Bruce Waltke noted in a comment that in my
previous posts on Lady Wisdom, I did not interact with his specific arguments
which lead him to conclude that Wisdom is a personification of Solomon’s wisdom
preserved for us in the book of Proverbs. He is right. I simply sketched an
alternative understanding.
In a series of posts I will critique Waltke’s thesis in detail. In a nutshell, it is my position that, whereas Prov 1:1-6 distinguish the proverbs of Solomon from wisdom, such that wisdom encompasses more than the contents of the book of Proverbs, Waltke erases that distinction.
Waltke defines חכמה ‘wisdom’ and חכמה ‘Lady Wisdom’
in an introductory section to his commentary (pages 76-88) in which he
discusses the sense in which wisdom is revealed rather than acquired by keen
observation or received through traditional channels. On the basis of Prov
30:1-6 and 31:1, Waltke claims that the entire book of Proverbs is to be
understood as special revelation (81-82).
It is an axiom of both Judaism and
Christianity that every word found in the Tanakh is to be received as תורה ‘instruction’ from God’s mouth, whether the words in
question are presented as those of God, those of one human being speaking to
another, or those of a human speaking to God. But the axiom is not found in the
Tanakh itself. It is rather a statement of fact in the sense that God has spoken
and continues to speak to those who are disposed to accept it through a written
word vouchsafed to Israel in which prayer, praise, narrative, and ethical
instruction occur side by side with law and prophecy presented in the form of
God’s words sensu strictu.
This has been the case since at least the reigns
of kings Hezekiah and Josiah in the late First Temple period, beginning with
(proto)-Exodus, (proto)-Leviticus; (proto)-Deuteronomy, the first edition of
the Deuteronomistic History, Amos, Micah, Hosea, (proto)-Isaiah, Nahum,
Zephaniah, and so on. Or so non-minimalists believe.
But that does not settle the question as to
the means by which, according to the book of Proverbs, wisdom is communicated
to human beings. Nor does an appeal to Prov 30:1-6; 31:1 settle the question.
It is to Proverbs 1-9, which serves as a prologue to all that follows, that one
logically looks for an answer to the question of wisdom’s source, scope, and identification.
Bibliography
Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs 1-15 (NICOT;
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004).
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