Despite the welcome revival of scholarly interest in Biblical Wisdom, the "Book of Proverbs" remains neglected. It continues to be seen as a disorganised repository of traditional banalities, while "Job" and "Qohelet" are viewed as more exciting texts, in revolt against "Proverbs'" conventional wisdom. This book argues that this misleading consensus owes more to scholarly presuppositions than to the content of "Proverbs"; it sees "Proverbs" as a challenging work, one that aims to provoke a critical appropriation of wisdom and in which diverse sources have been skilfully brought together by a creative final editor to form a complex unity. Many divergences from the Hebrew in the Greek witness to the translator's discomfort with his spikey, provocative original. Peter Hatton challenges many existing scholarly assumptions and calls for a reevaluation of the role and significance of "Proverbs" in relation to the other biblical wisdom books and the whole canon.