Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
The poor man walking in simplicity is better than the foolish rich man; riches add friends; delights do not befit a fool; learning is proved by patience; the anger and cheerfulness of a king; a quarrelsome wife; a prudent wife is a gift from God; laziness begets sleep and hunger; he who keeps the law keeps his soul; he who has mercy on the poor lends to God; children must be instructed; counsel must be heeded; the poor man is better than a liar; the fear of the Lord begets life; the sluggard is torpid; by the scourging of the wicked, the wise man learns; he who afflicts his father is wretched; the wicked witness mocks justice; punishments are prepared for scoffers.
Vulgate Text: Proverbs 19:1-29
1. Better is the poor man who walks in his simplicity, than the rich man who twists his lips, and is foolish. 2. Where there is no knowledge of the soul, there is no good; and he who is hasty with his feet will stumble. 3. The foolishness of a man undermines his steps, and against God he rages in his spirit. 4. Riches add very many friends; but from the poor man even those whom he had are separated. 5. A false witness will not go unpunished; and he who speaks lies will not escape. 6. Many court the person of the powerful, and are friends of him who gives gifts. 7. The brothers of a poor man hate him; moreover his friends have withdrawn far from him. 8. He who pursues only words will have nothing; but he who possesses understanding loves his own soul, and the guardian of prudence will find good things. 9. A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who speaks lies will perish. 10. Delights do not befit a fool, nor does it befit a servant to rule over princes. 11. The learning of a man is known through patience, and his glory is to pass over wrongs. 12. As the roaring of a lion, so also is the wrath of a king; and as dew upon the grass, so also is his cheerfulness. 13. A foolish son is the grief of his father; and a quarrelsome wife is like a roof that leaks continually. 14. House and riches are given by parents; but a prudent wife is properly from the Lord. 15. Sloth brings on deep sleep, and the dissolute soul will go hungry. 16. He who keeps the commandment keeps his soul; but he who neglects his way will be put to death. 17. He who has mercy on the poor lends to the Lord; and He will repay him his due. 18. Instruct your son, do not despair; but do not set your heart on his destruction. 19. He who is impatient will bear loss; and when he has seized something, he will add another offense. 20. Hear counsel and receive instruction, that you may be wise in your latter days. 21. There are many thoughts in the heart of a man; but the will of the Lord will endure. 22. A needy man is merciful, and better is a poor man than a liar. 23. The fear of the Lord leads to life, and he will abide in fullness without the worst visitation. 24. The sluggard hides his hand under his arm, and does not bring it to his mouth. 25. When the pestilent man is scourged, the fool will become wiser; but if you reprove a wise man, he will understand instruction. 26. He who afflicts his father and drives away his mother is shameful and wretched. 27. Do not cease, my son, to hear instruction, and do not ignore the words of knowledge. 28. The wicked witness mocks judgment, and the mouth of the ungodly devours iniquity. 29. Judgments are prepared for scoffers, and hammers striking upon the bodies of fools.
Verse 1: Better Is the Poor Man Who Walks in His Simplicity
1. BETTER IS THE POOR MAN WHO WALKS IN HIS SIMPLICITY, THAN THE RICH MAN WHO TWISTS HIS LIPS, AND IS FOOLISH. — "Better," both ethically, that is, more just, more innocent, more holy; and physically, that is, more excellent, because more tranquil and wiser. For "in his simplicity" the Hebrew has betummo, that is, in his integrity or perfection. So often elsewhere tam, that is, "simple," denotes a man who is sincere, free from guile and malice, upright and perfect, as when Job is called "a simple and upright man," that is, perfect (Job 1:1). For "twisting" the Hebrew has iekes, that is, perverting, distorting. Hence the Septuagint renders it striblos, that is, crooked, such as one who is cunning and crafty. Therefore the Complutensian Septuagint (for in the Roman edition this verse and the two following are missing) has: "Better is a beggar walking in his simplicity than one perverse in his lips, who is himself foolish." Pagninus: "than one perverse on account of his lips, who is foolish." Vatablus: "than one who has wicked lips and is foolish." The Syriac: "than a fool whose ways are crooked." The Chaldean: "than he who perverts his ways — he is the fool." For the word "rich" is not in the Hebrew, nor in the Greek of the Complutensians; hence some codices, and among them Jansenius, expunge it from the Latin text, and explain it thus, as though the poor man is not contrasted with the rich, but with him who twists his lips and is foolish, that is: Poverty is better than folly, because poverty is compatible with and easily joined to wisdom and integrity of life; but the twisting, that is, the distortion of the lips, cannot coexist with these, but is folly and wickedness. For he who twists his lips is one who does not act sincerely, but composes deceitful words to deceive, since he harbors one thing in his heart and utters another with his mouth. Better, therefore, is the poor man who lives simply and innocently, than the one who twists his lips and is full of guile — for this makes a man deceitful and perverse. However, the author of the Greek Catena, Bede, and the corrected Roman Codices read the word "rich": for thus there is a clear antithesis between the rich man who is simple and sincere, and the rich man who distorts his speech and is deceitful.
The meaning therefore is, as if to say: Better is the poor man who is free from guile and who lives candidly, innocently, and with integrity, than the crafty rich man who by his wiles, tricks, and frauds amasses great wealth for himself — for the latter is foolish, that is, impious; whereas the poor man is wise, that is, upright and pious. For the word "and foolish" does not signify a connection, as if one could twist or distort his lips without being foolish (for that is false); but it signifies a cause, as if to say: The poor simple man is better than the rich man who twists his lips, because he shapes and twists his lips to deceive; "and," that is "because," this person is foolish, that is, impious. Solomon implies that poverty is akin to wisdom, that is, to simplicity, innocence, and holiness; whereas riches are akin to foolishness, that is, to fraud, usury, injustice, and wickedness, according to the saying: "Every rich man is either unjust, or the heir of the unjust."
The a priori reason, therefore, why the simple poor man surpasses the deceitful rich man, is that the simplicity and innocence that poverty brings surpasses the guile and wickedness that the desire for wealth brings: for the former is truth and true, pure wisdom; the latter is vanity and vain, sheer foolishness. The former leads to heavenly happiness, the latter to the fires of hell. Hence Aben-Ezra explains it thus, as if to say: An upright man is better than a perverse man who distorts his words. So also R. Levi.
An example of this is found in St. Francis, who was poor not only in wealth but also in sense and spirit, that is, a wonderful lover of Evangelical poverty, and through it attained great simplicity and holiness. For he was wiser, better, holier, more pleasing and more honored by God and the world than all deceitful and cunning rich men. The same may be said of any religious who have professed and cultivated poverty. Furthermore, examples of this maxim are found in poor craftsmen and merchants who, because they work and trade candidly and justly according to their conscience, earn little profit: for these in their innocent poverty surpass the rich who enrich themselves immensely through wiles and fraud. The former have a good conscience, and therefore justice, peace, joy, and the hope of eternal life; the latter have a bad conscience, and therefore injustice, disturbances, sorrows, and despair of their salvation. For as the Apostle says (1 Tim. 6:9): "Those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and into the snare of the devil, and into many useless and harmful desires, which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the root of all evils is cupidity."
Mystically, Bede says: "Better is the simple hearer of the word of God, if he completes by doing what he was able to understand in the Scriptures, than any learned man, if in those things which he keenly understood, he twists his lips to preach heresy."
Verse 2: Where There Is No Knowledge of the Soul
2. WHERE THERE IS NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE SOUL, THERE IS NO GOOD; AND HE WHO IS HASTY WITH HIS FEET WILL STUMBLE. — The Chaldean and Syriac have: "he who is hasty with his feet toward evil, sins." Aben-Ezra: "he who hastens to plunder undergoes a new guilt." It is a litotes: "there is no good" means "there is evil," indeed "the worst evil." The word "soul" can refer either to "knowledge," so that a comma is placed after "soul," as the Romans punctuate it; or to "there is no good," as if to say: Where there is no knowledge, there the soul fares not well, but badly. Hence the author of the Greek Catena renders it: "A soul destitute of wisdom is not good," that is, not beautiful, not well-formed. Another translates: "Not even life without knowledge is pleasant." The Zurich version: "Nor does an untrained mind fare well, like one who hastens and stumbles with his feet," as if this verse pertains to the preceding verse and gives its reason, as if to say: Therefore the simple poor man surpasses the perverse and foolish rich man, because where there is no knowledge or wisdom, there the mind fares badly — for it lacks an eye and a guide, and therefore, like a blind man walking hastily, it strikes against stones and stumbling-blocks. Vatablus, however, understanding by nephes, that is, "soul," the animal and concupiscible power, or desire, translates and explains it thus: "Even without prudence, desire is the worst thing, and he who is swift of foot sins — swift, that is, to fulfill his desire," as if to say: Concupiscence that is not governed by prudence is the worst thing, because it swiftly draws a man to its fulfillment, and since it is blind, it easily dashes against rocks and hurls the man into ruin.
Solomon therefore signifies that the proper good of the soul, its very treasure as it were, is knowledge: for other goods such as wealth, honors, and pleasures are extrinsic to the soul; but knowledge is intrinsic to it. Therefore knowledge is the vital good of the soul (being its vital activity, cognition, and understanding), while other goods are lifeless and dead. Hence R. Levi explains it thus, as if to say: When a person is stripped of expertise in things, it happens that his desire and lust are carried toward what is not honorable; and he who rashly follows his desires binds himself with guilt. St. Augustine gives the reason in his treatise On the Happy Life: "There is no greater or more pitiable destitution," he says, "than to lack wisdom; and he who does not lack wisdom can lack nothing at all. Therefore the destitution of the mind is nothing other than folly." And further on: "To be happy is nothing other than not to lack, that is, to be wise. For wisdom is nothing other than the measure of the mind, that is, by which the mind frees itself, so that it neither runs out into excess nor is confined below what is full." And he adds that the wise man, who possesses wisdom, possesses God, and is therefore happy. However, the Romans and others combine "of the soul" with "knowledge," though the meaning returns to roughly the same.
The question therefore is: what is the knowledge of the soul? First, the Chaldean takes the knowledge of the soul to mean that by which the soul knows and recognizes itself. Hence he translates: "He who does not know his own soul, for him there is no good." For as Agapetus the Deacon says in his Admonition to the Emperor Justinian, no. 3: "The divine and most important teaching for us men is that each person should know himself. For he who has known himself will know God; and he who has known God will be made like God; and he who has been made worthy of God will be made like Him; and he who does nothing unworthy of God, but thinks what pertains to Him, speaks what he thinks, and does what he speaks, becomes at last worthy of God." Hence that inscription on the temple of Delphic Apollo, as if an oracle: gnothi seauton, that is, "Know thyself."
Second, others take the knowledge of the soul to mean the knowledge of the spirit, which is opposed to the knowledge and wisdom of the flesh, as if to say: He who is wise in the things of the soul and spirit, not in those of the flesh, possesses a great good — because he who lacks it is blind and eyeless, and therefore, like a blind man hastening, will strike against stones. For as the Apostle says (Rom. 8:6): "The prudence of the flesh is death; but the prudence of the spirit is life and peace: because the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God; for it is not subject to the law of God." See what was said there.
Third, others interpret "the knowledge of the soul" as that which searches, penetrates, and sees through the inmost recesses, depths, feelings, thoughts, and intentions of the soul; for the entire goodness of a work depends on a good will and intention. Hence St. Gregory, in Moralia XIX, chapter 8, morally explaining the Cherubim whom Ezekiel (ch. 1) saw full of eyes both within and without, says: "Hence it is that the living creatures seen by the Prophet are said to be full of eyes all around and within. For whoever arranges his exterior honorably but neglects his interior has eyes all around but not within. But all the saints, because they both look to their exteriors to give good examples to their brethren, and vigilantly attend to their interiors — because they prepare themselves to be blameless before the gaze of the internal Judge — are said to have eyes both all around and within, and they order their interior life all the more to please God, just as it is said through the Psalmist concerning the holy Church: 'All the glory of the king's daughter is from within'" (Ps. 44:14).
Fourth and genuinely, the knowledge of the soul is wisdom, prudence, and foresight, by which the soul surveys and foresees not only the present but also the past and the future, so that it may arrange its actions so honorably and perfectly that it can defend and uphold them at the judgment of Christ, before Christ's all-seeing eyes, and thus deserve to be awarded the prize and heavenly glory. For prudence is the eye of the soul, and he who excels in it prudently sees, foresees, and provides where to place the steps of his action, and therefore walks securely, just like one who follows a torch going before him in the darkness. But he who lacks prudence walks like a blind man in the darkness of this life and stumbles, because wherever blind concupiscence drags him, he hastily follows; and so he dashes against many stumbling-blocks and sins, and finally plunges headlong into the abyss of hell. The knowledge of the soul, therefore, is prudence, which takes counsel for the salvation of the soul, which foresees its rewards and punishments, and therefore urges a man to live well and to flee from sins — which the Wise Man accordingly calls "the knowledge of the Saints" (Wis. 9:10), and the Angel calls "the prudence of the just" (Luke 1:17). "For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but suffers the loss of his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt. 16:26). Weighing these words, St. Chrysostom says in Homily 56 on Matthew: "You do not have another soul that you could give for your soul. For one who has lost money can bring other money in place of what was lost; similarly one who has lost houses, or servants, or other such things; but if you lose your soul, you will never be able to give another in its place. Even if you were king and lord of the world, even if you were to offer everything in the world, and the world itself, you would not be able to rescue a single soul." Hence he concludes: "Setting aside everything else, devote all your care, all your effort, all your work to the soul itself. Do not, therefore, concern yourself with what belongs to others and neglect yourself and what is yours — which is what almost everyone does now. They are like those consigned to work in the mines: for they gain no profit, no wealth from it, but labor for others at great peril and loss to themselves, turning nothing at all of their sweat, toil, and the death they usually meet into any fruit for themselves. Very many people now imitate these, seeking riches not for themselves but for others. Indeed, we are far more wretched than they; for death brings an end to their suffering, but for us, whom hell awaits, it brings the beginning of true affliction.
The same St. Chrysostom, in Homily 13 on the Epistle to the Romans, teaches that the soul ought to live and govern the body as wisely and harmoniously as a harpist composes and plays the harp, and a helmsman steers his ship.
Mystically, Bede says: "For the human soul, the knowledge of heavenly life is necessary, because without it the soul cannot be happy forever; yet he who with unbridled senses rashly desires to know more than is fitting usually incurs the offense of heretical folly. This was mystically signified in the first parents of the human race, who, while they hastened by the desire for greater knowledge to touch what was forbidden, deviated from the state of blessedness in which they were created and fell into the punishment of misery and mortality."
AND HE WHO IS HASTY WITH HIS FEET WILL STUMBLE. — He opposes haste to knowledge, that is, to prudence, because the prudent man advances slowly toward a task (for feet are a symbol of action and work): for he first considers its reason, quality, manner, dangers, advantages, etc. The imprudent man, however, not considering these things, rashly hastens to the task, and therefore casts himself into the dangers and losses both of fault and punishment. The wise man, therefore, is deliberate and slow, while the fool is hasty and reckless; hence the common saying: "Make haste slowly," and: "A dog that hastens gives birth to blind puppies." Plato wisely says in the Statesman: "He who hastens more than enough at the beginning arrives later at the end." The same, in Book VII of the Republic: "While I hasten to run through everything quickly, I am slower." St. Augustine, in Against Petilian, says that those who hasten with some agitation end up putting on their clothes or shoes backward, which causes further delay; and the same happens to those who try to do many things simultaneously and quickly, accomplishing nothing. See what was said on chapter 13, verse 11: "Wealth gotten in haste will be diminished." Indeed, Augustus Caesar, as Suetonius testifies in his Life, chapter 25, used to say that "nothing less befits a perfect commander than haste"; and he frequently proclaimed: "Soon enough, if well enough." In military matters, the delaying strategy of Fabius accomplished more than the rashness of M. Minutius; hence Ennius:
"One man by delaying restored the state for us."
And Statius, Thebaid X, 699: "Impulse manages everything badly."
This maxim, adorned with an appropriate fable of the horse and the ox, crowned with elegant parables, is vividly represented by Cyril in his Moral Apologues, Book I, chapter 12, whose title is: "In all things proceed with orderly gravity." "When," he says, "a horse was nimbly running here and there, it met a laden ox walking gravely. He said to it: 'Why do you have a cloven hoof, when under so great a burden solidity would be more fitting for you?' But the ox replied: 'Assuredly, He who made me provided that I should always proceed in this way, so that under a burden I might walk all the more with orderly gravity. Do you not know that destruction often comes from a swift foot? For all mortal things are full of dangers; therefore one must everywhere walk with gravity, so that with one foot planted, one may wisely foresee where the other should be placed. Similarly, wisdom comes slowly to men: for weighed down by mortal senses and limbs, they can scarcely attain the light of wisdom, which is hidden and set on high, over long periods of time. And for this reason, the more maturely they seek it, the more securely they find it. But if we walk with slow gravity, we labor more moderately, and what we do we see more clearly, and with the mind at rest we judge all things better. For wisdom also reaches from end to end mightily, and disposes all things sweetly. Therefore, if we proceed slowly, we accomplish more quickly what we intend. For in this way we are led by the lamp of prudence, by which, with detours removed along the straight path of truth, we better provide for the end of our work.' Then he confirms the same point with a comparison to the heavens, a ship, and rain: 'Does not the face of the sky seem not to change, and yet it is carried along with the most rapid regularity? Wise nature does not suffer anything sudden, and things that come on suddenly confuse the mind more and overturn it. A ship, unless checked by gravity in its immoderate course, breaks apart, and a puppy born from a hasty birth is born blind. But from a more moderate rain the earth is made fertile, and with orderly steps cranes walk not only more gracefully but also more healthily. But you, dearest, because you are driven faster with undivided hoof, you are often brought low by a fall, by which indeed you are judged an unclean animal.' Hearing this, the horse withdrew in shame."
Verse 3: The Foolishness of a Man Undermines His Steps
3. THE FOOLISHNESS OF A MAN UNDERMINES HIS STEPS; AND AGAINST THE LORD HE RAGES IN HIS SPIRIT. — The Septuagint: "The imprudence of a man wastes his ways, and he accuses God in his heart." Symmachus: "and against the Lord his heart grows angry." The Chaldean: "The foolishness of a man makes his way unstable, and his heart murmurs." The Syriac: "he complains in his heart." For "rages" the Hebrew has the verb zaaph, which means to be disturbed, tossed about, to seethe — as a pot of water seethes when it boils by the force of fire, and as the sea rages when it is tossed by winds and waves. In a similar way, the soul of the fool, that is, of the wicked man, is tossed by the waves of alternating passions — now of anger, now of sadness, now of indignation. Hence Aben-Ezra explains, as if to say: "He grows angry, he grieves, and when he is afflicted, he does not place his hope in God."
Now first, R. Solomon explains it thus, as if to say: A man is weighed down by adversities on account of his crimes, since because of his folly he perverts his habits and incurs offenses, for which he pays penalties; but when he is afflicted by calamity, he rages in anger against God and devises schemes against divine judgment, as is evident from the brothers of Joseph, who said: "What is this that God has done to us?" So R. Levi says: By the man's folly it happens that his affairs go badly; when he eagerly desired something that he did not pursue by proper reasoning — and afterwards, when his designs are not accomplished according to his wishes, his anger is directed against God, by whom he thinks he is punished, since his intended plans are in vain, and he does not realize that this was brought about by his own folly.
