Woman Wisdom–God or Not?

Was Woman Wisdom in Proverbs just a metaphor? Or God Herself?

I asked this question several years ago in this post. But after I wrote it, I came to disagree with my own conclusions. I read Virginia Ramey Mollenkott’s wonderful book, The Divine Feminine: The Biblical Imagery of God as Female. I now believe that there is evidence that Woman Wisdom was seen as divine. And so, here’s the scoop, much of it gleaned from Mollenkott’s book.

Wisdom’s Parallel with Christ

The similarities between Wisdom and later references to Christ clinched it for me: the early church harked back to Scripture’s description of Woman Wisdom when speaking of Christ.

But first of all, as this Jewish author said, “unlike other examples of female imagery in the Bible, Wisdom (Hebrew hokhmah, Greek sophia) is described as working with God, rather than as a metaphor to describe a characteristic of God” (bold is mine). Indeed, Wisdom was more than poetic license, but rather a first-person woman’s voice claiming to act in much the same manner as Christ is described later.

Listen to Proverbs 8, verse 22:

Yahweh gave birth to me at the beginning, before the first acts of creation…I have been from everlasting, in the beginning, before the world began.

John speaks similarly of Jesus, “In the beginning, there was the Word…” (1:1), and “we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son….” and “he gave his only begotten Son…” (3:16).

Col. 1:15 provides an even closer parallel between the Wisdom of Proverbs 8 and Christ, in that Christ is the “firstborn of all creation.”

Lastly, Jesus refers to Himself as “the Wisdom of God” in Luke 11:49 (“That’s why the Wisdom of God has said….”). Again, He identifies with Wisdom in Luke 7:35: “Wisdom, however, is vindicated by all her children.” Matthew records the exact same words of Jesus in Matt. 11:19.

The Wisdom of Solomon

Mollenkott shows how Proverbs provides even more evidence that Wisdom is divine. However, I am super excited about what we can find in Intertestamental literature. You may not be familiar with these beautiful, nourishing books; neither was I for most of my life. But the early church used them as Scripture. The book The Wisdom of Solomon is still honored as canonical in the Orthodox and Catholic roots of Christianity.

The Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, and Sirach are a part of the Greek Old Testament (The Septuagint). The early church and St. Paul used The Septuagint as their Bible. Therefore, they fully valued The Wisdom of Solomon as being inspired (see 2 Tim. 3:16). It was only much later that the books’ value as canon Scripture came to be a matter of debate.

In The Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom represents God in passages where She looks like Christ and also those where she imitates the Spirit. Note that always and importantly, She is a woman. Usually, this fact is over-looked by male scholars. However, it’s an obvious pointer to the feminine aspects of God’s nature, and even Christ’s nature, despite his male body on earth.

Many have seen in the phrase “the flawless mirror of…God and…perfect image of the Holy One’s goodness” in The Wisdom of Solomon 7 a resemblance to the passages in the New Testament about Christ such as Hebrews 1:3, “Christ is the reflection of God’s glory, the exact representation of God’s being.”

Lady Wisdom is also the “designer of everything” (Wisdom 8:7), in parallel with “all things” being created “through Christ and for Christ” in Paul’s letter to the Colossians (1:16).

Wise Spirit

Woman Wisdom also acts like the Holy Spirit. Take a look at the whole passage from Wisdom of Solomon 7 (I have highlighted what seems most important):

She is a breath of the power of God, a pure light of the glory of the Most High, and nothing that is base can come into Her presence in secret. She is the light that shines forth from everlasting light, the flawless mirror of the dynamism of God and the perfect image of the Holy One’s goodness.

Though alone of Her kind, She can do all things, though unchanging, She renews all things; generation after generation She enters into holy souls and makes them a friend of God and prophets…

Wisdom 1:5 makes the connection even more explicit calling Her “the holy spirit of instruction.” And Mollenkott shows that the next verse too equates Wisdom, God and the spirit of Yahweh. (My emphases reveal the parallelism, which was a poetic technique revealing similar or equal things in Scripture):

Wisdom is a spirit, a friend to [humankind], Though she will not pardon the words of a blasphemer, since God sees into the innermost part of him [or her], truly observes [the] heart, and listens to [the] tongue. The spirit of [Yahweh], indeed, fills the whole world, and that which holds all things together knows every word that is said.

Colossians 1:17 echoes the last part of this passage though it is the Second Member of the Trinity who is identified as “the one who holds all things in unity.”

Wisdom 9:17 makes a clear parallel with Wisdom and the Spirit: “But who has ever mapped out the ways of heaven? Who ever has discerned your intentions unless you have given them Wisdom and sent your Holy Spirit from heaven on high?”

More Wisdom

Proverbs 30:3 affirms that Wisdom and God were interchangeable to Solomon (or the other possible author, Agur), when he laments, “I have not learned wisdom; I have no knowledge of the Holy One.” The parallelism again indicates that wisdom and the Holy One were one and the same to the author.

I have more to say about Wisdom being divine, as the Intertestamental Wisdom books Sirach and Baruch teem with references to Woman Wisdom. The early church especially relied upon Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus, or The Church) and so I will be focusing there in my next post.

Meanwhile, what do you think? If you read my first post and this one, which are you convinced by and why?