Measured Mercy and Ordered Providence: A Thomistic Reading of Wisdom 11:21-12:2 in Light of Divine Governance
/INTRODUCTION
The Book of Wisdom presents God’s governance as measured, merciful, and mediated through creation. Aquinas likewise describes providence as God’s ordered plan and governance as its unfolding through created causes, where justice always serves mercy. This essay argues that Wisdom 11:21-12:2 exemplifies Aquinas’ providential framework by depicting moderated, creation-mediated punishments that mirror his distinction between providence and governance. The essay has three parts: (1) locating 11:21-12:2 within chapters 11-19 and showing how “measure” guides judgment toward repentance, (2) outlining Aquinas’ view of providence and governance (ST I, qq. 22-24, 103-05), and (3) comparing the two, emphasizing their shared vision of measured justice as an expression of divine mercy.
ANALYSIS
1. Wisdom 11:21-12:2 within the Exodus Diptychs (Wis 11-19): “Measure” as the Form of Judgment for Repentance
Wisdom 11-19 retells the Exodus as a series of vivid contrasts between Egypt and Israel, where the elements of creation, such as water, animals, light, and darkness, become the tools of both judgment and deliverance. This section functions as a polemical-apologetic midrash: a historical representation designed to encourage Jewish fidelity, contrast Hebrew wisdom with pagan practice, and reinterpret the Exodus traditions for an Alexandrian audience.[1] The author arranges these scenes in pairs: what harms Egypt helps Israel. The punishments fit the sins, often turning the very means of wrongdoing back on the wrongdoers (11:16). This is the overall design that frames the section and guides the reader.[2]
Wisdom 11:21-12:2 stands right at the center of this design. Divine power is described in absolute terms: God could overwhelm everything at once, and no one could resist (11:21-22). However, instead of moving from power to crushing verdicts, the text pivots to mercy. The reversal shows that because God is so powerful, He chooses mercy. Power and restraint are not opposites. Restraint is an expression of power. In 11:20, God “disposed all things by measure and number and weight,” which means His actions are proportionate, intelligible, and directed toward good.[3] David Winston calls this the biblical rejection of “disproportionate punishments.”[4] God’s power is measured and operates through the same rational harmony that keeps the cosmos intact. James Reese also argues that “measure, number, and weight” function as an organizing principle governing the transitions, comparisons, and digressions in 11-19.[5]
The author returns to the notion of restraint. God “has mercy on all,” “loves all things that are,” “loathe[s] nothing” He has made, and “spare[s] all things” because all creation belongs to Him. He not only creates, but He preserves what He creates. His “imperishable spirit is in all things,” so His goal toward the world is to keep it alive, not to destroy it (11:23-26; 12:1). Mercy is not an exception to justice but the policy that flows from sovereignty itself.[6]
The author then moves to the moral aim of punishment. God “rebukes offenders little by little,” “warns,” and “reminds” wrongdoers of their sins so that they can “abandon their wickedness” and “believe” (12:2). In the narrative frame, these “offenders” are the Egyptians whose oppression of Israel has provoked the plagues, yet the language deliberately generalizes: the same pattern of gradual correction applies to “all” whose sins God “overlook[s] . . . for the sake of repentance” (11:23). Punishment is medicinal and unfolds as a process of admonition aimed at personal improvement. The beneficiaries are first, the oppressor nations themselves, whose chastisements are ordered toward their repentance; and second, “your people,” who learn from God’s dealings with enemies that justice itself is an expression of mercy (12:19). The measure of judgment is set by what facilitates repentance, not by what maximizes pain.[7]
This “measured” approach explains how this section, covering chapters 11-19, is organized. In the first pattern, the plague-pairs, the same natural elements that strike Egypt bring protection to Israel. God’s justice works through creation in a precise and purposeful way, turning the same forces toward opposite ends according to the moral situation.[8] The second pattern, depicted as moral contrasts, shows how punishments match sins. Since God acts “by measure,” there is no excess or cruelty. Even the most severe scenes, such as the death of the firstborn or the drowning in the sea, are portrayed as fitting consequences within a larger process of moral instruction.[9]
God’s compassion extends to all even while confronting Israel’s oppressors. He hates nothing He made and holds back His hand to give room for change (11:23-12:2). Creation and salvation are presented as one continuous work: the God who orders the world “by measure” orders judgments by the same measure, so that justice is never severed from mercy or from the preservation of life.[10]
Wisdom 11:21-12:2 defines the logic and tone of chapters 11-19 by acknowledging God’s power to do all things, identifies His governing policy as a mercy that spares and preserves, and names its goal as repentance unto life. Wisdom 11:21-12:2 thus functions as the hinge of chapters 11-19 and shows that God’s justice is ordered towards mercy.[11] The vision of “measured mercy” prepares the way for Aquinas’s distinction between providence as plan and governance as execution.
