On the one hand, this chapter stands on its own. The soaring poetry and utterly accessible metaphor of Lady Wisdom calling to humanity is hard to miss. Every major English translation fails to do it justice, yet even with these feeble attempts, commentary on the narrative seems impotent and futile. It’s almost arrogance to try. On the other hand, most people who read it in English are likely to miss the whole point.
Western literary legacy has little that compares with the underlying Hebrew frame of reference here. Solomon assumes a view of reality that is wholly missing from the Western intellectual background. Ours is a bag of materialistic and mechanistic assumptions, and we make no room for a type of intelligence in the heart. We assume the heart is merely a metaphor for emotions and sentiment. For the Hebrew, the heart is a superior intelligence with its own logic, the only proper place to understand morality.
In the Hebrew awareness, as is common with most other Ancient Near Eastern civilizations, Creation remains actively and completely dependent on the whims of the Creator. It’s not a clock wound up and allowed to run, but a living thing that requires constant direct attention or it dissolves. God holds all things together by His active and personal involvement. Nothing inherent in Creation is sufficient to maintain integrity and existence on its own. And while His merest whim alone is sufficient to change things wholesale, we could not know unless He made it a point to allow us to see it happen. However, there is one essential element in all things, and this alone is what gives it consistency: His divine character.
It should seem entirely natural that everything God does reflects directly His personality. He is self-consistent, at least insofar as it means anything to us. Not that we could pretend to estimate such a thing, but we are obliged to accept it. He is a very real Person, but far more complex than any person you meet here below. We give it all kinds of names: wisdom, God’s Law, revelation, His character and personality, His divine will, moral discernment, and many more. In a certain sense, they all mean the same thing. It represents the fundamental awareness we must have in order to understand anything at all the matters. The very fabric of the universe is woven of His personality. Here, Solomon characterizes it with the parable of Lady Wisdom.
You cannot really understand her with your intellect. You can only approach her with your heart reigning over your reason. If you aren’t committed in sacrificial love to making her more valuable than life itself, then you cannot have her best gifts. It’s all or nothing, in the sense that you receive only what she drops in the mud if she is not your one true love in this life. Granted, Solomon’s writing assumes a male audience, but Wisdom herself can translate the imagery for any woman who cares. She was there before Creation, so she transcends the parable that gives her substance for our consideration.
