I’m finding the subject-studies at the beginning of Kidner’s Proverbs commentary
If we could analyze the influences that build up a godly character to maturity, we might well find that the agencies which we call natural vastly outweighed those that we call supernatural. The book of Proverbs reassures us that this, if it is true, is no reflection on the efficacy of God’s grace; for the hard facts of life, which knock some of the nonsense out of us, are God’s facts and his appointed school of character; they are not alternatives to his grace, but means of it; for everything is of grace, from the power to know to the power to obey. “The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made them both” (20:12).
Yet while all go to God’s school, few learn wisdom there, for the knowledge which he aims to instill is the knowledge of himself; and this, too, is the ultimate prize. In submission to his authority and majesty (that is, in the fear of the Lord) we alone start and continue our education; and by diligent search for wisdom “as for hid treasure” we shall find our prize in a growing intimacy with the same Lord. He is the beginning; he is also the end; for the goal is: “Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God” (2:5).
C.J. Mahaney commended Kidner’s Proverbs commentary here.