The just will live with God
1 The souls of the just are in the hands of God and no torment shall touch them.
2 In the eyes of the unwise they appear to be dead. Their going is held as a disaster;
3 it seems that they lose ev ery thing by departing from us, but they are in peace.
4 Though seemingly they have been punished, immortality was the soul of their hope.
5 After slight affliction will come great blessings, for God has tried them and found them worthy to be with him;
6 after testing them as gold in the furnace, he has accepted them as a holocaust.
7 At the time of his coming they will shine like sparks that run in the stubble.
8 They will govern nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will be their king forever.
9 Those who trust in him will penetrate the truth, those who are faithful will live with him in love, for his grace and mercy are for his chosen ones.
10 But the godless who have ig nored the upright and deserted the Lord, will meet the punishment their evil thoughts deserve.
11 Unhappy are those who put no value on wisdom and instruction, their hope is vain, their efforts useless, their work without profit;
12 their wives are foolish, their children evil, their posterity cursed.
A truly fruitful life
13 Happy the childless wife if she is blameless and has not been guilty of adultery; she will be found fruitful on the day of judgment.
14 And happy the impotent man who has done no evil or harbored resentful thoughts against the Lord. His fidelity will be richly rewarded with a special place in the Lord’s heavenly sanctuary.
15 The toil of the righteous bears choice fruit; and wise discernment is a tree that does not wither.
16 But the children born of adultery die young and the offspring of an unlawful union disappear.
17 If they live long, they count for nothing and are finally despised in their old age.
18 If they die young, it is without hope, and they cannot com fort themselves with think ing of the Judgment.
19 Cruel is the fate of an evil race.
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Comments Wisdom, Chapter 3
• 3.1 The souls of the just are in the hands of God. This is the great revelation in this book. In the previous books of the Bible, the soul only means the breath of a person, that is to say, the life in him which disappears at death. Now, the soul means the person who does not die when the body does.
Their going is held as a disaster. Whether the just die in the hands of violent people, or naturally die as we all do, the end of their lives seems to contradict God’s goodness. It is a scandal that death can overcome the just. (We know that the just are those who fulfill the hopes that God placed in them.) It is only the body which dies. They are alive before God as Jesus will also state (Lk 20:38).
But they are in peace. They will forever enjoy what they hoped for here on earth. That is to say, we only see one side of death: we shall never know how everyone experienced his departure, even less how he awakened in God’s world.
At the time of judgment we will see that the just are the only ones who have been truly alive. The death of the friends of God brings peace to those who were at their side. Through their death the martyrs bring the triumph of the cause for which they lived.
• 13. Happy the childless wife if she is blameless. In the Bible we always find praise of the fruitful life, of a couple having several children and raising them to be fully human (see Ps 127and 128). Here the question is revised: what is a fruitful life? In Israel, being without children was seen as God’s punishment and the Law excluded eunuchs (or castrated men) from religious worship. Yet one of the pro phets took an opposite view (see Is 56:4).
Better to have no children and to be virtuous (4:1). Here we have the revelation of another way of being fruitful: seeking perfection. We know of childless couples and of single women who channeled their capacity for love and surrender toward others and succeeded in having spiritual children and family. A fruitful life is one spent for others or for God. When these lines were written, there were Jews going to the desert to form religious communities of single men, in order to pray and to hurry the coming of the Savior. Years later, Mary will dedicate her virginity to God and so, for Chris-tians, she is the model of a virginity consecrated to God and with its own form of fruitfulness.