Wisdom at the Gate of Time

Prv 8:1-4

Amichai Lau-Lavie (he/him)

Nov 14, 2024

Wisdom speaks up, in her big voice, at the crossroads and at the city gates, echoing the oldest, primal and primordial power that defines her legacy and defies the patriarchal male-led reality that is all we have been taught to know. Yet this text reveals what many of us have always suspected - she was here from the very beginning and is the essence of our story of creation.

הֲלֹֽא־חׇכְמָ֥ה תִקְרָ֑א וּ֝תְבוּנָ֗ה תִּתֵּ֥ן קוֹלָֽהּ׃ בְּרֹאשׁ־מְרֹמִ֥ים עֲלֵי־דָ֑רֶךְ בֵּ֖ית נְתִיב֣וֹת נִצָּֽבָה׃ לְיַד־שְׁעָרִ֥ים לְפִי־קָ֑רֶת מְב֖וֹא פְתָחִ֣ים תָּרֹֽנָּה׃

אֲלֵיכֶ֣ם אִישִׁ֣ים אֶקְרָ֑א וְ֝קוֹלִ֗י אֶל־בְּנֵ֥י אָדָֽם׃

This is Wisdom calling,

Understanding raising her voice.

She takes her stand at the topmost heights,

By the wayside, at the crossroads,

Near the gates at the city entrance;

At the entryways, she shouts,

“O human race, I call to you;

My cry is to all mortals.

We wonder, along with many over the generations: Who is She who is this Wisdom?

As we’ve written earlier, she may be an echo of an earlier deity familiar from other cultures, not repressed exactly in the Bible but represented as a mostly disembodied voice without the familiar face or body that was how most ancient goddesses were recognized.

Our wise teacher Rabbi Jill Hammer helps understand the evolution and hidden hints about her possible identity:

“In the Book of Proverbs, Wisdom (Chochmah) appears as a woman standing at the crossroads. In ancient Greece, the crossroads was a place sacred to Hecate, crone-goddess of magic—indeed, the Talmud tells us that two women sitting opposite one another at a crossroad are surely doing magic. According to Daniel Dever, the gates of the city were once places of worship for a number of deities, before the monotheistic reforms of King Josiah and the Deuteronomic school.

Wisdom is a kind of demigoddess, though her status in relationship to God is not clear…

Wisdom offers her teachings at the gate: the place of community gathering and of transition. She enlightens us to the perils of foolishness and the gifts of understanding. She attracts us with her seriousness and her longing. When we sit at her feet, she offers us full consciousness as human beings.”

As we’ve seen in the first chapter of Proverbs, it is her voice that hides within these pages, often mistranslated and obscuring the original feminine Hebrew that clearly defines her gendered origin.

Chapter 8 is all about her and is in her voice, including some of the most dramatic claims to fame of just how ancient and important she was and is to us.

She shows up in the very beginning of time - here portrayed as God’s original partner in creation. Perhaps it is a later rendition that minimizes the mother of the world’s role in being the originator - the one to birth - of all life, including our version of a creator God who is male.

At the risk of a longer than usual entry, it seems worthwhile to include more of this chapter’s stunning poetry, before focusing on one of the more startling fragments that frames her origin in the time before time.

“I am the deep grain of creation,

the subtle current of life.

God fashioned me before all things:

I am the blueprint of creation.

I was there from the beginning,

from before there was a beginning.

I am independent of time and space, earth and sky.

I was there before depth was conceived,

before springs bubbled with water,

before the shaping of mountains and hills,

before God fashioned the earth and its bounty,

before the first dust settled on the land.

When God prepared the heavens,

I was there.

When the circle of the earth was etched into the face of the deep,

I was there.

When the stars and planets soared into their orbit,

when the deepest oceans found their level

and the dry land established the shores, I was there.

I stood beside God as firstborn and friend.

My nature is joy,

and I gave God constant delight.

Now that the world is inhabited,

I rejoice in it.

I will be your true delight if you will heed my teachings.

Follow me and be happy.

