The book of Proverbs is a repository of short, didactic sayings, a fountain of proverbial wisdom of both a religious and secular nature. These maxims are intended not only to advise the conscientious person in the true and proper path to God, but also to instruct one in the ways of the world and the affairs of humankind.

As a genre, proverbs are common to every spoken tongue and offer universally recognized truths in the form of a short saying, maxim or aphorism. Egyptian proverbial wisdom can be found in a variety of "instructions," including that of Kagemni of the Old Kingdom, as well as Ptah-hotep and Merikare, and may have formed a basis for some of the biblical texts in Proverbs (see Pritchard, Ancient Near East Texts, 412ff). "The Proverbs of Alfred" was published in 12th-century En…