3.10 Οἱ δὲ ἀσεβεῖς καθά ἐλογίσαντο ἕξουσιν ἐπιτιμίαν οἱ ἀμελήσαντες τοῦ δικαίου καὶ τοῦ κυρίου ἀποστάντες· The concept of punishment (ἐπιτιμία) in accordance with thought is an intensification of previous eschatologies of judgment which focus on deeds, but also presents an ironic reversal of the earlier verses in which what it is that the impious “think” or “reckon” is that death is the end of existence. The implication is that such will be their lot. 3.11 σοφίαν γὰρ καὶ παιδείαν ὁ ἐξουθενῶν ταλαίπωρος, καὶ κενὴ ἡ ἐλπὶς αὐτῶν, καὶ οἱ κόποι ἀνόνητοι, καὶ ἄχρηστα τὰ ἔργα αὐτῶν· The one who “despises” Sophia and education (παιδεία) is ironically revealed to be the one whose works are genuinely useless (ἄχρηστα), contrary to their own assessment of the just man earlier on. 3.12 αἱ γυναῖκες αὐτῶν ἄφρονες, καὶ πονηρὰ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν, ἐπικατάρατος ἡ γένεσις αὐτῶν. That the impious have foolish wives could call back to a variety of biblical and/or classical precedents of polemic. Proverbs, for example, structures its conception of Lady Wisdom in contrast to Lady Folly, and the book closes with an idealized depiction of the wise, virtuous wife who embodies wisdom. The implication here may be that just as the impious have foolish wives, the just man has Sophia for his bride. The idea that the “origin” or “becoming” of the children of the impious is “accursed” contrasts with the divine origins (γενέσεις) of the kosmos, which are preservative, salvific, wholesome, etc. (σωτηρίοι). 3.13 ὅτι μακαρία στεῖρα ἡ ἀμίαντος, ἥτις οὐκ ἔγνω κοίτην ἐν παραπτώματι, ἕξει καρπὸν ἐν ἐπισκοπῇ ψυχῶν The “undefiled stock” here does not seem to yet be a holy seed of Israel, in the sense of a racist kind of superiority for Jews over gentiles, but is rather the lineage of the just man. For the author of Wisdom, it is true that the people of Israel are the collective just man vis-a-vis the nations, but this is not based on a genetic feature of Israel’s origin, but rather on the basis of that which the book opens with: love of justice and consequent intimacy with Sophia and God. The very appeal to the rulers of the earth to embrace wisdom that is the didactic appeal of the book implies that this is a basic human potency, not something specific to a particular nation, even if a particular nation happens to embody or host Wisdom among the nations. 3.14 καὶ εὐνοῦχος ὁ μὴ ἐργασάμενος ἐν χειρὶ ἀνόμημα μηδὲ ἐνθυμηθεὶς κατὰ τοῦ κυρίου πονηρά, δοθήσεται γὰρ αὐτῷ τῆς πίστεως χάρις ἐκλεκτὴ καὶ κλῆρος ἐν ναῷ κυρίου θυμηρέστερος. Eunuchs are excluded from the liturgical assembly by the Torah (Deut 23:1) but Deutero-Isaiah envisions a future in which they will be made members of the assembly (Isa 56:4). It may be that Wisdom is here conflating this expectation with the closely related idea that God will make some of the gentiles to be priests and Levitical officiants in the Temple cult (66:21). 3.15 ἀγαθῶν γὰρ πόνων καρπὸς εὐκλεής, καὶ ἀδιάπτωτος ἡ ῥίζα τῆς φρονήσεως. 3.16 τέκνα δὲ μοιχῶν ἀτέλεστα ἔσται, καὶ ἐκ παρανόμου κοίτης σπέρμα ἀφανισθήσεται. The distinction between the children of the just and the children of the impious is clarified as being the difference between the legitimate children of a marriage and the illegitimate children of adultery or other unlawful union (μοιχῶν; παρανόμου κοίτης). It is worth saying that the Torah at least and Ancient Judaism generally acknowledged various kinds of relationships between marriage and adultery as having varying degrees of legitimacy; it is also the case that this was a culture where polygamy, specifically polygyny, was normative until the advent of Greek and Roman cultural mores that privileged monogamy. Nevertheless, licit sexual activity for most ancient people would have included, in essence, any non-immediate family member over whom a male head of household had plenipotentiary power, and for the wealthy included concubines and slaves. We shall see over the course of the book that Wisdom maps onto a changing moral landscape in Ancient Judaism with respect to its concept of licit sex and marriage, and will want to ask how its concept of licit sexuality compares and contrasts with that of other Jewish thinkers of its historical and cultural context. 3.17 ἐάν τε γὰρ μακρόβιοι γένωνται, εἰς οὐθὲν λογισθήσονται, καὶ ἄτιμον ἐπ׳ ἐσχάτων τὸ γῆρας αὐτῶν· This is a level of punitive effect for the children of illicit unions that is minimally rhetorical hyperbole and maximally reflective of a real kind of discrimination against a category of society that would have been fairly sizable in antiquity as today. 3.18 ἐάν τε ὀξέως τελευτήσωσιν, οὐχ ἕξουσιν ἐλπίδα οὐδὲ ἐν ἡμέρᾳ διαγνώσεως παραμύθιον· 3.19 γενεᾶς γὰρ ἀδίκου χαλεπὰ τὰ τέλη. Does the argument of Wisdom admit of counterexample here, or does the author really believe that the children of the unjust are doomed to the same fate as them? Whether the author of Wisdom himself would have drawn this conclusion, I might offer the possibility that just as the just man is a child of God not by genetics (that is, not from the start) but by assimilation to justice, so perhaps the “holy lineage” and unjust lineage are also determined by deeds. It is at least hard to imagine that the author of Wisdom would really prove to be a genealogical determinist.
Comments
No posts