The Hitchhiker’s Guide (24)

I, Wisdom, dwell in shrewdness, and cunning knowledge I find.  Fear of the LORD is hating evil.  Proverbs 8:12-13a   Robert Alter

Shrewdness/ Cunning – Perhaps you’re more familiar with the typical English translations of this verse, like the NASB, “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion.”  Unfortunately, such translations miss an important connection with Genesis (as we will see).  The LXX is no better: “I, wisdom, I encamped with counsel, and knowledge and insight I summoned.”  These versions are more or less descriptions of intellectual superiority.  But that isn’t what Lady Wisdom is really saying.  We need the Hebrew to truly understand.

Robert Alter’s comment is essential:  “This book [Proverbs] uses in a positive sense a cluster of terms . . . that in other contexts have a connotation of deviousness and scheming. (‘Shrewdness,’ ‘ormah, for example, is the word used for the primeval serpent in Genesis 3:1.)  Such usage fits in with the pragmatic curriculum of Proverbs.  Intelligence of the most practical sort, involving an alertness to potential deceptions and seductions, is seen as an indispensable tool for the safe, satisfying, and ethical life, and a fool is repeatedly thought of as a dupe.”[1]

We can add to his insight about ‘ormah by noticing that the phrase “cunning knowledge” is the usual noun, daʿat, coupled with mĕzimmôt, a word about plans and purposes.  Lady Wisdom is really saying that she can provide the necessary means for recognizing hidden agendas, precisely what Adam and the woman did not recognize in the Garden and what the yetzer ha’ra does to convince us that our suspect actions are acceptable.  Without the connection to the serpent, we might think that all that’s happening here is lauding “prudence” and “discretion,” but that would be a mistake.  Her claim is not about being cautious or avoiding offence.  It’s about battling the impulse to have it our own way, to make ourselves the final arbiter of right and wrong.  Now you see why we need the Hebrew connection to Genesis 3.

But don’t think that just because you see the connection, you’ll find the answer to your struggle in these verses.  Lady Wisdom plays a different role.  She upsets the apple cart of unreflective living.  She forces us to challenge what we have always taken for granted.

“The role of the intellectual is not to tell others what they have to do.  By what right would he do so? . . . The work of a intellectual is not to shape others’ political will; it is, through the analysis that he carries out in his field, to question over and over again what is postulated as self-evident, to disturb people’s mental habits, the way they do and think things, to dissipate what is familiar and accepted, to reexamine rules and institutions and on the basis of this re-problematization (in which he carries out his specific task as an intellectual) to participate in the formation of a political will (in which he has his role as citizen to play).”[2]

What did you expect?  A Boy Scout handbook to life?  There’s a reason Paul tells us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  The Bible isn’t a list of “do’s and don’ts.”   It’s a contextual attitude able to discover with shrewdness and cunning what is called for in each of life’s complex and ever-changing situations.  It’s not frozen rules.  It’s life-giving flow.

Step 24:  Be as wise as serpents (the dove part comes later).

Topical Index: ‘ormah, shrewdness, mĕzimmôt, cunning, wisdom, Proverbs 8:12-13a

[1] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: Volume 3 Writings, p. 353, fn. 4.

[2] Michel Foucault and Lawrence D. Kritzman, Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984 (Routledge, 1988), p. 265.