then I was by him [his] nursling, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him;
In Proverbs 8, a voice called Wisdom speaks about the time before the world existed. Verse 30 is the heart of that speech: a Person standing beside God, and God's daily delight. Who is this speaker, and what does an eternity of shared joy have to do with us?
The chapter is not describing a quality God has. Someone is speaking here, and the New Testament gives us the name.
The New Testament confirms who Wisdom is. "Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God" (1 Cor. 1:30). We have the key to Proverbs 8 in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus, the one great Mediator between God and men... "to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:24).
The verse places Wisdom by God. That small word holds two Persons together and keeps them distinct. It also rules out any idea that this speaker had a beginning.
"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way." Wisdom was not simply in Him, but with Him. John 1:1 says the same of the Word: "the Word was with God." And He "is God" just as surely... "I was set up [literally, anointed] from everlasting, from the beginning before the earth was." He was no creature of God, but was in being before His works.
Translators have taken the Hebrew phrase two ways, and commentators differ over which is better. One reading hears tenderness in it: the cherished child at the Father's side.
When God appointed the foundations of the earth, the verse says, "Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him." This means "the nursling of His love" (J.N.D.). Divine tenderness and deep affection were there even before God appointed the strong and solid foundations of the earth. There is a parallel to this expression in the New Testament — "the Son of His love" (Col. 1:13).
The other reading is the one the ESV follows: "like a master workman." It makes Him the craftsman of all that was built. The surprise is that He stands by the Creator instead of working alone.
Come to the truth about the greatness of the Son of Man, and we find that He is the Creator Himself. He made all things (John 1; Col. 1; Heb. 1). And yet this passage sets Him "by" the Creator, when He made the heavens and the earth. The reason for this, I have no doubt, is that here He is viewed only as the Man of God's purposes... "As one brought up with Him" appears in the Revised Version as "a master workman" (v. 30), and elsewhere as "His artificer." I am persuaded the meaning is this: everything was created with a view to Christ taking it under His control as Man, on the ground of redemption.
The verse shows delight running both ways. God delights in Wisdom, and Wisdom rejoices before Him. No human thinker reached that view of God on his own.
Here we read of two Persons — one is Wisdom — who enjoy an eternal and mutual flow of affection. It must be so. Never in all the searching of philosophy did men like Socrates or Plato reach such a height. Then a simple fisherman, called from his boat and nets by the Sea of Galilee, wrote three words. The greatest philosopher never dreamed of them: "God is love" (1 John 4:16).
What verse 30 says of eternity, God later said out loud where people could hear it.
Creation's many amazing wonders came about while Christ, the Wisdom of God, was with the Father. He was there as a "Master Craftsman," bringing all things into being (v. 30). He was daily God's delight, rejoicing always before Him. God's words from heaven confirmed this on two occasions: when John the Baptist baptized the Lord Jesus, and when He was transfigured on the holy mountain.
The second half of the verse says Wisdom was not only loved but rejoicing. Believers share that same joy before God, but on different terms.
There was divine delight in this wisdom, seen here fully as a person. And He too was ever rejoicing before God at all times. This object of God's delight was rejoicing before Him. In a lesser way, and by grace, we are "holy and blameless before Him in love." But here it was an eternal and divine object — what was in the Godhead itself, yet with God as a distinct object before Him.
- Delight identified — the Wisdom speaking here is Christ, called the wisdom of God in 1 Corinthians. This chapter gives us a Person, not a principle.
- Delight eternal — He was with God, not made by Him: anointed from everlasting, in being before any of God's works.
- Delight mutual — two Persons in an unending exchange of affection. A fisherman put it into three words: "God is love."
- Delight declared — God had this delight in Him before creation, and spoke it aloud at His baptism and on the mountain of transfiguration.
- Delight shared — He rejoiced before God by right; we stand holy and blameless before Him in love by grace.
rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, and my delights [were] with the sons of men.
