“She is the book
of God’s commandments…”
--Baruch 4:1
She is. In Hebrew
literature, wisdom is depicted as feminine, referred to as “she.” And the first
question I always stumble over is: why? Why would a patriarchal society depict
this essential quality as feminine? There are those who argue that it is simply
a figure of speech, like calling a car or a ship “she.” But, throughout much of
the wisdom literature she is not only referred to with a feminine
pronoun, but also with feminine traits, feminine attributes. As far as I can
tell from my brief research, there isn’t an answer, but only speculation. But,
for me the question itself seems so much more important: Why? What did this patriarchal society see in
the feminie that conformed to their archetype of wisdom? Was it simply that they had seen too many men
behave like fools? Too many men, kings, judges, priests, rabbis, merchants and
even shepherds had made it utterly clear that wisdom wasn’t something that came
easily to men?
I don’t know. But, in my own foolishness, I like to think
about it.
And speaking of foolishness, here is a brief reflection on
this passage. First, Baruch is one of
the Deuterocanonical books in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, but not a part
of the canon in Protestant or Jewish scripture. It is a prophetic work
attributed to Jeremiah’s secretary, Baruch (app. 580 BC), though some scholars
think it was actually written by an anonymous author in the first century.
Now, back to that She who is the book of God’s commandments.
This phrase comes near the end of a lengthy passage on the foolishness of
Israel. In ironic and sometimes bitter
terms, the author dwells on Israel’s rejection of wisdom, in fact her almost
complete ignorance of her ways. “Nothing
has been heard of her in Canaan, nothing has been seen of her in Teman…” (3:22)
and no one seems to know her path. The
prophet tells the people, look around! You want to know why you were conquered
and dragged off to Babylon? Because you
have “forsaken the fountain of wisdom!” And what is that fountain? The book of
God’s commandments! The Word of God. The Law!
Israel is suffering in exile because she rejected the Law. And –as we see time and again in the books of
the prophets—to reject the Law of God is to choose exile; it is the path of
foolishness. God’s law is love, mercy,
justice; to reject it is to dwell in anxiety and fear and isolation. A
permanent state of pandemic, if you will!
So, how do we return from exile? How do we find Wisdom? Open the book! She is
the book of God’s commandments. For us,
today, we look at our Bibles and we might wonder, who can read all that? And
where do you start? For me, it was page
1; Genesis 1. But, for some, it might be easier to start with a psalm (open
your Bible right at the middle and you will probably find yourself in the
Psalms). Or maybe you want to read one
of the Gospels first. Mark is the shortest.
But, no matter what—open your Bible; just open the book. She is there;
in fact, she is the book. She dwells there in the revelation of God’s loving
presence; a wisdom beyond any you could imagine.
Lost in my Covid anxieties and distracted by movie making, I
missed a few book of the Bible as I was reading my way through the prophets. I
want to go back and pick up a few of these as I go. This is the first of one of
those looks back.
I think one of the things God’s word teaches us, is to stop
being so distracted. Be attentive, be present to the moment. As Christ reminds us in Matthew, don’t worry
about tomorrow. There is enough of life today, if only you will live it.
This morning, a man and his wife were walking past as I sat
on the porch. I waved, and they waved back. And then I noticed them pausing,
and overheard him telling her,
“He’s that guy! The one who walks and reads at the same
time.”
So, I got up and walked over to say hello. As I came up, the man asked me,
“What do you have there?”
And I looked down to see I was still holding a couple of
pages of poetry from a friend. I had been lingering over them as I sipped my
coffee. As I started to tell them what it was, I heard his wife exclaim:
“Oh Lord, he loves poetry! You should see the shelves of
books he’s got!”
And suddenly, on a Sunday morning, here I was standing at
the curb talking with an almost stranger about something we both hold so very
dear. And I wondered: Does this happen
to anyone else? I love this life. I love the way the squirrels leap about my
lawn. I love the way the sunlight looks on the green of the leaves. I love the
sudden comforting breeze on a July afternoon. And I love the way strangers
become friends.
Less than an hour later, this couple drove up in front of
our house and the man got out of his can and handed me a book from his shelf,
some poetry he loves and wanted to share.
And that seemed to me a revelation of its own. We don’t hoard or hide the things we truly
love. We share them. Maybe that is how God feels about His law. In fact, maybe
that is the heart of His law: the golden rule, so to speak. Be generous. Is that what it means to be
wise? That beautiful generosity of self-giving? Kind of like a mother's love? In my foolishness, that’s another one of those things that I wonder about.
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