Bruce K. Waltke, the 93-year-old distinguished evangelical professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, holds doctorates in Greek and New Testament from Dallas Theological Seminary and ancient Near Eastern languages and literature from Harvard.

Considered the foremost living authority on the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, Waltke was a translator of the New American Standard Version of the Bible and a member of the committee responsible for the New International Version of the Bible.

The Evangelical Association of Christian Publishers awarded Waltke its 2002 Gold Medallion Christian Book of the Year for his landmark exegesis "Genesis: A Commentary," and its 2008 Christian Book of the Year Award for his "An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach."

Waltke's commentary on the book of Proverbs is widely acclaimed. He notes that two Hebrew words for fool—ewil and k'sil—refer to people with morally deficient character. The fool, unlike the gullible, is fixed in the correctness of his own narrow opinion regardless of the established moral order revealed in Scripture. The fool's "supercilious arrogance blocks him from wisdom ... [although he does have] genius for invective and denigration."

People hardened by sin tend to go from bad to worse. Scripture presents the 'mocker' [Hebrew: l�îm] as the most hardened apostate, who ridicules and derides those who hold to Biblical morality and ethics. The scoffer may fancy satirizing his opponents, but he is without hope in the 'world to come' [Hebrew: olam ha'ba].

read more