"Foolishness" here can be taken in two ways: first, properly, as imprudence; second, as wickedness — for in this book the "fool" is commonly called the wicked man. The meaning here is therefore twofold. First, properly, as if to say: When a man has done something imprudently and foolishly, and therefore lacks the desired success, or rather has cast himself into dangers and losses — he does not blame his own imprudence and folly, but attributes it to God, and accuses God's providence for not having directed and made his actions fortunate, but for having given him unhappy lots, chances, and outcomes. Just as the sea, when it rages, seems to hurl its waves up to heaven — so fools, when they seethe with anger, raise their mouth to heaven and hurl murmurings and blasphemies against God for not having prospered their affairs. And this is a remarkable folly, in that one rages and rises against God, whom one can in no way harm, and whose hand and just vengeance one cannot escape. This is what Solomon properly intends here.
Second, as if to say: "Foolishness," that is, impiety and wickedness, "undermines a man's steps," that is, drives him into crimes and the punishments of crimes; but the man attributes these things not to his own foolishness, that is, wickedness (which is their true and proper cause), but to God. Therefore he murmurs against God, because God by His providence, ordering all causes, so arranged them that they enticed him into crimes and their punishments. Hence St. Augustine, in Epistle 105, reads: "The folly of a man violates his ways, and he blames God in his heart." Thus Calvin and his followers cast upon God, as the first cause, all the works of men, both bad and good. And Melanchthon sacrilegiously vomited forth that the betrayal of Judas is as much the work of God as the calling of Paul — which the Council of Trent condemns under anathema, Session VI, canon 6. The philosophers did the same, who attributed all things both good and bad to fate; for they regarded fate as either God or God's providence — whom therefore St. Augustine refutes in The City of God, Book V, chapter 1; St. Chrysostom in Oration 3 On Providence; Lactantius, Justin, Athenagoras, and others writing against the pagans. Uneducated Christians do the same, and even the educated, when they are driven by the furies of anger and impiety. For then the impious man, as the Psalmist says, sets his mouth against heaven: "They set their mouth against heaven, and their tongue traversed the earth" (Ps. 72:9); and he sacrilegiously assails God with insults and curses. Indeed, even Adam after his sin, proudly assigning the blame for his sin to Eve, tacitly turned it back against God, saying: "The woman whom You gave me as a companion gave me of the tree, and I ate" (Gen. 3:12). Hence Nazianzen in his Iambic on Anger: "I myself saw stones, dust, and harsh words hurled against God." This is the height of wickedness, the pinnacle and summit of impiety, so that it is a wonder the earth does not open up for such people and swallow them alive, just as it swallowed alive Korah, Dathan, and Abiram when they murmured against God and Moses (Num. 16). Hence Ecclesiasticus, rebuking such people, says (ch. 15:11): "Do not say, 'It is because of God that it is absent'; for what He hates, do not do. Do not say, 'He led me astray.' For He has no need of impious men. The Lord hates every abomination of error." See what was said there.
The a priori reason for this saying is the very nature of foolishness and wickedness; for foolishness is nothing other than a foolish and proud love of oneself — the fool, because he labors under self-love, loves himself too much, and hence esteems himself too highly. Therefore, when he errs and sins, he does not want to see his error and sin; but turning his eyes away from himself, he attributes it to God, seizing the occasion that God is the first cause of all things, who rules, arranges, and orders secondary causes. But he deceives and is deceived. For God does indeed arrange secondary causes, but each according to its own condition: namely, necessary ones necessarily, but free ones freely. Therefore He permits free causes to their own freedom, so that it is in their power to act well or badly, and consequently to merit reward or punishment. Otherwise God would be the author of sin, which is as absurd as it is impious; for God, being most pure, most good, and most holy, abominates all sin and has prepared hell for it. Therefore, those who make God the author of sin speak as if they were to say that the sun, which is the fountain of light, is the fountain of darkness; or that fire, which is the fountain of heat, is the fountain of cold; or that the soul, which is the fountain of life, is the cause of death. For sin is the darkness, cold, and death of the soul; but God is the sun, fire, and soul of our soul. Seeing this, the Manichaeans, though heretics and impious, nevertheless, in order to avert such a great wickedness from God, invented two gods: one good, who was the author of all good; the other evil, who was the author of all evil and sin, namely the devil or Lucifer. See St. Basil, Homily On the Topic That God Is Not the Author of Evils, where he says that to make God the author of sin is tantamount to denying God; for a God who is the author of sin is not God but the devil. See also St. Augustine, On Grace and Free Will, chapter 2, where in concluding he says: "Let no one therefore blame God in his heart, but let each person impute it to himself when he sins."
Verse 4: Riches Add Very Many Friends
4. RICHES ADD VERY MANY FRIENDS; BUT FROM THE POOR MAN EVEN THOSE WHOM HE HAD ARE SEPARATED. — The Septuagint: "but the poor man is abandoned even by an existing friend." The Syriac and Symmachus: "but the poor man is separated from his friends." The Chaldean: "riches bring very many friends." The meaning is clear, as if to say: Riches procure many friends for the rich man; because everyone desires to be a friend of the rich man in order to share in his riches — and so they are friends not so much of the rich man as of his riches. But if someone falls into poverty, he will acquire no friends; indeed he will be deserted by those whom he had in better fortune, because everyone flees the poor man and poverty, since from it they can expect no advantage but many disadvantages. For if they were true friends of the poor man, they would certainly relieve his poverty with their own resources — for among friends all things are held in common. By the very fact that they desert a poor friend, they show that they love not persons but fortunes, and that they are not true friends but pot-friends and masked ones. See what was said in chapter 14:20 and Ecclesiasticus 14:25. Such people are therefore like swallows, which fly to warm regions in summer and flee in winter: for just so, these people flock to wealth and fly away from the destitute. Riches therefore add very many friends in the same way that cook-shops attract and lure great swarms of flies with the smell of meat; but when the aroma ceases, they all fly away. So riches, with the hope of gain (for the smell of profit is sweet), invite everyone to the rich man; but when that hope vanishes through poverty, they all immediately scatter. From Solomon, Plato and the philosophers drew the same truth. For Plato's maxim in the Epigrams is: "Have you at last learned by experience that old saying, That he who has nothing, has no friend?" The comic poets: "To the fortunate, anyone is a kinsman." And: "For him whose lot is adverse, friends are far away." Petronius Arbiter: "While fortune remains, you keep your face, friends; When it falls, you turn your faces to shameful flight." Plautus, Epidicus: "He is a friend who helps you in a doubtful matter, When help is needed." Publilius Mimus: "Prosperous circumstances make friends; sad ones prove them." Ausonius: "You prove friends in adversity."
Symbolically, Jansenius understands by the rich man the generous man, and by the poor man the miser, as if to say: Riches generously distributed add very many friends, according to the Savior's saying: "Make friends for yourselves with the mammon of iniquity." But from him who is poor in spirit, that is, meager in doing good because of avarice, even those friends he had are separated — detesting his avarice. Or, as the Hebrew has it, the poor man is separated from his friend — which in the case of the poor man who is so through avarice applies perfectly, since he is not only separated from his friend because the friend leaves him, but because he himself leaves the friend first, fearing that he might be compelled to spend something on the friend, since he values money more than friendship.
Mystically, Bede understands by the rich the Apostles and holy Doctors, who are rich and enrich many with grace and glory; and by the poor, the philosophers, as being empty of true virtues, grace, and glory, as if to say: The riches of the heavenly kingdom, which are preached by holy Doctors in bestowing them upon the faithful, gain many friends both for those preachers themselves and for the Lord who bestows them. But from the philosophers and other teachers of the nations, because they know how to promise nothing of certain blessedness in the future, even those whom they had are separated — namely, those converted to the faith and the most certain hope of the Lord's Passion. The anonymous author in the Greek Catena adds: "The discussion here," he says, "concerns the riches of wisdom and knowledge; for these (because they are adorned with virtues) join to us the friendship of the Angels, from which an unclean and impure man is separated, just as he is also separated from the Angel whom he received as guardian from childhood. Such a person is therefore called poor according to virtue, since spiritual friendship rests on virtue and knowledge. For through these we are united with those sacred and heavenly virtues and powers."
Verse 5: A False Witness Will Not Go Unpunished
5. A FALSE WITNESS WILL NOT GO UNPUNISHED; AND HE WHO SPEAKS LIES WILL NOT ESCAPE. — That is, the punishment and vengeance either of men or of God. From the Hebrew, Aquila, Theodotion, and the Chaldean translate literally: "a false witness will not be innocent" — but "innocent" is taken by metalepsis for "unpunished," as also in Exodus 20:7: "For the Lord will not hold him guiltless" — that is, unpunished — "who takes the name of the Lord his God in vain." Some think the same thing is said in the latter half of the verse as was said in the former. But others more correctly judge that the first half threatens punishment only for the false witness, while the latter extends the same punishment to anyone who contrives a harmful lie in any way to the injury of his neighbor, whether as a false witness, or as an accuser, or as an informer and slanderer, etc. So the author of the Greek Catena, R. Levi, Jansenius, and others. Hence the Septuagint, adapting it to the accuser, translate thus: "A false witness will not go unpunished; and he who accuses unjustly will not escape." Aquila and the Syriac: "will not escape safe." The meaning therefore is, as if to say: The witness who imputes a false crime to another, or in any way testifies falsely, especially in court, will not escape the penalty of retaliation established by law for forgers. For this falsehood is usually uncovered, either by the opposing party who is unjustly injured, or by the judge, or by another who is aware of and hostile to the falsehood. Thus the false witnesses who accused Susanna of adultery, by the law of retaliation, themselves underwent the stoning decreed for the adulterer, after being convicted of falsehood by Daniel (Daniel ch. 13). But if a false witness should sometimes elude or escape the eyes and hands of men, he will certainly not elude or escape the eyes of the all-seeing and the hands of the omnipotent God, who will punish this falsehood and injustice either with present punishment or with eternal punishment in hell.
Similarly, he who in any way blows and utters lies like bubbles from his mouth, by which he harms his neighbor either in reputation, or in fortune, or in liberty and life — because by his lie he is the cause of his neighbor being defamed, or stripped of his possessions, or imprisoned, or killed — this man will not escape the judgment and vengeance either of men, or certainly of God, who will rise up as an avenger against him all the more fiercely, as He is more powerful and more just. For the truth and majesty of God are more greatly and more gravely injured by this falsehood than those of men; therefore He will impose a greater punishment for this greater fault and offense. Most especially, a false witness in court injures the holiness of God through the perjury he commits; for the judge usually compels the witness to take an oath, to swear by God that he will tell the truth. Therefore, when he swears falsely, he makes God a witness or co-witness of falsehood, which is an enormous injury to God. Therefore God, wishing to vindicate His faithfulness, digs out the truth itself and brings it to light, and thus exposes the false witness, and punishes him as a forger and perjurer, either by Himself or through the judge.
Note: the phrase "who speaks lies" in Hebrew is: who "blows forth" (iaphiach) lies, that is, exhales or expires them. Vatablus: "vomits them out." By this word it is signified: first, that this liar is shameless and impudent; for while commonly a liar, being conscious of his guilt and fearing refutation, utters his lie with a trembling and breathless voice, yet when he becomes shameless and impudent, he exhales his lies in a confident and strong voice, as if boldly proclaiming certain truth. Second, that he forcefully blows forth grave and abundant lies, just as a furnace blows forth sparks. Third, that he deserves to have his breath and spirit cut off by strangling, since he abuses it to blow forth lies. Fourth, that he cannot remain hidden for long. For just as we soon exhale the breath that we drew in by inhaling (for breathing is the reciprocation of inhaling and exhaling spirit), so likewise a liar cannot long contain his lie without soon exhaling it — that is, retracting it or betraying it by some signs. For a liar is inconsistent, and what he asserted he soon denies. Hence the saying: "A liar must have a good memory." Petrarch gives an example in Book I of On the Solitary Life, regarding divers: "No one," he says, "lives long under water; he must burst forth and expose the face he was hiding" — for the breath cannot be contained for long. I have said more about the word iaphiach, that is, "blows forth," above.
Verse 6-7: Many Court the Person of the Powerful
6 AND 7. MANY COURT THE PERSON OF THE POWERFUL, AND ARE FRIENDS OF HIM WHO GIVES GIFTS. THE BROTHERS OF A POOR MAN HATE HIM; MOREOVER HIS FRIENDS HAVE WITHDRAWN FAR FROM HIM. — The Hebrew has it in the singular: "and a friend" — that is, each of his friends, says Aben-Ezra — "withdrew from him." For "powerful" the Hebrew has nadib, that is, "generous," and hence "powerful" and "prince," as our translator, the Syriac, the Chaldean, and the Septuagint render it — both because the generous man deserves to be elevated to a position of authority, and conversely because generosity especially befits princes, so that it appears to be their proper and royal endowment. The Hebrew therefore literally has: "many entreat the face of the generous man, and every man is a friend (is, or wishes to be a friend) to the man of gift" — that is, to the munificent man who bestows abundant gifts. So Vatablus, Pagninus, and others. Again, for "many" the Hebrew has rabbim, which sometimes means "nobles," as is evident from Jeremiah 61:1. Hence first, Aben-Ezra, R. Levi, and Vatablus translate thus: "distinguished men, or nobles, will entreat the face of the generous man; and everyone is a friend of the munificent man" — to commend generosity, as if to say: The generous and munificent man is so distinguished and excellent that even nobles ask him to bring them aid, or not to deny the bond of goodwill. Our translator, with the Septuagint, Syriac, and Chaldean, renders it "powerful" for the reasons already stated, and because of the antithesis with the poor man in the following verse. The plain meaning therefore is, as if to say: Nearly everyone courts rich and powerful men, because they fear and love their power — they fear lest through it they be harmed; they love it because from it they expect gifts and benefits. On the other hand, they neither fear nor love the poor man, but hate him and withdraw from him — not only brothers but also friends, who often love a friend more than brothers, as he said in the previous chapter, last verse. This is what he said in verse 4: "Riches add friends; from the poor man even those whom he had are separated," and often elsewhere. By which he signifies, first, the advantage of riches — that they win many friends — and the disadvantage of poverty — that all flee from it as much as from the poor themselves. He does this to urge each person to honest labor, by which one may acquire moderate means and thereby friends; and to flee from idleness, which is the cause of poverty, which all flee and dread. Furthermore, that friends are not to be trusted, since many are truly not friends of the rich but of riches, and are therefore feigned and pretended, as I said on verse 4. For this reason Agapetus the Deacon, in his Admonition to the Emperor Justinian, earnestly exhorts him to beneficence, so that through it he may win men to himself, and indeed God. For he says, no. 35: "Consider that you truly rule securely when you rule over willing subjects. For what is subjected against its will fluctuates with seditions, having seized the opportunity; whereas what is governed by the bonds of goodwill maintains a stable obedience toward the ruler." And no. 44: "The resources of beneficence are inexhaustible. For by giving they are acquired, and by scattering they are gathered. Having these implanted in your mind, most munificent Emperor, bestow generously on all who ask of you. For you will have infinite repayment for them when the time of rewarding your works comes." And no. 48: "Be to your subjects, most pious Emperor, both fearsome on account of the excellence of your power, and lovable on account of the generosity of your beneficence. Do not despise fear because of love, nor neglect love because of fear; but bear a gentleness that is not contemptible, while chastising with stern severity a familiarity that is contemptible." And no. 58: "A citadel fortified with impregnable walls scorns the enemies besieging it; so also your pious empire, when it is surrounded by generosity toward the wretched as by a wall, and strengthened by towers of prayers, becomes invincible and impervious to any enemy's weapons, raising up glorious and celebrated trophies against them."
Mystically, Jansenius says: "Many court the person of the powerful," that is, of Christ; for many began to worship Him and entreat His face and seek His grace and favor (for to "court the person" is in Hebrew "to entreat the face"), after He became powerful and generous by ascending on high, distributing the diverse gifts of His Spirit variously, according to the saying: "Ascending on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men." On the other hand, the brothers and friends of the Jewish people, after it became poor in the understanding of the Scriptures and in the gifts of God, began to hate it and leave it, because the Apostles and Jews descended from them became alienated.
Furthermore, the Chaldean and Septuagint, instead of harea, that is "friend," read with a different pointing hara, that is "evil." Hence the Chaldean translates: "Many are those who serve before a prince, and the evil man gives gifts" — in Hebrew: "and the evil man of gifts." Symmachus: "the man of gifts," as if to say: Many serve the prince, but the wicked flatter him more and are more importunate and persistent; hence they extort more gifts from him. Whereas the good and upright, because they are sincere, honest, and modest, do not know how to flatter or shamelessly demand, and so obtain less — but these adorn the prince with their probity, while those disgrace him with their wickedness. Hence the Septuagint translates: "Many court the face of the prince; but every wicked man becomes a reproach to a man." Which some explain by antithesis, as if to say: The prince and generous man by his generosity wins all to himself and makes them friends; but the wicked man, that is, the miserly and avaricious, is hated and a reproach to any man. However, the author of the Greek Catena renders this sentence differently from the Septuagint, and explains it more aptly according to the Hebrew and Chaldean, drawing from St. Chrysostom, as if twisted against flatterers of princes. For he translates: "Many everywhere observe and court the person of the king" — weighing this expression, St. Chrysostom, as if it contained a warning not for flatterers but for princes, teaches that princes should beware of flatterers and not give them access, since flatterers corrupt both prince and state.
The Septuagint adds: "Everyone who hates a needy brother also departs from friendship." This can be taken in two ways. First, as if to say: He who hates a poor friend shows that he is not truly a friend; for it belongs to a friend to help a friend in need, for example, when he is in poverty. Second, as if to say: He who hates poverty and the poor man is unfit for friendship; for a true friend clings and binds himself to his friend in every fortune, and looks not at his friend's wealth but at his character and the honor of friendship.
Verse 8: He Who Pursues Only Words Will Have Nothing
8. HE WHO PURSUES ONLY WORDS WILL HAVE NOTHING; BUT HE WHO POSSESSES UNDERSTANDING LOVES HIS OWN SOUL; AND THE GUARDIAN OF PRUDENCE WILL FIND GOOD THINGS. — In Hebrew: "He who pursues words — not they" (that is, they will not exist); "possessing a heart, loving his soul; keeping understanding to find good." The Chaldean and Syriac: "Where are those who persecute with their words? Nothing (of grace and friendship) will remain for them. He who possesses a good heart guards his soul; he who keeps prudence will find good." The Septuagint adds more that is not in the Hebrew: "A good thought will draw near to those who know it, and a prudent man will find" (the author of the Greek Catena: "will easily discover") "it. He who does much evil will bring wickedness to completion; but he who contends" (some read meconitii, that is, pricks, goads) "with words will not be saved. He who possesses prudence loves himself; but he who keeps prudence will find good things." For "will bring wickedness to completion," the author of the Greek Catena renders: "will reach the pinnacle of wickedness."
Now many join the first words — "He who pursues only words will have nothing" — to the preceding verse. Hence first, the Rabbis in Bereshit Rabba, that is, in Genesis Rabba (the Great Commentary on Genesis), and from them R. Solomon here, instead of reading lo hemma (with aleph), meaning "not those," reading ve-lo hemma (with vav), meaning "to them those very things," translate thus: "He who pursues another with words, such as accusations, slanders, or insults — those very things will recoil upon himself, will be turned back upon his own head." And they explain this of the patriarch Joseph: He, they say, accused his brothers before their father falsely of three crimes. The first was that they ate the limbs of living animals; but this recoiled upon Joseph himself, when he himself, while still alive, was sold by his brothers to the Ishmaelites. The second was that they despised the sons of their father's handmaids, namely Bilhah and Zilpah; this too recoiled upon him, since he himself was for this reason carried off into slavery by the Ishmaelites into Egypt and sold as a slave to Potiphar. The third was that the brothers cast their eyes upon foreign women; this also recoiled upon him, since Potiphar's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph, and when he refused to comply with her, she had him thrown into prison. But these are Rabbinic fables, indeed slanders and blasphemies against Joseph the patriarch and eminently holy Prophet, whose accusation of his brothers was therefore true, not a false slander, as is clear from what I said on Genesis 37:2. More fitting is what Aben-Ezra adds: "But he who is the possessor of understanding" — in Hebrew, he says, means "he who acquires a heart," that is, who obtains knowledge (for knowledge bears the name "heart") — this man loves his soul, that is, his life, so as to prolong it to old age.
