Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
The house and banquet of Wisdom are described parabolically, to which she invites the simple. For she declares that scoffers are incapable of correction and wisdom. Then Wisdom, at verse 13, introduces and depicts her rival, the foolish woman, who seduces the senseless and even leads them with herself to the underworld.
Vulgate Text: Proverbs 9:1-18
1. Wisdom has built herself a house, she has hewn out seven pillars. 2. She has slain her victims, mixed her wine, and set her table. 3. She has sent her handmaids to call from the citadel and from the walls of the city: 4. If anyone is a little one, let him come to me. And to the foolish she has spoken: 5. Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine that I have mixed for you. 6. Leave behind childishness, and live, and walk in the ways of prudence. 7. He who instructs a scoffer brings injury upon himself: and he who reproves the wicked generates a stain for himself. 8. Do not reprove a scoffer, lest he hate you. Reprove a wise man, and he will love you. 9. Give a wise man an occasion, and wisdom will be added to him. Teach a just man, and he will hasten to learn. 10. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord: and the knowledge of the holy is prudence. 11. For through me your days will be multiplied, and years of life will be added to you. 12. If you are wise, you will be so for yourself: but if a mocker, you alone will bear the evil. 13. A foolish and clamorous woman, full of allurements, and knowing nothing at all, 14. sat at the door of her house upon a seat in a high place of the city, 15. to call those passing along the way, and those going on their journey: 16. Whoever is a little one, let him turn aside to me. And to the senseless she has spoken: 17. Stolen waters are sweeter, and hidden bread is more pleasant. 18. And he did not know that giants are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.
First Part of the Chapter
Verse 1: Wisdom Has Built Herself a House
1. WISDOM HAS BUILT HERSELF A HOUSE, SHE HAS HEWN OUT SEVEN PILLARS. — For 'wisdom' the Hebrew is חכמות chochmot, that is, 'wisdom' in the plural, to signify the dignity, majesty, and amplitude of wisdom — namely that she, being one in herself, is equivalent to many, and comprehends many things, and so is the sum and mother of all wisdoms, counsels, understandings, prudences, etc. For 'hewn out,' the Septuagint translates 'propped up'; the Syriac, 'erected'; St. Ambrose, Book I On the Faith, chapter vii, 'raised up'; St. Athanasius, in the Disputation against Arius, 'established'; the Chaldean, 'set up pillars in it'; the Arabic, 'made' it resting on seven pillars. These pillars, then, are the supports and bases upon which Wisdom builds her house, just as in Rome we see the basilicas of St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Lawrence, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, St. Cecilia, etc., standing upon and built with pillars hewn from marble, both very numerous and magnificent. 'She hewn out,' therefore, means she cut from rock, shaped, polished, erected, and established them as bases of the house of Wisdom. So Galatinus, Book III On the Secrets of the Faith, chapter III, and Aben-Ezra. It is a catachresis and metalepsis.
You may ask, what is this house and structure of Wisdom?
Note that here there is, as it were, a continuous allegory or parable, and therefore Solomon speaks here parabolically and enigmatically, as he often does elsewhere in these Proverbs. For he composed these from weighty, notable, elegant, obscure, acute, and especially parabolic maxims: whence he inserted and intermingled every kind of sentence in this book. Therefore, because in chapter VII, 14, he set forth the allurements and finally the banquet prepared by the harlot, to which she invites the young man in order to ruin and corrupt him, for this reason in this passage he constructs, opposes, and sets before it the house of the banquet built by Wisdom, furnished with true delights, to which she invites the young man, so as to tear him away from the harlot and draw him to the pursuit of herself and the salvation of his soul. Here, therefore, she sets forth and expounds to him her delights, of which she spoke in the preceding chapter, verse 31: "My delights are to be with the children of men."
Grammatically, therefore, and on the surface of the letter, the house here of the banquet prepared by Wisdom, or the dining room, is understood, in which she sets forth her own dishes — namely those of Wisdom — her doctrines and counsels of salvation. She alludes to the earliest banquets of the wise, in which the wise men contributed, as it were, tokens of wisdom, and brought forth acute, weighty, obscure sentences, parables, riddles, etc., as is evident from Athenaeus, On the Banquets of the Wise; Plato, Macrobius, Plutarch, and indeed from Sirach, Ecclesiasticus XXXII, 4, as I showed in that place. Relevant here is what the Seven Sages of Greece declared about household management, that is, about the wise constitution of a house, as recorded in Plutarch in the Banquet of those same Sages.
For the first, Solon, said: "That house seems best to me where wealth has not been unjustly acquired, and where there is no occasion for distrust in preserving it, nor for regret in spending it. Bias: one in which the master of his own accord behaves at home as he does abroad on account of the laws. Thales: one in which the most leisure is granted to the master. Cleobulus: one in which there are more who love than who fear the master. Pittacus: where neither superfluous things are sought, nor necessary things are lacking. Chilon: a house ought especially to resemble a city that is under a king; and he added that Lycurgus, when someone urged him to establish a popular government in Sparta, replied: First do this in your own house."
But parabolically, beneath this grammatical surface, by 'house' he means the Temple and the Synagogue of the Temple. For Solomon, as president and prince of wisdom, built this as a house of wisdom, that is, of God, 3 Kings VI, 1, and chapter VII, 1; and it was supported and adorned by seven, that is, many, pillars. In it also was a table, that is, the altar, on which victims were slain for God, with a libation, that is, the mixing and pouring of wine, and also the table of the showbread. And in it wisdom was taught — that is, true faith, law, virtue, prudence, religion and the worship of God — by the priests, Scribes, and Pharisees. Moreover, by 'temple' understand the Synagogue and the Church, which gathered in the temple to hear the worshippers and teachers of wisdom: for both the Synagogue and the temple were a type, and typically represented the Church, which the most wise Solomon — that is, Christ — built and inhabits, and where as in a school He teaches through His masters, priests, and teachers Christian wisdom and virtue, about which more shortly. Wisdom of God, therefore, or God through His wisdom, built the Temple and the Synagogue, that is, His house, in which He would be worshipped, and through His priests and teachers would teach the Jews and proselytes wisdom — that is, the true knowledge, love, and worship of God, and all uprightness and virtue. Thus by 'house' and 'table' here the Hebrews, and our Jerome Prado in Ezekiel chapter V, number 7, and his follower Vilalpando in Ezekiel XL, volume II, part 2, book III, chapter XX, understand Solomon's Temple. Where he teaches that besides the very many pillars that supported the temple, there were precisely seven pillars of the porticoes of the temple, that is, of the court. For the court was the temple of the people: since not the people, but only the priests could enter the Holy Place, and only the high priest the Holy of Holies. For each of the porticoes of the court, he teaches that there were seven pillars on each side, that is, fourteen in all, and that by these were represented the three groups of fourteen in the genealogy of Christ, Matthew I, 17.
But hear Vilalpando: "There are two rows of pillars in each portico; each row consists of seven pillars: three such porticoes surround the House of God and the Holy of Holies in the middle. What if St. Matthew, chapter I, 17, perhaps had this in view when he divided the entire genealogy of Christ into three groups of fourteen, as many as the pillars by which the House of God was surrounded on the outside? For there were three porticoes, and each had a group of fourteen pillars — namely seven pillars in one row and seven in the other opposite it: there were therefore three groups of fourteen pillars, just as there were three groups of fourteen in the genealogy of Christ."
The seven pillars, then, are seven schools, in which there were as many chairs from which teachers professed all the liberal arts, each his own. On this matter, hear Optatus of Milevis, Book III Against Parmenian, on Isaiah XXII, The burden of the valley of vision: "He does not say 'in Zion,' but 'in one of its valleys'; not on that Mount Zion, which in the Syria of Palestine a small stream separates from the walls of Jerusalem, on the summit of which there is a not very large plateau: on which there were seven synagogues, where the Jewish people, assembling, could learn the law given through Moses, where no law was heard, nor any judgment celebrated by anyone, nor any sentence pronounced by any judge there; because the place was for instruction, not for disputes." After instruction, if anything needed to be done, it was done within the walls of Jerusalem. Hence it is written in Isaiah the prophet, chapter II: "From Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." Hence also Aben-Ezra understands the seven pillars as the seven liberal arts. For the sciences, says R. Levi, are the pillars of prudence and wisdom.
The handmaids sent by Wisdom to call to the citadel — that is, to the academy erected in the citadel of Zion — are the various faculties that were taught in the academy. For these, by their subject matter and appearance, attracted and invited all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the Jews, and even proselytes and foreigners, to attend and hear this school of wisdom. Whence Justin in his Dialogue against Trypho asserts that the ancient priests of Mithras, that is, of the Sun, imitated the Hebrews teaching on the heights of the rocks of Zion, since they in a similar manner initiated their disciples in the sacred rites of Mithras in a rocky cave. Tertullian affirms the same in his book On the Soldier's Crown, near the end, and in the book On Prescription against Heretics, chapter XL. Moreover, there are those who recall that the place of the academy was at the Eastern gate of the Temple. So Arias Montanus in the Apparatus, and St. Antoninus, Part I, title 5, chapter 1, section 3. Paul noted this same place saying in Acts XXIV, 12: "They did not find me in the temple disputing with anyone" — namely in the school that was in the court of the temple. Christ wished to honor and authorize this academy by His presence and authority when, as St. Luke says, chapter II, His parents found Him in the temple sitting in the midst of the teachers.
Pineda adds, Book III On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter XXVIII, that this academy of Solomon was the mother of all others, from which consequently proceeded Pythagoras, as St. Ambrose attests, Book I, epistle 6, and also Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, etc. For Eusebius, Book III of the Preparation, chapter XIII, Clement of Alexandria, Book I of the Stromata, and others, teach that these and the other philosophers of the Gentiles drew their doctrines from Solomon and the Hebrews; therefore Solomon himself taught in this academy of his, as a teacher of wisdom authorized by God, and dictated these and other parables, according to the passage: "Solomon also spoke three thousand parables; and his songs were a thousand and five. And he discoursed about trees," etc., 3 Kings IV, 32. From this they consequently infer that Solomon dictated these things after the building of the Temple and his own house, around the 26th year of his reign. For in the fourth year of his reign he began to build the Temple, and completed it after seven years, and then built his own house over thirteen years, 3 Kings chapter VII, 1. If you combine all these years into one sum, you will find 25, after which he first began to teach in the school built near the Temple, having previously taught his own household privately. Whence from his various sayings, pronounced by him at different times, or even repeated, this book of Proverbs was collected and arranged, as is evident from chapter XXIV, verse 23, and from chapter XXV, verse 1.
Allegorically, the house of Wisdom — namely the ancient Temple of the Jews, the Academy and Synagogue — represented the Church of Christ. For Christ, who is Wisdom uncreated and incarnate, built her — that is, He erected and inaugurated her — teaching and preaching in that same Temple of Zion. Whence in that same place the Apostles at Pentecost received the Holy Spirit, and with fiery tongues there promulgated the new law. So St. Ambrose, Book I On the Faith, chapter VII; Caesarius of Arles, Homily 7 On Easter; Anastasius of Nicaea, Question LX on Scripture; St. Athanasius, Oration 5 Against the Arians; St. Isidore, Book VIII of the Etymologies, chapter 1; St. Thomas, Part III, Question XXXII, article 1, reply 3, and the author of the Questions on the Old and New Testaments in St. Augustine, volume IV, Question LII: "The house of Christ is the Church, he says, which He built for Himself with His blood."
Hear St. Gregory, Book XXXIII of the Morals, chapter XV: "The house of Wisdom, he says, is called the Church: which has hewn out seven pillars for herself, because she has raised up the minds of preachers, separated from the love of the present age, to bear the structure of that same Church. Because they are supported by the virtue of perfection, they are designated by the number seven. She slew her victims, because she allowed the lives of her preachers to be sacrificed in persecution. She mixed her wine, because she preached to us equally the mysteries of her divinity and humanity. She also set her table, because she prepared for us the nourishment of Sacred Scripture by opening it up. She also sent her handmaids, who called us to the citadel and the walls of the city: because she chose to have weak and lowly preachers, who would gather the faithful peoples into the lofty buildings of the spiritual homeland."
You may ask, what are the seven pillars of the Church? First, St. Augustine, Book XVII of the City of God, chapter IV, and St. Gregory, Book XXIII of the Morals, I, respond that they are the individual particular Churches, of which the universal Church is composed and consists. For the number seven is a symbol of fullness and universality: the seven pillars, therefore, are all the particular Churches that constitute the universal Church. "By the number seven," says St. Augustine, "the perfection of the universal Church is signified." As a symbol of this, St. John inscribes the Apocalypse thus: "John to the seven Churches;" because, as St. Gregory says, "John writes to the seven Churches, so as to designate the one Catholic Church, filled with the Spirit of sevenfold grace."
Second, the author of the Greek Catena and Lyranus understand the seven pillars as the seven Sacraments of the Christian Church, by which, as by pillars, she is supported.
Third, the author of the Imperfect Work on St. Matthew, found in St. Chrysostom, Homily 50, understands the seven pillars as the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, with which He supported the Church, Isaiah XI, 2. For these spirits are strong, indeed they are the strength of the Church: for they strengthen both the prelates and the individual faithful against all enemies — namely against heretics, unbelievers, atheists, politicians, and all the impious, and indeed against the demons and the whole power of hell.
Fourth, St. Ambrose (or whoever the author may be, for the same Commentary is found among the works of Bede) on Apocalypse I, near the end, understands the seven pillars as the totality of preachers, whom God sent to her through the seven, that is, all, ages of the world: "Wisdom, he says, built herself a house, when our Lord Jesus Christ from the beginning of the world to its end, from the multitude of the elect, constructed and established the Church for Himself. He hewn out seven pillars, when in those seven periods He appointed preachers suited to each period in His Church, who would sustain her both by salutary counsels and by the examples of good works."
Fifth, Salonius understands the seven pillars as all the doctors of the Church: for they, like pillars, support her. Whence Paul, Galatians II, 9, calls Peter, James, and John pillars of the Church. Hear Salonius: "The pillars of this house are the holy doctors; these pillars are rightly said to be seven, because the holy doctors are filled with the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit. How then did Wisdom hew out these pillars? Because she separated the minds of the preachers from the love of the present age, as from their quarry, and raised them up to bear the structure of the same Church."
Symbolically, Wisdom uncreated — that is, the Son of God — built Himself a house, that is, a human body in the Incarnation, in which the fullness of divinity dwelt bodily; the seven pillars are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, with which Christ's humanity was full and supported, Isaiah XI, 2. The table is the table of the Eucharist, in which Christ offers us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink, about which more shortly. So St. Athanasius in the Disputation against Arius at the Council of Nicaea: "Wisdom, he says, that is, the Word or the Son of God, since He was incorporeal, for our salvation built Himself a house in the womb of the Mother of God Mary without the intercourse of a man, and was made man, and presented Himself as the model of every virtue: so that those who wished to follow Him might have, as it were, footsteps on a divine journey, by being made like which they would become partakers of the divine nature. The house of Christ, therefore, is His body, through which Christ," says St. Athanasius, "became concorporeal with us (σύσσωμος)." So also St. Gregory of Nyssa, Oration 2 Against Eunomius: "Wisdom built herself a house, that is, the flesh," he says, "which she assumed," meaning: "The Word was made flesh." And St. Augustine, Book XVII of the City of God, XX, where he explains this entire passage thus: "Here we certainly recognize the Wisdom of God, that is, the Word co-eternal with the Father, building for itself a human body as a house in the virginal womb, and joining the Church to it as members to a head, having offered the sacrifices of the Martyrs, having prepared a table with wine and bread; where also the priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek appears; having called the foolish and those lacking understanding, because, as the Apostle says: God chose the weak things of this world to confound the strong." So also Anastasius of Nicaea in the Questions on Holy Scripture, Question XL: "Wisdom, he says, built herself a house, when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." He prepared a table, namely of the divine flesh and blood in the Eucharist. "He mixed His wine, inasmuch as He united His divinity to flesh as unmixed wine." So also Caesarius of Arles, Homily 4 On Easter; St. Ambrose, Book I On the Faith, chapter VII, and Book III On the Holy Spirit, chapter VIII; and St. Gregory, Book XXXIII of the Morals, chapter XV: "Wisdom, he says, built herself a house, when the Only-begotten Son of God in Himself, within the womb of the Virgin, through the mediation of a soul, created for Himself a human body. For thus the body of the Only-begotten is called the house of God, just as it is also called a temple; yet in such a way that one and the same Son of God and of man is Himself the one who dwells therein and the one who is dwelt in."
Wherefore, with his characteristic gravity, St. Leo, Epistle 13 to Pulcheria Augusta, says: "The sacrament of our reconciliation, arranged before the eternal ages, a thousand figures were fulfilling, etc., so that within the inviolate womb, with Wisdom building Herself a house, the Word would become flesh, and with the form of God and the form of a servant coming together in one person, the Creator of times would be born in time; and through whom all things were made, He Himself would be begotten among all things." So also St. Thomas, Part III, Question XXXII, article 1, reply 3.
