Proverbs

Rami Shapiro

Description

Wise and practical prescriptions for how to live with an honest perception of reality can become a companion for your own spiritual journey.

More than commonplace truisms, the biblical Book of Proverbs is an anthology of teachings designed to help you live with a sense of self-responsibility. Its wisdom, compiled in the seventh century BCE and credited to King Solomon, transcends nationality and politics, addressing instead the individual seeking the true satisfaction and tranquility that comes from living with an honest perception of reality.

In this fresh translation of an ancient "how-to," Rami Shapiro unpacks the proverbs, demonstrating how these complex poetic forms are actually straightforward instructions to live simply, without rationalizations and excuses. He shows how unlike almost anything else in the Hebrew Bible, the truths claimed in the Book of Proverbs are testable and verifiable. They force us to examine our lives and how we are living them without the benefit of psychological sophistry and New Age babble: We are either doing good or doing bad; we are either disciplined or lazy; we are either students of wisdom or puppets of desire.

Now you can experience the Book of Proverbs and understand Solomon's teachings with no previous knowledge of the Hebrew Bible. This SkyLight Illuminations edition presents insightful commentary that shares these timeless principles and encourages us to put them into practice in ways that are uniquely our own.

Preface vii
Introduction xi
The Nine Foundational Teachings 3
Introduction 3
The First Teaching 5
The Second Teaching 11
The Third Teaching 17
The Fourth Teaching 25
The Fifth Teaching 31
The Sixth Teaching 37
The Seventh Teaching 45
The Eighth Teaching 51
The Ninth Teaching 59
The First Collection of Shorter Sayings 63
The Thirty Precepts of Wisdom 159
Sayings of Solomon's Contemporaries 179
The Second Collection of Shorter Sayings 183
Warnings and Numerical Proverbs 219
A Mother's Advice 229
Afterword 235
Bibliography 237

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Philosophie et théologie
• Proverbs
• Christianity
• Bible

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 18 août 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781594733758
• Langue: English

Extrait

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Proverbs: Annotated & Explained
2011 Quality Paperback Edition, First Printing Translation, annotation, and introductory material 2011 by Rami Shapiro
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information regarding permission to reprint material from this book, please mail or fax your request in writing to SkyLight Paths Publishing, Permissions Department, at the address / fax number listed below, or e-mail your request to [e-mail].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bible. O.T. Proverbs. English. Shapiro. 2011.
Proverbs : annotated & explained / translation & annotation by Rami Shapiro.
p. cm.-(Skylight illuminations series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-59473-310-9 (pbk.)
1. Bible. O.T. Proverbs-Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Shapiro, Rami M. II. Title.
BS1463.S525 2011
223'.706-dc23
2011025877
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Manufactured in the United States of America
SkyLight Paths Publishing is creating a place where people of different spiritual traditions come together for challenge and inspiration, a place where we can help each other understand the mystery that lies at the heart of our existence.
SkyLight Paths sees both believers and seekers as a community that increasingly transcends traditional boundaries of religion and denomination-people wanting to learn from each other, walking together, finding the way .
SkyLight Paths, Walking Together, Finding the Way and colophon are trademarks of LongHill Partners, Inc., registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Published by SkyLight Paths Publishing/Jewish Lights Publishing Divisions of LongHill Partners, Inc. Sunset Farm Offices, Route 4, P.O. Box 237 Woodstock, VT 05091 Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]
www.skylightpaths.com www.jewishlights.com
Contents
Preface
Introduction
The Nine Foundational Teachings
Introduction
The First Teaching
The Second Teaching
The Third Teaching
The Fourth Teaching
The Fifth Teaching
The Sixth Teaching
The Seventh Teaching
The Eighth Teaching
The Ninth Teaching
The First Collection of Shorter Sayings
The Thirty Precepts of Wisdom
Sayings of Solomon s Contemporaries
The Second Collection of Shorter Sayings
Warnings and Numerical Proverbs
A Mother s Advice
Afterword
Bibliography
About Jewish Lights
About SkyLight Paths
Copyright
Preface
The world of the biblical Book of Proverbs, Sefer Mishlei , is fairly black-and-white. King Solomon, the presumed author of the book, eliminates the grays of life, an elimination I at first found troubling. The more I sought to apply these teachings to my own life, however, the more I realized that much of what I took for legitimate gray was in fact my own attempt to blur what was clearly black-and-white. I preferred to think in terms of gray to rationalize away questionable actions or to confuse things so that I could avoid doing the right thing.
The fact is, life is fairly simple. There is birth and death; good and evil; right and wrong; justice and injustice; honesty and dishonesty. We complicate life by refusing to respond to reality as it is. Most of the time it is not difficult to identify the right path. What is difficult is actually walking it.
Many years ago on a flight from Miami to Chicago, I struck up a conversation with the man sitting next me, a financial analyst named Jason. When I told him I was a rabbi, he paused for a long moment and said, I m dying. I have a rare form of cancer, and there is nothing anyone can do for me. I m forty-six years old. I have a wife and three kids. The oldest is only nine. How the hell does this happen to people? And why the hell is it happening to me?
My closest friend says I have to experience this cancer in order to work out some error in a past life. My priest says it s God s will. What kind of God wills this?
Jason seemed a bit out of breath. I invited him to keep talking, but he had nothing more to say. It was my turn.
Listen, Jason, I can t pretend to know what you re going through. I have no solution to offer, nor any way to make sense of your cancer. I can give you my opinion on some of the issues you raised, but that s about it.
Jason nodded, and I continued.
There is no reason why this is happening to you. And saying this is God s will is simply another way of saying horrible things happen. They do, and you are living proof. I believe in reality, and the reality is that you are a young man with a wife and three young children, and you are dying. Asking Why me? is a distraction from that reality. There is no final answer to Why me? You can invent possibilities right up until the moment you die, and none of them will really satisfy you.
Jason, I m not trying to be harsh, just clear. You are going to hear a lot of opinions about why this is happening to you. Most of it is offered in order to comfort the person offering it. The only comfort you can find in your situation is to respond to it with the best that is in you.
What does that mean? Jason asked.
You have to do what you can to maintain your health for as long as possible. You have to do what you can to see to the financial security of your family. And you have to do what you can to show your kids the right way to die.
The right way to die?
Show them that death is sad, maybe even tragic, and that people can handle the sad and the tragic in a loving way. Love them so much that you are willing to share your feelings with them. Love them so much that you are willing to spend as much time with them as they need. Love them so much that you do not close the door of your heart to them when you are the most lost and they are the most frightened.
The only thing I m sure of is that I m dying and that I love my wife and kids, Jason said.
That s reality, I said. Now respond to it.
Just die and love?
The other way around, I said. Just love and die.
When I share this story with people, they often criticize me for being unduly harsh and cold. You may feel the same way. The fact is that I had only a few minutes to get to the heart of a very serious matter. I could have complicated things sufficiently to pass the time on the airplane and leave Jason with a lot of theoretical ideas to ponder. But that would have been a cop-out. Life isn t that complicated. His situation was extremely simple: love and die. Maybe the same could be said of all of us.
The Book of Proverbs addresses us as if we were all Jasons in need of clarity and truth. No theories. No excuses. Just love and die. It is this ability of Proverbs to cut to the heart of the matter that gives the book its power. It doesn t deal in grays.
For Solomon, there are two states of mind: disciplined and slothful. The disciplined mind focuses on the task at hand and engages life as best it can. The slothful mind looks for excuses for inaction or seeks to cut corners through violence, dishonesty, and theft.
Solomon call