Commonplace –
“Does not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?
She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths.
She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors” (Proverbs 8:1-3).
In his introduction to Proverbs 8, Solomon poses a couple of questions:
- “Doth not wisdom cry” (v.1a)
- Doesn’t “understanding put forth her voice” (v.1b)
Wisdom and understanding are open and available to all. They “crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors” (v.3). Unlike folly and ignorance, who lurk in the shadows and use cunning to entrap their prey, wisdom illuminates the soul and can only be found in connection with light.
From verses 4-36, Wisdom directly addresses the reader and makes it clear that wisdom is readily available to everyone.
“All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing froward or perverse in them.
They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge” (Proverbs 8:8-9).
And, again,
“I wisdom dwell with prudence” (Proverbs 8:12a).
Prudence is practical wisdom; it’s common sense. There is also intellectual wisdom, which is the wisdom we need to understand fundamental, unchanging truths. In Proverbs 8:12, we learn that wisdom is available to the common man and is useful for everyday living.
In verse 13, Wisdom imparts foundational knowledge, informing the reader what it means to possess ‘fear of the Lord’.
“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Prov 8:13).
If you will recall, Solomon shared in Proverbs 1:7: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction”. So from the beginning of our journey through these first eight verses of Proverbs, Solomon has been making a passionate plea for us to choose the path of wisdom, which begins with fear of the Lord. Now, in Proverbs 8:7, Solomon clearly states with it means to ‘fear the Lord’, which is to hate evil, pride, arrogance, and contrariness.
Beginning in verse 22, Wisdom shares that she was with the Lord in the very beginning: “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was” (v.22-23). In reference to these two verses, Matthew Henry comments,
“That it is an intelligent and divine person that here speaks seems very plain, and that it is not meant of a mere essential property of the divine nature, for Wisdom here has personal properties and actions; and that intelligent person can be no other than the Son of God himself, to whom the principal things here spoken of wisdom are attributed in other scriptures, and we must explain scripture by itself” (684).
In his introduction to Proverbs 8, Henry writes:
“The word of God is two-fold, and, in both senses, is wisdom; for a word without wisdom is of little value, and wisdom without a word is of little use” (680).
Proverbs 8 gives instruction in wisdom and also points to the source of wisdom, which is the Word.
Works Cited
Henry, Matthew. “Proverbs 8.” Matthew Henry’s Commentary On the Whole Bible: New Modern Edition. Volume 3 and Volume 6, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., March 1996.
Holy Bible: Giant Print with Study Aids. Dugan Publishers, Inc., 1984.
© 2025 Angela Hormberg
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