What is Wisdom?

What is Wisdom?

We look this Sunday at the quality and character of wisdom. Described with a feminie personality, and said to have been established before the creation of the world, she is greatly admired in much ancient literature. But what is wisdom? 

Our readings are from the book of Proverbs. Proverbs is the most characteristic of Wisdom literature from the Hebrew scriptures. Along with the book of Job it relates instruction on how to live life "wisely."

So is wisdom merely common sense writ large? Is this conventional wisdom? How do we compare or contrast this with the teachings of how we are to live out the Gospel?


Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31



8:1 Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?


8:2 On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand;


8:3 beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out:


8:4 "To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.




8:22 The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.


8:23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.

8:24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.


8:25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth--


8:26 when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world's first bits of soil.


8:27 When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,


8:28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep,


8:29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,


8:30 then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,


8:31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.