Yet another testimony from the Scriptures will I give you, my Friends, I said, namely that God has begotten as a Beginning before all His creatures a kind of Reasonable Power from Himself, which is also called by the Holy Spirit the Glory of the Lord, and sometimes Son, and sometimes Wisdom, and sometimes Angel, and sometimes God, and sometimes Lord and Word. Sometimes also He speaks of Himself as Chief Commander, when He appeared in the form of a man to Joshua the son of Nun. For He can have all these names, from the fact that He ministers to the Father’s purpose; and has been born of the Father of His own will.
But do we not see that this is much the same as takes place within ourselves? For when we put forth any word, we beget a word, not putting it forth by scission, as though the word within us was diminished. And as we see in the case of fire another fire comes into being, without that one from which the kindling was made being diminished, but remaining the same, while that which is kindled from it appears as itself existing, without diminishing that from which it was kindled.
But the Word of wisdom will act as witness for me, being Himself this God begotten of the Father of the universe, and being all the time the Word and Wisdom and Power and Glory of Him who begat and spake as follows by Solomon: If I declare to you the things that happen every day, I will remember to recount them that are from eternity. The Lord created me as the beginning of His ways for His works. Before eternity He founded me, ‘in the beginning’, before He made the earth and before He made the depths, before the fountains of the waters came forth, before the mountains were settled; and before all the hills He begetteth me.
God made cultivated and desert land and the inhabited heights under heaven. When He prepared, the heaven I was along with Him; and when He marked out His throne on the winds; when He made the upper clouds strong and made the fountains of the deep sure; when He made the foundations of the earth strong; I was at His side arranging. It was I in whom He was delighting; yea, daily did I rejoice in His presence at all times; because He rejoiced when He completed the world, and He rejoiced in the sons of men.
Now, therefore, my son, hear me. Blessed is the man who shall listen to me, and the human being who shall keep my ways, watching at my doors daily, observing the posts of my entries. For my exits are exits of life, and good pleasure has been prepared (him) of the Lord. But they who sin against me act impiously against their own souls, and they that hate me love death.