Proverbs 8:22

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way - Wisdom is not acquired by the Divine Being; man, and even angels, learn it by slow and progressive degrees; but in God it is as eternally inherent as any other essential attribute of his nature. The Targum makes this wisdom a creature, by thus translating the passage: אלהא בראני בריש בריתיה Elaha barani bereish biriteiah, "God created me in the beginning of his creatures." The Syriac is the same. This is as absurd and heretical as some modern glosses on the same passage.

A verse which has played an important part in the history of Christian dogma. Wisdom reveals herself as preceding all creation, stamped upon it all, one with God, yet in some way distinguishable from Him as the object of His love Proverbs 8:30. John declares that all which Wisdom here speaks of herself was true in its highest sense of the Word that became flesh John 1:1-14 : just as Apostles afterward applied Wisd. 7:22-30 to Christ (compare Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3).

Possessed - The word has acquired a special prominence in connection with the Arian controversy. The meaning which it usually bears is that of "getting" Genesis 4:1, "buying" Genesis 47:22, "possessing" Jeremiah 32:15. In this sense one of the oldest divine names was that of "Possessor of heaven and earth" Genesis 14:19, Genesis 14:22. But the idea of thus "getting" or "possessing" involved, as a divine act in relation to the universe, the idea of creation, and thus in one or two passages the word might be rendered, though not accurately, by "created" (e. g., Psalm 139:13). It would seem accordingly as if the Greek translators of the Old Testament oscillated between the two meanings; and in this passage we find the various renderings ἔκτισε ektise "created" (Septuagint), and ἐκτήσατο ektēsato "possessed" (Aquila). The text with the former word naturally became one of the stock arguments of the Arians against the eternal co-existence of the Son, and the other translation was as vehemently defended by the orthodox fathers. Athanasius receiving ἔκτισεν ektisen, took it in the sense of appointing, and saw in the Septuagint a declaration that the Father had made the Son the "chief," the "head," the "sovereign," over all creation. There does not seem indeed any ground for the thought of creation either in the meaning of the root, or in the general usage of the word. What is meant in this passage is that we cannot think of God as ever having been without Wisdom. She is "as the beginning of His ways." So far as the words bear upon Christian dogma, they accord with the words of John 1:1, "the Word was with God." The next words indeed assert priority to all the works of God, from the first starting point of time.

8:22 Possessed me - As his son by eternal generation, before the beginning. Of old - His works of creation.