Wisdom the Woman

Proverbs has always been a very precious book to me. Especially as a High Schooler, I had a strong desire to be wiser than my age. I have always recognized that my youth would be the window of my greatest capability, and I wanted to ensure that the saying “youth is wasted on the young” would not be fulfilled in me.

I sought after the advice of faithful, older Christians, and I also dove into Proverbs. For years, every one of my devotional times involved reading at least one chapter of Proverbs because I hoped to learn wisdom as early as possible. However, my favorite part of the book has always been the personification of wisdom (henceforth “Lady Wisdom”) in Proverbs 1:20-33 and 8:1-9:12.

Presenting the aspects of God’s wisdom as a person created an impact far more potent than a typical definition would have. Even now, my favorite character in the Bible is Lady Wisdom, with my second favorite being Solomon himself.

However, I wanted to discuss one characteristic of God’s wisdom that impacts me in a way the others do not.

Wisdom is emotional.

In our culture, we characterize wisdom as being many things. Some would call wisdom the pragmatic ability to apply knowledge in one’s life. My father calls wisdom “skillful living.” Proverbs often defines wisdom as the ability to learn — “Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser, // Teach a  righteous man and he will increase his learning.” (Prov. 9:9, NASB 2020). However, wisdom is not generally identified as emotive. Instead, wisdom is the calm ability to make calculated decisions despite a person’s emotions.

However, Lady Wisdom defies this regular association. During her short appearance in Scripture, Lady Wisdom displays passion through desperation, joy, love, and hatred.

Wisdom’s Desperation

As a first introduction, we find that “Wisdom shouts in the street, // she lifts her voice in the square; // At the head of the noisy streets she cries out; // At the entrance of the gates in the city she utters her sayings” (Prov. 1:20-21). In fact, this behavior is demonstrated as a common occurrence as it is repeated in 1:24, 8:1-4, and 9:1-4. In fact, the bulk of Lady Wisdom’s appearance is the message that she cries out to the world.

Wisdom is not an aloof master that judges the worthiness of her potential students. While fiction commonly depicts the highest masters as being scrupulously selective of their students — consider Master Jeong Jeong in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Jasnah Kholin in the The Way of Kings and many more — Lady Wisdom not only accepts all students, but spends her time seeking them out wherever possible. 

Lady Wisdom actively pursues the areas with the highest traffic to increase her chances of finding a student. She cries out from the street, town square, city gates (Prov. 1:20-21), heights, and crossroads (Prov. 8:1-2). She even enlists the help of others in her pursuit of the naive — “She has sent out her maidens, she calls / From the tops of the heights of the city” (Prov. 9:3). In every method she can think of and at every place she anticipates success, Lady Wisdom invites all mankind to pursue her.

There is no better way to describe Lady Wisdom’s actions than desperation. The idea of someone screaming in an attempt to overcome the noises of a bustling main street is unbecoming of a great teacher, and yet it is the main practice of sagacity personified (Prov. 1:21). The notion that the possessor of paramount knowledge and understanding would bribe people to take it is absurd, and yet that is the case (Prov. 9:1-6). Frankly, Lady Wisdom is an evangelist. A resourceful, diligent evangelist to the naïve, ignorant, and foolish.

Wisdom’s Love

So then what motivates the desperation in Lady Wisdom’s actions? What could fuel this consuming pattern of pursuing and appealing to those that generally reject her offer?

At the core of Lady Wisdom’s efforts and character is love.

The fact that Lady Wisdom is motivated by love is actually inferable from her desperation. When you consider the gift that Lady Wisdom offers, her desperation is by necessity an expression of love.

Even on the surface, Lady Wisdom is offering an extraordinary opportunity to those she entreats. In discussing the value of wisdom, Solomon declares that “her profit is better than the profit of silver / And her gain better than fine gold. / She is more precious than jewels; / And nothing you desire compares with her” (Prov. 3:14-15). This valuation is clearly deserved when the specific benefits of wisdom are considered. Wisdom gives a person access to the defense of God, Who is “a shield to those who walk in integrity, / Guarding the paths of justice, / And [preserving] the way of His godly ones.” (Prov. 2:7-8). Furthermore, Lady Wisdom offers long life because “by [Lady Wisdom] [one’s] days will be multiplied, / And years of life will be added to [the wise].” (Prov. 9:11).