Second, others more aptly connect these words to the preceding verse, as if to say: A friend withdraws from the poor man, who, while pursuing the words of promises made to him by friends — that is, while he demands them back — finds that they have no substance, but are empty and void, and therefore obtains nothing from what he pursued.
But our translator, the Chaldean, the Syriac, the Septuagint, and the others refer "he who pursues only words will have nothing" to what follows: "but he who is the possessor of the heart loves his soul" — for these are antithetical. Hence first, our Salazar profoundly takes "heart" to mean a secret; and by "he who pursues words," the revealer of secrets, as if to say: The difference between a prudent and an imprudent man is that the imprudent man, not in control of himself, everywhere betrays his mind by words rashly poured out, and therefore keeps nothing of secret or hidden matters for himself. But the prudent and cautious man — "possessing a heart" — he calls the one who guards and locks up within himself his most prudent counsels.
Second, more plainly, fully, generally, and adequately, he contrasts the pursuer of words with the possessor of understanding and the guardian of prudence — that is, he who feeds on words alone with him who through wisdom possesses a heart — and far prefers the latter, as if to say: He who feeds on words feeds on wind; for words, as soon as they are spoken, go into the wind and vanish. Therefore he will have nothing. But he who feeds on wisdom will possess it; indeed, through it he will become the possessor of a heart, that is, of a mind, so that he may wisely govern and order all its affections, actions, and movements according to the dictate of right reason and divine law. Therefore such a person loves his soul, because he takes the best counsel for it and wins for it eternal happiness and glory. Thus the guardian of wisdom and prudence will find goods both present on earth and eternal in heaven. Hence Jansenius says: The meaning is, as if to say: He who, whether teaching or listening to others, merely pursues words — that is, looks only to the adornment of words, caring only that he speak well and elegantly, not that he bring forth or hear good and useful things; or who acts only to speak or hear, but not also to do what he speaks or hears — he will gain no solid fruit from it: "For it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified." And: "He who does and teaches thus to men will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." But he who "is the possessor of understanding," or, as it is in Hebrew, "of the heart" — that is, he who is sensible, and is not content with words but possesses wisdom within himself and retains it in his mind, continually meditating on the law of God — he truly "loves his soul," that is, himself, because he looks out well for himself and does himself good. And he who not only hears prudence but also keeps it in his mind and works will find good things both in this present age and in the age to come: "For blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it."
Lyranus also adds: "He who pursues only words will have nothing." This, he says, is explained in two ways. In one way, of the student who loves the adornment of words more than good knowledge, and he gains nothing of truth from the teacher, or so little that it is counted as nothing. In another way, of the teacher who has fine words but no deeds, and he will gain no reward from God. And the following text agrees with this, when it says: "But he who is the possessor of understanding" — through the moral virtues, by which the sensitive powers are held in obedience to reason — "loves his soul," because he wills for it the true good, which is the good of virtue. "And the guardian of prudence" — which directs the moral virtues — "will find good things," of grace in the present and of glory in the future. Thus far Lyranus.
Hence St. Thomas, in the Summa, I-II, Question 25, article 7, teaches that only the good love themselves, while the wicked hate themselves, and he proves this from the five properties assigned to love and friendship by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, Book IX, chapter 4: "For each friend," he says, "first, wills his friend to exist and to live; second, wills good things for him; third, works good things for him; fourth, lives with him agreeably; fifth, is in harmony with him, being delighted and saddened by the same things. And according to this, the good love themselves with respect to the inner man, because they will that it be preserved in its integrity, and they desire for it its goods, which are spiritual goods, and they also strive to attain them in works; and they return agreeably to their own heart, because they find there good thoughts in the present, the memory of past goods, and the hope of future goods, from which delight arises. Similarly they do not suffer dissension of will within themselves, because their whole soul tends toward one thing. On the contrary, the wicked do not wish to be preserved in the integrity of the inner man, nor do they desire spiritual goods, nor do they work toward this, nor is it pleasant for them to live with themselves by returning to their heart — because they find there evils both present, past, and future, which they abhor. Nor are they even in harmony with themselves, because of a remorse-stricken conscience, according to the Psalm: 'I will reprove you, and set it before your face.' And by the same reasoning it can be shown that the wicked love themselves according to the corruption of the outer man, while the good do not love themselves in this way."
Therefore he who pursues words is like a chameleon that feeds on air; but he who pursues wisdom, by which he becomes the possessor of understanding, is like a man who eats solid food, by which he is strengthened and enlivened for manly and heroic deeds. The former is a philologist, the latter a philosopher; the former hunts after wordy and empty eloquence, the latter after real and solid wisdom. To the former you may say what a wise man said to a loquacious orator or prattling lawyer: "A river of words begins, and a drop of mind." And what the Lacedaemonian said to the nightingale when, having plucked its feathers, he found very little flesh, as Plutarch testifies in his Laconic Sayings: "You are a voice, and nothing more." For this reason Thales, who was the first of the seven Wise Men of Greece, says according to Laertius, Book I, chapter 1: "Many words do not prove wisdom." For a wise man will speak only when the matter demands it, and will complete his thought in few words. Therefore the fool is a jackdaw, because a chatterer; but the wise man is a swan, because silent and wise in mind. Hence the saying of Gregory Nazianzen, in Epistle 1 to Celeusius who reproached him for his silence: "The swans will sing when the jackdaws have fallen silent." Similar proverbs about the verbose exist among the Greeks and Latins. Synesius in his epistle to Theophilus: "Speech is the lightest thing." Homer, who everywhere calls words epea pteroenta, that is, winged or flying. Juvenal: "The word flies irrevocably." Cicero: "Hermodorus's merchandise is words" — for Hermodorus sold the words and writings of Plato as merchandise. To this belong those well-worn sayings: "More talkative than a turtledove; more vocal than a cicada; The museum of swallows; An Arabian piper; The rattle of Archytas; Dodonaean brass; Daulian crow; Tongue, where are you going? The echo of Telenia; logemporos, who brings nothing besides words; Words instead of flour" — whereas on the contrary the jurist warns that "property is to be increased by substance, not by words. Bandying words; You fight with words, not with action; Do not be moved by the noise of words."
Verse 9: A False Witness Will Not Go Unpunished
9. A FALSE WITNESS WILL NOT GO UNPUNISHED; AND HE WHO SPEAKS LIES WILL PERISH. — Take "lies" as harmful and pernicious ones; for these are full and perfect lies, such as those of slanderers, whisperers, seditious people, heretics, etc., who by their lies and slanders stir up quarrels and wars. Hence the Septuagint translates: "but he who kindles evil will perish by it." For by the just vengeance of God it happens that whisperers, slanderers, seditious people, etc., when their falsehood and perversity are discovered, pay the penalty for it either through the judge, or through the people, or through God, or are involved in the common calamity of the strife and war they stirred up, and are killed and perish along with the combatants. This maxim is repeated; for we heard the same in verse 5, where I explained it more fully.
Verse 10: Delights Do Not Befit a Fool
10. DELIGHTS DO NOT BEFIT A FOOL, NOR DOES IT BEFIT A SERVANT TO RULE OVER PRINCES. — In Hebrew: "Delight or pleasure is not seemly for a fool; how much less for a servant to rule over princes" — repeat: "is not seemly." The Septuagint: "Delights do not profit a fool, and if a servant begins to rule with arrogance, or to rule over a prince and dynasty" — for the Greek dynasteuein means both, as the author of the Greek Catena notes. First, Vatablus explains it thus, as if to say: Delight does not befit a fool, that is, it does not befit a fool to enjoy peace of conscience, which is the highest joy. The reason is that he has a conscience like himself — that is, foolish, reckless, and impious — which breathes nothing but disturbance, tumult, strife, and quarrels; hence he cannot enjoy peace.
Second, others say, as if to say: It does not befit a fool to delight himself with a false opinion of wisdom, and to flatter himself with the persuasion that he is wise — indeed, the eighth of the Wise Men, and the wisest of mortals — as we sometimes see the proud foolishly persuading themselves. For what is more proud than this? What more foolish? Much less does it befit a servant, that is, a common and lowly man, to so exalt himself that he considers himself superior to princes in wisdom or industry, and looks down upon them.
Third, plainly and genuinely, as if to say: It does not befit a fool to indulge in delights, or to be treated delicately by his master and others; much less does it befit a servant to rule, that is, to imperiously preside over and command (for this is meschol) princes. He fittingly compares the fool to a servant, because a servant has a servile, that is, dull and stupid, disposition like a fool; conversely, the fool is a slave to his own foolishness and foolish desire. It is an argument from lesser to greater, as is evident from the Hebrew, as if to say: If it does not befit a fool to enjoy delights, much more does it not befit a servant to rule, and that over princes. For "do not befit" the Hebrew has lo nave, that is, "it is not seemly, it is not beautiful, nor handsome" — that is, it is shameful, unworthy, and very harmful. It is a litotes. The "fool" throughout this book is understood not physically, that is, as one who is mentally incapacitated (for such a one, like a brute, is temperate and takes no more pleasures than nature allows), but ethically, that is, as one who is imprudent, foolish, who stupidly follows his desires and places sense above reason, human things above divine, and carnal things above spiritual.
The a priori reason is that the fool is unbridled and dissolute, who immediately seizes everything he desires, takes pleasure in it, stuffs and intoxicates himself. For such a one, therefore, discipline is fitting rather than delights, chastisement rather than feasting, the rod rather than wine. For a servant, by nature, condition, and disposition, it is fitting to serve, not to rule. Therefore it is unseemly, as if the order of nature were inverted, if delights are given to a fool who does not deserve them, who abuses them, and becomes all the more foolish and insolent — and not to the wise man, who deserves them and uses them rightly, so that he may more easily and pleasantly devote himself to prayer, study, and wisdom. Much more unseemly is it if a stupid servant imperiously dominates wise masters and princes, whose role it is to govern and command — especially since a servant, if elevated to a position of authority, becomes proud and insolent, rules tyrannically, and rages against the free and powerful as though they were his opposites and adversaries in every respect. This seems unworthy, tyrannical, and intolerable, and is often the cause of the overthrow of king and kingdom. Hence the saying in chapter 30:21: "By three things the earth is shaken, and a fourth it cannot endure: by a servant when he reigns; by a fool when he is filled with food; by a hateful woman when she is taken in marriage; and by a handmaid when she is heir to her mistress." Understand these things of servants born and raised in servility, or of those who have a servile disposition and nature, and are therefore dull, base, and abject. For a servant who has been liberally educated, or who excels in wisdom and spirit, is not so much a servant as a free man, and sometimes commands the free and the noble, according to Ecclesiasticus 10:28: "Free men will serve the sensible servant." Thus the sixth king of the Romans was a servant and born of a slave woman, and hence was called Servius Tullius; for when a flame had flickered around his head while he was still a sleeping boy, Tanaquil, the wife of King Priscus Tarquinius, admiring this prodigy, raised Servius, though born of a slave, as her own son, and elevated him to the royal throne, as Valerius Maximus says, Book I, chapter 6. And this Servius was the foremost establisher of laws, as Tacitus says, Book III. So Joseph, the slave of Potiphar, on account of his wisdom and prophecy, was raised by Pharaoh to the rulership of Egypt (Gen. 41:40). But truly, wise servants, when they are elevated to a higher rank or even to kingship, strive greatly for modesty and humility, to mitigate the indignity of the situation and allay the envy of the nobles and win them over. So did Agathocles, who, having been made king of Sicily from a potter, dined on earthenware vessels, so that, mindful of his former humble fortune, he would not set himself above his subjects but consider himself their equal, or even their inferior. Concerning him, Ausonius writes elegantly and wisely in Epigrams, section 1:
"The story is that King Agathocles dined on earthenware And often loaded his sideboard with Samian clay. When he set golden dishes among gem-studded vessels And mixed wealth and poverty together, To one asking the reason he replied: 'I who am king Of Sicily was born of a potter father.' Hold fortune reverently, whoever you are who suddenly Advance rich from a humble place."
Mystically, it does not befit foolish concupiscence to indulge in delights, but rather to be restrained from them, lest it rush like a pig into the mud of gluttony, drunkenness, lust, and other vices. Similarly, it does not befit a servant to dominate his master and prince — that is, the body to dominate the soul, and sense to dominate reason and mind — but rather to be subject to it and governed by it. For if the body obtains dominion over the mind, no spiritual delights will profit it, says the author of the Greek Catena. And he adds: "The saints spend their lives in the continual delights of spiritual things. For to them pertains the saying: 'Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.' But these delights have no place among fools and the wicked." Furthermore, it does not befit a servant — that is, one who serves his own passions and vices — to be elevated to the position of prince or prelate, to rule over the wise and princely, namely the upright and just, who wisely rule over their own desires, mind, and emotions. So Bede says: "The delights of the Scriptures do not befit a heretic, because he does not know how to use them well; nor should he who is still proved to be a servant of sin be placed over others in the governance of the Church."
Verse 11: The Learning of a Man Is Known Through Patience
11. THE LEARNING OF A MAN IS KNOWN THROUGH PATIENCE; AND HIS GLORY IS TO PASS OVER WRONGS. — "Learning" here is understood not as speculative but as practical — namely wisdom, prudence, discretion. For many are learned speculatively who are nonetheless impatient; indeed, speculation not infrequently causes impatience. But he who is wise and prudent is at the same time patient. In Hebrew: "The understanding of a man lengthens his nose," that is, his anger — for anger is seen in the nostrils. Hence the Hebrews call one who is "long of nostrils" slow to anger, and one who is "short" or "narrow of nostrils" they call quick and prone to anger. The meaning therefore is, as if to say: Understanding and wisdom lengthen anger — that is, make a man master of his anger, patient, and longsuffering. For prudence is the mother of patience; for it dictates that in adversity patience is to be exercised and embraced as the only remedy for evils. Symmachus and Theodotion: "the prudence of a man is his longsuffering." The Syriac: "the learning of a man is patience." R. Solomon: "if a man overcomes his anger, he will excel in mind." The Chaldean: "the understanding of a man is to defer his fury." Aben-Ezra: "by the prudence and learning of a man, fury is drawn out." R. Levi: "the prudence of a man prepares his anger to be drawn out, so that he is not easily inflamed when those things occur which usually stir bile." The Septuagint: "a merciful man is longsuffering" — because prudence dictates mercy, namely that the weaknesses, faults, taunts, and injuries of neighbors are to be borne mercifully and patiently. Prudence therefore begets patience through mercy, according to the saying: "Charity is patient" (1 Cor. 13). For mercy too is patient, indeed compassionate.
Now first, St. Gregory, in Homily 35 on the Gospels and in the Pastoral Rule, Part III, Admonition 10, takes these words as referring to teachers; for it is their role to confirm what they teach through patience. "Through the vice of impatience," he says, "the very nurse of virtues, learning, is dissipated. For it is written: 'The learning of a man is known through patience.' Therefore the more anyone is proved to be impatient, the less he is shown to be learned. For he cannot truly impart good things by teaching, if by living he does not know how to bear the faults of others equanimously." Bede and Lyranus agree, who take these words as referring to the Apostles and apostolic men, who sealed their teaching and the preaching of the Gospel by their patience amid so many labors, sorrows, death, and martyrdom. For they showed in reality how true and salutary the teaching of Christ was, since they did not hesitate to die for it, and since they nobly passed over all iniquities — that is, all the alluring wickedness opposed to this teaching — in order to conform themselves and all their actions to it in every way. It is therefore signified that the Apostles confirmed their teaching by two things: by patience and by innocence of life. These authors therefore take "learning" in an active sense — namely, that by which the teacher proves and strengthens what he teaches through patience and holiness.
Second, others take "learning" in a passive sense — namely, that which a disciple receives and draws from a teacher, as if to say: A good disciple shows himself to be zealous for salutary teaching and true wisdom. First, through patience, by which he both patiently listens to the teacher and, from his teaching, bears all adversities equanimously, according to James chapter 1: "But let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger" — for the eagerness to listen, and the slowness to speak, beget slowness to anger. Second, through the avoidance of iniquity, if he passes over wrongs; for this is what the teacher teaches, and wisdom's teaching itself.
Third, Jansenius explains from the Hebrew: The Hebrew, he says, has: "the understanding of a man makes his anger to be drawn out (or deferred)." For he who is understanding and prudent is slow to anger and vengeance, both because he considers that he himself commits many things that are to be punished more severely by God if he continues to be severe toward his neighbor, and because he notices that it is unbecoming to yield to one's passions and to leap immediately to revenge and anger. Furthermore, that anger hinders the mind from discerning the truth, and from the acceleration of revenge, things are usually done that displease afterwards. "For the anger of man does not work the justice of God."
Our Salazar adds his explanation drawn from the Chaldean: The Chaldean translates: "The understanding of a man is to defer fury, and his beauty is to pass over malice." And this agrees with the Hebrew: "the understanding of a man lengthens his nostril." For what else is it to lengthen the nostril than to defer indignation? And to defer anger is to extinguish it — for indignation rages suddenly and subsides suddenly; and so he who does not immediately obey it deceives and eludes it by deferring. And indeed in this deferral of anger, a man's wisdom is especially manifested. For since anger can only be restrained by reason, he who immediately checks its sudden impulses (which are known to be fierce and violent) clearly shows that reason is most vigorous in him. And thus, when injuries have been received, not to grow angry, not to feel indignation, is the greatest proof of wisdom.
This meaning is subtle and fitting, but too narrow; it does not match the full force and weight of the Hebrew sentence and the Vulgate version, nor exhaust its meaning. For the Hebrew "to lengthen the nostril," that is, anger, does not merely mean to defer anger, but to calm it and utterly extinguish it through patience and longsuffering. Fourth, therefore, plainly, fully, and adequately, as if to say: Learning — that is, as the Hebrew has it, understanding and prudence — of a man lengthens his anger, that is, makes him longsuffering, patient, and slow to anger, indeed the master and lord of his anger, to take it up and set it down at will as circumstances require. For true prudence dictates that patience is to be employed in adversity. And therefore "the learning" — that is, the prudence — "of a man is known through patience," as our translator renders it. For from the fact that prudence causes patience, one rightly infers from patience, as from an effect, that prudence is its cause, so that by a true and certain inference, and by an argument from effect to cause, you may conclude: This man is patient; therefore he is prudent, because prudence infallibly causes patience. Conversely, from the cause you infer the effect: Peter is wise; therefore he is also patient. And conversely: Judas is impatient; therefore he is foolish. Conversely: Judas is foolish; therefore he is impatient. Solomon says this to refute the common error. For the common people judge that those who patiently endure insults and injuries are simple-minded and pusillanimous, base and abject. Solomon therefore teaches the contrary here: namely first, that those who patiently endure insults and adversity are remarkably wise and prudent; and second, that those who do not avenge injuries, but pass over them with great spirit and contempt, are magnanimous and glorious. For this is what he adds: "And his glory is to pass over wrongs."
