“For while all things are quiet silence, and that night was in the midst of her swift course, thine Almighty Word leaped down from Heaven out of thy Royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of a land of destruction; and brought thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword, and standing up filled all things with death; and it touched the heaven, but it stood upon the earth.”[5]
The Word in this place (ὁ παντοδύναμός σου λόγος) is clearly reproduced in the Epistle to the Hebrews (iv. 12). “The Word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword;” and the same military metaphor accompanies this “Word” into Revelation xix. 13. This continuity of metaphor has apparently been overlooked by Alford (Greek Testament, vol. iv., p. 226) who regards the use of the phrase “Word of God” (ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ) as linking Revelation to the author of the fourth Gospel, whereas in this Gospel Logos is never followed by “of God,” while it is so followed in Hebrews iv. 12.
This evolution of the “Word” is clear. In the “Wisdom of Solomon” Wisdom is the creative Word and the Saviour. The Word leaping down from the divine throne and bearing the sword of vengeance is more like the son of the celestial counterpart of Wisdom, namely, the detective Holy Spirit (called in i. 5 “the Holy Spirit of Discipline”). But in the era we are studying, all words by able writers were living things, and were two-edged swords, and long after they who wrote them were dead went on with active and sundering work undreamed of by those who first uttered them.
The Zoroastrian elements which we remarked in Jesus Ben Sira’s “Wisdom” are even more pronounced in the “Wisdom of Solomon.” The Persian worshippers are so mildly rebuked (xiii.) for not passing beyond fire and star to the “origin of beauty,” that one may suppose the author, probably an Alexandrian, must have had friends among them. At any rate his conception of a resplendent God is Mazdean, his all-seeing Holy Spirit is the Parsî “Anahita,” and his Wisdom is Armaîti, the “loving spirit” on earth, the saviour of men.[6] The opposing kingdoms of Ahuramazda and Angromainyu, and especially Zoroaster’s original division of the universe into “the living and the not-living,” are reflected in the “Wisdom of Solomon,” i. 13–16:
“God made not death: neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living. He created all things that they might have their being; and the generations of the world were healthful; and there (was) no poison of destruction in them, nor (any) kingdom of death on the earth: (for righteousness is immortal): but ungodly men with their deeds and words evoked Death to them: when they thought to have it their friend they consumed to naught, and made a covenant with Death, being fit to take sides with it.”
In the moral and religious evolution which we have been tracing it has been seen that the utter indifference of the Cosmos to human good and evil, right and wrong, was the theme of Job; that in Ecclesiastes the same was again declared, and the suggestion made that if God helped or afflicted men it must depend on some point of etiquette or observance unconnected with moral considerations, so that man need not omit pleasure but only be punctilious when in the temple; that in Jesus Ben Sira’s contribution to his fathers’ “Wisdom,” the moral character of God was maintained, moral evil regarded as hostile to God, and imaginary sanctions invented, accompanied by pleadings with God to indorse them by new signs and wonders. Such signs not appearing, and no rewards and punishments being manifested in human life, the next step was to assign them to a future existence, and this step was taken in “Wisdom of Solomon.” There remained but one more necessity, namely, that there should be some actual evidence of that future existence. Agur’s question had remained unanswered—
“Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
Such an one would I question about God.”
To this the reply was to be the resurrection from death claimed for the greatest of the spiritual race of Solomon.