Texts in Conversation
Genesis 28 shows Jacob dreaming of a ziggurat with angels going up and down. Later traditions view it differently: the Testament of Levi sees it as a vision of Levi’s priestly role, and the Wisdom of Solomon says it's Wisdom revealing God’s kingdom.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Testament of Levi 9:3
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs
Pseudepigrapha, Testaments
1 And after two days Judah and I went up with our father Jacob to Isaac our grandfather. 2 And my grandfather blessed me according to all the words of the visions I had seen. 3 And he would not come with us to Bethel. 4 And when we came to Bethel, my father saw a vision concerning me, that I should be their priest to God. 5 And he rose early in the morning and paid tithes of everything to the Lord through me.
Date: 100 BCE – 100 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Wisdom of Solomon 10:10
Deuterocanon
8 For having passed wisdom by, not only were they disabled from recognising the things which are good, but they also left behind them for their life a monument of their folly, so that where they stumbled, they might fail even to be unseen; 9 but wisdom delivered those who waited on her out of troubles. 10 When a righteous man was a fugitive from a brother’s wrath, wisdom guided him in straight paths. She showed him God’s kingdom, and gave him knowledge of holy things. She prospered him in his toils, and multiplied the fruits of his labor. 11 When in their covetousness men dealt harshly with him, she stood by him and made him rich. 12 She guarded him from enemies, and she kept him safe from those who lay in wait. Over his severe conflict, she watched as judge, that he might know that godliness is more powerful than every one.
Date: 50 BCE – 50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Verse 10 concerns Jacob's dream during his sojourn in Bethel as recounted in Genesis 28:10-17. In these cola Wisdom's revelatory and instructional role is highlighted in chapter 10. She shows Jacob the kingdom of God and gives him knowledge of holy things (the same two verbs occur in proximity in verse 14). The two lines can be read as exhibiting synonymous parallelism, that is, the revelation of God's kingdom is equivalent to the giving of supernatural knowledge. The phrase 'kingdom of God,' is hapax in the Septuagint, and it is difficult to know its exact meaning in this context. It most likely refers to the angels ascending and descending on the ladder reaching to heaven that Jacob sees in his dream (Genesis 28:12). From his vision, Jacob gains an understanding of how God's realm functions. The following colon is probably related to this understanding. There are several ways to interpret the term. First, the word could mean 'holy ones,' referring to the angels that Jacob saw. Second, it might refer to the heavenly sanctuary and thus reflect a tradition found in Testament of Levi 9:3. In this pseudepigraphal text, Jacob has a vision concerning Levi. According to Eric Burrows, not only might the term in Wisdom of Solomon 10:10 refer to the 'privileges of Levi' as high priest as cited in Testament of Levi 9:3, but it is also a likely reference to the heavenly sanctuary ..."
Andrew T. Glicksman, Wisdom of Solomon 10: A Jewish Hellenistic Reinterpretation of Early Israelite History through Sapiential Lenses, DCLS 9 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 124–125.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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