Proverbs 1:1 “The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel.”
The Hebrew word for “proverb” is מָשָׁל (mashal), and the same word as a verb means to rule or to reign. These might just be homophones with no original connection. An identical word can sometimes have completely unrelated meanings, like the English “stick”—a wooden stick as a noun, or to stick one thing to another as a verb. But putting the meanings of mashal together is appropriate because proverbs, wise speech, is what should characterize rulers. This is what Wisdom says in Proverbs 8:15, “By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just.”
When the verb mashal first appears in the Bible, it describes the creation of the sun, moon, and stars, which are made “to rule” over the day and night, and with a specific purpose “to separate light from darkness” (Genesis 1:16-18). That’s what kings should do: divide light from dark, and that’s what the proverbs are for. Proverbs is written for the sons of God to grow up into maturity, into “rulers” who can exercise a proper dominion in the world, judging between good and evil, light and dark, in the way that God intended humanity to do at creation.
Actually, this is the whole story of man in the Bible.
In the very first chapter, we’re told the task for which God created human beings: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion…” (Genesis 1:26, 28). Then in the last chapter of Revelation, at the end of the final vision, we read that the servants of God “will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5). The story of man in the Bible is the story of God creating man in his image to share his rule over creation, and bringing them through sin, death, redemption, resurrection, and glorification to achieve his original purpose. This hope should ground, motivate, inform, and shape our growth in godliness right now. Another way to say this is that our growth in godliness is nothing less than growth in fitness to share God’s throne. Even simpler, sanctification is preparation for kingship.
Proverbs is a vital signpost to get us there.
It’s the word of God to his children, the brothers and sisters of Christ, who in and with him are to inherit the world (Galatians 4:1-7). Proverbs wants to move us from being children tossed by the waves to the stability of mature manhood, into the image of Christ the king (Ephesians 4:13-14). So Proverbs speaks wisdom, it teaches us to discern between good and evil, light and darkness, so that we would reflect and share in the righteous rule of God in the world and be better prepared to reign with him in the redeemed creation.
The theme of reigning with Christ is actually more pervasive in Scripture, I think, than many realize, Often below the surface, and often indirect, but the basic idea isn’t absent from Christian reflection. According to one classic statement of Christian faith, the Heidelberg Catechism, the reality of our future rule is bound up in the very name Christian:
Heidelberg Catechism Question 32
Question: But why are you called a Christian?
Answer: Because by faith I am a member of Christ
and so I share in his anointing.
I am anointed
to confess his name,
to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks,
to strive with a free conscience against sin and the devil in this life,
and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for eternity.
And it’s no accident that Proverbs is written by “the son of David, king of Israel”—because we have another Son of David, “one greater than Solomon” who, Paul says, “became the wisdom of God for us” (1 Corinthians 1:30). The fullness of wisdom is in Christ, but one reason for this is his embodiment of the earlier wisdom of Proverbs, which is still the living word of God, and still worth the study.