Wisdom of Solomon 11: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The writer speaks directly to God, recalling how Wisdom made the people's works succeed through the holy prophet, how they traveled through an empty wilderness, and how water came out of hard rock when they were thirsty. He places their thirst beside the punishment of their enemies, whose flowing river was troubled with foul blood, and says the same things that punished the one group helped the other in its need. He then describes animals sent as punishment on those who worshiped animals, and says God could have destroyed them by other means, but arranged all things by measure and number and weight, and has mercy on all because he loves everything he has made.

Claim by Claim

1. 11:1
   • Wisdom prospered their works.
   • The works were prospered by the hand of a holy prophet.
2. 11:2
   • They travelled through a wilderness that had no inhabitants.
   • They pitched tents in trackless places where there was no way.
3. 11:3
   • They stood against enemies in battle.
   • They repelled their adversaries and were avenged of them.
4. 11:4
   • They were thirsty.
   • They called upon God.
   • Water was given to them out of flinty rock.
   • Their thirst was healed out of hard stone.
5. 11:5
   • By the same things through which their enemies were punished, they themselves in their need were benefited.
6. 11:6
   • Instead of an ever-flowing fountain of a river, the enemies were troubled with foul, clotted blood.
7. 11:7
   • The blood served as a manifest reproof of the decree by which the infants were slain.
   • God gave the people abundant water.
   • The water came unexpectedly, by a means they had not hoped for.
8. 11:8
   • By means of that thirst God showed how He had punished the adversaries.
9. 11:9
   • When the people were tried, they were chastised only in mercy.
   • In being tried they came to know how the ungodly were judged in wrath and tormented.
   • The ungodly thirsted in a different manner than the just did.
10. 11:10
    • God admonished and tested these as a father does.
    • God condemned and examined the others as a severe king does.
11. 11:11
    • Whether they were absent or present, they were afflicted alike.
12. 11:12
    • A double grief came upon them.
    • A groaning came upon them at the remembrance of things past.
13. 11:13
    • They heard that through their own punishments the others were being benefited.
    • On hearing this they perceived the Lord.
14. 11:14
    • Long before, a man had been thrown out and exposed at the casting forth of the infants.
    • They had treated that man with scorn and mockery.
    • In the end, when they saw what came to pass, they marvelled at him.
15. 11:15
    • Their unrighteousness had foolish, senseless devices in it.
    • Being deceived by those devices they worshipped irrational reptiles and worthless vermin.
    • In return, God sent upon them a multitude of irrational animals as vengeance.
16. 11:16
    • The purpose was that they might know that by whatever a man sins, by that same thing he is punished.
17. 11:17
    • God's almighty hand made the world out of formless matter.
    • That hand did not lack means to send upon them a multitude of bears or fierce lions.
18. 11:18
    • God could have sent unknown wild beasts, newly created and full of rage.
    • Such beasts would breathe out a fiery blast.
    • Or they would send forth scattered smoke, described either as a roar or as a stench.
    • Or they would flash dreadful sparks from their eyes.
19. 11:19
    • The harm such beasts do could destroy the people.
    • The mere terrifying sight of them could also utterly destroy the people.
20. 11:20
    • Even without such beasts, the people could have fallen by a single blast.
    • They could have been pursued by vengeance.
    • They could have been scattered abroad by the breath of God's power.
    • God has ordered all things in measure and number and weight.
21. 11:21
    • God can show great strength at all times.
    • No one can withstand the power of God's arm.
22. 11:22
    • The whole world before God is like a small grain that tips a balance.
    • The whole world before God is like a drop of morning dew falling on the earth.
23. 11:23
    • God has mercy upon all.
    • God can do all things.
    • God overlooks the sins of men.
    • God overlooks their sins so that they may repent.
24. 11:24
    • God loves all the things that exist.
    • God abhors nothing that He has made.
    • God would never have made anything if He hated it.
25. 11:25
    • Nothing could have endured unless God had willed it.
    • Nothing would have been preserved if it had not been called by God.
26. 11:26
    • God spares all things.
    • God spares them because they belong to Him.
    • God is addressed as Lord and lover of souls.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1

"She" is Wisdom, who has been the subject since chapter 10, where she is spoken of as a woman because the Greek word for wisdom, sophia, is feminine. "The holy prophet" is Moses. This retelling of the Exodus names no one in it: Moses, Pharaoh, Egypt and Israel are all referred to only as "he," "they" and "them," and the reader is expected to recognize the story.

