Wisdom of Solomon 14: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter sets a sailor who prays to a piece of wood beside the wooden ship that carries him, says God's care steers the ship, and recalls how in old times the hope of the world escaped on a raft while the proud giants were perishing. It then calls the handmade idol and its maker cursed, and traces where idols came from: a grieving father's image of his dead child, and images of far-off kings honored at rulers' command and made more beautiful by ambitious craftsmen, until the crowd worshiped them. The rest lists the evils that follow the worship of idols, and states that those who swear falsely by lifeless idols will be justly punished on two counts.

Claim by Claim

1. 14:1
   • A person preparing to sail is described.
   • That person is about to pass through raging waves.
   • That person calls upon a piece of wood.
   • The piece of wood called upon is more rotten than the ship that carries him.
2. 14:2
   • Desire of gain devised the ship.
   • The workman built the ship by his skill.
   • Wisdom is the skill by which the ship was built.
3. 14:3
   • God's providence governs the ship.
   • God is addressed as Father.
   • God made a way in the sea.
   • God made a safe path in the waves.
4. 14:4
   • God's making a way in the sea shows that God can save from all danger.
   • A man may go to sea without skill and still be saved.
5. 14:5
   • God does not will that the works of his wisdom be idle.
   • Because God wills his works not to be idle, men commit their lives to a small piece of wood.
   • Men pass through the rough sea in a weak vessel.
   • Men passing through the rough sea in a weak vessel are saved.
6. 14:6
   • In ancient time the proud giants perished.
   • The hope of the world escaped in a weak vessel.
   • The hope of the world was governed by God's hand.
   • The hope of the world left to all ages a seed of generation.
7. 14:7
   • The wood by which righteousness comes is blessed.
8. 14:8
   • That which is made with hands is cursed.
   • The maker of the thing made with hands is cursed.
   • The maker is cursed because he made it.
   • The thing made is cursed because it was called god.
   • The thing made is corruptible.
9. 14:9
   • The ungodly man is hateful to God.
   • The ungodliness of the ungodly man is hateful to God.
   • The ungodly man and his ungodliness are hateful to God alike.
10. 14:10
    • That which is made shall be punished.
    • That which is made shall be punished together with the one who made it.
11. 14:11
    • There shall be a visitation upon the idols of the Gentiles.
    • The idols are made from things God created.
    • The idols have become an abomination.
    • The idols have become stumblingblocks to the souls of men.
    • The idols have become a snare to the feet of the unwise.
12. 14:12
    • The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication.
    • The invention of idols was the corruption of life.
13. 14:13
    • Idols did not exist from the beginning.
    • Idols shall not exist for ever.
14. 14:14
    • Idols entered into the world through the vain glory of men.
    • Because idols entered through men's vain glory, a speedy end was devised for them.
15. 14:15
    • A father was afflicted with untimely mourning.
    • The father's child was taken away soon.
    • The father made an image of the child.
    • The father honoured as a god the one who was then a dead man.
    • The father delivered ceremonies and sacrifices to those under him.
16. 14:16
    • In process of time the ungodly custom grew strong.
    • The ungodly custom was kept as a law.
    • Graven images were worshipped by the commandments of kings.
17. 14:17
    • Men could not honour certain rulers in their presence.
    • Men could not honour them in presence because those rulers dwelt far off.
    • Men took the likeness of the ruler's face from far away.
    • Men made an express image of the king they honoured.
    • Men made the image so that by their forwardness they might flatter the absent one as if he were present.
18. 14:18
    • The singular diligence of the craftsman helped to push even the ignorant toward more superstition.
19. 14:19
    • The craftsman perhaps wished to please one in authority.
    • The craftsman forced all his skill to make the likeness more beautiful.
20. 14:20
    • The multitude was allured by the grace of the work.
    • The multitude took the man for a god.
    • The man had a little before been merely honoured.
21. 14:21
    • This became an occasion to deceive the world.
    • Men served either calamity or tyranny.
    • Men ascribed the incommunicable name to stones and stocks.
22. 14:22
    • It was not enough for them that they erred in the knowledge of God.
    • They lived in a great war of ignorance.
    • They called such great evils peace.
23. 14:23
    • They slew their children in sacrifices.
    • They used secret ceremonies.
    • They made frenzied revellings of strange rites.
24. 14:24
    • They no longer kept their lives undefiled.
    • They no longer kept their marriages undefiled.
    • One slew another treacherously.
    • One grieved another by adultery.
25. 14:25
    • Blood reigned among all men without exception.
    • Manslaughter reigned among them.
    • Theft reigned among them.
    • Dissimulation reigned among them.
    • Corruption reigned among them.
    • Unfaithfulness reigned among them.
    • Tumults reigned among them.
    • Perjury reigned among them.
26. 14:26
    • The disquieting of good men reigned among them.
    • Forgetfulness of good turns reigned among them.
    • Defiling of souls reigned among them.
    • Changing of kind reigned among them.
    • Disorder in marriages reigned among them.
    • Adultery reigned among them.
    • Shameless uncleanness reigned among them.
27. 14:27
    • The worshipping of idols not to be named is the beginning of all evil.
    • The worshipping of idols not to be named is the cause of all evil.
    • The worshipping of idols not to be named is the end of all evil.
28. 14:28
    • Idol worshippers are mad when they are merry.
    • Or idol worshippers prophesy lies.
    • Or idol worshippers live unjustly.
    • Or idol worshippers readily swear falsely.
29. 14:29
    • Idol worshippers trust in idols.
    • The idols have no life.
    • Though idol worshippers swear falsely, they do not expect to be hurt.
30. 14:30
    • They shall be justly punished for both causes.
    • They thought not well of God.
    • They gave heed to idols.
    • They swore unjustly in deceit.
    • They despised holiness.
31. 14:31
    • It is not the power of those by whom men swear that punishes.
    • It is the just vengeance due to sinners that punishes.
    • That vengeance always punishes the offence of the ungodly.

