Hokmah/Wisdom and Yeshua
In Yeshua’s Kin-dom of
Heaven, Chapter 7, Matthew 11:16-19, Yeshua refers to
a mysterious figure named Hokmah, which in English is Wisdom. Here again is the
passage:
[Mt11:16-19]
16 “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in
the marketplaces, who call to their companions 17 and say,
‘We
played the flute for you, and you didn’t dance.
We
mourned for you, and you didn’t lament.’
18
For Yohanan came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’
19 I came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard,
a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ But
Hokmah (Wisdom) is justified by her children.
Hokmah/Wisdom was known to Yeshua
through the Books of Job, Proverbs, Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon in the Septuagint.
The Septuagint is a Greek translation of
the Hebrew Bible and the Deuterocanonical books which were written in the time
between the Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures. Hokmah/Wisdom is most completely described in
the Wisdom of Solomon. Here is chapter
10 from Wisdom. I’ve placed the names of the persons referred to in brackets
rather than footnotes:
[Wisdom10:1-21]
1 She [Wisdom] guarded to the end
the first formed father of the world, that was created alone [Adam],
And delivered him out of his own
transgression,
2 And gave him strength to get
dominion over all things.
3 But when an unrighteous man fell
away from Her in his anger [Cain],
He perished himself in the rage
wherewith he killed his brother [Abel].
4 And when for his cause the earth
was drowning with a flood,
Wisdom again saved it,
Guiding the righteous man's course
by a poor piece of wood [Noah].
5 Moreover, when nations consenting
together in wickedness had been confounded [the Tower of Babel],
She knew the righteous man, and
preserved him blameless to God,
And kept him strong when his heart
yearned toward his child [Abraham].
6 While the ungodly were perishing,
She delivered a righteous man [Lot],
When he fled from the fire that
descended out of heaven on the region of the five cities [Sodom &
Gommorah].
7 To whose wickedness a smoking
waste still bears witness,
And plants bearing fair fruit that
comes not to ripeness;
Yes and a distrustful soul has a
memorial there, a pillar of salt still standing [Lot’s wife].
8 For having passed wisdom by,
Not only were they disabled from
recognizing the things which are good,
But they also left behind them by
their life a monument of their folly;
To the end that wherein they
stumbled they might fail even to be unseen:
9 But Wisdom delivered out of
troubles those that waited on Her.
10 When a righteous man [Jacob] was
a fugitive from a brother's wrath [Esau], She guided him in straight paths;
She showed him God's kingdom, and
gave him knowledge of holy things;
She prospered him in his toils, and
multiplied the fruits of his labor;
11 When in their covetousness men
dealt hardly with him,
She stood by him and made him rich;
12 She guarded him from enemies,
And from those that lay in wait She
kept him safe,
And over his sore conflict She
watched as judge,
That he might know that godliness
is more powerful than everyone.
13 When a righteous man was sold
[Joseph], She forsook him not,
But from sin of his brethren She
delivered him;
She went down with him into a
dungeon,
14 And in bonds She left him not,
Till She brought him the scepter of
a kingdom,
And authority over those that dealt
tyrannously with him;
She showed them also to be false
that had mockingly accused him,
And gave him eternal glory.
15 She delivered a holy people and
a blameless seed from a nation of oppressors.
16 She entered into the soul of a
servant of the Lord [Moses],
And withstood terrible kings in
wonders and signs.
17 She rendered to holy men a
reward of their toils;
She guided them along a marvelous
way,
And became to them a covering in
the day-time,
And a flame of stars through the
night.
18 She brought them over the Red
sea,
And led them through much water;
19 But their enemies She drowned,
And out of the bottom of the deep
She cast them up.
20 Therefore the righteous spoiled
the ungodly;
And they sang praise to your holy
name, O Lord,
And extolled with one accord your
hand that fought for them:
21 Because Wisdom opened the mouth
of the dumb,
And made the tongues of babes to
speak clearly.
As you can see Hokmah/Wisdom and
God's actions are the same. As Elizabeth A. Johnson states in She Who Is:
“Sophia
(Greek for Wisdom) is a female personification of God’s own being in creative
and saving involvement in the world. The
chief reason for arriving at this interpretation is the functional equivalence
between deeds of Sophia and those of the biblical God”1
So Hokmah/Wisdom is the female
personification of the Spirit of God, and as I said before the Spirit of God,
the Holy Spirit, is God. The Spirit aspect of God emphasizes her presence and
action in salvation history. The Jews used circumlocutions around directly “encountering”
God, at least initially, by conceptualizing her working through semi-divine
manifestations or beings like spirit or angels. The Christians went the other
way and fragmented the interior life of God into three “persons,” although they
retained angels and seraphim as well.
