Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Wisdom 19 about?

Bringing the meditation to its end, the nineteenth chapter recounts the Red Sea, where a dry path opened for Israel while the pursuing Egyptians were swallowed by the returning waters. The author reflects that the elements themselves were refashioned to serve God's purpose, the whole creation reordered so that His people might be preserved and their enemies undone. He closes by declaring that in every place and time God magnified and glorified His people and did not forsake them. Ending where it began, the book rests its case that divine wisdom and justice keep the righteous through every trial, the assurance it offered Jews holding their faith amid a pagan world.

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 19
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 19

Wisdom Chapter 19
19
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What is Wisdom 19 about?

Bringing the meditation to its end, the nineteenth chapter recounts the Red Sea, where a dry path opened for Israel while the pursuing Egyptians were swallowed by the returning waters. The author reflects that the elements themselves were refashioned to serve God's purpose, the whole creation reordered so that His people might be preserved and their enemies undone. He closes by declaring that in every place and time God magnified and glorified His people and did not forsake them. Ending where it began, the book rests its case that divine wisdom and justice keep the righteous through every trial, the assurance it offered Jews holding their faith amid a pagan world.