GOD AND WISDOM AT PLAY: JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATIONS OF PROVERBS 8:30-31

Proverbs 8:30-31 describes a cosmic scene of God playing with His daughter, personified as Wisdom, before the Creation. Afterwards Wisdom was to play with humankind. The scene uses the language of play and delight. Jewish tradition as it developed played down the play aspect of Deus Ludens or preferred the other meanings for the Hebrew, such as joking, mocking or jeering in order to vitiate the joyful play and delight of God and Wisdom. Better to turn the cosmic delight into cosmic humdrum. Even the marked Divine creative cosmic play of Jewish mysticism was sexual play and not simple play and did not have the joy of that simple play. It is hard to know whether the depiction of God playing was too much to accept or too trivial or whether reasons like the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the travails of Jewish history caused this change. Early Christianity began as mostly neutral regarding play and used the verses in Proverbs for Christological purposes. Later, the motif of Deus Ludens was expanded into a theology of joy in serving God. Playing around, as in the sense of mocking, jeering and the like, and cosmic creation became Christian joyful play and games.