The book of Proverbs is one of the very few places in
scripture where context is generally unimportant — even useless. For Bible
students, that makes some of the more obscure individual proverbs a little difficult
to parse: we are reduced to looking up the meanings of individual Hebrew words,
comparing turns of phrase with other Old Testament books from the same period,
or resorting to internet explanations of traditional rabbinical renderings.
Or making wild guesses. I don’t recommend that approach.
All the same, if we were to assume Solomon never groups
proverbs together by subject for effect, we would be dead wrong.
