Scripture Daily

Context No. 1938 of 4322 · Wisdom

Context · Reflection

Wisdom 2:1-16: in context

1For they said within themselves, with unsound reasoning, “Our life is short and sorrowful. There is no healing when a man comes to his end, and no one was ever known who was released from Hades. 2Because we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we will be as though we had never been, because the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our heart, 3which being extinguished, the body will be turned into ashes, and the spirit will be dispersed as thin air. 4Our name will be forgotten in time. No one will remember our works. Our life will pass away as the traces of a cloud, and will be scattered as is a mist, when it is chased by the rays of the sun, and overcome by its heat. 5For our allotted time is the passing of a shadow, and our end doesn’t retreat, because it is securely sealed, and no one turns it back. 6“Come therefore and let’s enjoy the good things that exist. Let’s use the creation earnestly as in our youth. 7Let’s fill ourselves with costly wine and perfumes, and let no spring flower pass us by. 8Let’s crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither. 9Let none of us go without his share in our proud revelry. Let’s leave tokens of mirth everywhere, because this is our portion, and this is our lot. 10Let’s oppress the righteous poor. Let’s not spare the widow, nor regard the gray hair of the old man. 11But let our strength be a law of righteousness; for that which is weak is proven useless. 12But let’s lie in wait for the righteous man, because he annoys us, is contrary to our works, reproaches us with sins against the law, and charges us with sins against our training. 13He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. 14He became to us a reproof of our thoughts. 15He is grievous to us even to look at, because his life is unlike other men’s, and his paths are strange. 16We were regarded by him as something worthless, and he abstains from our ways as from uncleanness. He calls the latter end of the righteous happy. He boasts that God is his father.

The book of Wisdom records the reasoning of the ungodly. Life is short and there is no hereafter, they say; we came by chance and will be forgotten; so let us seize every pleasure, crown ourselves with rosebuds, and let none of us miss his share of revelry. And they turn against the righteous: let us oppress the poor, let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he reproaches us and is contrary to our ways. He is grievous to us even to look at, because his life is unlike other men's, and his paths are strange.

The most revealing part of this passage is why the ungodly hate the righteous man: because his life reproaches them. They do not hate him for any wrong he has done them; they hate him because his very life is a standing rebuke to their ways. His goodness exposes their evil; his integrity shames their corruption; his different path calls their own into question. He is grievous to us even to look at, they say, because his life is unlike ours. His mere existence, living rightly, is an accusation, and they resent him for it. There is a piercing truth here about why the world often resents and opposes the genuinely righteous. It is not usually for any harm the righteous do, but because a good life is a silent rebuke to those who do not live it. The light exposes the darkness; the honest person's integrity makes the dishonest uncomfortable; the one who will not join in the revelry or the oppression stands as a reproach to those who do. And so the righteous are resented, opposed, sometimes hated, not for wrongdoing but for the goodness that rebukes. Everyone who does evil, Jesus said, hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds be exposed. This helps us understand a hard experience: that living rightly can provoke hostility rather than approval, that our integrity may make us disliked rather than admired, that the world may resent us not for our faults but for our faithfulness. And most strikingly, this passage from Wisdom reads almost as a prophecy of Christ himself, the righteous one whom the world hated, plotted against, and put to death precisely because his life and words were a rebuke to their evil. If the world hates you, Jesus told his disciples, know that it hated me first. The hatred of the righteous by the ungodly, because the righteous life rebukes them, is an old pattern, foreshadowed here in Wisdom and fulfilled in the cross. It should not surprise us, then, if living rightly provokes hostility; the good life has always been a reproach to those who reject it, and they have always resented the reproach.

Am I surprised or discouraged when living rightly provokes hostility rather than approval, when my integrity makes me disliked rather than admired, or can I understand from this passage, which foreshadows the hatred the world showed Christ himself, that the ungodly often resent the righteous not for any wrong but because a good life is a silent rebuke to their ways?

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