When it comes to preaching, the book of Proverbs has fallen on hard times. The thicket of individual proverbs that are located in chapters 10-29 have been marginalized in homiletic circles for a number of reasons. For one, the individual proverbs are perceived as having no context. The sayings, according to customary scholarly consent, are all randomly collected. For another, the proverb itself has no narrative plot. There is no homiletical loop or reversal motif built into the saying. If one were to diagram a narrative, it would be a line rising diagonally toward a climax.

In contrast the most fitting diagram of a proverb may simply be a period. Once a proverb has been spoken, can anything else be said? Tom Long has said that some view the book of Proverbs as "a deserted stretch of highway between Psalms and Ecclesiastes."1 The book is often treated by preachers as the resident alien of Scripture. Preachers, therefore, feel their hands are tied when it comes to developing sermons from Proverbs.

Donald Gowen sums up the attitude of many homileticians:

Of what use can the Old Testament proverbs be to the preacher? Their very nature suggests they ought not to be taken as texts to be expounded in a sermon. What needs to be said, they have already said in the most effective way. They are like the punch line of a joke; if they have to be explained, better not to bother with it in the first place... When one preaches on wisdom themes the best way to use the proverbs may be as the writers of those sermonettes did [i.e. Proverbs 1-9], to intersperse them along the way to drive home a point and to serve as memorable summaries of what has been developed."2

Al Fasol, in an essay on preaching from the Hebrew Scriptures, maintains that "Proverbs perhaps could be more effectively shared on Wednesday nights during Bible study."3 Elizabeth Achtemeier confesses that "preaching from any portion of Proverbs 10-29 ... can seem to confront the homiletician with enormous problems."4 She continues:

What does a preacher do with a two- or four-line text that is unconnected with what precedes and follows it?" That is one of the difficulties with Proverbs 10-29; those chapters seem to have the most random order, simply listing maxims one after another.5

These observations are not uncommon by any means.

The common homiletical resolution is simply to peruse through the collection and gather together proverbs that address a common theme or topic such as wealth, folly, friendship, or speech and shape the topic into the form of a sermon. Achtemeier states, "In short, in dealing with traditional Wisdom, the preacher constructs a topical sermon, and, as we have said before, a topical sermon looks at the entire canon's view of the subject."6

There are limitations to this topical approach. First, it does not take the rhetorical and structural sense of the text seriously. Any possible contextual structure that might exist beyond the level of the individual proverb is ignored. Second, dealing with Proverbs 10-29 exclusively in a topical fashion runs the risk of over-looking a number of proverbs because they do not fall within the specific categories that one has listed. Several proverbs are quickly marginalized and get lost in the topical shuffle. Third, many of the proverbs are judged to be quite pedantic because there is no referent or context. But if the context of the proverb is taken seriously, could this not possibly give the melancholy proverb a new dimension and supply the needed referent?