Wisdom of Solomon 18: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter sets the light given to God's holy people beside the darkness and loss given to their enemies, and their rescue beside the enemies' ruin. It recalls the night the fathers were told about beforehand, when they offered sacrifice in secret and sang praise while the enemy wailed over countless dead, and God's all-powerful word leaped from the royal throne and filled all things with death. It then turns to the wilderness, where the taste of death touched the righteous too, until a blameless man stood between the dead and the living with prayer and incense and the anger stopped.

Claim by Claim

1. 18:1
   • God's holy ones had a very great light.
   • The enemies heard the voice of the holy ones.
   • The enemies did not see the form of the holy ones.
   • The enemies had not suffered the same things the holy ones suffered.
   • The enemies counted the holy ones happy.
2. 18:2
   • The holy ones did not now harm the enemies.
   • The enemies had wronged the holy ones earlier.
   • The enemies gave thanks to the holy ones.
   • The enemies begged the holy ones for pardon for having been at enmity with them.
3. 18:3
   • God gave them a burning pillar of fire.
   • The pillar of fire was to be a guide for a journey they did not know.
   • The pillar of fire was a harmless sun.
   • The harmless sun gave them honourable treatment on their journey.
4. 18:4
   • Those people deserved to be deprived of light.
   • Those people deserved to be imprisoned in darkness.
   • Those people had kept God's sons shut up.
   • Through God's sons the incorruptible light of the law was to be given to the world.
5. 18:5
   • They had determined to kill the infants of the holy ones.
   • One child was cast out.
   • That child was saved.
   • That child was saved to convict them.
   • God took away the multitude of their children.
   • God destroyed them all together in a mighty water.
6. 18:6
   • That night was made known beforehand to our fathers.
   • The fathers were told beforehand so that they might know surely what oaths they had trusted.
   • The fathers were told beforehand so that they might afterwards be of good cheer.
7. 18:7
   • God's people expected the salvation of the righteous.
   • God's people expected the destruction of the enemies.
8. 18:8
   • By the same means God punished our adversaries, he glorified us.
   • God had called us.
9. 18:9
   • The holy children of good men offered sacrifice in secret.
   • They agreed with one consent to the divine law.
   • They agreed that the holy ones would share alike in the same good things and the same dangers.
   • The fathers were already singing songs of praise.
10. 18:10
    • A discordant cry of the enemies sounded in answer.
    • A pitiful noise of lamentation for bewailed children was carried abroad.
11. 18:11
    • The master and the servant were punished in the same manner.
    • The common person suffered the same as the king.
12. 18:12
    • They all together had countless dead by one kind of death.
    • The living were not enough to bury the dead.
    • In one moment their noblest offspring was destroyed.
13. 18:13
    • They refused to believe anything because of the enchantments.
    • When the firstborn were destroyed, they acknowledged this people to be the sons of God.
14. 18:14
    • All things were held in quiet silence.
    • The night was half through its swift course.
15. 18:15
    • God's almighty word leaped down from heaven out of the royal throne.
    • The word came like a fierce warrior into the midst of a land marked for destruction.
16. 18:16
    • The word brought God's unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword.
    • The word stood up and filled all things with death.
    • The word touched the heaven.
    • The word stood upon the earth.
17. 18:17
    • Visions of horrible dreams suddenly troubled them severely.
    • Terrors came upon them unexpectedly.
18. 18:18
    • One was thrown down half dead in one place and another in another place.
    • Each one made known the cause of his death.
19. 18:19
    • The dreams that troubled them foreshowed this.
    • The dreams came so that they should not perish without knowing why they were afflicted.
20. 18:20
    • The tasting of death touched the righteous also.
    • A multitude was destroyed in the wilderness.
    • The wrath did not last long.
21. 18:21
    • The blameless man made haste and stood forth to defend them.
    • He brought the shield of his own ministry, which was prayer.
    • He brought the propitiation of incense.
    • He set himself against the wrath.
    • He brought the calamity to an end.
    • He showed that he was God's servant.
22. 18:22
    • He overcame the destroyer.
    • He did not overcome it by strength of body.
    • He did not overcome it by force of arms.
    • He subdued the one who punished by a word.
    • He appealed to the oaths and covenants made with the fathers.
23. 18:23
    • The dead had already fallen in heaps one upon another.
    • He stood between the dead and the living.
    • He stopped the wrath.
    • He cut off the wrath's way to the living.
24. 18:24
    • The whole world was represented on his long garment.
    • The glory of the fathers was engraved on the four rows of stones.
    • God's majesty was upon the diadem on his head.
25. 18:25
    • The destroyer gave way to these things.
    • The destroyer was afraid of them.
    • It was enough that they only tasted of the wrath.

Words Worth Explaining

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

18:1

"Saints" in the King James means holy ones, people set apart for God, and here refers to the Israelites; it has nothing to do with the later idea of a canonized saint. The light and the darkness carry over from the previous chapter: in the plague of darkness (Exodus 10:21-23) the Egyptians could not see for three days, while the Israelites had light where they lived. Notice also that this book names nobody. Israel, Egypt, Moses and Aaron are all present in this chapter but appear only as "thy saints," "the enemies," "one child," "the blameless man." That is the author's deliberate style, not a gap in the text. The second half of this verse is genuinely tangled in the Greek, and translators differ over who is counting whom happy and why.

