Wide-eyed Delight ~ Proverbs 8

Wisdom find some things delightful, and other things detestable (Proverbs 8:10-13). It rejoices in God’s handiwork, but recoils at the way of the wicked. In our age, wisdom is the kind of thing that gets dragged before the equal rights commission on charges of discrimination.

In Proverbs we learn (at least) five things about lady wisdom.

First, we discover that she’s just about everywhere you go, and she’s very vocal.

Does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud… (Proverbs 8:1-3)

Secondly, she’s more valuable than anything else in this world.

…for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. (Proverbs 8:11)

Thirdly, she hates the closed-minded, know-it-all attitude, and has no truck with perverted or dishonest speech.

Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. (Proverbs 8:13)

Fourthly, God made the world through wisdom.

When He established the heavens, I was there… when He marked out the foundations of the earth, there I was beside himself, like a master workman… (Proverbs 8:27, 29)

And finally, far from being the dusty, dry domain of bearded philosophers, wisdom is all about the joy and gladness of life.

…daily I was His delight, rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of man. (Proverbs 8:30-31)

Like a child’s wide-eyed joy at discovering a bright-coloured beetle under a rock, wisdom delights in creation and rejoices over it before God.

People have often noticed the similarity between Solomon’s description of wisdom in these final verses of chapter 8 and the Lord Jesus. This is very true. Jesus is the wisdom of God through whom the world was created (1 Corinthians 1:30 and Colossians 2:3).

But here in Proverbs, wisdom is also a handmaiden, both to God and those made in His image. She is given to guide us simple souls through this life using the tracks laid down by God.

She is beautiful and she is the source of godliness, joy and contentment to those who listen to her and follow her simple instruction.

The wicked, knowing intuitively that they are stewards over the earth but rejecting the wisdom through which the world was made, worry about creation or else destroy it.

The righteous, seeing the fingerprints of God throughout, delight in it, perceive the wisdom of God in it, consider the lillies, learn from it (Proverbs 6:6), prosper from it, and tend to it in hope.

Wisdom is not really that complicated. But it does take courage. And so, I have sometimes said, to anyone who would listen, that my heart’s desire for my children is not that they would obey the commandments of God, which are all wisdom, but that they would love them. For if they love them and perceive the beauty and wisdom in them, the courage to obey them will follow.