Words Worth Explaining

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

14:1

Ancient ships commonly carried a carved wooden image of a god, often set at the prow or the stern, and travelers prayed to it before a voyage. The writer's joke is that the passenger prays to a smaller and flimsier piece of timber than the hull he is standing on.

14:2

"Wisdom" here is the ordinary Greek word for practical skill or craft, the same word this book uses elsewhere for God's Wisdom. The sentence can be heard either way: the shipwright's know-how built it, or God's Wisdom did, and the writer is playing on both.

14:3

"Providence" means foresight: care that looks ahead and provides in advance. It is not a visit or an intervention after the fact.

14:5

Behind "a small piece of wood" and "a weak vessel" is the Greek word for a raft, planks lashed together, the cheapest and least seaworthy thing that floats.

14:6

The "proud giants" are the Nephilim of Genesis 6, the generation wiped out by the flood; "the hope of the world" is Noah, and the "weak vessel" is the ark, which the writer pointedly calls a raft to keep the theme of wood running. The "seed of generation" is the surviving family from which all later humanity descended.

14:7

The blessed wood is the timber of the ark, set deliberately against the timber of the idol in the next verse: the same material, opposite uses.

14:8

The thing made by hands is an idol, a statue that people made and then treated as a god. A thing that rots means wood, which decays and falls apart.

14:11

In older English a "visitation" is an official coming to inspect and to pass sentence, not a friendly call. The point is that God will come to deal with the idols themselves, not only with the people who made them.

14:12

The Greek word is the ordinary one for sexual immorality, but Israel's prophets had long spoken of worshiping other gods as adultery against God, so the word carries both senses at once here. The KJV translators added "spiritual" to mark the figurative sense.

14:15

This repeats a theory current in the Greek world of the writer's day: that the gods began as human beings who were honored after death until the honor hardened into worship. "Mysteries" and "ceremonies" are secret initiation rites open only to those admitted; "those that were under him" are the grieving father's household, dependents and subjects.

14:16

In the Hellenistic kingdoms, and later under Rome, honoring the ruler's image could be a legal obligation enforced by decree, so worship of a statue was not merely private devotion but something the state required.

14:17

Portraits and statues of a ruler were sent out to provinces he would never visit, and honoring the image counted as honoring the man. "Forwardness" in the KJV means eagerness or zeal, not rudeness.

14:18

The worker here is the artist who carved the statue.

14:21

"The incommunicable name" is the personal name of God, which belongs to him alone and cannot be transferred to anything else; by this period Jews avoided pronouncing it at all. "Stocks" means blocks of wood or tree trunks.

14:22

The KJV word order inverts the sense: read it as "they called those so great plagues peace." The charge is that people gave the name peace to a condition the writer regards as open warfare.

14:23

Three practices are named that Jewish writers regarded as marks of foreign religion: sacrificing children, which the law of Israel forbids absolutely; initiation into secret cults whose rites members swore not to reveal; and ecstatic night festivals of the kind associated with Dionysus, in which frenzy was part of the worship.

14:24

Treachery means betraying someone who trusted you. Adultery means breaking a marriage by being unfaithful to a husband or wife.

14:25

Catalogues of vices strung together like this were a standard set piece in Greek and Jewish moral writing of the period, meant to overwhelm by accumulation rather than to be read as a precise list. KJV "dissimulation" means pretending to be what one is not, and "tumults" means riots or civil disorder.

14:26

KJV "changing of kind" translates a Greek phrase whose sense is disputed. It may mean confusion of parentage, children whose descent is no longer certain, or a blurring of the distinction between the sexes; the wording does not settle which.

14:27

There was a long-standing refusal in Jewish practice to speak the names of other gods aloud, going back to commands like Exodus 23:13. "Not to be named" reflects that habit rather than describing the idols as unnameable.

14:28

"Mad when they be merry" refers to religious festivals in which ecstatic frenzy was part of the rite, not to ordinary drunkenness. "Prophesy lies" refers to oracles delivered at shrines, and "lightly forswear themselves" means swearing false oaths casually.

14:29

An oath in the ancient world called on a god to punish the swearer if he lied, so the oath's whole force rested on the god being able to act. The writer's point is that people who swear by lifeless statues expect nothing to happen to them when they lie.

14:30

Something holy belongs to God. People treat holy things with great care.

14:31

"The just vengeance of sinners" means the punishment that sinners have coming, not punishment carried out by sinners. The contrast is between the powerlessness of the thing sworn by and the justice that acts anyway.