Miscellanies 1.4.25

Homer calls even a carpenter wise, and of Margites, if the poem is really his, he writes something like this: “The gods made him neither a digger nor a plowman, nor wise in anything else; he failed in every art.” And Hesiod, having said that Linus the lyre-player was “skilled in every kind of wisdom,” does not hesitate to call a sailor wise, writing, “not at all wise in seamanship.” And Daniel the prophet says, “The mystery that the king asks, it is not in the power of the wise, the magi, the enchanters, the Gazarenes to declare to the king; but there is a God in heaven who reveals.” And indeed he calls the Babylonians “wise.” That Scripture calls every worldly science or art by the common name “wisdom” (and there are many devised by combination through human reasoning), and that artistic and wise invention comes from God, will be clear if we set out this passage: “And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘See, I have called Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the divine spirit of wisdom and understanding and knowledge in every work, to devise and to direct the building, to work gold and silver and bronze, blue, purple, and scarlet, and stonework and carpentry in wood, to work in all kinds of works.’”