[120] Prov. viii. 8, 9.
[121] Prov. viii. 18.
[122] Prov. viii. 10-16.
[123] Prov. viii. 17.
[124] Prov. viii. 22. There is unfortunately an ambiguity in the word קָנָה. It may mean either "to possess" or "to create." Cf. Gen. xiv. 19, 22, where it is impossible to decide between "Possessor of the earth" and "Maker of the earth." That the word might be rendered "got" in this passage is evident from iv. 7, where it is employed; on the other hand, the LXX. renders ἔκτισε, and the author of Ecclesiasticus evidently took it in this sense; cf. i. 4, "Wisdom hath been created before all things, and the understanding of prudence from everlasting." In Gen. iv. it is rendered "gotten," but it is quite possible that the joyful mother called her son קַיִן with the feeling that she had created him with the help of the Lord.
[125] Prov. viii. 26.
[126] Milton, Paradise Lost, vii. 225.
[127] Prov. viii. 29. It is hardly necessary to point out that the language betrays a complete ignorance of those facts with which astronomy and geology have made us familiar. The author puts into the lips of Wisdom the scientific conceptions of his own time, when the earth was regarded as a flat surface, covered by a solid circular vault, in which the sun, and moon, and stars were fixed. The "circle upon the flood" is probably the apparent circle which is suggested to the observer by the horizon. No one had as yet dreamed that the mountains were thrown up by, not settled in, the surface of the earth, nor was it dreamed that the bounds of the sea are far from being settled, but subject to gradual variations, and even to cataclysmal changes. It may be observed, however, that the voyage of the Challenger seems to have established beyond question that the great outlines of land and ocean have remained approximately the same from the beginning. Ocean islands are of volcanic origin or the work of the coral-insect; but the great continents and all contained within the fringe of a thousand-fathom depth from their shores have remained practically unaltered despite the numerous partial upheavals or submergences.
A passage so full of spiritual and moral significance, and yet so entirely untouched by what are to us the elementary conclusions of science, should furnish a valuable criterion in estimating what we are to understand by the Inspiration of such a book as this.
[128] Cf. x. 23.