.

God and Wisdom

The Deuteronomist urges the people to obey Gods ordinances and statutes, for that will be your
wisdom and understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes will
say, Surely this nation is a wise and understanding people ) (Deut 4:6).
That is, the people will be acting in the best tradition of wisdom. The experience of God that the
wisdom writings presuppose is called the fear of God. The wisdom school (teacher[s]) of
Proverbs explains this wisdom: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Prov 1:7);
the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight
(Prov 9:19). About one seventh of the sayings in the Solomonic sections of Proverbs (10:122:16;
2529) have a religious flavor. The fear of the Lord is a source of confidence and fountain of life
(14:2627); it is instruction in wisdom (15:33); it leads to life (19:33). God is the one who has
supreme dominion, many are the plans in the mind of man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that
will be (19:21; 20:24). Decision is wholly with God (16:33); man proposes, but God disposes
(16:19). God made the eye and the ear (20:12); God created poverty and riches (22:2); evil men
do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it completely (28:5). The
wisdom tradition urges its disciples to search for the fear of the Lord (2:15) and for true religious
wisdom (3:12). This wisdom this fear of the Lord, is awe and reverence before God
who creates and orders. The fear of the Lord and the knowledge of God are equated (2:5).
Knowledge for the Israelite is an experience of the innermost being. It is God who possesses this
wisdom. He founded the earth by his wisdom (3:19), and wisdom has always been his (8:2231).
Proverbs identifies the creator, the source of wisdom, with YHWH, the God of Israel.1

4.The most striking characteristic is the absence of elements generally considered to be typically
Israelite: the promises to the patriarchs, the Exodus experience, the Sinai covenant, etc. It is true
that Sirach identifies wisdom with Torah (Sirach 24) and provides a catalogue of Israels heroes
(Sirach 4450), and Wisdom of Solomon presents a midrashic consideration of the plagues (chaps.
1119). But these exceptions prove the rule: salvation history is absent from the realm of wisdom.
Another way of putting this is to say that wisdom is an international heritage in which Israel had a
share (see the treatment of extra-biblical Wisdom Literature below).
One result of this characteristic has been a tendency to push wisdom to the perimeter of OT
theology, or even to exclude it as a legitimate topic for biblical theology (Preuss 1974; 1987). Hence
there has been much discussion of Yahwism as opposed to Wisdom (Murphy 1975; Collins
1980). But the opposition between these two entities is more conceptual than real. One can indeed
distinguish between saving history (Exodus, covenant, etc.) and an experiential attitude toward
lifes daily events. But this distinction existed in the one Israelite individual who worshipped yhwh
and denominated yhwh as God. Those same Israelites ultimately canonized the Wisdom Literature
as a genuine expression of their traditions. There was no conflict for them. Even when Sirach
eventually identifies wisdom with Torah (Sir 24:23), this is achieved not with a sigh of relief, or as
if by some sleight of hand a major division in Israelite religion had been healed. The fact of the
matter is that there is no incompatibility between the saving God of history and the God of human
experience. The Psalms show this perhaps most clearly. The psalmists usually ask for salvation in
the concrete order of things, not for an intervention in national history. They seek from the
hostile agents they recognized in daily life. It is this same which the sages held out to their
readers: the good life. Indifference to Israels historical experience does not indicate that wisdom is
any the less Israelite or religious.
One of the distinctions made by von Rad has contributed to the unnecessary dichotomy between
Yahwism and wisdom. Using the terminology of Martin Buber, he distinguished between the pansacral faith implicit in the early narratives about divine intervention into human affairs (from
patriarchs to Philistines), and a worldly sphere in which humans have a more independent role, as
the so-called Succession Narrative (2 Samuel 61 Kings 2) illustrates. But one must be fair to von
1Freedman, David Noel, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, (New York: Doubleday) 1997, 1992.

Rad. He is not talking about faith and the lack of it. He is reconstructing an understanding of
reality, a conception of the environment, which has fundamentally altered vis--vis that of pansacralism (von Rad 1972: 59). It is true that the mentality behind the Samuel narrative recognizes
the distinctiveness and independence of human motivation and action. Such a recognition is blurred
in other narratives (the stories of Joshua or Gideon, for instance), where divine intervention is
highlighted. Perhaps the transition from one mentality to the other is not the way to put the
question. The issue is the relationship between divine intervention and human independence. These
two factors are always operative in the biblical story. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, is
emphasized; but both are at work. Moreover, there is no discernible point in time where Israel
passed from one mentality to the other. Neither denies the other; they complement each other. We
shall see a similar balance in the consideration of the problem of retribution (divine intervention
vis--vis destiny-producing deed).
Biblical wisdom is basically religious, not secular. The fateful distinction between religious and
secular, sacred and profane, so widely accepted in modern culture, has been applied in much too
wholesale a fashion to the Bible. In particular, the classification of the sayings according to the
absence or presence of God-language (McKane Proverbs OTL, 451) or by the appearance of the
sacred name yhwh (Whybray 1979) is too facile. The categories of religious and secular are not to
be defined merely by content. It is only too easy to contrast the advice about table manners (Prov
23:13; Sir 31:1231) with statements about fear of the Lord (Prov 1:7; Sir 1:1130). This
differentiation does not get to the heart of the matter. The rules of wisdom cover all areas of life
from a perspective that is ultimately religious; the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov
9:10). For some scholars the basic goal of wisdom is to live by the order of the world posited and
guaranteed by the Lord, and in the circumstances of everyday life (Skladny 1962: 93). Even if one
demurs at the notion of order, there can be no denial that the wisdom perspective is governed by
an understanding of creation and activity as reflected in Israels tradition. Here attitude tells us more
than content. G. von Rad has expressed this aspect very well: Thus here, in proverbial wisdom,
there is faith in the stability of the elementary relationships between man and man, faith in the
similarity of men and of their reactions, faith in the reliability of the orders which support human
life and thus, implicitly or explicitly, faith in God who put these orders into operation (von Rad
1972: 6263).
There seems to be a general consensus that biblical wisdom connotes a search for order
(Murphy 1978: 3536; Gese 1958: 198199). That is to say, the sages held that there was a
fundamental order in the world, discernible by experience, and the teachings were designed to bring
about conformity with this order that had been determined by God. No one would deny that his is a
modern reconstruction of Israelite mentality. Nor can one deny that the ancient recognized a certain
order in creation. This understanding is reflected in such passages as Amos 6:12 (does one plow
the sea with oxen) or Jer 31:35. There is an order to natural events, and to the day by day activities
of human beings. But does search for (objective) order adequately describe the wisdom
enterprise? At most the sages perhaps impose an order on experience; they present conclusions
drawn from observation. Despite the dogmatic form of their statements they were also aware of
mystery and uncertainty (see below on the limitations of wisdom).
The emphasis on order in scholarly research is at least partially due to the existence of such a
view among the Egyptians (the concept of discussed below). Although Egyptian influence
upon Israelite Wisdom Literature is undeniable, more caution should be exercised in reconstructing
the mentality of each people.
In this connection the famous study of Koch (1955) is to be noted. On the basis of several biblical
passages (Prov 26:2728 can provide an example) he reconstructed a specific mentality behind
biblical reward/punishment. For him there is no retribution or intervention by God; rather, deed and
result are mechanically related. An evil deed produces an evil result; a good deed produces a good
result. Hence Koch speaks of a destiny-producing deed; the Lord does not intervene. In Kochs
metaphor, God is a kind of midwife watching over events and their results, good and bad. This is
the nature of the retribution that God has established. Again, we are faced with an inherent
order of things. In fact, some scholars (Gese 1958: 45) have argued that the books of Job and

Qohelet demonstrate that the influence of Yahwism broke through this ANE idea of the fateproducing action. That seems to be too easy a victory for Yahwism. Instead, one should recognize
that the OT sources present retribution from two points of view: both divine intervention and
destiny-producing action. There is no evidence that one view is earlier than the other or, for that
matter, more religious than the other. Certainly a cardinal affirmation in the Bible is the primary
activity of the Lord in all that happens.
The doctrine of the sages, especially as expressed in Proverbs and in the speeches of Jobs three
friends, easily give the impression of a rigid dogmatism. This is misleading. The sages believed in
their teachings, and like all teachers expressed themselves in such ways as to gain adherents.
Exaggeration is one mode of convincing students. When one turns to the books of Job and
Ecclesiastes, there is no escape from the hard questions that are put to the reigning wisdom
orthodoxy. But even here one has to acknowledge that these hard questions arise from within the
wisdom movement. If it is undergoing a crisis, at the same time it remains true to its aims. A fair
understanding of the traditional doctrines of the sages has to be achieved for a correct assessment of
the development that takes place.
C. Fontaine (1982: 54) quotes the saying of a modern paroemiologist that the proverb in a
collection is dead. Any attentive reader of OT wisdom soon realizes the cost of the mental struggle
to revivify the sayings as they appear in collections. Modern literary studies insist on illuminating
the proverb performance (Fontaine 1982: 5763), an attempt to capture the context of the saying
and the interaction which accompanies it. This is very difficult to do for proverbs that have been
transmitted in collections. N. Lohfink (1980: 5051) has thrown new light upon Eccl 7:1ff. by his
attempt to establish a dialectic between traditional wisdom and Qohelet. If 7:1a is a traditional
praise of good reputation, then 7:1b4 cuts in to say that one cannot lay claim to it before death.
