Featured Why Proverbs 8:22 Cannot Refer to Jesus Christ.

The Jewish Targum on this verse reads, "Elaha barani bereish biriteiah, "God created me in the beginning of his creatures."

The Jewish Study Bible (editors, Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler) reads: "The LORD created me at the beginning of His course As the first of His works of old.", with this note

"Created me: Since ancient times, interpreters have disputed whether the verb "kanah" means "created" or "acquired." The latter allows for the possibility that wisdom existed from eternity and was coeval with God. Some Christian groups preferred this, since they identified wisdom with the Logos, which was in turn identified with the Christ. It is, however, clear from v. 23 that wisdom is a created being. In fact, "kanah" refers to acquisition by any means, including creation, as here."

 

did you not read the title of this thread?

Why Proverbs 8:22 Cannot Refer to Jesus Christ

 

why would you accept John Gill, whose "theology" tells him that the KJV is right here, who most probably is a KJVO person, and reject the Hebrew lexicons that I have referred to? Are you more interested in the man-made "theology" of this verse, or what it actually does teach? I still don't get the hang-up about this verse referring to Jesus Christ? It actually says NOTHING more to the Person of Jesus Christ, than we know from the whole of the Bible! But does open up the way to show that He was a created being, which the language says!

The Jewish Bible by Leeser, has it read "The Lord created me as the beginning of his way, the first of his works from the commencement"

As I have said, the Greek LXX (completed over 100 years before Jesus Christ was born, so could not be biased), a work done by the best Hebrew scholars from Israel at the time, used the Greek word, "κτίζω", and not the Greek, "ἔχω", which would have suited this theology? Do you think that Gill, and others who have their "theology" to address, know more than these Hebrew experts???

 

and how is that?

 

Dr Charles Ellicott has some interesting obversations on this verse. As I have said before, the heretical teaching of the "eternal generation" of Jesus Christ, in His divine nature, from the Father, is agrued by some from this very verse in Proverbs!

Proverbs 8:22
(22) The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way.—The Hebrew word translated” possessed” in this passage (qânah) seems originally to have signified to” set up” or “establish,” and is applied (1) to the “forming” of the heavens (Gen_14:19) and the “begetting” of a son, (Deu_32:6); next it signifies (2) to “acquire” (Gen_4:1), (3) to “purchase” (Gen_25:10), and (4) to “own,” as in Isa_1:3. From the fact that “set up” and “brought forth” are used just after as synonyms to it, it is most likely that (1) is the proper meaning of the word here, and that the sense of the passage is that Wisdom was “formed” or “begotten” before the Creation, comp. Psa_104:24. This agrees with the rendering of the most important Greek translation, the Septuagint (έκτισε). When in Christian times it was observed how well the description of Wisdom in Job and Proverbs harmonised with that of God the Son in the New Testament, such passages as this were universally applied to Him, and the present one was rightly interpreted as describing His eternal generation from the Father. Such was the view, for instance, of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. But when the Arian controversy arose, this phrase was seized upon by the opponents of our Lord’s Divinity, and claimed as teaching that He was, though the highest of created beings, still only a creature. The Catholics then changed their ground, some standing up for the rendering of Aquila, ἐκτήσατο (“acquired” or “possessed”), others applying the term έκτισε to Christ’s Incarnation (comp. “first-begotten among many brethren,” Rom_8:29), or to His being appointed to be the first principle or efficient cause of His creatures, the “beginning of the creation of God” (Rev_3:14). For references to the Fathers see Bishop Wordsworth’s note, and, for a like variation in the rendering of “first-begotten of every creature,” comp. Bishop Lightfoot’s note on Col_1:15.

 

so you simply ignore the two leading Hebrew lexicons, which are used the world over when translating the Holy Bible, and in thousands of Bible colleges? You also want to dismiss the 70 Hebrew scholars who translated the Hebrew OT into Greek (LXX), who chose a Greek word that also means "create"? There is nothing "knee-jerk" about facts, just because you cannot agree with scholarship? My view of this has been the same for the time I got saved, way back in Feb 1982! Why should you be right in saying that Proverbs 8:22 is Jesus Christ? I don't intend to change anything!

 

really? When HE (God) prepared the heavens, I (wisdom) was there. What do you, and those who support that this refers to Jesus Christ, say about the fact that FEMININE language is used to describe this "wisdom"? take a look at verses 1-3, "HER voice", "SHE stands", "SHE crys", etc, etc. Is Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the eternal Godhead, a FEMALE??? Stick with what the Bible ACTUALLY teaches, and not theological nonsense!

 

my use of the LXX, is to show that the BEST Hebrew scholars, who lived over 100 years before the Birth of Jesus Christ, and before any Christological controversies entered the Church; translated the Hebrew in Proverbs 8:22, by CREATE. As do the two leading Hebrew lexicons, used the world over by Bible translators, and pastors/students. I doubt very much that when a person wants a word defined in Hebrew, that they would turn to John Gill, and not to the standard Hebrew lexicon of Brown, Driver and Briggs! WHY do you and others who say this is Jesus Christ, never deal with the FEMININE language used for the actual speaker, "wisdom", like in verses 1-3?

You suggest that the Hebrew can be translated "get"? Well of course this is a possibility, as it is not a narrow word only meaning "create". So, we adpot this defination here in 8:22, "the Lord did GET Me in the beginning of His way...". Meaning exactly WHAT? The base meaning is "to obtain", which sounds complete nonsense in this verse!

 

Nor the uses of the FEMININE when "wisdom" speaks in the first person. If it were not for some of the early Church fathers, I doubt very much that any casual reader of Proverbs, would have taken "wisdom" to refer to Jesus Christ!

 

I have a question for those who accept the KJV rendering of the Hebrew, "qânâh", in 8:22, by "possessed", and refer the words to Jesus Christ. Can you explain exactly how this word "possess", relates to this verse, as God the Father "possessing" the Lord Jesus Christ? If this verse does refer to Jesus, and His relation to the Father, and the words in its context as understood by some, speaks of "eternity past", then what we have here is the "eternal generation" of the Lord Jesus Christ, in His essential Deity, from the Father! This teaching is from the PIT OF HELL!. Jesus Christ is in NO WAY in His Deity, "subordinate" to the Father. This is an IMPOSSIBILITY from the Holy Bible. PERIOD!!!