Understanding the Books of Proverbs

Many proverbs are "variations on a theme." What major themes have you noticed in the book of proverbs?
Possible answers are : wisdom / fool; righteous / wicked; tongue/ speech; diligence / sluggard; honesty / dishonesty; Justice; pride / humility.

Proverbs has several ways it gets across a message:

• Couplets - a pair of verses that talk about the same thing
• Personification - visual personification of the unseen characteristic (e.g. wisdom is personified as a woman)
• Simile - A is like B
• Antithesis - a second couplet states the opposite of the first (.e. first talks about the righteous and the second the wicked)
• Synonymous parallelism - a second couplet states the same as the first but in a different way
• Synthetic parallelism - a second couplet adds some new idea or thought to the first line

Ask youth to go through some of the proverbs and identify the couplets and characteristics of each one:

• Contradicts
• condones an action
• condemns an action
• compares
• combines - adds a thought
• characterizes
• etc

Some proverbs are simple observations on life, others are advice for living. How do you tell the difference?