AOTC Apollos Old Testament Commentary BBRSup Bulletin for Bible Research, Supplement BibInt Biblical Interpretation Series. JSOTSup Journal of the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series JTISup Journal of Theological Interpretation, Supplements. The theological process of finding a home for wisdom in Old Testament theology is an arduous one.
His patience, knowledge, and exegetical insight have been רסומ ("discipline and guidance") to keep me on the right track in writing this dissertation. Thirdly, I thank God for my brothers and sisters in Christ who have supported my academic journey in many ways: Vice. Their love and support enable me to complete my doctoral studies and to keep the Church and its mission a constant focus in my writing.
She is my ליח־תשׂא (“woman of strength”) who accompanies me on this journey to seek wisdom in the fear of the Lord.
INTRODUCTION
Lennart Boström, The Lord of the Wise: The Portrayal of God in the Book of Proverbs, ConBOT (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1990). The loss of the concept of wisdom as a divine speech (ie, the word of God) poses great challenges to the integration of divine and human freedom in the book of Proverbs. The compatibility of divine speech with human freedom is intertwined with the broader question of the relationship between divine and human choice.
In Chapter 2 I will outline the problem of divine and human intervention in modern scholars' view of the book of Proverbs. God-talk, the reconciliation of the theological and anthropological lies in the theology of the book of Proverbs itself. Moreover, YHWH is actively involved in the satisfaction of the righteous and the deprivation of the wicked.
In these cases there is no correspondence between divine action and the action of the wicked. The assumption of the priority of human ability does not serve a complementary relationship between the divine and the human. As such, the passage is an assertion of the immediacy of divine agency upon human speech.
Answering this question involves an inquiry into the nature of the divine speech, if any, in the book of Proverbs. Deuteronomy shows how the words of the human author are identical with the words of God. The issue of the divine and human intervention of proverbial wisdom mingles with the issue of divine inspiration and revelation in Proverbs.
Nicholas Wolterstorff's concept of divine discourse comes closer to the concept of the divine voice than either revelation or inspiration. In Proverbs 2:6 there is an explicit identification of the wise man's words in the "book" of Proverbs as the voice of God - as divine speech.
And now, because you have done all these things, declares the
Because I have called and you refused to listen, have stretched
And you shall say to them,
Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me
As the laughter and scorn of YHWH takes place in connection with the encroaching calamities of the wicked, so also the laughter and scorn of wisdom takes place when calamities befall those who forsake her. Furthermore, the speech of wisdom in Proverbs 1:31 uses the metaphor of fruit to describe the consequence of one's behavior (קרד): "So they shall eat of the fruit of their way, and they shall be filled with their own thoughts." This too finds its parallel with YHWH's speech in prophetic speech (Isa 3:10; Jer Mic 7:13). In summary, we can relate most of the speech of wisdom in Proverbs 1:22-33 to the speech of YHWH.
We have already seen the parallels between the self-prediction of wisdom in Proverbs 8 and the understanding of the Torah in Psalm 119. Here I want to emphasize the similarities between the speech of wisdom and the speech of YHWH in prophetic discourses. In the initial speech of wisdom in Proverbs 8:4-5, she not only limits her address to those who are open to her instructions, but also extends her address to the simple (םיאתפ) and the foolish (םיליסכ).
Also, the credibility of wisdom is contrasted with the strange woman (הירכנ) in Proverbs 7 who speaks lies with her "smooth words" (ירמאהקילחה) in "pretense of religious devotion to calm the young man's conscience about going to her."112 That personified wisdom encourages one to simply trust in its trustworthiness (8:6-7) contrasts with the deceptive. Wisdom's declaration that "I love those who love me" (Prov 8:17) echoes YHWH's speech elsewhere in which YHWH is the object of love or object of love. A possible defeat for Baumann's claim is Fox's contention that while the reciprocity of divine-human love is attested in the OT, "the formula for mutual love is not."115 Rather, Fox suggests, along with Kayatz, that the reciprocity of wisdom's love has a strong parallel in Egyptian sources where a deity is said to love those who love him/her.116 However, against Fox's claim, Deuteronomy 7:9-10, however, not a.
Moreover, the divine speech in 1 Samuel 2:30 closely parallels Proverbs 8:17: “Those who honor me [ידבכמ] I will honor [דבכא], but those who despise me [יזב] I will make insignificant [ולקי]. 117 Therefore, it is conceivable that wisdom's statement that "I love those who love me" parallels YHWH's speech, either directly as a quote (as in 1 Sam 2:30) or indirectly through the Mosaic Torah (Deut 7:9-10). ). Wisdom speaks as YHWH, even though she is not a divine being like YHWH.120 Through the identification of the words of wisdom with the words of the wise, this poetic personification facilitates the conception of wisdom as a quasi-agent whose intercession is seen by the real intermediary. of the wise. Raymond van Leeuwen has argued that Wisdom's "liminal thinking" parallels the divine enactment of cosmic boundaries.122 More recently, Schwáb has further argued that the motive for building houses in Proverbs—that "Wisdom has built her house , hath hewn out its seven pillars'. (Prov.
121 That Proverbs is concerned with the actualization of personified wisdom is further proven in the appearance of the woman of strength (ליח־תשׁא) in Proverbs 31:10–31 with many characteristics of personified wisdom. Fox writes that the woman of strength is the highlight of the book of Proverbs "in which resonates everything that is said about wise women and Lady Wisdom elsewhere. Building one's own earthly household and human relationships by being wise is equal to building the temple of God, so to speak (הוהיטיב) and this house is at the same time God's temple (תומכחתיב) the whole universe is wisdom's house.124.
