In the Bible, wisdom is not theory, not abstraction, not something speculative. Biblical wisdom is a practical thing. If, for example, a person can...
In the Bible, wisdom is not theory, not abstraction, not something speculative. Biblical wisdom is a practical thing. If, for example, a person could make a beautiful object out of stone, wood, or metal, he could be called wise. Because what was needed here was not only skill, but also that sense of beauty which a person feels with the heart more than with the hands.
Wisdom was also the art of dealing with people, the ability to understand them and see the motives of their actions. And righteousness too was wisdom: the skill of righteous life, without which it was impossible to follow God in spite of one's own sins, following while stumbling as little as possible and not falling. In the time when the Book of Job was written, this skill of righteous life was called wisdom above all. But righteousness is first of all relations with God. And with people too, in accordance with the commandments given by God. And those commandments did not appear by chance. They are not a moral code invented by God specially for man.
The commandments reflect the spiritual laws according to which a person's relations with God and people's relations with one another are built. They have existed as long as the world itself. Or at least as long as man has existed in the world. But if so, then God conceived these laws even before the creation of man, when He was creating His world. That means wisdom is not a human matter. Not only in the sense that man did not invent it, but also in the sense that it was not invented at all.
Man does not invent wisdom; he discovers it. More precisely, God reveals it to him, and man receives this revelation. But the origins of wisdom, which Job sought so intently, are where the origins and first cause of everything else, of all that happens in the world, are: with God. In His eternity. In the fullness of His life. In the depth of His person. There, where His creative will begins. And therefore there, where man by definition cannot penetrate. The origins of wisdom are inaccessible to man. Wisdom itself is accessible insofar as man is ready to receive it from God's hands, not by right, which man does not have, but by God's mercy.
38 God begins with an awakening challenge, Job 38:1-3.
Proceeds to several proofs of Job's inability to contend with him, because of his ignorance and weakness: for he knew nothing of the founding of the earth, Job 38:4-7.
The limiting of the sea, Job 38:8-11.
Of the morning light, Job 38:12-15.
The recesses of the sea and earth, Job 38:16-21.
Of the treasures in the clouds, Job 38:22-27.
He could do nothing toward the making of his own soul, the producing of rain, frost, lightning, or the directing of the stars and their influences, Job 38:28-38.
He could not provide for the lions or the ravens, Job 38:39-41.
How then should he direct God's secret counsels? Here God takes up the argument, begun by Elihu, and prosecutes it in inimitable words, exceeding his, and all other mens in the loftiness of the style, as much as thunder does a whisper.