Wisdom has just traced herself back before the world began, standing beside God as He formed the earth. Now her joy turns outward — to the world people live in, and to people themselves. Who is this speaker? And why would an eternal Being delight in us?
The chapter presents Wisdom as a woman speaking, but writers see a Person behind the figure.
The fact that the speaker is a woman need not trouble us. When Scripture pictures truth through a woman, it is to present divine principles in their inward character. No honest mind taught by God can doubt that this chapter sets Christ before us. Some have argued that we cannot apply abstract principles to Divine Persons, but Luke 11:49 disproves it: "Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles.'" Here a divine Person is speaking.
The words "his earth" point the same way. The speaker claims to own the planet.
HIS earth! Whose? Evidently the One who speaks. Who can call the earth HIS earth, but the Creator Himself? And who has shown His delight in the sons of men but the Lord Jesus? Who has died that men might live? Christ! So we read, "because of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God" (1 Cor. 1:30).
The verse narrows twice: from the whole creation to the inhabited world, then to people. That narrowing is deliberate.
A wise God did order the creation, yet wisdom was fixed on something else — man was the object in view. That wisdom, whose joy was before God, and who was God's delight and joy, did not delight in the earth but in the parts of it where people would live. There was purpose in this. Man is a poor, trivial part of creation if he is only a creature — small against the vast scene he moves in. Yet he is the centre of all God's purposes, the object of His thought before creation.
The rejoicing in the earlier lines is between Wisdom and Jehovah alone. What is startling is that we are allowed to overhear it.
We are carried back into the past eternity, where infinitely sufficing to each other, Wisdom was with Jehovah, the Son with the Father… What perfect mutuality of divine joy, but in which the Son was absolutely alone with the Father, none else to know, much less to enter into it. Yet we are given to understand what occupied their thoughts in this communion. "Before him, rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth" — while as yet He had not made the earth — "and my delights were with the sons of men." Who could have conceived it, that in the ineffable joy of such divine communion, we should find the intimation of our place in the comprehension of the purposes of God as the objects of His delight.
This delight came before the earth, so nothing people did produced it. Where does it find its answer?
Before the second verse of Genesis 1, or even the first, God's heart was going out to the parts of the earth where people would live. What a word for us! It passes all we can understand — His delights with the sons of men! Where shall we look for these thoughts to be carried out? Not in the history of the first man. It is in the second Man, already before Him in His eternal counsels.
Writers link this verse forward to Bethlehem. There the heavenly hosts sang, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!" (ESV)
This is not Christ glorified on high, and so it is not our union with Him as His body. Still, it is an expression of divine love in man and toward man, far beyond anything Israel ever knew. It will be seen in the days of the kingdom here below, when He reigns and all the families of the earth are blessed in Him. For it is divine delight in Him whose delights were, and will be, with the sons of men. So the praise of the heavenly hosts at His birth is beautiful, heard at night by the lowly shepherds. It is beautiful in itself, and beautiful in their delight, free of jealousy, in the ways of Him who made men, not angels, the special object of His pleasure.
One more surprise: look at who these people were.
The love between the Father and the Son is divine, and so completely happy and satisfied, if we may say so. The Son was daily His Father's delight, and rejoiced always before Him. Yet that divine love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit wanted to go beyond itself, and to show itself outside itself… But the vast range into which that love had spread was to hold, as its special objects, children of disobedience, enemies of God. This is what makes that love so truly divine, and is its highest glory.
- Speaker. Wisdom here is a Person, not an idea — Christ, who calls the planet "His earth" because He made it.
- Direction. The joy narrows from creation, to the inhabited world, to people. Man was the object in view — the centre of all God's purposes.
- Timing. God set this delight before the earth existed. Nothing we did produced it, and nothing we do can be its cause.
- Fulfilment. Not the first man's history, but the second Man, brings it about. Angels announced it at His birth, glad — not jealous — that God chose men and not them.
- Reach. The love between Father and Son was already complete. It still went outside itself and settled on enemies. That is where its highest glory shows.