Operations of the Spirit: Part 9(b), Proverbs 1 – 9

Operations of the Spirit: Part 9(b), Proverbs 1 – 9

 

 

 

 

This is the second subpart of the ninth of fifteen parts to an 
essay entitled "Operations of the Spirit"; this part covers 
Proverbs 1 through Proverbs 9 and necessarily addresses, albeit not 
comprehensively, the gender of the Holy Ghost. 

The entire essay is just over one hundred pages 
if printed out, so it is presented serially in this blog. These 
parts should be read sequentially, because each builds on the 
previous parts. Hopefully, readers will have comments, suggestions 
and criticisms. The fifteen parts are as follows: 
I. Introduction, Part I 
II. Confusing Terms, Part II 
III. Metaphors and Meaning, Parts III through VI 
     A. The still small voice, Part III 
     B. The heart and reins, Part IV
     C. Light and burning, as in a burning in the bosom, Part V 
     D. Extracting meaning from metaphors,, Part VI 
IV. The Scriptures and the Spirit, Parts VII through X 
     A. The Oliver Cowdery revelations: D&C 6, 8 and 9, Parts VII(a), (b), and (c) 
     B. Other modern-day scriptures, Part VIII 
     C. Ancient scriptures about the Spirit, Part IX 
     D. Extraordinary events, Part X 
V. The Spirit and Individual Affectations, Part XI 
VI. Conclusion, Part XII 

There are footnotes in this work. You can read the footnotes 
by hovering your cursor over the note, or you can click 
on the note to read it as text. There is a symbol at the end 
of each footnote that allows you to return to the text 
by clicking on it.

 

XI. ANCIENT SCRIPTURES ABOUT THE SPIRIT (cont.)

B. Proverbs 1–9, Wisdom personified as the Holy Ghost

There is no explicit reference to the Holy Ghost in the Old Testament,¹ but the first nine chapters of Proverbs personify Wisdom–chochman in Hebrew–as though she (wisdom is a feminine word in Hebrew) is the Holy Ghost.² This characterization is embodied in the offices Wisdom performs in these chapters. Lady Wisdom does the things one expects the Holy Ghost to do.

Proverbs begins with an overview of what it is the Holy does for those prompted by the Spirit. The Lady Wisdom of Proverbs teaches one

To know wisdom and instruction;

to perceive the words of understanding;

To receive the instruction of wisdom,

justice, and judgment, and equity;

To give subtilty to the simple,

to the young man knowledge and discretion.

A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and

a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:

To understand a proverb, and the interpretation;

the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.³

What follows this introductory overview is not just another proverb; rather, the book continues with the formula for attaining and keeping the blessings of the Spirit. These blessings do not involve the Spirit’s interference with one’s free agency; rather, the Spirit–Lady Wisdom–is there to bless with enlightenment and knowledge.

The beginning of knowledge and discretion is reverence for the Lord and instruction received at the feet of one’s parents. ⁴ Then, the one striving for the Spirit must eschew temptation and resulting wickedness,⁵ and recognize that the Spirit is everywhere to be had and a comfort or fortification against evil.⁶ This is followed by understanding of the Lord and His ways,⁷ and the resulting inculcation that will deliver one from evil so that the with the Spirit will walk with good men—the righteous—rather than the wicked, who will be cut off.⁸ This walk with the righteous then requires that the individual keep the Lord’s commandments, trust in His understanding, acknowledge the Lord’s hand, and always flee from evil, knowing that the Lord will correct him.⁹ Happiness, peace, and the tree of life ¹⁰ is the result, and one is good and just to his neighbors and friends, not a scorner.¹¹ The importance of getting Wisdom is so important that these injunctions are repeated a second time,¹² and during this repetition the injunction is given to “Drink waters out of thine own cistern|and running waters out of thine own well.”¹³ This injunction to draw from within must be because the Spirit works from within to fortify one’s life with righteousness and the learning one attains as he advances in righteousness toward perfection.

The importance of Wisdom and righteousness is the pragmatic message of the first nine chapters of Proverbs. Proverbs uses the imagery of looking out a window at a naive young man who follows after the harlot in the street, the strange women from whom the man’s kinswoman and sister, Lady Wisdom, would keep him.¹⁴

The close relationship between Lady Wisdom and the Lord is, also, explained in these chapters, but particularly, in chapter eight. Wisdom declares (1) that she vouches for the Lord in understandable terms,¹⁵ (2) that she is the source of wisdom, understanding strength, and the substance of treasure,¹⁶ (3) that she was present before and involved in the creation of the world,¹⁷ and (4) that those who hearken to her are blessed rather than being lovers of death who hate their own soul.¹⁸

The foregoing four points form two couplets and underscore the essential nature of Lady Wisdom’s office, making it clear that she is a part of the Godhead who created the earth and continues to bless those whom will listen to her during their probationary sojourn on the earth.

The first nine chapters of Proverbs are an extraordinary exposition on the Holy Ghost. It is unfortunate that the chapter divisions, which were originated by Stephen Langton in the late 12th or early 13th Centuries, along with the versification of the Geneva Bible of 1560, which established the standard for the versification that was followed in the King James Version and virtually all bibles of today, distract most readers. It would be better if the verses and chapter divisions were ignored and the writing given a poetic versification to aid the reader.

One of the Church’s most renowned scholars, Truman G. Madsen, and David Noel Freedman, videotaped an interview where they discussed what they both considered the ultimate question for mankind: the nature of God. Freedman was the author of some 345 books on the Bible, and he was the editor of the 120-volume Anchor Bible, perhaps the most scholarly Bible ever prepared, the product of more than 1,000 scholars working since 1956. Since Freedman had worked with “every syllable of every word in the Hebrew Bible and beyond into the New Testament,” Madsen’s encomium goes on, “you are in a way qualified, as few are, to talk about what we call an ultimate question. The ultimate question is the nature of God and of man as revealed in the first of Genesis chapters, the creation narratives.” The interview Madsen recorded with this great man is worth viewing.¹⁹. After all, one should care about the nature of the Godhead and our relationship to divinity. That includes what many have told this author is irrelevant and even irreverent: the gender of the Holy Ghost. Scholars like Freedman say there is no longer a question about her female gender:

MR. MADSEN: An even more touchy question has to do with, is there a match or is there an archetypal figure alongside of the deity who can be called female.

MR. FREEDMAN: For me, that’s no longer and, not really a question anymore because of, we not only have substantial evidence in the Bible, but also from archeological research as ultimately resolved in the figure of Lady Wisdom

MR. MADSEN: Chochmah in the Hebrew?

MR. FREEDMAN: Yeah, chochmah in Hebrew, who is described in considerable detail in the book of Proverbs, especially chapter eight. But not only there, elsewhere, indicating that she is the one who accompanies, ah, the deity and is the instrument, the one who actually carries out, ah, the successive acts of creation.

MR. MADSEN: She is a person?

MR. FREEDMAN: Oh yeah, very—

MR. MADSEN: She’s a—

MR. FREEDMAN: Very much so.

MR. MADSEN: She’s a person.

MR. FREEDMAN: And see, she is more or less orthodox. I —

MR. MADSEN: Meaning that the traditional—

MR. FREEDMAN: That the Bible supports this. Whereas, I think she may have been the solution to a significant problem, namely, the persistent belief in and worship of goddesses in the Bible, or reported in the Bible—

MR. MADSEN: That’s interesting

MR. FREEDMAN —usually condemned. But it means there was something there quite different from Lady Wisdom. It all begins—

MR. MADSEN: Well, let me just say—

MR. [[FREEDMAN:—back in Genesis,

 

[00:22:42]
MR. MADSEN: So to sum up, though there are these three Canaanite’s deities, all women, you’re saying that that’s idolatry, but the fact that it was part of the culture may reflect that chochmah — which is genuinely part of the Torah — chochmah wisdom does get us into understanding that there can be, even in the legitimate reading of Israelite religion, a faith that includes both a male God and a female?

MR. FREEDMAN: Yes. And the way you define it, in other words, orthodox religion, even Biblical religion would not say she’s a goddess.

MR. MADSEN: Right.

MR. FREEDMAN: But rather she is a female figure associated very closely with the deity, with God, and in a way that’s closer, more intimate than angels. She’s not an angel.

She is not a goddess, but she is associated more closely and intimately with the Father than angels. Perhaps, this is the status of the Holy Ghost, because she does not have a body, is not resurrected, and is not married–yet. Until she is, she is like the Savior before his birth, death, and resurrection. Not yet perfected and, therefore, not yet a Goddess.

