Not one author. The book names at least five sources, including a foreign king's mother and an editorial team working two centuries after Solomon.
Ask who wrote Proverbs and the book answers you itself, more openly than almost any other book in the Bible. It names at least five sources and it labels them as it goes.
Solomon is the largest, and he is not the only one. There is Agur, there is King Lemuel's mother, there are the sayings of the wise, and there is an editorial team working for Hezekiah two centuries after Solomon died.
Proverbs is an anthology and it says so. That is not a problem to be explained away, and the section headings are still printed in your Bible.
The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel. Long poetic instruction, mostly a father addressing a son, plus Wisdom personified as a woman.
The proverbs of Solomon. This is the short two-line material most people picture when they think of the book.
The sayings of the wise. A separate collection, not attributed to Solomon, and the most interesting section in the book. More on it below.
More proverbs of Solomon, copied by the men of Hezekiah king of Judah. An editorial note, in the text, naming a compilation roughly 250 years later.
The sayings of Agur son of Jakeh, then the sayings of King Lemuel, which the text says his mother taught him. Neither man appears anywhere else in Scripture.
Nobody has to reconstruct this. The book prints its own table of contents, and the Hezekiah note is a piece of editorial history sitting inside the canon.
1 Kings 4:32 says he spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. The book we have holds a few hundred, so even on the traditional reading this is a selection.
And it is inside the text rather than added to it, which puts it on stronger ground than most traditional attributions elsewhere in Scripture.
The preposition rendered of can mean by, for, or belonging to. The same ambiguity runs through the Psalm headings that say of David.
Kings across the ancient Near East patronised wisdom writing. A court collection under a king's name was a normal and honest way to publish.
The man who warns his son about foreign wives in chapter 5 is recorded in 1 Kings 11 as having been turned by exactly that. The book does not hide it.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
This is the part that almost never gets taught, and it should be, because people find it on their own and it hits harder when nobody prepared them.
Proverbs 22:17 to 24:22 has striking and sustained parallels with an Egyptian text called the Instruction of Amenemope, written before it. Not one coincidental line. Structure, order, vocabulary and idiom.
Proverbs 22:20 asks, have I not written for you thirty sayings. Amenemope says, see thou these thirty chapters. Both texts count themselves the same way.
Biblical Archaeology Society puts it directly: passages here “seem to be paraphrased from the Instructions of Amenemope”.
We think this is good news, and we are going to say why rather than manage around it.
Scripture is God-breathed and it came through real people in real cultures who read and borrowed and adapted, because that is how human beings write. A God who inspires material has no difficulty inspiring the selection and reshaping of existing material. The alternative view, that every line had to arrive from nowhere or it does not count, is a rule nobody got from the Bible.
And watch what the Israelite editor does with it. Amenemope's instruction is framed around Egyptian gods and Egyptian order. The Proverbs version reorganises the whole thing around the fear of the Lord, which the book announces in 1:7 as the beginning of knowledge. The raw material is shared. The claim about who holds the world together is not, and that is the edit.
This also fits what Proverbs already says about itself. Wisdom in chapter 8 is present at creation and calls out in the street to everybody. A book making that claim would be inconsistent if it then refused to recognise anything true written by an Egyptian.
What is unusual about Proverbs 22:17 to 24:22?
The section is headed the sayings of the wise rather than attributed to Solomon, and it shares structure, order and idiom with an earlier Egyptian text. Both count thirty sayings, and the Israelite version reorganises the material around the fear of the Lord.
The last two chapters belong to two men nobody can identify, and both are probably not Israelite.
Chapter 30. Opens by saying he is weary and has not learned wisdom, which is an unusual way to begin a wisdom text. Possibly from Massa in north Arabia.
Three things, four things. Ants, rock badgers, locusts, lizards. The most observational material in the book, and the strangest.
Chapter 31. No such king of Israel or Judah exists in any record. A foreign king, then, whose material was worth keeping.
Verse 1 says it is what his mother taught him. So the famous chapter 31 passage about a capable wife is a woman's teaching, delivered to a son about how to choose.
That last point is worth pausing on, since chapter 31 is usually preached at women as a standard to meet. In the text it is a mother telling a king what to look for, which is a different message aimed at a different person.
Proverbs is unusually honest about its own construction. Multiple sources, foreign material, a royal patron, a later editorial committee, and headings that say so.
Most of the Bible is not this transparent, which is why this book is useful as a calibration. When somebody tells you that the Bible presents itself as arriving whole and undisturbed by human hands, Proverbs is sitting there with a Hezekiah-era editorial note printed in the middle of it.
And nothing is lost. The fear of the Lord is still the beginning of knowledge. A gentle answer still turns away wrath. Wisdom still calls in the street to anybody who will stop.
What the book actually claims is that wisdom is available, that it predates Israel, and that it can be recognised wherever it turns up because it belongs to the God who was there at the founding of the world. A collection assembled from several sources over centuries is not an embarrassment to that claim. It is a demonstration of it.
For related ground, see the authors of the Bible, Proverbs 24 on procrastination, how the Bible was put together, who chose the books, how to study the Bible, the most accurate translation and what wisdom means.
Proverbs names at least five sources including Agur, King Lemuel's mother and an editorial team under Hezekiah, one section closely parallels an earlier Egyptian text, and the book prints all of that on its own pages.
Finding out a book of the Bible has a construction history is disorienting the first time. Send your questions in and somebody at Sound of Heaven will work through them with you.
Not one person. The book labels its own sections. Chapters 1 to 9 and 10:1 to 22:16 are attributed to Solomon. 22:17 to 24:22 is headed the sayings of the wise. Chapters 25 to 29 are Solomon's proverbs copied by the men of Hezekiah roughly 250 years later. Chapter 30 is Agur son of Jakeh and chapter 31 is King Lemuel, recording what his mother taught him.
No, and the book never claims he did. 1 Kings 4:32 says he spoke three thousand proverbs, and the book we have holds a few hundred, so even the traditional reading makes it a selection. The Hebrew preposition rendered of can mean by, for or belonging to, and royal patronage of wisdom collections was ordinary across the ancient Near East.
Proverbs 22:17 to 24:22 has sustained parallels with the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope in structure, order, vocabulary and idiom. Proverbs 22:20 asks, have I not written for you thirty sayings, and Amenemope says, see thou these thirty chapters. Biblical Archaeology Society says the passages seem to be paraphrased from it.
No. Scripture came through real people in real cultures who read and adapted, and a God who inspires material can inspire its selection and reshaping. Watch what the editor does: Amenemope is framed around Egyptian gods, and the Proverbs version reorganises everything around the fear of the Lord, which chapter 1:7 names as the beginning of knowledge.
The text says King Lemuel is recording an inspired utterance his mother taught him. No king by that name appears in the records of Israel or Judah, so he was probably foreign. That makes the famous passage about a capable wife a mother's teaching to her son about what to look for, rather than a standard being set for women to meet.