Wisdom writing · Greek, Alexandria, c. 100-50 BC
Wisdom of Solomon
Written in Solomon's voice a thousand years after Solomon, and it contains the lines the crowd at the cross seems to be shouting.
- 19Chapters
- 436Verses
- c. 50 BCE - 50 CEWritten
Original language: Greek (composed, not translated)
King James Version Apocrypha (1769 standardized text) · public domain
Read Wisdom of Solomon
King James Version + Apocrypha (standardized 1769 text), eBible.org USFX edition of the Crosswire/eBible KJV — Public Domain
Featured studies on this book
— the deep dives, each its own page
The Potter Refused
Ilya Repin, Jeremiah (1870) — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Righteous One Condemned
G. Dore, The Christian Martyrs (1871) — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Wisdom, the Radiance
Unknown (Byzantine manuscript illumination), Solomon and Sirach with Wisdom Personified (c. 975-1000 AD) — CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Plain answers first
What this book is
The speaker is a king of Israel addressing the rulers of the earth, and he never gives his name; readers have always heard Solomon. But the book was composed in polished Greek by a Jew of Alexandria, most likely in the century before Christ. Writing in a revered teacher's voice was a known and accepted practice then: a claim to stand in Solomon's tradition, not an attempt to forge his signature.
The first part, chapters 1 to 6, argues for immortality. The ungodly reason that life is short and strength makes right, and then they plot against the righteous man precisely because he is righteous: "he professeth to have the knowledge of God, and calleth himself the child of the Lord... let us examine him with despitefulness and torture... for if the just man be the son of God, he will help him" (2:13-18). The book answers with one of the most quoted sentences ever written outside the canon: "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them" (3:1).
The middle part, chapters 7 to 9, is a portrait of Wisdom herself in the highest language this tradition ever reaches: the breath of the power of God, the brightness of the everlasting light, an unspotted mirror, passing into holy souls and making them friends of God (7:25-27).
The last part, chapters 10 to 19, walks Wisdom through Israel's history from Adam to the Exodus, matching each plague to the sin it punished. Folded into it is a long, cutting section on idolatry: how people end up worshiping the work of their own hands, and how the worship of fire, wind, and stars is understandable and still misses the Maker (13:1-9).
The setting explains the style. Alexandria's Jews lived surrounded by Greek philosophy and Egyptian religion, and the book meets them on that ground, borrowing Greek philosophical vocabulary while arguing hard for the God of Israel.
Why a student of the 66 should still open it
Why read it: and how
This is the apocryphal book with the strongest and most widely accepted New Testament echoes. When the crowd at the cross jeers, "He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God" (Matthew 27:43), the wording tracks Wisdom 2:18 closely enough that most commentators think Matthew is deliberately showing the righteous sufferer of Wisdom 2 fulfilled. Hebrews 1:3 calls the Son the brightness of God's glory using the same rare Greek word Wisdom 7:26 uses of Wisdom: the writer of Hebrews reaches for language this book had already forged. Paul's argument in Romans 1:18-32, that creation reveals God and that idolatry is therefore inexcusable, runs so close to Wisdom 13-14 that many scholars think he knew the book; that is a serious argument rather than a settled fact. And 3:1 has been read over the Christian dead for centuries.
Read chapters 1 to 6 first, and read them slowly with the passion narrative in mind, because a Christian cannot read chapter 2 any other way. Then take chapters 7 to 9 for the great portrait of Wisdom, remembering that this is Wisdom (an attribute of God spoken of as a person) and that the New Testament goes further than this book ever does when it names Christ. Chapters 10 to 19 are a preacher's meditation on the Exodus; read them for how a Jewish teacher handled his own Scripture, not as extra history.
The canon question, honestly
Why it stands outside the 66
It is not in the Hebrew Bible. It was written in Greek by an author who did not sign his own name, and the Solomon of the title is a literary voice rather than a claim any early reader could check. Jerome named it among the books the church reads for edification and not for confirming doctrine, and the Reformers held that line, so the King James of 1611 printed it in the Apocrypha between the Testaments. Trent made it canonical for Roman Catholics in 1546. It has always been widely loved: several church fathers quoted it as Scripture and the ancient Muratorian list mentions it, which is a useful reminder that the church's affection for a book and the church's canon have never been quite the same thing.
Doors into the text
Key moments
The ungodly resolve to test the just man because he calls God his Father.
The souls of the righteous are safe, and no torment shall touch them.
The breath of God's power, the brightness of everlasting light, the unspotted mirror.
The request for wisdom from 1 Kings 3, rewritten and expanded into a full prayer.
The gentlest and sharpest ancient Jewish account of how creation gets mistaken for God.
While all things were in quiet silence, the almighty word came from the royal throne.
Plainly told
The story it tells
A call to the rulers of the earth
The book opens as an appeal to the powerful: love righteousness, seek God with a sincere heart, because Wisdom will not be found by a soul bent toward deceit.
What the wicked tell themselves
Chapter 2 stages the reasoning of the ungodly: life is short and pointless, so let us enjoy what we can and oppress the poor and the righteous man who annoys us by claiming God as his father: if he really is God's son, let God rescue him.
The answer: the souls of the righteous are in God's hand
Chapters 3 through 5 answer the wicked directly. The righteous who seem to die are not destroyed: they are at peace, tested like gold in a furnace, and on the day of judgment the very people who despised them will see them standing among the sons of God.
Solomon's own search for Wisdom
The unnamed king (understood throughout as Solomon) describes seeking Wisdom above every throne and scepter, calling her a breath of God's power and the brightness of everlasting light, and praying for her the way Solomon prayed at Gibeon.
