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Wisdom of Solomon 19 - Creation Made New for the Delivered

15 min read

The book’s final image is a musical instrument. Fire, water, earth, and living creatures have changed their parts, like notes arranged into another tune, yet they remain the creation of one Maker. Israel has walked through the sea, and what first sounded like the noise of an empire’s judgment ends in the praise of a delivered people. Wisdom closes by addressing the Lord who has not overlooked them.

Orientation

Wisdom 18 recalled Passover and priestly intercession. Chapter 19 returns to Egypt’s pursuit and the crossing of the Red Sea, then gathers the Exodus signs into a final account of creation’s obedience. The narrative is read through two moral contrasts: the Lord preserves His people while judging renewed oppression, and hospitality received is betrayed when benefactors are made slaves.

The ending also answers the earlier chapters on idolatry. Created things cannot become gods, but they are far more than meaningless matter. They serve the Lord’s command. Christians hear this history in the light of baptism, Christ’s Resurrection, and the promised renewal of creation, keeping Israel’s actual deliverance as the foundation of the fulfillment.

The sea made a way for the delivered (Wisdom 19:1-9)

1 As for the ungodly, wrath came upon them without mercy unto the end: for he knew before what they would do; 2 how that having given them leave to depart, and sent them hastily away, they would repent and pursue them. 3 For whilst they were yet mourning and making lamentation at the graves of the dead, they added another foolish device, and pursued them as fugitives, whom they had intreated to be gone. 4 For the destiny, whereof they were worthy, drew them unto this end, and made them forget the things that had already happened, that they might fulfil the punishment which was wanting to their torments: 5 and that thy people might pass through a wonderful way: but they might find a strange death.

6 For the whole creature in his proper kind was fashioned again anew, serving the peculiar commandments that were given unto them, that thy children might be kept without hurt: 7 as namely, a cloud shadowing the camp; and where water stood before, dry land appeared; and out of the Red sea a way without impediment; and out of the violent stream a green field: 8 through which all the people went that were defended with thy hand, seeing thy marvellous strange wonders. 9 For they went at large like horses, and leaped like lambs, praising thee, O Lord, who hadst delivered them.

The first three verses expose a terrible reversal. Egypt has urgently sent Israel away and then pursues the departed as fugitives. Even mourning has not broken the determination to regain control. Exodus 14:5-9 supplies the narrative: Pharaoh and his servants regret losing Israel’s service, and the army follows. Grief is real, but grief alone has not become repentance.

In verse 2, “repent” has the older, ordinary sense of changing one’s mind. Egypt regrets letting the people go. It is a turn back toward oppression, not the return to God that Christians mean by repentance. The distinction is painfully recognizable. A person can regret an outcome because it has cost him power, while still refusing the change of heart that would make another person’s freedom safe.

Wisdom says the Lord knew what they would do. Verse 4 also describes a deserved necessity drawing them toward judgment and forgetfulness. The language is stronger than a neutral account of choices and consequences. The hardened pursuit has entered the course of divine judgment. Yet Wisdom continues to name their action as their foolishness and their punishment as deserved. It does not present innocent people forced into an evil they had resisted. We need not turn these compressed verses into a complete theory of providence and freedom in order to hear their warning: a history of refused correction can make the next refusal terribly easy.

The crossing then reverses what appears possible. Israel passes through an extraordinary way; its pursuers meet death. Cloud, water, and dry land serve a command for the protection of God’s children. Verse 7 recalls the land emerging where water had stood and the sea becoming an unhindered road. The Creator has not surrendered the world to the ruler who would make it a prison.

Isaiah 43:16-19 remembers the Lord who makes a way through the sea and speaks of a new work of deliverance. Wisdom similarly sees more than a successful flight. Creation is arranged anew for the people it could have overwhelmed. The ordinary boundary between safety and danger is no longer determined by the tyrant’s forces. The Lord can make the very place of helplessness into a passage.

Language insight: “fashioned again anew”

Verse 6 in the Elpenor Greek text contains “πάλιν ἄνωθεν”, palin anōthen, in its account of creation being refashioned. The combination can intensify the sense “again” or “anew”, as Brenton renders it. The adverb “ἄνωθεν” can also mean “from above” in other settings, and it is the word used in John 3:3 and John 3:7 for the new birth. That shared vocabulary makes a Christian comparison fruitful, but does not require translating Wisdom here as “from above” or prove that John is borrowing the verse.1

The immediate gain is already substantial: the Creator can form a new arrangement within His own creation for the life of His children. John 3:3-5 teaches the new birth of water and the Spirit on its own terms. The baptismal connection with the sea rests more firmly upon Paul’s explicit reading in 1 Corinthians 10:1-2 and the participation in Christ’s death and Resurrection taught in Romans 6:3-11. The Greek resonance serves that larger reading; it does not have to carry the doctrine by itself.

