WISDOM, BOOKS. - In the division of the writings of the Old Testament into historical, prophetic, and wisdom books, the latter designation includes Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus.
Today, however, they are preferably called “poetic” books, in reference to their literary form, or “didactic” books, insofar as they aim to teach an ideal of social and religious life. The latter designation is not exact in the strict sense, because the Psalms, the Song of Songs, and in part Job are eminently lyrical. It is therefore better to retain, as excellent authors do, the term wisdom books for Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus, to which the Song of Songs is joined only because of extrinsic analogies.
The subject of the wisdom books is “wisdom,” understood in the very broad sense that it has in the Old Testament. It is the first of the virtues, or rather their compendium (= subjective wisdom, conceived as a quality of the perfect man), or else the doctrine of wisdom in itself (= objective wisdom). In this kind of ethical philosophy of the ancient Israelites, divine wisdom and its merits are considered, together with numerous practical observations.
These books also contain passages in prose, but for the most part they are composed in poetry, which reproduces and often develops the ancient Hebrew māšāl (“gnomic saying”), consisting of two members or cola, often antithetical to one another in thought (= antithetic parallelism), or repeating the same idea in a different form (= synonymous parallelism). Angelo Penna