For Teaching

Wisdom of Solomon 12: What the Passage Says

77 claims across 27 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Wisdom of Solomon 12 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The writer tells God that his imperishable spirit is in all things, and that he therefore corrects wrongdoers little by little, reminding them of their sins so they may leave their wickedness and believe in him. It was God's will to destroy the old inhabitants of his holy land by the hands of our fathers, for their spells, their killing of children, and their feasts of human flesh and blood. Even so, he spared them as human beings and sent wasps ahead of his army, destroying them slowly and giving them room to repent. The chapter then says that no one can question God's judgment, that his power is the source of his righteousness, and that those who took despised animals as gods were punished through those same creatures.

Claim by Claim

12:1
- God's incorruptible spirit is in all things.
12:2
- God corrects those who offend, a little at a time.
- God warns offenders by reminding them of the very things in which they have sinned.
- God's purpose in this is that they may leave their wickedness.
- God's purpose in this is that they may believe on him.
- The speaker addresses God as Lord.
12:3
- It was God's will to destroy the old inhabitants of his holy land.
- God destroyed them by the hands of the fathers of the speaker's people.
- The land is God's holy land.
12:4
- God hated those old inhabitants.
- God hated them for doing most odious works of witchcraft.
- God hated them for performing unholy rites.
12:5
- Those inhabitants were merciless murderers of children.
- Those inhabitants devoured human flesh.
- Those inhabitants held feasts of blood.
12:6
- Their priests came out of the midst of an idolatrous company.
- The parents among them killed with their own hands souls that were destitute of help.
12:7
- God's purpose was that the land might receive a worthy colony of God's children.
- God esteemed that land above all other lands.
12:8
- God nevertheless spared even those inhabitants, treating them as men.
- God sent wasps ahead of his army.
- The wasps were sent to destroy the inhabitants a little at a time.
12:9
- God was not unable to bring the ungodly under the hand of the righteous in battle.
- God was not unable to destroy them all at once with cruel beasts.
- God was not unable to destroy them all at once with a single severe word.
12:10
- God executed his judgments upon them a little at a time.
- By doing so God gave them opportunity for repentance.
- God was not ignorant that they were a wicked generation.
- God knew their malice was inborn in them.
- God knew their way of thinking would never be changed.
12:11
- They were a cursed seed from the beginning.
- God did not spare them punishment for their sins out of fear of anyone.
12:12
- No one can say to God, What hast thou done?
- No one can withstand God's judgment.
- No one can accuse God concerning the nations that perish.
- God made the nations that perish.
- No one shall come to stand against God as an avenger for unrighteous men.
12:13
- There is no God besides God who cares for all things.
- There is no other to whom God would need to show that his judgment is not unjust.
12:14
- Neither king nor tyrant shall be able to confront God about any whom God has punished.
12:15
- God is righteous.
- God orders all things righteously.
- God considers it foreign to his power to condemn one who has not deserved punishment.
12:16
- God's power is the beginning of righteousness.
- Because God is Lord of all, he is gracious to all.
12:17
- When men do not believe that God is of complete power, God displays his strength.
- Among those who know his power, God exposes their boldness.
12:18
- God, mastering his own power, judges with equity.
- God governs the speaker's people with great forbearance.
- God can use his power whenever he wills.
12:19
- By such works God taught his people that the just man should be merciful.
- God made his children to be of good hope.
- God gives repentance for sins.
12:20
- God punished the enemies of his children with great deliberation.
- Those enemies deserved death.
- God gave them time and opportunity to be delivered from their wickedness.
12:21
- God judged his own sons with far greater care.
- God swore oaths to the fathers of his sons.
- God made covenants of good promises with those fathers.
12:22
- God chastens his own people.
- God scourges their enemies a thousand times more.
- The purpose is that when we judge, we should carefully consider God's goodness.
- The purpose is that when we are judged, we should look for mercy.
12:23
- Men have lived dissolutely and unrighteously.
- God tormented such men by means of their own abominations.
12:24
- They went very far astray in the ways of error.
- They held as gods creatures that were despised even among the beasts of their enemies.
- They were deceived like children without understanding.
12:25
- God sent them a judgment that mocked them.
- God treated them as children without the use of reason.
12:26
- Some would not be reformed by that mild correction.
- Those who would not be reformed shall feel a judgment worthy of God.
12:27
- They were indignant at the things they suffered.
- They were punished by means of the very creatures they thought to be gods.
- When they saw this, they acknowledged the true God.
- They had previously refused to know that God.
- Therefore extreme damnation came upon them.

