Two Hymns to Wisdom
Sets the wisdom hymn of Proverbs 8 beside that of Job 28, arguing that the first presents an accessible Wisdom who is God's first creation and rewards all who seek her, while the second insists that true wisdom lies beyond every human search, so that both poems reach the same reverence for God by opposite routes: confidence in reward and punishment, and resignation.
Bakon places two great wisdom poems side by side. He sketches how sages stood alongside priests and prophets in Israel, and how the genre matured from practical maxims into speculative reflection. In Proverbs 8, Wisdom speaks in her own voice, addressing every individual rather than the nation, promising prosperity and moral clarity, and revealing herself as God’s earliest creation and the blueprint of the world, a figure later identified with Torah. Job 28 reverses the picture: human ingenuity tunnels through rock for silver and sapphire, yet cannot locate wisdom at any price. Bakon reads that gulf as anticipating the whirlwind speeches, noting both poems nonetheless close on reverence.
Shimon Bakon, Ph.D., is the editor of The Jewish Bible Quarterly.
Cite this article
Shimon Bakon. "Two Hymns to Wisdom." Jewish Bible Quarterly 36, no. 4 (October – December 2008): 222–230.
Shimon Bakon. "Two Hymns to Wisdom." Jewish Bible Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 4, 2008, pp. 222–230.