The Pauline dictum about the "killing letter" and "vivifying Spirit" is appropriate to first think about the principles of exegesis, for a theologian should not be enslaved by the letter of any text, but adhere to the spirit, logos, to philosophy: even the revelation cannot bypass philosophy and there is a difficult, heartrendingly so, "marital" relationship between the two. In fact, the basic and very healthy conviction is that the natural light and wisdom of philosophers have the same divine origin being the divine gift for humans as the truth revealed directly to simple good-hearted prophets and the fishermen, and moreover, both the second should be interpreted through the first and the first should be instructed by the second.
Now, the ἔκτισεν means "he created", "he made", but its semantic field also includes "he brought forth" (Liddle&Scott give few references when the word means "to bring about", as in Aeschylus' "Suppliants" 171, where according to the context it can be translated even as "beget", as chosen by H.W. Smith). In Septuagint, for example in Sirach 44:2 it is impossible for the ἔκτισεν to be used in a strict technical meaning of "creation out of nothing" as it later acquired through the relevant theological debates, especially the Arian controversy, for it is said that "God wrought much glory through hero-ancestors, that is to say, His great power/majesty from the beginning" (πολλὴν δόξαν ἔκτισεν ὁ Κύριος, τὴν μεγαλωσύνην αὐτοῦ ἀπ᾿ αἰῶνος), now God's glory and majesty is always with Him inseparably, and therefore ἔκτισεν in this passage can but mean that He revealed or worked His (αὐτοῦ) ever-existing glory through the heroes of the past, and not created this glory and majesty out of nothing (the Hebrew is even more clear with this, for it has "He apportioned His glory to them"); that men can partake of uncreated divine glory is clear from the Scriptures (cf. John 5:44). The English translations of this passage give a range of options for the ἔκτισεν from “created” (CEB) to “wrought” (DRA), “honored” (GNT), "manifested" (WEB), “made” (WYC), others (NABRE, NRSV, NRSVA, NRSVACE, NRSVCE, RSV, RSVCE) opt for the Hebrew version, which makes things even clearer, saying that “God apportioned His great glory” to the heroic ancestors, thus it is excluded the Septuagint translator could mean in the ἔκτισεν any strong sense of creation, to say nothing about the ex nihilo sense, given that "His great Glory" is everexistent just as He Himself is.
Also, κτίζω can mean with a double accusative "to make somebody something", e.g., "to make/set somebody free" (cf. Aeschylus "Choephori" 1060), that is to say, cause somebody's getting free. In this last meaning the adequate literal translation of the Septuagint will be: "Lord caused/made me (brought me forth) to be the beginning of His ways towards His deeds", for there is not an "ἐν ἄρχῃ" in the text, but a double accusative ("[ἔκτισεν] με ἀρχήν"), like in the abovementioned quote from Aeschylus ("ἐλεύθερόν σε [κτίσει]"). Therefore, the translation "He created me in the beginning of his ways" is totally misleading, while "He caused/made me to be the beginning/principle" is grammatically more plausible with the double accusative construction. Thus, the Septuagint suggests that God was necessitated to bring forth, bring about, or cause something to be the principle ἀρχή for doing His deeds (ἔργα); therefore, by logic of this, this something is not included in those ἔργα but is outside of them as the God-derived principle for their coming into being.
The question is whether this something, this God-derived principle was always with God, or God can be imagined without it? And it would mean that God could create the ἔργα without the mediation of this ἄρχη, which is counter-intuitive, for then why on earth He makes things difficult for Himself as to create a middle principle between Himself and the rest of the creation and only later to create through this created middle principle the rest of the creation? Why not to create all creation without this intermediate creation, just directly? But if we take the ἔκτισεν in a looser sense of "made to be", or "caused to be", which grammatically is more precise, then it is very reasonalbe to think that God creates creatures making His intrinsic Wisdom as the necessary and inavodable principle of manifesting Himself in those creatures, for those creatures possess the perceptible and created signs of Him-Uncreated, or more precisely of His uncreated wisdom. Just for an analogy: rays of the sun say: "The sun made us the principle for making visible the mountains and fields", now, as it is impossible for the sun to make visible anything without its rays, in the similar manner, it is impossible for God to make anything without His Wisdom.
The Hebrew version has קָ֭נָנִי "possessed me", so there is no indication of its' being in any situation (I do not say "time", which could not exist without something to be measured by it, i.e. the world) not possessed by God. But why the Septuagint translators put there the ἔκτισεν (of course, if it is not a simple mistake on the part of the translator who put ἔκτισεν instead of ἐκτήσατο - from κτάομαι/"to possess" - which is the more adequate to the Hebrew word, as suggested by Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion and Jerome /possedit/)? I guess, for the reason to invest the text with a notion of dynamism: that God, so to say, reaches out of Himself through the Wisdom that He always possesses, thus creating the world, or expressing, manifesting Himself through the world created by Him through His eternally possessed wisdom, for it is impossible for such a vast orderliness to be based on chaos and haphazardness, unless we think that a) God himself is such a chaos and haphazardness, and then b) suddenly creates the structuring principle - wisdom, and then c) creates the universe invested with the features of this created principle. All that is absurd, for the creatures must reveal or bear witness to the Creator and not to the creature, while in this wrongheaded model creatures will be radically unable to bear witness to the utterly haphazard God, but only to a created structuring principle - wisdom; to say nothing about inadequacy of puting haphazardness above rational intentionality/providentiality, which is quite Protagorean or Nietzschean, but hardly Biblical.
