Wisdom’s Cry

20 Wisdom cries out in the street;

in the squares she raises her voice. 

21 At the busiest corner she cries out;

at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

22 “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? 

How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing

and fools hate knowledge?
23 Give heed to my reproof;

I will pour out my thoughts to you;

I will make my words known to you.

24  Because I have called and you refused,

have stretched out my hand and no one heeded,

25  and because you have ignored all my counsel

and would have none of my reproof,

26  I also will laugh at your calamity;

I will mock when panic strikes you,

27  when panic strikes you like a storm

and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,

when distress and anguish come upon you.

28  Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;

they will seek me diligently but will not find me.

29  Because they hated knowledge

and did not choose the fear of the LORD,

30  would have none of my counsel

and despised all my reproof,

31  therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way

and be sated with their own devices.

32  For waywardness kills the simple,

and the complacency of fools destroys them;

33  but those who listen to me will be secure

and will live at ease without dread of disaster.”

Proverbs 1:20–33 (NRSVue)

The Biblical presentation of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs and elsewhere is both alluring and confusing. It is alluring because it suggests that if we truly understood and appropriated the contours of this divine gift, we would have mastered a key aspect of faithful living. But it is confusing because its cry to us often is drowned out by the cacophony of competing cries which flood the marketplaces of our lives. This week’s lectionary reading recognizes both Wisdom’s alluring and confusing character. Three things to note about wisdom in this passage are its easy accessibility; the human tendency to ignore it; and, finally, the reward for listening to it. Wisdom is especially helpful to us today when we consider its value in thinking about politics, our approach to personal finance and investments, and history.

A few words, first, about Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs and in this passage. Proverbs, like no other book of the Bible, captures the tension between the secular and sacred understanding of Wisdom. On the one hand Wisdom is seen as a divine gift, and the quest for it begins with the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 1:7). But, on the other hand, Wisdom can be understood as the distilled and often lapidary exposition of principles gleaned from the experience of living in the world. The tension between its divine origin but human discovery can stimulate us to make it our own. In the opening chapter of Proverbs, Wisdom is personified, and it calls out in the public squares with its message.

The first thing to notice is Wisdom’s easy accessibility. The Hebrew text of 1:20 captures this perfectly by placing the word that means “wide open space” (rehovot) as the fourth of seven words in the verse. Wisdom, literally, resides in the public square, and that public square is right in the middle of the verse. It is therefore accessible to all, calling to all, beckoning to each one of us to listen to it. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for Wisdom is feminine, giving us the impression of a higher-pitched lilt calling us over the words of the crowd. Maybe that is why people have ignored it historically and today. People often associate wisdom with a lower vocal register. But the Scriptures teach us it is the Chokmoth (literally “wisdoms,” as it appears in the feminine plural) which beckon/s.

Yet people don’t hear. And that is our second point. The author of Proverbs talks about various groups on whom the voice of Wisdom falls. The passage is vaguely reminiscent of Jesus’ parable of the sower (e.g., Mark 4), where the word of Jesus falls on various kinds of soil. Here the word of Wisdom falls on various kinds of people: the simple, the scoffer, the fool. This isn’t an exhaustive list, as can be seen by the fact that some people actually will respond faithfully to the call of Wisdom. Nevertheless, our author spends several verses talking about how Wisdom’s call is rejected and what the judgment on those who reject it will be.

But not all people fit into the Biblical categories of fool, scoffer and simple, even though we can think of ample occasions in our own lives where those titles would capture us perfectly. The final verse of the song gives us hope: “but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease without dread of disaster” (1:33). The reward for listening to wisdom will be, in the words just quoted, security and ease. The word rendered “security” is actually a much richer word in Hebrew than captured in our translation. It is the word betach, and it originates in the field of “trusting.” Those who listen to wisdom live not necessarily with security but with trust as the organizing principle of life. That one word deserves fuller exposition, but suffice it to say that it takes us into the realm of authentic and intelligent engagement with life, rather than just feeling safe.

Engaging Life

And, once we are in the realm of what I call intelligent engagement with life, we are invited by the text to see the variety of ways that life can profitably be engaged or encountered today. I mentioned three above, though the heart of my point here is our political engagement. Let’s begin with that point. We live in a time when the most highly-charged, contrary and harmful things are being said in the public square. On other occasions I have written about what I call the “intensification of language” in many fields in our day, and this is evident nowhere more than in our political arena. Words such as “striking” or “shocking” or “bombshell revelation” or “revolution” or other such inflammatory language fill our oral and written spaces. In the midst of this, the Scripture tells us that Wisdom is calling. It is a woman’s voice, a voice that tells us to turn to her, to turn to finely honed and calibrated principles of living as the basis of life rather than the language of screeching panic. In fact, beginning in Proverbs 2, the Scriptures begin to lay out those principles, beginning in familial relationships, that lead to good living.

We not only need finely honed words of wisdom in our political arena today; we also need something that often isn’t broached in “polite conversation”: investing money. We have money; some of us manage it better than others. It can be a gift or a curse. It can be all-consuming or relatively ignored. But I have increasingly found in my writing on intelligent investment that people are at a loss to know how best to act wisely with this treasure in our day. And, to make matters worse, when I listen to what many others are saying “out there,” I find the cacophony to heighten rather than lessen the problem. Wisdom can be gleaned from basic principles for intelligent investment of our money.

Finally, I have explored elsewhere how we live in a time where possible wisdom gleaned from historical learning is not simply being lost but obliterated. While the Surgeon General may decry social media as a mental health hazard to users, I would say that social media’s most noxious by-product is its tendency to erase the concept that there is anything of value in the universe apart from what is happening RIGHT NOW. All the treasures of our past are in danger of being sucked into the whirlwind of presentism. Memory, a wonderfully rich historical and theological concept, is in danger of being lost or diminished. And the major problem with this is that it diminishes the value of nuance and the use of ambiguity to understand our own and others’ lives.

Divine Wisdom calls. It is publicly accessible. We may not recognize the voice because we might not be listening for it. But it is there beckoning to us. Take time to ask yourself what wise living would look like for you with respect to politics, to investments, to understanding history. The gift of Wisdom is sweet: perspective and understanding and what the Scriptures call betach, a refined trust that fully engages life.