Is Lady Wisdom The Pre-Incarnate Son Of God? A Study Of Proverbs 8:22-31

In answering the question proposed in the title of this article we will look at Proverb 8:22-31 exegetically and survey three different ways of interpreting the passage: 1. the orthodox Trinitarian/Arian¹ perspective – Wisdom is the pre-incarnate son of God 2. the Jewish rabbinic perspective – Wisdom is the Torah and 3. the Biblical Unitarian perspective – Wisdom is the personification of the attribute of wisdom. In the rest of this article I will refer to #1 as PISV (Pre-incarnate son view), #2 as TV (Torah view) and #3 as PAV (Personified Attribute view).

In order to receive the full benenfit of this study, I encourage the reader to take the time to look up all of the scripture references in both the article and the endnotes.

Preliminaries

In the exegetical part of the article we will examine this passage in three different sections – vv. 22-26, vv. 27-29 and vv. 30-31. Before we begin to exegete the passage it is necessary to establish the immediate context, which is set out in vv.1 -4 of the chapter:

_1. Does not Wisdom call, and Understanding lift up her voice?
_2. On the top of the heights along the way, between the paths she has taken her stand.
_3. Beside the gates, leading to the city, at the entrances, she shouts:
_4. “To you, O men, I call, and my voice (calls out) to the sons of men.“

It is clear and undeniable that the attribute of ‘wisdom’ is here being personified, i.e. portrayed as a person. Because of the feminine grammatical gender of the Hebrew word chokmah, the natural consequence is that wisdom is portrayed as a woman. Some scholars have asserted that we cannot tell if Wisdom in this passage is meant to be taken as a simple personification of the attribute or as a hypostasis or actual personal being, perhaps a goddess of sort. But this is absurd! We are dealing with poetry here, not straightforward narrative. We are readily able to recognize when we encounter poetry because there is something distinctly different about it compared to narrative. Typical of poetry is the use of non-literal language to vividly express ideas, and we see this kind of thing in the poetry of scripture². Personification of inanimate things and abstract concepts is one particular technique in the use of non-literal language. We already begin to see this technique of personification applied to wisdom earlier in the book of Proverbs, though on a smaller scale, in 1:20, 4:6-9, 7:4-5, and after our passage, in 9:1-6. Wisdom’s antithesis, foolishness, is also briefly personified in 9:13-18. Another clue that the attribute of wisdom is being personified is that it is paralleled with the attribute of ‘understanding’³ and is said to dwell with ‘prudence’⁴, another feminine noun attribute. Also important is Prov. 3:19, where God is said to have created by his wisdom.

This poetic devise of personifying wisdom is encountered again in intertestamental wisdom literature⁵. It is important to understand that the PAV is not based upon a presupposition that is being forced upon the text, but is, in fact, the most natural way to read it.

The TV, espoused by many Jewish sages throughout history, while recognizing the technique of personification, holds that the ‘wisdom’ of Proverb 8:22-31 is the Torah itself. This concept was developed from particular passages from the Tanakh, such as Deut. 4:5-6, Ps. 19:7; 119:98, 130, in which it is the law of God that makes men wise. This is then extrapolated to passages like Ps. 104:24, Prov. 3:19, Jer. 10:12 and 51:15, in which God is said to have created by his wisdom. It is then deduced that God created the Torah first and then used the Torah as a guide in the creation of the material universe. While not so much in the cannonical scriptures, the identification of wisdom as the Torah becomes more straightforward in the intertestamental literature. In Sirach 24:23-25 and Baruch 3:36-4:4 the equation of wisdom with the Torah is more explicit. A further development seen in Sirach 24:3 is that Wisdom says, “I came out from the mouth of the Most High.” This, coupled with Ps. 33:6, equates God’s word with wisdom, further solidifying in the Jewish mind the identification of wisdom with the Torah.

While I can appreciate this line of reasoning, and surely God’s law does make one wise, I don’t think it can be said that wisdom is synonymous with Torah. Wisdom can be derived by other means also, such as from observation of the world around us⁶ or by direct impartation into a person’s mind by God.⁷ Surely, in the Torah is found a specific wisdom given to the nation of Israel to enable her to live in proper covenant relationship with God and in such a way so as to enjoy God’s continued blessing and protection, but to infer that the Torah existed before the creation of the physical world and was the blueprints that God used to create all things is certainly going beyond what is written and is an idea not worthy of being taken seriously.

