A recurring complaint about the revival of theological exegesis in our time, especially its interest in the rule of faith, is that, as an interpretive enterprise, it is all theology and little or no exegesis. Thus a colleague of mine once defined contemporary interest in theological exegesis as a simple matter of dogmaticians posing as biblical scholars in order to ‘beat up’ on exegetes. Whatever else one might say about the accuracy of this definition, controversy over the proper exegesis of Proverbs 8:22–31 in the early church tells a different story. The fathers recognised that the ‘verbal iconography’ of the word-images in this wisdom poem were congruent with, or in the language of Paul ‘in accordance with’, what Christ taught about his origins and relationship with the God and Father of Israel.
To be sure, there are grounds for concern. When it comes to contemporary suspicion on the part of biblical scholars concerning the rule of faith, at least part of the problem stems from the fact that the rule is not a fixed formula.Footnote 1 Indeed, it is precisely this underdetermined character of the rule that invites its exploitation by approaches that tend to weaken its exegetical aspect, either by grounding it in the hermeneutical categories derived from ‘story’, the communal use of scripture, or ecclesial tradition per se. On the other hand, for those who rightly value the importance of theological imagination in exegesis, the rule can sometimes work in tandem with undisciplined and unbridled uses of human imagination, serving as a theological warrant for readers to override scripture's literal sense with their own agendas. However, while one may rightly speak of an elasticity of sorts with respect to the interpretive parameters established by the rule – parameters established not apart from, but in conjunction with, scripture's ongoing voice for the present – there is a point when interpretive stretching becomes tearing, and bending becomes breakage. Properly understood, this flexibility is not limitless, but exegetically bounded, and this will come as bad news for those who seek to use the rule as a way to authorise theological idiosyncrasy of various shades.
In this respect, the debate over the christological significance of Proverbs 8 in the early church remains significant for our day, not least because it offers an alternative to approaches to theological exegesis that sacrifice exegesis for the sake of theology. The continuing debate over these matters is especially instructive because it points up the reason why, for many biblical commentators in our day, the early church's exegesis of Proverbs 8 was little more than a christological power play aimed at subordinating the verbal profile of the text to later Nicene concerns. For many modern interpreters of the Old Testament, such a move is anything but exegetical.Footnote 2 To appreciate these concerns, it will be necessary to explore the hermeneutical terrain that typifies contemporary exegesis of Proverbs 8:22–31, in order that the contrast between current exegetical and theological instincts and those of the early church might emerge more fully in our consciousness. Against this backdrop, it should then be possible to establish the thesis, admittedly controversial, that much modern concern over the early church's reading of Proverbs 8 stems not from the christological power play just described, but from the influence of philosophical monotheism; in particular, a more or less generic form of monotheism ill-suited for dealing with the nuanced and complex version of monotheism taught in Israel's scriptures.
The hermeneutical impact of this generic monotheism upon our understanding of Israel's scriptures has been noted by John Behr:
After many centuries of monotheism, understood from a philosophical rather than scriptural perspective, it is today more likely to be assumed that if there is a God, there is only one God, and that while Scripture speaks about him, it is also possible to be in independent or direct relationship with him; that one can believe in God before he is encountered through Scripture; and the one already known (or thought to be known) is then identified with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Father of Jesus Christ.Footnote 3
On this view, scripture is essentially dispensable for the question whether the God of modern monotheistic belief is the same God witnessed to in Israel's scriptures. There is not only resistance to the idea that our knowledge of the one God is mediated by scripture, but resistance to the idea that this knowledge is mediated by Israel's scripture in particular. Thus, when it comes to the question of the identity of the one true God, for moderns the contribution made to this question by the Old Testament is dispensable.
