Albert Barnes Commentary Proverbs 1:20

"Wisdom crieth aloud in the street; She uttereth her voice in the broad places;" — Proverbs 1:20 (ASV)

Wisdom is personified. In the Hebrew, the noun is a feminine plural, as though this Wisdom were the queen of all wisdoms, uniting in herself all their excellences.

She lifts up her voice, not in solitude, but in the gathering places of people: “without” (that is, outside the walls), in the streets, at the highest point of all places of concourse, in the open space of the gates where the elders meet and the king sits in judgment, and in the heart of the city itself (Proverbs 1:21). Through sages, lawgivers, and teachers, and even more through life and its experiences, she preaches to mankind.

Socrates said that the fields and the trees taught him nothing, but that he found the wisdom he was seeking in his conversation with the men whom he met as he walked in the streets and agora of Athens.