2. The Order of Providence and the Work of Governance in Aquinas
God first designs a plan, then carries it out, in Aquinas’ view. Providence is the ratio ordinis by which God orders all things to their ends, while governance is the execution of that order in creatures.[12] Cardinal Thomas Cajetan describes this as a two-step process. The plan belongs to God alone, but its fulfillment involves intermediaries such as angels, natural causes, and human agents so that creation shares the “dignity of causality.”[13] Aquinas likens this to a wise king who rules through ministers, not from weakness, but to elevate their participation in his governance.[14]
Fr. Brian Davies places this distinction within God’s justice and mercy. God’s justice is distributive, giving each creature what fits its nature and purpose.[15] Since everything God gives reflects His perfect will and wisdom, His justice is “truth.” Every good thing in creation shows God’s mercy. Providence unites justice and mercy as He plans all things and carries out that plan in an orderly way for the good of creation.[16]
Aquinas holds that God’s providence extends to all things because He is the first cause of everything that exists.[17] However, because providence is the ordering of all things by God’s wisdom and will, God’s plan ensures that creatures act according to their own natures, so that its effect is to lead each thing to its end in the manner proper to its created cause..[18] Some events happen by necessity because their causes are necessary, while others happen freely or by chance because their causes are contingent or free.[19] Cajetan explains that God’s infallibility guarantees the plan’s success, but not that everything happens in the same way.[20] What God wills to occur necessarily happens, and what He wills to happen freely happens freely. Even “chance” events, such as two friends meeting unexpectedly, fit within providence.
According to Aquinas, God never directly wills evil, but He may allow it to happen to bring a greater good, reveal His justice and mercy, strengthen human virtue, or preserve creation’s harmony.[21] Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange explains that the central principle of providence is that even what God merely permits, rather than directly causes, is still part of His eternal plan, because He allows certain evils only so that greater goods can come from them, many of which require the reality of struggle, trial, or suffering.[22] For Aquinas, God is said “to order all things sweetly.”[23] He lets them operate according to their own natures and then directs even their mistakes and failures toward a good end.[24]
Aquinas divides governance into three parts: conservation, concurrence, and the motion of intellect and will. God’s act of creating never stops because if He stopped keeping things in existence, they would immediately fall back into nothingness.[25] God’s conservation works through the natural and social orders He has created, such as birth, nourishment, and human cooperation, without ceasing to be the ultimate Preserver of all being.[26] Through concurrence, God acts with creatures in every operation. He is both the final cause, since all acts aim at His goodness, and efficient cause, because He empowers creatures to act.[27] This cooperation does not replace creaturely action but enables it, making their deeds genuinely their own. Finally, God moves intellect and will. He gives the intellect its capacity to recognize truth and gently inclines the will toward the good, respecting its freedom.[28] God never acts against His plan, but He can act outside the normal workings of created or “secondary” causes. Aquinas calls this a “miracle,” and classifies miracles according to how far they go beyond the limits of nature.[29]
3. Comparative Analysis: Wisdom’s Measured Mercy and Aquinas’s Providence
With Aquinas’ framework now established, we now turn to Wisdom to see how its narrative embodies the same logic of ordered governance and merciful restraint.
Proportion and “Measure”: From Sapiential Imagery to Metaphysical Grammar
Wisdom 11:20 prefaces with the claim: God orders all things “by measure and number and weight.” Luca Mazzinghi notes that the initial γάρ in 11:21 looks back over 11:17-20 and governs the whole argument down to 12:1: the idolaters receive a punishment “less than they deserved” precisely because God acts “with measure, number, and weight.[30] The text links divine order to divine judgment. God’s power is absolute. He could sweep creation away like dust in a scale, but He does not act with blunt force. Instead, He chooses restraint. His judgments unfold slowly, “little by little,” so that wrongdoers have space to repent. The broader retelling of the Exodus in Wisdom reinforces this. Nature itself becomes the instrument of God’s measured justice: what harms Egypt protects Israel. The same elements that scourge the wicked sustain the righteous. Punishment fits the fault, not because God needs to achieve balance, but because the goal is restoration.
