The following was typed from the Crossway, ESV study Bible. I have been reading chapters 1-9 of Proverbs repeatedly, during my Bible study sessions and each time I begin again at chapter 1, I reread the introduction because I think it is so useful.
I decided to share it with others who may not read study Bibles and who appreciate the book of Proverbs.
Character Types in Proverbs: (directly from the ESV Crossway Study Bible intro to Proverbs; all emboldening and underscoring are mine)
To read Proverbs well, one must have a good grasp of who the character types are and what function they serve in the book.
The most obvious characters in the book are the wise, the fool, and the simple. Proverbs urges its readers to be wise, that is, to embrace God’s covenant and to learn the skill of living out the covenant in everyday situations (compare 2:2). The wise person has done that (10:1); usually Proverbs focuses on the one who has made good progress in that skill, whose example is worth following (9:8b).
The fool is the person steadily opposed to God’s covenant (1:7b). The setting of Proverbs assumes there can be fools even among God’s people. There are three Hebrew terms translated “fool” (kesil, ‘ewil, nabal), with little difference among them. This kind of person resists even the offer of forgiveness found in the covenant (14:9; 15:8). These people are dangerous in their influence (13:20; 17:12) and cause grief to their parents (10:1); but they are not beyond hope (8:5).
The simple is the person who is not firmly committed, either to wisdom or to folly; he is easily misled (14:15). His trouble is that he does not apply himself to the discipline needed to gain and grow in wisdom.
Proverbs also uses other terms, both positive (e.g., righteous, upright, diligent, understanding, prudent) and negative (e.g., wicked, lazy, lacking sense). These do not designate different groups of people from the wise and the fools; rather, these terms are commonly “co-referential,” i.e., they apply to the same people looked at from different angels. The righteous is the one who has embraced the covenant, seen from the perspective of his faithfulness to God’s will; the wise is the same person, seen from the perspective of his skill in living out God’s will; the prudent is the same individual seen as one who carefully plans out his obedience. Likewise, the wicked is the one who rejects God’s covenant, seen from the angle of his opposition to God; the fool is this same person, seen from the angle of the stupid course of life he has chosen.
The co-referential use of these terms helps the reader to discern the many-sided fruits of godliness and ungodliness.
Also, these characters usually serve as idealized portraits: that is, they denote people exemplary for their virtue and wisdom or especially despicable for their evil. The literary name for this is “caricature”: portraits of people with features exaggerated for easy identification. The positive figures serve as ideals for the faithful, to guide their conduct and character formation. The negative figures are exaggerated portraits of those who do not embrace the covenant, so the faithful can recognize these traits in themselves and flee them.
Beyond the co-referential negative terms, there are some gradations: the scoffer is worse than the fool (21:24), and the person wise in his own eyes is almost beyond hope (26:12). The difference is one of hardness in unteachability (the great sin in Proverbs). The simple is not as far gone as the fool. All of these are what the OT calls “uncircumcised” in heart, and what Christian theology calls “unregenerate.”
For those who would like to download the above, I made a downloadable pdf:
STUDY RECOMMENDATIONS:
I wanted to add to the definition of the “simple,” I think he could also be called double-minded, as he sees good in each path: godly and ungodly. He hasn’t learned to only love God’s way, but still believes the lies of his conditioning, and trusts in the world when he should trust in God. He hasn’t, therefore, learned wisdom yet.
For those who have read through their Bibles several time or more, I wanted to share my reading plan with you:
I read a chapter or more from the 5 different parts of the Bible each day: the Pentateuch; the history; the poetry; the prophets and the New Testament. Recently, I created a few more sections, dividing the prophets (major and minor); the poetry, (Job and Psalms; and Proverbs, Ecc., Song) into subdivisions.
I keep a journal of daily readings, because I usually don’t get a chapter or more in all those areas; if I read half of them on Monday, I read the other half of them on Tuesday….
I do the above because it keeps me in touch with all the sections of the Bible, I am in each of them daily or at least weekly.
Also, my Bible reading doesn’t tend to get stale, like it has when it was confined to one long book….