Hebrew Greek

because God did not make death nor does he delight in the destruction of the living.  Wisdom of Salomon 1:13  A New English Translation of the Septuagint

Death – It’s fairly widely recognized that The Wisdom of Salomon was composed in Greek in the mid first century B.C.E. It contains many Hellenistic themes, most likely imported into the literature because of the dominance of Greek thought in the Mediterranean world.  Nevertheless, Wisdom traces many ideas that originated in the Tanakh.  Reading this text in the Septuagint helps us see how these ideas developed after the era of the prophets.  In this particular verse, we find the explicit denial that God has anything to do with death.  He didn’t create it; He didn’t intend it; He finds no pleasure in it.  In every sense, death is opposed to God’s purposes and plans.  It should come as no surprise that this idea generates the constant hope of a world to come, a world where death is no longer experienced.

But the Tanakh really has nothing to say about the end of death.  Its focus is on this world, this moment, this opportunity for obedience.  What happens after the inevitability of death seems to be of little concern.  There are references to the underworld, but the idea of reward and punishment in another life just isn’t there.  For modern readers this is particularly unsettling.  We want to know what happens afterward.  We want assurances.  We need hope.  So we must ask, “Why did the ancients of Israel seem so indifferent about the end of life?”  “What changed so that the defeat of death became such an important theme in the rabbinic age?”

The answer is a change in the concept of justice.  Psalm 33:5 says, “He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.”  The Hebrew term is mišpāṭ from the verb šāpaṭ.  TWOT provides an important explanation:

The primary sense of šāpaṭ is to exercise the processes of government. Since, however, the ancients did not always divide the functions of government, as most modern governments do, between legislative, executive, and judicial functions (and departments) the common translation, “to judge,” misleads us. For, the word, judge, as šāpaṭ is usually translated, in modern English, means to exercise only the judicial function of government. Unless one wishes in a context of government—civil, religious, or otherwise—consistently to translate as “to govern or rule,” the interpreter must seek more specialized words to translate a word of such broad meaning in the modern world scene.^[1]

The meaning of šāpaṭ is further complicated by the fact that although the ancients knew full well what law—whether civil, religious, domestic or otherwise—was, they did not think of themselves as ruled by laws rather than by men as modern people like to suppose themselves to be. The centering of law, rulership, government in a man was deeply ingrained. “The administration of justice in all early eastern nations, as among the Arabs of the desert to this day, rests with the patriarchal seniors ^[2]

As you can see, mišpāṭ is located entirely within the human political realm.  It does not postulate a balance of reward and punishment in another life.  What matters is what happens in this world, not the next.  In fact, we might be justified in saying that until the Greeks highlighted, and answered, the problem of injustice in this world, the ancient Hebrew culture simply operated on the basis that God would punish evil in this world despite the evidence that this seemed not to always be the case.  The solution of reward and punishment in the next life had to wait until Hellenism conquered Hebraic thought.  By the time of The Wisdom of Salomon, Greek ideas were firmly planted in rabbinic discourse, and the ‘olam ha’ba became a vital element in Jewish orthodoxy.  Perhaps that’s why the death and resurrection of the Messiah was seen as fundamental to followers of the Way.  Death wasn’t just the termination of human living.  It was an enemy of God.  Abraham might have been content with living a good life and passing to his kin, but that wasn’t enough for Paul.

Topical Index: death, Hellenism, šāpaṭ, justice, reward and punishment, ‘olam ha’ba, Septuagint, The Wisdom of Salomon 1:13

^[1] Culver, R. D. (1999). 2443 שָׁפַט. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 947). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.