18:2

This scene of the Egyptians thanking the Israelites and asking pardon is the author's expansion; Exodus reports no such exchange, though it does say the Egyptians urged Israel to leave and gave them what they asked for (Exodus 12:33-36).

18:3

The pillar of fire is from Exodus 13:21-22, where a column of cloud by day and fire by night went ahead of the Israelites. "Entertain" in 1611 English means to receive or host a guest, so the fire welcomes them the way a host welcomes a traveler. Calling it "an harmless sun" sets it against the desert sun that burns: this one gives light without the scorching.

18:4

"Thy sons" are the Israelites, held as slaves in Egypt. "The uncorrupt light of the law" means the law of Moses, described as a light that cannot decay or be spoiled, which Israel was to carry to the rest of the world.

18:5

The child thrown out and saved is Moses, set adrift on the river in a basket after Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew baby boys drowned (Exodus 1:22 to 2:10). "The multitude of their children" is the death of the Egyptian firstborn (Exodus 12:29), and the "mighty water" is the sea closing over Pharaoh's army (Exodus 14). The author is matching the punishments to the crime: the Egyptians who drowned babies are themselves drowned.

18:6

"That night" is the night of the first Passover (Exodus 12). "Certified afore" in the King James means informed in advance, warned beforehand; it has nothing to do with a certificate. The oaths they had trusted are the promises God swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

18:7

"Accepted" here does not mean approved. The Greek verb means awaited or looked forward to, so the sense is that the people were expecting both things to happen that night.

18:9

The secret sacrifice is the Passover lamb, killed and eaten indoors on the night of the escape (Exodus 12:3-11). To "make a holy law" is to bind themselves by a covenant, a sworn agreement with terms on both sides. The songs are the hymns sung at the Passover meal.

18:10

"Ill according" is an old English phrase meaning out of tune, discordant. It is placed deliberately against the singing in the previous verse: one set of houses in harmony, the other screaming.

18:11

Exodus 11:5 puts it the same way: from the firstborn of Pharaoh on his throne to the firstborn of the slave girl working the mill. "Common person" in the King James means an ordinary man, with no insult intended.

18:12

"The noblest offspring" means the firstborn sons. In this world the eldest son held first place among a man's children and took the largest share of the inheritance, so losing him was losing the family's future.

18:13

The "enchantments" are the magic arts of Pharaoh's own experts, who matched the first signs Moses performed by turning staffs into snakes and water into blood (Exodus 7:11-12, 22; 8:7). Because the signs could be copied, the Egyptians could dismiss them as tricks.

18:14

"The midst of her swift course" means midnight. Exodus 12:29 places the death of the firstborn at exactly that hour. Readers may recognize this verse and the next from later Christmas use, but here the night in question is Passover night in Egypt.

18:15

"Word" translates the Greek logos, which covers a spoken word, a command, and the reasoning behind it all at once. The author describes it acting like a person, a soldier leaping down from a throne, the same way this book speaks of Wisdom herself as a woman. "A land of destruction" means a land already marked out for ruin.

18:16

"Unfeigned" in 1611 English means genuine, not pretended. An unfeigned commandment is an order that is exactly what it claims to be. The figure that touches heaven while standing on the ground is being described as enormous, filling the space between the two.

18:20

The scene jumps here from Egypt to the years in the desert. The reference is to Numbers 16:41-50, where a plague broke out among the Israelites after the rebellion of Korah. "The righteous" are now the Israelites themselves: this time the blow fell on them.

18:21

The blameless man, unnamed as always in this book, is Aaron, Moses' brother and the first high priest. In Numbers 16:46-48 he ran into the middle of the crowd carrying a censer of burning incense and stood between the dead and the living until the plague stopped. "His proper ministry" means his own particular office, the priesthood; "proper" in the King James means one's own, not correct. "Propitiation" is the act of turning away anger and setting a relationship right again, here done by burning incense as an offering.

18:22

"Him that punished" and "the destroyer" in verse 25 refer to the agent carrying out the plague, pictured as a single striking figure. "Alleging" is an old legal use meaning citing or bringing forward as an argument, not the modern sense of claiming something unproven. The oaths and covenants are the promises sworn to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

18:24

These are the working clothes of the high priest, described in Exodus 28. The long robe is the ankle-length garment worn under the priestly vest; Jewish writers of this period read its design as a picture of the whole universe, which is what "in the long garment was the whole world" means. The four rows of stones are the twelve precious stones set in four rows of three on the breastpiece, each engraved with the name of one of Jacob's sons, "the fathers" of the twelve tribes. The diadem is the gold plate tied over the turban, engraved with the words "HOLINESS TO THE LORD" (Exodus 28:36-38), which is why God's majesty is said to be on it.

18:25

"Gave place" in the King James means gave way, yielded ground, backed off. The final clause is ambiguous in the Greek: it can mean that the people had only a taste of the anger and that was punishment enough, or that a mere taste was enough to show what the full measure would be.