Who Wrote the Book of Proverbs?

Proverbs is an anthology of wisdom that explicitly includes the voices of Solomon (1:1; 10:1; 25:1), the “wise” (22:17; 24:23), Agur (30:1), and Lemuel (31:1). There was also the editorial work of the “men of Hezekiah” (25:1) along with, presumably, a final editor or editors who put the whole collection together in its finished form. And when one considers the international borrowing of proverbs among different peoples, one can readily recognize that Proverbs does not relay the thought of only a single human author.

Nevertheless, it is also true that the most significant authorial voice in the book is that of Solomon. Several factors support this claim. First, when comparing its structure with the structure of other works of wisdom in the ANE, Pr 1:1–22:16 displays a unity as the work of Solomon. “The corpus conforms precisely in its structure with many of the ancient Near Eastern ‘instruction’ documents: main title with preamble (1:1-7), a prologue (collection 1: 1:8–9:18), a subtitle to collection 2 (10:1), and the main text (10:2–22:16)” (Bruce Waltke, with Charles Yu, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007], 905). Second, the words of the wise (22:17–24:34) most likely are Solomon’s own compilation and adaptation of wisdom from other sources, appended to 1:1–22:16. After all, since its author is not named (which is not typical of works of wisdom instruction in the ANE), the “I” (22:19) who introduces this section most naturally accords with the Solomonic “I” of chaps. 1–9 (Waltke, OT Theology, 905). Third, chaps. 25–29 are another section of Solomonic proverbs, this time collected by scholars in the time of King Hezekiah (25:1). Fourth, Solomon’s work in collecting and disseminating the wisdom in Proverbs fits well the biblical picture of him as a famous sage and composer of wisdom writings (1Kg 4:29-34; cf. 1Kg 3).

Hence, with the exception of chaps. 30–31, all the previous sections of the book have a direct connection with Solomon. This makes the superscription in 1:1, “the proverbs of Solomon,” an appropriate description of the book as a whole.