Many proverbs are “variations on a theme.” What major themes have you noticed in the book of proverbs?
Possible answers are : wisdom / fool; righteous / wicked; tongue/ speech; diligence / sluggard; honesty / dishonesty; Justice; pride / humility.
Proverbs has several ways it gets across a message:
- Couplets – a pair of verses that talk about the same thing
- Personification – visual personification of the unseen characteristic (e.g. wisdom is personified as a woman)
- Simile – A is like B
- Antithesis – a second couplet states the opposite of the first (.e. first talks about the righteous and the second the wicked)
- Synonymous parallelism – a second couplet states the same as the first but in a different way
- Synthetic parallelism – a second couplet adds some new idea or thought to the first line
Ask youth to go through some of the proverbs and identify the couplets and characteristics of each one:
- Contradicts
- condones an action
- condemns an action
- compares
- combines – adds a thought
- characterizes
- etc
Some proverbs are simple observations on life, others are advice for living. How do you tell the difference?
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200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.