Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 1 ▾
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1× 5
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Wisdom 15 about?

Breaking the indictment with thanksgiving, the fifteenth chapter turns to bless the God of Israel as gracious, patient, and true, and to affirm that to know Him is perfect righteousness. Against this the author sets the potter who shapes from one lump of clay both useful vessels and a counterfeit god, laboring over what he knows to be dead. He reserves particular scorn for the Egyptians, who worship even the basest of beasts. Marking off Israel's God from the idols of the nations, the chapter reassures the faithful that their hope rests on the living Lord.

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 15
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 15

Wisdom Chapter 15
15
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What is Wisdom 15 about?

Breaking the indictment with thanksgiving, the fifteenth chapter turns to bless the God of Israel as gracious, patient, and true, and to affirm that to know Him is perfect righteousness. Against this the author sets the potter who shapes from one lump of clay both useful vessels and a counterfeit god, laboring over what he knows to be dead. He reserves particular scorn for the Egyptians, who worship even the basest of beasts. Marking off Israel's God from the idols of the nations, the chapter reassures the faithful that their hope rests on the living Lord.