Here is interaction within sayings that have in the past been merely viewed as collections of
disparate proverbs. For the most part, however, the biblical proverbs do not manifest such a
dialectic. The juxtaposition of answer not a fool according to his folly with answer a fool . . .
(Prov 26:45) is a striking reminder that the sayings are more subtle than they appear to be at first
sight. Even the seemingly most banal proverbs have a certain evocative power if they are
approached perceptively.
In view of the imposing array of confident sayings in the collections, from Proverbs down to
Sirach, one may ask if the sages were aware of their own limitations. Many sayings reveal such an
awareness (von Rad 1972: 97110). Perhaps the most telling is Prov 21:30, There is no wisdom,
no understanding, no counsel, against the Lord. This radical statement points to the mystery over
which the sages had no control: the activity of God. All their careful thoughts about success and the
good life deserved to be expressed, but there were certain limit situations which they recognized.
They recognized the importance of advice and planning for any venture, especially for war (20:18),
but no matter the number of horses, victory belongs to the Lord (21:31). The realm of experience
to which the sages constantly resorted, also indicated to them that certainty was not always to be
had.
One may make plans in the heart
but what the tongue utters is from the Lord.
All the ways of a person may be pure in his own eyes,
but it is the Lord who proves the spirit.
In his mind one plans a course,
but the Lord directs the steps (Prov 16:12, 9).
The sages allowed a large margin of error because they had experienced mystery as well as
certainty.
The most striking expression of this awareness comes in sayings which even warn about the
possession of wisdom. Because wisdom can blind a person to reality:
You see a person wise in his own eyes?

There is more hope for a fool than for him (Prov 26:12).
Be not wise in your own eyes,
fear the Lord and turn away from evil (Prov 3:5).
In the same direction is the admonition of Jeremiah against glorying in ones wisdom (Jer 9:2324).
So great were the possibilities of self-deception, that even the possession of wisdom turns out to be
tenuous.
It can be said that the Israelite sages expressed the mystery of God and life even more effectively
than the rest of the biblical writers. Zophar (Job 11:78) reads a lesson to Job (however
insensitively and ultimately unjustifiably):
Can you penetrate the designs of God?
Dare you vie with the perfection of the Almighty?
It is higher than the heavens; what can you do?
It is deeper than the nether world; what can you know?
And despite the bombastic introduction to his speech, Elihu (Job 36:2226) is also aware of the
limit situation:
Behold, God is sublime in his power.
What teacher is there like him? . . .
Lo, God is great beyond our knowledge;
the number of his years is past searching out.
Israel experienced the mystery of God more radically in the area of wisdom than in the traditions of
its own history!
B. Wisdom and OT Theology
The integration of wisdom into Old Testament Theology is an unsolved task that remains for the
future (Reventlow 1982: 201). One might reply to this statement by asking if this is more of a
problem for OT theology than for wisdom. Wisdom presents a theology of its own kind, although
with certain resonances in the rest of biblical theology. The statement of Reventlow points up the
difficulty which current scholarship is having with the notion of biblical theology itself. It would
appear that a conceptual unity has not yet been achieved for biblical theology. The recent discussion
on the center or Mitte of OT theology has yielded no clear result (Hasel 1972: 4963; Reventlow
1982: 138147), and to say that God is the center is to return to square one. There are in fact several
theologies within the OT, and there seems to be no line of thought that can bind them together into a
neat package (Murphy 1984: 6571).
1. Wisdom and Creation. The situation is best illustrated by showing the problem that the
standard OT theology has had with the notion of creation. G. von Rad entitled this the Theological
Problem of the Old Testament Doctrine of Creation (PHOE, 131143), and he underlined the
opposition between the doctrines of election/redemption and creation. A literary analysis of texts
dealing with creation supposedly shows that they are not central to Israelite faith as this is
expressed, for example, in Deut 26:111. They are absent from most of the prophets (the creation
doxologies in Amos 4:13; 5:89; 9:56 are theological accretions, arising from the reflections of a
later writer [PHOE, 135]). There are many powerful passages concerning the Lords victory over
chaos in Deutero-Isaiah (e.g., 44:2428; 51:910), but here creation is clearly subordinate to the
redemption which the prophet is proclaiming to the exiles: Your husband is your Creator . . . your
Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel (54:5). Psalms 8, 19, 54, 104, in which creation is treated
rather independently, are considered to be secondary and derivative, dependent upon outside
influence, especially Egyptian. Even the Priestly portrayal of creation (Genesis 1) is interpreted as
motivated by the theology of salvation history. In short, the doctrine of creation was never able to
attain to independent existence in its own right (PHOE, 142).