The early church actually worked with a reverse logic, as their exegesis of Proverbs 8 makes clear. For them, the effective power of the Old Testament did not depend upon its correlation, in the first instance, with the New Testament, but rather with the triune God disclosing himself in Christ by the Spirit. Thus even after its juxtaposition with the New Testament to form the biblical canon, the Old Testament remained first-order theological talk, fully capable of providing the church with a place to stand and offer her christo-trinitarian claims. Hence when Augustine sought to understand the gospel, Ambrose famously sent him to Isaiah.Footnote 4 Whatever else one might think about Ambrose's spiritual direction in this matter, it reveals something of the same interpretive vision regarding Israel's scriptures we see at work in the early church's struggle with the exegesis of Proverbs 8 and its relation to OT monotheism, a struggle which takes its point of standing within the parameters of Israel's scriptures, and not through an appeal to the NT in the first instance. Obviously, the shape of the ecclesial space in which we now stand is very different in this respect from the world of Ambrose and Augustine, a difference bound up with resistance in our day to the patristic conviction that the Old Testament's figural language has significance for our understanding of the ontological identity of Israel's Lord. Assessing the nature of this resistance to the ontological significance of the Old Testament's figural language is thus also required, in order that the operative theological a prioris of modern exegesis and commentary on Proverbs 8 may come to light.Footnote 5
Although there are many issues that might be pursued in this connection, recent exegetical debates over the meaning and translation of ’amôn in Proverbs 8:30 offer an instructive point of entry into some of the more theologically interesting issues raised by this wisdom poem. Kindred issues surrounding the proper translation and interpretation of the Hebrew verb qānāh in Proverbs 8:22, while also important, have been frequently pursued in the history of interpretation, and in any case serve to underscore theological issues similar in kind to those raised by the translation and interpretation of ’amôn in Proverbs 8:30. This paper will therefore not venture into the exegetical debate over how the Hebrew verb qānāh in 8:22 should be rendered, whether ‘created’, ‘begotten’, ‘acquired’ or ‘possessed’, though the arguments C. F. Burney offers for translating qānāh as ‘begat’ or ‘begot’ are to be preferred. Those interested in the fine case Burney mounts for so translating qānāh would do well to consult his 1926 essay in the Journal of Theological Studies.Footnote 6
This study instead focuses upon issues of exegetical interest in Proverbs 8:30 especially significant for the early church's hypostasis reading of begotten Wisdom in Proverbs 8:22–31. Reflection upon these issues will conclude in the judgement that the theological frame of reference within which they are contextually situated speaks against reducing the figure of begotten Wisdom, either to an attribute of the Lord (YHWH), or to the literary personification of an abstract hypostasis.Footnote 7 On the one hand, the attribute reading has the merit of recognising the ontological status of begotten Wisdom, yet struggles to come to terms with the character of Wisdom as an active personal agent in the poem. On the other hand, while the personification reading comes much closer to recognising the character of Wisdom as a personal, even active agent, it typically refuses to assign any distinctive theological significance to that agency for our understanding of the character of God's oneness in Israel's scriptures. Both these readings leave no room for the fact that the ‘peculiar’ form of monotheism in the Old Testament,Footnote 8 while resistant to the notion of a plurality of deities, is nevertheless capable of supporting distinctions of person within the one being of Israel's Lord (YHWH), distinctions for which the verbal profile of 8:22–31 provides exegetical support.Footnote 9 As a result, the contribution this wisdom poem makes to our understanding of the peculiar nature of monotheism in Israel's scriptures is either marginalised or lost altogether.
Over against such approaches, the semantics and syntax of Proverbs 8:30, as well as the frame of reference established by verses 22–31, exert what might be called an ‘ontological pressure’ upon our understanding of the character of divine identity in Proverbs 8, a pressure evident in at least three different ways in the poem: first, in the poem's exegetical portrayal of begotten Wisdom as a specific and active personal agent; second, in the theological ontology with which begotten Wisdom is identified in Proverbs 8:30; and finally, in the presentation of Wisdom's personhood as one that subsists through time. In closing, this essay will suggest that Proverbs 8 remains crucial for our ability to appreciate, along with the fathers, the Old Testament's continuing ability to ‘rule’ or shape the church's christological confession when read in light of Christ, both apart from and in concert with the New Testament.