Baptism is therefore more than a private resolve to improve. Christ joins us to His death and risen life, bringing us into a delivered people. Romans 6:12-14 presses the consequence into the body: sin is no longer to exercise the mastery to which the baptized person once yielded. The old tyrant is not honored by preserving his habits under a Christian name. A truthful baptismal remembrance may begin with refusing the lie, cruelty, or appetite that still demands our obedience.

The type remains rooted in history. Israel’s feet truly passed where water had stood, and the people truly emerged to praise. The Church’s sacramental hope does not need a less real Exodus. It receives a God who saves through the world He has made, then confesses the greater deliverance accomplished in the incarnate and risen Son. Second Corinthians 5:17 names new creation in Christ; Revelation 21:5 opens the horizon to the renewal of all things. These are Christian fulfillments, not claims that Wisdom’s account has already described every feature of that final hope.

Verse 9 gives the body’s answer to deliverance. The people range like horses and leap like lambs. Isaiah 63:11-14 remembers the Lord leading His people through the deep like a horse in the wilderness. Psalm 114:4-6 (LXX Ps 113:4-6) pictures mountains and hills leaping. Wisdom brings that freedom and joy into the redeemed people themselves. Their praise is the proper use of the life that oppression had tried to consume.

Gems from the Fathers 💎

St. John Chrysostom, in Homily 27 on Hebrews, §2, expounds the crossing in Hebrews 11:29. He stresses that the water was real, rather than an appearance, and that the same sea became a place of deliverance and judgment. His sentence catches the reversal: “That which was spread under the one as land, overwhelmed the others as sea.”2

This is a thematic witness through Hebrews. Its spiritual force is not an invitation to imagine ourselves naturally on the safe side. It locates salvation in God’s act received by faith. We cannot produce the road or boast that the sea has become harmless in itself. We entrust ourselves to the Lord who brings His people through, and then allow that deliverance to teach us how to live.

Hospitality betrayed and creation brought into harmony (Wisdom 19:10-22)

10 For they were yet mindful of the things that were done while they sojourned in the strange land, how the ground brought forth flies instead of cattle, and how the river cast up a multitude of frogs instead of fishes.

11 But afterward they saw a new generation of fowls, when, being led with their appetite, they asked delicate meats. 12 For quails came up unto them from the sea for their contentment. 13 And punishments came upon the sinners not without former signs by the force of thunders: for they suffered justly according to their own wickedness, insomuch as they used a more hard and hateful behaviour toward strangers. 14 For the Sodomites did not receive those, whom they knew not when they came: but these brought friends into bondage, that had well deserved of them. 15 And not only so, but peradventure some respect shall be had of those, because they used strangers not friendly: 16 but these very grievously afflicted them, whom they had received with feastings, and were already made partakers of the same laws with them. 17 Therefore even with blindness were these stricken, as those were at the doors of the righteous man: when, being compassed about with horrible great darkness, every one sought the passage of his own doors.

18 For the elements were changed in themselves by a kind of harmony, like as in a psaltery notes change the name of the tune, and yet are always sounds; which may well be perceived by the sight of the things that have been done. 19 For earthly things were turned into watery, and the things, that before swam in the water, now went upon the ground. 20 The fire had power in the water, forgetting his own virtue: and the water forgat his own quenching nature. 21 On the other side, the flames wasted not the flesh of the corruptible living things, though they walked therein; neither melted they the icy kind of heavenly meat, that was of nature apt to melt. 22 For in all things, O Lord, thou didst magnify thy people, and glorify them, neither didst thou lightly regard them: but didst assist them in every time and place.

The closing survey returns to creatures. Ground brings forth pests, the river yields frogs, and the sea supplies quails for the people who ask for food. Wisdom hears the relation between judgment and provision: the world that fails to support Egypt’s illusion of mastery can nourish those who depend upon the Lord. Appetite appears again, recalling the quails of Wisdom 16. The Lord’s provision does not make every human desire wise; it shows His patience with people who remain dependent upon Him.

The account then interrupts its attention to the elements with an indictment of how strangers have been treated. This is no digression. Creation serves the Creator’s justice, and the history of Egypt’s injustice must therefore be named. The sin is not mere unfamiliarity with a foreign people. Egypt has enslaved guests who had already been its benefactors and sharers in its civic life.

Genesis 45:17-20 and Genesis 47:5-6 show the earlier welcome extended to Joseph’s family. Exodus 1:8-14 then records the new king’s failure to know Joseph and the descent into forced labor. Wisdom names the moral betrayal across those events. A people once welcomed is now exploited; a benefit received becomes a debt the powerful prefer to forget. When gratitude disappears from public memory, injustice can present itself as sensible administration.

