In chapter 9, we hear Solomon’s prayer as he asks for Wisdom. All this is an expansion and reflection on 1 Kings 3, when Solomon had a dream in which God appeared and asked him what he would like. There, he was humbler and asked for wisdom, saying he didn’t know how to rule. God was pleased that he didn’t ask for wealth or victory over his enemies, or long life for himself, so promised to give him those other things too.
In this prayer, again, Solomon is humble. “ I am only human. I am not strong, and my life will be short. I have little understanding of the Law or of how to apply it.”
But in this prayer Wisdom is much more strongly personified, with Solomon asking God to send her down from heaven, from the side of his glorious throne, to show Solomon what to do in life. How else will I know anything? All humans can do is make guesses about what they see, they can never truly know. Solomon is being scathing about scientific knowledge, which can actually amount to a lot as we know, but always in the end is accurately described as guesses about things that we can’t know for certain. These guesses have to be changed and refined as our knowledge grows and changes, and Solomon wants more than that.
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