Preaching Proverbs

“If more professors of Bible and homiletics had seen what the advertising industry has seen, we would doubtless hear and do more preaching on Proverbs, and it might be some of the most helpful preaching in the church. Both biblical proverbs and advertising slogans are designed to speak directly into the heart of a culture, to ordinary people in their daily lives. With just a few words, they epitomize certain core values, and if they catch on, they become a powerful way of communicating those values. They may be adapted to new contexts within the culture, some of those quite distant from a given saying's original Sitz im Leben, its setting in life: ‘Where's the beef?’”

Ellen F. Davis, "Surprised by Wisdom: Preaching Proverbs," Interpretation 63 (2009): 259.