The Wisdom poem and Proverbs 8
Proverbs 8:22–31 is one of three wisdom speeches falling within the introductory section of the book formed by chapters 1–9.Footnote 10 In contrast with 8:22–31, the other wisdom speeches do not address the question of Wisdom's origins and relationship to the Lord (YHWH), the God of Israel. For this reason most commentators acknowledge the role of 8:22–31 in the larger context of the book to be that of specifying the origin and relationship of Wisdom to the Lord.Footnote 11 In terms of the poem's inner relations with chapter 8, after the first exhortation (vv. 1–11), Wisdom moves to a description of the benefits she offers (vv. 12–21). These benefits are judged to be worthwhile because of the special relationship Wisdom has with the Lord himself (vv. 22–31), a relationship which the wisdom poem justifies by specifying the origin and relationship of Wisdom to the Lord. Having established Wisdom's origin and relationship to the Lord, the closing section (vv. 32–6) is then able to justly affirm that the benefits of life and favour she offers are not merely transient or temporal, but enduring blessings that ultimately proceed from the Lord himself: ‘whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord ’ (8:35).
Turning now to the issues surrounding 8:30, most modern commentators recognise that the debate over its translation has theological implications for the nature of monotheism in the Old Testament, because its translation directly impacts the question whether Wisdom is to be conceived of as an active agent in creation, or whether Wisdom was merely instrumental in a more or less passive sense (cf. Prov 3:19). The Hebrew word ’amôn in 8:30 has been translated in a variety of ways by commentators, the most popular candidates being ‘artisan’, ‘architect’ or ‘master craftsman’, all of which would seem to imply an active agency on Wisdom's part in creation, and not merely what might be called a passive instrumentality. Among the problems involved with rendering ’amôn in an active sense concerns the contextual question why, as Stuart Weeks puts it, ‘the active role of Wisdom is introduced only at this late point in the poem and mentioned nowhere else in Proverbs 1–9’.Footnote 12 At the other end of the spectrum, others have responded to the lack of contextual precedent for assigning Wisdom an active role in creation by translating ’amôn with a passive sense. For example, both Alan Lenzi and Stuart Weeks argue that only a passive understanding of Wisdom's role in creation can do justice to the context preceding 8:30. Brief summaries of the arguments on both sides of this debate are helpful for illustrating the contextual issues at stake.
Passive renderings of ’amôn and contextual concerns
Alan Lenzi argues for the translation of ’amôn as ‘master’ in the sense of skilled sage or scholar, an idea that he regards to be congruent with Wisdom's lack of active agency in the verses preceding 8:30. He arrives at this translation by emending the spelling of ’amôn along the lines of the noun used in Canticles 7:2, then reconstructing the meaning of ’amôn by means of an appeal to an Akkadian cognate (ummanu), a move that others before him have also followed in order to reconstruct ’amôn’s meaning.Footnote 13 Lenzi's reconstruction of the cognate's meaning calls upon us to assign a more passive sense to the English word ‘master’ than that of ‘master architect’ or ‘master craftsman’, presumably because a ‘master’ in the sense of sage or scholar suggests passive contemplation rather than constructive activity.
On the other hand, Stuart Weeks argues that ’amôn is a proper name or title meaning ‘faithful one’ and suggests that this reading of ’amôn strengthens the likely dependence of Revelation 3:14 on Proverbs 8:30: ‘If Prov. 8:30–31 does indeed refer to Wisdom's continuing relationship with God, then an expression of constancy would not be out of place in v. 30a; in fact, such an expression would offer an excellent parallel to the emphasis on continuity in the following stichs.’Footnote 14 Weeks’ solution thus offers a slight variation on an earlier approach found in the revision history of the LXX, in this case the versions of Symmachus and Theodotion, who render the Hebrew in an active sense with the Greek participle estērigmenē, meaning ‘to set or stand firm’. As a participle in the active voice, ’amôn would thus be rendered adverbially as ‘faithfully’ or ‘constantly’.Footnote 15 For his own part, Weeks follows earlier tradition in taking ’amôn in the sense of faithfulness or constancy, but argues that it functions as an attributive name or title, either in the form of an appositionally placed noun or a substantive adjective. Such a rendering would allegedly avoid violating contextual concerns, in that it would be consistent with rendering ’amôn as an attribute of wisdom rather than an active co-agent with the Lord in creation.
