A Topical Treasury of Proverbs

Why I Decided to Write This Book
Hi, my name is Tom Clarke and I wish I could meet you in person. My wife Nancy and I live in upstate New York, and I have two adult daughters, Laurel and Becky. I am an author/publisher, caretaker of the Gethsemane Prayer Garden, and a developer of computer software. I first called Jesus Christ my Savior in 1989.

This is the second of three books that I have had published, all since 2008 and all based on Bible-related topics. My first book, Joshua's Spiritual Warfare, was written based on the Book of Joshua and is an in-depth study of the chiastic structure in Joshua. My third book, A Garden of Love, is a poetic prose journey through the New Testament – by using flowers and photographs from the Gethsemane Prayer Garden, the book delves into the topic of Christian "agape" love.

In this book, Proverbs is analyzed using my skills as a computer software developer. Starting with a word-by-word analysis of Proverbs, I wrote specialized computer software so that a thorough, professional, and revealing understanding may be provided. In this way, the skills that I had learned in the secular workplace were able to be used for God's glory.

In 2004, I was reading through the Bible in a year with my daughter Becky: Genesis to Revelation. She was a freshman at Messiah College and had read only parts of the whole Bible. We talked on the phone each Sunday evening for two or three hours, discussing what we had read. I believed that by reading the Bible together, I could demonstrate my love to her by helping her draw closer to the Lord and imparting a stronger understanding of the Bible.

When we got to Proverbs in July of 2004, I was stumped because I was not able to adequately mentor my daughter with the Word of God. I could speak in generalities, but I could not state the full counsel of the Lord on any particular topic because the topics were so scattered. There would be a verse about righteous living that was immediately followed by a verse about discernment and then a verse about consequences of sin – it seemed to be very confusing to me.

Then I realized that I could write computer software that would help my understanding. I downloaded the Book of Proverbs to my computer and started analyzing Proverbs from a new perspective. Soon the book began to take life.

I invested four years and thousands of man-hours on this project, yet I can say that my effort was well worth it to me. Using this very sophisticated software, I was able to give thorough attention to detail in my analysis. Such detail would have been extremely difficult for someone that was just reading the Bible.

I invite you to look at the 5 sample pages to see its quality.