Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 2 ▾
Catechism of the Catholic Church 4× 20-21, 23-26 City of God 2× 20
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Wisdom 11 about?

Carrying the story into the wilderness, the eleventh chapter tells how wisdom prospered Israel's works through the holy prophet, giving them water from the rock when they thirsted. The author dwells on a pattern of fitting judgment: the Egyptians were punished through the very things by which Israel was helped, their river turned to blood while God's people drank from stone. From this he rises to the mercy behind the justice, declaring that God loves everything that exists and loathes nothing He has made, sparing all because all are His. Setting judgment within love, the chapter holds together the book's twin themes of God's justice and His care.

Historical backdrop

The book comes from Alexandria, the Greek city on the Nile that Alexander founded and the Ptolemies made the intellectual capital of the age. There the largest community of the dispersion lived in Greek, read its Scriptures in the Greek of the Septuagint, and argued philosophy beside the great library, all under the constant pull of a cultured paganism. Wisdom is written into that pressure, in the elegant Greek of a Jew who would not trade the God of his fathers for the wisdom of the Greeks.

The Church Fathers on Wisdom 11
Deuterocanon (Catholic & Orthodox) · Accepted as canonical Scripture by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and included in the original 1611 KJV (between the Old and New Testaments). Not in the Protestant 66-book canon. Read with the same care you bring to other Scripture, conscious that Protestants and Catholics weigh its authority differently.

Wisdom 11

Wisdom Chapter 11
11
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What is Wisdom 11 about?

Carrying the story into the wilderness, the eleventh chapter tells how wisdom prospered Israel's works through the holy prophet, giving them water from the rock when they thirsted. The author dwells on a pattern of fitting judgment: the Egyptians were punished through the very things by which Israel was helped, their river turned to blood while God's people drank from stone. From this he rises to the mercy behind the justice, declaring that God loves everything that exists and loathes nothing He has made, sparing all because all are His. Setting judgment within love, the chapter holds together the book's twin themes of God's justice and His care.