Active renderings of ’amôn and the theological concerns of monotheism
Apart from contextual concerns, the concern to maintain a passive voice for ’amôn is also tied to a larger theological worry in some interpreters, namely, the worry that assigning an active sense to ’amôn will not merely lead to a distinction of person (e.g. the reading of the fathers), but to a separate creator alongside the Lord. Interpreters with a concern to protect the Old Testament's monotheistic claims follow the lead of Aquila and a number of rabbis by reading ’amôn as ’amûn, glossing the vowel letter waw as shureq rather than cholem.Footnote 16 The potentially active sense inherent in ’amôn is thereby more or less neutralised by rendering it in terms of a passive participle from the Greek (tithēnoumenē) and translating it as ‘nursling’ or ‘one who is nursed’.Footnote 17
Those who share a concern for preserving the claims of Old Testament monotheism, but opt for an active sense for ’amôn, are thus in a bit of a fix, fighting as it were in a two-front war involving both contextual and theological issues. For example, in his Baker commentary on Proverbs, Tremper Longman argues for the active sense of ’amôn as ‘architect’ based upon Akkadian comparative philology.Footnote 18 Yet he also worries about the threat this reading might pose to Old Testament monotheism. Accordingly, his solution to the exegetical difficulties involved in 8:22–31 calls for a variation on the strategies canvassed above by stressing two things: first, the importance of keeping in view the ‘figurative’ nature of the language in 8:22–31, and second, appreciating the fact that as a personification of ‘Woman Wisdom’ in Proverbs,Footnote 19 Wisdom functions as an attribute of the Lord, and is thus not to be conceived of as someone (or something) distinct from the Lord.
In his How to Read Proverbs, Longman articulates his position on the figural character of wisdom in Proverbs by arguing that ‘The location of her house makes clear that Woman Wisdom stands for God. She is a poetic personification of God's wisdom and represents God, as a part for the whole (synecdoche).’Footnote 20 As one reads on, however, it becomes apparent that this definition, especially the stress it places upon the metaphorical and figurative character of biblical poetry, is closely tied to a concern on Longman's part to protect the Old Testament's teaching on monotheism:
We have already observed that Woman Wisdom is a personification of God's attribute of wisdom. This part of the poem is making the point that God created the cosmos by virtue of his age-old wisdom. The language about the creation of Wisdom is a powerful metaphor, affirming that God's wisdom preceded every other thing. It is figurative language; Wisdom is not a separate personal entity. That it is provocative language is not to be doubted and is confirmed by the fact that certain minor but articulate strands of Judaism and Christianity came to treat Wisdom as a separate divine being, even a bride of Yahweh himself.Footnote 21
Here Longman seems to have in mind those who interpret Lady Wisdom as a separate deity, created at the beginning of time for the purpose of being the bride of Yahweh.Footnote 22 He notes that monotheistic interpreters who share his concern to refute this reading have often resorted to the exegetical tactic of rendering the Hebrew verb qānāh as ‘acquired’ rather than ‘formed’.Footnote 23 He regards this as heavy-handed, the result of what might be called genre amnesia, or as he puts it, forgetting ‘that we are interpreting a poem’.Footnote 24 On his view, failure to reckon with the genre effects of poetry and the figurative nature of its language have prevented interpreters from grasping that ‘Woman Wisdom is a personification of God's attribute of wisdom’. Thus for Longman, a better way to satisfy the concerns of monotheism is to take seriously the passage's genre as a poem, especially the figurative nature of Woman Wisdom as a metaphor. Once this is recognised, the character of ’amôn as an attribute of the Lord rather than a separate deity becomes clear.
