A King

In everything, you, Lord, magnified and glorified your people, and you did not neglect them, but stood by them at every time and place. (Wisdom 19:22, appointed for today)

The verse from the Apocryphal book of Wisdom brings to mind two excellent dvd movies, The King’s Speech and the Masterpiece Theatre production Bertie & Elizabeth. Both are about beloved King George VI of England and his wife Queen Elizabeth, later titled Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The two movies present a good and loyal, heroic man who knew what was right and did it, stuck faithfully with duty to God and Country through England’s most difficult period in modern times. Bertie (George VI) stood in sharp contrast to his brother David (Edward VIII) whom history says chose personal preferences over duty and country in a time of mounting crisis. The Book of Wisdom praises God, or a king, perhaps Solomon, and for Christians, Jesus. However, looking in one’s own lifetime, one could see the character of George VI praised in the verse.

Wisdom, or the Wisdom of Solomon, is a book of the Septuagint, the Alexandrian Greek Bible. Not canonical in the Palestinian Hebrew Bible, it is for us a book of the Apocrypha, of which our Catechism says (BCP 853), “Q. What is the Apocrypha? A. The Apocrypha is a collection of additional books written by people of the Old Covenant, and used in the Christian Church.” From time to time, both in the Sunday Eucharistic Lectionary and in the Daily Office Lectionary, a reading from the Apocrypha is prescribed in place of the Old Testament reading, and that is the case for today, Saturday in the Week of 5 Easter, Year One (BCP 962).

Wisdom seems to have been written in the second or third century B.C. by an unknown Greek speaking Jew, perhaps of Alexandria. Matthew, who evidently did not know Hebrew or the Hebrew Bible, used the Septuagint in his Gospel. Some scholars believe that the Septuagint may have been the Bible that Jesus knew, because although the language Jesus spoke was Aramaic, he lived in a day and age when the common language was Greek and did not necessarily know Hebrew. If that is so, Jesus would have known the Book of Wisdom. We actually don’t know though.

Sabbath.

Right shoe first.

Shalom.

Tom+