Why is wisdom referred to as she in the Bible?
- Posted:
- 3+ months ago by William T...
- Topics:
- bible, wisdom
Answers (2)
The following pertains to what you call "old testament".
1) It isn't in the general case, so far as I've noticed at a glance.
2) In hebrew, gender rules for non biological entities are oft arbitrary and prone to change over time. Some are permitted to be called either way (such as wind or sun), but there's always a certain preference that somehow pervades the native speakers' intuition as a whole, due to standing out when the norm is broken by poems, texts and what have you (both female for the former). Other than that, morphology and phonetics do play a significant part in determining this when relevant - at least one word for wisdom ends in "-ah" so it fits the standard category.
If you seek to ascribe a meaning to this alleged phenomenon / hypothesis, the bible is hardly a suitable instrument for it. That manuscript is roughly as patriarchal as the rest of the era it describes, whether it offers token heroines and encrypted hints of feminism.or not.
In the Bible, the analogy is used to describe wisdom as a being, rather than a possession, someone, rather than something, that is to be cared for. This is from the Old Testament, and likely refers to the Jews who had many laws and traditions to uphold, so the general audience would probably be men. The Bible uses many comparisons that help the audience understand better. For example, Jesus used parables about things that people he was speaking to would likely understand as it pertained to their everyday lives. Wisdom is a she, not only to express its value as a human, but also to help men better understand its value.