The approach of C. Westermann (1978: 58117) is similar but different. In his view, the first
article of the Apostles Creed which affirms a belief in God the Creator is not genuinely biblical.
Westermann thinks that faith must allow for alternatives, to believe or not to believe, and Israel
supposedly had no other alternative to the fact of creation. Hence there can be no conflict between a
scientific explanation of creation and biblical faith. As with von Rad, Israels fundamental
experience focuses on God as savior. This is then expanded to include creation and other areas of
life. Creation is seen as fitting into Gods blessing upon all the divine handiwork. Blessing is the
continuous, unobtrusive, working of God which is different from the once-for-all saving actions.
Westermanns view of creation dictates his understanding of wisdom: The theological position of
wisdom is thus to be determined from the perspective of creation and primeval history (1978: 100).
The blessing of humanity in Gen 1:28 is correlated with wisdom: When Adam and Eve are
commanded during creation to cultivate and maintain the garden, wisdom as a coming to terms with
life is implied in this commission (1978: 99).
W. Zimmerli (1963) had already anticipated the thought of Westermann. He approached it from a
slightly different point of view: how does wisdom fit into OT theology? His solution was also found
in Gen 1:28. The command to be fruitful and have dominion is the divine authorization for the
wisdom enterprise of going out to master the world. Thus the position of wisdom within the OT is
again justified from the point of view of a text in the Torah, as though wisdom cannot speak for
itself. It is in this essay that Zimmerli also stated that wisdom theology is creation theology. That
conclusion is something all can and do agree with. Wisdom does work within this sphere, rather
than in the area of the covenant tradition.
The studies of von Rad, Westermann, and Zimmerli show that wisdom and creation are mirror
images of each other (Murphy 1985). Where creation doctrine is not valued in and for itself, there
also wisdom is treated as marginal. The way out of the impasse demands a broader view which
holds salvation and wisdom together. Such a view can be illustrated in the psalter. The cult is not a
frequent topic in the Wisdom Literature, but neither is it foreign (Perdue 1977). The prayers of the
psalter (laments of the individual, especially) are highly focused on the present life, the experience
of the individual. The hymns rehearse the events of salvation history, but quite frequently also the
creative activity of the Lord. No conflict exists between these themes in the psalms. Psalm 93
moves easily from creation (v 1ff.) to the divine decrees and temple (v 5). So also Psalm 95. In
Psalm 96 the movement is from the Lords salvation to an invitation to nature to rejoice in his work.
In the laments and thanksgiving psalms the Israelite prays for life: to be delivered from Sheol (the
state of non-being or death which is the prime metaphor for the distress afflicting the psalmist).
Here appears the personal experience, the existential struggle, which is characteristic of wisdom.
The same Lord who saved the people is now invoked to deliver the psalmist.
Thus it is the experience of Israel that suggests the inadequacy of the theological conclusions
based on literary analysis on the style of von Rad. Inferences from literary texts relative to the
centrality of wisdom/creation remain highly subjective. The God of immediate experience, i.e., the
wisdom experience, is the creator who is also the or redeemer of Israel. He is the personal
god of patriarchal religion. Theologians have come to understand the god of the fathers, who is
continuous with yhwh (CMHE, 375). There is a reflection of this in the book of Job. He and three
friends are all identified as non-Israelites, although they argue from the point of view of Israelite
wisdom. Moreover, there is a certain air of the patriarchal period about their life-style as well as
their religion. Job does not appeal to the God of Sinai, yhwh, but to El Shaddai, although the
framework (chaps. 12, 42) of the book provides a yahwistic context. The flavor of the patriarchal
religion, the god of the fathers, is seen in his frequent recourse to God, over and beyond his words
to the friends: I will say to God: Do not put me in the wrong! Let me know why you oppose me. Is
it a pleasure for you to oppress, to spurn the work of your hands, and smile on the plan of the
wicked. . . . Your hands have formed me and fashioned me; will you then turn and destroy me? Oh,
remember that you fashioned me from clay! Will you then bring me down to dust again? (Job
10:29). Janzen (1985: 514) has shown how Jobs relationship to God is covenantal.
2. The Wisdom Experience. One cannot describe the biblical Wisdom Literature without
trying to understand the experience that lies behind it. The sayings, or the wisdom teaching, are

the encoding of a lived experience, and only facets of this encounter with reality can be captured in
words. It is the encounter which generated the insights into the world and human beings. As
Aristotle (Metaphysics, I.ii.19) remarked about philosophy, wisdom also can be rooted in wonder.