He alludes to the physiognomy of men and animals; for all animals that have short nostrils and breathe moderately are weak and feeble, whereas those that have long and wide nostrils, and draw in a great breath, are strong and sturdy, and fit for bearing great burdens, because they abound in warmth and hence in strength. For they draw in a great breath because they are of great strength, and in order to temper the great heat with which they burn. So those who have long nostrils, as the Hebrew has it — that is, who draw a long breath of patience — are great and strong in spirit for bravely enduring many adversities. But those who have short nostrils — that is, a narrow breath of patience — are small and weak in spirit for enduring adversities, hardships, and heavy burdens. Furthermore, the length of nostrils is a sign of wisdom and prudence, as Aristotle testifies in the Physiognomics. Hence the saying: "Even boys have the nose of a rhinoceros." Thus physics agrees with and serves ethics: namely, the length of nostrils indicates a prudent and brave man, just as the length of soul — that is, patience and longsuffering — is a sign of a wise, strong, and magnanimous soul. Hence Song of Songs 7:4: "Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon, which looks toward Damascus" — on which passage see St. Gregory, Rupert, Philo of Carpathia, our Delrio and Gislerius.
The a priori reason is, first, that the wise and prudent man wisely understands that in this life, which is so unhappy and wretched, many adversities are to be expected and endured, and accordingly prepares himself to bear them easily through patience. For he knows that if he is impatient in them, he will double the evil and the sense of evil: for he will be tortured both by the sense of the evil and by the sense of his own impatience, whereas he would have only a simple pain if he were patient — for he would only be afflicted by the sense of the evil, and he would even diminish and alleviate this through patience. Add that if he is impatient, he will incur the offense of God, and the guilt of new punishment and torment to be inflicted by Him. Therefore he who is wise, in order to avoid this offense and guilt, guards against impatience and strives for patience.
Second, that the wise man prudently understands that the supreme good of this life and of the soul is peace, and that peace is born from patience; therefore in all adversities he embraces patience, so that he may attain the peace of soul so greatly desired. Hence St. Chrysostom, in Homily 33 on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, says: "Gentleness and patience are the root of all philosophy; for which reason a certain wise man said: 'A patient man is of great prudence.'" For as Christ says (Luke 21): "In your patience you shall possess your souls."
Third, that the wise man is of great spirit, and therefore endures great things, according to Seneca's line in the Troades: "The more you are able to do, the more you should patiently bear." Furthermore, he understands that vengeance is the work of an abject and womanish spirit, and therefore beneath him, according to Juvenal, Satire 13: "Vengeance is the delight of a weak and petty spirit; Infer at once from this that no one Rejoices in vengeance more than a woman."
Hence it follows that the measure of wisdom is the measure of patience, and as much as anyone grows in patience, so much does he also grow in wisdom. Hence St. Gregory, in Book II on Ezekiel, Homily 21, says: "It is written: 'The learning of a man is known through patience.' If therefore patience is the index of learning, each person is shown to be learned to the degree that he has been patient." Now there are three degrees of patience: the first is to endure adversities patiently; the second, willingly; the third, to suffer any hardships joyfully. These are the same degrees of wisdom. Hence St. Bernard asserts that this third degree is proper to wisdom, which takes its name from "savor" (sapor), and therefore tastes and savors adversities: "It belongs to virtue," he says, "to bear injuries bravely; to wisdom, to rejoice in tribulations. For to endure the Lord belongs to virtue; but to taste and see that the Lord is sweet belongs to wisdom." See the same author, Sermon 48 on the Song of Songs, and his sermon On Wisdom, Obedience, and Patience.
Fourth, because the wise man more often knows that by anger and vengeance evil is not removed but increased and exacerbated — both his own evil, who suffers it, and that of the enemy or rival who inflicts it — whereas by patience both are softened, calmed, and extinguished.
Finally, the wise man knows that it belongs to a great soul to show oneself superior and above every injury, fortune, and adversity; therefore he nobly despises all things and fixes his mind on God and heaven, as one who is above the world, a citizen of the Angels, a possessor of his soul, a lord of heaven, a son and heir of God.
The exemplar of this wisdom was Christ the Lord, who showed supreme wisdom in supreme patience amid the greatest torments and the most bitter cross; so much so that this patience was a certain proof of His divinity — namely, that He was God who endured such things so calmly and bravely, especially because He endured them because He had said He was God, and to show that He truly was God, as He had said. For unless He had been truthful and holy, He would certainly not have been able to endure such things. A liar and proud boaster would have failed a thousand times in such torments and would have shown his boastfulness and impatience. This is what the Apostle says (Eph. 3:18): "That you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge." Where I treated at length the four dimensions of the cross of Christ, as well as of His patience and charity.
Conversely, St. Chrysostom in the passage already cited says: "The gentle and patient man is therefore called makrothymos, that is, longsuffering, because he has a certain long and great soul — for what is long is also called great; and hope makes the soul long." And Valerius Maximus, Book III: "What else is it to bear oneself longsufferingly in adversity, than to turn raging fortune, conquered by shame, into one's own assistance?"
And his glory is to pass over wrongs.
The Chaldean: "and his beauty (Syriac: praise) is to pass over malice." Aquila: "his glorying is to step over transgression." Symmachus: "his splendor is to step over injustice." First, R. Solomon, Aben-Ezra, Bede, and others explain, as if to say: The glory of a man is to flee iniquity and pursue equity. The honor and distinction of a man, which others confer upon him, consists in passing by crimes with untroubled step. But what does this have to do with the first half of the verse? Second, the Septuagint translates: "but his glorying comes upon the wicked," which the scholiast explains, as if to say: The glorying of the just man is to punish the wicked, for this is the glory and honor of vindicative justice. But this meaning seems to contradict the preceding half of the verse. Hence more plainly and harmoniously the author of the Greek Catena explains, as if to say: While the pious and merciful man suffers, the wicked exult and glory. Third, Jansenius and Vatablus, as if to say: The glory of a man is to overlook the transgression of his brother. For an exalted man dissimulates the faults of others and, as it were, does not see them, because he thinks of higher things and dwells in mind in heaven with God and the Blessed. Fourth, genuinely, plainly, and fittingly to the first half of the verse, as if to say: It is not shameful, as the common people think, but honorable and glorious to pass over with lofty step and exalted spirit the wrongs, transgressions (for this is what the Hebrew pesca means), and injuries inflicted upon oneself — to despise them and leap over them. Hence the Zurich version translates: "a prudent man defers his anger, and by dissembling offenses he becomes greater and greater."
In Hebrew it is abor al pesca; which you may first translate: "to pass by or past transgression or iniquity." For just as pilgrims, when they travel to a distant region, are sometimes laughed at by the children and inhabitants, and are assailed with taunts and insults on account of their foreign dress, language, and customs; yet they, knowing that they are pilgrims, dissimulate all these things, and silently, as if they did not pertain to them, pass by and continue on their way, longing to reach the desired end of their journey. So likewise the wise and patient man, knowing that he is a pilgrim on earth, but a citizen of heaven and a member of God's household, passes over all the injuries, insults, and adversities that he endures in his pilgrimage through this earthly life, dissimulates them, does not care about them, indeed does not even look at them, as though they did not pertain to him, and through patience presses on vigorously toward the heavenly homeland. And he says with the Psalmist: "But I, like a deaf man, did not hear, and like a mute man not opening his mouth" (Ps. 37:14).
Second, you may translate abor al pesca as: "to pass over or leap over transgression." For just as travelers, if they come upon filth, ditches, or sewers, do not walk through them lest they be defiled, but cross over and leap over them by widening their step or jumping — so likewise the wise man with great spirit overcomes and rises above all taunts, insults, and injuries, and despises them as base and trifling things set beneath him, treads them underfoot, and indeed, as if placed in heaven, sees and laughs at them from on high.
St. Chrysostom gives the a priori reason, in Homily 22 on the Epistle to the Romans and 16 on the Epistle to the Ephesians, that the holy and supreme vengeance is to dissimulate and pardon an injury: "Nothing," he says, "so confounds the one who inflicts evil as the strong endurance of the one who suffers, and to render vengeance neither in word nor in deed." St. Basil, in his Homily on Anger: "If you despise your enemy, you will avenge yourself more sharply upon him. For what can be harder for an adversary than to see you bearing a spirit higher than all injuries? Let him bark at you in vain, let him burst with rage within himself." Recently, Philip II, King of Spain, wonderfully patient and master of his anger, when a hasty servant poured ink instead of sand-dust on a letter he had written to the Pope in his own hand, smiled and asked for another sheet to rewrite the letter, saying: "He who does not know how to endure does not know how to reign."
This is what the Hebrew tipharto signifies — that is, "his glory, beauty, ornament, splendor, magnificence." And there is a climax, as if to say: It belongs to the wise man to bear adversities patiently, and so patience is an outstanding wisdom. But to pass over adversities, insults, and injuries — that is, to dissimulate them, despise them, and as it were not see them, not care about them, do nothing — this is not merely great wisdom, but also glory, splendor, and magnificence. For this marks, indeed makes, a man glorious, splendid, and magnificent — one who is above praise and blame, higher than the earth, and beginning to enjoy the fellowship, happiness, and glory of God and the Angels, whom no insults touch.
Again, for "to pass over wrongs" the Hebrew has abor al pesca; hence St. Chrysostom, in Homily 41 on the Acts, dares to say: "Not to take vengeance makes one equal to God." St. Isidore, Book II of the Soliloquies: "It is a great virtue," he says, "not to harm the one by whom you were harmed; it is great strength, if even when harmed you forgive; it is great glory, if you spare someone you could have harmed." And even Seneca: "It belongs to a great soul," he says, "to despise injuries, etc. It is the mark of a petty and wretched man to bite back, like mice and ants, which, if you turn your hand toward them, turn their feeble mouths; they think they are being harmed if they are touched." The Emperor Theodosius provided a notable example, who enacted a constitution in these words, in the single law, chapter Si quis: "If anyone," he says, "ignorant of modesty and devoid of shame, should think to assail our name with wanton and insolent cursing, and if he be a turbulent detractor of our times through drunkenness, we do not wish him to be subjected to punishment, nor do we wish him to endure anything harsh or severe: for if it proceeded from levity, it should be despised; if from insanity, it is most worthy of pity; if from injury, it should be forgiven." A saying truly worthy of so great a prince, and one that princes should display inscribed in golden letters in their halls.
Socrates, the foremost teacher of moral philosophy, saw this as if through a shadow, and confirmed his teaching with a wonderful gentleness and patience of character, to such a degree that he always bore with a calm and tranquil spirit not only unworthy words but even blows — not only from strangers but even from his wife Xanthippe — and at last patiently and bravely endured imprisonment and death for the truth, namely for the assertion and worship of the one God, inflicted upon him by his own citizens, as Laertius testifies in his Life.
Verse 12: As the Roaring of a Lion, So Is the Wrath of a King
12. AS THE ROARING OF A LION, SO ALSO IS THE WRATH OF A KING; AND AS DEW UPON THE GRASS, SO ALSO IS HIS CHEERFULNESS. — The Chaldean: "The anger of the king roars like a lion, and like dew upon the grass is his will or good pleasure." Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion: "his grace." The Syriac: "his benevolence." For this is what the Hebrew ratson means. Vatablus: "clemency," as if to say: "As grass turns green by the dew, so the people grow and gather strength by the clemency of the king." The Septuagint: "the threats of a king are like the roaring (Lucifer of Cagliari, in his Apology for St. Athanasius, reads 'groanings') of a lion." For "lion" the Hebrew has kepir, that is, a young lion of middle age, midway between a cub and a full-grown lion. For because, like young men, he is hungry and has a great appetite, he is most eager for prey, and so he roars, bellows, groans, and rages. Similar to this is the anger of a king, whether it be just or unjust. St. Augustine, in Epistle 68 to Januarius, applies this maxim to the just anger of a king, where he says that the Circumcellion heretics had tried to stir up the Emperor's anger against the Catholics, but God turned it against the heretics themselves: "It is written," he says: "'The threats of a king and the anger of a lion make no difference.' The slanderous enemies forced Daniel to be cast into the den of lions; his innocence conquered their malice; he was lifted out unharmed, and they themselves were cast in and perished. Similarly your predecessors threw Caecilian and his associates to be consumed by the royal anger; but when his innocence was vindicated, you suffer from those same kings what your forebears wanted them to suffer, since it is written: 'He who prepares a pit for his neighbor will himself fall into it.'' Yet this maxim better fits the unjust anger of a king, as will soon be evident.
The first purpose and aim of this verse is to show how much subjects ought to reverence the king and obey him, lest they incur his anger, which is as fearsome as a lion's. For what the lion is among animals, the king is among peoples — for the lion is the king of animals. Hence Amos 3:8: "The lion has roared — who will not fear?" The second purpose is to warn kings to restrain their anger, lest, if they leave it untamed, or even yield to it, they rage and tear the people like lions. So R. Levi. Hence St. Chrysostom, addressing a king in Homily 4 on Matthew, warns him to contain and tame his anger as if it were a wild lion. And Seneca, in On Clemency, Book I, chapter 5: "Cruel and inexorable anger," he says, "does not befit a king. For he does not rise much above the one to whom he makes himself equal by being angry. But if he gives life, if he gives dignity to those in danger of losing it and who deserve to lose it, he does what is permitted to no one but the one who has power over all things." And so, in the same book, chapter 7, he wisely advises kings: "If the gods, being placable and just, do not immediately pursue the offenses of the powerful with thunderbolts, how much more fitting is it for a man set over men to exercise his rule with a gentle spirit, and to consider whether the state of the world is more pleasing to the eye and more beautiful on a serene and clear day, or when frequent crashes shake everything and fires flash here and there? And yet the face of a quiet and moderate rule is no different from that of a serene and shining sky; a cruel kingdom is turbulent and darkened with shadows, among those who tremble and are terrified by sudden noise, and even he who disturbs everything is himself not unshaken."
The third purpose is to warn those who elect kings and princes not to choose a king or prince who is irascible and unable to control his anger. For if such a person becomes king, he will ravage the people like a lion through plundering, slaughter, and robbery, and no one will be able to resist him. Such was Nero, who raged most cruelly against his citizens, against the Senate, against the Apostles, and against all of Rome. Hence the Apostle says (2 Tim. 4:17): "I was delivered from the mouth of the lion" — that is, of Nero. Therefore those who wish well for the commonwealth should choose a king who is by nature gentle and calm, just as bees choose a king that lacks the common sting and is placid. "Bees are the most irascible," says Seneca in On Clemency, Book I, chapter 19, "and the most pugnacious for their body size, and they leave their stings in the wound; but the king himself has no sting, etc. Let it shame us not to derive our customs from these small creatures, when the human mind ought to be all the more moderate as it does more harm." And after some further remarks: "He is mistaken who thinks a king is safe where nothing is safe from the king; but security must be purchased by mutual security. Clemency will keep the king safe in the open: the one impregnable fortress is the love of citizens." And near the end of the chapter: "Closest to the gods is he who conducts himself after the nature of the gods — beneficent and generous, and powerful for good. This is to be aspired to, this is to be imitated: to be considered greatest in such a way that one is at the same time considered best."
Furthermore, the anger of a king is fittingly compared to the roaring of a lion. First, because a lion is prone to anger, and is almost always angry, and its anger is heavy; therefore it roars and rages terribly. Hear Pliny, Book VIII, chapter 16: "The tail is the indicator of a lion's mood, just as ears are for horses. When still, it shows a calm, gentle, and almost friendly disposition — which is rare; for anger is more frequent. At first, the ground is struck; as the anger increases, the flanks are lashed, as a kind of self-incitement." Just so, kings are by nature prone to anger; for since they are exalted and lofty, they do not bear being injured or despised even in the slightest. Hence, if this happens, they become angry, indignant, and roar. Hence the poet Seneca, in his sixth tragedy: "The anger of kings is always heavy." And Seneca the philosopher, in On Anger, Book III, chapter 30: "We are disturbed," he says, "by trivial and empty things. The color red excites a bull; the asp rises at a shadow; everything that is wild and rabid by nature is startled by empty things. The same happens in quiet and dull dispositions — they are struck by suspicion of things, to the point that they sometimes call slight kindnesses injuries." Thus kings, not the wise and serious but the proud and fierce, take offense and grow indignant at the shadows of insults.
Second, because just as a lion is both wrathful and strong, and its anger sharpens its strength, and conversely its strength sharpens its anger — so in a king, power is joined to anger, and is therefore formidable. For as Seneca says in his Proverbs: "It is a thunderbolt when wrath dwells with power." Hear St. Basil, Homily 9 on the Hexaemeron: "Together with the lion, there is a courage and a propensity to the blazing of anger innate in it, a solitary life, devoid of fellowship with those of its own kind. For like a tyrant among irrational animals, it does not accept equal honors or associations with others, but scorns them." Hence the author of the Greek Catena: "The threats of kings," he says, "are rightly compared to the roaring of lions. For if it seems good to them, they immediately kill without a hearing. For who, if they wish, will prevent them? Since the power to execute is joined to their will."
Third, the roar of a lion is so terrible that all animals are stricken and stunned by it — to the point that they stand as if thunderstruck and do not move from their place, so that they cannot flee but are seized and torn apart by the approaching lion. The lion therefore freezes beasts far from it with its roar, and then runs to them and kills them. Similarly, the voices, edicts, and commands of kings strike all people, however remote, and no one can escape them. For the king's officers are immediately at hand to execute them. Hear St. Basil in the passage cited: "To the lion, nature also gave such instruments for producing its voice that very many animals, far swifter than the lion itself, are often captured by its roar alone." St. Ambrose, in Book VI of the Hexaemeron, chapter 3, following St. Basil in his customary way: "The lion," he says, "proud by the fierceness of its nature, does not know how to mingle with other kinds of beasts, but like a king it disdains the company of the many. For what beast would dare to associate with it? In whose voice there naturally resides such terror that many creatures, which by their speed could escape its attack, are stunned as if struck by some force by the sound of its roar, and collapse?"
Fourth, the lion through anger becomes savage and rages; so also a king through anger strips off his humanity, puts on a beast and a lion, indeed rages like a fury — anger is a wild beast, fury is a madness. Hear Seneca, On Anger, Book I, chapter 1: "Certain wise men have called anger a brief insanity, etc. To see that those whom anger has possessed are insane, look at their very appearance. For just as the certain signs of madness are a bold and threatening countenance, a gloomy brow, a fierce face, a quick step, restless hands, changed color, and frequent and more violent sighs — so the signs of the angry are the same. Their eyes blaze and flash, a great redness spreads over their whole face, blood surging from the deepest organs, their lips tremble, their teeth are clenched, their hair bristles and stands on end, their breath is forced and hissing, their joints make sounds as they twist themselves, they groan and bellow, their speech is broken with half-formed words, their hands are frequently clapped together, the ground is stamped by their feet, and their whole body is agitated, presenting a foul and horrible sight — a face of those who are disfiguring and swelling themselves." He then adds that all animals exacerbate their ferocity through anger: "Foam covers the mouths of boars; teeth are sharpened by grinding; the horns of bulls are tossed into the air, and sand is scattered by the stamping of their feet; lions roar; the necks of irritated serpents swell; the aspect of rabid dogs is grim. No animal is so terrible, so destructive by nature, that there does not appear in it, if anger has invaded, an increase of new ferocity."
Fifth, natural scientists report that the lion dies from anger and rage, and therefore groans and weeps as it dies. Hence Pliny, in the passage cited: "It is believed," he says, "that the dying lion bites the ground and sheds a tear in death" — namely from rage and fury. Hence Lucifer also reads: "The threats of the king are like the groanings of a lion." So not infrequently princes, from anger and fury — especially if they cannot vent their anger and take revenge — are struck by apoplexy and expire, or are killed by those they attack. See Seneca, On Anger, Book I, chapters 2 and 3.
