Despite the centuries which separate us from the authors of these proverbs, the everyday realities of human existence remain: making friends, coping with sexuality, handling money, responding to poverty, making a living, learning through loss, muddling through difficulties, facing death.
David Atkinson shows how Proverbs addresses all these issues. Wisdom, he argues, is about helping to cope; about seeing the world in a fresh way to five new resources for living; about working out what living for God means in the very ordinariness of daily life.
These sayings, he explains, bring such concerns to life in vivid, imaginative, often humorous pictures, linking the cosmic and the homely. The ancient book puts a mirror up to our behaviour, and asks: ‘Are you like this? Is there not a better way to live?’
The Bible Speaks Today series covers every book of the Old and New Testaments, as well as Bible themes that run through the whole of Scripture. These revised editions are updated with contemporary language and Bible translations to help you to follow and to teach the Bible in today’s world.
表中的内容
General preface ix
Author’s preface xi
Select bibliography xiv
The wisdom of God 1
1. Wisdom’s portrait (1:1 – 9:18) 17
2. Wisdom’s instructors and Wisdom’s detractors (1:1 – 9:18) 45
3. Wisdom’s methods 69
4. Wisdom’s values: foundations (10:1 – 22:16) 86
5. Wisdom’s values: the practical dimension (10:1 – 22:16) 108
6. Wisdom’s values: the words of the wise (22:17 – 31:31) 132
Conclusion: godliness in working clothes 146
关于作者
David Atkinson is an Honorary Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Southwark, and was formerly Suffragan Bishop of Thetford in the Diocese of Norwich. As well as The Message of Job he has written the Bible Speaks Today commentaries on Genesis 1 – 11, Ruth and Proverbs.