1) God of my ancestors, Lord of mercy,
you who have made all
things by your word
COMMENTARY: This is a variation of a
prayer by Solomon elsewhere in the Bible.
Most people in the world at this time considered deities
ethnicity-specific; hence the writer invoking the “God of my ancestors”. Back in the Psalms, when David, begging not
to be exiled, asks if God would want him to worship foreign gods, he wasn’t
saying, “Do what I want or I’ll go to some other god who will!” but spoke a
genuine concern that he might be obliged to serve other gods as part of
becoming a citizen of another land. Accordingly, the earliest forms of apostasy
from Judaism took the form of adopting the deities worshiped before in the
territories which they now occupied, in the belief that these would have more
weight locally.
But the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob challenged that idea from the outset, forbidding the wandering
Jews from taking on local deities wherever they went. The tabernacle was a symbol of the same deity
that they had always had traveling with them wherever they went. Ultimately, when finally settling down in the
Promised Land, the Jews signaled their intention to sink roots in the land by
building a stationary temple modeled on the tabernacle.
The Babylonian exile and
the first destruction of the temple forced them to reconsider how their migrant
herding ancestors held onto their Jewish identity, even before the creation of
the tabernacle. Invoking these forebears
reminded them that the truest temple is the heart—an important point for the
Alexandrian Diaspora to whom the writer addresses this book.
The Greeks and Romans had begun to shake up even ancestral ties, however, as
religion began to become a choice rather than an inheritance. Not only did more and more of their subjects
adopt the religions of their conquerors, but they themselves increasingly
adopted the religions of other lands and brought then home or to far distant
colonies.
This cultural expropriation had the unexpected consequence of making the spread
of Christianity possible. One of
fiercest debates in the early Church was whether non-Jews could become
Christians. Starting with St. Peter’s
vision of God offering him a feast of unclean meats, and assuring him that
henceforth nothing—and no one—created by God would be considered unclean, and
promoted by St. Paul championing the right for converts to remain
uncircumcised, the Council of Nicea ultimately settled the matter for most
Christians, declaring Christianity to be “catholic”—that is to say universal,
applicable to all ethnicities.
The prayer also address
God as the Lord of Mercy. People forget
just how central Mercy is to Judeo-Christian religion, and when they remember, they
usually apply it only to themselves.
People often teach that God’s love is unconditional, but it’s not quite. Jesus, reflecting common rabbinical thought, pointed
out that God gives mercy only to the merciful—you could be forgiven anything,
so long as you yourself forgave others.
Not only did He enshrine this in the Lord’s Prayer, He also told a
parable of a servant forgiven a great debt by his master, only to turn around
and beat up someone else who owed him far less.
The master changed his mind and reinstated the debt, ordering his
merciless servant arrested.
2) And in your wisdom have established humankind
to rule the creatures
produced by you,
COMMENTARY: I had a great deal of
trouble with this verse, as you can imagine!
I looked into whether “rule” might be mistranslated, but could find no
loophole.
However, the context of Jesus’s teachings transforms it marvelously. When Jesus stripped down to a towel around
his waist like a common slave, and did a slave’s work washing the dusty feet of
His apostles, He specifically said that anyone who leads in His name must
similarly—totally, humbly—serve those they lead.
Why us? My guess would be creativity. There are creatures (whales and dolphins,
bonobo apes, ravens, elephants) who might possibly match us for intelligence,
or close, certainly with some overlap between their most gifted and our most impaired,
but when it comes to creativity, in the animal kingdom you have the chaotic collections
of the bower-bird or the octopus, and the monotonous sand-mandalas of the
puffer fish, the raven’s mating dance, and that’s it. One might also include elephants jamming on
musical instruments for pleasure when taught how, but not spontaneously
creating instruments in the wild. Human
beings, in contrast, have been exploring and expanding art with nonutilitarian
enthusiasm since before we had even fully taken our present form, creating
tools such as ocher-clay crayons and bone flutes, for no other purpose.
This artifice has tremendous
potential for good—and equally tremendous potential for evil. We can create cures for diseases of man and
beast, tend forests for their greatest well-being, or cause one of the greatest
extinction-waves in geologic history—that latter being something that no other
animal or plant has ever “achieved” all by itself.
If rulership means power, then we have that.
The question is, are we wise enough to use it correctly? Does the world’s physical salvation depend on
our spiritual salvation?
3) And to govern the world in holiness and righteousness,
and to render judgment in
integrity of heart:
COMMENTARY: Okay, that’s how we’re
SUPPOSED to do it. But what does that
mean? Can we govern anything or anyone
in holiness if we regard them as mere resources for our pleasure? Shouldn’t we recognize the holiness of God’s
touch in all Creation, and treat Creation with appropriate reverence, gratitude
and awe, as we would treat a painting by a great human master? Is there anything righteous about treating
living things cruelly just because we can?
And if a judge renders judgment in integrity of heart, that means he
divorces his selfish desires from what is best for all.
4) Give me Wisdom, the consort at your throne,
and do not reject me from
among your children;
COMMENTARY: It’s a bold move to ask a
king for his consort! Solomon executed
his own brother, Adonijah, for requesting of their father’s many concubines: a prepubescent
girl named Abishag, who hadn’t had relations with the elderly, dying king, but
only acted as his nursemaid (which therefore made it not incest.) Why?