Proponents of the PISV will typically acknowledge that wisdom is personified in all of the earlier passages in Proverbs noted above, and even in 8:1-21, but then claim that in 8:22-31 wisdom morphs into an actual person who was with God from all eternity. Since there seems to be no textual or grammatical reason for this shift it becomes obvious that this understanding of the passage is derived from their presupposition rather than from the text itself. The presupposition of modern adherents to this view is that because church fathers of the 2nd -5th centuries interpreted the passage this way then this must be the right way to understand it. But why did these earlier so-called church fathers interpret the passage this way? One might wish to suppose it was simply their commitment to scripture that led them to this conclusion, but it seems more likely than not that a commitment to certain philosophical principles, as set forth in the first endnote, was mainly at play.

But we should not just blindly follow what these early church fathers wrote and then interpret scripture accordingly, as if what they wrote was inspired by the spirit of God. These men were evidently imbued with a certain philosophical worldview which was ubiquitous in their day, most of them having been instructed in the then prevalent philosophies prior to their conversion to Christianity. Thankfully, many orthodox Christian scholars today are able to see this flaw in the church fathers and to understand that Proverb 8:22-31 is simply employing the literary technique of personification in speaking of the attribute of wisdom. One does not have to be a Biblical Unitarian to deny that ‘wisdom’ in this passage is meant to be taken as an actual personal being, nor does one have to deny the Trinity and deity of Christ to acknowledge the obvious use of personification. With this in mind let’s examine the passage.

Section 1

₂₂“The Lord brought me forth (acquired me) a beginning of his way, 
before his works of old;
₂₃ I was established from of old,
from the beginning, from before the earth.
₂₄ When there were no seas, I was given birth,
when there were no springs overflowing with water;
₂₅ before the mountains were settled in place,
before the hills, I was given birth,
₂₆ before he made land or open spaces
or the first dust of the earth.

The first thing to note is the underlined portions, which are descriptive of how wisdom came to be. The non-underlined portions speak of when wisdom came to be. There has been much debate about the word in v. 22 which I have translated here as “brought me forth” or alternatively “acquired me.” The Hebrew word is qanah and it’s dominant meaning in it’s 85 occurrences is to acquire by purchase. It is also used in the book of Proverbs of acquiring wisdom⁸. One rare usage which may be more pertinent to our passage is Gen. 4:1 – “And Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived and brought forth Cain and said, ‘I have acquired a man from Yahweh.'” Here the word is used in connection with giving birth to a child. This is relevant to our passage which, as we will see, uses the language of birth in relation to God’s acquiring of wisdom. The LXX and the Peshitta both have words that mean to create in Prov. 8:22. This may be because there is another Hebrew root for qanah, confirmed by Ugaritic literature, which means to create.⁹ The problem is in knowing which meaning was originally intended by the author of Proverbs. Since, we have an allusion to birth in two other verses in this section, I prefer the idea of acquiring by birth rather than by creation, although it is possible for both concepts to apply to the same entity. For example, the nation of Israel is said to have been both created by God¹⁰ and given birth by God.¹¹ Believers in Messiah are also said the be both created anew¹² and born anew.¹³ So the two concepts do overlap; what is created could be spoken of as having been born and what is born can be spoken of as having been created.

Proponents of the PISV have typically opted for the translation possessed, for obvious reasons. Since they take ‘wisdom’ here to literally be the pre-incarnate son of God, and they hold to the belief that the son is eternal, then the idea of wisdom being created is not something they would want to say. Some early church fathers, though, quote the passage as created, but explain it as a figure of speech, not a literal creating. But even if qanah is best understood as to acquire, and the idea of possession is implied, for once something is acquired it is then possessed, the idea is that one is acquiring something they did not possess before they acquired it. Is this passage saying that God did not possess wisdom until he acquired it at some point? I will come back to this shortly, but let’s first look at the other words used of how wisdom came to be.

In v. 23 the word is nacak whose primary meaning is to pour out as in the pouring out of the drink offering. The two odd uses of this word are Prov. 8:23 and Ps. 2:6, which is typically translated as installed, set or appointed in English versions. Perhaps the idea of anointing is in view, as the king was anointed with oil which was poured upon his head. The Greek text has a word meaning founded or established and the Aramaic also has established, probably from the same idea of set or appointed as found in Ps 2:6. But perhaps the idea is simply that wisdom flowed out of God like a liquid is poured out of a cup.