Moreover, St. Chrysostom on Psalm XXII, St. Ambrose, Book I On the Faith, chapter VII; St. Cyprian, Book II, Epistle 3 to Caecilius; Anastasius of Nicaea, Question XL on Scripture; Bede, Hugh, and others here, understand this passage as referring to the dining hall and banquet of the Eucharist; and indeed so does the Church in the Office of the Venerable Sacrament, which St. Thomas composed, in which the first Antiphon at Lauds is this: "Wisdom has built herself a house, she has mixed her wine, and set her table. Alleluia."
Physically, the Hebrews in the Sanhedrin, as reported by Galatinus, Book III On the Secrets of the Faith, chapter III, explain it thus: "Wisdom built her house, that is, God through wisdom created the world. She shaped her seven pillars, that is, she arranged the seven primordial days of the creation of the world, in which He created, formed, and distinguished all things in their places and orders as if by pillars. She slew her victim, or cooked her victim, or her decoction: by this are understood the seas, rivers, and all the necessities of the world. She sent her maidens to call: these are Adam and Eve." So the Hebrews in the Sanhedrin, and R. Solomon here.
Potho, a priest of Prum, around the year of the Lord 1152, wrote a treatise On the Great House of Wisdom, which is found in volume XII of the Library of the Holy Fathers, the most recent Cologne edition, Part I, page 642, in which by 'the house of Wisdom' he symbolically understands this universe; by the seven pillars, the seven days of the creation of the world, and also the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which he then pursues through each individual day, adapting to each day its own gift, according to that passage: "The Lord by wisdom founded the earth, He established the heavens by prudence," Proverbs III, 19. But allegorically he interprets the house of Wisdom as the womb of the Blessed Virgin, in which God made man dwelt for nine months; whence he mystically applies the adornment and dedication of Solomon's Temple to the same.
Tropologically, Wisdom, that is, Christ, by grace builds a house — that is, a temple — in the faithful soul, when He sanctifies it. For then within it a temple of virtue and holiness is raised up, in which the Holy Trinity dwells, and indeed dines, according to that passage in Apocalypse III, 20: "If anyone hears My voice and opens the door to Me, I will enter to him and will dine with him, and he with Me." And that passage in John XIV: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him." So St. Athanasius in Oration 3 Against the Arians, and in the Disputation against Arius at the Council of Nicaea, and the author of the Imperfect Work, Homily 29 on Matthew.
Hear St. Bernard, Sermon 3 On the Advent: "Blessed is he with whom You will make Your abode, Lord Jesus. Blessed is he in whom Wisdom builds Herself a house, hewing out seven pillars. Blessed is the soul that is the seat of Wisdom. Which soul is that? Surely the soul of the just man. Rightly so, because justice and judgment are the preparation of Your throne. Who among you, brothers, desires to prepare a seat for Christ in his soul? Behold what silks, what tapestries, what cushion must be prepared. Justice, he says, and judgment are the preparation of Your throne. Justice is the virtue that gives to each what is his own. Render, therefore, to three what is theirs. Render to the superior, render to the inferior, render to the equal, to each what you owe, and you worthily celebrate the coming of Christ, preparing for Him His throne in justice. Render, I say, reverence to the Prelate, and obedience, the former pertaining to the heart, the latter to the body." And here he assigns seven pillars of this spiritual house, namely: the custody and discipline of oneself and those committed to one's care, reverence and obedience toward Prelates, counsel and assistance toward brethren; and as the seventh he assigns judgment, by which we judge and humble ourselves before God. "This truly, he says, is the worthy preparation of a throne for the Lord of majesty, that one both strive to observe the commands of justice, and always consider himself unworthy and useless."
Moreover, St. Bonaventure in his treatise On the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit assigns the seven pillars of Wisdom from that passage of St. James, chapter III: "The wisdom that is from above is first indeed chaste, then peaceable, modest, open to persuasion, consenting to good, full of mercy and good fruits, judging without pretense." And so he constructs and raises the seven pillars thus: "The first pillar is chastity in the flesh, the second simplicity in the mind, the third modesty in speech, the fourth openness to persuasion in the affections, the fifth generosity in action, the sixth maturity in judgment, the seventh holiness in intention."
But especially the house of Wisdom is the soul of one who communicates worthily. For such a soul, like Zacchaeus, receives Christ into its house, and deserves to be blessed by Him and to be laden with every heavenly blessing. So Salazar from St. Athanasius. Such a soul, therefore, is the dining room of Wisdom, because it is furnished and spread with three couches and as many guests, namely memory, will, and intellect. In the memory, thanksgiving feasts, according to that passage in Psalm CX, 4: "The merciful and compassionate Lord has made a memorial of His wonders: He has given food to those who fear Him." In the will, charity reclines and feasts as a guest, according to that passage in the same Psalm: "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord;" for this fear is filial, says St. Augustine, and therefore is charity. In the intellect, the knowledge and contemplation of God is a guest and feasts, according to that passage in the same Psalm: "Good understanding to all who practice it," which spurs the soul to every virtue, and to heroic works of justice, and especially to the perpetual praise and jubilation of God. Whence there follows: "His praise endures forever and ever."
Again, this dining room and its threefold delights are depicted thus by St. Thomas, and from him the Church in the Office of the Venerable Sacrament at Second Vespers: "O sacred banquet, in which Christ is received, the memory of His Passion is recalled, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us!" Much more does Wisdom build Herself a house when she establishes some holy state of life, such as a Religious Order, especially one in which all kinds of wisdom are taught, such as the Society of Jesus is now, and as many other Orders formerly were. See what I said about this mystical structure of virtues and orders at the end of the prophet Haggai.
Mystically, Wisdom — that is, the Son of God — built for Himself, that is, for His own use, a house worthy of Himself, namely the womb of the Virgin Mother of God, when He chose it as His dwelling: and therefore, so that it might be divine and worthy of God, beyond the Angels, Cherubim, and Seraphim, He adapted and adorned it with the highest graces — that is, with seven pillars, meaning the most robust virtues: namely the three theological virtues — robust faith, hope, and charity — and the four cardinal virtues — robust prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Hear St. Bernard, Sermon 9 among the minor ones: "This Wisdom, therefore, who was of God and was God, coming to us from the bosom of the Father, built Herself a house — namely her own mother, the Virgin Mary — in which she hewn out seven pillars. What is it to hew out seven pillars in her, if not to prepare for Herself a worthy dwelling by faith and works? Indeed, the number three pertains to faith, on account of the Holy Trinity; the number four pertains to morals, on account of the four principal virtues. And that the Holy Trinity was in Blessed Mary (I say 'was' by the presence of majesty), where the Son alone was present by the assumption of humanity, the heavenly messenger testifies, who, revealing the hidden mysteries to her, said: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you." And shortly after: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Behold, you have the Lord, you have the power of the Most High, you have the Holy Spirit, you have the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." And further: "The Blessed Virgin Mary was therefore strong in purpose, temperate in silence, prudent in questioning, just in confession. With these four pillars of morals, then, and the three of faith mentioned above, heavenly Wisdom built Herself a house in her: which so filled her mind that from the fullness of her mind her flesh also became fruitful; and by a singular grace the Virgin gave birth in the flesh to that very same Wisdom whom she had first conceived in her pure mind. We too, if we wish to become the house of the same Wisdom, must be built up with these same seven pillars — that is, we must prepare ourselves for Her by faith and morals. And in morals indeed, I think justice alone suffices, yet fortified by surrounding virtues. Thus, lest she be deceived by the error of ignorance, let prudence go before her. Let temperance and fortitude stand on either side, lest she perhaps stumble by inclining to the right or to the left."
See Francisco Suarez, Part III, Question XXVII, article 3, disputation 4, section 2, where he teaches that God infused into the Blessed Virgin at her conception and first sanctification all the habitual virtues and all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Whence St. Athanasius, in the sermon On the Most Holy Mother of God, applying to her that verse of the Psalmist: "The Most High has sanctified His tabernacle," asserts that the Holy Spirit descended upon her with all His essential virtues; and St. Bonaventure in the Psalter of the Virgin, in the place of the Te Deum laudamus: "You, he says, are the bride and mother of the eternal King; you are the temple and sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, the noble dining hall of the entire most blessed Trinity."
Hear Blessed Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 141: "Whoever does not marvel at the mind of this Virgin, whoever is not amazed at her soul, sufficiently fails to know how great God is: heaven is in awe, the Angels tremble, creation cannot bear it, nature does not suffice, and yet one young maiden so receives God, takes Him in, and delights Him with the hospitality of her heart, that she demands as rent for the house itself peace for the earth, glory for the heavens, salvation for the lost, life for the dead, kinship between the earthly and the heavenly, the very commerce of God with flesh, so that the word of the Prophet may be fulfilled: Behold, the heritage of the Lord is children; the reward is the fruit of the womb."
Wherefore, by the house of Wisdom, St. Ignatius, in his epistle to the Philippians, understands the womb of the Blessed Virgin: "Wisdom, he says, built herself a house, and God was made like a man with a body which He received from the Virgin, not from any union, that is, or seed of a man: For a Virgin, says Isaiah chapter VII, shall conceive in her womb and bear a son." And St. Jerome on Isaiah chapter VII, at the words: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive." St. Ildephonsus also explains it of the Mother of God, in his book On the Virginity of the Mother of God, and Sermon 3 On the Assumption, and St. Bernard, Sermon 9 among the minor ones: "What is it, he says, to hew out seven pillars in her, if not to prepare for Himself a worthy dwelling by faith and works?" Peter Damian, in his Sermon On the Nativity, similarly explains it of the Virgin, whom he calls a house supported by seven pillars — namely, endowed with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. St. Jerome, on Isaiah chapter III and in the book Against Helvidius, calls the womb of the Mother of God "the lodging of the sacred womb, of which Jesus was the inhabitant for nine months." Andrew of Crete, in the Oration on the Angelic Salutation, calls it "the consecrated palace of the King; the unique dwelling of Him who is contained nowhere." George of Nicomedia, in the Oration On the Oblation, calls it "a glorious house." Similarly, St. Bonaventure in the Mirror, chapter VIII, wishes that Psalm XCII be said of her: "Holiness befits Your house, O Lord." And the patriarch Jacob, Genesis chapter XXVIII, mystically declared of the same: "This is none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven." Finally, St. Epiphanius, Heresy 73: For "the Word was made flesh," Solomon says: "Wisdom built herself a house."
Anagogically, Wisdom builds Herself a house when she gives to her disciples and children — that is, to the wise who lived according to wisdom and virtue — a glorified body after death, according to the words of Christ in John II, verse 19: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," as if to say: Crucify Me, and kill My body, and I will raise it up gloriously from death to life on the third day. Whence St. John adds: "But He was speaking of the temple of His body." Again, when He gives them a home and a throne in heaven, according to the words of St. Paul, 2 Corinthians chapter V, verse 1: "We know that if our earthly house of this dwelling is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
Verse 2: She Has Slain Her Victims
2. SHE HAS SLAIN HER VICTIMS (the Arabic: her holocausts), MIXED HER WINE, AND SET HER TABLE. — The Septuagint: she slaughtered (St. Ambrose, Book I On the Faith, chapter VII: killed) her sacrificial victims, mixed wine in her bowl, and prepared her table; the Chaldean: arranged; the Syriac: prepared; Aquila: laid out; the Arabic: placed; Symmachus: served; Theodotion: packed; Vatablus: furnished her table; Cajetan: she cut up her slaughter; Tertullian, to be cited shortly: Sophia slaughtered her sons. For 'victims,' that is, sacrificial victims, he reads 'sons,' that is, sons. For 'mixed,' Cajetan translates 'strained,' that is, purified, clarified the wine, as if to say: she served pure and clear unmixed wine. But the Hebrew מסך masach means 'mixed,' not 'strained.' And the ancients were accustomed, both for health and for sobriety, to mix and dilute wine with water, lest it strike the head, inflame the liver, and sharpen the bile, and thus stir up fevers and inflammation. Add that diluted wine is more easily digested and conveyed to the heart than unmixed wine. So Hippocrates and Galen, and from them Cornelius Celsus, Book I On Medicine, chapter IV. Whence Aben-Ezra here says: Wine tempered with water benefits the drinker just as digestion benefits the eater.
Mystically, first, Anastasius of Nicaea, Question XL on Scripture: "Christ, he says, united His divinity to flesh, as though diluting unmixed wine with water." And St. Jerome on Ecclesiastes chapter II: "Wisdom, he says, calls passers-by to herself with a mixed bowl. We must understand the body of the Lord as a great bowl, in which the divinity was not unmixed, as in heavenly beings, but was tempered for our sake by the middle ground of humanity, and through the Apostles, wisdom was poured out in smaller cups and bowls to believers throughout the whole world."
Second, 'she mixed' signifies the mixing of water with wine in the Eucharist, about which shortly. Third, that Christ tempered the cup of His precepts from historical narrative and spiritual understanding, says St. Gregory, to be cited shortly. Fourth, that from the Jews as from unmixed wine, and from the Gentiles as from water, He blended one Church, says Caesarius of Arles, Homily 7 On Easter. Fifth, the water mixed with wine signifies that God mingles adversity with prosperity for His faithful.
You may ask, what table, what victims, what wine is understood here literally? A learned Interpreter thinks that all these things signify nothing, but are merely employed for the adornment of the parable through ethopoeia: and that the parable of Wisdom's banquet signifies nothing other than the speech and teaching of wisdom, because the wise of old were accustomed to bring forth and teach their wisdom at banquets. But since all these things are necessary parts of the parable — namely, of the banquet of Wisdom — they seem necessarily to represent something and to signify something parabolically, just as the parable itself does. Whence the other interpreters explain and apply each of these things.
Accordingly, note first: The table, both in Scripture and among profane authors, is a symbol of nourishment, delights, and all good things. Such above all was the table of the Sun among the Egyptians, most abundantly furnished every day with all manner of foods, and always prepared for whoever wished to approach it, about which Herodotus writes in Book III. Similar, indeed far richer and more splendid, is this table of Wisdom.
Note second: The ancients sacrificed during their banquets, and indeed closed the sacred banquet with a sacrifice. Regarding the Jews, this is evident from Exodus XII. Regarding Christians, it is evident in Christ's Last Supper; for after the sacrifice and meal of the lamb, He instituted the sacrifice and banquet of the Eucharist, and then delivered that burning discourse on wisdom, that is, on charity, John XIII and following. Regarding the Gentiles, it is clear from Macrobius, Virgil, Homer, and Athenaeus, who append banquets to sacrifices, and indeed call sacrifices sacred banquets, as it were.
Note third: There is an allusion here to the banquets of the ancients, which were seasoned no less by wisdom and by learned and wise conversations, disputations, and readings, than by food and wine, as Plutarch beautifully teaches in Book I of the Symposiacs, problem 1; Macrobius, Book VII of the Saturnalia, chapter 1; Gellius, Book VI, chapter XIII; Athenaeus, Book XV of the Deipnosophistae (that is, Banquets of the Wise), chapter XXI. Such were the meals and suppers of Christ in Luke chapter XI, verse 38, and chapter XXII, verse 45, and of the first Christians, as Tertullian attests in the Apology, chapter XXXIX, where the reading of Sacred Scripture was also employed, as St. Augustine teaches in the book On the Common Life of Priests, and Epistle 109. A similar banquet of Wisdom is set forth here.
I respond, therefore: By this table and banquet is understood the sacrifice, and after it the agape or sacred meal; which the offerers and sacrificers in the court of the Temple prepared from the victims sacrificed to God: for a large portion of the peace offering fell to the offerers, as I discussed in Leviticus III. Wisdom, therefore, inviting her guests to this table, tacitly invites them to offer sacrifice to God. For this is the first act of religion and the highest worship of God, which Wisdom prescribes: and so that they may perform it with pleasure, she likewise invites them to the sacred feast from the victims offered to God, which she seasoned through the priests and Levites, and through the pious offerers and guests, with learned and pious speeches, especially with sayings drawn from Scripture — all of which are signified here under the name of table and banquet. And this table most excellently represents allegorically the table of the Eucharist and its agapes, which the Fathers generally understand this passage to refer to, as I will shortly show.
Wherefore, in part, St. Gregory, cited on verse 1, and Bede following him, understand the table as Sacred Scripture: "Which, he says, refreshes the weary and those coming from the burdens of the world with the bread of the word." And Anastasius of Nicaea: "He prepared, he says, His table, namely the knowledge of the Trinity." For on the table, books — for example, the Bible — were set out to be read by anyone, according to the passage: "Let their table become a snare before them": the table, that is, Sacred Scripture, says Origen, Jerome, Hilary, Euthymius, Anselm, Cajetan, and others, as if to say: Because the Jews refuse to recognize Christ from Scripture, it comes about that from Scripture they seek death and blindness, from which they were trying to gain life and light. Whence there follows: "Let their eyes be darkened."
