The Noontimes

Proverbs 9: Folly or Wisdom

Monday, July 15, 2024

There are seven columns on the front portico of Notre Dame Preparatory. The design is not casual; it is meant to evoke the columns upon which Wisdom builds her house where all are invited to sit at the feasting table of instruction, where we learn of, about and in God.  Wisdom also sends out maidens to call others into her house of training.  From the HARPERCOLLINS STUDY BIBLE: Poems on Woman Wisdom (9. 1-6) and Woman Folly (9.13-18) frame a central collection of sayings (9.7-12).  The focus on the houses of the two women continues familiar themes [seeking and finding as a quest for Wisdom, seduction of worldly things, choosing which house to enter, the ideal wife] and also seems to expand upon the proverb in 14.1 [The wise woman builds her own house but the foolish tears it down with her own hands]. (Meeks 954)

This description is followed by another description built of opposite parallels, with more typical themes for living an ordinary life in an unordinary way. If only we choose the portal of wisdom, we will see which way to go when the road of life bifurcates to the right and left.

There are seasons when we have enter into a holy period of spiritual quiet and anticipation much like a mother about to give birth; but this quiet and virtue are juxtaposed against the clamor of the commercial world in which we exist. When we open our eyes and ears each morning, what is it we see and hear? When we step out the door and move to the car or the bus, what are we thinking? As we breathe and move through the day, what do we do? As we interact with others, what do we intend?

Wisdom calls us from the heights of God’s instruction. She invites all to feast and relax with God. She prepares a banquet, readies the house, and serves as the handmaiden of God in a plan that is too wide and too amazing to comprehend.

As we move from place to place today, as we greet and say good-bye to others, and as we return to our own houses to lay our burdens down before we put tired heads upon pillows, what do we see as the path of our day? And what do we imagine for tomorrow?

Do we choose the House of Folly . . . or the House of Wisdom . . . ?

Meeks, Wayne A., Gen. Ed. HARPERCOLLINS STUDY BIBLE (NRSV). New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1989. Print.  

Adapted from a reflection written on December 1, 2009.

Image from: https://nogreaterjoy.org/articles/a-wise-woman-builds-her-house/