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

Trinity Sunday/Year C
Proverbs 8:1–4, 22–31
Trinity Sunday/Year C 237
As we note on Proper 19/Year B, the Jewish tradition uses the notion of
wisdom to refer both to the content of awareness of God’s purposes for
the world and to Woman Wisdom, who is active in the world as an agent
of the divine presence and purposes.
Proverbs 8:1–4 depicts wisdom in a way similar to Proverbs 1:20–23
(Proper 19/Year B). She is on the heights, at crossroads, beside the gates
of the city, and at the portals calling to people to heed her. She wants all
in the community to “learn prudence, acquire intelligence,” that is, to live
according to God’s design in ways that will bring blessing to all (8:5). Her
instruction is trustworthy (8:6–9) and worth more than silver, gold, and
jewels (8:10–11). Those who follow her live with knowledge and discretion,
but distance themselves from evil such as pride, arrogance, and perverted
speech (8:12–14). She is manifest through rulers who govern justly
(8:15–16) and, ideally, those who love her will live in her ways and thereby
find security, righteousness, and justice (8:19–21).
The community can trust the words of Woman Wisdom because God
created her when God began to create the world (8:22–23). While wisdom
is one of God’s closest agents, wisdom is not herself God. God
brought her forth even before the deep existed (8:24). The language
“brought forth” usually refers to the act of giving birth, thereby imaging
God as a woman whose womb birthed wisdom.
Woman Wisdom was present in the world before the creation of the
mountains, hills, earth, fields, and soil (Prov. 8:25–26). Wisdom was on
hand before God made the heavens, shaped the horizon, gave the sky its
form, established the deep, and limited the power of the sea by setting the
boundaries beyond which it could not go (8:27–29). In a key assertion,
Woman Wisdom describes herself as beside God like a “master worker,”
that is, working as an accomplished builder (8:30a). Such work brings God
delight, causes wisdom herself to rejoice, and further brings delight to the
human family who benefit from this work (8:30b–31).
The Wisdom literature assumes that the world itself reveals the character
and purposes of God. The idea that Woman Wisdom was an agent
of creation is one way of explaining how the divine intentions became
implanted in the world: wisdom put them there. Now, people can discover
God’s design for the good life by paying attention to what we learn from
life itself.