Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
← →
⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Wisdom 17 about?

Dwelling on the plague of darkness, the seventeenth chapter portrays the Egyptians shut up in a long night, bound not only by shadow but by the terrors of their own guilty minds. The author describes them paralyzed by phantoms, strange sounds, and dread, for 'wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very timorous' and always imagines the worst. Even those who thought themselves hidden were exposed by their fear, prisoners of a self-made prison. By making conscience the true torment of the wicked, the chapter shows that God's judgment reaches inward as well as outward.

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 17
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 17

Wisdom Chapter 17
17
← Chapter 16 Chapter 18 →
What is Wisdom 17 about?

Dwelling on the plague of darkness, the seventeenth chapter portrays the Egyptians shut up in a long night, bound not only by shadow but by the terrors of their own guilty minds. The author describes them paralyzed by phantoms, strange sounds, and dread, for 'wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very timorous' and always imagines the worst. Even those who thought themselves hidden were exposed by their fear, prisoners of a self-made prison. By making conscience the true torment of the wicked, the chapter shows that God's judgment reaches inward as well as outward.