David Atkinson shows how Proverbs addresses all these issues. Wisdom, he argues, is about helping to cope; about seeing the world in a fresh way to five new resources for living; about working out what living for God means in the very ordinariness of daily life.

These sayings, he explains, bring such concerns to life in vivid, imaginative, often humorous pictures, linking the cosmic and the homely. The ancient book puts a mirror up to our behaviour, and asks: 'Are you like this? Is there not a better way to live?'

The Bible Speaks Today series covers every book of the Old and New Testaments, as well as Bible themes that run through the whole of Scripture. These revised editions are updated with contemporary language and Bible translations to help you to follow and to teach the Bible in today's world.