One may readily agree that ’amôn should be translated as ‘architect’, not simply because of its Akkadian cognate, but also because of the pervasive use of the architectural imagery of creation as house-building in wisdom literature, imagery which often construes all of creation in terms of a house or temple which the Lord originally constructed in order to dwell with his creatures. The problem arises, not so much with the active sense inherent in the gloss ‘architect’, but with the decision to interpret ’amôn as an attribute of the Lord. As Stuart Weeks notes, the problem in 8:30 is not solved by arguing that ’amôn is an attribute of the Lord, for the third-person possessive suffix in the preceding word ’etslô suggests a distinction that the attribute reading obscures: ‘it is difficult . . . to understand why the writer would have obscured his own meaning by using a redundant suffix pronoun’.Footnote 25 The grammatical difficulty consists in the fact that the prepositional phrase ‘at His side’ continues the distinction, pursued throughout the poem, between Wisdom's voice, which is presented in the first person, and references to the Lord, which occur in the third person. Thus if ’amôn is to be taken straightforwardly as an attribute of the Lord in 8:30, rather than a distinct hypostasis, why not avoid the continuance of this distinction and drop the third person suffix altogether? After all, if ’amôn merely refers to an attribute of the Lord, then the third person suffix is redundant, as Weeks notes.
On the other hand, if the writer intended to register a distinction between the Lord and ’amôn, then the use of the third person suffix not only makes sense, but also coheres with the larger context by continuing the distinction between the Lord and Wisdom through the use of first and third person pronouns.Footnote 26 The difficulty with reading ’amôn as an attribute of the Lord is that it obscures that which the verbal profile of the text distinguishes. Moreover, the semantics of Proverbs 8:30 suggest a further distinction, in that the children of Adam, along with the rest of creation, occupy a point of standing in the poem that suggests a life ‘before’ rather than ‘beside’ God, while the image of Wisdom as a ‘master architect’ is described as a life ‘beside’ God. Although this observation does not conclusively settle the issue, it does appear to be compatible with the ‘distinct but equal’ status of Wisdom in the poem discerned by the early church. To be sure, the counterargument can be made that personification as a literary device typically adopts the use of personal pronouns. Hence this phenomenon is hardly unusual, especially within the genre of a poem. However, there are other exegetical phenomena in this poem that are resistant to this logic and ultimately incapable of being wholly absorbed by this explanation. Answering the biblical claims of monotheism calls for a different approach, that is, if the words of the text are to be our guide.
Passive instrumentality or hypostasised presence: Proverbs 8:22–31 and 3:19–20
Lenzi suggests that 8:22–31 was composed and added to the growing corpus of Proverbs 1–9 with an eye towards 3:19–20 in its final form,Footnote 27 and in fact constitutes an instance of the inner-biblical exegesis of 3:19–20. The reference to Wisdom in Proverbs 3:19 makes an instrumental use of preposition beth to describe Wisdom's role in the creation, suggesting that Wisdom in 3:19 is being described in terms of instrumentality rather than personhood. However, in 8:22–31, the writer presents Wisdom's role in the creation in a different light by constructing Wisdom's relationship to Lord in different terms. Lenzi writes: ‘In 3:19 this word (chokmāh) denotes the instrument of God's creative activity, whereas in 8:22 it identifies the object of God's activity: Yahweh acquired me, that is, Wisdom’.Footnote 28 From this he draws the following conclusion:
Wisdom is a personality in Prov. 8:22–31 – a ‘me’ in v. 22. As such, she cannot be an intellectual tool or abstract instrument with which God can manufacture the universe. Thus, in the positive account of creation in Prov. 8:27–30 the text transforms what was presented in 3:19–20 as wisdom's non-sentient instrumentality in the process of creation into Wisdom's personal presence at creation. This is accomplished through two brief phrases: first, in v. 27a, shām ’anī, and then, most emphatically, in v. 30a with wĕ’ehyeh ’etslô ’amôn. These two laconic statements form an inclusio around the positive description of the activity of creation. In this way Prov. 8:22–31 explains bĕchokmāh in 3:19 not as an instrument but as a personal presence alongside Yahweh during the genesis of the cosmos.Footnote 29
