Proverb 3:18

“She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her,
And happy are all who retain her.”

All this study on Lady Wisdom has me wondering what her relation is to our sovereign Lord. Is she a merely a priceless virtue? Is she a manifestation of the character of God, that is to say, one of his attributes? Is she God?

I’m sorry if that’s offensive to ponder the existence of God outside of the Holy Trinity, but that’s what this study is all about, right? The pursuit of Truth. And in this, very specific instance, the pursuit of Wisdom, because it is clear that we are instructed to find her and I wonder if we don’t find her there in the midst of the Holy Trinity. But I also wonder if she is her own, separate being that we are to seek, not as Lord, but as to possess.

I wonder if this verse is supposed to lend us insight into the answer to all of these questions as it states that she is “‘a tree of life’ to those who take hold of her”. 

Instantly, my thoughts bring to surface the only other tree of life to my knowledge, the one in the Garden of Eden. In Gen. 2:9, we are told that “The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the only one they were instructed not to eat form. 

We all know what happened with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the next chapter: Eve partook, and carried her man to the grave with her. After God cursed their behavior, he said this, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever—”

…and the sentence stops there, intentionally leaves the reader hanging on his imaginations and the “what ifs”. What if Adam and Eve also partook of the tree of life? There’s a whole lotta evil sitting on the ledge of that dash. God foresaw the eternal damages of sin and rescripted history as you and I know it by ejecting the sinners from the Garden of Eden and setting up guard over the tree of life.

Which brings us back to our subject, Lady Wisdom, who is a tree of life to those who take hold of her. I’m going to suggest that the tree of life represents eternal life based on our study so far. I’m no scholar and I don’t at all claim these assumptions as truth. But in order to arrive at the truth, we have to ask questions and make assumptions to be proven one way or the other. If my assumption is correct, we can assume then that Wisdom offers eternal life to those who take hold of her. But we also know from John 14:6 that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life,” and that “No one comes to the Father except through” him.

So then, does that support the notion that Lady Wisdom is God, or at the very least, one  of his attributes? But why then, did she make herself out to be this external being who was there as an onlooker, rejoicing as the Creator laid the foundations of the earth in Proverbs 8? I wonder if it’s not because of the perfect unity that is consummated in the trinity, in perfect unison with one another (mirrored by man in the sexual act “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”) each lifting the other up, Lady Wisdom in this case acting as an attribute of one of the three. Which one, I’m not so sure.

Happy are all who retain her. The idea here, is that we take hold of her—no grasp hold of her—and hang on for dear life (pun intended). She is a tree of life to those who retain, or continue to have; keep possession of her. She is not someone to be frivolously used or more appropriately prostituted for personal pleasure and momentary satisfaction and left to the mercy of the next abuser. She is to be treated with honor and dignity as a the precious jewel she is. 

Now, if those who retain her are happy, the alternative assumption can be made that those who do not are unhappy and dissatisfied. Just look around. Do we not know that to be true? People are turning to anything and everything–mutilating their own bodies and committing heinous crimes against themselves and others–in search of some sort of satisfaction. They will never find it. They will inevitably be left with an eternal wanting for more, for bigger, for better, for prettier, for richer until they take hold of wisdom, keep her as a treasure and are given eternal life in return.