Who Is Wisdom In Proverb 8?
I'm an enthusiast for "the Bible as literature." There are, of course,
liabilities to this popularized label since in some circles it runs
the risk of implying that the Bible is only literature and therefore
devoid of the special authority that Christians ascribe to it as a religious
book.
No less a literary giant than C. S. Lewis
expressed that same reservation when he accused those who read the Bible
"as literature" of reading the Bible "without attending to the main
thing it is about."1 Two sentences later, however, Lewis asserted unequivocally,
"There is a saner sense in which the Bible, since it is after all literature,
cannot properly be read except as literature; and the different parts
of it as the different sorts of literature they are."
What Lewis meant is that the Bible is composed
of different kinds (genres) of literature - narrative, poetry, prophecy,
epistle (authoritative teaching in the form of a letter), and so on
- and each part of the Bible must be read according to the kind of literature
it is. It is this principle I propose to explain: literary genre should
influence our interpretations, and an awareness of literary genre can
spare us from misreadings of the Bible (though that is not its only
usefulness).
How to Misread Proverbs 8. One biblical text
that illustrates this principle is a famous poem that praises wisdom
(Prov. 8:22-31). Here are the first five verses of the poem:
The Lord possessed me at the beginning of
his work, the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before
the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought
forth,
when there were no springs abounding with
water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was
brought forth, before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world. (ESV)
Who is speaking here? The lead-in to the speech
answers the question: "Does not wisdom call?" (v. 1); and in verse 12,
we read, "I, wisdom, dwell with prudence." The repeated first-person
references (my lips, my mouth, etc.), therefore, are to wisdom.
With this context as your guide, you would
probably not find the passage difficult, but what would you say if someone
rattled off proof texts to support the belief that the speaker of the
poem is really Christ and that the passage, moreover, shows that Jesus
is a created being? This is exactly what Jehovah's Witnesses claim regarding
the passage.
In a Watch Tower tract entitled Should You
Believe in the Trinity? 2 the following verses from the Bible are strung
together:
· · Colossians 1:15, which calls Christ
"the first-born of all creation."
· · Revelation 3:14, which speaks of Christ
as "the beginning of God's creation."
· · Several verses from Proverbs 8, one
of which speaks of how "Yahweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning,
before the oldest of his works" (NJB).
· · 1 Corinthians 8:6, where the italicizing
in the tract shows the Jehovah's Witnesses interpretation that God
the Father created Christ, who then created the world: "There is one
God, the Father, from whom are all things,…and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things."
They argue that because the speaker in Proverbs
8 is described in the same terms as are used for Christ elsewhere, that
speaker, therefore, must be Christ. Since the speaker in the Proverbs
8 passage speaks of being "brought forth" (vv. 24-25 ESV), moreover,
this same Christ must be a created being and not an eternal member of
the Trinity. Lest we think that the Jehovah's Witnesses thought this
up on their own, they correctly adduce "Christian writers of the early
centuries of the Common Era" as having also believed that the speaker
in Proverbs 8 is really Christ.3 Indeed, the view that the speaker of
Proverbs 8 is Christ continues to make the rounds in some evangelical
circles.
How to Recognize Personification.
As I said earlier, I will make the case for
literary genre as an effective way to spare us from misreading the Bible.
We noted that wisdom is the speaker in Proverbs 8. Wisdom, someone might
protest, cannot speak. Well, yes she can if she is a personification
of an abstract concept.
Poets have always used personification, and
biblical writers did as well. Just recall some famous examples: "Sin
is crouching at the door" (Gen. 4:7 ESV). "Mercy and truth are met together;
righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Ps. 85:10 KJV). "Then
desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is
fully grown brings forth death" (James 1:15 ESV). My personal favorite
is Zechariah's vision of a woman named Wickedness sitting inside a cereal
container (Zech. 5:6-8).
How can you know when a poet has used personification?
It is not complicated: whenever a poet attributes human qualities to
some- thing inanimate, often an abstraction, he or she has used personification.
This takes us back to Proverbs 8. The main
subject of Proverbs chapters 1-9 is wisdom, which is an abstract quality
or character trait rather than a person, but wisdom is treated as a
woman from the first chapter right through chapter 9. Wisdom is portrayed
as a woman of dazzling attractiveness and virtue, who teaches in the
marketplace of the town (1:20), who is romantically embraced (4:8-9),
who can be addressed as "my sister" (7:4), who utters a long speech
commending herself to the public (chap. 8), and who builds a house and
invites people to an alluring banquet (9:1-6).
