NOTES for Luk 7:31-35
It is worth paying attention to three different translations of the words the Lord says to us today. “And Wisdom is justified by all her children” (Synodal). “And all her children were the justification of wisdom” (Bishop Cassian's translation). “But all her children acknowledged that God's Wisdom is right” (Good News). In fact, they all convey different meanings, something easily grasped in the third version and with considerable difficulty in the first two, which seem very close. Since not all of us are philologists and not all of us know Greek, if we want to penetrate the essence of what is being said, we have no choice but to reflect on all three—though perhaps someone knows other translations that differ substantially.
The first translation, very close in meaning to all the English versions known to us, points to something important. We, the children of Wisdom, come into this world to prove by our deeds that God's Wisdom is a true reality, not a myth we have created, but something Living that participates in our labor. Yet before whom must she be justified? Certainly not before God, and therefore before the world. But why? The Lord does not need to be justified before the world. Why, then, does Wisdom need it? Perhaps an answer can be found to some extent in the eighth chapter of Proverbs. Recalling the creation of the world, Wisdom says of herself: “then I was beside Him as a master craftsman” (Prov. 8:30). She is the “agent,” if one may put it that way—from the Latin agentis, “acting”—who is in some sense responsible for the world. Here is the answer to why she appears before the world's judgment.
Bishop Cassian's translation somewhat removes the active role from the children and transfers it to Wisdom. These are the children she has brought forth, and in themselves they already constitute her justification. Finally, the quite different Good News translation undoubtedly has a truth of its own. Why are we children of Wisdom? Simply because we acknowledge that she is right without any justifications or proofs. This is precisely the nuance carried by the word “vindicate” in one English translation, where the Russian has “justification.” We simply accept that Wisdom is right, and we need nothing else.