O Sapientia: O Wisdom From On High
The “O Antiphons” are a set of ancient songs that address Christ with seven special titles. Each title is a prophetic name from the Old Testament, which looked forward with hope to the promised messiah. Traditionally, we say or sing one per day in the week before Christmas, a messianic Advent crescendo that builds to the nativity of Jesus. Today, the best-known of these titles is “Emmanuel,” since it is the first verse of the classic Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” But in the original O Antiphons, and still to this day on the church calendar, the first of the seven was O Sapientia, or “O Wisdom,” said or sung on December 16 or 17:
Traditional Antiphon
O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
O come, thou Wisdom from on high,
who orderest all things mightily;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Why is Wisdom—or in Latin, Sapientia—the first of the seven “O Antiphons?” Because this is Wisdom from on high: the divine, personified Wisdom, who was present at the creation of the world. In other words, we begin our song with Wisdom, because she was singing at our beginning! And yes, we sing also of the human wisdom that we need, accepting that we must learn it at her feet. For “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 9:10).
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What is Wisdom?
In my first year of seminary, I was studying Biblical Hebrew, and I felt like I was drowning. The previous summer, I had studied introductory Hebrew in Jerusalem (wise decision!), so I decided to be ambitious and go straight into intermediate Hebrew in seminary (unwise decision!). I loved the language, but the ratcheting of new vocab, verb conjugation, and regular quizzes was getting to me. I felt that I was falling behind and wouldn’t be able to catch up.
Then one day in the library, after multiple fruitless hours with my flashcards, I stood up from my desk to seek some other aid. Where to go? I went to the restricted section of the library, to those resources so valuable and rare that they could not be checked out. I scanned the shelves and found the group of books on Biblical Hebrew. Most of the books were so advanced that I had no chance of understanding them. I imagine that I must have despaired in that moment, wondering if I would ever find a way of cracking the Hebrew code. But I don’t actually remember any despair, for my dominant memory is the joy of what happened next.
For there it was: the Old Testament Parsing Guide. I opened the book, and before me, in lovely lines running down the entirety of the page, every page, was a list of every Hebrew verb in the Bible, complete with conjugations!
Hold on to your hat, Indiana: I had found the holy grail! Needless to say, my subsequent studies in Biblical Hebrew mostly happened in the restricted section of the library.
Wisdom and Knowledge
As great as the Old Testament Parsing Guide was, I still had to learn to use it effectively. If I used it for answers without first working on my homework, then it would hurt my learning, rather than help it. And then the class test, where no parsing guide is allowed, would reveal my ignorance. In other words, I needed wisdom to be able to turn this treasure of information into practical knowledge and discretion.
We see this dynamic in Solomon’s description of wisdom in the book of Proverbs:
I, wisdom, dwell with prudence,
Proverbs 8:12
and I find knowledge and discretion.
Notice how wisdom is related to knowledge, but it is more than knowledge, because it has prudence and discretion for putting knowledge into action. This is why wisdom is essential to the effective exercise of any authority, for its responsibility is to make wise decisions in accordance with justice. Solomon was right to prize wisdom as his chief prayer to God:
By me kings reign,
Proverbs 8:15-16
and rulers decree what is just
by me princes rule,
and nobles, all who govern justly
Today, the advent of Artificial Intelligence poses the same challenge to everyone that I had with the Parsing Guide. With ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok, the answers to innumerable questions are at our fingertips. But do we have the wisdom to use such information? If we use these tools to shortcut the process of learning, or to replace the discernment of justice, then the tests of school and of life will reveal that we have neither knowledge nor wisdom.
Wisdom and Folly
In other words, there is a fine line between Wisdom and Folly. The Book of Proverbs understands this deeply. Both Wisdom and Folly are personified as women, and both call out to us and invite us in. They even use the exact words! Lady Wisdom says: “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here” (Proverbs 9:4). And the woman Folly says the same: “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here” (Proverbs 9:16).