Is Proverbs 8 Literal Fact or Literary Fiction?
We would make so much more sense of biblical
poetry if we would simply acknowledge that poetry is a form of fiction
and quite often of fantasy. In its usual pose, it asserts something
that we know to be literally untrue and often openly fantastic. Surely
personification illustrates this in its pure form. We all know that
blood does not literally cry from the ground (Gen. 4:10) and that light
and truth are not literally travel guides to Jerusalem (Ps. 43:3).
Similarly, in Proverbs 1-9, wisdom is not
literally a woman who speaks eloquently about herself and prepares a
banquet. Wisdom is a quality of the soul. The purpose of the entire
eighth chapter is to praise and exalt wisdom. In conducting this praise,
the writer invents a fictional creation story in which wisdom, as an
attribute of God, was actually present at creation. Proverbs 3:19 tells
us propositionally that "the Lord by wisdom founded the earth." Proverbs
8 turns that statement into a fictional narrative in which a personified
wisdom was present at the creation of the world. It is as simple as
that.
Proverbs 8 as an Encomium.
A proper understanding of Proverbs 8 does
not absolutely depend on viewing the poem as an encomium, but the dynamics
of the passage will fall even more into place if we do so. The encomium,
one of the most beautiful and exalted types of literature used in the
Bible, is a composition in praise of either an abstract quality or a
general character type. First Corinthians 13 is an encomium in praise
of love, Hebrews 11 in praise of faith, and Proverbs 31:10-31 in praise
of the virtuous wife.
The writer of an encomium conducts the praise
by using a standard set of literary motifs (elements):
(1) introduction to the subject, (2) the
distinguished and ancient ancestry of the subject, (3) a list of the
praiseworthy acts and qualities of the subject, (4) the indispensable
and/or superior nature of the subject, and (5) a conclusion urging
the reader to emulate the subject. Proverbs 8 has all of these familiar
motifs. In verses 22-31, we find the motif of the ancient and distinguished
ancestry of wisdom, which was present from the beginning and even
participated in the creation of the world.
Is Christ the First Created Being?
The specific hermeneutical principle that
I have applied in this article is the need to read figurative speech
in a nonliteral sense. This is part of a broader principle of interpreting
a text in keeping with what we know about its genre (what type of literature
it is). Interpreters have done a lot of mischief by taking figurative
language literally. If an interpreter begins with the premise that Proverbs
8 is talking about Christ, then certain references can be (incorrectly)
interpreted as implying that Christ is a created being. The fallacy
is in thinking that the speaker in Proverbs 8 is Christ in the first
place. The speaker is wisdom personified. Those who press for a literal
interpretation of Proverbs 8 face the daunting task of explaining why
the pronoun and language used for wisdom are feminine - is Christ feminine
in His true essence or does He have a female counterpart in heaven to
whom this passage refers?
We also need to apply this principle when
we come to passages that speak of Christ as the "firstborn" or "beginning"
of God's creation. These titles do not refer literally to generation
but figuratively to exaltation - not to a literal origin but to an exalted
position.
All Literature Requires Interpretation.
I can imagine some readers questioning whether
what I have said in this article introduces an element of subjectivity
into the interpretation of the Bible. After all, whether the speaker
in Proverbs 8 is a personified wisdom and whether the passage is an
encomium are decisions that the interpreter makes. Yes, they are, but
two things need to be asserted in regard to this. First, all texts require
interpretive decisions, and the more literary and more ancient the text,
the more interpretive decisions are potentially required. Second, all
interpretive decisions involve an element of subjectivity. To decide
that a statement in the Bible is figurative is no more subjective than
to decide that it is literal. This element of subjectivity, moreover,
does not mean that all interpretive decisions are entirely subjective.
With practice we can learn to recognize what kind of literature we are
reading and let that influence our interpretation.
- Leland Ryken
NOTES
1. C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the
Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958), 3. 2. Should You
Believe in the Trinity? (Brooklyn: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society,
1989), 14. 3. Aid to Bible Understanding (Brooklyn: Watch Tower Bible
and Tract Society, 1989), 918.
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