619 Pain and Danger: Unpleasant Sayings and the Structure of Proverbs RYAN P. O’DOWD Ithaca, NY 14850 Abstract: In this article, I examine approximately ifty sayings in Proverbs that imag- ine intense pain in order to evaluate their potential to shape the way the moral instruc- tions and character portraits in the book are interpreted, remembered, and actualized in the moral life. I also explore the conspicuous gathering of these pain sayings within several clusters in the latter part of the book. Key Words: wisdom • pain • trauma • empathy • emotion • memory •  neuroscience • Proverbs • metaphor • moral formation Research in cognitive science, pain studies, and linguistics together con- irms strong connections between verbal descriptions of pain, images of pain, and sounds of pain, on the one hand, and heightened responses of empathy, vicarious experience, pain aversion, and anticipation of pain, on the other. One could put it this way: reading about, seeing, hearing, or anticipating a slap or smack triggers a sophisticated chain of physical and emotional responses. Over time, these triggers prime our memory and, in turn, inform subsequent psychological and social behav- ior. 1 Much of this is common sense: pain of any kind has long-standing personal and social effects below the surface of conscious reasoning (albeit in far more complex ways than most of us imagine). Yet, apart from scholars working in trauma theory, biblical scholars have passed by the dificult proverbs that I treat here without a word about their jarring and highly unusual imagery or a guess as to why the sayings might have been included in the Book of Proverbs. Trauma I extend gratitude to Collin Cornell, Calum Carmichael, and Daniel Miller for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this article. 1 Ilaria Bufalari and Silvio Ionta, “The Social and Personality Neuroscience of Empathy for Pain,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7, 393 (2013) 1-7.