Scripture Daily

Context No. 1263 of 4322 · Wisdom

Context · Reflection

Wisdom 18:1-16: in context

1But for your holy ones there was great light. Their enemies, hearing their voice but not seeing their form, counted it a happy thing that they too had suffered, 2yet for that they do not hurt them, though wronged by them before, they are thankful; and because they had been at variance with them, they begged for pardon. 3Therefore you provided a burning pillar of fire, to be a guide for your people’s unknown journey, and a harmless sun for their glorious exile. 4For the Egyptians well deserved to be deprived of light and imprisoned by darkness, they who had imprisoned your children, through whom the incorruptible light of the law was to be given to the race of men. 5After they had taken counsel to kill the babes of the holy ones, and when a single child had been abandoned and saved to convict them of their sin, you took away from them their multitude of children, and destroyed all their army together in a mighty flood. 6Our fathers were made aware of that night beforehand, that, having sure knowledge, they might be cheered by the oaths which they had trusted. 7Salvation of the righteous and destruction of the enemies was expected by your people. 8For as you took vengeance on the adversaries, by the same means, calling us to yourself, you glorified us. 9For holy children of good men offered sacrifice in secret, and with one consent they agreed to the covenant of the divine law, that they would partake alike in the same good things and the same perils, the fathers already leading the sacred songs of praise. 10But the discordant cry of the enemies echoed back, and a pitiful voice of lamentation for children was spread abroad. 11Both servant and master were punished with the same just doom, and the commoner suffering the same as king; 12Yes, they all together, under one form of death, had corpses without number. For the living were not sufficient even to bury them, Since at a single stroke, their most cherished offspring was consumed. 13For while they were disbelieving all things by reason of the enchantments, upon the destruction of the firstborn they confessed the people to be God’s children. 14For while peaceful silence wrapped all things, and night in her own swiftness was half spent, 15your all-powerful word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne, a stern warrior, into the midst of the doomed land, 16bearing as a sharp sword your authentic commandment, and standing, it filled all things with death, and while it touched the sky it stood upon the earth.

The Wisdom of Solomon retells the night of the exodus, the Passover, when God struck the firstborn of Egypt while sheltering Israel. It describes the holy ones offering sacrifice in secret and singing while their enemies wailed over their dead. And at the center is a striking image: while peaceful silence covered everything and the night was half spent, your all-powerful word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne, into the doomed land, a stern warrior bearing your command, filling all things with death, touching heaven and standing on earth.

The image the passage reaches for is the word of God leaping down from the throne of heaven into the world at midnight. In its original setting it describes the destroying word that struck Egypt, but the picture, the divine Word coming down from the royal throne in the deep silence of night, has struck Christian readers ever since as a shadow of something greater. The church has long heard in it a foreshadowing of the incarnation, the Word of God leaping down from heaven into the world, and it is no accident that these verses have been read at Christmas, applied to the coming of Christ, the eternal Word, into the silent night. What in Wisdom is a warrior of judgment becomes, in the fullness of time, a child in a manger, the Word made flesh, come down not to fill the land with death but to bring life. The deeper truth is that God's word is not distant and abstract; it comes down, it leaps from the throne into the actual world, it touches both heaven and earth at once. At the exodus it came as a judge; at Bethlehem it came as a Savior. But in both, the pattern holds: the Word of God does not stay in heaven; it comes down, into the night, into the world, to do what God has purposed.

Do I know God's word as something that stays distant and abstract, or as the living Word that leaped from heaven into the world, come down all the way to a manger to reach me?

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