Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 1061 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
God's Right-Hand Woman - Wisdom Wednesday


Wisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge.  Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy.  Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1061 of our Trek, and it is Wisdom Wednesday.  Creating a Biblical Worldview is important to have a proper perspective on today’s current events.  To establish a Biblical Worldview, it is required that you also have a proper understanding of God’s Word.  Especially in our western cultures, we do not fully understand the Scriptures from the mindset and culture of the authors.  In order to help us all have a better understanding of some of the more obscure passages in God’s Word, we are investing Wisdom Wednesday reviewing a series of essays from one of today’s most prominent Hebrew Scholars Dr. Micheal S. Heiser.  He has compiled these essays into a book titled  ’I Dare You Not to Bore Me With the Bible.’

While much of the Bible is written from a patriarchal perspective, women certainly play an integral part of God’s redemption story.  I don’t think it is by coincidence that when Scripture speaks of wisdom that it is referred to in the feminine gender.   In today’s essay, we will explore passages that cover: 
God’s Right-Hand Woman
Hebrews 1:2 tells us: And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe.  This is also emphasized in Colossians 1:16 and in I Corinthians 8:6.  Jesus' role as co-creator with God is a familiar doctrine. But in Hebrews 1:3 there's something that's a bit odd: The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.

What’s strange about the phrase isn't its meaning. We get the metaphor. Jesus “radiates” the glory of God; He is a brilliant reflection of what God is like. What's odd is where the idea comes from, and how startling it would have been to the Jewish Christians for whom the book of Hebrews was intended.The word “radiates” (apaugasma) occurs only here in the New Testament. To figure out what the writer of Hebrews meant, we have to look at his source. The writer is quoting the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, but the Septuagint included books that many Jews and Christians today do not consider part of the biblical canon, but which some in ancient times considered sacred. The phrase in Hebrews 1:2 comes from one of these books titled Wisdom of Solomon. Which is different than the book of Proverbs in our Old Testament.  How can we be sure? Because the word (apaugasma) is found only one time in the Septuagint: Wisdom of Solomon 7:26.  Sure, the scarcity of the word is curious, but where's the surprise? Not only is the word extremely uncommon, but the source of the Hebrews 1:2 quotation has a woman as God’s personified reflection. As Dr. Heiser puts it, “welcome to the biblical twilight zone.”

The Wisdom of Solomon 7:24-26 from the Septuagint where this word is taken from reads this:

For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things.

For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance in...