The prophetic energizing we encounter in Second Isaiah came from the same place as the prophetic criticizing of the predestruction prophets. Second Isaiah must have known the energizing power of God in his own experience. Only so could he have energized and empowered his community to embark on the journey of return.
Concluding Reflections
Prophetic criticizing and energizing are most relevant to our time when we hear what the prophets were saying in their time, not when we divorce them from their time and imagine that they were predicting a distant future. Though their language is full of metaphor, as poetic language always is, we hear them most clearly when we hear them most historically.
In much of Christian history, their voices have not been clearly heard. They have usually been domesticated, most often by those choosing to see them as predictors of Jesus as the messiah. The domestication is to a large extent the product of Christendom, the wedding of Christianity with Western culture (a union that began with Constantine in the fourth century and ended only recently). During the centuries that Christianity slept with the dominant culture, it did not (and in a sense could not) see the prophets as voices of radical social protest against domination systems. And so the prophets were made “safe,” either by ignoring them or by making them irrelevant.
In our time, the end of Christendom creates the possibility of hearing and reading the prophets again as God-intoxicated voices articulating “the dream of God.”53 God’s dream is a world of justice and peace:
The nations will beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid.54
For more than one reason, communicating the prophetic passion for social justice is difficult in the church in North America today. Some of us continue to be blinded by the blinkers of prediction and fulfillment. We also resist hearing the prophets because they easily make us, as residents of an affluent society, uncomfortable. Yet another reason is that the word “justice” has multiple meanings in our culture, and the most common of them have little to do with the prophetic meaning of justice.
I became aware of this while teaching the prophets to undergraduates. I was puzzled that my students did not get very excited as I passionately exposited the prophets’ passion for justice, even though I had found the prophets to be the most exciting part of my college years. My students dutifully took notes, but nothing remarkable seemed to be happening.
So I paused and asked them, “When I say the word ‘justice,’ what do you think of?” After some silence, a student said, “I think of the criminal justice system.” I realized that his response made sense. After all, in the United States, the Department of Justice is concerned with criminal justice, and its head is spoken of as “the nation’s chief law enforcement official.” But if one hears the prophets’ passion for justice as being about convicting and punishing criminals, one has not heard them at all.
Yet another common meaning of justice is “procedural justice.” Procedural justice is concerned with “fair play,” with ensuring that the “procedures” (laws and legal processes) are the same for everybody, and are enforced the same for everybody. Because the concern of that sort of justice is the individual and individual rights, it fits nicely within the core American cultural value of individualism. Rather than challenging the ethos of individualism, it supports it. Of course, procedural justice does matter, and matters greatly, especially in the areas of criminal justice and human rights. But it is still not what the prophets meant.
A third meaning of justice is “social justice.” More comprehensive than criminal justice and procedural justice, social justice is concerned with the structures of society and their results. Because it is results-oriented, it discerns whether the structures of society—in other words, the social system as a whole—are just in their effects. Do they produce a large impoverished class or result in a more equitable distribution of resources? Do they benefit some at the expense of many or serve all equally? Do they produce conflict or peace? Do they destroy or nourish a future?
One can imagine a society with very good procedural justice being nonetheless filled with social injustice. For example, one can imagine Pharaoh’s Egypt or the Third Reich having perfect procedural justice (they did not, of course, but one can imagine it) and laws that were impeccably enforced, and yet one cannot imagine concluding that these were just societies. Social justice is about more than the fair enforcement of laws and procedures. It is concerned with the justice of social systems. Its opposite is systemic injustice.
Social justice is the kind of justice that the prophets proclaim. The passion of their prophetic criticism challenges us. For the conflict between the dream of God and the domination systems of this world is persistent. It not only runs through the history of ancient Israel, but surfaces again in the time of Jesus—a conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the Herods and Caesars of this world. And, to say the obvious, this conflict abides with us to this day. The structuring of societies by elites to serve their self-interest continues.55
The message of prophetic energizing also remains relevant today—relevant to the victims and exiles of the domination systems of our time. It proclaims that their identity, value, and worth are grounded not in culture but in God’s regard. It affirms that God’s character, will, and justice are different from the justice of oppressive social orders.
It is also relevant to those of us of Pharaoh’s household who yearn for a different kind of society.56 Newness is possible; the future does not have to replicate the past; the dream of God is alive.
More so than prophetic criticizing, prophetic energizing reminds us of the reality of God. After all, one can be passionate about social justice without God. But the prophets were passionate about both God and justice. They bring together the same two emphases we heard in the exodus story: the spiritual and the social, God and justice, the sacred and this world. At the center of the spiritual life, of life with God, is a twofold relationship: with God, and with the world of the everyday (including the way the world of the everyday is structured).