Therefore, Wisdom prepared the table, the victims, and the wine, when in Leviticus she established the rite of worshipping God through the various kinds of sacrifices, libations, rites, and ceremonies (for with the victims as food, wine was used as drink that was poured out — that is, offered to God): so that by these she might keep the Jews always piously and joyfully occupied in the worship of God, lest they turn aside to the idols and vices of the Gentiles; especially because during the sacrifices the priests and Levites sang the praises and psalms of God, both with voice and with musical instruments; they read Moses and the Prophets, and explained them to the people by teaching and preaching, just as is now done in the churches of Christians during the solemnities of the Mass. The table here, therefore, is the altar: for the altar is the table of God, at which He dines with men. Whence in Scripture the altar is called a table, as I said at the beginning of Leviticus.
Moreover, in order to attract the Jews to this, she uses the enticement of a banquet table, which she ordained to be held after the sacrifice in the court of the temple, which she likewise ordained to be seasoned with sacred speeches. To this, then, Wisdom invites all, so as to draw them to the worship of God and to every virtue. There is an old saying of the comic poet: "A ship and a woman are never sufficiently adorned"; add a third: "nor is the table of a prince." Wherefore this table of Wisdom, like a ship and a bride, is adorned with such a variety and elegance of dishes and of the things already mentioned, that it cannot be further adorned — as befits the table of God.
Again, our Pineda, Book III On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter XXVIII, just as by the house of Wisdom he understood the academy erected by Solomon on Mount Zion near the temple, so by the table he understands the table of the academy, at which teachers reclined with their students to teach them temperance as well as wisdom. Thus the table consecrated to Minerva is famous, and the Egyptian table that was set in the Egyptian school. Athenaeus also, in Book V, after the beginning, celebrates those convivial delights of the Athenian philosophers, for which Theophrastus bequeathed money — not so that in that gathering they might revel wantonly and shamelessly, but so that whatever discourses they held at the banquet they might pursue with temperance and learning. But he adds that the philosophers also took care to dine with the young men gathered to them according to a fixed rule, which Xenocrates in his Academy, and likewise Aristotle in the Lyceum, laid down for regulating their banquets. And nothing is more well-known than the philosophical supper. And Justin taught in the Apology to Antoninus Pius that those disciples of Mithras were initiated by the offering of bread, and Tertullian in On Prescription, chapter XL, where Pammelius is to be consulted, number 244; St. Jerome on Amos the prophet; and the same Jerome writes in his epistle to Paulinus that Apollonius drank from the fountain of Tantalus — that is, as Philostratus writes in Book III of the Life of Apollonius, chapter X, from that draught which was invented among the Indians not so much for ordinary friendship as for confirming mutual agreement among the wise. Moreover (as the same Philostratus narrates in chapter VII), in the place where Iarchas was conversing with Apollonius in the presence of the other sages, there was a statue inscribed with Tantalus's name, resembling one offering a bowl, which when full would abundantly provide drink to any thirsty person: from which there distilled the liquid of an incorruptible potion, which never exceeded the measure of the bowl. For one must believe that Tantalus did not lack the faculty of speech, and when he communicated it to men, he was rebuked by the poets for having given nectar to men to drink. So Pineda.
Allegorically, the Fathers and Interpreters generally understand these things as referring to the table proposed by Christ incarnate in the Church, both on the Cross and more properly in the Eucharist, and from this they prove that the Eucharist is both a sacrifice and a Sacrament: for the victims denote a sacrifice; the table, that is, the altar, denotes both sacrifice and Sacrament. St. Gregory and, following him, Bede, Lyranus, and others explain it of the table, that is, the altar of the Cross, as if to say: Wisdom slew her victims — that is, Christ immolated Himself on the Cross.
Hear St. Gregory, Book XVII of the Morals, chapter XVII: "The Lord slew His victims, by offering Himself for us. He mixed His wine, tempering the cup of His precepts from historical narrative and spiritual understanding. Whence it is said elsewhere: The cup in the hand of the Lord is full of unmixed wine with a mixture. And He set the table, that is, Sacred Scripture, which refreshes us with the bread of the word when we come weary to it and burdened by the world, and strengthens us against our adversaries by its nourishment. Whence it is also said by the Church: You have set a table before me against those who trouble me. He sent His handmaids — namely the souls of the Apostles, weak in their very beginning — to call to the citadel and the walls of the city: because when they proclaim eternal life, they raise us to the lofty walls of the heavenly city — walls which only the humble can ascend. Whence the same Wisdom adds there: If anyone is a little one, let him come to Me; as if to say openly: Whoever considers himself great in his own eyes narrows the approach to Me: because the more truly each person's mind is humbled in itself, the higher it reaches to Me."
You may object: Christ offered one single victim, namely Himself: but here Wisdom is said to have offered victims in the plural. I respond that Christ's victim encompassed all the species of victims: for it was a holocaust, a sacrifice for sin, and a peace offering; so Lyranus, and indeed St. Augustine, Book XVII of the City of God, XX. Bede adds that Christ endured not one but many deaths, and was like many victims, because He endured very many torments, any one of which would have sufficed to kill Him. Finally, in the Hebrew it is not 'victims' but 'victim' in the singular.
The author of the Greek Catena adds: "She mixed wine in her bowl, he says, for first Christ the Lord offered Himself to God the Father as a sacrifice and oblation for all. Then He made the Apostles, and others after them, imitators of His death. By the bowl, moreover, we may understand the Church: for she received for her use the blood that was shed for her, and guards it in holiness and distributes it. This blood He also calls wine in this passage by a certain mysterious analogy, just as the table set and prepared in it is the food of the Lord's body. These things may also be understood as the vessels designated for the mystical oblation, such as altars, chalices, and other such vessels."
Others generally understand it of the table of the Eucharist. Whence here also mention is made of both species, namely bread and wine, and of the victim of the flesh and blood of Christ: and in the celebration of the Eucharist, praises are sung to God, prophecies are recited, Epistles, Gospels, and sermons and exhortations are given. Finally, after it, the agape was formerly celebrated — that is, a sacred banquet as a symbol of charity — as I discussed in 1 Corinthians chapter XI, verses 21 and 33, and chapter XIV, verse 26. It alludes to the table of the showbread, which was a type of the Eucharist and of almsgiving, about which I spoke in Exodus XXV, 23. It also alludes to that passage in Psalm XXII: "You have prepared a table before me against those who trouble me." So St. Augustine, Book XVII of the City of God, XX, and St. Athanasius in the Disputation against Arius at the Council of Nicaea: "Wisdom, he says, set the table of the sacred altar, on which bread — that is, the most holy body and blood of Christ — is offered to be eaten and drunk."
And St. Cyprian, Book II, Epistle to Caecilius (which in another edition is number 63): "Through Solomon, he says, the Holy Spirit shows beforehand the type of the Lord's sacrifice, making mention of the immolated victim, and of bread and wine, but also of the altar and the Apostles: Wisdom, he says, built herself a house and set up seven pillars, slaughtered her victims, mixed wine in her bowl, and prepared her table, etc." And from the Septuagint's 'mixed' he proves that wine must be mixed with water in the chalice of the Eucharist: "Mixed wine, he says, is declared — that is, the prophetic voice proclaims that the cup of the Lord is to be mixed with water and wine, so that it may be clear that in the Lord's Passion (in the Last Supper of Christ going to His Passion) what was done was what had been foretold beforehand." In like manner, from the word 'mixed,' R. Samuel the Moroccan, Book On the Coming of the Messiah, chapter XX, which is found in volume V of the Library of the Holy Fathers, and St. Isidore, On the Calling of the Gentiles, chapter XXVI, infer that water must be mixed with wine in the Eucharist: "The Wisdom of God, he says, established for Herself a house, the holy Church, in which she slaughtered the victims of His body, in which she mixed the wine of His blood in the chalice of the divine Sacrament, and prepared a table — that is, the altar of the Lord — when sending her servants, the Apostles and teachers, to the foolish, that is, to all nations ignorant of the true God, saying: Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine that I have mixed for you."
Tropologically, the table of holy doctrines and examples is set forth in the Church, and every faithful person is invited to it, according to that passage in Ecclesiasticus XV: "He will feed him with the bread of life and understanding, and give him the water of saving wisdom to drink." Whence the author of the Greek Catena says: "By the victims, he denotes the divine mysteries and their secret meanings, as well as the sound and sincere interpretation of Sacred Scripture."
So also St. Jerome on Isaiah chapter LV, verse 1: Buy without money, etc., wine and milk: "Despising, he says, that silver and the money with which we cannot buy the waters of the Lord, let us go to Him who, holding the chalice of the Sacrament, spoke to His disciples: Take and drink, this is My blood, which will be poured out for you for the remission of sins. This wine Wisdom also mixed in her bowl, calling all the foolish of the world and those not possessing worldly wisdom to drink. And indeed, the Church thus understands this passage in the Office of the Venerable Sacrament."
Wherefore Christ alluded to this banquet of Wisdom in the parable of those invited to the wedding; for sending servants He said: "Tell those who are invited: Behold, I have prepared my feast, my bulls and fattened cattle are slain, and all things are ready; come to the wedding," Matthew XXII, 4. For first, the wedding — that is, the wedding banquet — which the king, that is, God, made for His son, is the table of Evangelical teaching and of the Sacraments, especially of the Eucharist instituted by Christ. So Origen, Euthymius, and the author of the Imperfect Work in the same place; second, the king's son, the bridegroom, is Christ incarnate, whose bride is the Church. So Origen, Hilary, St. Jerome, St. Gregory in the same place: this wedding was, as it were, begun as an engagement in the Incarnation, and will be consummated in heaven; third, those invited are the Jews, both before and after the Incarnation of Christ, that they might believe in it either as future or as accomplished. So the same authors; invited, I say, through the law of Moses, then called through servants, that is, the Prophets and Apostles; fourth, the bulls and fattened cattle signify that the banquet has been sumptuously furnished. So St. Jerome and Euthymius, and so it is the same: "My bulls and fattened cattle are slain" as what is said here of Wisdom: "She slew her victims." For 'altilia' are not 'alites,' that is, birds or fowl, but calves, oxen, sheep, etc., so called from 'alendo' (feeding). For this is what the Greek σιτιστά means — that is, fattened cattle, as calves are fattened for a splendid banquet.
Physically and ethically, just as by the building of the house of Wisdom the Hebrews in the Sanhedrin understand the creation of the world, so consequently St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Epistle 9 to Titus the Bishop, understands the table as the table of divine providence, by which God provides abundantly for mortals in all things, and sets before them a twofold food, both solid and liquid: "The cup, he says, since it is round and with an open and wide mouth, signifies the open and all-pervading providence of all things, which has neither beginning nor end." R. Solomon adds: "She set her table — that is, he says, she willed that the nature of all things consist of the dry and the moist." See Theodoret and others in the book On Providence and the Deity.
Relevant here is what, as Pineda notes, the Bridegroom Christ said to the Church in Canticle VII, 2: "Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks drink;" for it pertains both to the belly, which is a symbol of the mind where the food of doctrine is digested, and to the bowl and cup for the signification of wisdom, as St. Ambrose explains on Exodus XVI: "For, he says, in all doctrine there is something well-shaped, and a spiritual drink not lacking in fullness and in the knowledge of heavenly secrets." And perhaps that passage of Isaiah XXVIII, 9 plays upon this very ceremony: "Whom will He teach knowledge? And whom will He make to understand the message? Those weaned from milk, those drawn from the breasts" — that is, from the cups that had the form of breasts, in which milk was offered to those being initiated as disciples of wisdom in a vessel shaped like a woman's breast, among the Egyptians, as Apuleius reports. This is what Christ says in Matthew XXII, 4: "Behold, He says, I have prepared My feast, My bulls and fattened cattle are slain, and all things are ready; come to the wedding."
Where the author of the Imperfect Work, found in St. Chrysostom, Homily 41, understanding the table as Sacred Scripture, and the bulls as the examples of the Prophets, Priests, and Martyrs set before us in Sacred Scripture as models, says: "Whatever is now sought for salvation has already been completely fulfilled in the Scriptures. Whoever is ignorant will find there what to learn. Whoever is obstinate and a sinner will find there the scourges of the future judgment to fear. Whoever labors will find there the glories and promises of eternal life, which by reading will stir him further to good works. Whoever is faint-hearted and weak will find there moderate foods of justice, which, even if they do not make the soul fat, nevertheless do not permit it to die. Whoever is magnanimous and faithful will find there the spiritual foods of a more continent life, which will lead him close to the nature of Angels. Whoever has been struck by the devil and wounded in sins will find there medicinal foods, which may call him back to salvation through repentance. Why is it written there that Achan was stoned for the theft of a golden plate, unless so that thieves may have something to fear? Why is it that the children of Israel, who fornicated with the daughters of the Moabites, were struck and fled to Beelphegor, unless so that fornicators may have something to dread? Why were the lustful of the flesh punished in the desert, unless so that no one may lust after pleasures? Why did Nathan rebuke David, and David accept it, unless so that adulterers and murderers may not despair of the remedy of repentance? Rahab the harlot was sanctified, so that hope might be given to harlots. Nothing, therefore, is lacking in this banquet that is necessary for human salvation."
More fittingly and properly, St. Augustine, Book XVII of the City of God, XX, and Anastasius of Nicaea, Question XL on Scripture, understand the victims that Wisdom slew as the Martyrs, whom God, as it were, sacrificed to Himself. So also Tertullian, in the book Against the Gnostics, chapter VIII: "Sophia, he says, slaughtered her sons; wisely indeed she slaughtered them, since it was for life; rationally, since it was for glory. O good mother! I myself wish to be numbered among her sons, so that I may be slain by her. I wish to be slain, so that I may become a son."
Again, the victim is mortification, and because it is necessary to mortify oneself to God frequently and daily, hence she says 'victims' in the plural; which nevertheless must be seasoned with the wine of prayer and devotion; for just as bitter foods are seasoned with honey so that they may become sweet and pleasant to the taste, so too mortification must be seasoned with prayer, so that it may become sweet to God and to man.
Anagogically, Hugh understands the table as that of eternal refreshment and blessedness, about which Christ says in Luke XXII, verse 29: "And I dispose to you, as My Father disposed to Me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom."
Mystically, the Blessed Virgin prepared and set a table for us, when she gave birth to and gave us Christ, the true bread of souls. So St. Epiphanius, Sermon On the Praises of the Virgin: "She is, he says, the intellectual table of faith, which has furnished the bread of life to the world." And shortly after: "Rich, most dear, and full of virtues is the virginal table, abounding in the very best foods, with which the earth may rejoice. O virginal candlestick," etc. And Andrew of Crete, Homily 2 On the Dormition of the Virgin: "She shows, he says, her most holy table, inasmuch as she carried in her womb by the divine economy Him who is the entire life-giving bread, our Lord Jesus, who is eternal life, who contains created nature — bread made from the leaven of Adam's mixture in the womb; who leads those who approach Him in holiness back to a renewed life, and makes them perfect in God. In which way He also purifies and renders immortal those who are joined to Him by participation in that new and beautiful communion of His, and become His familiars."
She also mixes wine with water, when she calms quarrels and schisms, when she mingles diverse and even hostile peoples and nations, and consolidates them into one by the bond of peace and charity. Whence the Council of Constantinople, in the Epistle to Pope Hormisdas: "Behold, he says, through the intercession of the most holy Virgin, the members that were formerly divided have, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, been brought back to unity and perfect charity."
Relevant here is what Blessed Peter Damian writes in the Life of St. Boniface, a Camaldolese monk and later Archbishop and Martyr — namely that when he was a blood relative of Emperor Otto III, and so dear to him that the Emperor called him by no other name than 'my soul,' he entered a church dedicated to St. Boniface the Martyr, his namesake, and, inflamed with the desire to imitate him and for martyrdom, said: "I too am called Boniface; why then should I not also be a Martyr?" Wherefore, having entered the Order of St. Romuald, and thence having been made Archbishop and Apostle of Russia, he converted it together with its king, both by preaching and by a miracle — namely, passing through the middle of a fire unharmed — and therefore, slain by the king's brother, he fell a Martyr. Likewise Cornelius Musius, as Miraeus attests, continually besought St. Cornelius the Pope and Martyr, his namesake, that he might be made like him in blood as well as in name, and he obtained it; for in the year of the Lord 1572, captured in Holland, he gave his blood for Christ.
