Abstract: This study argues that the Book of Mormon both adopts and develops the instructional wisdom tradition found in Proverbs 1–9 and other pre-exilic Near-Eastern texts. After outlining the structure, rhetoric, and themes of Hebrew instructional wisdom, it tracks those features through major Book of Mormon discourses. Particular attention is given to the personification of Wisdom, the tree-of-life and great-whore polarity, temple motifs, and the democratic invitation to pursue the “mysteries of God” through personal revelation. The analysis suggests that Book of Mormon authors preserve a strand of Israelite temple wisdom largely suppressed in the post-exilic biblical record. By reading restored scripture back into its ancient literary context, the paper offers fresh insight into both corpora: Proverbs’ “enigmas” become transparently eschatological, while the Book of Mormon’s doctrinal core takes on new depth as a deliberate wisdom inheritance. The study concludes that recognizing this shared sapiential framework clarifies the Book of Mormon’s purpose as a covenant guide and underscores its claim to recover “plain and most precious” truths lost from the biblical canon.
[Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared as Alyson Skabelund Von Feldt, “‘His Secret Is with the Righteous’: Instructional Wisdom in the Book of Mormon,” FARMS Occasional Papers 5 (2007): 49–83. As this important paper is not currently available online, it is reprinted here for the benefit of our readers. It has been updated and edited by the author.]
[Page 438]While studying the topic of personal revelation a number of years ago, a furious cross-referencing of Doctrine and Covenants 76 landed me in the Old Testament book of Proverbs, and I stopped to explore the territory. I turned to chapter 1 and read straight through until the wonder wore off somewhere after chapter 8. I first understood the dominant message to be an impassioned invitation to search for the knowledge of the mysteries of God, to seek personal revelation. But a note fell out of my Bible that I must have made some time before when preparing a Gospel Doctrine lesson or studying for a BYU religion test. It characterized Proverbs as “a collection of folk sayings; hard to see as scripture.” This did not seem an apt description of the passages I had just breathlessly encountered.
Over the years, I have learned that my reading of Proverbs 1–9 that night was unusual. Though scholars recognize that the author beseeches the reader to find wisdom, they almost always take this to be practical knowledge about how to live life richly, rather than how to obtain the riches of eternal life.
What has also surprised me is that many of the writers of the Book of Mormon were familiar with the literary forms, themes, and vocabulary of Hebrew wisdom literature, of which Proverbs 1–9 is an example, and made them part of their own sacred recordkeeping. What’s more, Book of Mormon authors clearly understood the search for wisdom to be a quest for eternal life and the mysteries of God.
This paper begins with a short introduction to Hebrew wisdom literature. I will then turn to an exploration of similarities between selected Old Testament wisdom texts, primarily Proverbs 1–9, and passages in the Book of Mormon, and I will investigate how the two sources elucidate each other.
Instructional Wisdom in Ancient Israel and the Near East
Scholars believe that wisdom sayings develop naturally in families and villages because of the human need to capture and distill the lessons of life and make them memorable. A literary wisdom tradition emerged anciently throughout the Near East, particularly in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
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