Canter Bridge

On a week of beginnings, it is easy to imagine that the requisite strength and intelligence for forging a differing kind of year lie within. They do not.

To hear the proverbial summons to turn outside oneself in search of these qualities is not for a moment to demean the accrued courage and discernment that over time become inseparable from the wise person’s persona. It is rather to recognize that it is futile to begin there.

One of the Bible’s most condensed statements about getting smart in a world where foolishness is the default state comes to us, fittingly, near the beginning of the biblical anthology of Proverbs. For a sentence about first principles, it is remarkably subtle and pregnant.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction

The proverb and the collectors who placed it near the doorway of the book of Proverbs insist that knowledge begins with proper posture. One humbles oneself before YHWH. Surely this is a the core of what it means to speak of the fear of the Lord. One recognizes one’s derived and dependent state. The man who fears YHWH must not loathe him or live terrified of his arbitrary whims. The Bible argues strongly that YHWH is good and that the constancy of his beneficence towards us makes it both reasonable and safe to trust him.

Yet the proverb asks us to assume the status of a novice, arguably even that of a fool before the one who is both wise and the source of attainable wisdom.

Such fear is, in sequential terms, the very first step on the path to wisdom. If one does not take this step, one has chosen or fallen onto a different path, the destination of which is not wisdom.

To fear YHWH is also to take the principal or most important step towards wisdom. It is not mere pious incaution to find the Hebrew r’eshyt offering this double entendre to the reader. Both fruits hang low, within reach.

There will be other, valuable, and supplementary means of adding to one’s wisdom along this chosen path. The proverbs and the biblical portrait of Solomon, their sponsor, are anything if not eclectic. The woman who fears and trusts YHWH ranges widely over his creation, collecting understanding wherever it lies.

Yet to fear YHWH, says the proverbs, is the critical thing, the foundational matter, the sine qua non of growth into the kind of learning that matters, shapes, and satisfies.