Finally, she herself, as it were, 'Sophia slaughtered her sons,' as Tertullian reads — namely Christ the Lord and the Martyrs, whom she, standing by the Cross, immolated to God, and daily immolates and offers. Whence St. Ephrem, On the Praises of the Virgin: "I call the Virgin, he says, both priestess and altar, who bearing the table, gave us the heavenly bread for the remission of sins." And Blessed Peter Damian, Sermon On the Nativity: "Eve gave a food (others read 'ate'), he says, by which she punished us with the hunger of eternal banishment from the feast; Mary gave a food which opened for us the entrance to the heavenly banquet."
Moreover, our Fernandez in Genesis III, number 7, rightly weighs the phrase 'she mixed wine.' What, I ask, he says, did you mix, O Mother of God, with the blood of Your Son, which we drink? Was it not the most limpid water of tears, which at the circumcision, and which, standing by the Cross of Jesus, His mother poured forth most copiously and sorrowfully from those virginal eyes, and was not that a visible mingling of the Son's blood and the Mother's tears? O if only that torrent of delight would flow over me, so that my soul might be bathed in it! Most rightly does St. Epiphanius call the Virgin Mother of God the table of faith. Namely, in His most worthy Virgin Mother, God set forth all the kinds of foods, dishes, seasonings, and drinks that divine love devised, by which the souls of both the pious and even the impious might be fed, nourished, and strengthened. Come (He says), drink the wine that I have mixed for you. Is that word 'to mix,' customary in love potions, similarly used by the Virgin Mother? If so, it clearly signifies in the divine Eucharist a certain admirable and, as it were, amatory power, which the souls of the pious feel when, duly receiving the body and blood of the Lord, they dissolve into tears, burn with the fires of love, find distaste for all human things, yearn for the divine, and utterly forgetful of themselves and laying aside their former life, they transform themselves into their God. So Fernandez.
Verse 3: She Sent Her Handmaids
3. SHE SENT HER HANDMAIDS, TO CALL FROM THE CITADEL AND FROM THE WALLS OF THE CITY. — For 'handmaids' the Hebrew is נערות naaroth, that is, young women, maidens, girls, as Theodotion, Aquila, and Symmachus translate. But the Septuagint and the Syriac translate 'her servants.' Thus the Septuagint reads: she sent her servants, calling with lofty proclamation to the bowl; the Syriac: she sent her servants to call from the heights. So also the Arabic; for both usually follow the Septuagint.
You may ask first, who are the handmaids of Wisdom sent by her to call and invite all to her banquet? Cajetan understands them as all the virtues that serve Wisdom, and that invite men to virtue and to heaven; others understand them as the Angels: for all are ministering spirits sent for service on behalf of those who are to inherit salvation, Hebrews I. R. Solomon understands them as Adam and Eve, and also Moses and Aaron.
But I say that by 'handmaids' are understood the preachers, teachers, Prophets, and Apostles. For in former times, before Christ, all of these called people to the Synagogue and the worship of God; after Christ, they call all to the Church and Christianity. They are called handmaids — that is, servants, as the Syriac and Septuagint translate — because Wisdom is here introduced as a matron and mistress, who for her service requires handmaids rather than male servants, that is, women rather than men. For this is what the beauty and elegance of the parable demands.
Tropologically, Hugh adds that the Prophets and Apostles are called handmaids because of their lowliness and humility, and because, he says, they were gentle and yielding in order to relieve the weakness of their neighbor. For thus handmaids lower themselves to the most humble and difficult tasks, so as to serve their mistress. Wherefore, just as the eyes of handmaids always look to their mistress, so the eyes of the Apostles and Doctors look to Christ, to observe His wishes, to ask grace from Him, and to give themselves entirely to Him, according to the passage: "As the eyes of a handmaid are on the hands of her mistress, so our eyes are on the Lord our God, until He have mercy on us," Psalm CXXII, 2. So St. Gregory, whose passage and words I cited above, and from him Bede and Hugh.
So also St. Athanasius in the Disputation against Arius at the Council of Nicaea: "After His (Christ's) Passion, he says, and Resurrection, Wisdom, Power, the Word, God, sent the Apostles to all the foolish — namely the brutish Gentiles, ignorant of God — having set the table, that is, the sacred altar; and on it He exhibited the heavenly and incorruptible bread, giving life to all who partook of it — namely His own holy and most sacred body; and the wine that gladdens the mind, which produces sobriety in the soul of each one who tastes it — as in a bowl He mixes, as it were, His own blood, summoning to Himself those predestined and chosen through His Apostles. And so all foolishness is indeed cast aside, and those who hear them will become citizens of the kingdom of heaven."
Finally, Honorius of Autun, a priest, wrote a brief Commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon, which is found in volume XII of the Library of the Holy Fathers, Cologne edition, where by 'handmaids' he understands the Apostles; for he says they are called handmaids "because of their foolishness, weakness, and poverty; because Christ chose as Apostles the unlettered, the weak, the poor, and the despised, whom He sent into the world to preach, so that they might call the faithful peoples to the citadel of eternal blessedness and to the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem." So Honorius. Salonius, who lived much earlier than Honorius, has the same words.
Tropologically and mystically, by 'handmaids' understand eloquence, knowledge, miracles, and the virtues of the holy faithful who are truly wise; for through these, as through handmaids, Wisdom and God attract and summon men to Themselves, as is evident from the Acts of the Apostles and the Lives of the Saints. Whence St. Thomas, Part I, Question I, article 5: Wisdom, he says, is Theology; the handmaids are the other sciences, which serve as handmaids to Theology, that is, to the science of divine things.
You may ask second, what is the citadel and the walls of the city, upon which, as the Hebrew has it, and to which, as our Vulgate has it, the handmaids of Wisdom call everyone to her banquet? Note that in Hebrew the literal rendering is: she called upon, or from, the pinnacles (or heights) of the high places of the city. For גפי gappe, which our Vulgate translates as 'citadel,' means the pinnacles, summits, and tops of houses and walls: whence Pagninus translates: she called from the heights of the high places of the city; R. Levi: she called from the wings of the highest parts of the city; the Chaldean: she called from the height of the mighty hills; the Syriac: from the heights; Vatablus: she sent her maidens to invite to the highest citadel of the city.
This established, I respond: what in verse 1 she called the house of Wisdom on account of love and union, here on account of fortification and breadth she calls the citadel and walls of the city — that is, a citadel and city fortified with the strongest walls, such as the citadel of Zion, which was also called the city of David, in which was Solomon's palace and the Temple. For the same reason, the Church Triumphant is called the city of Jerusalem, Apocalypse XXI, 2.
The citadel, therefore, is the Temple and Synagogue built on the citadel of Zion; and the Christian Church, which was begun in the same place by Christ and the Apostles preaching. It is called a citadel because it was in an elevated place, and most strongly fortified with surrounding walls like a citadel, so that it might be in the sight and view of all, and so that from there the sound of voices and trumpets resounding far and wide might call all to it. So our Pineda, Book III On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter XXVIII. Moreover, he says, what is added: "And to the walls of the city" undoubtedly designates the city of David itself, or the citadel of the Jebusite: for this is frequently called by the name of citadel in the Scriptures, 1 Chronicles XI, 4, 5, 7; 2 Kings V, 7, 9, and in Josephus throughout, especially Book VII of the Antiquities, chapter III. Moreover, what is added: "And to the walls of the city" indicates the wall and the very strong fortifications with which David surrounded his city — that is, the citadel of Zion — 2 Kings V; which most ancient and strongest wall of the citadel Josephus calls VI.
Second, the citadel, or as the Hebrew has it, the summits and pinnacles of the high places of the city — namely Zion — denote the highest and most secure places of the Church, such as the state of perfection, as seen in Religious Orders, where discipline flourishes. For Wisdom calls all not only to the Church and to Christianity, but also to the perfection and summit of Christianity, especially all priests, religious, doctors, and preachers, who are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. For these must stand in the citadel — that is, in the loftiness of wisdom and virtues — so as to call others to the same by their life and example more than by their words. Whence Cajetan translates: she called from the shoulders of the high places of the city; and he explains it thus, as if to say: The handmaids — that is, the virtues — sent by Wisdom to invite all, accomplish the same thing and actually invite and summon all, if they are carried not on the lips but on the shoulders — that is, if they are sustained and set before others not by words but by deeds and actions, through the eminent men of the city, that is, through those who excel in status, condition, and office; for it is their duty, as they excel in status and rank, so also to excel in virtue and merits and to surpass the rest. For thus their preaching will be lofty, as now through the Prophets, now through the Apostles, you reprove and lay bare their weakness.
Tropologically, the citadel signifies that the Church is fortified like a citadel, because on every side she is besieged and attacked by demons, the flesh, and the world: wherefore the faithful are called to the banquet of Wisdom in the citadel, so that strengthened and fortified by her victims and wine, and bound and devoted to her, they may fiercely defend this citadel and fight against all the impulses of concupiscence and the other enemies of the Church and the faithful. This is a military banquet, which is prepared for fighting, not for resting, according to the passage: "You have prepared a table before me against those who trouble me," Psalm XXII. For generals are accustomed to entertain soldiers about to fight with a banquet, or to offer them wine and drink, both to bind them to themselves and to strengthen them with food and wine for battle. Such is the banquet of the Eucharist, by which we are fed, as it were, as soldiers, so that against all the phalanxes of the world and the demons we may fight nobly as champions of Christ, according to the words of St. Chrysostom, Homily 61 to the People: "Let us therefore depart from that table like lions breathing fire, made terrible to the devil, pondering in our minds our Head and the charity He showed us."
Whence some note that this table was foreshadowed by the table of the showbread, which was surrounded by a "carved crown," for which the Septuagint translates στεφάνη παλαιστοῦ, which the Complutensian editors render as 'the crown of a boxer' — but incorrectly; for it should be translated, with the Roman editions, as 'a crown of a palm's breadth'; for the Hebrew tophach means this — a measure of four fingers, or a handbreadth, as our Vulgate and the Chaldean translate; therefore malautsah, from which comes the genitive, in this place does not mean a boxer, as the Complutensian editors thought, but a palm's breadth; for the Hebrew tophach means 'a palm's breadth,' not 'a boxer.'
Mystically, the Blessed Virgin sends handmaids — that is, souls devoted to her — so that they may summon others to her banquet, which she prepared both in the generation and upbringing of Christ, and throughout her entire life, setting before us the most splendid model of all virtues for imitation, and this in Zion, where she herself dwelt after the Ascension of Christ into heaven; for she invites all to the citadel of Zion — that is, to the exalted and contemplative life. Whence experience teaches that almost all Religious Orders were established by her inspiration and assistance, and in particular, whoever is called to them is summoned almost always by her help and, as it were, by her voice. Thus we see men devoted to the Blessed Virgin, and especially the members of her Sodalities, burning with zeal for souls, and therefore the Blessed Virgin working wonderful and great things through them in all the provinces of the world — namely, converting unbelievers and heretics, restoring cities to their ancient virtue and piety, drawing many of both sexes to the celibate, indeed angelic, life, whether at home or in various Religious Orders. See our Spinelli, On the Mother of God, II. they are, and are clothed with an incorruptible garment; who in the solitude of this age enjoy the concourse and celebration of the age to come; who reject pleasures, and yet possess a perpetual and inexpressible delight of soul; whose tears are a flood washing away sin and an atonement for the world; whose stretching out of hands extinguishes flames." The companion of St. Gregory, St. Basil, in his sermon On the Institution of Monks, says that he who has renounced the world ought above all to think on this and always to turn over in his mind: that he has already passed beyond the boundaries of human nature, and has handed himself over to an institution that is as far removed from the body as possible, and that he has therefore undertaken to imitate the way of life of the Angels — since it is proper to the angelic nature to be free from earthly bonds, and not to be drawn aside at all to contemplate any other beauty, but to keep one's eyes constantly fixed on the face of God.
Another St. Gregory, surnamed 'the Great' and illustrious for his deeds, who experienced this, wonderfully laments his fall — or rather his being snatched away — from the monastery to the pontificate, as is evident from Book VII of the Register, Epistle 126 to Leander, and Book I, Epistle 5 to Theoctiste, the Emperor's sister: "I have lost, he says, the high joys of my repose, and while collapsing inwardly I seem to have ascended outwardly: whence I mourn that I have been driven far from the face of my Creator. For I was striving daily to be beyond the flesh, driving away all the phantoms of the body from the eyes of the mind, to see the heavenly joys in a bodiless manner; and panting for the vision of God not with my voice alone but with the very marrow of my heart, I used to say: My heart has said to You: I have sought Your face; and Your face, O Lord, I will seek. But desiring nothing in this world, fearing nothing, I seemed to myself to stand on a certain summit of things, so that I almost believed fulfilled in me what I had learned from the promise of the Lord through the Prophet: I will lift you above the heights of the earth."
Such in this age was St. Charles Borromeo, who standing on the lofty summit of all virtues drew after him the Church of Milan, which he so imbued and adorned with holy ways that it seemed to be a terrestrial paradise. Therefore the state of perfection and Religious life is the citadel of the Church, which is Zion, the city of David, that is, of Christ.
First, because like a citadel it is fortified with laws, prayers, penances, examples, exhortations, etc. Whence St. Bernard, Sermon 4 On the Dedication of the Church, calls Religious life the citadel of God, and indeed most strongly fortified: "You have surely taken the best fortress for Christ, he says, if you have handed over Clairvaux to His enemies." And St. Jerome to Hedibia, Epistle 150: "Do you wish, he says, to be perfect and to stand on the first pinnacle of dignity? Do what the Apostles did: sell what you have, and give to the poor, and follow the Savior, and follow the naked and solitary Cross with naked virtue." And St. Cyprian, On the Lord's Prayer: "He who has already renounced the world is greater than honors and a kingdom; and therefore, he who dedicates himself to God and Christ desires not earthly but heavenly kingdoms." For like an eagle he has set his nest on high, Job chapter XXXIX, verse 27.
Second, because like a citadel it is lofty. Whence in Apocalypse XXI, 2, the heavenly Jerusalem is so called, because, namely, it has been called from heaven by God, and leads us to heaven. Wherefore St. Bernard, writing to the Brethren of Mont-Dieu, treating of Religious: "I do not know, he says, by what worthier name to call them — heavenly men, or earthly Angels — dwelling on earth, but having their conversation in heaven." And Climacus, in the fourth step, says the monastery is a kind of earthly heaven; and therefore with the same affection and reverence with which we believe the Angels minister to God, we ought also to minister to our brethren.
Third, because it is itself Zion, that is, a watchtower: both because it contemplates heavenly things, and because it looks upon and looks down upon all earthly things, and because from on high it observes and wards off all the ambushes of enemies, and because it is the watchtower upon which the eyes of all are turned. Wherefore St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 1 against Julian, paints Religious with these vivid colors: "Do you see, he says, these poor men lacking food and shelter, these humble and earthly men who are yet above the earth; who dwell among men, and are superior to human affairs; who are pressed by chains, and yet are free; who are held, and yet cannot be detained; who have nothing in the world, and yet have all things; who are superior to the world; these, I say, who are immortal through mortification, who through renunciation are joined to God; who are strangers to human love, but burn with divine love; whose fountain is light, and whose rays already are radiance and beams of splendor; whose angelic chanting of psalms, and night-long vigil, and rapture of mind to God, snatches them to heaven before death; whose purification continues, and yet they are being purified, since they set no limit for themselves on their ascent and deification; whose lot it is to be crushed and cast down, and yet at the same time to sit upon thrones; who also are the Septuagint. Such in this age was St. Charles Borromeo — " The Blessed Virgin, therefore, calls to the bowl with lofty proclamation, because she herself was the bowl containing and offering to us the flesh and blood of Christ, according to that passage in Canticle VII: "Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks drink." On which St. Ambrose, Book On the Institution of Virgins, chapter XIV, says: "Truly, he says, that womb of Mary was a rounded bowl, in which was Wisdom, who mixed her wine in her bowl, providing from the fullness of her divinity an unfailing grace of devout knowledge. In which womb of the Virgin, a heap of wheat and the grace of the lily flower germinated together, because both the grain of wheat was germinating and the lily." And St. Ildephonsus, Sermon 1 On the Assumption, borrowing the same from St. Ambrose: "Truly, he says, the womb of Mary was a rounded bowl, because into it Wisdom poured herself, who in that bowl mixed her wine." So Ildephonsus, whom Vincent of Beauvais cites in the Mirror of History, Book VII, chapter CXXI.
4 and 5. IF ANYONE IS A LITTLE ONE, LET HIM COME TO ME. AND TO THE FOOLISH SHE HAS SPOKEN: COME, EAT MY BREAD, AND DRINK THE WINE THAT I HAVE MIXED FOR YOU. — For 'little one' the Hebrew is פתי peti, that is, a little one who is easily persuaded of anything; the Septuagint, the Chaldean, and the Syriac: foolish; St. Cyprian, Book II of the Testimonies against the Jews, number 2: unknowing; others: simple — about which see more at chapter I, verse 4. For 'the foolish' the Hebrew is חסר לב chasar leb, that is, he who lacks heart — namely, one poor in heart, one who has no heart; the Septuagint: one lacking in sense; the Chaldean: those in need of understanding; others: those lacking in mind. 'Little one,' therefore, is the same as 'foolish' — namely, a person led only by sense and flesh; for the latter part customarily explains the former. St. Gregory, however, symbolically understands the 'little one' as the humble person; for the humble person is capable of wisdom: "For whoever, he says, does not yet despise himself does not grasp the humble wisdom of God, according to the words of Christ: I confess to You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to little ones," Matthew XI.
