20 Wisdom cries aloud in the street,
in the markets she raises her voice;
21 at the head of the noisy streets she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
22 “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?
23 If you turn at my reproof,[a]
behold, I will pour out my spirit to you;
I will make my words known to you.
What follows in these verses can be taken, in connection with 8-19, as supple- menting and strengthening what the father has said to his son, or as underlying it - i.e., in the father's tender entreaty divine wisdom has In fact been speaking. It is certainly true that inasmuch and insofar as Christian parents are taking their responsibilities seri- ously under God, then when they speak to their children and instruct them, divine wis- dom is speaking through them, for parents are in the place of God to their children, and they are the vehicles of the divine instruction. At all events, however, two things are clear: (1) Wisdom is personified here (this is the first of many passages in which this per- sonification occurs), and it is not difficult to think in this connection of the Eternal Word made flesh in Christ. Here is Christ standing among men, appealing to them and saying, 'My son, give me thine heart'; (ii) In relation to what has been said in 8-19, the offer of wisdom is made in down-to-earth situations to the man in the street, and for the business of living, as Kidner finely puts it. It is crying out where men are, in the hurly burly of life, in all its temptations and cynicisms and lawlessness. The implication is that men lapse into sin and evil ways in the face of wisdom and of an alternative way that is open to them. This is what makes them without excuse. We sense the note of urgency in wis- dom's cry in 22, 23, as if the young man were on the point of yielding to the alluring blandishments of the way of folly. There is never, in fact, plenty time in dealing with this kind of situation. 'Resist beginnings' is always the best advice; and where this is not done, it is often already too late for anything effective to be done.