Wisdom at work in Israel's history
The final movement traces Wisdom guiding the patriarchs and delivering Israel at the Exodus, widening into a long argument against idolatry (the folly of bowing to what human hands have shaped) and a closing comparison of how the same created elements punished Egypt and spared Israel through the plagues and the wilderness years.
Dates hedged where scholarship hedges
Where it sits in history
- 1st century BC (range: 2nd c. BC – early 1st c. AD)
The scholarly range for composition; the balance of recent scholarship favors the 1st century BC, with no single decade commanding consensus.
- Composed in Alexandria, Egypt (near-consensus)
The book's fluent Greek philosophical vocabulary, its long polemic against Egyptian animal-worship, and its focus on the Exodus all point to the center of Hellenistic Jewish scholarship in the ancient world.
- c. AD 393
Jerome, in his Prologue to the Books of Solomon, places Wisdom alongside Sirach as books the church reads “for the edification of the people,” not to establish doctrine: the line the Reformers would later lean on.
- 1546
The Council of Trent affirms Wisdom of Solomon as canonical, one of the seven deuterocanonical books.
The disagreement is old: here it is plainly
Where the traditions stand
Wisdom of Solomon was never part of the Hebrew Bible, and unusually among the Apocrypha, no Hebrew original is attested for it at all: nearly every scholar takes it as a book composed directly in Greek from the start, not translated from a lost Semitic source.
Jerome's judgment on it, in his preface to the books of Solomon, became the line both the Reformers and Rome's own critics would keep returning to: “As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it read these two volumes [Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus] for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church.”
The Reformers followed that judgment; Luther placed Wisdom in his apocrypha appendix as useful, not authoritative, reading. The Council of Trent in 1546 affirmed it as fully canonical Scripture, and Eastern Orthodox churches receive it as part of their wider canon as well.
So the line drawn here runs through Jerome's own words: a book he judged edifying enough to translate and preserve, and specific enough in its later canonical history to become one of the clearest places where “good to read” and “Scripture” parted ways between the traditions.
| Tradition | Where this book stands |
|---|---|
| jewish | not canonical; unknown in rabbinic literature |
| anglican | apocryphal — read for example of life and instruction of manners |
| catholic | canonical (deuterocanonical) |
| protestant | non-canonical; widely studied for background to NT |
| eastern orthodox | canonical (anagignoskomena) |
| oriental orthodox | canonical |
Real echoes only: each one attested, none invented
What the New Testament has made of it
The Greek word for “radiance” (apaugasma) occurs exactly twice in the whole Greek Bible: once describing Wisdom in Wisdom 7:26, once describing the Son in Hebrews 1:3. Hebrews opens by applying Wisdom's own language for herself to Christ.
Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia, 1989)
Paul's argument that God's invisible nature is “clearly seen” in what he made, leaving no excuse, closely follows the shape and language of Wisdom 13's argument against those who failed to find God through the beauty of creation.
C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans (International Critical Commentary)
Paul's potter-and-clay image, one lump shaped into vessels of honor and dishonor, echoes Wisdom 15:7's description of the potter working the same clay toward opposite ends.
James D. G. Dunn, Romans 9–16 (Word Biblical Commentary, 1988); Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans (Anchor Bible, 1993)
The mockers at the cross say, “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God”, nearly matching Wisdom 2:18's taunt against the righteous man: if he is God's son, let God help him.
John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (NIGTC, 2005)
3 threads into the 66
Its connections into Scripture
The "righteous one" of Wisdom 2:12-20 is ambushed by the wicked with the taunt: "Let us see if his words are true; let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God's son, he will help him and deliver him from the hand of his adversaries." The mockery of Jesus at the crucifixion (Matt 27:41-43; Mk 15:32; Lk 23:35) deploys strikingly similar vocabulary: "He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him." Many early church fathers read Wisdom 2 as a direct prophecy of Christ's passion.
Paul's argument in Romans 1:18-32 — that Gentiles know God from creation but exchange the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man, bird, beast, and creeping thing, becoming fools and descending into sexual immorality — parallels Wisdom of Solomon 13-15 almost point for point. Both move from creation-as-witness → idolatry-as-refusal → moral decay-as-consequence. Paul's argument in Romans is not original critique but a Second Temple Jewish commonplace, sharpened for his gospel theology.
Wisdom of Solomon calls Wisdom "a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty... a reflection (apaugasma) of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image (eikon) of his goodness." Hebrews 1:3 applies the identical Greek vocabulary to Christ: "He is the radiance (apaugasma) of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature." The literary dependence is direct.
Reception history, never our confession
What the church has made of it
The church fathers leaned on Wisdom's picture of the suffering righteous “son of God,” mocked by his enemies in chapter 2, reading it as strikingly close to the Passion even though the book itself predates Christ.
Its language of Wisdom as God's breath, radiance, and agent in creation became a major resource for later Christian reflection on the Logos and Christ's role in creation, though the New Testament writers who echo its wording never name it as a source, a caution against claiming more direct dependence than the verbal parallels themselves show.
Printed as its own book in the KJV Apocrypha from 1611 onward, until nineteenth-century Bible societies began dropping the Apocrypha from standard English printings.
Wherever it was received as canonical, Wisdom took a regular place in liturgical readings, especially prized for its meditations on the fate of the righteous and its extended argument against idolatry.
The voices
What the teachers have said
“As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it read these two volumes for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church.”
Every claim above rests on these
Where this comes from
- Bruce M. Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (1957)
- David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon (Anchor Bible, 1979)
- David A. deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha (2nd ed., 2018)
- R. H. Charles, ed., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 1 (1913)
- The Wisdom of Solomon itself (KJV Apocrypha)