sdom hast Thou made them all."(398)

2. Accordingly, if we are to speak in human terms, we may consider God's
wisdom the element which determines His various
motive-powers,--omniscience, omnipotence, and goodness,--to tend toward the
realization of His cosmic plan. Or we may call it the active intellect
with which God works as Creator, Ordainer, and Ruler of the universe. The
Biblical account of creation presupposes this wisdom, as it portrays a
logical process, working after a definite plan, proceeding from simpler to
more complex forms and culminating in man. Biblical history likewise is
based upon the principle of a divinely prearranged plan, which is
especially striking in such stories as that of Joseph.(399)

3. At first the divine wisdom was supposed to rest in part on specially
gifted persons, such as Joseph, Solomon, and Bezalel. As Scripture has it,
"The Lord giveth wisdom, out of His mouth cometh knowledge and
understanding."(400) Later the obscure destiny of the nation appears as
the design of an all-wise Ruler to the great prophets and especially to
Isaiah, the high-soaring eagle among the seers of Israel.(401) With the
progressive expansion of the world before them, the seers and sages saw a
sublime purpose in the history of the nations, and felt more and more the
supreme place of the divine wisdom as a manifestation of His greatness.
Thus the great seer of the Exile never tires of illumining the world-wide
plan of the divine wisdom.(402)

4. A new development ensued under Babylonian and Persian influence at the
time when the monotheism of Israel became definitely universal. The divine
wisdom, creative and world-sustaining, became the highest of the divine
attributes and was partially hypostatized as an independent cosmic power.
In the twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Job wisdom is depicted as a
magic being, far remote from all living beings of earth, beyond the reach
of the creatures of the lowest abyss, who aided the Creator with counsel
and knowledge in measuring and weighing the foundations of the world. The
description seems to be based upon an ancient Babylonian conception--which
has parallels elsewhere--of a divine Sybil dwelling beneath the ocean in
"the house of wisdom."(403) Here, however, the mythological conception is
transformed into a symbolic figure. In the eighth chapter of Proverbs the
description of divine wisdom is more in accordance with Jewish monotheism;
wisdom is "the first of Go