In the Hand of God: The Wisdom of Solomon on the Fate of the Just

The Wisdom of Solomon was written in Greek, in Alexandria, in the century or two before the Common Era — a time when Jews lived under Hellenistic rule and watched the righteous suffer while the wicked prospered. It is a sophisticated response to Ecclesiastes (which says the same death comes for the wise and the fool) and an anticipation of Paul (who will say that what is sown in weakness is raised in power).

The text opens with stunning confidence: The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. Then it names what other people think: In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction. The world sees martyrdom, defeat, premature death — and interprets it as evidence that righteousness doesn't pay.

The Wisdom of Solomon calls this interpretation foolishness. The foolish think this. What actually happened is different: But they are at peace. Their apparent chastisement was really discipline. God tested them like gold in a furnace and accepted them as a sacrificial burnt offering. They will govern nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them forever.

The passage then describes the fate of the wicked who had persecuted the righteous — they will come to stand before them, shocked and terrified, recognizing that everything they had believed about power and survival was wrong.

The text advances, in a Jewish framework, one of the clearest statements of personal immortality before the New Testament — not resurrection in the Pharisaic sense, but the imperishable soul dwelling in God's hand. It represents the meeting point of Greek philosophy (the immortal soul) and Jewish theology (the righteous God who rescues the faithful), and it becomes one of the most-cited texts in Christian funeral liturgy.