Sixth, the roar of a lion is the harbinger of death. For when a lion roars at someone, it soon springs upon him, tears him apart, kills him, and devours him. So also "the indignation of a king is a messenger of death," as he said in chapter 16, verse 14. And just as a lion cannot bring back to life the one it has mauled, so also a king cannot recall to life the one he has killed in anger, even if he repents of his deed and has changed his anger to clemency, says the anonymous author in the Greek Catena.
Furthermore, lions lay waste to entire cities and provinces. Hence Polybius, cited by Pliny in the passage mentioned, says that lions in their old age prey upon men, "and then besiege the cities of Africa; and for this reason he had seen them crucified in the company of Scipio, so that the others might be deterred from harm by the fear of a similar punishment." So an angry and raging king plunders and devastates entire cities and the whole kingdom. Hence Ezekiel, comparing King Jehoiakim of Judah to a young lion (ch. 19:5): "She took," he says, "one of her cubs, she made him a lion who walked among lions, and he became a lion; and he learned to seize prey and to devour men; he learned to make widows and to bring their cities to desolation; and the land was desolated, and its fullness, by the voice of his roaring."
Seneca rightly exclaims, in On Clemency, Book I, last chapter: "What evil is this, good gods — to kill, to rage, to delight in the sound of chains, to strike off the heads of citizens, to shed much blood wherever one goes, to terrify and put to flight by one's very appearance? What other life would there be if lions and bears reigned? If power were given to serpents and every most harmful creature over us? Those creatures, devoid of reason, which we condemn for their savagery, spare their own kind, and among beasts a similarity of nature is a guarantee of safety. But among men, rage does not restrain itself even from those who are closest."
Seventh, lions abandon their anger and roaring if they hear the crowing of a cock, if they see fires, or wheels spinning around, or if you throw a cloak or garment over their eyes — for these things terrify them. Hence Pliny in the cited passage teaches that the way to capture a lion is to cast a veil over its head: "In a scarcely credible manner," he says, "that great ferocity becomes torpid, and with even a light covering cast over its head, it is bound without resistance — clearly all its power lies in its eyes." So wrathful kings and tyrants fear shadows and hold the most trifling things suspect: they are terrified by gatherings and crowds of people, thinking themselves the target, themselves sought for death, as happened to Nero. Especially if their eyes are covered — that is, their head — by the threat of a higher or greater power that would strip them of their authority, they immediately abandon their spirit and anger. Truly Seneca says in Oedipus: "He who rules his scepter with harsh and cruel command Fears those who fear him: the fear returns to its author." And in the same author's Thyestes, Act 3: "While I stood on high, I never ceased to tremble, And feared the very sword at my own side." This is what Job says in chapter 24, verse 22: "And when he stands, he will not trust his own life." For as St. Chrysostom says in Homily 2 on Matthew: "Greater power is always subject to greater fear. For just as the branches of trees planted on high are moved even if a light breeze blows, so even the rumor of a slight report disturbs exalted men." Thus "when King Herod heard of the coming of the Magi, he was troubled" (Matt. 2). "The Emperor Domitian was so fearful and suspicious that he lined the walls of the porticoes where he was accustomed to walk with phengite stone, from whose reflection he could see by the images whatever was happening behind him," says Suetonius in his Life, chapter 14. Truly Petrarch, Dialogue 95: "Contemplate," he says, "Gaius, Nero, Domitian, Commodus, Bassianus, etc., and you will see the usual and common end of tyrants — either the sword or poison."
AND AS DEW UPON THE GRASS, SO ALSO IS HIS CHEERFULNESS. — With another metaphor and comparison (which is customary for the Hebrews), he completes the antithesis. For he compared the anger of a king to the roaring of a lion; now he opposes to it the cheerfulness and benevolence of a king, and compares it to dew on account of many analogies. First, just as the morning dew tempers the heat of the sun, and moistens, refreshes, and cheers the grass withered by the heat of yesterday's sun — and likewise cheers men, who seem to behold in so many drops of dew so many precious pearls, which both delight the sight and mitigate the heat. Indeed, Pliny (Book IX, ch. 33) teaches that dew, when it falls into an open shell and is solidified by heavenly force, especially that of a thunderbolt, turns into a pearl. So likewise the serene and cheerful face of a king wipes away the fears and sorrows of his subjects, cheers them, delights them, and raises them to the hope of great things.
Second, just as the dew breathes a pleasant breeze and vital breath upon living creatures and all that lives, so likewise a king, looking upon his people with a cheerful face, seems to breathe courage, vigor, and life into them.
Third, dew is rich, and instills a rich and almost oily juice into buds, seeds, and plants, and thus by irrigating them makes them fat, plump, and fruitful. So likewise a king by his benevolence, generosity, and beneficence nourishes, enriches, and heaps all good things upon his subjects.
Fourth, dew gently and gradually, imperceptibly and sweetly, settles upon the grass, and thus supplies the vital juice by which they grow and develop into leaves, fruit, and flowers. So also the affability and gentleness of a king gently and sweetly flow into his subjects, and make them grow and abound in riches and delights. On the other hand, the anger and cruelty of a king is like a stormy rain, which carries with it lightning and thunder, by which it flattens, devastates, kills, and destroys crops and grass. Hence St. Chrysostom, in his Sermon on Gentleness, Volume V: "Anger," he says, "is like a thunderbolt and a great storm in the soul, and drives mad whoever serves it." Hence the birth, life, and kingdom of Christ, because most gentle and most sweet, is compared to dew (Isaiah 45:8): "Drop down dew, you heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One." Where I said much about dew and its symbols.
Mystically, Bede, Baynus, and Jansenius take these words as referring to Christ, who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. For Christ at the judgment will appear cheerful and gentle to the just, like dew, and terrible to the unjust, like a lion. For He Himself, as the lion of the tribe of Judah, will roar against them, thundering the sentence of eternal damnation: "Depart, you cursed, into everlasting fire." His favor and cheerful countenance toward the just and holy, like dew irrigating the grass, will refresh them after the sorrows and crosses of this present life, and will make them flourish in all grace and glory in the house of God forever.
Verse 13: A Foolish Son Is the Grief of His Father
13. A FOOLISH SON IS THE GRIEF OF HIS FATHER; AND A QUARRELSOME WIFE IS LIKE A ROOF THAT CONSTANTLY DRIPS. — In Hebrew: "The destructions of a father are a foolish son, and like a continual dripping are the contentions of a wife." Symmachus: "and a wife's quarrels are like hastening drops." For just as there is a back-and-forth of drops in the rain, so there is of insults in a quarrel. Aquila: "and a continual dripping are the contentions of a wife." The Septuagint: "A foolish son is a shame to his father, and the impure vows of a harlot's wages." The Chaldean: "A foolish son is heavy upon his father like sour grapes (wild grapes that never ripen and become sweet); and like a dripping that drips are the quarrels of a wife." The Syriac: "A foolish son is the confusion of his father, and like dripping drops are the thoughts of a wife." Vatablus: "A foolish son is the calamity of his father, and a quarrelsome wife is like a roof that perpetually drips." R. Solomon explains it thus: A continual dripping and rains flowing into the house vex the household members and drive them out of the house, and the quarrels of a bad wife do the same. Aben-Ezra translates: "The misfortunes of a father are a foolish son, and a drip that drives out are the quarrels of a wife," as if to say: A demented son is the cause of adversities befalling his parent; sharp-tongued yet weak; whence what they cannot obtain by force and arms, they try to extort by words and complaints; they are especially irritable when pregnant and carrying a female child in the womb, the physical cause of which is given by Peter of Abano, the distinguished physician, in his commentary on the Problems of Aristotle, book X, chapter 35. Hence Menander says: "A wife is a storm in the household for men." Ovid, in book II of the Art of Love: "The wife's dowry is quarrels." Juvenal, Satire 6: There is scarcely a case in which a woman has not Started a lawsuit. And shortly after: The bed in which a bride lies always has quarrels and alternating disputes; Very little sleeping is done in it. Certainly Socrates, harassed by the quarrels of Xanthippe, had already become so hardened to them that he was no more disturbed by them than if he heard the creaking of a well-pulley; and he used to say that at home he learned from her the tolerance that he needed to use in public. See Laertius, book II, chapter 5. Let husbands who have married Xanthippes imitate Socrates. Terence in the Eunuch: I know the nature of women: They refuse when you want them; when you don't want them, they desire it all the more. St. Jerome, book I against Jovinian, cites this from Varius Geminus: "He who does not quarrel is a bachelor." Xystus the Pythagorean in his Manual: "If you want to fight, take a wife and beget children." There exists here near Rome on the Tiburtine Way an inscription on a monument, cited by Jovianus Pontanus in his book On Obedience, Volaterranus in his Philologia, and others; and it reads: "Hey, traveler, a miracle! Here lie a husband and wife who did not quarrel. Who we are, I will not say. But she herself will say: Here Baebius, the drunkard, calls me a drunkard. Hey, wife, even dead you quarrel!"
Note: The Septuagint derives the Hebrew מדיני midiene, that is contentions, quarrels, by dropping the yod, from נדה nede, that is harlotry, namely the payment given to a harlot, from the root נדה nada, meaning removed, put far away, drove away; because this payment, being as it were sordid and stained with the crime of fornication, ought to be kept away from the holy temple and its sacred offerings. Hence Ezekiel chapter 16, verse 33, calls with paragogic nun נדנין nedanain the gifts and payments of a harlot. For this reason, therefore, the Septuagint translates: nor are vows offered from a harlot's payment considered pure. It alludes to that which was sanctioned by God: "You shall not offer the wages of a prostitute, nor the price of a dog in the house of the Lord your God, etc., because both are an abomination," Deuteronomy 23:18. See what was said there, and Philo in his elegant oration whose title is, That the wages of a harlot are not to be received.
Tropologically, the Author of the Greek Catena says: The wages of a harlot, he says, is the impurity of the soul, whose offering cannot please God. To this St. Ambrose accords, book III, epistle 19 to Constantius: "The whole world, he says, is the possession of the wise man since he uses the whole of it as if it were his own. Why then is a brother defrauded? Why is a hired man cheated? Not great, he says, are the gains from the wages of a harlot (Proverbs 19), that is, of this slippery frailty. The harlot herself is not particular, but public. Not one woman, but every wandering desire, is a harlot." But the Vulgate version, being more fitting and more conformable to the Hebrew, is also truer and more genuine. they drive out; and just as a dripping roof drives the members of the household out of the house, so womanly quarrels, which never cease but always drip, likewise drive them out of the house. R. Levi says: A foolish child is calamity itself to a parent, and ruin because of the violent anger and grief to which he succumbs on account of the wicked conduct of the son. The same parent is also most grievously tormented when he perceives quarrels and disputes being sown by his wife, just as he is vexed by a constant dripping continuously flowing into the house; for thereby it comes about that he considers it most burdensome to remain at home, and the same happens because of a seditious woman.
Bede by the quarrelsome woman understands heresy and heretics, who drip nothing but disputes and quarrels, by which they overthrow the house of the Church. But this is a mystical interpretation.
Therefore, literally, Solomon here assigns two things that are, as it were, synonymous, being of the same kind and name (for a foolish son is often either born from or raised by a foolish, imprudent, and quarrelsome mother), which are most troublesome to a husband and cause him severe grief. The first is a foolish son, that is, one who is imprudent, undisciplined, wayward, disobedient, rebellious, drunken, quarrelsome, etc.; for his folly, that is, his wickedness and depraved morals, are attributed to the father, as if he taught him those ways, or overlooked them and did not correct them. See what was said at chapter 10, verse 1, and chapter 13, verse 1. The second is a quarrelsome wife, who by her frequent disputes and complaints, like drops constantly falling, pounds and strikes the ears and spirit of her husband, and at last wears through, so as to drive him into anger, impatience, sadness, and continual grief that consumes him. For just as drops continuously falling gradually hollow out a stone, so the constant quarrels of a wife hollow out and exhaust the heart of a husband, however strong and adamantine. Again, and more fittingly, our translator refers the dripping (as the Hebrew has it) to roofs, as if to say: Just as roofs constantly dripping eat away beams, stones, flooring, pavements, and destroy the whole house, making it uninhabitable, and therefore compel the inhabitants to move elsewhere: so also a wife who constantly quarrels almost compels the husband to give her a bill of divorce and marry another, which was formerly lawful for Jews, or at least to make a separation now permitted to Christians, so that he may separate himself from her bed and company, and indeed move to other houses, lands, and regions. For this is more pleasant than spending one's whole life in complaints and quarrels: for this is not a human but a canine life, and death rather than life. And not only the husband, but also the servants, maids, sons, and daughters, impatient with and weary of her quarrels, she compels to aspire elsewhere and migrate. That this is the meaning is clear from chapter 27, verse 15, where this maxim is repeated: "A constantly dripping roof, he says, and a quarrelsome woman are compared." For there the Septuagint translates: drops drive a man out of his house on a winter day; so also a scolding woman from his own house.
Moreover many women are prone to disputes and quarrels because by their nature they are proud, talkative,
Verse 14: House and Riches Are Given by Parents
14. HOUSE AND RICHES ARE GIVEN BY PARENTS: BUT A PRUDENT WIFE IS PROPERLY FROM THE LORD. — In Hebrew: house and riches (are) the inheritance of fathers; but from the Lord a wife of understanding; Aquila and Theodotion: knowing; the Syriac: from the Lord a wife is betrothed to a man; the Chaldean: from God a woman is given to a man; the Septuagint: house and substance fathers divide to children; but from the Lord a woman is fitted to a man; St. Ambrose: from God a wife will be prepared for a man; the Author of the Greek Catena: but God unites a wife to a husband.
By house understand both a house properly so called, and the family, the splendor, dignity, and nobility of the family; for these are transmitted from parents to children.
Note the word properly, as if to say: A prudent wife is a proper and singular gift of God. Thus Sarah was given by God to Abraham, and another to Tobias, Rebecca to Isaac, Rachel to Jacob.
You will say: A house and wealth are also a notable gift of God. I reply: That is true; but because those things are left by parents as an inheritance to children, whereas a suitable and prudent wife, although she must be diligently sought, is nevertheless especially procured by God, and must be asked of Him; for although God by His providence governs, cares for, and procures all things, yet He more especially cares for and procures the greater and more necessary things: and such is a faithful, wise wife, of agreeable manners and suited to her husband's temperament, because on her depend the fidelity, peace, salvation, and predestination of the husband, the children, and the whole family. Just as therefore in a vocation to the religious state, this religious order rather than that one suits this particular person, and is prepared by God, if one is willing to consult, hear, and follow God who calls: so likewise one who is called to marriage ought to rely not so much on his own or his parents' fancy, or desire, or diligence and industry, but on God, and repeatedly beseech Him to direct him to a suitable and fitting wife. In a similar sense he said in chapter 16, verse 1: "It belongs to man to prepare the soul, and to the Lord to govern the tongue," as I explained there.
The Septuagint for aptatur (is fitted) has the Greek ἁρμόζεται: which word is very well suited to the present matter, and has emphasis; for ἁρμόζω means the same as to fit together, adapt, square, compose, glue together, temper: and it is especially appropriate to musicians, who blend together different voices, low, high, and middle, so as to produce a sweet harmony and concord. Similar ought to be the harmony, that is the composition, fitting together, congruence, and consonance between husband and wife; and this God alone can bring about. And so by this maxim is signified not only that marriage, or the union of husband and wife, was instituted by God, as St. Chrysostom explains in homily 23 on the Epistle to the Romans, and Pope Innocent, XXVI, C. 3 Deinde, § Si vero: for this is common to all marriages, even quarrelsome and very bad ones; but in addition it is signified in particular that for a prudent and upright man, a prudent and upright wife is prepared by God, and that this is a great and special gift of God.
The Wise Man had said in the preceding verse how great an evil a quarrelsome wife is: now he provides the remedy for the evil, namely that a prudent wife should be sought, one therefore of composed manners, gentle and obedient; and he asserts that such a wife is a gift of God, and therefore must be constantly entreated from God. For not every wife, even a good one, is suitable for any husband — for example, a sad one is not suitable for a cheerful man, nor a poor one for a rich man, nor a common woman for a prince, nor a generous one for a miser, nor a gentle one for a stern man, and so on; but a gentle wife for a gentle man, a cheerful for a cheerful, a stern for a stern, a rich for a rich, a noble for a noble, a poor for a poor, and so between husband and wife there must be a proportion and congruence of affections, manners, and conditions, such as exists among voices in musical harmony. Since therefore God alone knows this harmony, inasmuch as He alone knows and foresees the inward affections, conditions, and weaknesses of husband and wife, and therefore He alone knows which wife is suited to which husband, hence He alone can either procure or bring about this harmony of spouses and marriage. But because most people, when seeking wives, do not consider this harmony, but the wealth, nobility, beauty, etc. of wives, hence we see many troublesome and unhappy marriages everywhere. For what pleasure, what consonance, what happiness can there be, where what the husband wants, the wife does not want; what he loves, she hates; what he rejoices in, she is saddened by? What recreation is there in living with such a person, and being intimately joined to her, and that for one's whole life, when she is utterly opposed to your manners and sensibilities? I pass over the disputes, quarrels, jealousies, etc. that arise from this, and not rarely bring ruin both present and eternal to both parties. Indeed many are damned because they obtained wives unsuited to them, and therefore troublesome and quarrelsome.
Moreover this harmony of husband and wife, for the marriage to be pleasant and good, is manifold and requires many things, namely first, a consonance of religion, faith, and piety, so that the wife is not heretical, unfaithful, and impious, but agrees with her husband in faith and piety; second, a consonance of manners; third, a consonance of conditions; fourth, a consonance of love; fifth, a consonance in tempering prosperity and adversity; sixth, a consonance of peace and concord in the family.
Therefore, a wife who is understanding and prudent is first one who accommodates herself to the religion and piety of her husband, indeed one who recalls to the way a husband who is straying from religion and piety, and leads him back to it, as St. Monica brought back both Patricius and her son St. Augustine, Clotilde brought back Clovis, St. Helena brought back Constantine, etc. For this is the first and most necessary harmony of marriage. Hear St. Ambrose on Luke chapter 16, book VIII, at the beginning: "Fathers divide house and substance to their children; but from God a wife is prepared for a man: whoever reads this in the Greek does not think it is contradictory; for the Greek well said ἁρμόζεται. For harmony is said to be the fitting and apt connection of all things joined together. There is harmony when the pipes of an organ, coupled in order, duly maintain the grace of a melody, and the proper arrangement of the strings preserves concord. And so marriages do not have their harmony when a Gentile woman is not lawfully joined to a Christian man." And after some further remarks he concludes: "Therefore where there is marriage, there ought to be harmony; where there is harmony, God joins; where there is no harmony, there is strife and dissension, which is not from God; because God is love. Therefore do not dismiss your wife, lest you deny God as the author of your union; for if one must tolerate and amend the ways of strangers, much more those of a spouse."