Aquinas takes the Scriptural image of “measure” and explains how providence is the rational order by which God directs all things to their proper end, and governance is that order as it plays out in the world.[31] Since God’s will always operates through wisdom, His justice necessarily displays proportion. Aquinas can therefore say that divine justice is a kind of truth, where effects are matched to the divine idea that intends their good.[32] In every divine act, mercy and justice are inseparable: mercy initiates, and justice provides the fitting measure.[33] For Aquinas, as in Wisdom, divine judgment never abandons the good of the one judged. Punishment always relates to the larger arc of providence.
Wisdom 11:20 already distinguishes between what God could do “in one breath” and what He in fact does by “measure, number, and weight.” Aquinas names that same difference when he distinguishes God’s simple, eternal decree from its temporal realization through ordered means. God’s judgments are not sheer fiat but the worked-out form of a rational order. The literary movement in Wisdom, from the declaration of God’s limitless strength to the demonstration of His patient mercy, mirrors Aquinas’s philosophical claim that God’s judgment is an instrument of healing, necessary, and aimed at drawing creation back toward its intended good.[34]
Instrumentality of Creation and Secondary Causation
Wisdom presents creation as an active participant in God’s judgment and mercy. Aquinas offers a metaphysical framework that makes sense of this logic. For him, God governs by ordering the world through secondary causes so that creatures act and share in the dignity of accomplishing divine purposes.[35] God sustains every creature in being and cooperates with every natural and human act, guiding intellect and will in a way suited to their nature.[36]
Aquinas cites Wisdom 8:1 to show that God “orders all things sweetly.”[37] The original Greek emphasizes that God orders all things gently, fittingly, and without coercion, as χρηστῶς (“kindly,” “beneficently,” “fittingly”) describes the manner of divine action, indicating that God’s governance achieves its ends through a measured, harmonious ordering consistent with wisdom. God brings about order by enabling creatures to act according to their own nature.
Wisdom 11:20 fits this paradigm affirming that God could have reduced His enemies to nothing “by one breath,” but instead has “arranged all things by measure, number, and weight.” Aquinas can read this as an anticipation of his own distinction between absolute power and the wisely ordered use of power: God freely binds His omnipotence to an intelligible, mediated order.
Punishment as Medicinal and the Permission of Evil
Wisdom 12:2 presents divine judgment as a step-by-step process, and this structure matches Aquinas’s account of punishment as medicinal and divine permission ordered to the good. The sinners corrected are παραπίπτοντας (“those who slip,”) suggesting moral weakness rather than hardened rebellion.[38] God addresses them καθ’ ὀλίγον (“little by little”), signaling gradual and proportionate discipline rather than sudden force. The verbs reinforce this idea: God ἐλέγχεις (brings into truth), ὑπομιμνῄσκων (reminds, awakening conscience), and νουθετεῖς (admonishes, literally “places understanding in the mind”).[39] The process culminates in liberation and trust, ἀπαλλαγέντες τῆς κακίας . . . πιστεύσωσιν (“freed from wickedness so that they may believe”).
Considering the context of the Exodus imagery from Wisdom 11-19, Mazzinghi interprets the plagues here as a series of steps.[40] The Egyptians are warned so that they remember what they have done and so that faith might be awakened even in those who had rejected God. The “philanthropy” of God appears precisely in this measured, educational use of trial and warning. It chastens the oppressor nations as potential penitents, and, at the didactic level, it also educates “your people,” Israel and the Alexandrian Jewish audience, as they watch how God deals with those nations.
