Job 28:12

12. Wisdom החכמה , is a word of varied and comprehensive import. It includes both intellectual and moral qualities; either, as they exist (concretely) in the mind of God or other moral agent, or as they are brought to light (abstractly) either by His action or that of some other being. In other words, it may mean either the divine idea or archetype according to which God works, or high intelligent action itself, involving upright conduct. It also means pure creative Intelligence, ( hhokmah,) answering to the Logos of the New Testament. Here Wisdom is used with the article, and personified: darkly mysterious, of worth inestimable, perfect in all its works, infinitely to be desired by man; a Divine Conception and yet distinct from God, (Job 28:27, it may prefigure the incarnate Being who is “made unto us wisdom and righteousness.” Nature, as revealed wisdom of God, incomplete and unsatisfying, carries within herself an embryonic prediction that in the fulness of time there should be a fuller disclosure made of divinely hidden wisdom. The boasted Pindar, of the classics, fails in his tribute to wisdom when compared with Job:

“How can’st thou hope true wisdom’s to be found,

Wherein so little man surpasses man?

For it can never be that minds,

Of mortal woman born,

Can trace the counsels of Deity.”

Fragment x, (Dissen.)

Compare the apocryphal Book of Wisdom, chapters 7-9.

Understanding בינה , is rendered by the Germans, einsicht, insight. Its root idea, “to divide,” “to separate,” is the same as that of hhokmah, (wisdom,) and they are used interchangeably. The former, ( binah,) according to Delitzsch, is the faculty of seeing through that which is distinguishable consisting of the possession of the right criteria; while the latter, ( hhokmah,) is the perception, in general, of things in their true nature and their final causes.