Note 4 — Chapter XII · The Wisdom of Solomon.

With regard to Wisdom herself, there is a sentence which requires notice, especially as no unweighed word is written in the work under notice. It is said, “In that she is conversant with God, she magnifieth her nobility; yea, the Lord of all things himself loved her.” (viii. 3).4 This seems to be the germ of Philo’s idea of Wisdom as the Mother: “And she, receiving the seed of God, with beautiful birth-pangs brought forth this world, His visible Son, only and well-beloved.” The writer of Sophia Solomontos is very careful to be vague in speculations of this kind, while suggesting inferences with regard to them. Thus, alluding to Moses before Pharaoh, he says, “She (Wisdom) entered into the servant of the Lord, and withstood dreadful kings in wonders and signs” (x. 16), but leaves us to mere conjecture as to whether he (the writer) still had Wisdom in mind when writing (xvii. 13) of the failure of these enchantments and the descent of the Almighty Word, for the destruction of the first-born: