Proverbs 8:22
Proverbs 8:2222The LORD created me as His first course, before His works of old.
JWs identify the personified Wisdom of Proverbs 8 with Jesus and read "Jehovah produced me as the beginning of his way" as proof that Jesus was the first created being. The NWT's "produced" (or "created" in older editions) supports the Arian reading that Christ had a beginning. Witnesses also argue that Trinitarians themselves disagree about whether Proverbs 8 describes Jesus, that verse 14 ("I possess good advice and practical wisdom") shows a person who possesses wisdom rather than wisdom itself, and that "I was brought forth" in verses 24 and 25 confirms that "produced" in verse 22 means Jesus had a beginning.
The Hebrew verb qanah in can mean "possessed," "acquired," or "brought forth" — the Septuagint renders it ektisen ("created"), but the word's semantic range is broader than creation ex nihilo. More fundamentally, Proverbs 8 is Hebrew wisdom poetry — a literary personification of the attribute of wisdom, not a Christological biography. Wisdom is also described as a woman calling in the streets () and building a house with seven pillars (9:1). If Proverbs 8 is literally about Jesus, these details become incoherent. The NT does identify Christ as "the wisdom of God" (), but this identifies Christ with God's eternal attribute, not with a created being. states that "all things were created through him" — the NWT inserts "other" four times to protect the theology, but the Kingdom Interlinear shows no "other" in the Greek. Without "other," Christ created all things and is uncreated.
"Trinitarians disagree about Proverbs 8" is true, and worth admitting. Many Protestant commentators read the chapter as a personification of God's wisdom; many early Christian writers, Athanasius among them, read it of Christ. But both readings reach the same conclusion: Wisdom is not a creature. Athanasius took "created" in verse 22 of the Son taking a human body for our sake, not of his coming into existence (Discourses Against the Arians 2.44-47). A disagreement over how a poem applies to Christ is not a disagreement over whether Christ is God. Either way the created-Jesus reading fails. If the chapter is personification, it says nothing about Jesus' origin. If it is about Christ, then calls him "the power of God and the wisdom of God" — and God has never been without his wisdom or his power.
On verse 14 ("I possess good advice and practical wisdom," NWT): the word behind "practical wisdom" (tushiyyah, sound judgement) is a different Hebrew word from chokmah, the "wisdom" who is speaking, so the verse does not say that wisdom possesses wisdom. In poetry a personified quality can own other qualities anyway. Verse 12 says "I, wisdom, dwell together with shrewdness." If wisdom must be a literal person, who is shrewdness?
On "brought forth" (verses 24-25): the Hebrew verb is the one used for writhing in childbirth, and the NWT's own footnote on verse 24 reads "Or 'brought forth as with labor pains.'" That is the language of birth, not manufacture. What a father begets shares his nature; what he makes does not. Read of Christ, the passage points to the Nicene confession "begotten, not made" rather than to a created Son.
The NWT renders qanah in verse 22 as "produced," which narrows a verb whose ordinary sense in Proverbs is "get" or "acquire" (, 7 use it of acquiring wisdom). The NWT's own footnote on verse 24 concedes the birth imagery of the surrounding verses: "brought forth" is glossed "Or 'brought forth as with labor pains.'" Birth language describes generation from the Father, not creation from nothing.