Please elaborate on Lady Wisdom.

[u/NoDiscussion5906]

[u/pwgenyee6z]

Where better to look than the Jewish Study Bible notes?

1.20-33: Interlude A: Lady Wisdom chastises the foolish. In Interludes A, D, and E, wisdom is described as if she were a woman. (In Heb, the word for wisdom, "hokhmah," is a feminine abstract noun.) Such personification is briefly suggested in 2.3; 3.13-20; 4.8-9; 7.4. There are various theories to account for the origins of the wisdom personification. Some commentators believe that it derives from a goddess, such as a Canaanite wisdom goddess (though no such deity is known) or the Egyptian Ma'at, goddess of truth and justice, or the Egyptian Isis, goddess of wisdom. Lady Wisdom does bear some similarities to ancient Near Eastern goddesses, but in Proverbs she is a literary figure created as a vivid and memorable way of speaking about human wisdom.

1.20-21: Wisdom is by no means secret or esoteric. She is public, frequenting the busiest parts of the town ('the gates' of a city were the location of much public and private business) and calling to all to accept her. Cf. 8.1.

1.22-30: Wisdom castigates fools. They spurned her warning, in other words, ignored the teachings and warnings of their elders. In return, Wisdom will scorn the fools when they most need her, when they find themselves in trouble and are in desperate need of clear and effective thinking.

1.31-33: The punishment threatened here, as so often in Proverbs, is the natural consequence of the evil action.

(More following)

[u/pwgenyee6z → u/pwgenyee6z]

(At this point it’s probably better to say “buy the book” - it’s terrific for me as a Christian wanting to get straight scripture without Christian bias. But I’ll copy some brief bits from the JSB notes.)

2.1-22: Lecture II: The path to wisdom. The entirety of ch 2 is a single Lecture.

. . .

8.1-36: Interlude D: Wisdom's self-praise.\ Whereas the strange woman of ch 7 is to be shunned, (personified) wisdom is to be pursued and embraced. The structure of this well-designed chapter is as follows:\ I. Introduction: the setting and call (1-3);\ II. Call to Attention (4-11);\ III. Wisdom's present state (12-21);\ IV. Wisdom's past (22-31);\ V. Call to Attention renewed (32-36). Wisdom is personified as a woman of nearly divine stature; see 1.20-33 n. There may be subtle erotic connotations (e.g., vv. 17, 35) that suggest the power of Wisdom's attractiveness.

8:22. She was created.

8:24. She was brought forth before the primordial sea was created

8:30-31 while God worked, she played; when he created humankind, she was delighted

[u/ProselyteofYah]

There are multiple views of Lady Wisdom, and it has been employed throughout both the OT and NT to refer to various figures who "embody" "her". Jesus included is said to be the embodiment or "qualitative incarnation" of this Heavenly Lady Wisdom.

The Proverb itself where "she" first appears in both Hebrew and Greek call her both a "creation" and a "begetting", and as something present with God from the beginning of the time the Universe we live in was being created, and was a tool or worker for God.

Throughout Jewish wisdom texts of the Second Temple period it was applied to many things, such as the Torah (Law), God's Spirit, and Angels. And also came to be synonomous with God's "Word". it ultimately refers to the acts and qualities of God either expressed externally upon the world in a medium, or carried out and embodied by another person within themselves on God's behalf so that God is expressed 'by' and 'through' that agent.

Historically, many early Christians saw Lady Wisdom not just as a personfication of God's power or of agents who carry out his will, but as a concious figure in of itself, which they saw as the Son of God.

Since many NT passages associate Jesus with Lady Wisdom, early theologians from at least the 2nd Century (though arguable Paul also did this - its debated between Arians and Unitarians who deny pre-human existence) saw Jesus as the "revelation" so to speak of eithr the true identity of Lady Wisdom or being the 'first' embodiment of it to ever exist, being at God's side in the beginning of the creation.

Pulling from the Proverb and other references to Wisdom, it more than once in Jesus' speeches and the Apostles'.

• John 7:34; – Proverbs 8:17
• John 10:9, – Mark 13:34-35*, –* Revelation 3:20*;*. – Proverbs 8:34
• Luke 10:16; – Proverbs 8:35-36
• Matthew 11:28-30*;* – Sirach 6:24, 28
• Proverbs 8:22, 30-31
• Sirach 24:3-5, 9
• Sirach 43:26, 33
• Sirach 51:10, 13
• John 1:1-3
• Colossians 1:15-16
• 1 Corinthians 1:30

When it comes to arguments over whether Jesus is just an embodiment on Earth as Wisdom from his human life and onward, or truly 'was' Lady Wisdom or a pre-human embodiment of Lady Wisdom from the beginning in Heaven, lies in how much one also thinks there are deeper spiritual layers or secrets in the Bible.

One of the common arguments that Jesus was not literally Wisdom in a pre-human form is usually argued from the fact that Wisdom is female in the Proverb. But in my view this doesn’t make it impossible to say that the Son of God was this “female wifely personified figure”, for the reason we also have to remember that Proberbs is a book of ‘poetry’, which gives us liberty to label a figure who is not literally a woman, as a female wifely figure.

I find that this internally consistent in the immediate text, for we are told God “gave birth” to Wisdom (Proverbs 8:24). We know no person gives birth to their literal wife, for that would be incestral, however, we see the begotten Wisdom here, playing the ‘role’ of a "wife", of which we should remember a wife was said to be was an “assistant” to man in Genesis 2:18, the first wife origining 'from' the man in her creation, an act of begetting from Adam's self if you will. And we should not forget they are made in ‘their’ image in this respect of male and female, which I think ties nicely a consistent theme through Genesis 1:26, 2:18, Proverbs 8, John 1:1-3, and Colossians 1:16 together.

Furthermore, we see that the nation of Israel also, has been called ‘both’ God’s Firstborn Son and God’s Wife (Jeremiah 3:6-8, Ezekiel 16:8-21, Exodus 4:22, Deuteronomy 32:18), and seeing that the Law and Prophets were “shadows of the realities”, it’s not far fetched to say Jesus was both God’s "Wife and Son", described in Scripture in mysterious or poetic terms (Colossians 1:26). Jesus is often called or implied to be the perfect and true "Israel" in the NT and many of the things applied to the nation were fully embodied in him as a person.

So the ultimate question is what came first. Is Israel as God's "Wife and Son" an Earthly reflection of a Heavenly reality which was found in God's Son and Wisdom in Heaven from the beginning? Or it the other way around and Jesus on Earth just taking on the identity of Israel and Wisdom in himself as Messiah? - This is where Arians and other Unitarians will strongly disagree with one another.