Men get into useless debates about whether the Book of Wisdom is "scripture" or not because some groups of men put it in their Bibles and others didn't. This is the ego arguing over the brand name on the bottle while ignoring the medicine inside. The truth of the book is self-evident to anyone with ears to hear.
The Book of Wisdom is not a collection of clever sayings. It is a divine exposé. It is a spiritual X-ray that compares and contrasts the consciousness of the righteous man, who lives in reality, with the consciousness of the ungodly man, who lives in the ego's illusion.
1. Wisdom is a Person, Not a Concept
The entire book revolves around the personification of Wisdom (Sophia). This is not a literary device. Wisdom is the Spirit of God, the Logos, the divine intelligence that orders the universe.
- "For Wisdom is a spirit friendly to man." (Wisdom 1:6)
- "She is a breath of the power of God, a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty." (Wisdom 7:25)
- "In every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets." (Wisdom 7:27)
Wisdom is not something you acquire through study. She is a living presence you unite with. She is the Teacher within. You do not become wise by learning facts; you become wise by silencing the ego so that the voice of Wisdom can be heard.
2. The Ungodly are Trapped in the Ego's Logic
The book gives the most precise and chilling transcript of the ego's inner monologue ever written. The "ungodly" are not evil villains; they are ordinary men who live entirely "under the sun," ruled by the rational, materialist mind.
"For they reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves, 'Short and sorrowful is our life... for we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been.'" (Wisdom 2:1-2).
This is the creed of the ego. It is a philosophy born of fear and rooted in the illusion of time and death. And what is the logical conclusion of this creed? "Let us oppress the righteous poor man... let our might be our law of right, for what is weak is found to be useless." (Wisdom 2:10-11). The ego's world is a zero-sum game of power and survival.
3. The Righteous Man is an Affront to the Ego
Why do the ungodly hate the righteous man? The book explains it perfectly. They hate him not for what he does, but for what he is.
"Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law... He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. He became to us a reproof of our thoughts." (Wisdom 2:12-14).
The mere presence of a man who lives in the peace of the Spirit is an intolerable judgment on the chaotic, anxious state of the man living in the ego. The righteous man, by his very being, exposes the ego's inner world as a lie. This is why the ego's only recourse is to "test him with insult and torture... let us condemn him to a shameful death." (Wisdom 2:19-20). The ego must destroy the evidence of its own bankruptcy. This is a perfect prophecy of what would later happen to Jesus.
4. Death is an Illusion Created by the Ego
The book's final verdict demolishes the ego's entire worldview. It reveals that the ego's greatest fear, death, is a phantom.
"But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died... but they are at peace." (Wisdom 3:1-3).
And where did death come from? It was not part of the original design. "For God did not make death... but the ungodly by their words and deeds summoned it." (Wisdom 1:13, 16).
Death is not a biological event. It is the spiritual state of living in the ego, the "self" that is separate from God. The ego, by its very nature, summons and experiences death. The righteous man, who has died to his ego while in the body, does not experience death. He simply sheds the body and continues in the state of peace he has already found.
The Book of Wisdom is a mirror. It forces you to read the transcript of the ego's mind and ask: Is this the voice I am listening to? It shows you the end of both paths: the path of the ego, which is anxiety and a self-inflicted death; and the path of Wisdom, which is peace and eternal life.