In sum, 8:22–31 interprets 3:19–20 in terms of two phrases that expand upon the nature of the abbreviated description of Wisdom's instrumentality in 3:19. Whereas Wisdom's role in the creation in 3:19 is presented using the language of instrumentality, the language of 8:22–31 construes that role in terms of ‘a personal presence’.Footnote 30
To this should be added the observation that the opening verses of the first section of Proverbs 8 (vv. 1–11) conceive of Wisdom in first person terms as a speaking voice.Footnote 31 The second section (vv. 12–21) carries forward this first person, prophetic voice. Thus Wisdom in Proverbs 8 is conceived as a prophetic orator that mediates the wisdom implicit in Solomon's teachings to Israel. The question of Wisdom's identity in the poem is not framed in terms of the question, ‘What is this speaking voice?’, but in terms of the question, ‘Who is this speaking voice?’ That is, who is the one speaking, and what is the relationship of this ‘who’ to Israel's Lord?Footnote 32 Moreover, whether one translates qānāh as ‘acquired’, or as ‘begat’, both renderings tend to undercut the notion that the Wisdom in view in 8:22 refers to an attribute of the Lord. After all, what sense does it make to speak of the Lord acquiring or begetting an attribute? Supporters of the attribute reading will doubtless argue that this objection ignores the metaphorical, figural or poetic nature of the language, an objection to which I will return further anon. For now, suffice it to say that these translations comport more fully with the hypostasis reading of the fathers than they do with the attribute reading. This is not to claim, of course, that the writer of Proverbs 8:22 had in mind the concept of person (hypostasis), as this concept later came to be worked out in the trinitarian formulas of the early church. It is simply to register the observation that the syntax, language and concepts used to describe Wisdom in Proverbs 8:22–31 cohere, both ontologically and exegetically, with what the early church intended to signify by its use of the Greek term ‘hypostasis’ to render the Son of God's personhood,Footnote 33 as well as the Nicene claim that the eternal Logos or Son was ‘begotten, not made’.
Wisdom and theological ontology: Proverbs 8:30 and Exodus 3:14
Although the preceding observations help to establish an exegetically plausible case for the early church's hypostasis reading of Wisdom's personhood in 8:22–31, over against the attribute reading,Footnote 34 those commentators who argue that the personification of Wisdom is merely a literary device, a reference to Solomon's teaching per se, or a metaphor functioning on a purely literary and imaginative level, will probably remain undaunted. The suggestion that the metaphorical character of Wisdom rules out any theological and ontological status for Wisdom is especially curious. Is it always the case that metaphors in poetic discourses or genres lack ontological status? Shall we think of biblical metaphors as quasi-Kantian ‘phenomena’ that fail to mediate any descriptive knowledge of that which lies beyond our temporal experience? Before addressing more fully the rationale undergirding non-referential accounts of biblical metaphor, the ontological status of Wisdom in Proverbs 8 should be explored in terms of the wisdom poem's own semantics.
As others have observed, Proverbs 8:30 exegetically links the figure of begotten Wisdom in 8:22 with a particular theological ontology rooted in the divine name of Israel's covenant Lord. The two Hebrew phrases in 8:27 and 8:30a offer their own distinctive contribution to the question of Wisdom's origins and relationship with the Lord. In response to the question of Wisdom's origin, 8:27 answers, ‘I was there’, even before the waters of tehôm, the deep, were in place.Footnote 35 In response to the question of Wisdom's relation to the Lord of Israel, 8:30a answers, ‘I was at his side’. However, the double use of the Hebrew verb ‘to be’ (hyh) in 8:30 is a bit odd, especially given the general tendency in Proverbs, as Roland Murphy notes, ‘to avoid the verb “to be” in favor of juxtaposition or simple comparison’.Footnote 36 Moreover, as a number of commentators have pointed out, the Hebrew phrase in 8:27 and the double use of the verb ‘to be’ in 8:30 may be rendered in the present tense as ‘I am there’, ‘I am at his side’ and ‘I am daily his delight’,Footnote 37 thereby constituting ‘an eloquent allusion’ to the divine name in Exodus 3:14.Footnote 38 What significance might these observations have for the ontological status of Wisdom in Proverbs 8? Certainly, if it was not the intention of the writer of 8:30 to direct the reader's thoughts to the divine name in Exodus 3:14, then the decision to invoke a double use of the Hebrew verb hyh was at best unfortunate, and at worst, a bit reckless, especially in the context of a discussion about Wisdom's origin and relationship to the Lord.
