Page 112 - The Poetic Books - Student Text

Many older commentators identify Christ in these questions. George Lawson (1749-1820) says, “The
God, whose name is beyond our comprehension, and whose Son’s name is Wonderful, does all these
things. Heaven is his throne, and the clouds are his chariots, and the earth has often felt his awful
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presence.” Charles Bridges (1794-1869) capitalizes “Son,” warns about going beyond the revelation
given in scripture, and “acknowledges the nature of the Son to be alike incomprehensible with that of
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the Father.” Still another says “the name…belongs to the first and only-begotten Son of God, not
merely according to creative analogies, but according to His true being. The inquirer would know God,
the creator of the world, and His Son, the mediator in the creation of the world, according to their
natures. “
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Other experts hedge on the identification of the son. They doubt the clarity of the OT revelation about
the coming Messiah as God’s Son. The usually very excellent commentator, Waltke, points out that in
Proverbs “’son’ always elsewhere refers to the son whom the father teaches.” He discusses other
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readings of the word, including a plural, “sons”, that would imply the nation of Israel, eventually leaving
NT revelation to clearly identify Jesus Christ as the one who reveals God. McKane goes further and sees
the verse in an entirely negative light. “If any man has been up to heaven where God is and has come
down again to report what he found, he deserves to be listened to, but there is no such wisdom
teacher… There is an unbridgeable gulf between men and a Being whose dominion is so vast, who
collects the wind in his fists, and whose clothing is in the clouds.”
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The discussion is important. The last sentence, “Surely you know!” can be taken positively or negatively.
Positively we might find the sense that those who read the word of God can know about the Son of God.
Negatively it comes in a somewhat mocking tone as if the reader were arrogantly assuming impossible
knowledge. The issue involves how much OT people knew about the Messiah, the Son of God. Was this
common or uncommon knowledge?

Key to the issue is the question about the source of wisdom
to humans, “Who has gone up to heaven and come down
(30:4)?” The writers of Proverbs would have been familiar
with the book of Deuteronomy (30:12) which asks a similar
question. “It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask,
‘Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so
we may obey it?’” The Deuteronomy question is in the
context of commandments that are not too hard to obey but
instead are a word “in your mouth and in your heart” (v. 14).
The Deuteronomy alternative is either to obey the law,
Figure 54: Who has ascended to heaven?
something absolutely too difficult like ascending to heaven, or
to obey the command to simply believe in a coming Messiah.
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182 Lawson, Proverbs, 536.
183 Bridges, Proverbs, 592.
184 Delitzsch, Proverbs, 277.
185 Waltke, Proverbs, vol. 2, 474
186 McKane, Proverbs, 647.
187 Lauger, Pentateuch, 125.
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