Looking slightly below the surface, Lady Wisdom offers far more than material gains. She herself says that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, / And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” The wisdom being offered is not simply pragmatism in this life, but instead the wisdom being offered is ultimate wisdom – wisdom that begins with salvation. Consider Paul’s contrast between the Christian and the non-Christian in his letter to the Ephesians:

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles [pagans] also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart …. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus. (Eph. 4:17-18, 20-21)

The defining characteristic of a non-Christian is their foolish dismissal of the truth of God and salvation, whereas the defining characteristic of a Christian is their acceptance and learning of the truth of Jesus.

In fact, the rejection of truth in the life of a non-Christian is not a result of misunderstanding, but prideful rejection. In Romans, Paul explains that the unregenerate “suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them” (Rom. 1:18-19). This is reflected in Lady Wisdom’s description of the fool that rejects her: “[Lady Wisdom] called and [the fool] refused, / [she] stretched out [her] hand and no one paid attention; / And [the fool] neglected all [her] counsel / And did not want [her] reproof” (Prov. 1:24-25). Lady Wisdom is offering the “knowledge of salvation / By the forgiveness of [people’s] sins” (Luke 1:77).

While some non-Christians are wiser than others, they are still all fools. Even if a Godless person reaches the pinnacle of secular wisdom and knowledge, they would still have foolishly abused and wasted their life. Solomon describes the greatest secular wisdom as worthless. He “saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet [Solomon] know[s] that one fate [death] befalls them both” (Ecc. 2:13-14). In the end of the most brilliant non-Christian’s life will still be death. Then, that person will stand before God and find that his brilliant life was worthless and wasted when his “dread comes like a storm / And [his] calamity comes like a whirlwind” (Prov. 1:27). In a deluded sense of grandeur, the “wise” non-Christian will have forfeited his eternity.

What could possibly be more foolish?

Lady Wisdom is offering the greatest gift possible. Especially in light of a proper understanding of the fear of the Lord, Solomon’s saying that “She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, / And happy are all who hold her fast” (Prov. 3:18) takes on a much more profound meaning.

It is therefore abundantly clear that Lady Wisdom is characterized by great love for humanity. She has that which provides their greatest good, and she tries to give it to them with clear desperation. Even if it weren’t for Lady Wisdom explicitly “Rejoicing in the world, [God’s] earth, / And having [her] delight in the sons of men” (Prov. 8:31), her actions clearly demonstrate the love that she claims to have.

Conclusion

I could continue and discuss the hatred Lady Wisdom has for evil (Prov. 8:7, 13), or discuss her joy in the Lord (Prov. 8:30-31), but it is already clear that true wisdom includes more than calm, stoic, calculated pragmatism.

In my youth group, something I have been discussing frequently with my students is the relationship between truth and love. We tend to present them as different things, but truth and love cannot exist without one another. 2 John is a small treatise on the inseparability of these things that we tend to hold as distinct. For example, verse 6 says “this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning that you should walk in it.” And in case it is not clear that the commandment is truth, verse 4 says that John “was very glad to find some of your children walking in truth, just as we have received commandment to do from the Father” (emphasis added).

Love is to walk in truth. If there is no truth, there is no genuine love. 1 Corinthians 13:6 says that “love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.”

While it is easy to see that love without truth is not love, we still have a tendency to view wisdom — the possession and skillful use of knowledge and understanding — as a tool for only ourselves. We view it as something purely intellectual. This is not the case.

Even the purest form of wisdom — the very personification of wisdom — is not free of God’s passionate love. When God represents wisdom, He displays her as arguably more emotional than intellectual. While this may seem strange at first, how could this not be the case? Earlier in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 2 says that even “if [one] [has] the gift of prophecy, and know[s] all mysteries and all knowledge …. but [does] not have love, [he] [is] nothing.” In fact, based on 2 John, this person may have all knowledge, but he lacks truth. He lacks the understanding and internalization of the information he has acquired.

Although Lady Wisdom is of extraordinary value to the individual — consider Proverbs 9:11-12, “For by me your days will be multiplied, / And years of life will be added to you. / If you are wise, you are wise for yourself, / And if you scoff, you alone will bear it” — wisdom is something that we are to seek for the sake of others as well. Consider Proverbs 15:2a, “The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable.” Why does a wise man make knowledge acceptable? It is not simply that he knows how to make knowledge acceptable, but that he actively makes it acceptable because the person hearing his advice needs it.

So we are to pursue wisdom not only for the sake of ourselves, but also for the sake of others. We are to have a wisdom that is more than cool pragmatism or vast knowledge, but a wisdom that drives us to care for those around us.

We should strive for wisdom like God’s wisdom.

We should strive for wisdom infused with passion and love.