jective, so that He beheld it” (Job xxviii. 27) and embodied it in His creative work. This personification, therefore, is based on the thought that wisdom is not shut up at rest in God, but is active and manifest in the world. “She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors” (Prov. viii. 2, 3). She builds a palace and prepares a banquet, and issues a general invitation to the simple and to him that wanteth understanding (Prov. ix. 1-6). It is viewed as the one guide to salvation, comprehending all revelations of God, and as an attribute embracing and combining all His other attributes.
(3) The Angel of Jehovah. The messenger of God who serves as His agent in the world of sense, and is sometimes distin- guished from Jehovah and sometimes identical with him (Gen. xvi. 7-13; xxxii. 24-28; Hos. xii. 4, 5; Exod. xxiii. 20, 21; Mal. iii. 1).
In the Apocryphal writings this mediative element is more distinctly apprehended, but with a tendency to pantheism. In the Wisdom of Solomon (at least 100 .c.), where wisdom seems to be viewed as another name for the whole divine nat- ure, while nowhere connected with the Messiah, it is described as a being of light, proceeding essentially from God; a true image of God, co-occupant of the divine throne ; a real and in- dependent principle, revealing God in the world and mediating between it and Him, after having created it as his organ—in association with a spirit which is called povoryevés, only begotten (vii. 22). “She is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty ; therefore can no defiled thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness ” (see ch. vii., throughout). Again: “ Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily, and sweetly doth she order all things. In that she is conver- sant with God, she magnifieth her nobility : yea, the Lord of all things Himself loved her. For she is privy to the mysteries of