1. Psalms 51:11–12, Isaiah 63:10–11, and Ezekiel 36:26–28 are places where the Holy Ghost is not named but clearly intended. Perhaps, then, this part of the Old Testament survived the religious reforms during the reign of King Josiah, 640 BC–610 BC. The Bible casts King Josiah as a religious reformer who restored the true faith, but that seems unlikely for numerous reasons that are beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that there is a substantial body of scholarly opinion based on the work, principally, of Margaret Barker that the Bible we have today has been purged of the doctrines of the “Older Testament.” See Barker, Margaret, The Older Testament (Sheffield, TN: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005). The view of a substantial group of scholars is that King Josiah’s reign involved a prostitution of the true religion, turning it from a religion of polytheism to monotheism without references to a Savior and the Holy Ghost. The arguments against revelation and a Savior were made by the Sherem in the Book of Mormon, an argument that provoked Jacob out of retirement and to combat this heresy. See Jacob 7. Jacob won the argument in the New World, but the Old Testament suffers by loss of the plain and precious doctrine of God the Father, His Son, and the Holy Ghost. See 1 Nephi 13:40.
2. “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” according to Genesis 1:2, and this spirit is feminine in the original Hebrew. Interestingly, Tertullian’s (c. AD 155–240) treatise “De Baptismo” at ¶¶ 3, 4 says this spirit hovering over the waters of the creation is a type for the Holy Ghost hovering over the waters of baptism, which is consistent with the idea that this temple-ceremony presentation in the first chapters of Genesis is about the endowment ceremony, not the creation of the world. See D&C 101:32–33 (how the earth was made not to be revealed until the Millennium); cp. Moses 4:32 (the words of the Genesis creation not to be show “except to them that believe).
3. Proverbs 1:2–6. Dark sayings has the same tenor as proverb in the last couplet of this poem. A proverb is thought of as a pithy maxim, and dark sayings has the same meaning, something like a sententious, conundrum-like maxim.
4. Proverbs 1:2–9. The term fear of is used in the King James Version to translate irath, which has a complex meaning embodying reverence with a moral quality. Strongs H3374. The primitive root, H3372, means to fear; morally, to revere; cause to frighten.
5. Proverbs 1:10–19. The parallel, two-line strophes of this quotation are typical of Hebrew poetry. Yoram Hazony says, “[T]hat which is stated in one clause is then stated slightly differently, with somewhat modified but nonetheless parallel meaning, in a subsequent clause.” Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012)  at 344, n. 50, which cites Robert Alter, The art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), at 3–26, and James Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1998 [1981]), at 1–58. Thus, the scripture cited by Hazony for his proposition that the interchangeability of the wise man’s thoughts and the voice of the Lord makes sense, particularly when it is formatted like a poetry:

   And I will make Jerusalem a ruin,

   A lair for jackals,

   and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation,

   without inhabitant,

   Who is the man so wise that he can understand this,

   and to whom the mouth of the Lord has spoken that he may explain it:

   On what account is the land lost, withered like a desert,

   without anyone to pass through it?

   Jeremiah 9:10–11 (apparently Hazony’s own translation, reformatted here).

6. Proverbs 1:20–33. This scripture begins by saying “Wisdom crieth without|she uttereth her voice in the streets.” Jeremiah, perhaps, alluded to this when he commented on the simplicity of understanding the truth: all one has to do is stand in the street and look to see which path is the good way leading to rest for one’s soul. Jeremiah 7:16. The notion here is that the effects of the Spirit are available for the taking or asking, which requires one to walk the path that leads to this blessing.
7. Proverbs 2:1–9.
8. Proverbs 2:10–22.
9. Proverbs 3:1–13.
10. Proverbs 3:13–26. The tenor of the tree-of-life metaphor is significant here. As noted in footnote 5 of Part (a) of this blog on Operations of the Spirit, trees are the vehicle that represent a people. Thus, the reference in Proverbs 3 to finding paths of pleasantness and peace and the tree of life carries the sense of being among people—the tree of life—that share the same values and bring this peace and pleasantness: happiness.
11. Proverbs 3:13–26. The tenor of the tree-of-life metaphor is significant here. As noted in footnote 5 of Part 9(a) of this blog on Operations of the Spirit, trees are the vehicle that represent a people. Thus, the reference in Proverbs 3 to finding paths of pleasantness and peace and the tree of life carries the sense of being among people—the tree of life—that share the same values and bring this peace and pleasantness: happiness.
12. Proverbs 3:13–26. The tenor of the tree-of-life metaphor is significant here. As noted in the preceding footnote trees are the vehicle that represent a people. Thus, the reference in Proverbs 3 to finding paths of pleasantness and peace and the tree of life carries the sense of being among people—the tree of life—that share the same values and bring this peace and pleasantness: happiness.
13. Proverbs 5:15.
14. Proverbs 7.
15. Proverbs 8:1–12.
16. Proverbs 8:13–21.
17. Proverbs 8:22–31. This is consistent with Genesis 1:2 where it says, “And the Spirit [a feminine term, ruwach in Hebrew] moved upon the face of the water” during the creation process.
18. Proverbs 8:32–9:6.
19. The video can be purchased from Desert Book, “Ultimate Questions.”