000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

Wisdom 3:1–9
All Saints/Year B 209
As we note in introducing Wisdom on Proper 8/Year B, among other
things we seek to show that the promises of God prove true for the righteous
who continue to live faithfully even in the midst of difficulty and
persecution. Faithful members of the community to which Wisdom was
written may have died in the midst of social tension, in apparent contradiction
to the promise of God that they would experience blessing. Many
wicked people apparently profited from their wickedness and lived without
reproach during this life. Wisdom 3:1–13 claims that at a point after
death, God will provide a new life of blessing for the righteous (1–9) and
punish the ungodly (1:10–12).
Wisdom 3:1 presupposes a somewhat platonic notion of the soul as an
immortal part of the self that continues to exist after death (though some
scholars think that an interlude, similar to Sheol, takes place between
death and the beginning of the new life described in Wisdom 3:1–9). The
righteous, who only seem to have died, are in the hand of God, beyond
torment, and at peace (3:1–3). The foolish and wicked may have thought
that the deaths of the righteous were punishment, but the hope of the
righteous “is immortality,” which the dead now enjoy and to which those
who are still alive can look forward (3:2c–3a, 4).
When Wisdom speaks of the righteous being “disciplined” by their difficulty,
the writer makes use of a notion, popular in Hellenistic circles, that
maturity sometimes came about through suffering. The notion of God
“testing” the people here is not a simple matter of God doing things to
them to see if they would pass or fail but God giving them difficult circumstances
in the same way that gold ore is put into the furnace so that
the slag can burn away and the pure ore be left. God accepted their faithfulness
in the same way that God accepts a burnt offering (3:5–6).
When God takes these souls into care (the “visitation” of Wis. 3:7), they
will shine forth. Here the author uses language that echoes Daniel 12:3 and
other apocalyptic texts that dealt with life beyond death. From their place
with God in the heavenly world they operate as God’s agents, much like
angels, helping God rule the nations (3:8). The passage closes by drawing on
covenantal language to affirm that God watches over the faithful with grace
and mercy and that in the new life they will understand all things (including
the reasons for their suffering) and will abide forever with God in love (3:9).
Today’s congregation cannot know precisely what happens after death.
The idea of immortality beyond the grave is Wisdom’s way of showing