Broadly speaking, the wisdom of the Hebrews covers the whole domain of what we should call science and philosophy. It is the consistent effort of the human mind to know, to understand, and to explain all that exists. It is, to use the modern phrase, the search for truth. The “wise men” were not, like Moses and the prophets, inspired legislators and heralds of God’s immediate messages to mankind in seeking to interpret them. But rather…they brought all their faculties to bear in observing life.
By wisdom is meant not merely the search, but also the discovery; not merely a desire to know, but also a certain body of conceptions ascertained and sufficiently formulated. To the Hebrew mind it would have seemed meaningless to assert that agnosticism was wisdom. It was saved from this paradoxical conclusion by its firmly rooted faith in God. Mystery might hang over the details, but one thing was plain: the whole universe was an intelligent plan of God. The mind might be baffled in understanding His ways, but that all existence is of His choosing and His ordering was taken as the axiom with which all thought must start.
Thus there is a unity in the Hebrew wisdom; unity found in the thought of the Creator. All the facts of the physical world, all the problems of human life, are referred to His mind. Objective wisdom is God’s Being, which includes in its circle everything; and subjective wisdom, wisdom in the human mind, consists in becoming acquainted with this Being and all that is contained in it, meanwhile constantly admitting that He is, and yielding to Him the rightful place in our thoughts.