Commentary on Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

In Proverbs, Wisdom is a woman. Proverbs 8 represents the most famous of her words (though she speaks elsewhere in Proverbs too; see also 1:20–33). 

The language of the passage is rich: At the outset of Proverbs 8 we are reminded that Wisdom is accessible to any of us who will heed her voice. 

Wisdom is to be found in the midst of the hustle-and-bustle of our lives. In Proverbs 8:1–4 she calls to people “on the heights” and “beside the way.” She cries out “to all” from “the crossroads” and “beside the gates in front of the town” and “at the entrance of the portals.” 

Throughout the early chapters of Proverbs (Proverbs 1–9), the book’s addressees are encouraged to follow the way of wisdom and justice and to turn away from the path of folly and wickedness. But what is the path of wisdom? How does Proverbs suggest we should actually live? What does a wise life look like? 

Proverbs 8, and indeed most of Proverbs 1–9, doesn’t offer many specifics (Proverbs 6 is an exception) about the life of wisdom. To understand more fully the “content” of wisdom for Proverbs, to glimpse the sorts of values and virtues humans ought to pursue and the vices that should be rejected, readers of the book need to turn especially to Proverbs 10–31. 

Careful interpreters will discover in Proverbs 10–31 the values and virtues—such as generosity, faithfulness, kindness to the poor, honesty in market relations, and fairness in the legal realm, especially for those who inhabit a marginal socioeconomic status—that the book promotes. These values and virtues from the Hebrew Bible, because they are part of the same Israelite-Jewish moral tradition, are easily linked to the key Christian virtues the New Testament speaks of, for example in Galatians 5. 

The language of the passage is rich: Throughout Proverbs 8, Woman Wisdom is described with words that scholars have long recognized parallel the rhetoric other ancient sources deploy to describe goddesses. 

In a very real way, then, Woman Wisdom represents the feminine divine in ancient Israel’s theological imagination. In fact, scholars have debated the meaning of the words in Proverbs 8:22 that the New Revised Standard Version translates as “The Lord created me [Wisdom] at the beginning of his work.” The Hebrew verb qanah most basically means “acquire,” and certainly, one might “acquire” something by creating it. Hebrew permits this understanding of the term. Such a rendering of the word, however, suggests that ancient Israel’s religion was always and plainly monotheistic, just as Judaism and Christianity, the religious inheritors of the Bible, are. But a strict monotheism likely did not always characterize Israel’s religion (see below). 

The Hebrew verb qanah also might mean something like “beget,” as Eve says in Genesis 4: “Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have produced [qaniti] a man with the help of the LORD.’”

Whatever it might mean for the Lord to “beget” or “produce” Wisdom in Proverbs 8, this rendering of qanah, too, can be understood in terms of monotheism.

However, on one rather well-known occasion in Scripture, “acquire” (qanah) is also used in the context of marriage, although it is not the usual expression for marriage in the Hebrew Bible. In Ruth 4 Boaz claims that on the day that the closest “next-of-kin” of Ruth’s dead husband “acquires” her husband’s inheritance, this redeemer (or perhaps Boaz himself; the Hebrew is ambiguous) will “acquire” Ruth—apparently as a wife (see also 4:10). 

It may be, then, that the goddess-like Woman Wisdom in Proverbs 8 was early on conceived as a kind of consort or wife of Israel’s God Yahweh. The idea is not that far-fetched since many scholars believe there is good evidence that early in ancient Israel’s history, the goddess Asherah was understood as Yahweh’s spouse, even if the male-centered and subsequently monotheistic tradition turned away from both goddess religion and polytheism. 

If traces of the feminine divine in ancient Israel can be discerned in Scripture, how might that impact the theological and ethical reflection of Christian communities and individuals today, in churches and other organizations where not only traces but clear instances of sexism and the marginalization of women’s leadership are discernable? As in Proverbs 8:1–4, does not Wisdom (still) cry out? 

The language of the passage is rich: In Proverbs 8:22–31, Woman Wisdom explains her origins. As we saw, verse 22 says, “The LORD created me [Wisdom] at the beginning of his work.”

Proverbs 8:22–31 makes clear that Woman Wisdom exists prior to the creation of the cosmos—“before the beginning of the earth” (verse 23). She is thus in some fashion present at the Lord’s creation of the cosmos. “When he established the heavens, I was there … when he made firm the skies … when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker” (verses 27–30).

The scholarly debate about the meaning of the Hebrew word ’amon lying behind the New Revised Standard Version’s expression “master worker” is one of the most famous in biblical studies. Besides “master worker,” there are good reasons for translating the word as “little child” too. Whatever the best rendering, in 8:30–31 Woman Wisdom delights the divine with her “rejoicing” (or “dancing,” another possible rendering of the Hebrew text) during God’s creative work. Her pleasing actions at creation, “in the beginning” as it were, point to creation’s goodness (see also Genesis 1).

Wisdom’s close association with creation in Proverbs 8 suggests to some interpreters not simply that God used God’s wisdom when the deity created all that is. It hints, too, that divine Wisdom in some sense infuses the cosmos. The created world might thus be regarded not merely as that which God has entrusted to humans (see also Genesis 1:26), but as itself sacred. If so, it would demand not just our respect as a divine work, but our reverence. 

This is not pantheism—the idea that God and the cosmos are identical—a notion about which traditional Christian theology has often been suspicious. Instead, it is a kind of panentheism, or the idea that something of the divine inhabits everything. This idea has fared much better especially among contemporary Christian theologians. 

For people living in the Anthropocene epoch, an age that is now characterized by widespread environmental degradation, Proverbs 8 can thus move preachers and congregations toward some consequential moral-theological positions regarding “care of the cosmos.” What “good news” for both humans and all of sacred creation will preachers and communities of faith proclaim in light of Proverbs 8?

The language of the passage is rich: Since ancient times Christians have understood Wisdom in Proverbs 8 to be more than just a personification of the book’s ethical teachings. Jesus of Nazareth is called the Wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), and subsequently Proverbs’ Wisdom came to play a significant role in Christian reflection on the triune Godhead. Proverbs 8 is thus well read on Trinity Sunday.