Wisdom 2:13, 18-20//Matthew
27:43. As discussed above, in the speech of the wicked in Wisdom 2, they
contend against a righteous person who calls himself a son (2:18; υιος, huios) or
servant/child (2:13: παις, pais)
of the Lord. Those who oppress him taunt and say, “If the righteous man is God’s
child, he will help him and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries”
(2:18 NRSV). In the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the passion, Jesus is mocked
by the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders: “He trusts in God; let God deliver
him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s Son’ [υιος, huios]” (Matt 27:43 NRSV). In
Wisdom 2:18 the mockers say God “will rescue him” (ρυσεται, rhysetai), and this same
verb is used in Matthew 27:43: ρυσασθω rhysasthō.
The thematic parallels are strong, and the righteous sufferer of Wisdom 2 is
easily read by subsequent Christian readers as a depiction of Jesus.
Complicating the case for direct
dependence on Wisdom is the use of Psalm 22:8 (21:9 LXX) in Matthew 27:43: “He
hoped in the Lord; let him rescue him; let him save him, because he wanted him.”
The psalm text probably lies behind both Wisdom and Matthew, and particularly in
light of the significance of Psalm 22 for Matthew elsewhere, we should probably
cede the position of first influence to Psalm 22. But the invocation of the
righteous one’s identity as “son” speaks in favor of Wisdom’s influence here,
and may suggest that the righteous sufferer in Wisdom 2 formed part of the
cultural encyclopedia that helped the earliest Christians makes sense of Jesus’s
death. (David Lincicum, “The Wisdom of Solomon,” in Apocrypha and the
Septuagint, ed. Bruce W. Longenecker, Marieke Dhont, and James K. Aitken
[Ancient Literature for New Testament Studies 1; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan
Academic, 2026], 239)