11:2

The wilderness is the desert between Egypt and Canaan, which the Israelites crossed for forty years after the Exodus, camping in tents wherever they stopped.

11:3

"Were avenged of their adversaries" in the King James does not mean that someone else avenged them; it means they themselves took revenge on their enemies, or drove them off. The Greek is closer to "they beat back their attackers," and the reference is to battles during the wilderness years, such as the fight with the Amalekites at Rephidim in Exodus 17.

11:4

The story is of Moses striking a rock in the desert so that water came out of it for the thirsty people, told twice, in Exodus 17 and Numbers 20. From this verse to the end of the book the author speaks directly to God, so every "you" and "thee" is addressed to God, while "they" shifts back and forth between the Israelites and the Egyptians.

11:5

This sentence states the pattern that governs the rest of the book: the author lines up each plague on Egypt against a matching mercy to Israel, showing the same element harming one people and helping the other. Here the element is water.

11:6

The "perpetual running river" is the Nile, which flows all year round, unlike the seasonal streams of Palestine that dry up in summer. The blood is the first plague, when the Nile was turned to blood and the Egyptians could not drink from it, Exodus 7.

11:7

The order is Pharaoh's command that every newborn Hebrew boy be thrown into the river and drowned, Exodus 1:22. The author's point turns on water: the river the Egyptians used to kill children became undrinkable blood for them, while water came to the Israelites out of dry rock.

11:9

"The just" means the righteous, that is, the Israelites. The two thirsts are being contrasted: the Israelites went thirsty for a time and were given water, while the Egyptians stood beside a river they could not drink.

11:11

"Absent or present" means whether the Israelites were far from them or close by. The Egyptians suffered while the Israelites were still living among them and suffered again after they had gone.

11:12

The "double grief" is their present suffering together with the memory of what they had already been through. The Greek is compressed, and the second grief has also been read as their memory of the slaves they had lost.

11:13

"They had some feeling of the Lord" in the King James means they perceived the Lord's hand in it, they became aware of him. It does not mean emotion or affection.

11:14

The one thrown out is Moses, set adrift on the river in a basket as a baby at the very time when Hebrew boys were being cast away, and then raised in Pharaoh's household, Exodus 2. Note that "admired" in 1611 English means marveled at or were astonished by, not thought well of.

11:15

Egyptian religion made wide use of animal forms: sacred snakes, including the cobra worn on the royal crown, along with beetles, crocodiles, cats and bulls. "Void of reason" and "vile beasts" mean creatures without speech or reason, and vermin. The "multitude of unreasonable beasts" sent in return is the plagues of frogs, gnats, flies and locusts in Exodus 8 to 10.

11:17

"Wanted not means" in the King James means did not lack the means. "The world of matter without form" translates a Greek philosophical phrase for unformed, unshaped matter, and it echoes the opening of Genesis, where the earth is "without form, and void" before God shapes it. Whether the phrase assumes that such matter already existed has been argued over for centuries; the sentence itself does not settle it.

11:18

These animals are not part of the Exodus story. The author is listing what God could have sent instead, and the fire breathing, smoke belching, spark eyed creatures belong to the standard ancient description of dragons and monsters. "Newly created" means made fresh for this one purpose.

11:19

"Dispatch them at once" in the King James means kill them outright.

11:20

"One blast" and "the breath of thy power" translate a single Greek word, pneuma, which means breath, wind and spirit all at once. "Persecuted of vengeance" means pursued by vengeance; the Greek names Justice as a figure who hunts the guilty down, an image familiar from Greek poetry. "Measure and number and weight" is the language of builders and merchants: God laid out the world with the exactness of someone measuring a length, counting a quantity and weighing on a scale.

11:21

"The power of your arm" was an old way of saying strength. People said arm because arms do the strong work.

11:22

A balance is a pair of pans hung from a beam, the ordinary weighing scale of the ancient world. The image is of a single grain of dust in one pan, too light to tip the beam at all.

11:23

"Winkest at" in the King James means deliberately looks away from, shuts the eyes to. It carries no suggestion of a signal or a joke. "Because they should amend" means so that they may change their ways: "because" here has the old sense of "in order that," and "amend" means to reform one's conduct.

11:25

"Called by thee" uses the ordinary Greek verb for calling or summoning, as one calls a person by name. The thought is that a thing stays in existence only because God keeps calling for it.

11:26

"O Lord" here translates a Greek word meaning master or sovereign, the owner of a household. "Lover of souls" translates a word built on psyche, which in Greek means the life of a living creature rather than a soul separated from the body, so the phrase means one who loves everything that lives.