Jehovah by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens.
This verse lifts the reader's eyes from daily advice to the sky and the ground. It names the largest thing wisdom ever did, and it raises a question: what could that same wisdom do with one ordinary life?
The proof offered is not an argument but a world. Commentators read the verse as pointing to the structure of nature itself, at every scale.
God showed this wisdom in the structure of natural creation (v. 19). Yet you cannot separate one part of it from His whole purpose... In creation the mightiest things and the smallest are alike the fruit of that wisdom. The earth itself, the mighty deep, the bursting open of its springs, and the small dew that refreshes the tender grass all come from His hand. All are the fruit of His wisdom.
The word "founded" rules out anything careless in how the world came to be.
By wisdom He founded the earth. It was the thoughtful plan of ordered wisdom. Everything stood in its place, and it expressed His mind and will, His own thoughts. Our work can come from a careless will, or at least from a will that does not know the end from the beginning. This was the perfect ordering of One who did know the end from the beginning, and who ordered it all for the purposes of His wisdom.
Commentators connect wisdom in this chapter to Christ. Read that way, the verse tells us who was at work, not just how.
Since wisdom is personified in Christ, this verse highlights His power as Creator. So the earth, the heavens, the waters in the depths and the waters above are all under His perfect control (v. 20).
If wisdom made the world, wisdom was there before the world. Nothing in the world can add to it. That cuts against a common picture of a God who learns as He goes.
The Creator can learn nothing from His creation. The universe came out of His infinite mind, and He cannot receive any instruction from it... Some suppose that from the start He has been doing the best He can: fighting back the advance of evil, meeting the opposing power as well as He is able, and always improving on the past as intelligence grows. He has not.
Creation is not a change of subject here. It links the making of the universe to the way you walk through it.
In the passage we have quoted from Proverbs, God holds out wisdom to us to keep us going right on our ways. In this wonderful chapter we also see that wisdom at work in the creation of the universe. It is the same wisdom that is offered to us here. The One who ordered creation rightly for God's pleasure gives us that same wisdom, so that we might walk rightly in that creation for His pleasure.
God does not hand us the whole plan. Obedience puts us inside a design we could never map.
When we obey and walk in the mind and word of God, He sets us in the path that this infinite, all-embracing wisdom has arranged. No creature without a will ever leaves that path; only a will departs from it. God does not lay the plan out for our minds to take in, because then we would not be in our proper place in it. Simply receiving His word gives us our place and our duty, in line with the perfect wisdom that has ordered it all and understands it all.
The wisdom this book teaches is real, and it is for life on earth. Yet one writer points beyond it.
The wisdom and the understanding this book deals with remain always for man on the earth. Jehovah will surely bless His people in this way when they look to Him for these good gifts in the day of power and glory. But man's evil has given God occasion to bring in something better in every way. We see the basis, the substance and the pattern of that better thing in Christ crucified, risen, and set in the highest glory, far above all Old Testament expectations.
- Wisdom built. The earth and the heavens are the visible output of God's wisdom — the vast deep and the small dew alike.
- Wisdom planned. "Founded" points to a thoughtful, ordered plan, not a careless act. He knew the end from the beginning.
- Wisdom is a Person. Commentators see wisdom personified in Christ. The verse shows His creating power and His control over earth, heavens and waters.
- Wisdom learns nothing. The universe came out of His infinite mind; He is not doing His best and improving as He goes.
- Wisdom is offered. God holds out the same wisdom that ordered creation to keep us walking right. Simply receiving His word places us in the path it arranged.
By his knowledge the deeps were broken up, and the skies drop down the dew.
Proverbs 3 has been urging its reader to value wisdom above silver and gold. Then it lifts the eyes from personal gain to the universe itself — so why does a chapter of practical advice stop to say how God made the world?
This verse is the third line of a three-part statement. God founded the earth and established the heavens; now He handles the waters. One writer reads the two halves of this verse as two very different acts of the same knowledge.
"By His knowledge the deeps broke open, and the clouds drop down the dew" — a blessed witness of His many-sided wisdom and unlimited understanding. His knowledge directed the destruction of the flood, and it orders the kind refreshment of a peaceful night.
The same knowledge that broke open the deep in the flood also lays down the dew night after night.
Does "by His knowledge" mean God's own knowledge, or someone's knowledge of God? One writer compared the exact Hebrew form with the only other place it appears.
Looking the word up in a Hebrew concordance, I find that this exact Hebrew form occurs in only one other place besides Isaiah 53:11: "by His knowledge the deeps broke open" (Proverbs 3:20). In Proverbs it clearly means God's own knowledge. In Isaiah I take it to be Christ's knowledge of God.
Because the knowledge is God's own, the world holds no information He picked up along the way. One writer sets this against the idea of a God who improves as He goes.
The Creator can learn nothing from His creation. The universe came out of His infinite mind, and He cannot receive any instruction from it… He has not, as some suppose, been doing the best He can from the start. He is not fighting off the advance of evil as well as He is able, and always improving on the past as His understanding grows.
Commentators link the wisdom of these verses to Christ. Read that way, the verse names not only the act but the Person behind it.
"The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding He established the heavens" (v. 19). Since wisdom is personified in Christ, this verse emphasizes His power as Creator. So the earth, the heavens, the waters in the depths and the waters above are all under His perfect control (v. 20).
The verse ends with its gentlest image. Dew carries a settled meaning across Scripture.
Scripture constantly uses dew as a picture of blessing and refreshment coming down from heaven. So Moses says, "My speech will fall like the dew"; and in Hosea we read, "I will be like the dew to Israel."
Dew also works without drawing attention to itself, and that quality is worth copying.
How sweet to think of the dew as a picture of the refreshment we may be to others! It is not obvious; it does not call attention to itself; but it is there, and you know it is there by the effect it produces. Think of people you have known who were neither great preachers, nor gifted teachers, nor noticeable workers. It was impossible to be near them without feeling the sweetness of the presence of Christ. Why? Because, without thinking about the effect on others, their own souls were enjoying the presence of the One who is as the dew to His own.
The creation lines are not a digression. They are the reason to keep seeking wisdom from God for your own small affairs.
The Lord showed wisdom, understanding, and knowledge in creation — in its smallest things as well as its greatest. So how foolish it is for anyone to give up the search, or to give up the means open to them from heaven!
- Knowledge. The wisdom that built the world is God's own; the Hebrew wording points to His knowledge, not our knowledge of Him.
- Complete. God learned nothing from the world He made. It came out of His own infinite mind, and He is not slowly improving on His past.
- Person. Commentators link this wisdom to Christ. The deeps below and the clouds above are under His control.
- Range. One knowledge covers both extremes. It opened the deep in the flood, and it lays down the dew each night — the quiet refreshment we can also be to others.
- Ask. God showed His wisdom in the smallest parts of creation as well as the greatest. So it is foolish to stop seeking that wisdom when He offers it from heaven.