Scripture Daily

Context No. 534 of 4322 · Wisdom

Context · Reflection

Wisdom 5:1-16: in context

1Then the righteous man will stand in great boldness before the face of those who afflicted him, and those who make his labors of no account. 2When they see him, they will be troubled with terrible fear, and will be amazed at the marvel of salvation. 3They will speak among themselves repenting, and for distress of spirit they will groan, “This was he whom we used to hold in derision, as a parable of reproach. 4We fools considered his life madness, and his end without honor. 5How was he counted among sons of God? How is his lot among saints? 6Truly we went astray from the way of truth. The light of righteousness didn’t shine for us. The sun didn’t rise for us. 7We took our fill of the paths of lawlessness and destruction. We traveled through trackless deserts, but we didn’t know the Lord’s way. 8What did our arrogance profit us? What good have riches and boasting brought us? 9Those things all passed away as a shadow, like a rumor that runs by, 10like a ship passing through the billowy water, which, when it has gone by, there is no trace to be found, no pathway of its keel in the waves. 11Or it is like when a bird flies through the air, no evidence of its passage is found, but the light wind, lashed with the stroke of its pinions, and torn apart with the violent rush of the moving wings, is passed through. Afterwards no sign of its coming remains. 12Or it is like when an arrow is shot at a mark, the air it divided closes up again immediately, so that men don’t know where it passed through. 13So we also, as soon as we were born, ceased to be; and we had no sign of virtue to show, but we were utterly consumed in our wickedness.” 14Because the hope of the ungodly man is like chaff carried by the wind, and as foam vanishing before a tempest; and is scattered like smoke by the wind, and passes by as the remembrance of a guest who stays just a day. 15But the righteous live forever. Their reward is in the Lord, and the care for them with the Most High. 16Therefore they will receive the crown of royal dignity and the diadem of beauty from the Lord’s hand, because he will cover them with his right hand, and he will shield them with his arm.

This passage imagines a scene at the end of all things, and it is arresting. The righteous man, the one who was mocked and afflicted and whose life the world counted as a failure, stands in confidence before the very people who despised him. And they, seeing him vindicated and honored by God, are seized with terror and begin to speak among themselves, and what they say is one of the most honest confessions of regret in Scripture. This was the man, they say, we used to hold in derision, whose life we fools considered madness and whose death we thought disgraceful. And now, look, he is counted among the sons of God. We were the ones who went astray. The light of righteousness never shone for us.

Then they measure what their own lives amounted to, and reach for image after image of vanishing. What did our arrogance profit us, they ask, what did all our riches and boasting bring us? It has all passed away like a shadow, like a ship cutting through water that leaves no trace of its keel, like a bird flying through the air that leaves no track, like an arrow shot through the sky where the air closes up behind it. That is the sum of a life spent on arrogance and getting: a wake that closes over, a flight that leaves no mark. As soon as we were born, they conclude, we ceased to be, and had no sign of virtue to show. Everything they built to make themselves permanent left no trace at all.

That scene is meant to be looked at from where I stand now, while the outcome can still be changed. The world I live in largely shares the mockers' verdict, that the arrogant getting of riches and reputation is the substantial thing and a quiet life of righteousness is a waste. Wisdom lets me hear the mockers on the far side of death, discovering too late that they had it exactly backwards, that their whole enterprise closed over like water behind a ship. When I measure what makes a life count, am I building the wake that vanishes, or the righteousness that Wisdom says lasts forever, and which verdict am I living by now?

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