Proverbs8chapter 8

Proverbs 8:1-5

Against the strange woman of chapter 7, who waits in the twilight for one young man, wisdom cries in the top of high places, at the gates, at the entry of the city, to everyone: unto you, O men, I call. The contrast is the chapter's frame and the bench draws it: sin whispers privately and wisdom shouts publicly, so no one perishes for want of an invitation. Her audience is named without flattery, the simple and the fools, the very ones chapter 7 watched walk into the trap.

Proverbs 8:6-11

Wisdom's credentials are moral before they are intellectual: truth in the mouth, wickedness an abomination to the lips, nothing froward or perverse. They are all plain to him that understandeth answers the charge that wisdom is obscure; the difficulty, as the commentators note, lies in the hearer rather than the speech. The price comparison, instruction over silver and wisdom better than rubies, repeats the appraisal of 3:14-15 and Job 28's market where wisdom could not be bought, the cross-reference the bench carries.

Proverbs 8:12-16

Wisdom keeps company: prudence, counsel, understanding, strength. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil plants the book's motto inside her self-description, and the hate list that follows (pride, arrogancy, the evil way, the froward mouth) makes the fear of the Lord concrete rather than a mood. By me kings reign is the claim that government itself runs on wisdom's credit, which Henry applies in both directions: rulers rule well by her, and rule at all by God's providence.

Proverbs 8:17-21

I love them that love me is wisdom's covenant shape: she is not neutral information but a person-like voice that answers seeking with finding. The riches she offers are qualified twice, durable riches and righteousness, fruit better than fine gold, which the bench reads against the book's own warnings about wealth that takes wings (23:5). That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance closes the offer in inheritance language, the family word rather than the market word.

Proverbs 8:22-26

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way is one of the most argued verses in the Old Testament, and the argument turns on one Hebrew word, qanah, which the King James renders possessed and the Septuagint rendered created me. On that Greek reading the Arians built their claim that the Son was a creature, and the church answered that begotten is not made; the history is stated as history. The readings today are named with their holders: wisdom as the personified attribute of God, older than every made thing (so most of the bench, Delitzsch among them), and the passage read toward Christ the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24), so the older writers, hearing in was brought forth the language of begetting rather than making. The verses themselves say what no reading can remove: before depths, fountains, mountains and fields, wisdom already was.

Proverbs 8:27-31

When he prepared the heavens, I was there: the creation account retold with wisdom present at every stage, the compass on the deep, the clouds established, the sea given his decree that the waters should not pass his commandment, the same boundary Job 38:11 states as hitherto shalt thou come. Then I was by him, as one brought up with him, daily his delight, rejoicing always before him: the words are familial and glad, a craftsman or a nursling by the readings, and the philology of amon is carried by the bench without being settled. The poem lands at verse 31 in a place the reader does not expect: her delights were with the sons of men, wisdom rejoicing not only in the world but in us.

Proverbs 8:32-36

The poem turns back into the father's appeal: now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children, with blessed twice over, on the keepers of her ways and on the man watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors, the posture of a student who arrives before the doors open. Whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord is the chapter's promise gathered into one line, and the older writers hear John's Gospel vocabulary near it, life and favor found in a person; that reading is theirs by name. The alternative is stated without cushion: he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul, and all they that hate me love death.