The sage called attention to the mysterious wonder of sexual attraction by comparing it to ways
like the way of an eagle in the air (Prov 30:1820). God and king can be compared: the glory of
God in what he conceals, the glory of the king in what he understands (Prov 25:2). On the other
hand, wisdom goes with smallness, as in the case of the ants who store up their food in the summer
(Prov 30:24) and whose ways are a model for wisdom (Prov 6:5). Job can taunt his friends to
learn lessons from beasts and from the birds of the air (Job 12:7). Qoheleth can compare even a
little folly to the fly that spoils the perfumers ointment (Eccl 9:18). This openness to nature, and to
the experiences involved with human beings as well, is characterized by the insistence upon
hearing (Prov 1:8, 33; 4:10; 12:15, etc.). In 1 Kgs 3:9 Solomon asks for a listening heart so that
he might govern his people. The ideal of listening had already been underlined by Egyptian sages.
Ptahhotep even speaks of the master-hearer in the epilogue to his work (AEL 1: 7376). In
contrast is the fool who fails to listen, who is not docile: The way of the fool seems right in his
own eyes, but he who listens to advice is wise (Prov 12:15).
The experience is guided by the extraordinary claim that fear of God/Lord is indispensable:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
wisdom and instruction fools despise (Prov 1:7).
The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (Prov 9:10).
Fear of God is not lacking in the literature of the ANE (Barr 1981); reverence before the
numinous is practically a given in the ancient world. But in Israel it describes the basic orientation
toward wisdom, in a nutshell the whole Israelite theory of knowledge (von Rad 1972: 67). The
issue here is not the presence or the frequency of the notion; fear of God/Lord is common in the
Bible and indeed it has acquired various nuances (Becker 1965). But it is a key concept for wisdom
(Murphy 1987: 45156). Only in this fundamental attitude is progress in wisdom possible. It is
glossed with discipline (Prov 15:33), which is itself a path to life (Prov 10:17). The
concept is briefly mentioned in Job (avoidance of evil, 1:1; 28:28; cf. Prov 3:7), but it is central to
the book of Ecclesiasticus (Haspecker 1967). It is also important in Ecclesiastes, but without the
soft and consoling aspect that Ben Sira gives it. Qoheleth uses the verbal form, not the nominal.
Human beings are to fear God because of the inscrutable and mysterious divine ways (Eccl 3:14;
5:6).
The doctrine of fear of God/Lord indicates that the wisdom experience has an unmistakable
religious quality which G. von Rad (1972: 62) expressed thus: Israel knew nothing of the aporia
which we read into these proverbs. It was perhaps her greatness that she did not keep faith and
knowledge apart. The experiences of the world were for her always divine experiences as well, and
the experiences of God were for her experiences of the world. In effect, the wisdom experience
provides a model for living; the literature prescribes the way one should live. The wisdom
experience is found in the mysticism of everyday things (K. Rahner), where the Israelite found
God (not without also bewailing the divine absence). To know God, in the Wisdom Literature, is to
be in, and to do, the truth. This is as much a faith experience as any of the cultic acts in the
Jerusalem temple.
3. Wisdom and Moral Action. Akin to the wisdom experience is the way which wisdom
urges the Israelite to walk in. The most common word is derek (about 75 times in Proverbs), but it is
often interchangeable with as in the phrase, way of life (Prov 2:19; 5:6; 6:23; 15:24). This
is the way that leads to, or secures, life in the full sense, prosperity and a relationship to the Lord.
The way itself is the conduct which incarnates the teachings of the sage: honesty, diligence (Prov
10:4; 26:14), self-control (14:17; 15:1), a sense of responsibility (10:26; 27:2327), etc. While there
is often a certain overlap with the Decalogue (e.g., the frequent warnings against adultery), most of
the sayings deal with the grey area of forming character and integrity of action. The approach of

wisdom to morality is much broader than that of the Decalogue in that it aims at character
formation. It is also deeper in terms of the motivation it supplies. Whereas the Decalogue simply
invoked divine authority (thou shalt not!), the sages develop specific motivations, and anticipate
temptations. Thus the famous description of seduction in Proverbs 7 is a strong motivation. It aims
to anticipate a stressful situation, and to strengthen resolve. If one may designate the codes in the
OT as law, the wisdom rules are better described as catechesis, or moral formation. It seems
likely that both the wisdom lessons and the legal commands ultimately go back to a family or tribal
setting, before law separated from wisdom counsels (Audet 1960; Couturier 1980).
The sages use specific motivations, often those of enlightened self-interest, to achieve their end.
