Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Wisdom 3 about?

Turning from the plots of the wicked to the destiny of the faithful, the third chapter affirms that 'the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them.' Though in the eyes of the foolish they seemed to die, their departure is peace and their hope full of immortality; God tried them as gold in the furnace and found them worthy of Himself. Against this the author sets the fruitless hopes of the ungodly and their offspring, whose end is dishonor. By promising that suffering endured in faith gives way to reward, the chapter presses the book's confidence that the righteous are not lost but kept.

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 3
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 3

Wisdom Chapter 3
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What is Wisdom 3 about?

Turning from the plots of the wicked to the destiny of the faithful, the third chapter affirms that 'the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them.' Though in the eyes of the foolish they seemed to die, their departure is peace and their hope full of immortality; God tried them as gold in the furnace and found them worthy of Himself. Against this the author sets the fruitless hopes of the ungodly and their offspring, whose end is dishonor. By promising that suffering endured in faith gives way to reward, the chapter presses the book's confidence that the righteous are not lost but kept.