I did not use the name
Hokmah/Wisdom for the Holy Spirit because, at the time of Yeshua, that would have
been recognized to be Shekhinah. Hokmah
may or may not have been seen as the same being at that time. Jewish concepts
of God and the heavenly beings were evolving over time and, as noted above, these
heavenly beings were often circumlocutions for God.
Holy Spirit Wisdom and Saint Hildegard of Bingen
Here I would like to share two
beautiful and insightful poems about the Holy Spirit Wisdom written by Hildegard
of Bingen, (1098 – 1179 CE), who was a German woman religious, Benedictine
abbess, Christian mystic, visionary, writer, composer, philosopher, artist, and polymath.
The Holy Spirit as Caritas (Grace/World
Soul)
St.
Hildegard von Bingen
trans.
B. Newman (mod.)
She is Divine Wisdom. She watches over all people and all things in
heaven
and
on earth, being of such radiance and brightness that, for the measureless
splendor
that shines in Her, you cannot gaze on Her face or on the garments
She
wears. For She is awesome in terror as
the Thunderer's lightening, and
gentle
in goodness as the sunshine. Hence, in
Her terror and Her gentleness,
She
is incomprehensible to mortals, because of the dread radiance of divinity
in
Her face and the brightness that dwells in Her as the robe of Her beauty.
She
is like the Sun, which none can contemplate in its blazing face or in the
glorious
garment of its rays. For She is with all
and in all, and of beauty so
great
in Her mystery that no one could know how sweetly She bears with
people,
and with what unfathomable mercy She spares them.
The Holy Spirit as Sapientia
(Wisdom/Creatrix)
St.
Hildegard von Bingen
trans.
B. Newman (mod.)
I am Wisdom. Mine is the blast of the resounding Word
through which all
creation
came to be, and I quickened all things with my breath so that not one
of
them is mortal in its kind; for I am Life. Indeed I am Life, whole and
undivided
-- not hewn from any stone, or budded from branches, or rooted in
virile
strength; but all that lives has its root in Me. For Wisdom is the root
whose
blossom is the resounding Word....
I
flame above the beauty of the fields to signify the earth -- the matter from
which
humanity was made. I shine in the waters
to indicate the soul, for, as
water
suffuses the whole earth, the soul pervades the whole body. I burn in
the
sun and the moon to denote Wisdom, and the stars are the innumerable
words
of Wisdom.
From Sister
of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine,
B. Newman (1987).
Hokmah/Wisdom, the Fullness of God
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| Sophia Wisdom by Hildegard of Bingen | | |
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In concluding this post, I want
again to quote Elizabeth Johnson and make a final and most important point.
First the quotation:
"We must be very clear about this. Speech about God in female
metaphors does not
mean that God has a feminine dimension, revealed by Mary or other
women. Nor does
the use of male metaphors mean that God has a masculine dimension,
revealed by Jesus
or other men; or an animal dimension, revealed by lions or great mother
birds; or a
mineral dimension, which corresponds to naming God as a rock. Images
and names of
God … intend to evoke the whole.2
… The point for our interest is that the female deity is not the
expression of the feminine
dimension of the divine, but the
expression of the fullness of divine power and care
shown in a female image. The mystery of God transcends all images but
can be spoken
about equally well and poorly in concepts taken from male or female
reality.3”
And here is my point. When we refer to the Holy Spirit4
using a female image we are expressing the fullness of the divine. Just
as when we talk of the Father or Yeshua Mashiah, in each case we are talking of
the fullness of the divine not a dimension and certainly not a mathematical
third of the Triune God. So the fullness of God is found in the Holy
Spirit Shekhinah, also known as Hokmah/Wisdom or Sophia/Wisdom.
SHE WHO
IS: the Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, Elizabeth A Johnson. - New
York: Crossroad, 1993.
1 P. 91, (Greek for
Wisdom) added.
2 p.54
3 p.56, Emphasis
added.
4 The Holy Spirit in Hebrew is Ruach HaKodesh but the
phrase was only used three times in the Hebrew Bible (Found once in Psalm 51:11
and twice in Isaiah 63:10,11), and that is why I do not use it.
