The two options for the Hebrew scripture reading for this week’s lectionary are 2 Samuel 1, 17-27, and The Wisdom of Solomon, 1:13-15 and 2:23-24. This week I will focus on the passages from The Wisdom of Solomon (Wisdom).
The books in the Biblegrouped under the heading “Wisdom Literature” are rich in poetry and lyricism. In the Protestant canon, these include Ecclesiastes, Job, and the Song of Solomon. The Wisdom of Solomon is in the Protestant Apocrypha, but it is a part of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox canons. Books such as Ecclesiastes and Job stand out from other Hebrew Scripture books, as they do not include extended textual references to Israelite history. The literary form they take is that of poems and stories, without an explicit attempt to fit their narratives into the historical line of patriarchs and prophets like Abraham, Moses, Jacob, and David.
Two central motifs in The Wisdom of Solomon are “immortality” and “wisdom.” Although the author uses “Solomon” as a pseudonym, this book has been dated to approximately the first century BCE, or the early first century CE, after the Greco-Roman Empire extended into Mesopotamia. The editors of NOAB write that the book “reflects extensive interaction with Greek literary and philosophical conventions” (AP 70). For example, in Wisdom 8:7 the writer extols the four cardinal virtues recognized in Greek philosophy: self-control, prudence, courage, and justice. The opening chapters take the rhetorical structure of a diatribe used by Greek and Roman philosophers. A diatribe often features an extended argument with an enemy; in this case, the writer, contrasts the actions of those he calls wicked and those he calls righteous. The writer was likely a Jewish person addressing a community Jewish in exile to remind them of the core principles of their faith. He appropriates aspects of Greek culture to argue for the vitality of Judaism (AP 70-72).
In so doing, the writer elevates a term that is present in older Hebrew texts, although not heavily highlighted or laid out with clarity: the immortality of the soul.
. . . God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living.
For he created all things so that they might exist;
the generative forces of the world are wholesome,
and there is no destructive poison in them,
and the dominion of Hades is not on earth.
For righteousness is immortal. (1:13-15)
. . . for God created us for incorruption,
and made us in the image of his own eternity.
But through the devil’s envy death entered the world,
And those who belong to his company experience it. (2:23-24)
The book is written in Greek—we can see this even in translation, since in the passage above, the term Hades is used to describe what we would call hell. According to Greek mythological understanding, Hades was an underground, cavernous place where all souls went after death, in a comparatively emaciated, subdued existence compared to life on earth. Greek myths in which the location Hades figures prominently include the Orpheus narrative, in which Orpheus tries and fails to rescue his beloved from Hades, and the Persephone narrative, in which Ceres, the goddess of the harvest, succeeds in gaining her daughter’s freedom from Hades for half of each year, resulting in the changing seasons. In Hebrew texts, the term for what we call hell is Sheol. Sheol appears in the well-known passage from The Song of Solomon, not to be confused with The Wisdom of Solomon, that can be translated, “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death, passion as fierce as the grave” (8:6).
In Greek, the noun for wisdom, Sophia, has a feminine gender. In the first chapter, the writer, like the writer of Proverbs, personifies wisdom in terms that can be described as human, and yet also evoke descriptions of the Holy Spirit, the third part of the Trinity: “. . . for wisdom will not enter a deceitful soul,” and “For wisdom is a kindly spirit . . .” (1:4, 6). There is similarity to the female personification of Wisdom in the first chapter of Proverbs:
Wisdom cries out in the streets,
in the squares she raises her voice.
At the busiest corner she cries out;
At the entrance of the city gates she speaks . . . (1:20-21).
The term “wisdom” has loomed large in political media recently, because of the attention given to Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s remark about a “wise Latina woman.” The controversy surrounded her hearing has given way to reflections of all stripes as to what, indeed, constitutes wisdom.
In Wisdom Ways, the feminist biblical scholar Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza describes it thus:
“Wisdom is a state of the human mind and spirit characterized by deep understanding and profound insight. It is elaborated as a quality possessed by the sages but also treasured as folk wisdom and wit. . . . Its root meaning comes to the fore in the Latin word sapientia, which is derived from the verb sapere=to taste and to savor something. . . . Wisdom, unlike intelligence, is not something with which a person is born. It comes only from living, from making mistakes and trying again and from listening to others who have made mistakes and tried to learn from them” (ESF, 23).
The picture of the Divine that emerges from the passages in the lectionary is absolutely not that of God who, from a vengeful perch on high, uses death as a means of punishing humans. The image is one of beneficence and generative power:
“God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things so that they might exist;
the generative forces of the world are wholesome . . .” The passage uses the motif that humans are made in the image of God: “for God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity.”
The Wisdom of Solomon as whole is noteworthy for the answer it gives to what is often called the theodicy problem, concerning the justice of God. For readers interested in learning more on this topic, I recommend C. S. Lewis’ book, The Problem of Pain. The philosophical question, simplistically formulated, is as follows: How can God be omnipotent and benevolent, when innocent beings suffer in the world? Either God must be A) benevolent but not omnipotent, B) omnipotent but unjust, or C) unjust and not omnipotent. Public acts of unprovoked suffering and death, such as the death of the girl Neda, cause many to consider this line of questioning.
The writer provides an answer to the theodicy problem through his explanation of immortality. In chapter 2, taking on the voice of the wicked lying in wait for a righteous man, the Wisdom author writes,
Let us test him with insult and torture,
so that we may find out how gentle he is,
and make trial of his forbearance.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected. (1:19-20).
The answer of the Wisdom writer to this problem is formulated well by Michael Coogan:
“The doctrine of the immortality of the soul solves the problem of theodicy, of divine justice in this life: God will reward the good in the life to come. The wicked will have sided with death (who in 1:16 is almost a deity, like the Greek god Hades, the ruler of the underworld that has his name), but God has created life for the righteous, a life that is immortal. The way to achieve this eternal life is through the pursuit of wisdom, to which the author next turns” (Coogan, 521).
Other lectionary readings for this week are the following: Psalm 130 or Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43 (optional Psalm reading: Lamentations 3:23-33).
--Elizabeth Fels
Works Cited:
Coogan, Michael, Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (3rd ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Coogan, Michael D. The Old Testament: a Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2001.
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