The comparison with Sodom draws upon Genesis 19:1-11. Violence against guests brings blindness to those at Lot’s door. Wisdom compares that failure to receive unknown visitors with Egypt’s still deeper betrayal of people already received and recognized. Brenton’s difficult clause in verse 15 does not overturn the surrounding argument: verses 14 and 16 intensify the charge against Egypt. Both patterns oppose hospitality; the second adds ingratitude and enslavement to a relationship that already existed.

Verse 17 joins blindness to the failure of welcome. Those who sought power over the stranger lose the ability to find even their own doors. Wisdom has already explored the imprisoned heart in chapter 17; here the image discloses the cost of refusing the neighbor’s humanity. A household or community can become materially secure while making its own inner life uninhabitable through contempt.

Hebrews 13:2 urges hospitality to strangers, and Matthew 25:35 places the welcome given to the stranger within our response to Christ. The application is near at hand. A new parishioner may have no one to stand beside; a worker may be useful to us while remaining invisible as a person; a relative welcomed in a time of need may later be treated as an inconvenience. Wisdom asks whether benefit received has matured into gratitude and just treatment, or into the assumption that the other now exists for our convenience.

This judgment concerns conduct, not ancestry. The story cannot be used to attach a permanent moral character to Egyptians or any other people. Christians who inherit this Scripture must allow its charge to examine their own relations of power. To condemn ancient bondage while accepting the humiliation of those who work for us would be to refuse the very wisdom the history gives.

Then comes the psaltery. The instrument’s notes can be rearranged while remaining sounds. Likewise, the elements change their ordinary relations under God’s command without becoming rival gods or dissolving into chaos. Fire can work in water; water can cease to quench; flames can spare flesh; manna can be preserved. The world remains the Maker’s world while serving a harmony that the oppressor did not compose.

This image is the book’s final answer to idolatry. To worship creation is to mistake the instrument for the One whose command it serves. To despise creation is to miss how generously He works through it. Water, food, fire, and the human body can bear His gifts. In the Church’s sacramental life, this confidence reaches its fullness through the Incarnation: the Lord who truly became human gives baptismal water and Eucharistic bread and wine their saving use. Their reality is not reduced to an idea, and their power is never independent of Him.

A harmony is not made by every note demanding to become the whole song. The image gently searches the self-will with which we receive our lives. We may resent a task because it is hidden, despise a body because it is frail, or refuse a neighbor because he interrupts our plans. Creation’s obedience teaches the creaturely freedom to receive a part within God’s good purpose. This calls for discernment and willing love, never passive submission to abuse dressed up as providence.

The final verse addresses God directly. He magnified His people, did not overlook them, and stood by them in every time and place. It is a doxology, an utterance of praise, after a long remembrance of danger. His assistance has not meant an absence of night, water, hunger, or the need for correction. It has meant His faithfulness within them.

Matthew 28:18-20 gives the Church a fitting final horizon: the risen Christ sends His disciples to teach and baptize the nations with the assurance of His continuing presence. We need not claim a verbal dependence to hear the consonance. The Lord who did not overlook Israel has drawn near in the Son and remains with His Church. The book ends where prayer can begin again: with gratitude to the One who has not lightly regarded His people.

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

Live one act of baptismal freedom. Identify a familiar command of the old master: the lie that avoids embarrassment, the anger that demands submission, the resentment that will not release its account. Ask Christ for help and refuse that command in one concrete situation. Romans 6 teaches that His risen life is to take shape in what we do with our bodies.

Remember a benefit as an obligation of love. Recall someone whose help has become so familiar that you now regard it as your entitlement. Thank the person, repair an unjust arrangement if needed, and ask what his or her life requires beyond usefulness to you. Egypt’s betrayal begins where gratitude has been driven out of memory.

Let matter become thanksgiving. Receive a meal, a glass of water, a walk, or the ordinary work of your hands with deliberate gratitude. Share a material gift with someone in need. The world is neither your possession to consume without limit nor an obstacle to prayer; it is the Creator’s gift in which obedience can become praise.

The sea that seemed to close the way becomes the road beneath Israel’s feet. The people pass through together, and the book remembers them leaping in praise. Bring the place that seems impassable before the risen Christ without pretending to know how He will lead you. Then take the next faithful step, trusting the Lord who has not overlooked you in this time and place.

Footnotes

  1. Wisdom 19:6, Elpenor Greek Septuagint; Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, “ἄνωθεν”, sense c, discussing the combination with “πάλιν” and explicitly referring to Wisdom 19:6. Its wider meanings are distinguished from the contextual translation here. ↩

  2. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Hebrews, Homily 27, §2, on Hebrews 11:29, NPNF1 14, the real sea serving deliverance and judgment. ↩

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