These are the words of Wisdom inviting all to herself and her feasts. Whence the word 'saying' is to be understood, which the Septuagint accordingly supplies in this manner: saying: If anyone is a little one, let him come to Me. By bread and wine she means the agape, or sacred banquet from victims offered to God, which was seasoned with sacred readings and speeches, as I said on verse 2. Under this, allegorically understand the banquet of the Eucharist, which is to be eaten with the mouth and stomach both corporeal and spiritual — namely, to be received and ruminated upon with attentive meditation, prayer, desire, love, humility, and union of soul with Christ. Therefore Wisdom — that is, Christ — here invites all to the Holy Communion, just as with these words the Church summons all to it on the feast of the Venerable Sacrament; and St. Gaudentius, in Sermon 19 to the Neophytes: "Hasten, he says, noble chicks, to the sacred morsel, in which is life, and let not a crumb fall from that heavenly food." For, as St. Ambrose says, Book IV On the Sacraments, chapter II: "The good eagles are around the altar; for where the body is, there also are the eagles. The form of the body is the altar, and the body of Christ is on the altar; you are the eagles."
And Zechariah, chapter IX, verse 17: "For what is His good, he says, and what is His beauty, but the grain of the elect and the wine that makes virgins flourish?" Where I spoke at length about the fruit of Holy Communion, as well as in Exodus XVI, 33, where I treated extensively of manna, which was the bread of heaven and the bread of Angels, having in itself all delight and every sweetness of flavor: fed on which alone, the Hebrews in the desert remained healthy and vigorous for their continuous pilgrimage, and robust for waging wars against Amalek, Og, and Bashan. And therefore manna was an express type of the Eucharist, which is the heavenly bread conferring health, delight, and immortality on both soul and body, according to the words of Christ: "This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that if anyone eats of it, he may not die, etc. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever, and the bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world," John VI, 51.
From this passage, John Gerson, Part II, in his treatise On Drawing Little Ones to Christ, teaches that little ones must be instructed and formed in virtue; there he magnifies the fruit and merit of this labor, and presents himself as an example. For although he was Chancellor of Paris and occupied with the highest affairs of the University, he nevertheless constantly devoted himself to instructing children and hearing their confessions, following the example of Christ, who said: "Let the little children come to Me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven," Matthew XIX, 14. And therefore he also urged children of mature judgment to come immediately to Holy Communion.
Verse 6: Leave Behind Childishness
6. LEAVE BEHIND CHILDISHNESS, AND LIVE, AND WALK IN THE WAYS OF PRUDENCE. — As if to say: Leave behind childish and infantile trifles, errors, desires, and lusts; "and live" — that is, and thus you will live a human and rational life, following the guidance of reason and moral uprightness, whereas before you lived in the manner of children an animal life, such as beasts devoid of reason lead, who are driven only by imagination and sense; "and walk" — that is, by thus leaving behind childishness you will walk "in the ways of prudence," or "and" — that is, therefore — "walk in the ways of prudence." For if you walk in the ways of prudence, you will certainly leave behind childishness and imprudence, and will take up a life worthy of a human being, which will lead you to a blessed and eternal life.
Whence the Chaldean translates: send away from yourselves, O foolish ones, your senselessness (the Syriac: foolishness), or the deficiency of your understanding, and live; the Septuagint Complutensian: leave behind folly, and you will live; and seek prudence, that you may live; the Roman edition however: leave behind foolishness, that you may reign forever, and seek prudence.
For 'walk in the ways of prudence,' the Hebrew is: direct yourselves in the way of understanding, or make straight the way of prudence — that is, proceed along the straight way of prudence, and direct your works according to its dictation. Whence Aquila and Symmachus: go rightly in the way of understanding; the Septuagint: correct your knowledge and understanding; St. Cyprian, Book II of Testimonies, chapter II, reads, "correct knowledge and understanding;" the Syriac, "consider right ways."
7. HE WHO INSTRUCTS A MOCKER BRINGS INJURY UPON HIMSELF: AND HE WHO REPROVES A WICKED MAN BEGETS A STAIN FOR HIMSELF. — The Syriac: he who corrects a shameful person will receive ignominy for himself. He gives the reason why he has summoned the little ones and the simple, who easily yield and believe the one admonishing, and not the cunning, namely mockers and the wicked, who are obstinate in their wickedness (for he opposes these to the little ones and the foolish): because, namely, a mocker, being proud and puffed up, ridicules admonitions and admonishers. So Bede, Cajetan, Jansenius, and others. Therefore he who admonishes him "brings injury upon himself" (the Hebrew and Septuagint: receives ignominy), first, because he exposes himself and his words to the laughter and mockery of the mocker.
Second, because he brings upon himself a mark of imprudence, for correcting a mocker without fruit, indeed with harm. For he acts against that saying of the wise man, Sirach chapter 32, verse 6: "Where there is no hearing, do not pour forth speech." And against that saying of Christ, Matthew 7:6: "Do not give what is holy to dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet." Where note first, that by "holy" and "pearls" is signified the doctrine of the Gospel and of truth; by "dogs" and "swine," the perverse and obstinate, and this on account of their uncleanness and rebellious barking. He forbids, therefore, teaching and correcting the incorrigible, because, he says, they like swine despise and trample speeches contrary to their appetites and uncleanness, and then they are sharpened against the author of the speech, and tear him apart either with words or with blows. Note second, this is to be understood per se: for per accidens Christ, St. Stephen, Paul, and others preached to the most perverse Jews, and sharply reproved their unbelief, both to bear public testimony to the truth and glory of God, and as a witness against the inexcusable wickedness of the wicked, and for the benefit of other bystanders, and to avoid scandal. For then holy things are not given to swine, but rather to God and His elect.
Third, because it is the cause or occasion that the mocker sins more gravely, while he strives to defend his sin, and hardens himself in it, and detracts from the admonisher, murmurs, and mocks him. Hence Plutarch: "To admonish the obstinate in wrongdoing," he says, "is the same as holding a mirror before a blind man," who, thinking that he and his blindness are being mocked, is indignant at the one presenting it, and rages and fumes against him.
Fourth, he who provokes a mocker so that he returns retaliation, namely so that he throws back the same or similar faults against the one correcting him, and with insolent tongue hurls insults back at him, so as to cover or defend his own faults. Hence St. Gregory, Book VIII of the Moralia, chapter 24:
"A bulrush in flower," he says, "is a hypocrite in praise. In its flower it cuts the hand of the one plucking it, because the hypocrite set in praise, lest anyone dare to correct him, immediately cuts the life of the corrector with his harshness. For he does not desire to be holy, but to be called holy; and when perhaps he is corrected, he is, as it were, cut down in the glory of his reputation. Being caught in wickedness he grows angry, he forbids the one reproving him to speak to him, because he grieves as if touched in a hidden wound. As he has become known to the unlearned, so he wishes to be esteemed by all; and he is readier to die than to be corrected.
From what has been said, it is clear that Aben-Ezra wrongly translates the word as "mocker" in the nominative case. The mocker, he says, who reproves another, himself brings ignominy upon himself. For when the one who reproves another mocks and displays laughter and cackling, then he brings disgrace upon himself. For correction must be done with a grave and mature countenance, not a mocking one. Wrongly, I say: for all others translate "mocker" in the accusative case, just as "wicked man," which follows.
For the same reasons, "he who reproves a wicked man begets a stain for himself," especially because the wicked man, obstinate in his wickedness, moreover tries to drag others and the one reproving him to his own wickedness, and to stain him with his guilt or suspicion. In the Hebrew it is: and he who rebukes a wicked man, his stain — namely, draws it upon himself, or increases and multiplies it; the Chaldean: and the correction of the wicked is a stain to him, both to the wicked and to the one correcting; the Septuagint: he who reproves a wicked man stains himself. Some codices add: for the reproofs of the wicked are bruises for himself, as if to say: If you correct a wicked man, as many words, so many bruises and pains, livid and vivid, you inflict on him, who therefore does not cease to drip the bruise of indignation, slander, and revenge, so that he strikes back at the admonisher either with words or with blows, and inflicts equal pains and bruises on him in return, both in body and in soul.
8. DO NOT REPROVE A MOCKER (Septuagint: the wicked; Syriac: the criminal), LEST HE HATE YOU. REPROVE A WISE MAN, AND HE WILL LOVE YOU. — This is an antithesis between the correction of a mocker and of a wise man: that the former creates hatred, the latter love, and therefore the latter is to be embraced, the former omitted — since it is harmful both to the one correcting and to the one corrected, whom it excites to hatred and other sins, and as it were provokes. By "wise man" understand one zealous for wisdom, that is, for virtue, or even one perfected in wisdom and virtue: for the perfection of this life is mixed with imperfection; for no one is so perfect that he does not have some faults to correct. Hence St. Gregory in the passage already cited: By reproof, he says, he is made worse, because he considers the word of purity as a weapon of a savage blow. Hence, exasperated, he immediately rises to insults, and inquires into the life of the corrector to find what evils he may exaggerate. He desires to show that his reprover is far more incomparably guilty, so that he may show himself innocent not by his own deeds, but by the crimes of others; so that often one repents of having said something in reproof, and from the soul of the corrector, as from the hand of one plucking, there runs, so to speak, a certain blood of grief. Hence well it is said by Solomon: Do not reprove a mocker, lest he hate you. For the just man need not fear that the mocker, when corrected, will hurl insults, but that, drawn to hatred, he will become worse."
But the wise and holy love those who correct them and correction itself, because through it they are directed toward amendment of morals and perfection of life. The wise man therefore loves correction, because he loves truth and virtue: for virtue is truth. For what else are the dictates of virtues, if not lights of truth? But the wicked love vice, and therefore falsehood. For what is vice, if not a practical lie, by which evil is desired and praised as good? In them, therefore, that saying of the Comedian is true: "Flattery begets friends, truth begets hatred;" and therefore the medicine of correction turns to poison for them. Therefore, just as the sun melts wax but hardens clay, so correction and truth are received gently by the wise man, harshly by the fool and the wicked; and in the former it begets love, in the latter hatred. Hear Pacian, in his Exhortation to Repentance: "As coals are wont to glow most fiercely when you stir them; and a fire to burn most fiercely when you turn it; and rage to be most fierce when you provoke it: so they have broken the goads of necessary reproof with a contrary kick, not without their own harm and wound in resisting. For it is said by the Lord: Reprove a fool, and he will hate you. Again, just as wine poured into honey becomes honey-like, but mixed with gall becomes gall-like; and just as water poured into wine becomes wine-like, but mixed with vinegar becomes sour, indeed the former passes into wine, the latter into vinegar; moreover just as stony and thorny ground changes all moisture and rain into stones, thorns and briers, but soft and rich soil transforms rain into herbs and flowers; finally just as a good stomach converts food into good nourishment and blood, the stomach however, being bilious, turns food into bile, not by fault of the food, which is good and pleasant, but by fault of the stomach, which is bitter and bilious: so likewise the wise man turns correction into love, the wicked man turns the same into bile and hatred, not by fault of the correction, which is good; but by fault of the wicked man, who has a heart infected with pride and anger.
Morally, note here that correction is to be loved and sought by the wise man, just as salt is loved, though salty, for seasoning meats; and pills, though bitter, for purging bad humors; and lye, though sharp and biting, for scrubbing away the filth of the head: so that in like manner through correction the soul may be restored to its brightness, indeed may rise to illustrious holiness and perfection. Therefore parents of children, teachers of students, Superiors of subjects, and Prelates who love their Religious, frequently admonish and correct them, so that they may lay aside all blemishes, and accustomed to obedience and humility, may strive toward perfection with great steps of continual mortification. To the just who are not yet perfect, then, as zealous students of wisdom, it is said: "Hear, children, the instruction of a father, and attend, that you may know prudence;" but to the just who are perfect, as teachers, that saying of Solomon is also enjoined: "Reprove a wise man, and he will love you; give to a wise man" — that is, to a student of wisdom — "an occasion, and wisdom will be added to him. Teach a just man, and he will hasten to receive." For to all of these it pertains to reprove imperfections, to give occasion for advancement, and to teach true virtue, not so much by word as by deed, and by the practice of purest holiness.
Verse 9: Give a Wise Man an Occasion
9. GIVE A WISE MAN AN OCCASION, AND WISDOM WILL BE ADDED TO HIM (in the Hebrew: and the wise man will be wiser still). TEACH A JUST MAN, AND HE WILL HASTEN TO RECEIVE. — Namely, the doctrine that you teach. "An occasion," namely of wisdom and learning. Hence the Chaldean: teach a wise man, and he will be still wiser; show a just man, and he will add to his knowledge. In the Hebrew it is simply: give to a wise man — namely, doctrine and counsel, says Cajetan.
This proverb signifies that an occasion of wisdom and virtue is to be offered to the wise man, because the wise man, eager for it, immediately seizes the occasion given to him, so that he may advance in the wisdom he desires and seeks: for in all things he traces out his own progress. Hence this maxim can be adorned with various sayings and explained in various ways.
First, let us understand by "occasion," with Cajetan, doctrine and counsel, as if to say: Give the wise man sound doctrine and counsel; for he will immediately embrace and carry it out, and thus he will become wiser, and, so to speak, more virtuous. Hence, explaining, he adds: "Teach a just man, and he will hasten to receive." For the latter part of the verse explains the former.
Second, by "occasion" you may understand correction, of which there has been discussion; for correction is for the wise man an occasion of advancing and correcting his defects. Hence St. Augustine, Epistle 48 to Vincentius, from this passage teaches that the Donatists and other heretics, wallowing in heresy, are not only to be instructed by the word of God, but also to be compelled by force and punishments to the Orthodox faith, because punishments are for them an occasion of becoming wise, and this is proved by the experience of many who have been brought back to sound faith by punishments. Hence he concludes: "For all of these the terror of these laws, in the promulgation of which kings serve the Lord in fear, has so profited them that now some say: We already wanted this, but thanks be to God, who has given us the occasion of now doing it, and has cut short the delays of procrastination."
Third, it signifies that one need only suggest to the wise man an occasion for advancing: for from it he will further propel himself forward. Hence the saying: "The wise man is to be admonished by a nod, the fool by a stick." So St. Anthony, Epistle 2 to the Brothers of Arsenoe: "There were," he says, "also many other things I wished to teach; but if I give an occasion to the wise man, he will be wiser," as if to say: I was eager to write many things, but from the few I have written you will gather the rest. For the wise man, from what has been said, searches out and collects. Or, if I give an occasion, that is, space and time for thinking and learning.
Hence, fourth, the Syriac understands by "occasion" the opportune time, as if to say: Do not at an inopportune time, but at an opportune one, teach, correct, exhort, and stimulate the wise man toward better things. For if a wise man is admonished at an inopportune time — for example, when he is occupied with other things, when he is weighed down by sadness, when his mind is clouded — he will be afflicted or exasperated by the admonition. But at an opportune time, when for example he is serene, teachable, cheerful, he will receive the admonition excellently. So then the Syriac translates: give time to the wise man, that he may again be imbued with wisdom. For wisdom and virtue are learned gradually, and those who today are weak and feeble for some heroic work, tomorrow or in due course, having become stronger, will be strong and capable for it. Therefore to the weak, just as to children, intervals of time must be given, by which they may overcome and conquer themselves and their weakness. So Christ for a time tolerated the vices and weaknesses of the Apostles, citing among other things that "old wineskins cannot easily bear new wine," Matthew 9:17.
Fifth, the Wise Man signifies that parents, teachers, and superiors ought from time to time to give their children, students, and subjects occasions for advancing in wisdom and virtue, by suggesting and presenting occasions for exercising it. Thus teachers propose difficult questions to their students, so that they may investigate their solutions, and thus sharpen their intellect. So Blessed Aloysius Gonzaga, when conversing with Fathers and Doctors, in order to introduce a discussion about spiritual matters, would propose to them questions about acts of virtues and vices, about the meaning of certain passages of Sacred Scripture, about the duties of a Religious, etc., as if desiring to be taught by them. So that old man in the Lives of the Fathers used to say that Superiors ought to opportunely suggest to novices and subjects occasions for exercising now patience, now humility, now obedience, now resignation, now charity, etc., and therefore from time to time to sting, stimulate, and mortify them with sharper words; and that he who neglects to do this is cruel to his own, and withdraws the bread owed to his children: for just as the body is nourished by bread, so virtue is nourished and the spirit sharpened by occasions and stimuli. For this reason God, as a skilled teacher, presents to us now tribulations, that we may learn patience; now contempt, that we may learn humility; now the afflicted and the poor, that we may learn beneficence, etc., according to that saying of the Apostle: "Created for good works (that is, for good works) which God has prepared that we should walk in them," Ephesians 2:10.
