The book of Proverbs speaks to the human will and to the choices that life sets before us. Someone has said, “Choices are the hinges of destiny” and the truth is that our lives turn on the choices we make.
The primary message of Proverbs is that life can never be fully understood nor lived except through a relationship with God. There are only three books in the Hebrew scriptures that can be categorized as philosophic: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.
And by philosophic I mean it in the sense that the Jews would as Hebrew philosophers believe that their “love of wisdom” began with their love and affirmation of God, as Paul so aptly put it in Col. 2:2-3, “the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
Being a “philosopher” only makes a person a “lover of wisdom” but being a lover of God makes one wise! And it is this truth that Solomon starts with in Proverbs 1:7 as he writes, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” And by “fear” Solomon doesn’t mean to say the cringing sort of fear that lives in terror as John wrote in 1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”
The fear that Solomon mentions is the fear that our actions and attitudes may bring hurt or harm to our God by grieving His loving heart. Notice as well that Solomon says that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge”. It is not the “END” of knowledge it is only the door by which we may enter. It is through this door that Peter said in 2 Peter 3:18 that we were to then “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”