The final word we will look at is found in both vv. 24 and 25. It is the Hebrew word chuwl which means to writhe, either in dance or in pain. It then came to denote writhing in the pains of childbirth, and then finally giving birth. That it has the meaning of giving birth can be seen in the instances where it is paralleled with other words for birthing¹⁴.

All of this language implies a coming into existence of wisdom at a point in time. The time designated by the text is prior to the creation of the world. This is explicit in the language used. So what are we to make of this? Was there a time in which God did not possess wisdom? Tim Warner of 4Winds Fellowships, a proponent of the PISV though not a trinitarian, in a recent teaching on Prov. 8:22-31, pointed out that the flaw in the PAV is that all of this language implies that God would not have had wisdom prior to his having acquired it. But the flaw is not in the PAV but in Warner’s reasoning. Warner sees ‘wisdom’ in Prov. 8 to be literally equated with the pre-incarnate son of God, who is not co-eternal with God but was given birth out of God. So there was a time when the son did not exist. But if wisdom is just an attribute and it was originated at a point in time then God would have existed without wisdom until that time, and this is unthinkable. But Warner is ignoring the poetic nature of the passage and is simply applying the language much to literal.

Imagine, if you can, a time before God created anything. We would assume that God was alone and was inactive, except for any activity in his mind. All of God’s attributes would have, at this point, been dormant. Not until God began to create did his latent attributes become active. Before creation what need would there have been for God to exercise his power or his wisdom? To whom would he have shown his love and mercy? What need would there have been for his justice? The first exercise of these latent attributes of God would have taken place only when he created. Therefore, the poetic language of birthing in Prov. 8:22-24 should be understood as “it was as if the Lord acquired me, it was as if he gave me birth.” This is much like other instances in scripture poetry where God’s inactivity and the resumption of his activity are spoken of in non-literal terms. For example Ps. 44:23-24 – “Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Wake up! Do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?” and 78:65-66 – “Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, as a warrior wakes from the stupor of wine. He beat back his enemies; he put them to everlasting shame.” We are not to think from these words that God was actually asleep and then awoke from that sleep. Instead we are to understand that God was inactive in his relationship with Israel in such a way that it was as if he were asleep. And when he resumed his activity in coming to their aid it was as if he had awakened from sleep.

So when v. 22 says, “The Lord acquired me a beginning of his way,” we can understand “his way” to refer to his motion or activity, and thus wisdom was the first of his latent attributes to be employed. This makes sense, since wisdom was the attribute he would have used to plan his creation.

From the time of Origen, in the 1st half of the 3rd century, theologians began to speak of an eternal generation or begetting of the son and Prov. 8:22-31 played a pivotal role in this understanding, along with Ps. 2:7¹⁵. It was deduced that if the son, a.k.a. wisdom, was given birth before the creation of the physical world then he was begotten before time itself was created and therefore in eternity, making his generation from the Father an eternal process. This was first postulated by Origen on the basis of certain philosophical commitments he held to and then imposed upon the biblical text. This idea eventually became key to the development of the orthodox doctrine of the trinity. But it is important to note that this understanding is not derived exegetically from the text.

Section 2

₂₇ I was there when he set the heavens in place,
when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
₂₈ when he established the clouds above
and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
₂₉ when he gave the sea its boundary
so the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.

The thing I want to stress in this section is that the activity of creating is attributed to Yahweh himself, not to the wisdom that he acquired. In the PISV, it is always asserted that it is the pre-incarnate son of God who was active in creating the material world, but the text portrays ‘wisdom’ as an observer of Yahweh’s acts of creation, not a participant. The text says only “I was there.” The LXX and Peshitta read the same in this section, making Yahweh himself as the active mover in creation. Yet the early church fathers made constant use of this passage in portraying the son of God as the active agent of the Father in creation. This was based mainly on two misconceptions: 1. a philosophical need to have an intermediate agent of creation to preserve God’s perfection and immutability and 2. a handful of NT passages which they thought attributed to the son an active role in creation – John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2. Needless to say, I think they were wrong on both counts.

The TV would not have any issue here, since it does not see the Torah as an active agent in creation but only as the plan or blueprint which God used to map out his strategy¹⁶.

Section 3

₃₀ And I remain beside him, a reliable one;
I have been a delight (to him) day by day,
celebrating before him always,
₃₁ celebrating in the world, his earth,
and my (continuing)delight was in the sons of men.