Words Worth Explaining

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

12:1: The chapter opens in the middle of a thought. The "For" continues the end of chapter 11, where God is said to spare everything because everything is his. "Incorruptible" means not subject to decay or death.
12:2: To "chasten" someone is to correct them by punishing them, the way a parent corrects a child. It is not the same as destroying them.
12:3: "Our fathers" are the Israelites of the generation that entered Canaan. The "old inhabitants" are the Canaanite peoples living in the land before them, whose destruction is described in Joshua and Judges.
12:4: These are the charges the Hebrew scriptures bring against Canaanite religion: divination and magic, forbidden in Deuteronomy 18:10-12, and sacrifices offered in ways Israel was told to reject.
12:5: Child sacrifice is the charge made against Canaanite worship in Deuteronomy 12:31. The cannibalism and the "feasts of blood" go beyond anything said in those older texts and belong to the sharper polemic of Greek-speaking Jewish writing from this author's own period.
12:6: "Crew" in 1611 English meant simply a band or company of people, with no nautical sense. "Souls destitute of help" means helpless persons; "soul" in this older English usually means a life or a person rather than a spirit. The Greek is generally understood to mean the parents' own defenseless infants.
12:7: "Colony" translates a Greek word for a body of settlers sent out from home to found a new community, the ordinary term for the Greek colonies of the author's world. The Greek word rendered "God's children" can equally mean God's servants, and covers both.
12:8: The wasps, or hornets, come from Exodus 23:28, Deuteronomy 7:20 and Joshua 24:12, where God sends hornets ahead of Israel to drive the inhabitants out. "Forerunners of thine host" means the advance troops of an army.
12:9: "Righteous" means always doing what is right and fair. To be "under the hand of" someone is to be beaten by them and left in their power.
12:10: "Naughty" in 1611 English meant wicked or worthless, not mischievous in the way a child is. "Place of repentance" uses "place" in its older sense of room or opportunity, and "cogitation" means a settled way of thinking.
12:11: "Seed" means offspring or descendants. The phrase looks back to Genesis 9:25, where Noah curses Canaan, taken here as the ancestor of these peoples.
12:12: The whole verse is courtroom language. It asks in turn who could question the verdict, who could resist it, who could bring a charge, and who could act as the avenger, the relative whose duty it was to prosecute a killing on behalf of the dead.
12:14: A tyrant is a ruler who holds complete power and uses it cruelly. No one can argue back to him.
12:16: "Gracious" here translates a Greek verb meaning to spare, to hold back from striking, rather than to be pleasant. The argument is that because God is master of everything, he has nothing to prove and can afford to spare.
12:17: The second half of this verse is difficult in Greek and is translated in opposite directions. It can mean that God exposes the insolence of those who do acknowledge his power, or that he confounds the boldness of those who deny it. Both readings are in current use.
12:18: "Mastering thy power" can mean either that God is master of all strength or that he holds his own strength in check; the Greek allows both. "Great favour" here means forbearance, the restraint of someone who could strike and chooses not to.
12:19: Mercy means being kind to someone when you could punish them instead.
12:20: "Time and place" is an idiom for opportunity. "Place" means room to act, not a location.
12:21: The "fathers" are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. A covenant is a binding agreement sworn under oath, the form in which Genesis describes God's promises to them.
12:22: The Greek says ten thousand times, a standard way of saying an uncountable amount rather than an exact figure; the KJV softens it to "a thousand times." To "scourge" is to flog with a whip, a judicial punishment rather than a casual beating.
12:23: From here to the end of the chapter the subject shifts from the Canaanites to the Egyptians. The "abominations" are the animals they honored as gods, which in the plagues of Exodus became the means of their suffering.
12:24: Egyptian worship of animals, among them bulls, cats, crocodiles and beetles, was a standing target of ridicule for Greek and Jewish writers alike. The line claims these were creatures ranked low even by the standards of animals.
12:25: The mocking judgment is the plagues of Exodus, where frogs, gnats and flies, creatures too small to fear, were what broke Egypt.
12:26: "Dallied" in 1611 English meant trifled or played lightly with, and here describes a gentle, almost joking correction. The Greek has no "he" at this point; it speaks simply of "playful rebukes," which the KJV turns into a clause.
12:27: "Grudged" in 1611 English meant grumbled at or resented. "Damnation" meant a sentence of condemnation handed down by a judge, without the narrower later sense of eternal punishment, so "extreme damnation" is the final and heaviest verdict. The creatures meant are the worshiped animals of verses 23 to 25.

Read Wisdom of Solomon 12