needs to be qualified by seeing that the child also has a role to play. The proverb helps us to see that parental training has a strong impact, not that it bears sole responsibility. So the proverbs impart godly wisdom to us when they are rightly understood as proverbs, not promises. Proverbs also observes that living wisely often lengthens the years of your life (3:1–2; 9:10–11). Yet this is not meant as a ‘guarantee’ of long life for the godly (remember that Jesus died young), but is based on observations