Whiteboard: Wisdom

This Sunday we'll be talking about Wisdom...or as our Biblical tradition prefers to refer to it, Lady Wisdom.

That's right. In the Bible Wisdom is designated as feminine (the women of the church are nodding their heads knowingly). In fact, it is more than just feminine; Proverbs talks straight forwardly about wisdom as a personified woman ("Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice. On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out" Proverbs 8:1-3 with emphasis added by me).

Scholars have all sorts of theories and ideas about why this would be the case (read some here, here, and my personal favorite exposition on the text here) but in truth scripture never really answers the question "Why is Wisdom personified as a Lady?"

The more important question (and the one scripture does answer!) is "What should we learn from Lady Wisdom?" In answering this important question Rev. John Trigilio, Jr. and Rev. Kenneth Brighenti write:

In the Christian sense, wisdom isn't the same as truth or knowledge. Wisdom isn't just intellectual insight or book learning, either. Wisdom is the ability to make good judgments. A wise person doesn't have to be the most intelligent or the most accurate but does have to be someone who knows what to do with the knowledge he or she has, where to find more, and how to apply it.

Isn't that a great response! Oh, and my favorite part: It comes from their article in "Women in the Bible for Dummies." Yep, learning about wisdom from the "For Dummies" books!

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Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 The Gifts of Wisdom

Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
‘To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
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—
when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.