Finally, it signifies that the wise man does not lose occasions for learning, but draws profit from all things, and that the just man, if he has obtained a handle for further justifying himself, does not omit it, but like a fowler hunts and catches these heavenly birds. For opportunity flies past like a bird, unless it is seized as soon as it presents itself, according to the saying:
In front Occasion has hair, but behind she is bald; so that once she has passed by, she cannot be grasped. On the contrary, the foolish and wicked let infinite occasions for doing good pass by, which they will earnestly but belatedly seek, and they embrace with open hands occasions for doing evil; hence they will repent forever, according to that saying of Wisdom 5:6: "We have wandered from the way of truth, etc., we have wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and have walked through difficult ways. And indeed we were unable to show any sign of virtue, but we have been consumed in our wickedness."
Verse 10: The Beginning of Wisdom Is the Fear of the Lord
10. THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM IS THE FEAR OF THE LORD: AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE HOLY ONES (Syriac: of the just), IS PRUDENCE. — What the Wise Man established as the beginning of wisdom in chapter 1, verse 7, Wisdom herself establishes here, namely the fear of God: for in this the foundation, indeed the sum, of wisdom consists. For "beginning" in this place the Hebrew has techillat, which signifies nothing but "beginning," whereas in chapter 1, verse 7, it is reschit, which also signifies primacy, first-fruits, and pre-eminence, as I said there. He proves that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, from the fact that the knowledge of the holy ones is prudence: for prudence is the same as wisdom; since therefore this is the knowledge of the holy ones, that is, of those things which are holy, honorable, and pious, and which make their students holy, it follows that it is the same as the fear of God, because this is holy in itself, and makes its students holy. Therefore, says Jansenius, it is signified here that the discussion is about that wisdom which begins to exist and grow in us from the fear of God conceived: and thus the little ones and the foolish can arrive at wisdom, if they conceive the fear of God — which because the wicked and mockers have entirely cast off, for that reason they cannot perceive wisdom. To indicate more expressly the difference between this wisdom and that by which certain people are called wise according to the world, there is added: "And the knowledge of the holy ones is prudence," that is, the knowledge and cognition of holy things, such as Scripture teaches, and the knowledge which holy people have — that alone is true prudence or understanding. For the word "of the holy ones" can be explained as referring either to things or to persons; and in the Hebrew "beginning" can be repeated in the second member, so that it is translated: and the knowledge of the holy ones is the beginning of prudence.
Hence Rabbi Solomon: the root of prudence is the knowledge of holy things, or sacred things, namely of God and of Angels, says Aben-Ezra; and of heaven and of the blessed minds, says Rabbi Levi. Or conversely, with Vatablus you may translate: the beginning of knowledge is the understanding of the holy ones, which indeed is nothing other than the fear of the Lord. For all prudence, and understanding, and wisdom of the holy ones, that is, of holy things, and which holy people have, consists in fear, that is, in the worship, reverence, obedience, and love of God. Hence another translates: the highest thing in prudence is to know divine things; the Septuagint translates: the counsels of the holy ones are understanding. And they add by way of explanation: for to know the law is characteristic of a good mind, as if to say: True understanding and wisdom is to consult those things which are holy, and the Saints themselves who work holy things; because they, since they are of a good mind, know not only speculatively but also practically that the fear and worship of God consists in the observance of the divine law: for they fulfill it in practice, and therefore they have the fear of God, and consequently true wisdom and prudence, which consists in the fear of God and holiness. Therefore the same in reality, or practically the same, are the fear of God, the knowledge of the holy ones, wisdom, prudence, understanding, holiness, knowledge, and practical cognition — that is, the keeping of the divine law. For the fear of God stimulates and compels a person to keep God's law; indeed, to fully fear God is to keep God's law, which is to be holy. Here then is a sorites which goes round in a circle: where there is wisdom, there is the fear of God; where there is the fear of God, there is the knowledge of the holy ones and holiness; where there is holiness, there is prudence; where there is prudence, there is cognition, that is, the observance of the divine law. Therefore from first to last: where there is wisdom, there is the observance of the divine law, and in it all wisdom consists, according to Ecclesiastes 12:13: "Let us all together hear the conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole of man." Prudence therefore is the prince, queen, eye, and light of the virtues, which, as Iamblichus says in his letter to Amphalus, "referring the life of each individual to the divine exemplar, depicts it with the best possible likeness, and therefore makes its possessors like God."
Moreover St. Chrysostom in the Greek Catena says: "Almost nothing else," he says, "is the counsel of the Saints, than a prudent and sagacious judgment about things that come into practice. But also those same prudent and holy men study and desire nothing equally as to know the divine will" — practically, that is, to carry it out once known. "For the Holy Spirit is the life of the soul." Thus far St. Chrysostom.
A fitting fable for this maxim is found in Cyril, Book I of the Moral Apologues, chapter 3, whose title is: True prudence is that which is adorned with the innocence of simplicity. The animals, he says, inquired among themselves which of them was the most prudent, and the birds proposed the crow, the land animals the fox; the monkey came forward and said that both the crow and the fox were cunning and deceitful, but not prudent; and he proved this by this reasoning: "Cunning for doing harm is joined with ignorance of truly acting; but true prudence is the most noble art of living rightly with simplicity, knowing how to harm no one. Those, therefore, that are less provident, armed indeed with craft, with cunning and stings for doing harm, I will say are more malicious, but not more prudent. For only that one is prudent who is governed by right reason in all things. Now the right reason of rational nature is that which aims at its end as the best, and avoids everything that impedes the attainment of this end; and does and seeks everything that helps toward that end; and in all these things perseveres with firm constancy until it arrives at that end. Now the end of rational nature is to rejoice in every true good without any evil, and to be glad with the perpetuity of security and the security of truth. For attaining this end, all vices are obstacles, and all virtues are helpful. With this settled, each of the companions withdrew to his own place."
Verse 11: Through Me Your Days Will Be Multiplied
11. FOR THROUGH ME YOUR DAYS WILL BE MULTIPLIED, AND YEARS OF LIFE WILL BE ADDED TO YOU. — The Septuagint: for in this way you will live a long time, and years of life will be added to you; the word "for" gives the reason not only for the preceding verse, but also for verse 5 and the following ones — that is, it gives the reason for the entire speech and invitation of Wisdom, as if to say: I have invited, and continually invite all to me — that is, to wisdom and to the fear of God; now to those who come I promise great rewards. For I am she who offers to my devotees a healthy and happy life for many years in this age, and for all eternity in the next. See what was said at chapter 3, verse 8.
12. IF YOU ARE WISE, YOU WILL BE SO FOR YOURSELF: BUT IF YOU ARE A MOCKER (Syriac: wicked), YOU ALONE WILL BEAR THE EVIL. — This is another goad with which Wisdom prods everyone to follow her, as if to say: If, O son, you have obeyed my wise counsels and have wisely ordered your life, you will have done so for your own — not my or another's — advantage and reward; but if you have despised and mocked them, you alone will pay the penalty, as if to say: For you, not for me, is the sowing and the reaping, lest you think that I am looking to my own profits, and that I am hunting for disciples for my own honor — I need neither disciples nor honor; I am sufficiently learned, sufficiently honored: I seek your advantage, your honor; I counsel you, and I urge you to prudently counsel yourself: for if you obey me, so as to be wise for yourself, you will merit glory, life, and happiness; but if you mock me, you will mock yourself, and you will bring upon yourself death and hell: "For each one will bear his own burden," Galatians 6:5. The Septuagint adds: for yourself and your neighbors; the Syriac: for yourself and your friends. "If," they say, "you are wise, you will be so for yourself and your neighbors; but if you have turned out evil, you alone will certainly draw out (Greek: antleseis, as if to say: you will exhaust with great labor, pain, and anguish) evils;" Symmachus: but if you have been pestilent, you will bear evils. Following the Septuagint, St. Ambrose, on Psalm 35, verse 1, establishes this distinction between the just and the unjust: that the latter is useless to the world, the former useful and profitable: "The unjust man," he says, "is both useless to others and harmful to himself; but the life of the just is fruitful to others, sweet to himself. For Solomon says: Son, if you are wise, you will be wise for yourself and your neighbors; but if you have turned out evil, you alone will draw out evils. We observe therefore that justice is born more for others than for itself: it looks to the common good, not its own, and counts another's good as its own profit. Blessed is illustrious justice, whose good benefits everyone. From one person it usually proceeds, and reaches all."
For this reason the same St. Ambrose on Psalm 118, octonary 10, commenting on the words: "Those who fear You will see me, and will rejoice," teaches that the just man benefits others by his very appearance, and breathes forth his justice. "He prophesies," he says, "that the whole world is to be filled with divine fear, and therefore he says that those who fear God rejoice at the knowledge of the Saints. For he who sees a just man and rejoices, himself also wishes to be just. For it is beautiful that one should delight in others in what he wishes to preserve in himself, if he can. For it is implanted in good people that the chaste man should love the pure, the prudent man the wise, the merciful the generous, with pious affection, and should love his own virtues in others. For most people, the sight of a just man is an admonition to correction; for the more perfect, it is a joy. How beautiful, then, that you should be seen and be of benefit! A just man is therefore a good." He proves this by the example of a bird called the icterus, because it heals those suffering from icterus, that is, the jaundice; concerning which Pliny, Book 30, chapter 11, says: "The bird is called icterus from its color; if it is looked at, they say the disease is cured." Alluding to these words, St. Ambrose says: "For if there is such power in natural things that an animal when seen benefits those with jaundice, so that even the body of the dead creature is said to be beneficial if shown to those who have fallen into this ailment, can we doubt that the sight of a just man heals? Do not even the very rays of his eyes seem to infuse a certain virtue into those who faithfully desire to see him?" St. Ambrose adds that the opposite happens to the wicked: "But just as," he says, "the just man gladdens the heart of the innocent when he is seen, so also the wicked are tormented by the knowledge of the just, because they are convicted even by the silent conduct of the saints. Chastity torments incontinence, generosity torments avarice, faith torments impiety."
After this verse some Greek codices subjoin the following: "A son who has obtained discipline will be wise, but he will use an imprudent servant." The Roman codices and St. Cyprian in the Council of Carthage, and the Syriac, add the following: "He who trusts in false things feeds the winds; and the same person will pursue birds in flight: for he has abandoned the paths of his vineyard, and has strayed from the paths of his little field; he walks through pathless and arid places, and through land destined for thirst; and he gathers fruitless things with his hands;" or, as the Syriac has more clearly, he himself has gathered nothing. But all of these are not in the Hebrew, nor in the Latin Vulgate, nor in the Greek of the Complutensian edition, and most of them are found in the following chapter, whence they seem to have been transferred here from there.
Second Part of the Chapter
You will ask: who is this foolish woman? I answer that she is the same one described in chapter 7, verse 10; for the one whom the Wise Man depicted there, Wisdom herself depicts here, as her rival, competitor, and antagonist. In the literal sense, therefore, this woman is a harlot: for nothing is so contrary to wisdom, which is chaste, spiritual, angelic, and divine, as a harlot and lust, which is shameless, carnal, diabolical, and hellish. So St. Ambrose, Book I on Cain, chapter 4; and St. Jerome, on Hosea chapter 13; and Clement, Book III of the Pedagogue, chapter 12; Bede, Jansenius, the author of the Greek Catena, and others here.
But parabolically, through the harlot is represented foolishness itself — that is, cupidity or concupiscence, and false doctrine, especially heresy. Hence St. Ambrose considers that through these two women are described virtue and pleasure opposing each other, each of whom invites everyone to herself. But St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Polychronius, Evagrius, and others understand heresy: for this is false wisdom, which is diametrically opposed to true wisdom. Hear Philo (whose words St. Ambrose recites, Book I on Cain and Abel, chapter 4) in his book On the Hire of a Harlot Not Being Accepted in the Sanctuary, vividly depicting the quarrel and enticement of Anna and Peninnah, or rather of Sarah and Golla — that is, of virtue and pleasure. "Each of us," he says, "has two wives in his household, and they are hostile to each other, and fill the house of the soul with jealous contentions. One of them we love, as a smooth and familiar friend, who is called Pleasure; the other we pursue with hatred, as harsh and grim, and not at all well-disposed toward us: she is called Virtue." Then, before he sets forth their quarrels, he describes the appearance of each: "The former," he says, "approaches us in the attire of a harlot, with a languid gait from softness, ensnaring the souls of young men with a lascivious gaze, displaying boldness and shamelessness in her eyes, rising above her natural height with a haughty neck, laughing and cackling, with curled and crimped hair, with painted face and adorned eyebrows, freshly washed, rouged, clad in a costly and flowery mantle, proud with golden and jeweled bracelets and necklaces and the rest of feminine adornment, breathing the most fragrant perfumes, more fond of the marketplace and crossroads than of her own home, wanton, lavish with her own beauty but greedy for borrowed beauty. And with her, her household handmaids: cunning, injustice, wickedness — attended by whom, like a princess, she thus assaults the mind." Here he appends a lengthy speech in which Pleasure attacks Virtue, her adversary, and lures her lovers to herself. Then he proceeds to depict Virtue in a similar fashion: "The other," he says, "standing in a hidden place, fearing lest that one might draw the mind of the common husband entirely to herself alone — corrupted by gifts, either offered or displayed, or that she might deceive him, softened by her costly appearance — when she observed that he was being enticed and soothed by borrowed adornment and magical illusions, suddenly she came forth, dignified in character and in the matron's gait, serene of countenance, suffused with a certain natural color of modesty, simple in manners, upright in life, always of the same mind, not smooth in words but truly expressing a sound mind, adorned in her natural appearance, moderate in gesture, modest in dress, decorated not with gold but with far more precious ornaments. Her companions followed her: piety, holiness, truth." Here he then weaves in a distinguished speech in which Virtue remonstrates with Pleasure, her rival, and by which she calls miserable men entangled in the bonds of pleasure to the blessed freedom of Virtue herself.
Following Solomon's example, Plato and the Philosophers narrate similar things about Hercules. "For he," as St. Basil narrates from the same sources in Homily 24 on Reading Pagan Books, "when one day he was uncertain whether to follow the path of pleasure or of virtue, two women stood before him, whose character he immediately recognized from their very appearance. One," he says, "conspicuous in beauty, with a soft face, lascivious eyes, and smooth speech, promising through ease everything favorable and easy and tending toward life's comforts, was trying to draw Hercules to herself. But the other, with a stern countenance, an unkempt and sorrowful face, displaying great confidence and constancy, showed nothing pleasant, nothing agreeable, but immense labors to be undergone on land and sea."
Verse 13: A Foolish and Clamorous Woman
13. A FOOLISH AND CLAMOROUS WOMAN (Syriac: a deceiver by flattery), FULL OF ENTICEMENTS, AND KNOWING NOTHING AT ALL. — Against Wisdom, as a queen inviting all to the royal banquet of virtue, he sets a foolish woman who lures everyone to her delights: so that the honor and beauty of the former, and the dishonor and ugliness of the latter, may appear more clearly from the mutual comparison, and so that the invited may recognize and guard against the latter's frauds and deadly enticements, and pursue and seek the former's honored banquet of truth and uprightness.
Therefore the harlot, as well as concupiscence and heresy, is first "foolish" — Hebrew: eshet kesiluth, that is, "woman of folly," as if to say: She is folly itself personified and clothed in feminine garb — both because the harlot, intoxicated by lust and avarice, has lost her mind and reason, and, as if demented and mad, thinks of nothing but filth and debauchery; and because the harlot is a symbol of folly, namely cupidity and heresy, which is the very essence of folly. Hence St. Isidore, Book 8 of the Origins, chapter 11: "Venus," he says, "is called Cupid on account of love; for he is a demon of fornication. He is therefore painted with wings, because nothing is found more fickle, nothing more changeable, than lovers. He is painted as a boy, because love is foolish and irrational. He is imagined to hold an arrow and a torch: an arrow, because love wounds the heart; a torch, because it inflames." Hence the Poets report that Venus married Vulcan, to signify that love is kindled by fire. Again they paint her as cross-eyed, because love is perverse.