Because marrying a prince to his king-father’s consort could establish
his claim as heir to the throne.
5) For I am your servant, the child of your maidservant,
a man weak and short-lived
and lacking in
comprehension of judgment and of laws.
COMMENTARY: Nobody starts out with
wisdom. You have to seek it, through
learning, through observation, through thinking about what you have learned and
observed, and especially through prayer.
6) Indeed, though one be perfect among mortals,
if Wisdom, who comes from
you, be lacking,
that one will count for
nothing.
COMMENTARY: A tool unwisely used
produces nothing good, no matter how fine a tool it is. What use is human creativity, if we don’t
wield it wisely?
7) You have chosen me king over your people
and magistrate over your
sons and daughters.
COMMENTARY: By God’s people the writer
means Israel. But who are the sons and
daughters of God? Jesus gave an answer,
saying that those who do the will of His Father are His brothers and
sisters. And who better does the will of
God than Nature, which He created?
8) You have bid me build a temple on your holy mountain
and an altar in the city
that is your dwelling place,
a copy of the holy
tabernacle which you had established from of old.
COMMENTARY: Solomon built this temple
after David was denied permission, on account of his sins. Interestingly, Solomon was the product of one
of those sins, as David murdered his mother’s husband on his account. This goes to show that we are indeed born
innocent of the sins of our parents on the level of responsibility, though
being raised by sinful parents does incline us to sin, ourselves.
Original sin, however, may literally be hereditary. If my theory is correct, that the Genesis
vision accurately if symbolically reflects the Mesolithic transition, it became
a survival trait to become suspicious of strangers and anyone else not like
your own band, for they might be Neolithic slavers hunting down Paleolithic
types for backbreaking labor. This
stamped hostility, prejudice, conformity and war upon our very DNA.
How does this square with
the love of money being the root of all evil?
Money is nothing more than the codification of ownership—the Paleolithic
concept that motivated the slaving. We
can’t put the genie back in the bottle—ownership and money are here to
stay. But if we love ownership more than
we love people, evil ensues.
9) Now with you is Wisdom, who knows your works
and was present when you
made the world;
Who understands what is
pleasing in your eyes
and what is conformable
with your commands.
COMMENTARY: God created wisely. A well-made world in natural balance pleased
His eyes. The more we resemble this
balance of Creation, the more we conform to His commands.
10) Send her forth from your holy heavens
and from your glorious
throne dispatch her
That she may be with me
and work with me,
that I may know what is
pleasing to you.
COMMENTARY: Again, I wonder if a female
wrote this, depicting Wisdom as a wife who works with her husband and advises
him, rather than a chattel who does what she is told and has no opinions. At the very least it shows a far more
enlightened view of women than the more common views of the Roman patriarchy.
11) For she knows and understands all things,
and will guide me
prudently in my affairs
and safeguard me by her
glory;
COMMENTARY: We’ve discussed in far too
much detail in earlier chapters how wisdom brings safety. However, here the writer talks not merely of
material prudence and physical safety, but safety of the soul.
12Thus my deeds will be acceptable,
and I will judge your
people justly
and be worthy of my
father’s throne.
COMMENTARY: So, to do deeds acceptable
to God and to be just, we must listen to God’s feminine side? Interesting!
13) For who knows God’s counsel,
or who can conceive what
the Lord intends?
COMMENTARY: When knowledge fails, the
wisdom of faith must step in.
14) For the deliberations of mortals are timid,
and uncertain our plans.
COMMENTARY: Being limited in our
understanding, we make slow, small steps in the dark, afraid of what we might
bump into. Except, of course, for a few
reckless souls who occasionally achieve great things and more often wind up
bruised up by all of the unknowns that they crash into.
15) For the corruptible body burdens the soul
and the earthly tent
weighs down the mind with its many concerns.
COMMENTARY: Here the writer uses
Platonic philosophy and terminology—well-known in Alexandria, that city being
founded by the student of a student of Plato.
Plato originated the idea, in the West, of the body being a burden on
the mind and soul, as the Siddhartha Gautama did in the East. Soon after, when Greek philosophy met
Buddhist religion in the Alexandrian expansion, they were compatible enough to
give birth to Stoicism—the preferred philosophy of Rome. (Nevertheless, I must point out that this
innovation doesn’t completely square with earlier Biblical thought of the body
as a gift from God.)
16) Scarcely can we guess the things on earth,
and only with difficulty
grasp what is at hand;
but things in heaven, who
can search them out?
COMMENTARY: The beginning of wisdom is
knowing that no matter how much we learn, we can’t know it all. Which is no reason to stop learning—quite the
opposite. We can never run out of things
to fascinate us! Even so, we need to
humbly admit that we mortals have our limits.
17) Or who can know your counsel, unless you give Wisdom
and send your holy spirit
from on high?
COMMENTARY: And here we have the
solution for the vastness of our ignorance.
We can petition the Holy Spirit to reveal to us whatever we need to fill
in critical gaps.
18) Thus were the paths of those on earth made straight,
and people learned what
pleases you,
and were saved by Wisdom.
COMMENTARY:
The next chapter will go into this more fully. |