Wisdom - A short breakdown

What is wisdom?

Wisdom is a capacity of the mind.

OT - knowledge and ability to direct the mind toward a full understanding of human life and its moral fulfilment. It’s a special capacity, necessary for human living. Main books that deal with this in the OT are Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.

Wisdom literature -

Wisdom is rooted and grounded in God and is a central part of the nature of God.

Some things that God did in wisdom - created the universe and mankind.

Inherent in God, reflected in creation

Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible The Wisdom of God

The wisdom of God is thus creative, purposeful, and good; it is not merely the intellectual activity of God

Because we’ve been created by God, we have been given the capacity for wisdom.

Human wisdom is only possible because of God

Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible The Wisdom of Man

Human wisdom, in the Hebrew conception, is thus a development of the mind, an expansion of knowledge, and an understanding of both the meaning of life and how that life must be lived. It is thoroughly intellectual, but has a powerful moral content. Wisdom was not sought for its own sake, but always for its application to the meaning of life, for life—like wisdom—was God’s gift. This thrust in Hebrew wisdom meant that the virtues of the wise man or woman were never described in intellectual terms alone. The wise are not the intelligentsia of Israelite society, but, as the Book of Proverbs makes clear, they were those whose lives were characterized by understanding, patience, diligence, trustworthiness, self-control, modesty, and similar virtues. In a word, the wise man was the God-fearing man; his wisdom lay not just in a static attitude of reverence, but rather in the conscious development of the mind toward wisdom in the context of reverence