Getting Biblical in Daily Life
Writer and scholar Jack Miles describes Proverbs' "Lady Wisdom" as being originally a sort of alternative to God, but who, in Proverbs, stops being an alternative and starts being one of God's partners. In fact, Wisdom's really the focus of Proverbs, slightly putting God (as a character) into the background—even though God is still the point of wisdom, since "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
God is extremely important to Proverbs, nevertheless. Wisdom seems to be more of an abstract personification than an actual goddess (or whatever) anyway. Proverbs stresses humility before God, and continually states that no matter how human beings attempt to plot out and design their own fates, it is ultimately God who determines what happens. Proverbs 16:9 says, "The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps."
The Book of Proverbs assumes that the righteous are rewarded and the wicked are punished—even, to some extent, in this life. So, in that sense, it would seem to be almost the opposite of the Book of Job, where a righteous man needs to deal with a calamity he didn't deserve. Yet, this wouldn't be entirely true—Proverbs understands that life isn't always easy for the righteous. But it insists that righteous people go through trials because God loves them and wants to test them. It'll all be okay in the end.
Proverbs also confronts the Book of Ecclesiastes, which continually talks about how wisdom is actually pretty useless, and discusses how the wise and the foolish both meet similar ends. This is clearly different from Proverbs, where wisdom ultimately is really useful—even if you go through trials, you're going to get rewarded and get back on the right track at the end.