Subsistence and personhood: Proverbs 8:27–31
The question of Wisdom's identity in Proverb 8 is closely tied to the question of its origins. What is the originating context for Wisdom's identity? Proverbs 8:22 locates this originating context, and therefore the identity of Wisdom, before the beginning of the Lord’s way in time. While the significance of 8:22 for Wisdom's origins has often been noted, especially its polemical function,Footnote 39 comparatively few modern commentators have reflected on the way in which 8:22–31 frames and conditions all time in terms of a movement from the Lord to the children of Adam.Footnote 40 Stuart Weeks suggests that ‘we must envisage a progression through three periods: before, during, and after the creation’.Footnote 41 He argues against the traditional reading of 8:30a as the completion of a six-fold series of temporal clauses begun in 8:27, pointing out that 8:30–1 are a unit tied together by catchwords. As such, verses 30–1 structurally demarcate the period of post-creation in the poem, whereas 8:27–9 refer to a period during creation.Footnote 42 The overall movement of the poem thus progresses through three periods: before creation (vv. 22–6), during creation (vv. 27–9) and after creation (vv. 30–1), with begotten Wisdom as a personal presence subsisting through all three periods. Wisdom in these verses reflects a resistance to that which does not endure, that is, a resistance to mortality. Along with our observations on 8:30, this resistance serves to link begotten Wisdom in 8:22–31 with an ontological reality that endures before, in and through time.Footnote 43 At this juncture, it would appear to be at least reasonable, in light of the text's grammar, to give ear to the ontological overtones of the language and reconsider whether the literary category of verbal trope can do full justice to the claims being registered for Wisdom in Proverbs 8.
Dismissing these overtones in the name of ‘figurative’ or ‘metaphorical’ language presupposes a non-referential account of metaphor that should be questioned. Because biblical metaphor operates within the larger framework of Christian figural realism, there are good reasons to reject an account of metaphor's role in figural reading that reduces metaphor to an imaginative, verbal trope that undercuts its ‘reality-depicting’ function, that is, an account of metaphor that makes no ontological demands upon its readers.Footnote 44 To begin with, as ancient Greek rhetoricians understood, metaphor is itself a form of ‘other-speaking’, in that it relies upon an analogy or relationship between two things in order to do its sense-making. For example, the biblical or literary metaphor ‘the lion of Judah’ relies upon the reader's knowledge of a relationship between the verbal metaphor lion and an ontological thing or reality (res) outside the text (viz., the animal we refer to as a lion). Apart from the reader's knowledge of this relationship, the metaphor simply fails. Stated differently, the text's literary referent depends upon a particular ontological referent in order to do its sense-making. In this sense, metaphor as a verbal or literary phenomenon is akin to the referential account of sense-making we find at work in allegory. It is therefore a species of allegory, or ‘ontological’ other-speaking, in that it depends upon an ontological reality or non-textual referent outside itself in order to render its sense.Footnote 45
This is why it will not suffice, whether in the name of metaphor, or in the name of personification construed as a literary device, to rule out in a priori fashion the ontological status and framework in which the interpretive categories of Wisdom, beginning and begetting operate in Proverbs 8:22–31.Footnote 46 A de-ontologised reading of metaphor severs the relation between ontology and economy that holds metaphor and dogmatics together. However, because referential logic is built into metaphor, the status of Wisdom in Proverbs 8 cannot be resolved by remaining at the level of the literary presentation alone. Moreover, the exegetical semantics of the poem offer resistance to such a reading. The referential force of begotten Wisdom in Proverbs 8 is not merely a form of ‘textual’ other-speaking, such as we often find in contemporary theories of intertextuality.Footnote 47 Nor is it simply a form of ‘historical’ other-speaking, such as we often find in modern versions of ‘scientific’ exegesis. On these approaches, biblical referentiality becomes a way of speaking of other texts in a vast web of linguistically constructed sense-relations,Footnote 48 or an instrumentalised means to the end of reconstructing a historical ontology outside the words of scripture, in which ontology has usually been thoroughly de-theologised. Over against such approaches, it needs to be asserted that the referential logic at work in biblical sense-making is ‘ontological’ other-speaking in a distinctly theological sense. Both the theological and ontological frames of reference established by Proverbs 8:27–31, as well as the language of Proverbs 8:30, exert what might be called an ‘ontological pressure’ upon our reading that speaks against reducing the personification of Wisdom in this poem to a literary device, bereft of any ontological purchase upon the character of the divine identity of Israel's one Lord.
