Verse 20
The first three questions in this verse recall similar questions that Isaiah voiced when the Assyrians’ plans to destroy Jerusalem fell through (Isaiah 33:18; cf. Job 12:17; Isaiah 19:12). Paul’s references to the age (Gr. aion) and the world (kosmos) clarify that he was speaking of purely natural wisdom in contrast to the wisdom that God has revealed. God’s wisdom centers on the Cross.
"In first-century Corinth, ’wisdom’ was not understood to be practical skill in living under the fear of the Lord (as it frequently is in Proverbs), nor was it perceived to be some combination of intuition, insight, and people smarts (as it frequently is today in the West). Rather, wisdom was a public philosophy, a well-articulated world-view that made sense of life and ordered the choices, values, and priorities of those who adopted it. The ’wise man,’ then, was someone who adopted and defended one of the many competing public world-views. Those who were ’wise’ in this sense might have been Epicureans or Stoics or Sophists or Platonists, but they had this in common: they claimed to be able to ’make sense’ out of life and death and the universe." [Note: Ibid., pp. 15-16.]
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