Much debate has been had over the meaning of the Hebrew word amon in v. 30. The two chief suggestions, which have both ancient and modern support, are master craftsman and nursling. But these suggestions are not without their difficulties¹⁷. After doing much research on this verse and on the best probable meaning of amon, I have decided in favor of the translation above, based mainly on a 2006 JBL article by Stuart Weeks¹⁸, professor of OT and Hebrew at Durham University in the UK who specializes in wisdom literature. In the article he goes briefly through the two main translations and shows why they don’t really work, based largely on contextual considerations, and then shows why the better solution is to read emun instead of amon¹⁹.

The main gist of his argument is that the passage can be broken up into three sections. I was pleased to see this for I had already come to this conclusion before discovering his article. I had already ascertained that the first section, vv. 22-26, focuses on wisdom’s birth prior to God creating the world, and section 2, vv. 27-29, focuses on the period during God’s creative activity, as Weeks demonstrates. What I failed to see is that section three focuses on on-going time after God’s creative activity. Here is an excerpt from Weeks’ article explaining this aspect of the passage:

In short, a syntactic link between v. 30a and the preceding verses would be redundant, and the poetic techniques tie it very closely and obviously to what follows rather than to what precedes. In that case, there is no good reason to take ואהיה to refer to the period in which the preceding verses are set. Indeed, if ot is not serving as the apodosis of the previous temporal expression, then v. 30 more naturally refers to the period after creation; this after all is the setting of v. 31, to which it is closely tied. Correspondingly, the expressions of time in v. 30b are likely to have a more general reference than simply to the period of creation: Wisdom was not a source of delight only while God created the world, but continued to be so, “daily” and “all of the time.” In fact, it seems likely that these verses, with their strong emphasis on temporal constancy, should be understood with reference not to a brief interval in the past, but to the whole subsequent period: Wisdom was with God before the creation, was present at the creation, and has continued to be beside God all of the time, while herself rejoicing in the world. This clarifies the purpose of the section. It is not merely a statement that Wisdom was with God early on, but a declaration that she has been with God throughout the history of the world, and still is. To humans, in whom Wisdom delights, she offers a unique understanding of the divine will, which will enable them to live and prosper with divine favor.

P. 438 of Weeks’ article

Weeks points out that the word hayah that appears twice in v. 30 can be translated as continue or remain, and would then be describing wisdom’s continued value to God in his providential care and rule of his creation, just as wisdom was a reliable asset which enabled God to plan out his creation. This reliability of wisdom, which even God esteems, becomes a further motivating factor to incentivize men to desire, seek and acquire wisdom. This fits well with the context of chs. 1-9 of Proverbs, which contain a series of poetic discourses setting forth the greatness, desirability and benefits of wisdom, and which call men to it’s diligent pursuit. Wisdom’s benefits are especially touted as an inducement to it’s acquisition²⁰. But here, in 8:22-31, it is the fact that God himself highly valued wisdom as a necessary asset in planning his creation and as a continued asset in the judicious management of that creation, that becomes the motivating factor for man’s procurement of the same.

Now, of course, proponents of the PISV favor the translation that portrays wisdom as a master craftsman, for this gives support to the notion that the son was the active agent in the creation of the world. But, as I pointed out earlier, prior to this point in the passage there has been no language used which would require us to understand wisdom to be an active participant in the work of creation. Why would this idea come up only at the end of the passage? This seems to me to be a matter of reading back into this passage the presupposition that the son was the active agent in creation, based on John 1:3, 1 Cor. 8:6, Col. 1:16 and Heb. 1:2. As I said before, one would not need to abandon that presupposition in order to acknowledge that Prov. 8:22-31 is not a support for it. Many orthodox scholars admit this.

Conclusion

We have seen that the PISV of Prov. 8:22-31 depends first of all on the presupposition held by early church fathers that the son of God existed as a kind of emanation out from the substance of God prior to his incarnation as a human, and ultimately on the presupposition of modern orthodoxy that these church fathers were correct in this assessment. But neither of these presuppositions is certain and certainly if the first one can be shown to be false, and I believe it can, then the second one is automatically false.

We have also seen that the TV is based on the rather tenuous connection between scriptural passages which refer to Torah as a source of wisdom and those which speak of God creating the world by his wisdom. But this kind of exegesis seems forced at best and at worst just plain ridiculous. The idea that God created the Torah before the material world is not only not stated anywhere in the cannonical scriptures but also strains the limits of credulity.