Here the charge of eudaemonism or pragmatism has been made: moral action is determined by what
is good for the individual person. This charge has been softened somewhat by the claim that the
purpose of wisdom teaching is to bring the individual into harmony with the underlying order
established by the Lord. In a similar way, the Egyptian understanding of action in accordance with
has been defended against pragmatism (Frankfort 1961: 6272). However, it is difficult to
escape the appearance of self-interest. Indeed all human action is prompted by complicated motives;
eudaemonism is not absent, but neither is it the only motive. Moreover, the sages recognized the
danger of self-interest, as the question of Satan in Job 1:9 shows: Is it for nothing that Job is Godfearing?
A characteristic and striking move within the Wisdom Literature is the identification of the
righteous with the wise person The frequent division of humanity into the wise
and the fools is matched by a division into just and unjust. This is particularly conspicuous in
Proverbs 1015, but it is not lacking in Job and Sirach. The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the
years of the wicked will be short (Prov 10:27); wisdom is identified with virtue and its rewards,
and folly with wickedness and its deserts. Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but
righteousness delivers from death (Prov 10:2). Morality and wisdom cannot be separated, although
biblical wisdom is not to be reduced to a moral code.
4. Wisdom and Scepticism. The confident tone of the sage has been adverted to above. It was
the confidence of one who plunged into the events of life with verve (a spirit that was not lacking
even in Qoheleth! Eccl 9:10). And even if, as has been seen, the sages were aware of the limitations
of their teaching, they did not dwell upon these overmuch. Obviously the mystery that was God was
not a defeat for the sage, nor embarrassing. That the Lord was beyond wisdom (Prov 21:30) was an
easy admission to make.
The rub came when things did not turn out as expected. There is always the (apparent?) triumph
of the fool and the knave. It was against this that the author of Psalm 37 spoke: Be not vexed over
evildoers, nor jealous of those who do wrong (37:1). It was such a problem that nearly brought the
downfall of the author of Psalm 73. A temporizing kind of answer to this difficulty is to be found in
Prov 3:1112.
The discipline of the Lord, my son, disdain not;
spurn not his rebuke;
For whom the Lord loves he reproves,
as a father the son he favors.
Adversity, or the failure of things to work out the way they were supposed to, is seen here as the
disciplining of a father. This perspective is to be found elsewhere. The medicinal aspect of adversity
is held out by Eliphaz and by Elihu (Job 5:1721; 33:1930), where, however, it never becomes
independent of a presumed guilt, as supposedly to be found in Job. Suffering thus could be viewed
as a step taken by the Lord in the conversion of a sinner (hence there could be no understanding, but
only astonishment, at the suffering of the servant in Isaiah 53). In other words, it had to be fitted
into the overall view of retribution as taught by the sages.
It is remarkable that the problem of divine justice (or retribution, or whatever term one might
choose) becomes the problem for the sages. One need not be surprised by the admission of Agur
(Prov 30:16) that he is stupid and ignorant. That is the human condition. But it is hard to deal with

adversity that can find no reasonable explanation. A human standard of justice is applied to God,
and it does not work. This situation is often termed the crisis of wisdom (Crenshaw 1985a: 381),
and the books of Job and Ecclesiastes are the prime evidence. But it can be just as well argued that
these works prove the resilience of the wisdom movement, which did not skirt problems, even if it
could not solve them. The scepticism of these books is in conflict with the retribution theory of
Proverbs (and of Deuteronomy and other books, one may add). But the real thrust is to purify an
overconfident wisdom, to make the sages more aware of the limitations which they acknowledged
only too theoretically.
The book of Job does not cancel out the book of Proverbs. It is in a dialectical movement with it,
surely. And it obviously corrects any rigid interpretation of the sapiential message of life as
something humans can simply achieve. Proverbs 2:6 finally acknowledges that wisdom is a gift of
God. This was not a conclusion that was easily come by. The sages had to travel the path of Job and
Qoheleth. Wisdom does not become futile because it is challenged and modified. The witness of Job
and Qoheleth is treasured by the community which also retained the book of Proverbs (Wilson
1984: 189192).
If the author of Job broke through a simplistic understanding of divine justice, Qoheleth succeeds
in safeguarding the inscrutability and freedom of God (Zimmerli 1963: 155158). Time after time
he affirms that one cannot know what God is doing (3:11; 8:17; 11:5). Here too wisdom has the
boldness to confront the divine mystery, and the confrontation is made possible on the basis of the
honesty and integrity of the wisdom movement: even if the wise man says that he knows, he is
unable to discover it [all Gods work] (Eccl 8:17).
