What does Wisdom Chapter 13 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

The author argues from visible beauty and power to their maker. The illustrative carpenter makes useful vessels and a helpless image from different portions of wood. Prayers to weak, dead and motionless objects retain their stated contrasts.

Chapter breakdown

Wisdom 13 calls those without knowledge of God vain for failing to recognize the maker through visible good things and works. Fire, wind, swift air, stars, great water, sun and moon have been treated as ruling gods. If their beauty delights, the passage urges recognizing their more beautiful author; if their power impresses, their maker is mightier. Greatness and beauty of creatures disclose their creator. Seekers among God's works are less blameworthy because they perhaps err while seeking him, yet the passage says they are not pardoned: those able to judge the world should more easily find its Lord.

It calls people unhappy whose hope lies among the dead and who name handmade gold, silver, art, animal likenesses or old worked stone gods. An illustrative carpenter cuts a useful tree, removes bark and makes a practical vessel; chips cook meat. He carves otherwise useless crooked knotty leftovers into a human or animal image, colors it vermilion and red, conceals spots and sets it in a wall with iron lest it fall, knowing it needs help. Then he prays concerning substance, children or marriage, asking health of the weak, life of the dead, help of the unprofitable, a journey of the nonwalking and success of the unable. Prostration, iron nails, marital harmony and infinite radiance are not stated. These are the author's comparisons, not an added scientific or diagnostic theory.

The story inside

Opening: The author argues from visible beauty and power to their maker. Development: The illustrative carpenter makes useful vessels and a helpless image from different portions of wood. Conclusion: Prayers to weak, dead and motionless objects retain their stated contrasts.

Lessons worth keeping

1
The author argues from visible beauty and power to their maker.
2
The illustrative carpenter makes useful vessels and a helpless image from different portions of wood.
3
Prayers to weak, dead and motionless objects retain their stated contrasts.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 72567–72570
13:1. But all men are vain, in whom there is not the knowledge of God: and who by these good things that are seen, could not understand him that is, neither by attending to the works have acknowledged who was the workman:
Lines 72583–72584
13:5. For by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby.
Lines 72627–72629
13:18. And for health he maketh supplication to the weak, and for life prayeth to that which is dead, and for help calleth upon that which is unprofitable: