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Chapter 10[a]

Wisdom Preserves Her Followers

She preserved the first-formed father[b] of the world(A)
    when he alone had been created;(B)
And she raised him up from his fall,

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Footnotes

  1. 10:1–21 This chapter prepares for the following section (Wis 11:2–19:22) on the history of Israel in the exodus, by reviewing the dealings of Wisdom with the patriarchs. It has a parallel in Sir 44–50; cf. also Wis 18:9.
  2. 10:1–2 Adam.

then the Lord God formed the man[a] out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 2:7 God is portrayed as a potter molding the human body out of earth. There is a play on words in Hebrew between ’adam (“human being,” “man”) and ’adama (“ground”). It is not enough to make the body from earth; God must also breathe into the man’s nostrils. A similar picture of divine breath imparted to human beings in order for them to live is found in Ez 37:5, 9–10; Jn 20:22. The Israelites did not think in the (Greek) categories of body and soul.

Oh, remember that you fashioned me from clay!(A)
    Will you then bring me down to dust again?
10 Did you not pour me out like milk,
    and thicken me like cheese?
11 With skin and flesh you clothed me,
    with bones and sinews knit me together.
12 Life and love you granted me,
    and your providence has preserved my spirit.

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Look, I am like you before God,
    I too was pinched from clay.[a](A)

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Footnotes

  1. 33:6 Pinched from clay: a reference to the tradition that human beings were made from clay; cf. Gn 2:7; Jb 10:9; Is 64:7.

47 The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man, from heaven. 48 As was the earthly one, so also are the earthly, and as is the heavenly one, so also are the heavenly. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image[a] of the heavenly one.(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 15:49 We shall also bear the image: although it has less manuscript support, this reading better fits the context’s emphasis on futurity and the transforming action of God; on future transformation as conformity to the image of the Son, cf. Rom 8:29; Phil 3:21. The majority reading, “let us bear the image,” suggests that the image of the heavenly man is already present and exhorts us to conform to it.