Conclusion
While one can appreciate the admonition that, as a ‘highly figurative composition’, one should not read Proverbs 8:22–31 in a strictly literal fashion,Footnote 49 as well as the warning that ‘Woman Wisdom is not a pre-incarnate form of the second person of the Trinity’,Footnote 50 this way of putting the matter lacks theological and exegetical nuance. What, for example, is meant by the phrase ‘pre-incarnate form’? Presumably this commentator means to say that the figural language of Woman Wisdom in Proverbs 8 and in the book in general is not to be taken as a sort of literal incarnation of Christ before the fact, and with this, one can fully agree. Christ's figural presence in the form of Old Testament Wisdom is not the same mode of presence as his incarnate presence.Footnote 51 One can also agree with the concern to respect the teaching of Israel's scriptures on monotheism.
That being said, the ongoing distinction between the Lord and Wisdom in the poem registered by the use of first and third person pronouns, along with the other exegetical phenomena mentioned above, opens up another avenue of approach that honours the Old Testament's commitment to monotheism, but also allows the Old Testament's own presentation to shape our understanding of the character of that ‘monotheism’. At this juncture it is helpful to reference the comments of Christopher Seitz:
The problem here is that the term ‘monotheism’, when used in reference to the Old Testament, is nothing but a placeholder serving to rule out some obvious alternatives (Israel did not worship multiple gods in a pantheon) but in itself it is imprecise. At issue is the kind of monotheism said to mark the life of God with his people Israel . . . For later Christian theological reflection, it is the very existence of the scriptures of Israel and their commitment to a peculiar kind of monotheism that gives rise to trinitarian convictions about the character of God, such that, lacking these scriptures and their specific literal-sense declarations, we would simply have no trinitarian talk at all, but rather something like the divinisation of Jesus (with the help of borrowed titles having not much to do with him in reality). The precondition of trinitarian reflection, in other words, is precisely the Old Testament of early Christian reception and interpretation. Had there been no reception of these writings as the sole authoritative witness to the work and identity of God, during which period the New Testament writings were coming to form, the conditions would not have been in place for the kind of trinitarian theological thinking that emerged.Footnote 52
At the end of the day, there is no need to protect Old Testament monotheism from possible polytheistic abuse by interpreting Wisdom as an attribute of the Lord, or as a literary personification without significance for his ontological identity. There are good reasons to question whether such a move does justice to the exegetical pressures of the text. Moreover, the nature of Old Testament monotheism is bound up with these exegetical pressures. Israel's scriptures teach that the Lord (YHWH) is God, not in the way that other gods might be called God, but in a unique and incomparable way (Deut 4:35, 39; cf. Exod 15:11, Mic 7:18). Those scriptures disclose his identity in a manner that reveals the unique character of his oneness, a peculiar form of monotheism capable of supporting distinctions of person within that oneness, as Proverbs 8:22–31 teaches, and as the early church confessed.
The exegetical debate over Proverbs 8 offers a timely reminder that the early church fathers were confident in the ability of the Old Testament, through Christ the eternal Word, to position their present point of standing and the church's christological confession, without recourse to the New Testament in the first instance. Indeed, Frances Young notes that in the debate over Proverbs 8:22–31, ‘no one in the fourth century challenged the fundamental approach to this text which we can already trace in the work of the second-century apologists. The christological referent of personified wisdom was a tradition never questioned’ by either party to the debate, including Arius.Footnote 53 Rather, Proverbs 8 was ‘generally read as a passage about the being who was the instrument through whom God created the universe’.Footnote 54 Here we meet with the early church's confidence in the Old Testament's continuing ability, in conjunction with the Spirit and the Word now made flesh, to exegetically authorise a place to stand in the mapping out of her christo-trinitarian confession. It is to this Old Testament witness that ‘the rule of faith’ calls our attention in the first place, and it is for this reason that the witness of Proverbs 8 continues to shape the christological character of ecclesial space in our present.Footnote 55
