Apocryphal Wisdom, 5-7

In Chapter 5 "Solomon" continues his discussion of the just man in an unjust society, where, when the just is rewarded, his former persecutors are dismayed:

 "Why, these were the men we made into a laughing-stock and a by-word! 4 We, poor fools, mistook the life they lived for madness, their death for ignominy;  and now they are reckoned as God’s own children, now it is among his holy ones that their lot is cast."

Early Christians, former Jews and Greeks alike, must have seen this as a promise to themselves.  The mockers had high hopes, but their successes are hollow and come to nothing, while:

"It is the just that will live for ever; the Lord has their recompense waiting for them, the most high God takes care of them."

In Six, he continues by declaring that even in this world, wisdom is greater than strength and admonishes kings to heed this truth.  The power of kings, as Jesus reminds Pilate, comes from God.

"The very first step towards wisdom is the desire for discipline, and how should a man care for discipline without loving it, or love it without heeding its laws, or heed its laws without winning immortality"

Once again he is promising immortality to those who possess wisdom, but if "the desire for discipline" is the first step, what is discipline?  The Greek word, predictably at this period, is παιδεἰα, a word that referred originally to rearing of children to the education necessary for a free Greek citizen, in other words, humane letters, but the Septuagint translators use it typically for chastisement, but in the Fathers it again means, typically, humane learning or "culture."  The exact shading in this passage is not easy to determine.  The desire for "discipline" is here the beginning or foundation or basic principle--"first step" is a bit trivializing--of wisdom.  If wisdom means knowing your place in the universe and the supreme majesty of the Creator, then the desire to be kept in your place, corrected, chastised when necessary is necessary, but it is not impossible that he also includes learning the Scriptures and traditions of Judaism.

[7] Solomon rejects any notion that he was born with a preternatural attachment of capacity for wisdom.  He gained it by prayer:

Whence, then, did the prudence spring that endowed me? Prayer brought it; to God I prayed, and the spirit of wisdom came upon me.   This I valued more than kingdom or throne; I thought nothing of my riches in comparison.

His wisdom does not consist only of the moral teachings of the Scriptures but what we should call a knowledge of natural science:

how the world is ordered, what influence have the elements,  how the months  have their beginning, their middle, and their ending, how the sun’s course alters and the seasons revolve, 19 how the years have their cycles, the stars their places. To every living thing its own breed, to every beast its own moods; the winds  rage, and men think deep thoughts; the plants keep their several kinds, and each root has its own virtue;  all the mysteries and all the surprises of nature were made known to me; wisdom herself taught me, that is the designer of them all.