Scripture Daily

Context No. 739 of 4322 · Wisdom

Context · Reflection

Wisdom 10:17-21: in context

17She rendered to holy men a reward of their toils. She guided them along a marvelous way, and became to them a covering in the day-time, and a starry flame through the night. 18She brought them over the Red sea, and led them through much water; 19but she drowned their enemies, and she cast them up from the bottom of the deep. 20Therefore the righteous plundered the ungodly, and they sang praise to your holy name, O Lord, and extolled with one accord your hand that fought for them, 21because wisdom opened the mouth of the mute, and made the tongues of babes to speak clearly.

The Wisdom of Solomon walks back through Israel's history and credits every rescue to the same figure, Wisdom herself, personified as God's guiding presence. This passage reaches the exodus. Wisdom, it says, gave holy people the reward of their labors and led them along a marvelous way, becoming a shelter over them by day and a blaze of stars through the night. Anyone who knows the story recognizes the pillar of cloud and fire; the writer is telling you that the cloud was Wisdom, sheltering and steering the people through the desert. She brought them through the sea and drowned the army behind them.

Then comes the last line, and it is the most surprising. Wisdom, it says, opened the mouth of the mute and made the tongues of infants speak clearly. After the crossing came the song, and the writer imagines it reaching even those who had no words, the speechless and the small children, all of them suddenly able to sing. Deliverance does that. It loosens the tongue. The people who were groaning under Egypt come up out of the water singing, and the ones you would least expect to have a voice are the ones the rescue makes articulate.

The writer says the rescue at the sea gave even the mute a voice to sing. Has what God has carried me through loosened my tongue to say so, or have I stayed quiet about my own deliverance?

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