The second characteristic of the harlot, and of concupiscence and heresy, is that she is "clamorous" — in Hebrew homia, that is, tumultuous or making an uproar, as Origen, Vatablus, and Pagninus translate: The foolish woman, he says, makes an uproar; the Septuagint: bold. How clamorous and tumultuous harlots are, is evident from experience, which teaches that most quarrels, brawls, and murders are excited by or on account of harlots. The same is evident from the same experience regarding cupidity and heresy, which have stirred up so many tumults, wars, and conflagrations in this our age in France, England, Scotland, Belgium, and all of Europe: so that through them we see everywhere temples and monasteries burned, cities overturned, provinces laid waste, and innumerable thousands of people slaughtered. St. Ambrose adds, Book I on Cain, chapter 4: "There is the tumult of revelers, the clamor of fighters, the slaughter of quarrelers, the harmony of singers, the noise of dancers, the cackling of those laughing, the applause of the wanton — all in confusion." And in chapter 5: "That intoxication of wine is the fuel of lust, by which the internal organs are heated through the flesh, the mind catches fire, the soul is consumed. Lust is a savage goad of crimes, which never allows the affections to remain at rest. At night it burns, by day it pants, it rouses from sleep, draws away from business, takes away counsel, makes lovers restless, inclines those who have fallen, lays snares for the chaste, inflames by enjoyment, and is kindled by use. There is no limit to sinning, and the insatiable thirst for crimes cannot be extinguished except by the death of the lover." He shows similar tumults in the cupidity of avarice, or the lust for money: "Envious of all," he says, "cheap to herself, in the greatest riches destitute, she diminishes by her desire what she abounds in by her wealth. There is no limit to seizing where there is no measure of desiring. So she inflames, so she feeds the mind with her fire, that this alone is the difference: that the former is an adulteress of beauty, the latter of lands. She shakes the elements, plows the sea, digs up the earth, pleased neither by fair weather nor by foul, condemns the annual produce, and finds fault with the fruits of the earth."
The third characteristic is that she is "full of enticements" — in Hebrew petaiuth: which first, Cajetan and Pagninus translate as "of simplicity;" Marinus, "of stupidity," as if to say: a simple woman; Vatablus, "unskilled;" Marinus, "stupid;" for peti means small, simple, rude, unskilled. Second, the Septuagint translates "lacking bread;" hence the author of the Greek Catena reads: and she is reduced to want of a morsel of bread, so that petaiuth is derived from path, that is, a morsel, a mouthful of bread, as if to say: a bread-beggar — as harlots often are, because they squander everything, and therefore, as St. Chrysostom says in Homily 63 to the People, they are like a barrel with holes. Third, our translator renders it best as "full of enticements." For the root patha means to persuade, to entice, to deceive, to seduce. Hence the Tigurine Bible translates: she has persuasions, as if to say: she is Pitho, or Suada, or Suadela. For Pitho was to the pagans the goddess of persuasion, persuading whatever she wished; concerning whom Horace, Book 1, Epistle 6:
Suasion and charm adorn the well-moneyed man.
And Cicero, On Famous Orators: "Peitho," he says, "as the Greeks call her, whose producer is the orator — Ennius called her Suada; and he wishes Cethegus to have been her marrow, so that the goddess whom Eupolis wrote sat upon the lips of Pericles, of her he would have said that our orator was the marrow." Such a persuader is the harlot, as well as pleasure, concerning which St. Ambrose, Book 1 on Cain, chapter 4: "She," he says, "bold with a harlot's movement, with a gait softened by delights, with wavering eyes, casting nets with playful eyelids, by which she catches the precious souls of young men (for the eye of a harlot is the snare of the sinner); whomever she has seen lacking sense, passing by in the corner, at the entrance of her house, she assails with gracious words, making the hearts of young men flutter — restless at home, wandering in the streets, lavish with kisses, cheap in modesty, rich in clothing, her cheeks painted. Indeed, because she cannot have the true beauty of nature, she counterfeits the appearance, not the reality, of affected beauty with adulterous cosmetics. Girt by the company of vices, and surrounded by a certain chorus of wickedness, a leader of crimes, with such engines of words she assails the wall of the human mind." And further: "She displays treasures, promises kingdoms, pledges continuing loves, promises unexplored embraces — learning without a tutor, speeches without an advisor, life without worry, soft sleep, insatiable desire."
Anne Boleyn was brilliantly skilled in these arts of enticement. Though she was a courtesan, and was called by the French "the English Mare," she assured Henry VIII, King of England, who sought her companionship, that she was a virgin, and that she would dedicate the flower of her virginity to no one but her husband. She judged it never alien to her modesty to converse, play, and even dance with the king — she only pretended to abhor intercourse. By these arts she so ensnared the king that he was now resolved, having repudiated Catherine, to marry so saintly a virgin. He married her, perished, and brought England to ruin to the present day. So says Sanders, Book 1 on the Schism of England.
The fourth characteristic is "knowing nothing at all" except her own loves and lusts, and the arts of enticing and milking money: for to these she directs and spends her whole mind, so that she seems to be able to know or think of nothing else. Hence the Septuagint, rendering the sense, translates: who knows not shame, because she is entirely shameless, so as to lure young men to her immodesty. For just as modesty is the bridesman of virginity and chastity, so shamelessness is the bridesmaid of immodesty. See St. Ambrose, Book 1 on Virgins. The Chaldean translates: she knows not good; the Syriac: she knows not what is useful.
Verse 14: She Sits at the Door of Her House
14. SHE SITS AT THE DOOR OF HER HOUSE, ON A SEAT IN A HIGH PLACE OF THE CITY. — The Syriac: she sits upon a high throne — both because she is proud, says Aben-Ezra, and so that she may display her beauty and invite everyone to her amours. For this is the custom of harlots: indeed some arrange to be carried through the city in chairs open on all sides, like certain Venuses, so that they may advertise and market their beauty, and therefore they drag behind them flocks of young men, as St. Pelagia used to do, who was first a sinner, then converted by Blessed Nonnus, became a penitent and a saint, whose Life is found in Surius, on the 8th of October. Hence that saying of Jeremiah 3:3: "You have taken on the brow of a harlot, you have refused to blush." Great indeed is the enticement in the eyes of women. For this reason St. Lucy — not the famous heroine of Syracuse, but another, who is therefore invoked as patroness by those who suffer from eye ailments, and is called by some Lucilla — sensing that she was being sought by a tyrant on account of the beauty of her eyes, tore out her own eyes and sent them to the tyrant, with these words: "Know that nothing more remains in me by which I should fear injury from you;" truly fulfilling that Gospel saying: "If your eye scandalizes you, pluck it out and cast it from you." So says Sabellius, Book 4 of Examples, chapter 8. Isidore of Pelusium recounts a similar example, Book 2, Epistle 53; see him. John Moschus has a similar story in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 60.
15. TO CALL THOSE PASSING THROUGH THE WAY, AND THOSE GOING ON THEIR JOURNEY. — In the Hebrew: who direct their paths; the Septuagint: who go straight on their ways; the Syriac and Chaldean: whose ways are right.
Verse 16: Whoever Is a Little One
16. WHOEVER IS A LITTLE ONE, LET HIM TURN ASIDE TO ME. AND TO THE SENSELESS ONE (Hebrew: the one lacking heart) SHE SPOKE. — The same words in the Hebrew are those which verse 4 attributes to Wisdom. Hence the Septuagint translates: whoever among you is most foolish, let him turn aside to me, and to those lacking wisdom I command, saying. Clement of Alexandria, Book 3 of the Pedagogue, chapter 12: whoever among you is most foolish, let him turn aside to me; and to him who lacks prudence she commanded, saying. For harlots are accustomed to lie in wait for travelers, to attack them when unwary, and to lure them to themselves. Hence they sit along the paths where people must pass, and from this they are called "path-women." Moreover, the Septuagint translates "most foolish;" the Chaldean: captured in mind, because it is the height of folly to follow a stupid and clamorous harlot. Hence an anonymous Rabbi in the great Hebrew Gloss paraphrases it thus: and to a seduced dove not having a heart she spoke these words. For doves love water, and when they drink from it, they do not tilt back their necks, as Pliny attests, Book 10, chapter 30, as other birds do — because they have narrower throats, and because they fear the traps and snares that fowlers usually set for them near water. But stupid doves drink with heads bowed and wash themselves with full mouths, and therefore, not looking around for the traps of the fowlers, they are easily caught. Such are the foolish youths who allow themselves to be seduced by the blandishments of harlots, and plunge and submerge themselves entirely in their stolen waters — that is, in the pleasures of harlotry.
St. Ambrose, Book 1 on Cain, chapter 4, explains this paraphrastically as follows: "She herself standing in the midst: Drink, she says, and be intoxicated, that each one may fall and not rise again. He is first with me who is the most lost of all. He is mine who is not his own: he is more pleasing to me who is more worthless to himself. The golden cup of Babylon is in my hand, inebriating all the earth; from my wine all nations have drunk. Whoever, therefore, is more foolish, let him turn aside to me, and to those lacking wisdom I command, saying: Use hidden breads pleasantly, and drink water of theft that is sweeter. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."
Verse 17: Stolen Waters Are Sweeter
17. STOLEN WATERS ARE SWEETER, AND HIDDEN BREAD (Hebrew: bread of hidden things or of concealments) IS MORE PLEASANT. — The Septuagint: touch hidden breads willingly, and drink the sweet water of theft; St. Ambrose, Book 1 on Cain, chapter 4: "Use hidden breads pleasantly, and drink water of theft that is sweeter;" St. Jerome, on Hosea 13: "And the stolen sweetness of water;" Pagninus: stolen waters are sweeter, and bread eaten in secret tastes better. For "stolen" the Hebrew has genubim, that is, taken away by theft (whence gannab is a thief, and geneba is theft), and therefore clandestine, secret, and hidden, and consequently containing, or thought to contain, a sweetness that is secret and not commonly known. For stolen waters are the same as hidden bread: for thieves steal in secret and hide their theft.
Note: This foolish harlot imitates Wisdom by inviting everyone, just as Wisdom did, to her banquet, but far unequally and differently. For Wisdom invites to wine, says Jansenius; the harlot to waters: because whatever the world or the flesh displays is watery — that is, insipid, juiceless, and cold. Wisdom openly sets forth her well-furnished table; the harlot insinuates that her table is hidden. Wisdom invites to her bread, saying: "Come, eat my bread;" the harlot to stolen waters, saying: "Stolen waters are sweeter, and hidden bread" — that is, bread eaten in secret, because being stolen, "is more pleasant." It seems, moreover, that this saying is taken by this woman from common proverbs, adapting a popular proverb to her own purpose.
And that it is so, as the proverb signifies, experience itself teaches.
Therefore "stolen waters" and "hidden bread" are the clandestine and stolen pleasure of fornication and adultery, which as her food and table this harlot proposes and opposes to the banquet of Wisdom in verse 5. For just as servants burn to secretly draw something from a cask of water or wine that the master hides away and keeps for himself alone, and if the spigot is missing, they bore through the cask and suck out the wine through a tube by sipping — in which they feel a remarkable delight, even though the wine in itself is ordinary and less flavorful — so likewise adulterers and fornicators burn with stolen desire for another's wife or a harlot, even though she may be less beautiful and less adorned. Hence our Salazar, by hidden or stolen bread, understands bran bread, which is made from bran, which is given to pigs and dogs, and also to lowly people, such as slaves and prostitutes. For it is fitting that those who imitate pigs and dogs in foulness and shameless lust should be fed, like the prodigal son (Luke 15:16), on the husks of pigs and dogs. For bran (furfures) seems to be named from stealing (furando), because the sieve, or the bolting-cloth, having let through the finer flour, retains and steals them away, just as the poor who knead bread for the rich not rarely keep and steal the same for themselves. Hence Terence in the Eunuch states that harlots "devour dark bread (such as bran bread) soaked in yesterday's broth."
Moreover, in all things indeed stolen pleasures are greater, but especially in matters of love. Hence everywhere the poets who treat of love celebrate furtive love — that is, love received secretly and as if by theft; and fornicators and pimps especially seek stolen girls — that is, girls abducted or carried off from elsewhere, according to that saying of Plautus in the Curculio: "Who buy their stolen girls and freeborn virgins." And in the Persa:
He brought at the same time A woman desirable in form, Stolen, abducted from the remotest Arabia.
Indeed adultery itself is called theft, because it is the theft of another's wife, which certainly is greater than the theft of an ox or a horse. Hence Tibullus:
Venus wishes her thefts to be concealed.
— that is, her adulteries. And Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 2:
This theft at least my wife shall not know, he said.
And a child conceived by theft is called one conceived from adultery. So Clement of Alexandria, Book 3 of the Pedagogue, chapter 12: "By 'sweet water of theft,'" he says, "he means stolen love. Hence aided by this, the Boeotian Pindar says: Something sweet, he says, is the stolen care of love."
Moreover, as to why stolen things are sweeter than openly available ones, the reason varies: because the desire and longing for stolen things is greater, and this for many reasons.
The first is the one given by St. Jerome on Hosea chapter 13: "For whatever is not permitted is more desired. For we always strive toward the forbidden, and desire what is denied." Prohibition, therefore, sharpens the desire for the forbidden thing, just as surrounding cold intensifies heat by antiperistasis.
The same author adds a second reason, because "what is sweet by rarity is turned to bitterness by constant use." For we think little of things that are readily available, as things we have in our hands; but we pursue secret, hidden, and concealed things, as if they were new, rare, and curious. So St. Augustine, whose words I shall presently recite. For love and lust are curious above all other things: hence it always seeks new mistresses, new loves, new modes and arts of lust. For this reason Plutarch, in his book On Curiosity, says that adultery is nothing other than the curiosity of another's pleasure. For lust, being insatiable, cannot be satisfied by one alone; hence it continually seeks others and still others, to satiate itself, yet never finds satiety, because, as I have said, it is insatiable — just as a person with dropsy craves more and more water, because his thirst is insatiable.
Therefore in their imagination she paints and fabricates a chimera of illicit pleasure as if it were the sweetest of all, so that they imagine and persuade themselves that nothing is sweeter than a harlot, when in reality often nothing is more deformed, more sordid, more putrid than she. Hence for "more pleasant" the Hebrew has iinam, that is, "it grows beautiful" — that is, it appears beautiful, it seems sweet.
Third, because stolen girls — for example, those captured in war, or carried off by force, or abducted by fraud, or seduced — are often chaste and virgins, who are more desired by fornicators. For they disdain harlots as cheap and sordid, and pursue virgins as honorable and noble. Conversely, virgins, because they are inexperienced, think that some secret and wonderful pleasure lies hidden in lust, and hence they are more sharply tempted by it. So St. Jerome, in his letter On Avoiding Suspicious Companionship: "Among the enticements of pleasures," he says, "lust tames even iron minds; it suffers a greater hunger in virgins, for it considers everything it does not know to be sweeter. The lustful mind suspects what is not permitted to be sweeter."
Fourth, because it is more difficult to obtain stolen things: but the difficulty of a desired thing increases the desire. So Quintilian, Declamation 14: "For some love to grow into a frenzy," he says, "difficulties are needed: affection for things granted is brief, and immediately close to satiety."
Fifth, because in stolen things the very art of deceiving and stealing is delightful — which is often very ingenious and contains great cleverness: and therefore both the art itself and what one obtains through it are greatly delightful. Hence the Poets make Mercury a god, because he himself is the inventor and contriver of craft and deceptions, and of guile and fraud, and therefore they give him the surname kleptes, that is, thief — to which Horace alludes, Book 1, Ode 10:
All that pleased, he says, to hide In merry theft.
So St. Augustine, Book 3 of the Confessions, chapters 4 and following, narrates that he stole pears with his companions, not for the pears, but for the art and deception that is in theft: "And I," he says, "wished to steal and did steal, compelled by no want or poverty, but by a disgust for justice and a glut of iniquity, etc.; not for our banquet, but so that what we did might be done by us precisely because it was not permitted." And at the end of chapter 6: "Was it pleasing to act against the law at least by deception, because I could not by power — so that as a captive I might imitate a maimed liberty by doing with impunity what was not permitted, in a dark resemblance of omnipotence?" And chapter 9: "There was laughter, as if the heart were tickled that we were deceiving those who did not think such things were done by us and vehemently did not want them, etc. — when it is said: Let us go, let us do it, and one is ashamed not to be shameless." A similar example of a monk stealing bread, which he did not need, is recorded by Cassian, Conference 2, chapter 11. Confessors who hear the confessions of petty thieves hear many similar things.
Finally, the devil, in order to drag people into thefts and stolen lusts, persuades them that those pleasures are sweeter than the pleasures of marriage and other lawful ones.
