Proverbs 8:23 places personified Wisdom before the creation of the world: Wisdom says that she was established "from everlasting," from the beginning, before the earth existed. Throughout Proverbs 8, Wisdom is portrayed poetically as present with God in His creative work. In the immediate literary context this is a personification of divine wisdom, and interpreters have long debated how directly the passage should be identified with the pre-incarnate Christ.

Christian interpretation has nevertheless found a profound correspondence with the New Testament presentation of Jesus. First Peter 1:19-20 says that Christ, the spotless sacrificial Lamb, was foreknown before the foundation of the world and revealed in the last times for the sake of His people. Revelation 13:8, depending upon how its final phrase is translated and punctuated, also associates God's redemptive purpose with the foundation of the world. The New Testament elsewhere calls Christ "the wisdom of God" and presents Him as existing before creation and as the One through whom creation came into being. Proverbs 8:23 can therefore appropriately contribute to a Christian understanding of Christ's eternal place in God's redemptive purpose, while care should be taken not to equate every feature of the poetic figure of Wisdom with a literal statement about the Son's divine nature.