The birth of Solomon (Wis 7:1-7:6)

“I also am mortal.

Like everyone else,

I am a descendant

Of the first-formed child of earth.

In the womb of a mother,

I was molded into flesh,

Within the period of ten months,

Compacted with blood,

From the seed of a man,

Within the pleasure of marriage.

When I was born,

I began to breathe the common air.

I fell upon the kindred earth.

My first sound was a cry,

As is true of all.

I was nursed with care

In swaddling clothes.

No king has had a different beginning of existence.

There is for all

One entrance into life.

There is one common way out.”

This author proclaims the human male mortality (ἄνθρωπος) of Solomon in the first person singular (ειμι). He was a mortal child of the earth like everyone else. He became flesh (σὰρξ) in his mother’s womb (κοιλίᾳ μητρὸς), where he had been 10 months since they used the lunar 28 day month calendar. He came from the seed of a man (ἐκ σπέρματος ἀνδρὸς) within a marriage. After birth, he began to breathe the common air (ἀέρα) that we all breathe. He was on the same ground and nursed in the same swaddling clothes like everyone else. A king (βασιλεὺς) does not come to exist in a different kind of way than everyone else. Everyone has the same entrance (εἴσοδος) and the same exit (ἔξοδός) to life.