We rightly wonder what wisdom is, how to use it with skill, why it is so respected but made impotent in the face of human problem solving and conduct appropriate to its meaning. If informed about biblical story the reader can easily feel the impact of conversations between the father, David, and the son, Solomon, on the meaning and value of knowing the facts, understanding where they lead and having wisdom to interpret their meaning to the conduct of people. Solomon carried this writing of his father to his writings and actions in the reign he engaged after the death of David. The summary outline of the wisdom literature of Scripture is found in the seed of the 49th Psalm. David addresses all people, regardless of their status, and makes the largest point in that mankind cannot alone find solutions to life or find immortality. There is, in wisdom the understanding of the natural context needing wisdom, and the spiritual overlay of wisdom that follows the course of the team concept of the natural and supernatural. The highest illustration is adopted in the Psalm – mankind is unable to save mankind, and wisdom drives persons to God for ultimate benefit. The Psalm deals with the ultimate matter of life and death – of nature beginning and ending.
The Psalm begins with the concept of education, and that to all persons. Understanding and wisdom are necessary for effectiveness. He is addressing his people and desiring to say the most important words that he can say, words that join both human and spiritual wisdom for life action. He adopts a most common human experience – that persons live and work, gain wealth, and leave it to family in the hope their names will survive in some gift, with projects named for them, but there is nothing in this pattern that makes the rich greater than the poor because death ends human life as certainly as death ends life for animals who leave nothing to their progeny. Perpetuity is found in God and that in wisdom based on God’s authority.
We read wisdom maxims offered by some eminent persons of history. Benjamin Franklin wrote: The most exquisite folly is made of wisdom spun too fine. Homer wrote: How prone to doubt, how cautious is the wise. Edward Counsel stated: The road to true wisdom has seldom been spanned by mortals. He also wrote: Like water in the desert is wisdom to the soul. Aeschylus said what many others have affirmed: Wisdom comes only through suffering. John Milton in his writings on regaining paradise wrote: The first and wisest of them all professed to know this only – that he nothing knew. Sophocles wrote in Antigone: Man’s highest blessedness, in wisdom chiefly stands . . . . and so to grey-haired age teach wisdom at the last. Rousseau wrote: What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? Hume wrote: A wise man . . . proportions his belief to the evidence. William Blake wrote: A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel, and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago. Machiavelli advises in The Prince that: Wisdom consists in being able to distinguish among dangers and make a choice of the least harmful. Edmund Burke, so highly respected in the development of American democracy wrote: Never, no, never did nature say one thing and wisdom say another. John Fletcher wrote: Of all the forms of wisdom, hindsight is by general consent the least merciful, the most unforgiving. Euripides offered protection against thought storms: Second thoughts are ever wiser. Not all quotes on wisdom are to be taken seriously. Thomas Gray’s statement: Tis folly to be wise – would require much evidence to persuade me away from believing that one of the great tools of life, as God would have us live it, is found in wisdom – found both in nature and that found in faith from God.
Wisdom, as noted here and elsewhere in these Pages consists of thinking rightly from affirmative presuppositions, to concepts that seek support in evidence and with the evidence available to find understanding which combines the knowledge with effort to apply the results for the good of mankind in nature. It is peaceful, unrelated to threat or force from wise persons. Persuasion is its field of battle, and understanding of mankind’s faulty context in belief and action will parse wisdom to gain the best response. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020