This is the first reason why one should not marry a wife who is unfaithful or heretical, because namely she breaks the harmony of faith and of the marriage. Two other reasons are given by the same St. Ambrose, book I On Abraham, chapter 9, namely first, that she who lacks faith cannot be chaste and of good morals; for faith is the basis and foundation of chastity and all other virtues; second, that there is a danger that an unfaithful and heretical wife may pervert her husband, and make him like herself, unfaithful and heretical. "For with a holy person, he says, you will be holy, and with a perverse person you will be perverted. If this is true in other relationships, how much more in marriage, where there is one flesh and one spirit; but how can love agree if faith disagrees? And therefore beware, O Christian, of giving your daughter to a Gentile or a Jew. Beware, I say, of taking to yourself a Gentile or Jewish woman, or a foreigner, that is, a heretical woman or any woman alien to your faith, as a wife. The first bond of marriage is chastity. If she worships idols, whose adulteries are celebrated; if she denies Christ, who is the teacher and rewarder of modesty, how can she love modesty? If she is a Christian, it is not enough, unless both of you are initiated in the Sacrament of baptism. Together you must rise at night for prayer, and with united prayers beseech God. There is another notable mark of chastity, if you believe that the marriage you have obtained was given to you by God. Whence Solomon also says: A wife is prepared for a man by God. Those who are unequal in faith cannot believe this, so as to think that the grace of marriage has been bestowed on them by Him whom they do not worship. Reason teaches this, but examples move us more. Often allurement has deceived even stronger husbands, and made them depart from religion. And therefore either consult love, or beware of error. Therefore in marriage, religion is first to be sought."
So Nonna, the mother of St. Gregory Nazianzen, showed herself to be a teacher of faith and piety to her husband Gregory the Elder, as their son St. Gregory Nazianzen says in oration 12.
Second, a prudent wife is one who conforms herself to her husband's manners, and indeed shapes and forms her own to match his. For it is not enough for a wife that she be chaste, upright, and holy; but in addition she must comply with and defer to her husband, so as to produce in the consonance of manners of the marriage a sweet and pleasing harmony. For just as in a harp, lyre, or organ it is not enough for each string or pipe to produce a pleasant sound by itself, but each must be tempered to another, and so all must be blended together in proper proportion, so that the sound of one fittingly answers and accompanies another, and thus all together produce one harmonious concert: so likewise in society, especially in marriage, it is not enough for each to be good in themselves, but each must accommodate themselves to the manners and sensibilities of the other, so that all together may produce one concert of civil society. Again, just as matter must be prepared and disposed with certain qualities, for example wood with dryness and heat, that are congruent with the form, namely fire, in order that then the form of fire may be introduced into it: so likewise a wife must be congruent with her husband's manners, so as to produce one marriage and, as it were, one domestic compound with him. For in this the wife bears the analogy of matter, the husband of form. For this reason Socrates used to say that men ought to obey the laws of the state, and wives the manners of the husbands with whom they live; for the husband is the norm for a spouse. Equity therefore teaches that wives should obey husbands as their head. St. Ambrose says admirably, book III, epistle 25 to the Church of Vercelli, near the end: "A wife, he says, should defer to her husband, not serve him; she should show herself to be governed, not coerced. She is unworthy of marriage who is worthy of a quarrel. And the husband should direct his wife as a pilot, honor her as a partner in life, and share with her as a co-heir of grace."
Third, a prudent wife is one who seeks or creates a consonance of lot and condition with her husband. Therefore a prudent maiden, if she is of modest fortune, will not consent to marry a noble or princely husband, unless she wishes to be his handmaid, not his wife; but she will seek a husband of her own lot, condition, and station. For the first law of marriage is: If you wish to marry fittingly, marry your equal. So Ovid in the Epistle of Deianira to Hercules. The same was the opinion of the Seven Sages of Greece and of very many others, as Tiraquellus shows at length, law 5 on Marriage, number 16 and following. Hence Ausonius presents Solon speaking thus: Join spouse with equal spouse: what is unequal, disagrees. But if by some chance a maiden happens to be given to an unequal husband, say a richer or nobler one, she will strive by her own labor, her virtue, and her prudence to compensate for what is lacking in wealth or nobility, and so to equal or surpass the wealth and lineage of her husband. Just as therefore when a branch of one tree is grafted onto another, it conforms and adapts itself in all respects to the condition of the other, so that it seems not grafted but naturally grown: so likewise a wife, grafted as it were onto her husband through marriage, should accommodate and adapt herself to him in all things. Hence, just as for a shoot of one tree to be grafted onto another, it must be of the same condition and kind; for a shoot of a walnut tree is not grafted onto a pear tree, but onto another of the walnut kind; nor is a pear grafted onto a walnut, but onto a pear of another species: so likewise for a wife to be grafted onto a husband, she should take care to choose one who is of the same lot and condition as herself. Hence Cleobulus used to advise that one should marry an equal wife; for if you marry from a higher family, he said, you will acquire not relatives but masters. So Stobaeus, sermon 3 On Temperance.
Fourth and most importantly, a prudent wife is one who produces consonance of love with her husband; for this is the bond, knot, and soul of marriage. Therefore she will love no one but her husband, will fix all her affection on him, and hand over her heart to him; what he loves, she too will love; what he hates, she too will hate. For where there is love, God is the author and mediator of the marriage; but where there is hatred, the devil is the best man of the marriage. Hear the author of the Imperfect Work in St. Chrysostom, homily 1 on Matthew: "Boaz, he says, is interpreted 'in strength,' or 'strength in him,' or 'prevailing,' who according to the command of God receives Ruth as a wife provided by God; in strength he begets children, both having strength in themselves and prevailing. But those who receive wives by the provision of the devil, that is, not with a view to religion, nor as believers, beget children in weakness, never prevailing, nor strong except in evil, and seem to have begotten children for the punishment of their irreligion, not for joy nor for consolation." This is what God, instituting marriage in the union of Adam and Eve, decreed: "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cling to his wife," Genesis 2:24.
Fifth, a prudent wife will temper her husband's excessive joy in prosperity and excessive sadness in adversity, and will compose his anger and other immoderate passions. For just as David, by skillfully playing the harp, soothed the anger, melancholy, and evil spirit of Saul (1 Samuel 16:23): so also a prudent wife, by her grace, prudence, and gentle speech, as by the striking of a harp, mitigates and tempers all her husband's sorrows, indignations, and other disturbances of mind. So St. Monica by her modesty, silence, and prudence moderated and, as it were, harmoniously composed the outbursts and passions of Patricius, as St. Augustine relates, book IX of the Confessions, chapter 9. So Abigail by her humble and gracious speech soothed the anger of David, who was already hastening to slaughter and vengeance because of the harshness of Nabal (1 Samuel 25:23).
Sixth, a prudent wife by her wisdom creates a harmony of peace and concord in the family, so that all, content with their own rank, live in unanimity, and no one envies another, but all conspire together for the common profit and advantage of the family. For this is a notable consonance of domestic peace and unanimity, as Plutarch testifies in his Moralia, in which the husband, as it were, sings the bass, the children the treble, the servants and maids the countertenor, and the wife the tenor, as the middle voice that harmoniously composes and unites the bass with the treble and countertenor. Who will procure or bring about so great and so manifold a harmony of marriage, that is of wife and husband, unless God who is all-knowing and all-powerful, who disposes all things in measure, number, and weight? Wisdom 11:21. For God alone is the one who gives prudence to a woman, and assigns a prudent and suitable one to a man who deserves her, according to Sirach 26:3: "A good wife is a good portion, and will be given as a portion to those who fear God, to a man for his good deeds." Hence they commonly say that marriages are made in heaven. Solomon confirms this: "House and riches are given by parents, but a prudent wife is from the Lord." So Moses attests that Rebecca was prepared by God as a wife for Abraham's son Isaac. Sarah could not be married to another, because she was owed by divine ordinance to the young Tobias, who feared God. Samson asked that a Philistine girl be given to him as a wife, but her parents, thinking this marriage was against the law of God, discouraged him from marrying; for they did not know that the matter was from the Lord, so that from that marriage a war might arise between the Jews and the Philistines, by which the Jews might be freed from their long servitude. To Esther, that she might be preferred over the other virgins by King Ahasuerus, God bestowed remarkable beauty, so that without external adornment she far surpassed the other virgins who were decked out and anointed.
Therefore let spouses, if they desire this sixfold harmony just described, love and worship God. For if they are united to God through love, they will be united to each other by the same: both because things that are united to the same third thing are united to each other; and because the love by which we love God and neighbor, especially a spouse for God's sake, is one and the same.
Morally, let young men learn here, when they seek suitable wives, not to trust in themselves, nor in parents and friends, but to appoint God as their guide, and therefore to strive to win His grace through penance, prayer, almsgiving, and other pious and holy works, so that by Him they may be led by the hand to a prudent wife suited to them. Let them read the wise and pious counsel that the Archangel Raphael gave to Tobias when he was about to marry Sarah (Tobit 6:16), and let them apply it to themselves and carry it out in practice.
Mystically the Author of the Greek Catena expounds it thus, as if to say: "House and riches," etc., that is, the teaching of wisdom and virtue is imparted by teachers; but virtue and wisdom itself (which is, as it were, the bride and wife of a wise man) is bestowed by the Lord. Again, the soul and mind adorned with virtue is the bride whom Christ prepares for Himself and espouses. Hence St. Ambrose, book VIII on Luke, after the beginning: "You find, he says, a marriage that no one would doubt was joined by God, since He Himself says: No one comes to Me unless My Father who sent Me draws him. For He alone could unite these nuptials. And therefore Solomon said mystically: A wife is prepared for a man by God. The husband is Christ, the wife is the Church: a wife by love, a virgin by integrity. Therefore let not persecution separate him whom God has drawn to His Son, let not luxury turn him away, let not philosophy despoil him, let not the Manichean contaminate him, let not the Arian turn him away, let not the Sabellian infect him. God has joined, let not the Jew separate. All are adulterers who wish to adulterate the truth of faith and wisdom." And shortly after: "Remain therefore in the house of your father, remain with the bridegroom, strive to please your husband. O mind that has believed in God, be a strong woman, such as that soul or Church of whom Solomon says: Who shall find a strong woman? She is more precious than precious stones, she who is such; her husband trusts in her." And after some further words: "Come, Lord Jesus, that You may find Your bride, not contaminated, not adulterated, who has not violated Your house, nor neglected Your commandments. Let her say to You: I have found Him whom my soul loves; let her bring You into the house of wine (for wine gladdens the heart of man), let her be inebriated with the spirit, let her recognize the mystery, let her speak the oracle."
Verse 15: Slothfulness Casts into a Deep Sleep
15. SLOTHFULNESS CASTS INTO A DEEP SLEEP, AND A DISSOLUTE SOUL SHALL GO HUNGRY. — The Septuagint: fear or timidity (for this is the companion and sister of sloth) holds the effeminate man; but the soul of the idle shall go hungry. For sleep the Hebrew is תרדמה tardema, which word signifies a heavy sleep and lethargy; hence Aquila and Symmachus translate it ecstasy. Thus the sleep cast upon Adam was an ecstasy, Genesis 2:21. Theodotion however translates it καταφοράν, that is, a heavy drowsiness. For dissolute the Hebrew is רמיה remia, that is, slack or deceitful, as I said at chapter 10, verse 4. Hence the Chaldean translates: and a deceitful soul (the Syriac: proud) shall go hungry.
Solomon here assigns two evils of sleep that follow from sloth and torpor. The first is sleep itself. For just as labor makes one vigilant, so idleness and torpor make one sleep and snore; and heavy sleep is a great evil. First, because sleep begets want and hunger, as I shall soon say. Second, because sleep loosens and dissolves the sinews, and hence all the limbs, and therefore makes a man nerveless, weak, and languid. "For by torpor the strength is bound and enervated," says R. Levi; and finally torpor turns into lethargy. St. Augustine gives the a priori cause, in his book On the Greatness of the Soul: "Moderate dryness and warmth, he says, invigorates the sinews and makes them more supple; on the contrary, humid rigidity loosens and weakens them: and so from excessive sleep (because physicians say and prove that it is cold and moist) the limbs grow languid, and the effort of those who have awakened is much weaker, and therefore nothing is more broken and nerveless than lethargic persons. But we see certain frenzied persons, in whom wakefulness and acute fevers, that is, so many causes of excessive heat, stretch and harden the sinews, resist with greater strength than those in full health, even though their bodies are more wasted and emaciated by illness."
Third, because sleep dulls and corrupts not only the body, but also the mind and intellect. For just as a sword always kept in its sheath gathers rust upon itself: so also rest and torpor bring heaviness and dullness to the mind, as a kind of rust. Hence Baptista Mantuanus, book I of the Partheneia: It will be a spur, he says, to the sluggish; the slothful senses Are corroded by rust, and torpor numbs drowsy hearts. And Plutarch in his Moralia: "The mind of man, he says, contracts decay and old age in idleness, and silent rest and a sedentary life bring languor not only to bodies but also to souls."
Fourth, because torpor and sleep are the image of death, toward which they tend, and so they seem to be not so much life as death. Hence the saying of the Philosopher: "Idleness is the burial of a living man." For life consists in motion and action; the lazy person therefore, who is free from these, is not so much alive as dead. Hence the symbol of sloth is the torpedo fish, which from a distance, sending torpor through the nets, makes people numb, and indeed stupefies the hands of fishermen, as Aristotle testifies, book IV of the History of Animals, chapter 37, along with Aelian, Pliny, and others. Likewise the symbol of sloth is the narcissus flower, so named from νάρκη, that is torpor, because it induces torpor and lethargy by its scent, as Plutarch testifies, book III of the Symposiacs. Hence it was moved by this that a crown was customarily woven from this flower for the infernal Furies, as Eustachius affirms; and Sophocles called the narcissus the crown of the great subterranean Gods: namely those who devote themselves to torpor and lazily smell this flower weave a crown for the gods of hell; and just as the diligent and industrious in good works are a crown of the kingdom in the hand of God, so on the contrary, by their sloth they become a crown of demons in hell.
Counterparts to this maxim are those sayings of Philosophers and Theologians found in Antonius in his Melissa, chapters 45 and 46: of St. Gregory Nazianzen: "Sluggishness is the spouse of sleep. Weak and dissolute minds are equally slack and languid both toward virtue and toward vice, hard to rouse themselves, and in neither direction do the idle make notable progress;" of St. Clement: "Those who are weak and feeble — to them even what is moderate seems beyond their powers;" of St. Chrysostom: "Nothing is so easy that great laziness does not make it very burdensome and hateful; nor is anything so laborious and difficult that zeal and eagerness do not make it very easy;" of St. Basil: "Idleness is the beginning of mischief;" of Democritus: "Carelessness corrupts the natural disposition to virtue; instruction corrects wickedness; and easy things slip away from the negligent, while difficult things are captured by diligence; for just as an instrument that is loosened and tightened delights with pleasant enjoyment: so also the plan of human life must be distributed between leisure and business;" of Xenophon: "God has so ordained that for those who will not command and prescribe to themselves honorable deeds, He brings in others to be their commanding masters."
AND A DISSOLUTE SOUL SHALL GO HUNGRY. — "Dissolute," that is, slack (for this is what the Hebrew רמיה remia signifies), lazy, torpid. This is the second evil of sloth, namely hunger. The reason is that sloth begets sleep, sleep begets idleness and inaction, and inaction begets want and hunger. For those who do not want to work, but grow numb in idleness, earn and acquire nothing by which to live. See what was said at chapter 10, verse 4.
This maxim applies to spiritual goods as well as temporal ones. For just as temporal sloth begets sleep and the want of temporal things, so spiritual sloth begets sleep and the want of spiritual goods. For those who do not want to exercise acts of charity, mercy, prayer, piety, patience, etc., contract a kind of torpor and drowsiness, by which they become incapable and unfit for every good work, and moreover incur a lack of grace, consolations, and all spiritual gifts. So Bede from St. Gregory, Hugh, Dionysius, and others. "The lazy person, says Bede, is one who by thinking rightly seems to be awake, although by doing nothing he grows numb. But slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, because even the vigilance of right thinking is gradually lost when one ceases from the pursuit of good works."
Therefore Philo rightly says, as cited by Antonius in his Melissa, at the place already mentioned: "God has shown men that the beginning of every good is the labor of virtue; and with this removed, nothing good can be established among the human race. He who flees from labor flees from good things themselves; but he who tolerantly and bravely endures hardships hastens toward blessedness." More admirably still St. Gregory Nazianzen in the same place: "Noble minds, he says, with reason moderating and directing, have great impulse toward following virtue." And St. Chrysostom in the same place: "For a short time, O most beloved, let us labor, lest we lose eternal goods. Brief is the labor of time, but for many ages is the rest. Where the labor is greater, there the pleasure is greater. He who is endowed with prudence does not approach labor reluctantly, because of the fruits that follow from labors."
Finally St. Gregory treats this passage admirably, part III of the Pastoral Care, chapter 16: "The lazy, he says, must be told that often, when we do not want to do what we opportunely can, shortly afterward when we want to, we are unable. For the very sluggishness of the mind, when it is not kindled by fitting fervor, is slain by a torpor that secretly grows from the root of the desire for good things dying away. Hence it is aptly said by Solomon: Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep. For the lazy person, by thinking rightly, seems to be awake, although by doing nothing he grows numb. But slothfulness is said to cast into sleep, because even the vigilance of right thinking is gradually lost when one ceases from the pursuit of good works. Where there rightly follows: And a dissolute soul shall go hungry. For because it does not direct itself by binding itself to higher things, it spreads itself, neglected, downward through desires; and while it is not constrained by the vigor of lofty pursuits, it is wounded by the hunger of the lowest cupidity; so that the more it pretends not to bind itself by discipline, the more, hungering, it scatters itself through the desires of pleasures. Hence by the same Solomon it is again written: In desires is every idle person. Hence as Truth Himself proclaims, when one spirit has gone out the house is called clean; but when many more return, while it is empty, it is occupied."
Verse 16: He Who Keeps the Commandment Keeps His Own Soul
16. HE WHO KEEPS THE COMMANDMENT KEEPS HIS OWN SOUL; BUT HE WHO NEGLECTS HIS WAY SHALL BE PUT TO DEATH. — In Hebrew: he who keeps the precept keeps his soul; and he who despises his ways (Vatablus: his duty) shall die; the Syriac: shall be slain; the Chaldean: he who despises his way shall die; Cajetan: and he who despises its ways shall perish — its, namely the commandment's, as if to say: He who despises the ways, that is, the directions and ordinances of the commandment, shall pay for this contempt with death, present or eternal; the former will be inflicted by a judge, the latter by God. So Aben-Ezra: "He shall be put to death, he says, that is, he shall be visited with death, God so ordaining, while still in premature time (in the flower of his age); and it is written יומת iumat, because he shall be punished with death by judges, if it becomes known that he openly despised the commandments." So also R. Levi. Hence so many times in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, God attaches the penalty of death to His laws, and threatens it against transgressors; see among other places Leviticus chapter 20, where in almost every verse He threatens death against them.
Moreover he calls the commandment a way, or law; for the antithesis requires this. For the commandment of God is a way prescribed for man by God, along which he must press forward with continual steps of the soul straight toward virtue, salvation, and God Himself. So the Author of the Greek Catena: "The commandments, he says, are called precepts because they direct and impel the mind toward the one who commands; and ways, because they gently lead a man who is journeying toward God, and clearly show him where he must go." The meaning therefore is, as if to say: He who keeps the commandment of God, or of a man commanding in God's place, keeps his soul, that is, his life, both present and eternal; but he who despises the commandment, which God has established as a way to salvation for man, shall be visited with death — present death by a judge, eternal death by God. This is what Sirach says, chapter 15: "If you are willing to keep the commandments, they will preserve you." And Christ, Matthew 19:17: "If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." Hence also Plato said: "The law is the soul of a free man," both because the law, like a soul, directs and impels man to honorable action prescribed by law, in which a life worthy of man consists; and because, just as when the soul departs, man perishes, so when the law is despised, the spirit perishes. Therefore the law preserves or destroys the soul and life of man, so that it may rightly be called his soul.