In fact, what is manifested in the orderliness of the creation? God? His Wisdom? Or Both, that is to say, God in His Wisdom, or together with His Wisdom, with His intrinsic power and ability to introduce structure in reality intelligible for our created intellects, this intelligible created structure being grounded on His intrinsic structuring/creating power? And does not Paul say that pagans have no excuse for not believing in God, for His invisible/imperceptible and by clear implication, uncreated qualities, His invisible eternal (ἀΐδιος) power and divinity, are manifested through the creation (Romans 1:20)?! And through what aspects of the creation? Of course, through the orderliness-aspect, the intelligibleness-aspect of the creation that bears witness to its ἀΐδιος/eternal, uncreated cause, that is the God's eternal power to introduce and make manifest world's structure and order! And this eternal power is nothing else but His wisdom, and therefore, to the extent the power is ἀΐδιος/eternal, to the very same extent is also the wisdom, for both are interchangeable notions having the identical function and in theological expressions are used in a hendiadyoin ("one notion in two terms") construction (cf. Jeremiah 51:15; or Paul 1 Cor. 1:24). Thus, again, God's power is the same as wisdom, for God's wisdom is never an impotent wisdom but imbued with power, and vice versa, God's power is never a haphazard or chaotic power, but imbued with wisdom, and thus the creation reveals simultaneously God's power and wisdom and ἀΐδιος ("eternal") applies likewise to both power and wisdom. Therefore, had it been otherwise, Paul's logic would have been totally wrong, for why should one reprimand an unbeliever for not believing in the Creator, if that which is revealed and implied by the creation - i.e. wisdom - were itself a creature? But this is absurd, and Paul is emphatic that what is revealed and implied by the creation - the power and wisdom - is just as ἀΐδιος as God himself.
Later in theology, through the Arian controversy, there happened a clear technical division between "creation" (κτίζω) and "begetting" (γεννάω). However, Septuagint translators did not yet have this terminologically tense agenda and thus put the verb in a looser sense of "making somebody something" or "bringing forth", not at all investing this term with a necessity of a contingency and createdness,i.e. non-eternity, of a being that God has brought about (ἔκτισεν). This happens in theology: for instance "ὑπόστασις" and "οὐσία" where used interchangeably, both denoting the same idea of "being" in I Nicaea (325) but they became totally different and excluding terms in I Constantinople (381-2), when the first became "essence" and the second "person", never to be henceforth intermingled. Also in the Proverbs 8 it is clear that the ἔκτισεν is used interchangeably with the γεννάω, for immediately in the sequel we read (Proverbs 8:24-25): "πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι καὶ πρὸ τοῦ τὰς ἀβύσσους ποιῆσαι,πρὸ τοῦ προελθεῖν τὰς πηγὰς τῶν ὑδάτων, πρὸ τοῦ ὄρη ἑδρασθῆναι,πρὸ δὲ πάντων βουνῶν γεννᾷ με".
Therefore, had the Septuagint translator of the Proverbs 8 put in those two terms in 8:22 and 8:25 the mutually exclusive meanings, that they got in strictly theological debates later in history, especially with the Arian controversy, he could not perform this unless he got affected by schizophrenia before undertaking the task of translating this passage: in fact, semantics is the same in 8:24-25 as in 8:22, because "towards all His deeds" (ἔργα) is just explained in the sequel: τὰ ἔργα = 1. ἀβύσσοι (depths); 2. πηγαί ὑδάτων (streams of waters); 3. ὄρη (mountains); 4. βούνοι (hills) which simply indicate to everything, the heaven and earth of the Genesis 1:1.
Thus, the principle through which all those things are brought into being is not to be enlisted among them. As it is unreasonable to suppose that in Genesis 1:2 the "Spirit of God" is something created and as such a part of the creation through which other creatures are made, but natural, neutral and unforced interpretation will be that "Spirit of God" is intrinsic to God and is prior to creation just as God is, so also with the "Wisdom of God", the latter being likewise intrinsic to God and prior to creation just as God is. In fact in Exodus 31:3 God's Spirit and Wisdom are used in the same semantic power, synonymously.
And if one just reads the Psalm 104:24 ("O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all/πάντα)" with an unprejudiced eye: will anybody with a clear mind raise any suspicion that here in the “wisdom” is implied anything created? In fact “all” (Greek: πάντα) means “all” and it includes in its class the whole entirety of the created order, while necessarily excluding anything uncreated, ergo, also God’s wisdom.
Thus, Proverbs 8:22 does not say that God's Wisdom is created in the strict theological sense of the word as indicating something that did not exist to come into existence by the agency of God (for God's agency is always a wise agency and as such cannot be without His Wisdom that is "always-ed" or eternal to Him, for if His action/agency is always wise, necessarily the wisdom is possessed in His essence also always, for action is expression of essence, the latter logically preceding the former), but can be interpreted as a term indicating God's creative motion, an outreach so to say, in order to manifest Himself through His eternal wisdom in the things - τὰ ἔργα - created by Him.
