Reading in Proverbs 9 this morning I heard this female personified voice of wisdom a little differently, and a lot more personal. As I read this morning it occurred to me that her voice is not just a female voice. She is a mother’s voice. She calls out to us saying “my son” and begs us to listen to her voice. I could feel a different pull in her call to us to listen. The compassion and the love behind her wisdom as she describes herself. Verse 22 says “The Lord made me at the beginning of His creation” and she describes being there as God created everything on the earth. “I was born when there were no watery depths”, “I was there when He established the Heavens, and when he laid out the horizon on the surface of the ocean” and then she says “I was a skilled craftsman beside Him. I was His delight every day rejoicing before Him. I was rejoicing in His inhabited world delighting in the human race- and now my sons, listen to me.” Wisdom personified is the maternal counterpart that God created. As I read through the call and pleading of wisdom to listen to her voice as she called out, I thought of all the times I heard the voice of wisdom pull at me, and I pretended not to hear it because I wanted to do what I already planned to do. I can think of so many times that I came back sad with regret that I ignored that pull on my heart. Today, as I read through Proverbs 9, I saw wisdom as not just the voice that tells you what you should do or the voice that mocks you if you ignore it, but I saw the love and compassion in wisdom begging us to heed to her words. I saw the love and wisdom of mothers and grandmothers and it gave me a different perspective to her voice.
