Written in Solomon's name by an unknown hand in Greek-speaking Alexandria, this meditation on wisdom has been read across the Church for two thousand years, received as Scripture by Catholics and the Orthodox and set apart from the canon by the Reformers. It opens with a summons to the judges of the earth: love righteousness, seek the Lord in singleness of heart, for wisdom will not enter a deceitful soul nor lodge in a body enslaved to sin. God's own Spirit fills the world and holds all things together, so that no secret murmur and no whispered slander escapes the ear that hears everything. Against a culture that courted death, the writer sets the book's founding claim: God did not make death, nor does He delight in the ruin of the living, for He created all things to exist, and righteousness itself cannot die. The ungodly summon death by their own words and works, and make a covenant with it, being worthy to take part with death.