Wisdom depicts punishment as a form of moral illumination, memory work, and interior formation, rather than destruction. In context, that moral pedagogy is first directed toward the oppressor nations whose deeds the book recounts, but its logic is universalized in 11:23-24 and finally turned back upon “your people” in 12:19. God’s measured treatment of Egypt becomes both an offer of repentance in principle and a lesson in mercy for Israel. Aquinas gives this sapiential pattern a metaphysical form. Punishment restores the sinner and the common good, and it can also serve as a medicinal remedy for the sinner’s reform.[41] At the divine level, God permits evil and the consequent punishments to draw out greater goods resulting in justice clarified, virtue strengthened, mercy offered, and freedom respected.[42] Thus, Wisdom’s gentle sequence, slipping, gradual correction, reminder, interior counsel, liberation, belief, is the narrative expression of Aquinas’ “measured mercy,” in which God disposes all things “sweetly” and uses even permitted difficulties to heal rather than destroy.
Universality and Particularity: “Mercy on All” and the Scope of Providence
Wisdom 11:23-12:1 presents mercy as the principle that sustains creation. God has “mercy on all, because you can do all things.” The text continues: “You love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made.” It ends “For your imperishable Spirit is in all things” (τὸ γὰρ ἄφθαρτόν σου πνεῦμά ἐστιν ἐν πᾶσι).
The γάρ (“for”) indicates causal explanation: creation survives because God’s imperishable Spirit is in all things. By placing τὸ ἄφθαρτόν σου πνεῦμα (“your imperishable Spirit”) at the beginning of the clause in 12:1, Wisdom emphasizes that God’s Spirit exists within all things and that it is imperishable. It focuses on how creation endures because the Spirit that sustains it cannot decay.[43] This emphasis aligns precisely with Aquinas’ claim that God alone is ipsum esse subsistens.[44] The imperishability of God’s Spirit, highlighted by the Greek word order, offers the ontological explanation for why God can sustain creation.
The verb ἐστιν (“is”) intensifies this sense of ongoing action. It conveys a continual indwelling, as if God’s Spirit actively permeates every aspect of the created world.[45] This aligns with Aquinas’ account of conservation. God is “in all things by essence, presence, and power.”[46] His act of being flows through creation at every moment, sustaining each thing from within rather than influencing it from afar.
The final phrase, ἐν πᾶσι (“in all [things]”), extends the scope of providence universally. The Greek dative plural πᾶσι lacks a qualifier—no “created things” or “living things.” It means everything without exception.[47] This universality reinforces Aquinas’s teaching that divine providence and sustaining causality extend to every creature, great or small, without exception.[48]
Mazzinghi also highlights how unusual the language is in 11:24. 11:24 is the only Old Testament passage that explicitly denies any divine hatred toward creatures and the only place where God’s love is directly named as the reason He created the world.[49] The three present-tense verbs, ἀγαπᾷς (“you love”), οὐδὲν βδελύσσῃ (“you do not abhor”), and οὐδὲ μισῶν τι (“you do not hate”) express a lasting disposition, while the less common aorist form of θέλω, ἠθέλησας, (“you willed,”) and διατηρέω, διετηρήθη, (“you preserved”) are used here to show that God is acting continually in creation to keep it in the existence for which He created it (Wis. 1:14).[50] Creation and preservation are held together: God continues to spare what He has made precisely because it is His.
Aquinas’ claim that creation and conservation are one continuous act aligns with Wisdom’s grammar. The verbs ἐλεεῖς (“you have mercy”) in 11:24 and ἀγαπᾷς (“you love”) in 11:25 appear in the present tense, expressing actions that do not begin and end but persist without interruption. Just as Wisdom’s God “spares all things” because His Spirit “is in all,” Aquinas’ God governs and conserves simultaneously, holding creation in existence by love and mercy.
CONCLUSION
Wisdom 11:21-12:2 portrays God’s action in creation and the Exodus in narrative form, while Aquinas renders it in metaphysical terms. Providence is God’s rational plan and governance as it unfolds through created causes. Both depict a God whose omnipotence works by empowering creaturely freedom and whose justice heals rather than destroys. Creation, judgment, and mercy are one continuous act of ordered love. True power, in both Scripture and Aquinas, is manifested through the wise patience that sustains and perfects all things.
[1] R. T. Siebeneck, “The Midrash of Wisdom 10-19,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 22 (1960): 179.
[2] The New Interpreter’s Bible (NIB). Volume 5: Introduction to Wisdom Literature, the Book of Proverbs, the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, the Book of Wisdom, the Book of Sirach (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997), 528-30.