Morally, learn from this what law we ought to love, cherish, and keep, and that for a threefold reason. The first is on God's part, because he who loves and cherishes the law, loves and cherishes God the lawgiver. For the law is nothing other than the reason, mind, and will of God; for from the eternal law, which is in the mind of God, all our law is derived, just as a ray is derived from the sun, and splendor from fire. Therefore he who conforms himself to the law, conforms himself to the reason and will of God. Hence Christ says: "If you love Me, keep My commandments" (John 14:15). The second is on the part of the law, because the object of the law is the dictate of virtue; for the law prescribes the duties of all virtues. If therefore you love virtue, love the law. The third, which Solomon gives here, is on our part, because he who keeps the law keeps his soul, but he who despises it despises his own soul, that is, the life, salvation, and happiness of his soul. Therefore as much as you love your soul, so much love and keep the law.
Verse 17: He Who Has Pity on the Poor Lends to the Lord
17. HE WHO HAS PITY ON THE POOR LENDS TO THE LORD; AND HE WILL REPAY HIM HIS RECOMPENSE. — So that just as he had mercy on the poor and did good to him, so may God have mercy on him and do good to him, says Aben-Ezra; and may He heap His blessing upon him, so that to whatever he extends his hand, He may grant him blessing and an abundance of things, says R. Levi. R. Solomon however says: When a man lies sick and walks on the threshold of death, then the alms intercede before divine justice on behalf of the generous man, saying: When the poor were dying of hunger, this man called them back to life, abundantly supplying what was needed; why then should his spirit not have a long lease of life with his body? Why should he not be restored to his limbs?
For lends the Hebrew is מלוה malue, that is, lends or gives a loan, as Pagninus translates, whether simply or with interest, as is clear from Deuteronomy chapter 28, verses 12 and 44. Likewise the Greek δανείζω, as the Septuagint translates, is ambiguous; for it means equally both one who lends without interest and one who lends at interest. So also the Latin fænerari, although it properly means to lend at interest, yet sometimes is the same as to lend. The Hebrew therefore literally has: he lends to the Lord who has mercy on the needy; and He will repay him his recompense; the Septuagint: and according to his gift He will repay him; the Chaldean: he who seeks to lend to the Lord has mercy on the poor, and a good recompense shall be rendered to him; the Syriac: according to his works it shall be repaid; Vatablus: according to his kindness, or service, it shall be repaid to him. The meaning therefore is, as if to say: He who does good to the poor lends, that is, gives a loan to God, which he will receive back from Him with ample interest and increase; therefore he gives not so much a gift as a loan, indeed interest and usury. Therefore what is understood here is not a simple loan, but one with increase, namely interest and usury. So the interpreters and Fathers to be cited shortly.
Hear St. Basil on Psalm 38: "Why, he says, did he not say: He who has mercy on the poor gives to God? Scripture knows our avarice, it understood our insatiable appetite, which always proposes greater things for itself to have in abundance, and always seeks more; and for this reason he did not simply say: He who has mercy on the poor gives to God, so that you would think it a simple donation and repayment of the capital; but: He lends to God, so that the greedy man, desirous of profit, hearing the name of interest, would give himself over to mercy."
Solomon therefore, to declare the power of almsgiving and how much it pleases God, asserts that God considers as given to Himself what is given to the poor, and as it were obliges Himself to restore it to the giver with a great increase of capital, interest, and profit: for God claims the poor and wretched, being destitute of all resources, as His own, and as it were adopts them as children of His providence, and in Scripture designates Himself especially as their God and guardian. Hence He Himself says, Matthew 25: "What you did to one of the least of Mine, you did to Me," as if to say: I acknowledge Myself your debtor. This interest therefore, this usury of beneficence, is holy and divine, as well as most fruitful, and far surpasses the profit and gain of moneylenders.
For first, if you seek the dignity and nobility of the debtor, by this interest of almsgiving we make our debtor not a poor and lowly man, but God Himself, the most noble and the richest. How great a thing it is to have God obligated to you, and to hold Him bound, as it were, by His own surety and pledge! Hear St. Ambrose, book On Tobit, chapter 16: "I will teach you, he says, how you can be good moneylenders, how you can make good interest. Solomon says: He who has mercy on the poor lends to the Lord; according to his gift He will repay him. Behold, good interest has been made from evil, behold an irreproachable moneylender, behold praiseworthy usury. Therefore do not now think me envious of your advantages. You think that I am removing a human debtor from you? I am providing God, I am substituting Christ, I am pointing out One who cannot defraud you. Therefore lend your money to the Lord through the hand of the poor. He is bound and held, He writes down whatever a needy person has received; the Gospel is His bond. He promises for all the needy, He pledges His faith. Why do you hesitate to give? If some rich man of this world were offered to you, who would pledge his credit for some debtor, you would immediately count out the money. Is the Lord of heaven, and the creator of this world, poor in your estimation? And do you still deliberate whom you should seek as a richer guarantor?"
And St. Gregory Nazianzen in his Tetrastichs: Take something from envy and dark rust, And prefer God as your debtor above all others, Who repays heavenly scepters for a morsel; You nourish and protect, in feeding the poor, God Himself.
Second, a usurer receives beyond the capital, as interest and profit, only a twentieth part of the capital — for example, if he lends one hundred gold pieces, he receives one hundred and five. But God doubles the capital, indeed multiplies it a hundredfold. For this is the hundredfold promised by Christ to those who follow Him and distribute their goods to the poor (Matthew 19:29). Hence St. Chrysostom, homily 3 on Genesis: "He who has mercy on the poor, he says, lends to God. See the rare and admirable nature of this interest. One is he who receives, and another is he who makes himself liable for the payment of the loan; and this is not the only thing to be admired, but that in this kind of interest there is no room for ingratitude, nor for any other loss; nor does He who promises give only once, but it is repaid a hundredfold, and not only a hundredfold; for some things are given in this present life, others in the future life, namely eternal life. And indeed in this present life, if someone were only to promise us double for what we give, we would be ready to bring all our substance. Although there is great ingratitude there, delay, and the astonishing frauds of the greedy; and many who are considered good do not pay interest, either because they are unwilling out of malice, or often because they are unable due to poverty. But since nothing of the kind can be imputed to the Lord of all (for both the capital sum is safe, and a hundredfold is promised here to those who spend in almsgiving, and in the future life is stored up), what defense then shall we have if we have been negligent, and have not hastened to receive a hundredfold for a little, and future things for present, and eternal for temporal?"
The same St. Chrysostom shows this more fully in homily 53 to the People, where among other things he accuses the foolishness of the rich, who dismiss God who promises a hundredfold, and hand over their wealth to those who will not even repay the capital: "For what, he says, does the belly give back to us, which consumes so much? Filth and corruption. What does vainglory give? Envy and spite. What does avarice give? Care and anxiety. What does intemperance give? Hell and a poisonous worm. For these are the debtors of the rich, accustomed to joining these kinds of interest: present evils and future punishments. To these then, I ask, shall we lend for such great vengeance, and shall we not trust our goods to Christ who offers heaven, eternal life, and hidden blessings?"
If you excuse yourself by saying that Christ defers the payment of this interest for a long time, Chrysostom responds: "The good God multiplies the talent for you. For the interest is made greater; for in lending we see moneylenders do this — they more willingly lend to those who repay after a long time: for he who returns the whole sum promptly interrupts the course of interest; but he who retains it for a long time makes the fruit and gain of the interest greater."
Third, because God pays this interest twice — once on earth, and again in heaven. On earth He multiplies the wealth of the charitable, as the Apostle teaches (2 Corinthians 9:10), and St. Chrysostom in the homily That Almsgiving Is the Most Profitable of All Arts. The same is established by constant experience. A famous example is in the Life of St. John the Almsgiver, who the more he distributed to the poor, the more he received back double and triple. In heaven, however, God repays far more and greater things. Hence St. Gaudentius, sermon 13: "He who has mercy on the poor lends to God. For he receives, he says, great things for small, and heavenly things for earthly." And St. Ambrose, at the place already cited: "What the poor man received will not perish, and what you have given to the needy is kept for you without a guard. But if you seek increase of interest, in the law there is blessing, in the Gospel there is heavenly reward: what is sweeter than a blessing? What is greater than heaven? If interest in food is desired, that too is at hand, as we read. For he who has mercy on the poor, he himself shall be fed." See also St. Chrysostom, homily 15 on Matthew.
Fourth, the usurer exposes both capital and interest to the danger of loss. For if the debtor is insolvent, or refuses to pay interest as being unjust and extorted, the usurer will lose it. Uncertain and doubtful therefore is his gain, as well as his capital. But the almsgiver has his profit laid up safe and certain with God, together with the capital. Therefore St. Basil suggests wise counsel, homily 8 On Wealthy Misers: "If, he says, you have only one loaf of bread, and a beggar stands at the door, bring it out; and giving it, raise your hands to heaven and say these pitiful and kind words: This one loaf is all I have, as You see, O Lord; and the occasion is perilous. But I set Your commandment before me, and from my little I give to a hungry brother. Give also, O Lord, to Your servant in peril. I know Your goodness, I trust in Your power, that You will not long delay Your grace; but shortly, when it pleases You, the gifts of Your munificence will be abundantly open. And if you do and say this, there is no doubt that this bread which you give in this strait will supply seed and abundance for agriculture, and will yield you much from the land of interest, an earnest of future food, a mediator of mercy. Say again that word of the woman of Sidon, which most aptly fits this purpose, mindful of that opportune story: As the Lord lives, I have only this in the house, which I and my children may eat. You too will likewise have an oil flask filled with the grace of God, and no less a jar of flour continually full, if you give from what you have. For those who trust in divine grace by giving imitate wells, which when continually emptied are in no way diminished, but become twice as abundant. If you are in need, lend to God who is rich: trust, I say, in Him who forever embraces what is given to the afflicted as if given to His own person, and renders from His own, a worthy guarantor everywhere, having open treasures on land and sea. And if you sail, you will reclaim your loan. In the middle of the sea you will recover your capital with interest. For He is magnificent in paying interest."
Therefore "if you wish to lend at interest, lend to God." For God secures for you both the capital and its great profit, since He gives Himself as the collateral, and His promise as the security. So St. Chrysostom, on Psalm 38: "He placed Himself, he says, as a mediator and, as it were, a guarantor — to the poor man as a surety, to the creditor as a pledge or collateral. I do not trust him, you say, because of his poverty; trust me because of my abundance. He who has mercy on the poor lends to God. Fear not, he says, you are lending to Me." And St. Augustine, on Psalm 36: "When the poor man prays for himself, it is as if he says to God: Lord, I have received a loan, stand surety for me; and if you do not hold the poor man as a creditor, you hold a worthy guarantor. Behold, God says from His Scripture: Give, be secure, I will repay."
Fifth, the person who borrows money at interest receives great advantage from it, for which he obliges himself to pay interest. But God receives no benefit from almsgiving — every work of ours is barren and unfruitful to Him; and yet for it He binds Himself by His promise to pay enormous interest, which is His great condescension and generosity. So St. Irenaeus, book VI Against Heresies, chapter 34: "He who has mercy on the poor, he says, lends to God; for God, who needs nothing from anyone, takes upon Himself our good works, in order that He may bestow on us the recompense of His own goods." And St. Basil, on Psalm 14, sermon 2 Against Usurers: "When you give to a poor person, he says, for the Lord's sake, it is at once both a gift and a loan: a gift indeed, because you do not expect to receive it back from the poor person; but a loan or interest, because of the Lord's munificent generosity, who, having received small things through the poor person, will repay great things for them. Do you not want to have the Lord of all as your authorized agent for repayment? If some rich man in the city stands surety for others to you, you accept his guarantee; yet will you not accept God, who promises to repay so much more for the sake of the poor?"
Sixth, he who borrows at interest obliges himself to the usurer only to pay the interest, but does not bind himself to feed or enrich his children, wife, and family. But God provides both for the almsgiver. Hence St. Cyprian, treatise On Works and Almsgiving: "He who has mercy on the poor, he says, lends to God;" and then, raising against himself the excuse of the rich who claim they must provide for their children and family and therefore cannot give alms, he responds: "Assign your possessions to Him, he says, whom you would keep for your heirs; let Him be the guardian of your children, let Him be their curator, let Him be their protector by divine majesty against all worldly injuries. Property entrusted to God neither the state seizes, nor the tax collector invades, nor any forensic slander overturns; safe is the inheritance that is kept under God's guardianship. This is to provide for dear pledges in the future, this is to consult for future heirs with fatherly piety, according to the faith of Sacred Scripture which says: I was young, and now I am old, and I have not seen the just man forsaken, nor his seed begging for bread. All the day long he has mercy and lends, and his seed shall be in blessing." And St. Chrysostom, homily 7 on the Epistle to the Romans: "And so, he says, if you wish to leave great wealth to your children, leave them to the providence of God. For when He sees the possessions of your children being shared with Himself along with the children themselves, will He not open up all riches to them?" And after some further words: "Therefore if you wish to leave them rich, though with risk, leave them God as their debtor, and hand these testamentary tablets to God Himself."
Seventh, the usurer gives his own money, not another's; but the almsgiver giving alms does not give from his own, but from what belongs to God and what he has received from God; and yet God, asking that through the poor man he return to you what is His own that He gave, additionally pledges interest for it: for an old credit, then, He pledges a new debt. Hence St. Basil, cited by Damascenus, book II of the Parallels, chapter 16: "He who gave you wealth, he says, asks alms from you through the hands of the poor; therefore lend to God, because although He receives what is His own, yet He pays full gratitude just as if He had been the recipient of a favor." Moreover, God takes wonderful delight in this credit and debt of His, and desires to become our debtor, as St. Chrysostom teaches, homily 45 on Matthew. Indeed the same St. Chrysostom says that God allows Himself, as it were, to be bribed by this credit of almsgiving, so that in judgment He may overlook, not see, and pardon our debts and sins: just as a judge is bribed by a defendant with money, so that he does not condemn but acquits him. For he writes thus on Luke chapter 22: "Our Judge is bribed through the poor. Therefore make it so that through the hand of the poor you knock at the back door of the Judge; for He receives your gifts through that hand, and tampers with the law. He receives, I say, and from just becomes benign; He receives, I say, and places mercy before truth, and weighs the hand of the poor against the scale of sins." And again, in the homily on Psalm 38: "If God receives from us at interest, then He is our debtor; do you therefore wish to have Him as judge, or as debtor? A debtor respects his creditor; a judge does not respect the one who is brought before the court."
Here therefore are enormous incentives to practice almsgiving, both corporal and spiritual, which, the more worthy and greater it is than corporal almsgiving, the greater interest of both wealth and grace and glory it will receive from God. See St. Paulinus, in his epistle to Alethius, celebrating the almsgiving both of Alethius himself and of his wife Ruffina, who was the daughter of St. Paula. Hence he concludes thus: "Precious to the Lord is a soul that takes from earthly things the price of a pearl. For she is the spouse of faith, the sister of virginity, the daughter of perfection, whose mother is Paula, whose sister is Eustochium, and whose husband is you." And in the following epistle on the Treasury, where among other things he exhorts: "Let us rouse ourselves therefore from the sleep of inertia, and shake off, as it were, the torpor of negligence, and break the chains of avarice. Consult the very oracles of truth, and the Prophet will answer you: He who has mercy on the poor lends to God. This therefore is the table of the heavenly banker, building up a treasure of life, and exercising the interest of God in trading for the pearl; for he who lends to the poor of the Lord awaits from the Lord God the recompense of eternal reward."
There is a famous example in the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschus, chapter 195, concerning the philosopher Evagrius, who, hearing from Bishop Synesius this maxim of Solomon: "He who has mercy on the poor lends to the Lord," gave him money to distribute to the poor, and demanded from him a written bond in which he would promise to repay the money with interest in the next life; which he also ordered to be buried with him when he died; and after death, appearing to Synesius, he ordered him to recover it, for he had been abundantly satisfied. Moreover, in the bond they found written: "I, Evagrius the philosopher, greet you, holy lord Synesius the Bishop. I have received the debt recorded in these letters written by your hand, and I am satisfied, and I have no claim against you on account of the gold which I gave to you, and through you to Christ God our Savior."
Verse 18: Instruct Your Son, and Do Not Despair
18. INSTRUCT YOUR SON, AND DO NOT DESPAIR; BUT DO NOT SET YOUR SOUL UPON HIS DESTRUCTION. — In Hebrew: correct your son, because there is hope (of correction), and do not lift up your soul to his death; the Chaldean: and do not raise your soul to his death; the Septuagint: instruct your son, for so he will be εὔελπις, that is, of good hope; but do not be lifted up in your spirit to his humiliation; Vatablus: chastise your son while there is still hope; and do not pay attention to his crying, as if to say: "Let him cry, and do not stop chastising;" so also Cajetan; who instead of המיתו hamito, that is, his death, with different vowel points read המיתו hemiato, that is, his tumult, roar, and crying; for המה hama means to make noise, to cry out, to make a tumult. So also Pagninus in the Lexicon: "To his noise, he says, that is, to his weeping, do not apply your heart, as if to say: Do not, when you hear him wailing, spare him out of pity and hold back your hand, but continue to chastise until you have beaten out the fault."
The plain meaning is, as if to say: Do not cease to instruct, that is, to form in good morals and disciplines, to correct and chastise your son; for even if he is rather dull, stubborn, or insolent, do not despair of his correction and probity, so as to omit instruction and chastisement; for he who is not instructed and corrected today will be trained and corrected tomorrow. For discipline and childhood must be given their due time; and no vice is so obstinate, especially in a boy, that it cannot be removed and rooted out by instruction and chastisement, if it is constant and continuous. Hence the Septuagint translates: instruct your son, for so he will be of good hope; the Hebrew and Chaldean: because there is hope, namely that through instruction and chastisement the son may turn out learned and upright, and therefore long-lived, says Aben-Ezra, as if to say: In chastisement lies all the hope of a son's probity; but if you neglect it and indulge the son in everything, you destroy all hope of his virtue and salvation.
Jansenius explains the phrase do not despair differently, as if to say: Instruct your son, lest, if you do not instruct him but give him free rein, you lose confidence in his correction, and despair of his probity and salvation. "But do not set your soul upon his destruction," as if to say: Do not in despair, as though he were useless, or even shameful and harmful, kill him. Salazar however says, as if to say: Do not let it enter your mind to persuade yourself that the son must be killed if you educate, reprove, and chastise him more harshly; for a stricter education makes children vigorous, lively, and strong, as St. Ambrose teaches, book V of the Hexameron, chapter 13, by the example of the halcyon bird, which hatches its young by the sea in the middle of winter, and by exposing them naked to cold, sea, and winds, raises them harshly.
But because the text does not say "you will not set" in the future tense, but rather "do not set" in the optative or imperative, therefore the former explanation is the genuine one. Therefore the right of paternal authority extends to inheritance and liberty, but not to life. For a parent can disinherit a perverse and rebellious son, and can even sell him into slavery in a case of extreme necessity, but he cannot take away his life.
The physical a priori reason is that a parent cannot take from a son what he did not give him; but he did not give him his soul and life: for the rational soul is created by God alone, and is infused in the act of creating. Therefore he cannot take it from him, but only God, who created it and infused it by creating, and therefore He alone has the right of death and life over it. It is different with other animals, whose souls are from parental transmission. For an ox, for example, by generating another ox communicates to it not only a body but also a soul and life; for just as the light of a candle produces light and lights another candle, so the soul of an ox or cow produces the soul of a calf. Hence it happens that other animals claim full rights over their offspring, and sometimes deprive them of life, as eagles, storks, etc., cast down and kill degenerate young. Therefore Ben-Sira says modestly, in Alphabet 1, letter Beth: "A son who is not a son (that is, a rebellious son who does not behave as a son, and is perverse), let him row on the surface of the water;" because often the oar corrects those whom paternal chastisement could not.