Mystically, "stolen waters" are depraved arts and sciences that are taught secretly, such as the magical art, sorcery, divination, judicial astrology, and especially heresy. So St. Augustine, Tractate 97 on John: "Beware," he says, "by fearing and praying, lest you rush into that riddle of Solomon, where a foolish and bold woman, having become poor in bread, calls to those passing by, saying: Touch hidden breads willingly, and the sweetness of stolen water. For this woman is the vanity of the wicked, since they are the most foolish who think they know something, as is said of this woman: She becomes poor in bread. Since she is poor in bread, she promises breads — that is, since she is ignorant of the truth, she promises knowledge of the truth; yet she promises hidden breads, which she says are willingly touched, and the sweetness of stolen water — so that, namely, those things may be more willingly and sweetly heard and done which are forbidden to be said and believed openly in the Church." He adds the reason, which I assigned in the second place a little earlier: "For by their very secrecy these nefarious teachers season their poisons for the curious, so that they think they are learning something great because they deserve to possess a secret; and they drink foolishness more sweetly, which they think is knowledge, whose boldness they steal in a certain prohibited manner. Hence also the doctrine of magical arts commends nefarious rites to their followers, deceived or to be deceived by sacrilegious curiosity. Hence those illicit divinations, by inspecting the entrails of slaughtered cattle, or the voices and flights of birds, or the multiform signs of demons, whisper in the ears of people destined to perish (or: of the ignorant), through conversations with the lost. On account of these illicit and punishable secrets, that woman is called not only foolish but also bold. But these things are alien not only in reality but also from the name of our religion. What? — that this foolish and bold woman, under the Christian name, has founded so many criminal heresies, has fabricated so many abominable fables."
Hear St. Gregory, Book 23 of the Moralia, chapter 26: "There are," he says, "certain heresies that fear to openly preach what they think, and they season their words before weak minds all the more, the more they reverently, as it were, conceal them: for hidden heretical words taste better to miserable hearts insofar as they are not commonly shared with the rest." The same author, in the following chapter 27, calls this stolen water and hidden bread the delight of the present life. So great indeed is the usual enticement in pleasure, and in other such earthly goods, when they are first not granted but denied, or at least obtained with difficulty, that the devil very often uses this stratagem — which is wonderfully expressed in Pharaoh's denying straw and nonetheless compelling the Hebrews to the works of mud. In Exodus 5 it says: "You shall no longer give straw to the people for making bricks." Upon which Procopius excellently comments: "In this way the devil tempts those who are zealous to serve God; he makes the wickedness difficult, lest its satiety breed disgust in his worshiper; for we always strive toward the forbidden and desire what is denied; and the more we are restrained, the more we burn with desire." So Procopius.
So to Religious men the devil often sends a weariness of continual obedience, and sends a desire for a solitary life, by which one might live, as it were, blessedly for himself and God. This happened to the Abbot of Chartres, who, loathing the life and burden of a Prelate, was thinking of going to Jerusalem, to live there a private and blessed life. To him St. Bernard wrote, Epistle 82: "But you will say: Where then does such a desire come from, if it is not from God? With your leave I will say what I think. Stolen waters are sweeter, and this kind of sweetness — more bitter than wormwood, so to speak — does not hesitate to be poured into your thirsting heart by an angel of Satan, under the pretext of an angel of light, as everyone who knows his cunning understands. For he by whose envy death entered the world even now envies the good things he sees you doing; and since he is a liar from the beginning, he lies even now in promising better things, which he does not see; mixing false honey with true gall, while he promises doubtful things for certain ones, he also introduces true things for false ones — not to confer what you vainly hope for, but to take away what you fruitfully possess. But I trust that you cannot be drawn away or seduced by any tricks of the evil one, to enter upon a certain evil in hope of an uncertain good, and to abandon an equally certain good." So Bernard, scattered throughout that epistle.
Finally, stolen waters are desires which, because they are shameful and base, seek hiding places and are fulfilled secretly; while virtue, being honorable, seeks the light and fears no one's eyes. Over virtue presides God, who is the fountain of all good; over vice presides the devil, who promises and provides only the shadows of good. Hence God justly complains in Jeremiah 2:13, saying: "They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that cannot hold water."
Verse 18: Giants Are There
18. AND HE DID NOT KNOW THAT GIANTS ARE THERE, AND THAT HER GUESTS ARE IN THE DEPTHS OF HELL. — "He did not know" — not the harlot, but the young man enticed by her. For in the Hebrew there is a masculine verb, lo iada, that is, "he did not know" — namely, the little one and the senseless youth invited and seduced by the harlot, as if to say: The rude and senseless youth does not know that giants rule in the house of the harlot, and that her guests descend with her to hell. Hence, improvident and without fear of the giants and of hell, like an ox led to the slaughter he follows the harlot, and there falls into the hands of the giants, by whom he is led to hell: for these things are to be supplied from chapter 7, verse 22. For "giants" the Hebrew has rephaim; the Septuagint: gegeneis, that is, earth-born, or begotten from the earth and sons of the earth. For thus the giants were called, as being avid for earthly things and incapable of heavenly things. The Scholiast translates theomachoi, that is, fighters against God; the Tigurine and Rabbi Levi: the dead; others translate: the shades of the underworld. By giants are signified demons and the damned: for these are similar to the giants both in crime and in damnation, and they wage eternal wars and hatreds against God. He alludes to the giants who were born from lust, Genesis 6:2; Job 26:5: "Behold, the giants groan under the waters, and those who dwell with them." For just as the giants were submerged by the Flood in the time of Noah, and thence cast down to hell: so also the demons and the damned.
For the abyss of hell lies beneath the abyss of water. Hence Sacred Scripture everywhere places the giants as if damned on account of their outstanding pride and impiety in hell, and calls hell the house of giants — Proverbs 2:18, and chapter 21:16; Wisdom 14:6; Isaiah 26:14. Indeed the pagans, as Macrobius testifies, Book 1 of the Saturnalia, chapter 20, said that the Poets' giants signified an impious race despising and denying the gods; and therefore they attached dragons' feet to them, to represent that they thought nothing right, the whole course and progress of their life tending toward hell. Therefore it signifies that giants — that is, demons — rule in the house of the harlot, to incite both her and her lovers to lust and every crime. Hence St. Chrysostom, Homily 2 on Matthew, calls the bedroom of a harlot the workshop of the devil. The same, on Psalm 41: "Just as," he says, "where there is filth, there pigs run together: so where there are harlots and harlots' songs, there demons congregate." And St. Ephrem in his treatise Against Wicked Women: "What," he says, "is a harlot? A cause of the devil, the devil's consolation, the devil's weapons, the triumph of darkness, a leader of sins." The Septuagint translates differently: he himself, they say, did not know that giants perish at her home; the Chaldean: and he did not know that giants are cast down there; the Tigurine: and he did not know that the dead are there; the Syriac: he does not know that the strong perish at her home — as if to say: The bold youth, trusting in the strength of his mind and body, fears no evil from anyone in the house of the harlot; but he does not know that giants have perished, cast down in the same place — that is, men powerful and outstanding in strength, wisdom, indeed even in sanctity, as were the Samsons, the Davids, the Solomons; therefore much more will he himself be cast down and perish in the same place: both in body, by hastening his own death through excess and lust; and in soul, by binding it to the demon and to hell.
"Lust has mastered the strongest men, and the encounter with a single woman has driven the violent to ruin," says St. Basil, in his book On Holy Virginity. "For the way," he says, "that leads to her house goes straight to hell and the pit of death: but meanwhile that man, blinded by luxury, given over to the flesh and to gluttony, does not consider that not only pygmies but giants also perish at her home. For those who comply with her customs and counsels will become entirely earthly and carnal, and having been turned entirely into flesh, they are finally led away to everlasting destruction." Clement of Alexandria, Book 3 of the Pedagogue, chapter 12, translates "serpents" for "giants": "But the wretch does not know," he says, "that serpents dwell with her;" but by serpents he understands giants: because, as Macrobius testifies, Saturnalia, Book 1, chapter 20, and St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 2 Against Julian, the ancients painted the giants as men above and serpents below, or with serpent coils, to signify that they mixed power with cunning and deceit, so that what they could not accomplish by force, they achieved by fraud. Therefore both serpents and giants represent demons: but serpents denote their cunning and guile, giants their strength and ferocity. He alludes to the devil, who in the form of a serpent deceived Eve, and through Eve, Adam, in Genesis 3. For in a similar manner he daily seduces and destroys the greater number of mankind through women and harlots. Hence consequently, by serpents can be understood the harlot herself and her associates and procuresses. For these, as if breathed upon by the breath of the serpent, have imbibed serpentine manners, deceits, and frauds, by which with a thousand enticements and arts, like coils, they so envelop and entangle their lovers that they cannot extricate themselves, according to Sirach 25:22: "There is no head more wicked than the head of a serpent, and there is no wrath above the wrath of a woman," etc. See what was said there.
Among the fables of Gabrias, the last concerns a serpent and a farmer: "A farmer," he says, "took a serpent nearly frozen with cold into his bosom; but the serpent, warming up from the heat of his bosom, bit the farmer and killed him." So the wicked treat their benefactors; so indeed harlots treat their lovers — are they not then serpents? What, then, is a harlot? St. Ephrem responds, in his treatise Against Wicked Women: "She is a sought-after madness, a clothed viper;" and Anastasius of Nicaea, Question 63 on Scripture: "She is the repose of the serpent, the consolation of the devil, the workshop of demons." You may say the same of any cupidity; for this is the mystical harlot. Moreover, these giants — that is, the demons — are called by the Scholiast theomachoi, that is, fighters against God, because the demons, burning with anger and vengeance against God who tortures them with the fires of hell, and being unable to harm God Himself, vent their fury on human beings as the living images of God, and pour out their wrath upon them; therefore they tempt them to lusts and fornications, so that through these they may disfigure, profane, and destroy the image of God in themselves. For, as St. Ambrose says, Epistle 82: "Virginity is the fountain in which the image of God most shines and gleams." Add that the devil makes lust a stepping-stone to other crimes — indeed, through it he paves the way to them; for when he has conquered a person's chastity, he easily drags them to any crimes whatsoever, and to heresy itself. Hence Balaam gave this wicked counsel to Balak, king of Moab, for the destruction of Moses and the Hebrews: Send, he said, into the camp of the Hebrews beautiful Moabite girls, who might entice them to love of themselves, yet not grant their favors until the Hebrews had worshipped their idol Baal-Peor. And the outcome matched the counsel. See the history, Numbers 25, where I treated it. So today for Luther, Calvin, and the other apostates, lust was and is the origin and cause of apostasy and heresy.
AND HER GUESTS ARE IN THE DEPTHS OF HELL. — The Hebrew, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion: her invited ones, as if to say: This harlot kills her guests and lovers, and sends them to the underworld and to hell, so that just as here her guests were in the crime and fire of lust, so there they may be her guests in the fire of hell. Therefore let her say to her lovers that saying of Leonidas: "Dine here with me, comrades, for you will sup in the underworld." Hence the Septuagint translates: and she meets them in the depth of hell; St. Jerome, on Hosea chapter 13: "The earth-born perish at her home, and meet in the depth of hell;" the author of the Greek Catena: petauron, that is, the abyss; he also translates it as "net" or "snare": for a harlot is the devil's net and the snare of hell; therefore whoever wishes to escape it, let him flee from the harlot, as birds fly from a net.
Therefore Salonius says here: "He who willingly hears the words of a harlot," he says, "and delightedly receives her kisses, as it were knocks on the gate of hell." For, as St. Gregory says: "From the moment lust has occupied someone's mind, it scarcely allows them to think of good things. For desires are sticky; from consent arises action, from action habit, from habit despair." See what was said at chapter 2, verse 18, and chapter 5, verse 5. To fornicators, therefore, let that saying of Isaiah 33:14 be impressed: "Who among you will be able to dwell with the devouring fire? Who among you will dwell with the everlasting flames?" See what was said there. Moreover, St. Ephrem, in his treatise On the Various Torments of Hell: "That phrase," he says, "'in the depth of hell,' declares that some indeed are in the underworld, but not in the depth or lowest part of hell, who are punished far more mildly." The lustful, therefore, who are in the depth of hell, are punished more severely than the other damned.
Hear St. Cyril of Alexandria, in the Oration on the Departure of the Soul and on the Second Coming, volume 4, reviewing and vividly placing before our eyes the punishments of hell: "Woe to the guilty," he says, "when they shall be driven out from the banquet hall of the wedding! Alas, what repentance then, what affliction, what anguish, what turmoil there will be! It is grievous to be separated from the Saints, harder to be separated from God; it is ignominious to be bound hand and foot and cast into the fire; it is distressing to be thrust into the lowest darkness; horrible to gnash one's teeth and waste away; hateful to be tortured without end; evil to have one's wretched tongue inflamed, to ask for a drop of water and not obtain it; bitter to be in the fire and to cry out and receive no help; insuperable heights, an immense abyss, where one shut in and detained cannot escape or flee; the wall of insuperable custody, merciless guards, a dark prison, unbroken chains, unshaken fetters, the dread and fierce flames — those ministers of his; the heavy scourges employed for punishment; firm and unbroken claws; stiff sinews; roiling and torrential pitch; stinking sulphur; those fiery chambers; the extinguished pyre; the putrid and venomous worm; an inexplicable council; a judge unconquered by favor; an inexcusable defense; the faces of the great marked with compunction; outworn nobles; begging kings; unlearned wise men; foolish and rejected orators; demented rich men; unheard flattering lies of writers; the manifest tricks of the malicious; the transparent cunning of cheaters; the poisonous stench of the avaricious; the open hypocrisy of persons; rogues, impostors — all things there naked and exposed. Woe to the wicked! They are profane, criminal, and impure in the sight of God."
The Roman Septuagint adds this maxim:
But spring back, do not tarry in the place, nor cast your eye upon her, for thus you will cross the alien water.
Lest you be carried away by the torrent of lust, flee far from the harlot. Mystically, the same Clement, Book 1 of the Stromata, says that by these words it is signified that one must beware of the baptism of heretics.
Moreover, the Roman Septuagint adds: "But abstain from alien water, and do not drink from an alien fountain, so that you may live a long time, and years of life may also be added to you." The Syriac also reads this, and the Council of Carthage as cited by St. Cyprian, where Nemesianus tries to prove from these words that the baptism of heretics must be avoided, and that it is therefore invalid and void — which was the error of St. Cyprian and of that entire Council. But Clement, Book 3 of the Pedagogue, chapter 2, interprets it literally of the harlot: "Abstain from alien water," he says, "and do not drink from an alien fountain — admonishing us to avoid the flow of tingling sensual delight, so that we may live a long time; and years of life may be increased for us, whether by not pursuing alien pleasure, or also by declining heresies." Which Clement of Alexandria explains thus, Book 3 of the Pedagogue, chapter 2: "The Pedagogue counsels us not to approach an alien river, allegorically signifying by 'alien river' another's wife given to lust (and like a river carrying away and swallowing up her lovers), since she spreads out to all and by her harlot's intemperance pours herself out for the pleasure of all." Just as, therefore, lest you be swept away by a rushing torrent, you flee far from it: so lest you be swept away by the torrent of lust, flee far from the harlot.
Hence the author of the Greek Catena notes: Just as, he says, there is with God a fountain of life, so with the devil there is a vein or fountain of death. Again, as the fountain of God is that of virtue and knowledge, so the fountain of the devil is that of wickedness and ignorance. But all of these are absent from the Hebrew, the Latin Vulgate, and the Greek Complutensian edition. Therefore they do not obtain certain authority as Sacred Scripture.
Second Part of the Book
Thus far extends the encomium and exhortation, or encouragement to wisdom, by which Solomon, reviewing, impressing, and amplifying the praises, gifts, and fruits of wisdom, has invited and spurred everyone to it. Having therefore laid down this, as it were, preface, he now proceeds to deliver the Parables themselves — that is, the maxims and tenets of wisdom, or of Ethics. Therefore this second part is inscribed in Hebrew misle, that is, Parables — that is, maxims and practical sentences of Solomon, which in the Hebrew are like very elegant poems and verses, with antitheses, paronomasias, homoioptotons (that is, similar word endings), and other figures, and often the latter hemistich is the opposite of the former; although sometimes only tacitly and obscurely, through metonymy (by which from cause the effect is understood), and metalepsis (by which from the antecedent the opposite consequent, or vice versa from the consequent the opposite antecedent or concomitant, is left for the reader to supply). I will give examples in chapter 10, verses 6, 8, 9, 13, 14, and following. For he frequently opposes the wise to the fool, the just to the wicked, the diligent to the lazy, the rich to the poor, and generally virtue to vice — attaching to virtue its rewards, to vice its punishments. There are, however, some maxims that are pure parables — that is, similitudes, by which he compares and likens one thing, for example virtue, to another; some also are not so much about morals as about the outcomes of this life — namely, what usually accompanies or follows certain states, offices, and actions in this life, whether frequently or sometimes. Moreover, some are threatening, others promissory, some ethical, others economic, others political, as I said in the Prologue. Finally, these maxims are proposed and mixed together haphazardly and without order, as happens in the distichs of Cato, of Publilius Syrus, and other ancient gnomologists. Hence Hugo on chapter 10 says: This chapter, he says, as well as the following ones up to chapter 25, has as many parts as parables; therefore no connection is to be sought here, nor can the chapters be divided into definite sections.