Proverbs 9:10

Fear is the word modern readers stumble over, and the stumble is worth taking seriously rather than translating away.

It does not mean terror; a book that spends chapters on God's kindness is not asking you to be frightened of him. But it does not mean mere respect either, which is how it is often softened. The Hebrew covers the response of a small creature to something vastly larger and genuinely able — the involuntary recalibration that happens when you realise the thing in front of you is not on your scale.

And it is called the beginning. Not the summary, not the whole. The starting point, without which the rest does not assemble. Proverbs is claiming that all subsequent knowledge sits on this footing, and that a very clever person who has not begun here is building on something that will not hold.

The second line is the one that explains why. The knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. Knowledge of, not knowledge about. The distinction is the same one you would draw between studying a person and knowing them.

So the book's theory of wisdom is relational rather than informational. It is not that religious people happen to make better decisions. It is that knowing who you are dealing with is the first fact, and every other fact is positioned relative to it.