Page 11 - The Poetic Books - Student Text

“The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than
other peoples. But it was because the LORD loves you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors…
(Deut. 7:7-8).”

So wisdom, in honestly wrestling with the frustrations of this world, encourages people to trust in
Yahweh’s salvation. Suffering Job needed a mediator, one out of a thousand, who would find a ransom
for him (Job 33:23-24). Psalmist David took refuge in the God who would not let his Holy One see decay
(Ps. 16:10). Solomon in his search for wisdom inquired about the one who has gone up to heaven and
has come down (Prov. 30:4-5) and in his longing to escape the meaninglessness of life pointed to the one
shepherd who could give answers (Eccl. 12:11).

The clash of cultures in OT times was often violent. During the days of
King Hezekiah, the Sennacherib, king of Assyria, invaded Judah and
surrounded Jerusalem. His spokesman called out to the people of the
city, “Who of all the gods of these nations that my predecessors
destroyed has been able to save his people from me? How then can your
god deliver you from my hand (2 Chron. 32:14)?” He offered to do for
them what their God, Yahweh, could not do. “Make peace with me and
come out to me. Then each of you will eat fruit from your own vine and
fig tree and drink water from your cistern, until I come and take you to a
land like your own – a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and
vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey. Choose life and not death (2
Kings 18:31-32)!” They spoke these words in Hebrew so the people on
the walls of Jerusalem might be terrified and give up (2 Chron. 32:18). Figure 5: Sennacherib
Which God/god was right?

As these and other passages imply, Yahweh was different than the other gods. He had chosen a people,
Israel, while they were slaves in Egypt. He chose to love them. He had not first chosen a land with them
as the accidental inhabitants of that land as was true in the belief systems of the other nations. “What
made the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt so remarkable was the fact that Yahweh had succeeded in
invading the territory of another god and had managed, by means of a series of dramatic
demonstrations of his power, to deliver a large segment of the enslaved population.”
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Yahweh then proceeded to give Israel more truth. He built on the wisdom they could access themselves
with good news about salvation from the frustrations of life and death. “Biblical wisdom has a built-in
deficiency that cries out for God to break into man’s world and dismantle his vital questions with
answers that are clear and forthright, immediate and personal.” Biblical wisdom, even more than
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natural wisdom, points to the more thorough wisdom found in Christ (1 Cor. 1:30). He is the goal of all
Yahweh’s wisdom. He is the goal of our study of the poetical books of the Old Testament.

1.4 Let’s Practice

13 Daniel Isaac Block, The Gods of the Nations (Jackson: Evangelical Theological Society, 1988), 91.
14 Bullock, Poetic Books, 75-76.
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