We see this with special clarity in Second Isaiah. In addition to the historical meaning his words had for Jewish exiles in the sixth century, he has also bequeathed to us the language of “exile” and “return” as powerful religious metaphors. “Exile,” with all of its metaphorical resonances, is a rich metaphor for the human condition and how we often experience our lives. We feel much of what ancient Israel felt in exile: grief, anguish, longing, weakness, homelessness.
The solution for exiles is, of course, a journey of return, a way or path through the wilderness. Imaging the religious life as a “way” or “path” or “journey” is central not only in Second Isaiah, but also in Judaism and Christianity and in other religious traditions.
Both Judaism and Christianity are about a “way.” Indeed, the word “repent,” so central to the Christian tradition, has its roots in the Jewish story of the exile. To repent does not mean to feel really bad about sins; rather, it means to embark upon a path of return. The journey begins in exile, and the destination is a return to life in the presence of God.
The journey of return leads to the place where we began: to paradise and Jerusalem and Zion, all symbolizing the place of God’s presence. Of course, we are never outside the presence of God, even when we do not believe that or know that. The “way,” the “path,” leads to the place where we do know that. The journey of return of which Second Isaiah speaks leads to life in the presence of God—to the one in whom we live and move and have our being.
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7
Reading Israel’s Wisdom Again
In Israel’s wisdom literature we encounter the dailiness of life in ancient Isr
ael. The focus of this literature is more on the individual and the world of the everyday than what we encounter in the exodus and prophetic traditions. Its central concerns are the eminently practical questions, “How shall I live?” and “What is life about?”
Israel’s wisdom is extraordinarily rich. It ranges from the practical and pithy wisdom sayings of the book of Proverbs through the melancholic reflections about life’s mysteries in Ecclesiastes to the anguished and magnificent book of Job. It covers everything from sage advice about the raising of children to deeply reflective thought about the nature of reality and the meaning of life. Its voices are diverse and provocative.1
Introduction
Israel’s wisdom books are found in the third and final division of the Hebrew Bible: the Writings. This is a miscellaneous collection dating primarily from the postexilic period. In addition to the wisdom books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, this section of the Bible includes the Psalms (Israel’s prayer- and hymnbook), the apocalyptic book of Daniel, the stories of heroic Queen Esther and the good Gentile woman Ruth, the erotic love poetry of the Song of Songs (sometimes called the Song of Solomon or Canticles), and the historical books of I and II Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah.
The wisdom books are difficult to date with precision, largely because they contain no references to historical events contemporary with them by which they might be dated. Indeed, in striking contrast to both the Law and the Prophets, they do not refer even to historical events from Israel’s past. History, whether secular or sacred, is not one of their concerns.2
From ancient times, Israel’s wisdom has been associated with King Solomon, who reigned in the tenth century BCE. Much of the book of Proverbs is attributed to him, the book of Ecclesiastes claims him as its author, and the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon is named after him. But there is a scholarly consensus that these books do not come from the time of Solomon. Thus the connection to Solomon is traditional (as are the connections between the Pentateuch and Moses and between the Psalms and David) and without historical significance.
Wisdom literature finds us not in Solomon’s day, then, but in the postexilic period that began in 539 BCE. Though the book of Proverbs as a collection of sayings no doubt contains some earlier material, in its present form it is a postexilic composition put together around 500 BCE. The book of Job is most commonly seen as an exilic or postexilic document, though a few scholars would date it in the seventh century BCE. The book of Ecclesiastes is the latest, commonly dated in the third century BCE.
During these centuries, the Jewish people continued to live under the political control of foreign empires: under the Persian Empire until its conquest by Alexander the Great in 333 BCE and then under the Hellenistic Empires descended from Alexander. Jewish political independence was not regained until the time of the Maccabees in 164 BCE.
At the beginning of this period, we should imagine the Jewish community in the land of Israel as very modest in size and mostly clustered around Jerusalem. The temple in Jerusalem was the political as well as religious center of the community. Because theirs was a province in a foreign empire, the Jewish people had no king, of course. Thus domestic political authority as well as national-religious identity gravitated to the temple and its high priest. Over time, a native aristocracy emerged around the temple, consisting mostly of families from whom a high priest had been chosen. The Jewish people were in the process of becoming a “temple state” and a “theocracy”—a society ruled by God through God’s priests and scribal interpreters.