Practice my discipline and grow wise

Each of these verses is astounding and powerful - and a few of them caught the eye of readers who wanted to delve deeper into these mysteries.

These two verses have in particular intrigued commentators over the ages:

יְֽהֹוָ֗ה קָ֭נָנִי רֵאשִׁ֣ית דַּרְכּ֑וֹ קֶ֖דֶם מִפְעָלָ֣יו מֵאָֽז׃

וָאֶהְיֶ֥ה אֶצְל֗וֹ אָ֫מ֥וֹן וָאֶהְיֶ֣ה שַׁ֭עֲשׁוּעִים י֤וֹם ׀ י֑וֹם מְשַׂחֶ֖קֶת לְפָנָ֣יו בְּכׇל־עֵֽת׃

“I was created at the beginning of GOD’s course

As the first of the works of old.

I was with God as a confidant,

A source of delight every day,

Rejoicing before God at all times,

Rabbi Jill Hammer continues her helpful analysis of these words:

“Wisdom is the first companion of God. She is a little girl playing with the globe of the world, and she is an advisor and designer, participating in the plans of Adonai. Wisdom is not a wife of God; she is more like a friend.

The word ashrei or “happy” occurs again and again in Wisdom’s story. In the verses above, for example, we find the phrase: “happy are they who keep my ways.” The word ashrei is the echo of Asherah, mother of the gods in the region of Canaan, counselor of her husband and children. It seems that the author of the Book of Proverbs is attempting to meld some of the old goddess religion into the new Israelite religion, by bringing the Goddess along as Lady Wisdom.”

Rabbi Hammer’s radical reading of the ancient goddess as inspiration for Lady Wisdom is a bit too much for most classical commentators and requires the more traditional readers to come up with other ways of understanding who she is and what her role may be.

The most creative and powerful reading comes from early rabbinic sources, quoted often in the Talmudic text.

According to this view -Lady Wisdom is in fact the Torah -- the written and spoken body of sacred knowledge unique to the Jewish story. It is Torah that was there from the beginning - alongside or somehow part of - God.

This 4th century CE Midrashic musing brings a metaphor to unpack this idea:

“Rabbi Hoshaya taught the verses of Proverbs 8:30, "I was with God as a confidant, A source of delight every day,"

The Hebrew word Amon means “confidant” or "hidden" or "artisan." The Torah is saying, "I was the artisan's tool of God."

In the way of the world, a human king who builds a castle does not do so from his own knowledge, but rather from the knowledge of an architect, and the architect does not build it from his own knowledge, but rather he has scrolls and books in order to know how to build rooms and doorways. So, too, God gazed into the Torah and created the world. Similarly, the Torah says, “I was created at the beginning of GOD’s course” Through Torah God created heaven and earth.”

So who is she who calls out at the crossroads, at the public places and the city gates? Is she an ancient goddess disguised as wisdom, or the Torah - always referred to in the feminine in Hebrew - the blueprint of existence?

There are radical theological implications to how we read and make sense of these verses. We are invited to listen to her - in whatever way she calls on us to read between the lines, to listen beyond the known, and to meet her at the crossroads where all transitions and transformations await.

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Below the Bible Belt

Wisdom at the Gate of Time

Prv 8:1-4

אֲלֵיכֶ֣ם אִישִׁ֣ים אֶקְרָ֑א וְ֝קוֹלִ֗י אֶל־בְּנֵ֥י אָדָֽם׃

This is Wisdom calling,

Understanding raising her voice.

She takes her stand at the topmost heights,

By the wayside, at the crossroads,

Near the gates at the city entrance;

At the entryways, she shouts,

“O human race, I call to you;

My cry is to all mortals.

Prv 8:1-4

We wonder, along with many over the generations: Who is She who is this Wisdom?

As we’ve written earlier, she may be an echo of an earlier deity familiar from other cultures, not repressed exactly in the Bible but represented as a mostly disembodied voice without the familiar face or body that was how most ancient goddesses were recognized.

