The words translated in Authorised Version, 'As one brought up with
him,' are rendered in Revised Version, 'as a master workman,' and seem
intended to represent Wisdom--that is, of course, the divine
Wisdom--as having been God's agent in the creative act. In the
preceding context, she triumphantly proclaims her existence before His
'works of old,' and that she was with God, 'or ever the earth was.'
Before the everlasting mountains she was, before fountains flashed in
the light and refreshed the earth, her waters flowed. But that
presence is not all, Wisdom was the divine agent in creation. That
thought goes beyond the ancient one: 'He spake and it was done.'
Genesis regards the divine command as the cause of creatural being.
God said, 'Let there be--and there was': the forthputting of His will
was the impulse to which creatures sprang into existence at response.
That is a great thought, but the meditative thinker in our text has
pondered over the facts of creation, and notwithstanding all their
apparent incompletenesses and errors, has risen to the conclusion that
they can all be vindicated as 'very good.' To him, this wonderful
universe is not only the product of a sovereign will, but of one
guided in its operations by all-seeing Wisdom.
Then the relation of this divine Wisdom to God is represented as being
a continual delight and a childlike rejoicing in Him, or as the word
literally means, a 'sporting' in Him. Whatever energy of creative
action is suggested by the preceding figure of a 'master workman,'
that energy had no effort. To the divine Wisdom creation was an easy
task. She was not so occupied with it as to interrupt her delight in
contemplating God, and her task gave her infinite satisfaction, for
she 'rejoiced always' before Him, and she rejoiced in His habitable
earth. The writer does not shrink from ascribing to the agent of
creation something like the glow of satisfaction that we feel over a
piece of well-done work, the poet's or the painter's rapture as he
sees his thoughts bodied forth in melody or glowing on canvas.
But there is a greater thought than these here, for the writer adds,
'and my delight was with the sons of men.' It is noteworthy that the
same word is used in the preceding verse. The 'delight of the heavenly
Wisdom in God' is not unlike that directed to man. 'The sons of men'
are the last, noblest work of Creation, and on them, as the shining
apex, her delight settles. The words describe not only what was true
when man came into being, as the utmost possible climax of creatural
excellence, but are the revelation of what still remains true.
One cannot but feel how in all this most striking disclosure of the
depths of God, a deeper mystery is on the verge of revelation. There
is here, as we have said, a personification, but there seems to be a
Person shining through, or dimly discerned moving behind, the curtain.
Wisdom is the agent of creation. She creates with ease, and in
creating delights in God as well as in her work, which calls for no
effort in doing, and done, is all very good. She delights most of all
in the sons of men, and that delight is permanent. Does not this
unknown Jewish thinker, too, belong, as well as prophet and psalmist,
to those who went before crying, Hosanna to Him that cometh in the
name of the Lord? Let us turn to the New Testament and find an answer
to the question.