[3] Ibid. 541-42; David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 234.
[4] Winston, 234.
[5] James M. Reese, “Plan and Structure in the Book of Wisdom,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 27 (1965): 393.
[6] NIB 5:541-42; Winston, 235-36; Richard J. Clifford,
[7] Luca Mazzinghi, Wisdom, IECOT (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 2019), 302-03; NIB 5:541-42.
[8] NIB 5:528-30; Clifford, 151-52.
[9] NIB 5:528-30; Leo G. Perdue, Wisdom Literature: A Theological History (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 312-13; Siebeneck, 179.
[10] NIB 5:541-42; Clifford 151-52; Perdue 312-13.
[11] NIB 5:528-30, 541-42; Winston, 234; Mazzinghi, 300-01.
[12] Summa Theologiae (ST) I, q.22, a.1, ad 2.
[13] Thomas Aquinas and Tommaso de Vio Cajetan,
[14] ST I, q. 103, a.6, ad 3.
[15] Brian Davies, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: A Guide and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 5.7; ST I, q.21, a.1.
[16] Ibid.
[17] ST I, q.22, a.2; Cajetan on ST I, q.22, a.2.
[18] ST I, q.22, a.4.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Cajetan on ST I, q.22, a.4.
[21] ST I, q.22, a.2, ad 2.
[22] Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God: A Commentary on the First Part of St. Thomas’ Theological Summa, trans. Dom Bede Rose (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1952) qq. 22-23.
[23] ST I, q.103.
[24] Cajetan on ST I, q.103, a.8.
[25] ST I, q.104, a.1.
[26] ST I, q.104, a.2; Davies, 9.6.
[27] ST I, q.105, a.5.
[28] ST I, q.105, a.3; I, q.105, a.4.
[29] ST I, q.105, aa.6-8; Davies, 9.6.
[30] Mazzinghi, 302.
[31] ST I, q.22, a.1; q.103, a.1.
[32] ST I, q.21, a.2.
[33] ST I, q.21, aa.3-4.
[34] ST I, q. 21, aa.3-4.
[35] ST I, q.103, a.6.
[36] ST I, q.104, a.1; I, q.105, a.5; I, q.105, a.4.
[37] ST I, q.103, a.8; however, the NABRE reads, “she . . . governs all things well,” emphasizing right order.
[38] The NABRE translates this as “offenders,” which suggests a punishment tone rather than the therapeutic image of a person who has stumbled. Grammatically, παραπίπτοντας comes from παραπίπτω (“to fall beside,” “to slip,” or “to stumble”). A similar example can be seen in Heb. 6:6 where the same root denotes moral falling away or lapse, but not rebellion as the word “offender” may suggest.
[39] ἐλέγχεις could be translated to “you reprove / expose / correct.” From ἐλέγχω, a verb used for convicting or bringing to light (see John 16:8). It carries both judicial and educational overtones. God’s reproof aims at truth and amendment, not destruction. The participle ὑπομιμνῄσκων (from ὑπομιμνῄσκω, “to remind, call to mind”) shows that God’s reproof is cognitive. He awakens moral memory and conscience. Νουθετεῖς (from νουθετέω, “to put in mind, admonish”) adds the pedagogical aspect of moral instruction.
[40] Mazzinghi, 302-303.
[41] ST I-II, q.87, a.7.
[42] ST I, q.19, a.9; q.22, a.2.
[43] The NABRE translation, “for your imperishable spirit is in all things,” reads smoothly but loses the author’s emphasis on the quality of God’s imperishable Spirit because it states the fact of presence rather than emphasizing the very attribute that makes that presence possible.
[44] ST I, q.4, a.2; q.9, a.1; q.104, a.1.
[45] The NABRE’s translation sounds declarative or static in English: “Your spirit is in all things.”
[46] ST I, q.8, a.1.
[47] The English translation preserves the universality but does not capture the comprehensive and active inclusiveness of the Greek. The phrase implies in every existing reality, not only “all things” in a generic sense.
[48] ST I, q.22, a.2.
[49] Mazzinghi, 305; although Sir 15:11-13 says that God does not do what he hates and hates all abominations, Wis 11:24 goes further: it says that God detests none of the things he has made, so that no creature, simply as a creature, is the object of his hatred.
[50] Ibid. 302.