Our wise teacher Rabbi Jill Hammer helps understand the evolution and hidden hints about her possible identity:

Wisdom is a kind of demigoddess, though her status in relationship to God is not clear…

As we’ve seen in the first chapter of Proverbs, it is her voice that hides within these pages, often mistranslated and obscuring the original feminine Hebrew that clearly defines her gendered origin.

Chapter 8 is all about her and is in her voice, including some of the most dramatic claims to fame of just how ancient and important she was and is to us.

She shows up in the very beginning of time - here portrayed as God’s original partner in creation. Perhaps it is a later rendition that minimizes the mother of the world’s role in being the originator - the one to birth - of all life, including our version of a creator God who is male.

At the risk of a longer than usual entry, it seems worthwhile to include more of this chapter’s stunning poetry, before focusing on one of the more startling fragments that frames her origin in the time before time.

“I am the deep grain of creation,

the subtle current of life.

God fashioned me before all things:

I am the blueprint of creation.

I was there from the beginning,

from before there was a beginning.

I am independent of time and space, earth and sky.

I was there before depth was conceived,

before springs bubbled with water,

before the shaping of mountains and hills,

before God fashioned the earth and its bounty,

before the first dust settled on the land.

When God prepared the heavens,

I was there.

When the circle of the earth was etched into the face of the deep,

I was there.

When the stars and planets soared into their orbit,

when the deepest oceans found their level

and the dry land established the shores, I was there.

I stood beside God as firstborn and friend.

My nature is joy,

and I gave God constant delight.

Now that the world is inhabited,

I rejoice in it.

I will be your true delight if you will heed my teachings.

Follow me and be happy.

Practice my discipline and grow wise

Prv. 8:22-32

Each of these verses is astounding and powerful - and a few of them caught the eye of readers who wanted to delve deeper into these mysteries.

These two verses have in particular intrigued commentators over the ages:

יְֽהֹוָ֗ה קָ֭נָנִי רֵאשִׁ֣ית דַּרְכּ֑וֹ קֶ֖דֶם מִפְעָלָ֣יו מֵאָֽז׃

וָאֶהְיֶ֥ה אֶצְל֗וֹ אָ֫מ֥וֹן וָאֶהְיֶ֣ה שַׁ֭עֲשׁוּעִים י֤וֹם ׀ י֑וֹם מְשַׂחֶ֖קֶת לְפָנָ֣יו בְּכׇל־עֵֽת׃

“I was created at the beginning of GOD’s course

As the first of the works of old.

I was with God as a confidant,

A source of delight every day,

Rejoicing before God at all times,

Prv. 8:22, 30

Rabbi Jill Hammer continues her helpful analysis of these words:

“Wisdom is the first companion of God. She is a little girl playing with the globe of the world, and she is an advisor and designer, participating in the plans of Adonai. Wisdom is not a wife of God; she is more like a friend.

Rabbi Hammer’s radical reading of the ancient goddess as inspiration for Lady Wisdom is a bit too much for most classical commentators and requires the more traditional readers to come up with other ways of understanding who she is and what her role may be.

The most creative and powerful reading comes from early rabbinic sources, quoted often in the Talmudic text.

According to this view -Lady Wisdom is in fact the Torah -- the written and spoken body of sacred knowledge unique to the Jewish story. It is Torah that was there from the beginning - alongside or somehow part of - God.

This 4th century CE Midrashic musing brings a metaphor to unpack this idea:

“Rabbi Hoshaya taught the verses of Proverbs 8:30, "I was with God as a confidant, A source of delight every day,"

The Hebrew word Amon means “confidant” or "hidden" or "artisan." The Torah is saying, "I was the artisan's tool of God."

So who is she who calls out at the crossroads, at the public places and the city gates? Is she an ancient goddess disguised as wisdom, or the Torah - always referred to in the feminine in Hebrew - the blueprint of existence?

There are radical theological implications to how we read and make sense of these verses. We are invited to listen to her - in whatever way she calls on us to read between the lines, to listen beyond the known, and to meet her at the crossroads where all transitions and transformations await.

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