We also need to imagine a religious community seeking to consolidate its identity and preserve its traditions. During this period of exceptional activity, the Pentateuch was put into its present form (including both consolidation and some creation of legal traditions), the Prophets as a collection of books took shape, and most or all of the Writings were composed. It is an impressive literary and religious accomplishment for a small group of people.
Israel’s wisdom traditions also include two books found in the Christian Apocrypha but not in the Hebrew Bible. The first is known by several names: Sirach, or the Wisdom of Ben Sira, or Ecclesiasticus.3 This book was written quite late in the postexilic period, probably between 200 and 180 BCE, and its author was a Jewish wisdom teacher in Jerusalem named Jesus Ben Sira, or “Jesus son of Sirach.” The Wisdom of Solomon, the second apocryphal wisdom book, was written even later, commonly dated to the first century BCE (and perhaps even to the early first century CE). Its author is unknown. As part of the Christian Apocrypha, these two books are seen as sacred scripture by Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican Christians, but not by most Protestants. Though they contain very interesting material, we will focus on the three wisdom documents included in the Hebrew Bible: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job.
Israel’s wisdom literature is very different in content, tone, and form from the Pentateuch and the Prophets. Its subject matter, as mentioned earlier, is more concerned with the individual. It looks at the individual as embedded within family and kinship systems and society, however, so it is not “individualistic” in the modern American sense of the term. But unlike the rest of the Hebrew Bible, it is not concerned with Israel’s sacred story as a people or with the criticism and reshaping of the social order.
Its tone and form are also different. It does not claim to be the product of divine revelation but is grounded in observation of and reflection upon human experience. Unlike the laws of the Pentateuch, which are said to have come from God, and unlike the prophets, who claim to speak the “Word of the LORD” on God’s behalf, Israel’s wisdom does not claim to be revealed truth.
Instead, wisdom is insight based on experience. Sometimes, as in the short sayings of the book of Proverbs, wisdom is crystallized experience—compact insights about how to live generated by long experience of the world. As the product of the community’s experience over centuries, Proverbs is thus to a large extent “community wisdom.” Ecclesiastes and Job, on the other hand, are sustained reflections on experience from the vantage point of their particular authors. But all three books are based on observation of life: they say, in effect, This is what life is like.
As we explore these books, we will not only taste the riches of Israel’s wisdom tradition, but also become aware of an intense and probing dialogue—even a conflict—within it. Is life as simple as knowing the right things to do and doing them? Does everything work out if you live right? And if life is not so simple but much more mysterious, what does that say about the nature of God, the purpose of life, and how we are to live?
Proverbs
The book of Proverbs has thirty-one chapters and falls into two main parts. The first part (made up of the first nine chapters) is a series of “wisdom poems” that might be labeled “in praise of wisdom.” Most of the rest of the book is a collection of individual proverbs—the short, memorable sayings that give the book its name. Not the work of one person, the pithy proverbs of the second part are the accumulated sayings of generations of wisdom teachers.
The Wisdom Poems in Proverbs 1–9
The poems in the first part of the book introduce us to the central metaphor of Israel’s wisdom tradition: life as a “way” or “path.” They abound in images related to moving along that path: walking, running, following, stumbling, falling. The poems develop the metaphor by contrasting two paths: the wise way and the foolish way, the path of wisdom and the path of folly. Other contrasting pairs are also used: the way of righteousness and the way of wickedness, the way of life and the way of death. The book as a whole develops the choice between the two ways.
The foundation and starting place of the wise way is announced in the first chapter: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”4 The phrase “fear of the LORD” does not mean “fright,” as one might be frightened of a tyrannical ruler or parent. Rather, it refers to awe, wonder, and reverence in the presence of the One who is the maker of heaven and earth and the lord of life and d
eath. The beginning of wisdom lies in taking seriously that we are dealing with a reality that transcends the world of the everyday, even as that reality is known in the world of the everyday.
These chapters also introduce us to the personification of “Wisdom” in female form, commonly called “the wisdom woman” or “Sophia.” “Sophia” is not only the Greek word for wisdom; as a woman’s name it better expresses the personification than the more abstract and neuter-sounding “Wisdom.”
Wisdom/Sophia is of inestimable worth. Following her is the wise way, and that way leads to life, riches, honor, peace, and happiness:
Happy are those who find wisdom,
and those who get understanding.
Her income is better than silver,
and her revenue better than gold.
She is more precious than jewels,
and nothing you desire can compare with her.
Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honor.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called happy.5
So important is Wisdom/Sophia that she is spoken of as having been with God at the creation of the world:
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