a mountain or range of hills (sometimes used figurative… · noun, common masculine plural absolute
settled
הָטְבָּ֑עוּha.te.Ba.'u
H2883
to sink · verb, hophal perfect, 3rd person common plural
before
לִפְנֵ֖יlif.Nei
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct
hills
גְבָע֣וֹתge.va.'ot
H1389
a hillock · noun, common feminine plural absolute
forth
חוֹלָֽלְתִּיcho.Lal.ti
H2342
properly · verb, pual perfect, 1st person common singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 90:2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art G…
Job 15:7-8 Art thou the first man that was born? or wast thou made before the hills?
Job 38:4-11 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
Psalms 102:25-28 Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.
Hebrews 1:10 And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands:
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Proverbs 8:22-31
That it is an intelligent and divine person that here speaks seems very plain, and that it is not meant of a mere essential property of the divine nature, for Wisdom here has personal properties and actions; and that intelligent divine person can be no other than the Son of God himself, to whom the principal things here spoken of wisdom are attributed in other scriptures, and we must explain scripture by itself. If Solomon himself designed only the praise of wisdom as it is an attribute of God, by which he made the world and governs it, so to recommend to men the study of that wisdom which belongs to them, yet the Spirit of God, who indited what he wrote, carried him, as David often, to such…
Before the mountains were settled,.... "Plunged" (l), or fixed in the earth; and which was done by the great strength of the Lord, upon their proper bases, Psalm 65:6; and which were "aborigine", or from the beginning of the world, and therefore called the ancient mountains, Deuteronomy 33:15; to be before the mountains is a periphrasis of eternity, and is a phrase expressive of God's eternity; and being here used of the Son's, shows his eternity is the same with his Father's, Psalm 90:2;
before the hills was I brought forth; which is repeated partly to show the importance of it; this being a matter of infinite moment and concern, and deserving of the strictest attention and observation; an…
This her existence before the world began is now set forth in yet more explicit statements:
24 "When there were as yet no floods was I brought forth,
When as yet there were not fountains which abounded with water;
25 For before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills was I brought forth,
26 While as yet He had not made land and plains,
And the sum of the dust of the earth."
The description is poetical, and affords some room for imagination. By תּהומות are not intended the unrestrained primeval waters, but, as also Pro 3:20, the inner waters, treasures of the earth; and consequently by מעינות, not the fountains of the sea on this earth (Ewald, after Job 38:16), but he springs or places o…
The Church Fathers
Whether he is eternally begotten or not, I do not yet say, until I have looked into the statement, "Before all the hills he begets me" more accurately. But I cannot see the necessity of their conclusion. For if, as they say, everything that is to come to an end had also a beginning, then surely that which has no end had no beginning. What, then, will they decide concerning the soul or the angelic nature? If it had a beginning, it will also have an end; and if it has no end, it is evident that according to them it had no beginning. But the truth is that it had a beginning and will never have an end. Their assertion, then, that that which will have an end had also a beginning, is untrue.
But now, lest the terms 'creation' and 'establishing' should be an obstacle to belief in the divine birth, these words follow, "Before He made the earth, before He made firm the mountains, before all the hills He begat Me." Thus He is begotten before the earth, Who is established before the ages; and not only before the earth, but also before the mountains and hills. And indeed in these expressions, since Wisdom speaks of itself, more is meant than is said. For all objects which are used to convey the idea of infinity must be of such a kind as to be subsequent in point of time to no single thing and to no class of things. But things existing in time cannot possibly be fitted to indicate eternity; because, from the very fact that they are posterior to other things, they are incapable of suggesting the thought of infinity as a beginning, themselves having their own beginning in time.
Let us consider [that] our Savior is a "reflection of glory." The reflection of glory has not been begotten just once and no longer begotten. But just as the light is an agent of reflection, in such a way the reflection of the glory of God is begotten. Our Savior is the wisdom of God. But the wisdom is the reflection of everlasting light. If then the Savior is always begotten—because of this he also says, "Before all the hills he begets me" (and not "Before all the hills he has begotten me," but "Before all of the hills he begets me")—and the Savior is always begotten by the Father, and likewise also if you have the Spirit of adoption, God always begets you in him according to each work, according to each thought. And may one so begotten always be a begotten son of God in Christ Jesus, "to whom is the glory and the power for the ages of ages. Amen."
Dictionary and topics
Earth · CREATED BY GOD — CREATED BY GOD
Wisdom · .UNCLASSIFIED SCRIPTURES RELATING TO — .UNCLASSIFIED SCRIPTURES RELATING TO
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
formed me from the beginning . . . I was appointed in ages past: God’s wisdom has always existed. His wisdom is here personified, but wisdom itself is not a person. Wisdom does not exist outside of God; wisdom is an expression of his character and nature. Unlike pagan gods, God needs no outside counselor to give him instructions (see Isa 40:13-14). Jesus is the apex of God’s wisdom (see Col 1:15-17; 2:3).