But these two women offer different things. Wisdom provides a way of learning and insight:
Come, eat of my bread
Proverbs 9:5-6
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Leave your simple ways, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.
By contrast, Folly offers immediate pleasure through secrecy and theft:
Stolen water is sweet,
Proverbs 9:17
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.
To be sure, Wisdom offers satisfaction and a great many good things in the long run. But Wisdom often also requires a posture of work, of productive effort together with delayed gratification, of disciplined creativity.
Wisdom at the Creation
Wisdom is especially qualified to teach us about work and creativity because she was present at Creation.
Two of the most surprising and interesting passages in the Book of Proverbs relate wisdom to God’s work at the Creation. In Proverbs 3, Solomon explains how God used wisdom to establish the heavens and the earth:
The LORD by wisdom founded the earth;
Proverbs 3:23
by understanding he established the heavens;
by his knowledge the deeps broke open,
and the clouds drop down the dew.
Solomon therefore encourages us to find wisdom, for “she is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her” (Proverbs 3:22). Though God drove Adam and Eve out of Eden, we still have access to the wisdom tree of life.
Most remarkably, in Proverbs 8, Wisdom herself speaks of her existence at the Creation, and even before Creation.
The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.
Notice the repetition of the idea that wisdom existed before: before the beginning of the earth, before the mountains had been shaped, before he had made the earth.
When the text says “the Lord possessed me,” it is translating the Hebrew verb kanah, which means to acquire, to create, or to possess. Here it is in the perfect tense, which means that the action is completed (thanks, Old Testament Parsing Guide!). In other words, Wisdom is not a piece of creation, but rather a completed generation by whom God creates.
These passages imply that Wisdom is herself a divine figure. She is not a part of creation, but rather a possession of the Creator. For traditional Judaism, the most this can mean is that Wisdom represents an attribute of God. But for Christians, there is the further possibility that Wisdom refers more specifically to the eternal Son of God.
The Birth of Divine Wisdom
The first of the Antiphons, “O Wisdom From On High,” connects God’s wisdom at the creation to the birth of divine Wisdom in Jesus Christ.
Multiple passages from scripture witness to this connection. Isaiah speaks of the coming messiah as one who will have the “spirit of wisdom and understanding” (Isaiah 11:2). Jesus himself illustrated this wisdom in his life. The gospels record people marveling at it: “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him?” (Mark 6:2). Paul explains that Jesus has this wisdom because he himself is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24).
Most powerfully of all, John echoes Proverbs 8 by explaining that Jesus is the very Word by which God created in the beginning:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:1-3
In his illustration of this Antiphon (used as the cover image of this article), Anderson Carman brilliantly connects the Creation to the birth of Christ. As God works with wisdom to form the earth, the light already points to Bethlehem. From before the beginning, God knew he would send his Wisdom to take flesh as the light of the world.
Second Eve, Second Possession
Around the edges of the image are the swaddling clothes that will wrap and enfold the incarnate Wisdom of God.
We’ve already mentioned the Hebrew verb kanah, used in Proverbs to describe how God possessed Wisdom from before the foundation of the world. It’s intriguing to observe that the first Biblical appearance of the same verb is in Genesis 4, where Eve says after giving birth, “I have gotten (kanah) a man with the help of the Lord.”
The story of Christmas is the story of a second Eve, one who also possesses a man with the help of the Lord, but in an even more miraculous way. The eternally begotten Son of God is begotten by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary. Wisdom from eternity enters into time.
And the result, as at the creation, is an abundance of joy. The angels who appear in the sky and sing of joy to the world are louder echoes of Wisdom at the first creation. For in Christ, God is creating by his Wisdom once again, recreating us in his joy:
When he established the heavens, I was there;
Proverbs 8:27-31
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth
then I was beside him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the children of man.
Image: original art by Anderson Carman.
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