Gilbert House Fellowship #409: Proverbs 2–3

WE RETURN to our regularly scheduled reading this week with proverbs that are paternal calls for wisdom--and a warning against communing with spirits of the dead.Contrary to some who seen in these chapters a female deity named Wisdom, perhaps even the consort of Yahweh, the mundane explanation is simply that the word chokhmah (“wisdom”) is a feminine noun. Grammatical gender has nothing to do with biological gender. So, attempts to see in Proverbs a feminine spirit named Wisdom are misguided—an example of eisegesis, reading a desired, predetermined meaning into the text, rather than exegesis, drawing the intended meaning from the text. We also dig deep into Proverbs 2:18: [F]or her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the departed; We find in the passage what may be a reference to the cult of the dead that surrounded the Israelites. First, the word translated “departed” is rephaim, the spirits of the Nephilim destroyed in the Flood. This is confirmed by the Greek Septuagint, translated about 200 years before the birth of Jesus, which translates rephaim as “giants.” Further, the Septuagint uses axonas for the word translated “paths,” where three verses earlier the words triboi and trochiai are rendered “paths.” The Brenton translation of the Septuagint renders Prov. 2:18 this way: For she has fixed her house near death, and guided her wheels near Hades with the giants. We explain why this is relevant: On the Golan Heights, ancient Bashan, there are literally hundreds of funerary monuments that feature concentric rings of stone around a central tumulus or cairn. The largest is Gilgal Refaim (“Wheel of Giants”), which we visited last March, but there are three others nearly as large that are practically unknown. Gilgal Refaim appears to have been built as a cult site for ritual circumambulation around a sacred central core in which a priest or shaman would descend to make contact with spirits of the netherworld. In short, Proverbs 2 appears to be a warning against participating in rites that were clearly still taking place in the time of Saul, David, and Solomon (see 1 Samuel 28, Saul’s visit to the medium of En-dor). In fact, based on the writings of the prophets, communing with spirits of the netherworld continued in Israel for at least another three or four hundred years, down to the time of Jeremiah and the Babylonian captivity. —————— Thank you for making our Build Barn Better project a reality! Our 1,200 square pole barn is now where we produce all of our programs. Thank you for your support! If you are so led, you can help out at GilbertHouse.org/donate. Get our free app! It connects you to these studies plus our weekly video programs Unraveling Revelation and A View from the Bunker, and the podcast that started this journey in 2005, P.I.D. Radio. Best of all, it bypasses the gatekeepers of Big Tech! The app is available for iOS, Android, Roku, and Apple TV. Links to the app stores are at www.gilberthouse.org/app/. Video on demand of our best teachings! Stream presentations and teachings based on our research at our new video on demand site! Check out our online store! www.GilbertHouse.org/store is a virtual book table with books and DVDs related to our weekly Bible study.  Take advantage of our monthly specials! We love coffee! We’ve partnered with Kevlar Joe’s Coffee (KevlarJoe.com) for Gilbert House blends: Amazing Grace, a mild cookies-and-cream flavored coffee; Snarling Dachshund, a medium-roast Sumatran; and Bunker Buster, a dark-roasted Colombian that’s sure to get you moving. Find them at GilbertHouse.org/store/. —————— NEW DATES FOR OUR NEXT TOUR OF ISRAEL! Our 2025 tour features special guests Dr. Judd Burton and Doug Van Dorn! We will tour the Holy Land March 25–April 3, 2025, with an optional three-day extension in Jordan. For more information, log on to www.GilbertsInIsrael.com. —————— Subscribe to our new YouTube channels!Unraveling Revelation: www.YouTube.com/UnravelingRevelationThese weekly studies and Derek’s podcast: www.YouTube.com/GilbertHouse—————— Our favorite Bible study tools! Check the links in the right-hand column at www.GilbertHouse.org. For the complete Gilbert House Fellowship archive, go to www.spreaker.com/show/gilbert-house-fellowship.