Catholic Commentary
God's Original Plan for Humanity and the Entry of Death Through the Devil
23Because God created man for incorruption, and made him an image of his own everlastingness;24but death entered into the world by the envy of the devil, and those who belong to him experience it.
Wisdom 2:23–24 teaches that God created humans for incorruption and as bearers of divine eternity, but death entered the world through the devil's envy of humanity's destined immortality. Those who align themselves with the devil experience this spiritual death through rejection of God's gift of eternal life.
God made you for eternity, not death—and the devil's envy is what stole that from the world.
The final clause — "those who belong to him experience it" — is rendered variously as "those of his party" or "those in his possession." The Greek tēs ekeinou meridos ("those of his portion/lot") suggests not merely those who die physically, but those who have aligned themselves with the devil's worldview — the very wicked ones described throughout chapter 2 who oppress the righteous man (a figure typologically pointing toward the suffering Servant and ultimately Christ). Spiritual death, the death of relationship with God, is the deeper referent here.
Catholic tradition has consistently drawn on these two verses as a cornerstone of its teaching on the Fall, the imago Dei, and Original Sin. The Catechism of the Catholic Church directly references Wisdom 2:24 in its treatment of the devil's role in the Fall (CCC 391), stating: "Scripture witnesses to the disastrous influence of the one Jesus calls 'a murderer from the beginning' (Jn 8:44), who has even introduced sin into Paradise." The Catechism further notes (CCC 1008): "Death is a consequence of sin" — not a natural feature of creation as God intended it.
St. Athanasius, in De Incarnatione, builds his entire argument for the Incarnation on precisely the logic of Wisdom 2:23: because God made humanity for incorruption, and corruption entered through transgression, the Word of God had to take flesh to restore humanity to its original immortal destiny. The Incarnation is thus not Plan B; it is the fulfillment of Plan A.
St. Augustine in The City of God (XIV.11) identifies the devil's envy as the primal social evil — the first act of malice against another being — and traces all subsequent human envy to this diabolical origin. For Augustine, envy is the sin that destroys community because it cannot bear another's good.
The Council of Trent (Session V) defined that Original Sin brought death and captivity under the devil's power upon all humanity, directly grounding Catholic soteriology in this Wisdom text. Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes (§13) also echoes Wisdom 2:23 when it affirms that humanity was "established by God in a state of justice" and that "what divine revelation makes known to us agrees with experience" that humanity has a tendency toward evil — not because God made us so, but because of the entry of sin.
These verses also support the Catholic rejection of both Gnosticism (which holds matter and the body as inherently corrupt) and pure naturalism (which holds death as simply natural). Catholic anthropology, rooted here, insists the body is made for glory, and death remains the "last enemy" (1 Cor 15:26) rather than a friend.
In a culture that has largely normalized death — treating it as simply "part of life," or aestheticizing it as "natural return" — Wisdom 2:23–24 is a countercultural declaration: death is wrong. The grief we feel at a funeral is not irrational sentimentality; it is a theological instinct. Something in us recognizes that death is an intrusion, because we were not made for it.
Practically, this passage challenges Catholics to resist two temptations simultaneously. The first is despair — the wicked man's conclusion in Wisdom 2:1–9 that life is meaningless and the grave is the end. The second is indifference — the comfortable secular assumption that aging, decay, and death are simply the natural order to be optimized rather than an enemy to be ultimately defeated.
More urgently, verse 24's identification of the devil's envy as the source of death should sharpen our discernment of envy in our own hearts. Every act of envy — wishing another's good away, rejoicing in a neighbor's failure, diminishing others to elevate ourselves — participates in the devil's foundational mode of operation. The spiritual practice flowing from this text is concrete: examine your envy, name it for what it is (a diabolical impulse), and actively cultivate gratitude for the good of others, which is the theological opposite of envy.
Commentary
Verse 23: "God created man for incorruption, and made him an image of his own everlastingness"
The Greek word rendered "incorruption" (aphtharsia) carries a weight that cannot be reduced to mere physical immortality. It denotes a state of being untouched by dissolution, decay, or the erosion of any kind — spiritual and bodily wholeness sustained in permanent relationship with God. The author of Wisdom is not projecting Platonic ideas of the soul's natural immortality onto the text; rather, he is making a relational and theological claim: God created (ektisen) humanity with this destiny, meaning incorruption is a gift woven into the original act of creation, not a human achievement.
The second clause sharpens this: humanity is made as "an image of his own everlastingness (aidiotētos)." This is a direct commentary on Genesis 1:26–27, where humanity is fashioned in the imago Dei, but Wisdom presses into what that image specifically reflects: the eternal, undying nature of God himself. To bear God's image is not simply to possess reason or dominion; it is to carry within one's being a likeness to God's own deathlessness. The human person, in Wisdom's vision, is a creature whose very constitution points toward eternity.
This verse thus answers the meditation that precedes it in chapter 2, where the wicked reason from a materialist premise — "our life is short and tedious… we were born by mere chance" (2:1–2) — and conclude that pleasure and power are the only goods worth pursuing. The author dismantles this logic from its root: the premise is false. Death and meaninglessness are not humanity's natural condition. They are an intrusion.
Verse 24: "Death entered into the world by the envy of the devil, and those who belong to him experience it"
The Greek phthonō ("envy") is a precise and startling word. The author does not say the devil acted from pride alone, or disobedience, or rebellion — though all these are elsewhere attested — but specifically from envy. This envy is directed at humanity's share in divine incorruption. The devil, seeing that humans were made to participate in what he himself had rejected, was moved to corrupt their inheritance. Augustine and others would develop this insight: Lucifer, who refused God's image in himself, could not bear that creatures of clay should receive what he had spurned.
"Entered into the world" (eisēlthen eis ton kosmon) echoes the language Paul will later use in Romans 5:12 — "sin entered the world through one man, and through sin, death." Wisdom has already framed the drama that Paul will describe in explicitly Christological terms. Death is not endemic to creation; it is an invasion.