Wisdom Calls Out

A crowded city gate. Traders shouting prices. Donkeys braying. People pushing past. And above all the noise, one voice rings out. “Listen! I am calling to you. Yes, you.”

The book of Proverbs is a collection of wise sayings, gathered to teach young people how to live well in God's world. Much of it is short, sharp advice. But in chapters eight and nine, the book does something different. It paints a picture. Wisdom becomes a person, a woman who goes out into the streets to find people. She does not hide in a library or wait for clever people to come to her. She goes where everybody is. The hilltop. The crossroads. The gate into the city.

“To you, O people, I call,” she says. “You who are simple, learn to be sensible. You who are foolish, get understanding.” Notice who she calls first. Not the experts. The ones who know they do not know much. She makes big claims. “Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than the finest gold. Wisdom is better than jewels. Nothing you could ever want compares with her.” She says kings rule well because of her. She says, “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently will find me.” And she says what wisdom starts with. To fear the Lord, she says, is to hate evil: pride, arrogance, the crooked mouth. Wisdom is not just being clever. It is being good.

Then her speech reaches back to the very beginning. “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his way, before his works of old.” Before the mountains were settled. Before the springs bubbled up from the deep. “When he set the heavens in place, I was there. When he marked out the boundaries of the sea, so the waters would not overstep his command, I was there beside him.” And here is the lovely part. She was not standing stiffly at attention. “I was his delight day by day, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world, and delighting in the children of mankind.” The same wisdom that shaped the stars takes joy in people. And she ends her speech with a promise. “Whoever finds me finds life.”

In chapter nine, Wisdom throws a party. She has built her house and carved out its seven pillars. She has prepared meat and mixed her wine and set her table. She sends out her servants to call from the highest points of the town. “Whoever is simple, come in here! Come, eat my bread and drink the wine I have mixed. Leave your foolish ways, and live. Walk in the way of understanding.” In the middle of the chapter comes the line the whole book leans on. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

But there is another voice. Proverbs calls her Folly. She is loud, says the writer, and she knows nothing. She sits at the door of her house, high up in the town, and calls out to people going straight on their way. And she uses exactly the same words. “Whoever is simple, come in here!” Then she adds her own twist. “Stolen water is sweet. Bread eaten in secret is delicious.” It sounds exciting. It sounds like a shortcut. But the chapter ends with a warning. The people who go in do not realise where that road leads. Her guests end up in the depths of the grave.

Why does Wisdom stand at the city gate? In ancient Israel, the gate was far more than a doorway. It was the town's meeting place, marketplace and courtroom. The book of Ruth shows Boaz sitting at the gate with the town elders to settle a family legal matter in front of witnesses. The prophet Amos told people to establish justice in the gate. So Wisdom does not shout from a quiet corner. She speaks right where decisions are made, deals are struck and lives are shaped.

Wisdom calls out. You'll find her in Proverbs, chapters eight and nine. Two voices, using the same invitation. One table leads to life; the other only looks good from the doorway. So here is a question to take with you. When you hear two voices calling you this week, how will you tell which one is Wisdom?