I was flipping through Proverbs tonight and was struck by 1:26. If you read it out of context, the NAB translation is kind of chilling. I'll italicize the line for you:
Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the open squares she raises her voice;
Down the crowded ways she calls out, at the city gates she utters her words:
"How long, you simple ones, will you love inanity,
how long will you turn away at my reproof?
Lo! I will pour out to you my spirit,
I will acquaint you with my words.
"Because I called and you refused,
I extended my hand and no one took notice;
Because you disdained all my counsel, and my reproof you ignored--
I, in turn, will laugh at your doom;
I will mock when terror overtakes you;
When terror comes upon you like a storm, and your doom approaches like a whirlwind;
when distress and anguish befall you..."
Obviously, when the NAB translators worked on this text, they did not intend to the word "terror" to carry with it images of bearded men hijacking planes or strapping bombs to their chest. However, our current climate makes it almost impossible for me to think of terror without thinking of terrorism. Oh, deconstruction, you have such a clever way with words.
I'm calling this my Glenn Beck moment because stumbling upon these lines again immediately brought to mind the current fears and turmoil in the country, our complicity in these troubles, and the way in which the text offers a religious method to avoid those troubles.
Let's get something straight, though. I'm calling this my Glenn Beck moment, not my Pat Robertson moment. Someone like Robertson might suggest that our troubles are a punishment from God (I'm thinking of his ridiculous profession regarding the earthquake in Haiti).
It's important to keep in mind that the speaker in the passage above is Wisdom. Now, God is all wise, and Wisdom is a gift of the Holy Spirit, but the impression in this text is that Wisdom is more of an allegorical figure than a theological one. Wisdom is not saying, "If you disagree with me, I will smite you." Rather, Wisdom is saying that to leave her is, literally, foolish. The woes that befall the foolish are not retribution; they are not artificially constructed punitive measures imposed directly by a social institution. The suffering of the fool is often nothing more than the natural consequence of their actions.
The problem of living in a world of fools is that the consequences of a fool's actions are just as likely to visit the fool's neighbor.
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