5. The Personification of Wisdom. Participating in the divine mystery is the figure of Lady
Wisdom which appears in Job 28; Proverbs 1, 8, 9; Baruch 3:94:4; Sirach 24; Wis 7:79:18. It is
better to speak of personification than hypostasis (Marcus 195051). Personification is no stranger
to the Hebrew Bible. Justice leads Israel out of Babylon (Isa 58:4); in Ps 84:11 kindness and truth
meet, justice and peace kiss. Wine is arrogant (Prov 20:1). But the personification of wisdom is
simply unique in the Bible, both for its quantity and quality.
The personification of wisdom in Job 28 is sudden and unexpected. The message is simple:
humans can find hidden treasures in the earth, but they cannot find wisdom (28:12, 20). It is
inaccessible, known only to God. The description of Gods relationship to wisdom is obscure.
Apparently he knows wisdoms place because he sees everything (v 24). It was in the creation of the
wind and the rain (vv 2526) that he became actively involved with wisdom: seeing, appraising,
establishing and searching her out (v 27). This is all very tantalizing. What did God do with
wisdom? The author has not answered that question clearly, but wisdom is certainly involved with
the divine creative activity. The precise manner of this is difficult to state. Is it merely in the divine
mind, a master plan (cf. Prov 3:18), or is it somewhere in the universe? For N. Habel (Job OTL,
400) it is the fundamental principle which governs the design of the world. For J. G. Janzen
(1985: 197198), wisdom is in the creative act. G. von Rad (1972: 146148) thought that it must
be in the world, while being separate from created thingssomething like the meaning implanted
by God in creation (p. 148). It seems as though wisdom remains inaccessible in this very text of
Job! While many scholars regard 28:28, associating fear of the Lord with wisdom, as a spurious
addition, it can make sense in context. It affirms that piety is the (only) way to wisdom available to
humans. On the lips of Job it must be ironic, or perhaps it serves as a kind of inclusion with 1:1. The
personification does not emphasize the female characteristics of wisdom (is a feminine
noun), in contrast to the picture that emerges in Proverbs.
In Prov 1:2033 Lady Wisdom is portrayed in the style of an OT prophet, threatening her
audience (out in the public streets) with ridicule and doom. Only at the end of her public speech
does she offer peace and security to those who obey her. In Prov 9:16 she changes her tone, and
invites the simple to the banquet of bread and wine. This description is in deliberate contrast to
that of Dame Folly in 9:1318, who issues another invitation to the simple to partake of bread and
water (stolen, v 17!)an invitation that the author characterizes as a trip to Sheol.
Once more, and with great flourish, Lady Wisdom appears in Prov 8:336. Again, she addresses
the simple in public places. Her proclamation is encouraging: truth, more precious than silver or

gold (8:1011, 19); love, for those who love her (8:17). Then she begins the famous description (vv
2231) of her relationship to God and to creation:
The Lord begot me, the firstborn of his ways . . .
From of old I was poured forth . . .
When there were no depths I was brought forth . . .
Then was I beside him as his craftsman,
and I was his delight day by day.
Playing before him all the while,
playing on the surface of his earth;
and I found delight in the sons of men.
She emphasizes (six times!) her existence before creation, and describes herself as (v 30) at
the side of God. The meaning of that term is uncertain, either crafts(wo)man or nursling (Rger
1977). Perhaps she was actively engaged in the creative activity (cf. Prov 3:19). But she clearly has
a role with God and human beings. She describes herself as delight (v 30; his delight in the
LXX), and speaks of playing before God, much like David played before the Lord when he
brought the ark into Jerusalem (2 Sam 6:1416, 21; Keel 1974). Moreover, her delight is to be with
human beings (8:31); presumably this engagement involves her speeches in the previous chapters,
and especially the promise of life with which she concludes her present speech (8:32, the one who
finds me finds life).
Who is Lady Wisdom? Many identifications have been offered (Lang 1975: 147176). She seems
to be something of God, born of God, in God. Usually she is said to be a divine attribute, a
personification of the wisdom with which God created the world (Prov 3:19; Whybray 1968). This
identification is explicitly denied by von Rad (1972: 156157), who sees wisdom as an attribute of
the world, by virtue of which she turns towards men to give order to their lives. God did not
merely found the earth by wisdom (Prov 3:19); he built it into wisdom. Wisdom is the mysterious
order of the world which beckons to human beings. However, one may ask if this identification with
order does justice to the divine origins, and to the role Lady Wisdom occupies relative to human
beings. Is Wisdom not the Lord, who turns toward creatures and summons them through creation,
through the wisdom experience? (Murphy 1985). She certainly seems to be a communication of
God. Ben Sira recognized this aspect, and identified Wisdom more clearly for his generation.
Ben Sira begins his long work on a note of wisdom: All wisdom comes from the Lord . . . (1:1).
The poem on Lady Wisdom in chap. 24 is clearly modeled on Proverbs 8 (Skehan 1979). She is
now presented as speaking in the assembly of the Most High, i.e., in the heavenly court, and not
merely to simple earthlings. Yet she has the same old concern for humans, and invites them to her
banquet (again! 24:1922 and Prov 9:16). She describes her journey throughout the cosmos (v 5,
the vault of heaven, the depths of the abyss). Like God, she seems to possess the whole world
(v 6). Yet she has no fixed residence, until the Creator bids her to take up her dwelling in Jacob (v
8). So she settles in Jerusalem where she performs liturgical service (v 10, ). In an
elaborate comparison she describes her life there: like a tall cedar, fruitful olive tree, balm and
myrrh (vv 1317), and she issues an invitation to her meal (v 21), where paradoxically eating will
only increase the appetite for more.
At this point Ben Sira makes the identification:
All this is the book of the covenant of the most High God,
the law which Moses commanded us (24:23).
Lady Wisdom is the Torah, an identification prepared for by the postexilic vision of the Torah
(Psalms 19 and 119; Deut 4:68), and reflected in the apocryphal work of Baruch (Bar 3:94:3).
It is clear from the above that Lady Wisdom is a complex figure, whose traits accumulate as one
goes on through the Wisdom Literature. And this enables individuals to make concrete
identifications, as Sirach did for his generation. As a general comment, which respects the mystery

in which Lady Wisdom is cloaked, the words of von Rad (ROTT 1: 444) are worth quoting: None
the less it is correct to say that wisdom is the form in which Jahwehs will and his accompanying of
man (i.e. his salvation) approaches men. . . . the most important thing is that wisdom does not turn
towards man in the shape of an It, teaching, guidance salvation or the like, but of a person, a
summoning I. So wisdom is truly the form in which Jahweh makes himself present and in which
he wishes to be sought by man.
6. Wisdom and Immortality. It has been observed often enough that the goal of wisdom is
life (Murphy 1966). That is to say, life in this world, marked by prosperity and blessing, a fullness
of days until one was finally buried with the fathers. The Hebrew world displayed a remarkable
resignation to the inevitability of death (e.g., Psalm 49). Nonetheless it gradually became a problem
with the sages. The thought of Job is constantly hovering between life and death, light and darkness
(3:223; 10:1822; 14:1020). The most poignant lament of Qoheleth is his cry, How is it that the
wise man dies as well as the fool! (2:16). The issue was exacerbated by the problem of injustice
and suffering in this life. It was not an adequate answer to point out that the unjust person dies a
premature or painful death (Psalm 37). Qoheleth is crushed by the fact that there is the same lot
(deaththe evil time) for the just and the wicked (9:2). But there is an eventual breakthrough,
and in typically wisdom style.
It seems that the period of the martyrs (Maccabean era) gave rise to a firm belief in the
resurrection of the body (Dan 12:23; 2 Maccabees 7). Hence it is often said that the doctrine of
bodily resurrection is the typical Hebrew response to the issue of immortality. While this is
obviously the view indicated in the book of Daniel, another approach is expressed in the Wisdom of
SolomonSolomon and perhaps in the literature of the Essenes. In Wis 1:15 righteousness
is said to be undying (athanatos) and many times eternal blessedness is mentioned for
the just (Wis 2:233:4; 5:5). What is interesting here is that the author who clearly is aware of the
Greek doctrine of soul and body (Wis 1:14; 9:15) does not conclude to personal immortality on the
basis of the nature of the human composite. That would have been a Greek solution. He may have
shared such an idea, but he does not reason about immortality in that fashion. Instead, blessed
immortality flows from righteousness (1:15), from the wisdom that is the gift of God (Wis 7:7; 9:4).
It lies in the nature of the relationship between God and those who follow him. Immortality consists
in a relationship that death cannot sever. The old doctrine of Sheol (Eccl 9:10), where a loving
contact with God was missing (Pss 6:6; 30:10), now yields to an enduring presence (Ps 73:2328).
The presence is not limited to God and the individual; the blessed one is accounted among the sons
of God or holy ones (Wis 5:15), i.e., the members of the heavenly court. The association of the
just with the angels is also made in the Qumran literature (1QS 11:89; 1QHod 3:2022; 11:1014),
and this seems to suggest a kind of immortality. The description of a blessed immortality in terms of
association with the heavenly court is a logical development. The old lament was that no one could
praise God in Sheol. Now one will praise him with the other members of the heavenly court.
2

2Freedman, David Noel, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, (New York: Doubleday) 1997, 1992.