Proverbs 1:6-8
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
6 To comprehend proverb and byword,
the words of the wise and their riddles.
7 Fear of the Lord[a] is the beginning of knowledge;(A)
fools despise wisdom and discipline.
II. Instructions of Parents and of Woman Wisdom
The Path of the Wicked: Greed and Violence[b]
8 Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,
and reject not your mother’s teaching;
Footnotes
- 1:7 Fear of the Lord: primarily a disposition rather than the emotion of fear; reverential awe and respect toward God combined with obedience to God’s will.
- 1:8–19 A parental warning to a young person leaving home, for them to avoid the company of the greedy and violent. Two ways lie before the hearer, a way that leads to death and a way that leads to life. The trap which the wicked set for the innocent (v. 11) in the end takes away the lives of the wicked themselves (v. 19). This theme will recur especially in chaps. 1–9. A second theme introduced here is that of founding (or managing) a household and choosing a spouse. A third theme is the human obstacles to attaining wisdom. Here (and in 2:12–15 and 4:10–19), the obstacle is men (always in the plural); in 2:16–19; 5:1–6; 6:20–35; chap. 7; 9:13–18, the obstacle to the quest is the “foreign” woman (always in the singular).
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