Ps. 49.3-4 (Wisdom, like Beauty, is selective.)

“My mouth / shall speak / wisdom – and the meditation / of my heart / concerns understanding – I will / turn my ear / to a proverb; - with a lyre / I will expose / my enigma.” When it comes to wisdom the mode of its presentation is not mere decoration. What I mean is this: the fact that wisdom will be ‘revealed’, or ‘exposed’, with a lyre and by the attentive use of “mouth”, “heart” and “ear”, is, itself, an aspect of wisdom’s revealing. In other words, she is perceived in music much in the same way that David’s psalms were understood as demonic medicine (they ‘tamed’ Saul’s demons). Wisdom is perceived in beauty. And, wisdom is something that emerges within (and, from) the totality of the psalmist. Notice his emphasis on the psalmist’s body: mouth, heart, ear, lyre/fingers. The point, I believe, is that the wisdom the psalmist is about communicate is something ‘thick’ (or, deep). The fact that it ‘concerns understand’ and is something that the ‘ear must be turned toward’ indicates that it is received. It ‘comes from without’ so to speak. However, that said, we must notice that as ‘external’ as it is in reception, in communication (when Wisdom ‘appears’), she will, childlike, be born by the psalmist. In other words, the psalmist, like a woman, takes to himself the ‘seed’ of Wisdom. In his ‘womb’ he adds to it his own powers of fecundity and skill. When presented, wisdom is ‘given birth’ to the listener. Although the psalmist is certainly understood as a mediator of wisdom, he is not merely passive; the seed of wisdom requires a healthy womb to become ‘fruitful’. This is not merely a pretty idea, however. Those who would have looked to this ‘wise man’ would have known that Wisdom ‘makes her home’ in those who are able to reveal her in her profundity. Wisdom, like beauty, is selective. She does not cast her pearls to swine.