The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 1:7
“[The fear of the Lord] contains in a nutshell the whole Israelite theory of knowledge. . . . The search for knowledge can go wrong, not as a result of individual, erroneous judgments or of mistakes creeping in at different points, but because of one single mistake at the beginning. . . . Faith does not – as is popularly believed today – hinder knowledge; on the contrary, it is what liberates knowledge, enables it really to come to the point.”
Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (Nashville, 1972), pages 67-68.
This post was originally published on The Gospel Coalition