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About this book

Wisdom of Solomon

About this book

Justice and the Gift of Life

Chapter 1

1 Love righteousness, all you who are judges of the earth. Think of the Lord with a good mind. Seek him in singleness of heart, 2 because he is found by those who don’t put him to the test, and is manifested to those who trust him. 3 for crooked thoughts separate from God. His Power convicts when it is tested, and exposes the foolish; 4 because wisdom will not enter into a soul that devises evil,⁠ nor dwell in a body that is enslaved by sin.⁠ 5 For a holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will depart from thoughts that are without understanding, and will be ashamed when unrighteousness has come in.⁠ 6 For wisdom is a spirit who loves man, and she will not hold a blasphemer guiltless for his lips, because God is witness of his inmost self,⁠ and is a true overseer of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue. 7 Because the spirit of the Lord has filled the world,⁠ and that which holds all things together knows what is said.⁠ 8 Therefore no one who utters unrighteous things will be unseen; neither will Justice, when it convicts, pass him by. 9 For in his counsels the ungodly will be searched out,⁠ and the sound of his words will come to the Lord to bring his lawless deeds to conviction; 10 because a jealous ear listens to all things, and the noise of murmurings is not hidden. 11 Beware then of unprofitable murmuring, and keep your tongue from slander; because no secret utterance will go on its way void, and a lying mouth destroys a soul.⁠ 12 Don’t court death in the error of your life. Don’t draw destruction upon yourselves by the works of your hands; 13 because God didn’t make death, neither does he delight when the living perish.⁠ 14 For he created all things that they might have being. The generative powers of the world are wholesome, and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor has Hades royal dominion upon earth;⁠ 15 for righteousness is immortal,

The Wicked Choose Death

16 but ungodly men by their hands and their words summoned death; deeming him a friend they pined away. They made a covenant with him, because they are worthy to belong with him.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Wisdom of Solomon 1:5 and Origen, Contra Celsum 7.8

Deuterocanon · Early Christian

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Summary

The Christian theologian Origen uses the Wisdom of Solomon as an authoritative source for teaching and theology, quoting its emphasis that divine wisdom will not stay with a person who does not tell the truth.

Passages

Wisdom of Solomon 1:5

Deuterocanon
3 for crooked thoughts separate from God. His Power convicts when it is tested, and exposes the foolish; 4 because wisdom will not enter into a soul that devises evil, nor dwell in a body that is enslaved by sin. 5 For a holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will depart from thoughts that are without understanding, and will be ashamed when unrighteousness has come in. 6 For wisdom is a spirit who loves man, and she will not hold a blasphemer guiltless for his lips, because God is witness of his inmost self, and is a true overseer of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue. 7 Because the spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together knows what is said.
50 BCE – 50 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Wisdom of Solomon

Origen, Contra Celsum 7.8

Early Christian · Against Celsus
I do not know how Celsus, having said, what was said by the men in Judaea in the manner of those people, added, or not said, as though, being an unbeliever, he were claiming that possibly these things were not even said, but that things not said were perhaps written down. For he did not see the dates, nor that many years beforehand they foretold countless things and spoke also about the coming of Christ. Again, wishing to slander the ancient prophets, he says that they prophesied in the way that, he says, those around Phoenicia and Palestine are accustomed to do even now, without making clear whether he means people foreign to the teaching of the Jews and Christians, or people prophesying in the Jewish manner, after the pattern of the prophets. However his words are meant, they are proved false. For neither have any of those foreign to the faith done anything like the prophets, nor are any more recent people, after the coming of Jesus, recorded to have prophesied among the Jews; for it is acknowledged that the Holy Spirit has left them, since they acted impiously toward God and toward the one prophesied by their own prophets. Signs of the Holy Spirit were shown at the beginning of Jesus' teaching, and more after his ascension, but later fewer; yet even now there are still traces of him among a few, whose souls have been purified by the Word and by the actions that accord with it. “For the holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will rise up and depart from senseless thoughts.”
248 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Origen, Contra Celsum 7

References

"... Patristic writers cited the work frequently, especially in formulating Christological and trinitarian doctrine. Thus Ignatius applied to Christ language from 7:29–30 about Wisdom, and from 18:14–15 about the logos (Ephesians 18.2–3; Magnesians 8.2). Origen cited Wisdom’s attributes to support the eternal generation of the Son by the Father and the sharing of the Father and Son in the same essence. Augustine used the same passage to argue for the full equality of the persons of the trinity. Augustine also drew often on 9:15–17, according to which the perishable body weighs down the soul and spiritual insight requires the gift of the spirit, to formulate his anthropology; and he saw in the portrayal of the persecuted righteous one in 2:12–20 a prediction of Christ’s passion. Ambrose, among others, found a foreshadowing of the crucifixion in the reference to the saving wood of Noah’s ark: “Blessed is the wood by which righteousness comes” ..."
Randall D. Chesnutt, “Wisdom of Solomon,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Wisdom Literature, ed. Samuel L. Adams and Matthew Goff (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), 104–121.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Wisdom of Solomon 1:5 and Origen, Contra Celsum 7.8

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