A YEAR IN PROVERBS
By Joseph King
Guardian Books. 310 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 1 460 002 830
Have you ever been offered a delicious-looking slice of cake, only to take a bite and find it to be dry? If so, you will know how I felt when reading this book.
The blurb describes it as ‘a thoughtful gift to those appreciating devotional depth, it should also profit pastors or lay preachers seeking material for one-off sermons’. Perhaps it is unfortunate for the author that I am currently reading Future Grace by John Piper – here is devotional depth indeed!
A year in Proverbs is devised as 365 daily comments going through the biblical book. The author rightly states that Christ is ‘found in all the Scriptures… their focus, their substance and their goal’, but I fear that in his zeal to show this, he sometimes stretches the proverbs too far. For instance he takes the scarlet clothes made by the wife of noble character (ch.31) to be the righteousness with which the Christian is clothed. He does not shy away from the opportunity to share his views on many different issues, for instance, on ‘inferior methods of reaching out’ and ‘modern music frequently little better than inferior muzak’ – how does he extrapolate this from Proverbs 31.22?
A book aiming to be devotional should warm the reader’s heart and draw out her appreciation for the Lord and his wonderful grace. I regret to say this did neither.
