“When God established the Heavens, I was there; when He inscribed a circle in the depths, when He fortified the skies above, I was with Him, as an architect.” These words could be read as fantastic fiction, as craziness, or as someone on a severe power trip. But where is this speech from? It’s from the Book of Proverbs (8:27), and it’s the voice of Wisdom.
The personification of Wisdom is actually a character in Proverbs. Some people have compared her to a goddess-like being, similar to the character of Sophia in Greek philosophy.
Wisdom, the character, plays several different roles in the book. In addition to guiding God through the process of Creation, she offers advice to human beings about how to live justly and warns them against vice. The Book of Proverbs also presents, as a counterpart to Wisdom, a loose or “strange” woman character–unnamed. She is prominent throughout the book and in fact, nearly an entire chapter (Chapter 5) is dedicated to warning young men away from her evil.
So next time you’re thinking about the women of the Bible, go beyond the obvious Sarah, Miriam, Esther. The metaphorical women of Proverbs offer a fair bit of insight too.
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