Finally we have seen that the PAV is the most natural reading of the text, taking into account the poetic nature of the passage, the tendency in poetic scripture toward personification, and how this view best fits the immediate context of Proverbs ch. 8 and the overall context of chs. 1-9.

I plan to do a follow-up article of appendices to this article, dealing with christological issues related to Prov. 8:22-31.

Endnotes

1. The 4th century Alexandrian presbyter Arius believed that “if the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows, that he [the Son] had his substance from nothing.” I am not using the term Arian in this strict sense but only as a convenient way to refer to those non-trinitarians who believe in the pre-human existence of the Son, whether they believe exactly as Arius did or not. Many of the early church fathers before Arius held the view that God had within himself his Wisdom/Logos from all eternity, but prior to creation brought forth this Wisdom/Logos out of himself as a distinct rational being, the Son. Hence, the Son was emanated or generated out of the substance of God. This belief differed from the later Nicean theology in that before Nicea the Son was always viewed as subordinate to the Father, who was considered alone the one true God. These so-called church fathers, both before and after Nicea, believed that the Son, once emanated out from the Father as a personal being, created the material universe. This was a necessary plank in their theology because of their Neo-Platonic view of the Monad as perfect and immutable. Since to go from not creating to creating would involve a change in God it was necessary to have an intermediate figure who could do the actual work of creation. For these church fathers, who held this philosophical worldview, the Son easily occupied this role in their theology. This is why in their theology the Son is credited with creating the material world. This was a clear deviation from the concept of God as Creator in the Hebrew bible. ↩︎
2. See Gen. 4:7; Ps. 19:1-5; 43:3; 57:4; 79:8; 85:10-11; 96:11-13; 98:8; 114:3-4; Is. 55:11, 12; Joel 3:12-13; Hosea 10:11-13. ↩︎
3. See 1:2; 2:2, 6; 3:13, 19, 21; 4:5, 7; 8:1. ↩︎
4. See 8:12. ↩︎
5. See Wisdom of Solomon chs. 6-9; Sirach 24; Baruch 3-4. ↩︎
6. See Job 12:12; Prov. 24:30-34; 30:25; Eccl. 8:16. ↩︎
7. See Ex. 28:3; 31:3; 35:31; Deut. 34:9; 1 Kings 4:29. ↩︎
8. See 1:5; 4:5, 7; 16:16; 19:8. ↩︎
9. See the translators note on Prov. 8:22 in the NET Bible. ↩︎
10. See Is. 43:1. ↩︎
11. See Deut. 32:18. ↩︎
12. See 1 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 2:10. ↩︎
13. See John 1:13; 1 Pet. 1:3, 23. ↩︎
14. See Deut. 32:18; Job 15:7; 39:1; Ps. 51:5; Is. 45:10. ↩︎
15. It is hard to see how Ps. 2:7 ever became an important text for those who held to the eternal generation idea, since it explicitly refers to the day in which this son was begotten. The Psalm simply speaks of Yahweh’s anointed one, the Davidic king and v. 7 specifically about God’s decree that the chosen son of David would become the son of God upon his being installed upon the throne, based on God’s promise to David in 2 Sam. 7:12-14 (see also 1 Chron. 28:5-6). This does not entail an ontological change in the king, but only a change in his position or standing. It speaks of a functional relationship between God and the king, not an ontological one. ↩︎
16. From Rabbi Hoshaya in the midrash Bereshit Rabbah 1: The way of the world is that when a flesh-and-blood king builds a palace he does not build it based on his own knowledge, but rather based on the knowledge of an artisan. And the artisan does not build it based on his own knowledge, but rather, he has [plans on] sheets and tablets by which to ascertain how he should build its rooms, how he should build its doors. So too, the Holy One blessed be He looked in the Torah and created the world. The Torah says: “Bereshit God created” (Genesis 1:1), and reshit is nothing other than the Torah, as it says: “The Lord made me at the beginning of [reshit] His way” (Proverbs 8:22). ↩︎
17. See Scott, R. B. Y. “Wisdom in Creation: The ’āmôn of Proverbs VIII 30.” Vetus Testamentum 10, no. 2 (1960): 213–23. here ↩︎
18. Here is the link to Weeks’ article in the Journal of Biblical Literature , Vol. 125, No. 3, pp.433-442: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27638373 ↩︎
19. See Weeks article pp. 440-441 and Scott article p.220. ↩︎
20. See 2:9-16; 3:13-18; 4:5-9; 8:12-21. ↩︎