Pondering Proverbs

I've been thinking a bit about proverbs lately. Not the book Proverbs in the Old Testament, but the idea of proverbs in general. I've decided to do a little bit of research to try to nail down exactly what a proverb is and why some wise (or seemingly wise) people use them.

According to the Wikipedia, "Defining a 'proverb' is a difficult task." One definition, which sounds almost like a proverb itself, states that "A proverb is the wit of one, and the wisdom of many,” but I'm not sure whether or not wit is or should be a defining characteristic of a good proverb. I don't think a saying has to be witty to be a proverb, though may good proverbs do have some wit to them. I agree, however, that a proverb must have wisdom, and I would add that it should probably be short. It should be vague enough to force one to think for a moment or two to grasp its meaning, but not so vague that it has no meaning at all. The purpose of a proverb, in my opinion, is to convey wisdom in such a way that a person must practice wisdom to understand it, thus increasing the hearer's wisdom both through the teaching of the proverb itself and from the exercise by which they came to understand the proverb.

Proverbs are useful for teaching wisdom is the same way Jesus Christ taught doctrine through parables. When we're taught doctrine, and we understand it, God expects us to accept the doctrine and act on it, but some people aren't quite ready for that. So Christ taught doctrine in a way that required understanding, so those who didn't understand, and didn't want to, wouldn't be under a sacred obligation to apply what they had learned, because they wouldn't have really learned anything. On the other hand, I'm not sure if people are morally obligated to apply the wisdom they learn from proverbs, so perhaps this reason for using proverbs isn't as valid as I had thought.

Another reason some people use proverbs is so they can appear wise, even if they aren't. If you ask a supposedly wise man a question, he might answer with a meaningless phrase that sounds like a proverb, so he can sound like a wise teacher even when he didn't actually teach anyone anything. Plus, it'd be difficult to prove that the so-called wise man isn't actually wise because the problem may be that we aren't wise enough to understand the meanings of his proverbs.

Those who are actually wise and who truly desire to share their wisdom with others might use proverbs to help others learn and practice wisdom, or they may simply impart their wisdom in plain terms. Proverbs are interesting, and they can be useful, but they can also be confusing. A good and wise teacher wouldn't want to confuse his students when he could simply teach them instead. On the other hand, a wise teacher wouldn't want to just give his students nuggets of wisdom when he could lead them to discover the wisdom for themselves instead. Proverbs invite their hearers to ponder their meanings, and to thus discover important truths that might not otherwise have been given the amount of thought they deserve. Maybe there is wisdom in using proverbs to share wisdom, but only when the proverbs themselves are used wisely.