Wisdom speaks of creation with disputed language

Wisdom speaks of being with the LORD before the works of old, in disputed verbs

The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his way, the first of his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before mountains were settled, before hills, I was brought forth, before he had made the earth and fields or the first dust of the world.

Possessed, created, begotten, and set up are all attempts to render a Hebrew line whose verb is disputed. Brought forth is birth imagery. This poem will not be used here as a finished Christology, a denial of it, or a timeline you can convert into geology. It says Wisdom belongs at the start of the LORD's work.

She was there when limits were given to sea and sky, delighting in a habitable earth and in human beings

When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned the sea its limit so the waters would not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, a master worker, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him, rejoicing in his inhabited world, and delighting in the children of humankind.

Master worker and nursling are both heard in the disputed word at 8:30. Either way, Wisdom is not a rival deity and not a tool. The poem ends in joy: the world as a place to live, and human beings as Wisdom's delight. That delight is the opposite of a technique for managing God.