Inhuman therefore are the Japanese, and similar other barbarous peoples, who think it lawful to kill children whom they cannot feed; because they consider it better that they die than that they lead a poor and miserable life. Hence our St. Francis Xavier, coming to Japan, rescued a Japanese man named Bernard, who had been destined for death by his parent for this reason, and stood in the place of a father to him by feeding and instructing him for both this present life and the eternal one. Equally impious were the Carthaginians, who slaughtered their children to sacrifice them to Saturn, as Plato testifies in the Minos; and the Jews, who burned their children to the idol Moloch, as I discussed in Leviticus 18:21. Barbarous and impious were the Persians, of whom Aristotle writes, book VIII of the Ethics, chapter 10: "Among the Persians the father's rule is tyrannical, for they use their children as slaves." Moreover Plato, book VII of the Laws, teaches that in the education of children two extremes must be avoided, namely indulgence and excessive severity, because by the former the spirit is dissolved, and by the latter it becomes servile: "This, he says, is our opinion: that indulgence makes the manners of children difficult, peevish, irritable, and violently disturbed by slight provocations. On the contrary, excessive and fierce severity makes their manners humble, illiberal, and averse to the commerce of human society." And shortly after, urging moderation, he asserts that the right way of living is so constituted that it neither pursues pleasures alone nor entirely shrinks from pains, but embraces a certain mean; which mean I was calling a tranquil and peaceful disposition."
Moreover the Septuagint for destruction translates ὕβρις, which you may first render as savage wickedness, insolence, arrogance, haughtiness, impudence, as if to say: Do not set your soul, that is, do not consider, nor care that your son is more wicked, more insolent, more impudent, so as to omit chastising him on that account, as if despairing of his amendment; on the contrary, chastise him all the more, and add stripes to stripes, until you bring down and crush this insolence and wickedness of his: just as unruly and fierce horses must be pressed with spurs for so long, until they lay aside their fierceness and allow themselves to be governed by the rider.
Second, ὕβρις may be rendered reproach, insult, as if to say: Chastise your son with a calm and composed mind; but do not out of anger tear him apart with reproaches and insults, lest he either rush into despair, or into insolence, and casting off shame and reverence, return insult for insult, and repay words with words, and indeed blows with blows. Hence the Apostle, Colossians 3: "Fathers, he says, do not provoke your children to anger, lest they become faint-hearted." For a servile education makes children servile, that is, timid and pusillanimous, says St. Chrysostom on the same passage. Hence the Author of the Greek Catena translates: instruct your son, and he will become a frugal man of good hope; but do not lift yourself up in spirit to insolence, so as to wish to reprove and crush your son proudly and insolently. And the Syriac: do not set your soul upon his reproach. For when you reproach your son, you reproach yourself; for the disgrace of a son is the disgrace of a father. Hence St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his Poem to Vitalis, teaches that fathers must chastise their children moderately, because excessive rebuke begets shamelessness, which is the mother of crimes. For thus he sings: Lest harsh reproof break the tender sense of shame, A help to fathers stronger and easier than any other. For reproaches make men brazen, and kindness makes them modest.
Third, ὕβρις is violence inflicted, cruelty, ferocity, harm, bodily injury, as if to say: Chastise your son, but do not use violence against him, so as to rage against him, by wounding, maiming, or killing him, as our translator renders it.
Fourth, Aben-Ezra takes the injury and killing not passively — namely as suffered by the son from a raging father — but actively, namely as inflicted on others by the daring son. Hence he expounds it thus, as if to say: Instruct your son, because there is hope; for it is to be hoped that when you have chastised him, he will live a long life. "Do not set your soul upon his killing (by which he puts others to death)," namely by consenting to it, so that you may be nourished from his plunder. Or: "do not set your soul upon his killing," as if to say: When your son has killed another, you, O father, have killed him, because by not chastising your son and by indulging him, you have nourished him in crimes and killings.
Here is relevant the story or fable of the boy and his mother in Aesop: "A boy, he says, stole a classmate's book from school and brought it to his mother. When she did not correct him but rather embraced him, as he grew older he began to steal greater things. But being caught in the very act of theft one day, he was led straight to execution. As his mother followed weeping, he begged the executioners to let him say a few words in his mother's ear. When she immediately brought her face close to her son's mouth, he bit off her ear with his teeth. When his mother and others accused him, because he was not only a thief but also impious toward his mother, he said: She was the cause of my ruin. For if she had corrected me when I stole the book, I would not have progressed this far and would not now be led to death." The moral: "The fable signifies that the evils of those who are not punished at the beginning grow to greater ones."
But the preceding expositions are more genuine, and the third plainly agrees with the Vulgate. For killing here is understood not as active on the son's part, but passive, namely as his being killed by the father. Hence the Hebrew too may be plainly rendered with Pagninus: and do not lift up your soul to killing him. For this is a monstrous parricide, surpassing the ordinary conceptions, intentions, and designs of the soul. Hence, as something so extraordinary, the soul of the parricidal father must be lifted up and raised by force, so that inhuman cruelty may overcome and transcend the natural piety and love of the soul for the son. I have said more about the chastisement of children at Sirach 30:1 and following.
Solomon speaks of killing done by private authority, not by public authority. For in Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 20, parents are commanded or permitted to bring a disobedient, gluttonous, and insolent son before the judges, who decree that he be stoned; and yet even this is itself a disgrace and loss to the parent. Hence concerning Junius Brutus, the first consul of Rome, who expelled the Tarquins and kings from the city, and ordered his sons who favored the Tarquins to be struck with the axe, Virgil sang thus in book VI of the Aeneid: He first will receive the consul's power and the cruel axes, And the father will call his sons, who stir up new wars, To punishment for the sake of glorious liberty. Unhappy man, however posterity may judge those deeds. Love of country will prevail, and boundless desire for glory.
Verse 19: He Who Is Impatient Shall Suffer Loss
19. HE WHO IS IMPATIENT SHALL SUFFER LOSS; AND WHEN HE HAS PLUNDERED, HE SHALL ADD ANOTHER. — In Hebrew: he who is great in anger bears a penalty; because if you rescue (him), he will still continue, namely to boil over with anger, and consequently with penalties, as if to say: He who is prone to anger will incur punishments and losses, and although he is freed from one, when his anger boils over again he will rashly throw himself into other and greater ones. This verse can be taken as connected to the preceding one, as if it gives its cause. Hence the Complutensians and some others add the causal particle for: "For he who is impatient," etc. Therefore Vatablus translates and explains it thus: if you are too severe (in chastising your son, by wounding or killing him), you will suffer loss; if you free him, you will do it again. Cajetan: he who makes his anger great shall bear a penalty; because if you make him escape, you will add more. And he explains it thus, as if to say: He who chastises his son with such anger as to cause sickness or death, punishes himself rather than his son, because he deprives himself of a uniquely beloved son, and so brings upon himself perpetual grief and sorrow, and the vengeance of God the Avenger, and indeed often of a human judge as well. "Because if you make him escape, you will add more," as if to say: If you chastise your son moderately, so that he comes through the chastisement safe and sound, you will then have further opportunity to instruct and chastise him, so that what he did not learn before, he may learn afterward. Hence Pagninus plainly translates: he who is great in anger adds punishment; because if you deliver him, you will continue to chastise. Aben-Ezra however explains it thus, as if to say: Let your angry son be angry and rage, so that he may suffer penalties as he has bound himself by sin. And do not strive to free him; for once you have kept him safe, it will be necessary for you to labor most frequently at other times to rescue him, because being headlong into anger he will rush into other disputes, quarrels, and injuries, especially because he trusts that he will again be freed by his father.
But although this saying is introduced on the occasion of the chastisement of a son prescribed in the preceding verse, and can be referred to it, nevertheless it is general and must be extended to any anger and impatience. For the particle for is found neither in the Hebrew, nor in the Greek, nor in the Roman Latin. Hence first, R. Solomon explains it thus, as if to say: He who is excessive in anger will pay the penalty; but if, having mastered your anger, you have rescued your enemy from imminent danger, you will add days and goods. Second, better is R. Levi: He who exceeds the measure of anger, he says, will not escape paying the penalties of this base habit; for since he stirs up quarrels among mortals for this reason, if at some time he has been preserved because of his anger, because the one who was attacking him was struck with fear, having observed his immoderate rage, nevertheless he will become accustomed to anger and will again flare up against others, until at last someone arises who attacks and slays him; and this person, by such a depraved formation, will be the craftsman of his own calamity.
Note: For when he has plundered, the Hebrew is תציל tatsil, which R. Levi, Pagninus, and others translate: if you free, if you rescue; and Theodotion: a man of great anger, he says, shall be punished; because if you rescue him, he will add more. Our translator, however, renders it: when he has plundered; and the Septuagint: ἐὰν λυμαίνεται, that is, if he has laid waste, corrupted. For the root נצל natsal, that is, to free, sometimes means to plunder, despoil, strip, as is clear from Genesis 31:9 and 16; Exodus 3:22; and 2 Chronicles 20:24 and 25. Moreover tatsil and הוסיף tosiph, that is, he will add, are future tense, and signify either the second person masculine, as if to say: "When you, O impatient one, have plundered something, you will add loss;" or the third person feminine, namely: "When it has plundered, it will add," referring to חמה chema, that is, the anger that preceded, as if to say: He who is great in anger will suffer loss, and when his anger has plundered something, it will add another loss. Thus both expositions come to the same thing, as Baynus rightly observes. Hence our translator fully rendered the meaning by saying: "When he has plundered," namely the impatient man, something out of impatience and anger (for impatience includes anger in itself), "he will add another," namely loss upon the preceding loss.
Now the phrase when he has plundered is variously explained by various authors. First, some supply the pronoun himself, that is, when the impatient man has snatched himself away and freed himself from one loss, having relapsed into impatience, he brings another upon himself. With a similar expression Horace says, book II of the Satires, satire 7: Unless you snatch yourself away from here quickly, You will be added as a ninth laborer on the Sabine farm. And Ovid, concerning a cow, Fragment 6: She snatched herself away there, and mingled with those herds. Second, Jansenius: "When he has plundered, he says, that is, when he has swiftly carried off and borne away one loss, he will soon run into another. So Horace, book II of the Satires, satire 5, says: Yet so that you may snatch with sidelong glance what the first Wax tablet wants in its second line," that is, read furtively with sidelong eyes. For in a similar way anger, swiftly inflicting harm on someone, swiftly in turn brings upon itself a similar harm.
Again, to plunder means to lead rapidly and hastily. Hence Pliny in his Panegyric on Trajan: "Through all this distance, he says, when you were leading the legions, or rather (so great was the speed) sweeping them along, you never looked back at a vehicle, never at a horse." So the impatient person through impatience plunders, that is, swiftly inflicting harm on others, he stirs up and snatches upon himself the same.
Third and properly, to plunder is to drag, pull out, or take away by force or with haste, or with anger or fury; for these are the effects of anger and impatience. It is therefore characteristic of the impatient man to plunder, that is, to drag and seize the one against whom he is angry, and to take from him either his hair, or his clothes, or his money, or his liberty, or his health, or his life.
The meaning therefore is, as if to say: He who is impatient, whether in destroying and correcting a son he rushes into another's punishment — certainly a greater burden of punishment — or in tolerating poverty, sickness, insults, or any other adversity, this man shall suffer loss, because he both deprives himself of peace of mind, and by his impatience tortures himself; and also by his complaints, outbursts of anger, and quarrels creates enormous trouble for others, and stirs them up against himself; but if, indulging his impatience, he seizes, drags, and harasses another, or takes from him his clothing, reputation, money, or health and life (for example, by killing his son with poison or beatings, as was discussed above), then indeed he brings upon himself far greater losses, and brings upon himself fines either of money, or of liberty in prison, or of death to be inflicted by God or a judge. So Dionysius the Carthusian: "He who is impatient, he says, that is, who is provoked to impatience by his son's sin, and thus impetuously rebukes him, shall suffer loss, because he gravely injures himself in his soul, and exasperates, scandalizes, and disturbs the subordinate more than he heals him. Therefore the Apostle says: Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, lest they become faint-hearted; but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Hence Augustine asserts: Whatever you say with a torn spirit is the impulse of one punishing, not the love of one correcting. And Prosper: One chastised gently shows reverence to the chastiser; but one offended by the harshness of excessive rebuke receives neither the rebuke nor salvation; and when he has plundered, that is, treated someone violently, or stolen what belongs to another, he will add another, that is, will incur a greater loss. Let us therefore strive to cure the offender in his soul in such a way that we do not through anger, impatience, or any other means wound or destroy our own hearts, since the Savior says: What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but destroys himself and suffers his own ruin?"
This is the general and adequate exposition of this maxim, under which one may descend in detail to the various species and corresponding losses of impatience. Hence Bede explains and applies it, first to correction flowing from an impatient spirit; second, to theft and robbery. "For if, he says, provoked by the stubbornness of a contradicting brother whom you have begun to instruct, you yourself fall into the vice of impatience, you certainly incur the loss of your virtue; and if by perhaps rebuking him too harshly, you have snatched away the hope of earning salvation and doing penance that he had, you will give an account to the strict Judge for having scandalized a brother. The literal meaning is clear, because he who by impatience over poverty serves theft or robbery, inflicts harm on his own soul; and when he takes his neighbor's property, even if not to a human being for this, he certainly must render an account to the eternal Judge. Hence another edition translated this verse thus: A man thinking evil is afflicted with much loss; and if he has been pernicious, he will add his soul: because indeed when he has violently taken money, he will unwillingly give his soul for it."
Lyranus adds: "The impatient one, he says, shall suffer loss, namely of the patience which he loses. And when he has seized another's property out of impatience, he adds another, namely the loss of innocence to the loss of patience." Therefore St. Chrysostom teaches that only those experience the losses of poverty who bear poverty with difficulty, in his homily 20 on the First Epistle to the Corinthians: "For this reason, he says, we are poor, because we dread poverty, even if we have countless talents. For it is not he who has nothing who is poor, but he who dreads poverty. For even in calamities we do not weep for those who suffer many evils, but for those who do not know how to bear them," etc. Indeed even Seneca, epistle 123: "Poverty, he says, is an evil to no one except to him who resists it."
Morally, learn here that impatience is its own executioner, just as conversely patience in evils is its own medicine and physician for all things. For the patient person bears all things gently, patiently, and often cheerfully, and therefore feels them little or not at all; but the impatient person, tormenting himself by his impatience, increases and doubles for himself the feeling of all evils. Again, he brings upon himself enmities, lawsuits, and quarrels. Finally, through the injuries he inflicts on others, he makes himself guilty, so that he is punished in money, liberty, or life, because he has unjustly punished others with the same. Thus the anger and impatience of Simeon and Levi, who avenged the violation committed against their sister Dinah, brought the greatest losses; for they killed all the Shechemites, and exposed the whole family of Jacob and the race of Israel to the danger of destruction. Hence Jacob, dying and cursing them: "Cursed, he said, be their fury, because it is obstinate; and their indignation, because it is harsh." So the anger and impatience of Saul, who could not bear David being made equal to him, destroyed himself and his family, while he strove to destroy David.
To this the Septuagint accords, translating κακόφρων, that is, a man of evil mind, insane, impatient, thinking and plotting evil, will suffer many losses, as if to say: The impatient person who wishes and desires evil for others, creates the same for himself, and tacitly wishes and desires the same for himself. For the law of retaliation is that what you have done to another, you deserve to have done to you. But if he has harassed or injured, he will add his own soul, as if to say: But if his impatience has burst forth into external action, and he has injured others either in reputation, or in possessions, or in body, then indeed he will suffer graver losses; for retaliation will be rendered to him, so that he gives an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a soul, that is, his life, for a soul, that is, the life which he snatched from another, and properly he binds his soul to eternal damnation and death on account of the injury inflicted on his neighbor. So the Author of the Greek Catena: "Depravity of mind, he says, is punished by itself with a lesser penalty, but with a greater one if it breaks out into an external act." And the Chaldean: an angry man, he says, will receive punishment, that is, he will immediately feel the losses of his anger; and when he is exalted, he adds to his burden, as if to say: If anger grows, and into harm or death of another he rushes, he certainly stirs up against himself the burden and debt of a greater punishment. Memorable and very apt for this passage is the example recited by Phaedrus, the freedman of Caesar Augustus, book III of the Fables, chapter 30. A certain man, he says, rather freely accused the mistress before the master of adultery, so that he might become the heir of both. The master, in order to catch the crime, pretended to leave for a journey; but at night he hastily returned home: he approached the bed in the darkness, found a man lying in it, and suspecting him to be the adulterer, in his impatience impetuously stabbed him. But when a light was brought, he saw it was his own son: wherefore, unable to bear the grief, he ran himself through with the same dagger. The wife was brought before the court of the Centumviri, accused of killing both husband and son, on the charge that she had murdered both her husband and her son. Caesar Augustus, having investigated and ascertained the truth of the matter, delivered this judgment: "Let the freedman, who was the cause of all the evil, pay the penalty: for I judge that the mistress, bereft of both husband and son, is more to be pitied than condemned." Behold, the impatient father brought these losses upon himself from his impatience: first, the killing of his son; second, the killing of himself; third, the bereavement, calumny, and danger to the life of his wife.
Admirably St. Gregory, part III of the Pastoral Care, admonition 10: "The impatient, he says, should hear what Truth says to His chosen ones: In your patience you shall possess your souls. For we have been wonderfully made so that reason may possess the soul, and the soul may possess the body. But the soul's right is driven from possession of the body, if the soul is not first possessed by reason. The Lord therefore showed that patience is the guardian of our condition, because in patience He taught us to possess ourselves. How great therefore is the fault of impatience we know, through which we lose even the very possession of what we are."
On the harms of anger and impatience, see St. Basil, homily On Anger; Cassian, book VIII of the Institutes of Renunciation, chapter 1; St. Gregory Nazianzen in his poem On Anger; St. Chrysostom, homily 5 on Matthew; and Seneca, book I On Anger, chapter 2.
Verse 20: Hear Counsel and Receive Instruction
20. HEAR COUNSEL, AND RECEIVE INSTRUCTION, THAT YOU MAY BE WISE IN YOUR LATTER DAYS. — The Chaldean: at your end; the Syriac: in your paths; Symmachus: he who hears counsel will receive instruction; Vatablus: hear counsel, and embrace correction, and at last you will be wise; the Septuagint: hear, O son, the instruction of your father, that you may be wise in your latter days. For this exhortation pertains to all, but especially to the young, and is fittingly appended to the preceding verses: for just as there he taught parents to instruct and chastise their children, so here he admonishes children to receive this chastisement, as if from a father, with a humble and willing spirit. For Solomon is accustomed to commend instruction to children and adolescents, because this age, being flexible and like a blank tablet, is capable of instruction and needs it, lest it be swept away into the vices to which youthful fervor draws.
The meaning therefore is, as if to say: O young man, hear and follow the counsels and admonitions of fathers and elders, and not just once, but constantly and continually: for thus you will gather great wisdom and virtue, so that in old age you may be truly wise and endowed with virtue. For just as a river, for example the Rhine in the Alps where it is born, is small, but gradually advancing and receiving streams flowing into it, it grows, so that at last it becomes a full and great river: so likewise a boy has but a small measure of wisdom, but by hearing and learning he gradually collects a heap of wisdom, so that in old age he may have it in perfection, and indeed may be able to impart it to others and make them wise. Hence the saying of Hesiod: "Wars are for the young, deeds for men, counsels for the old." Wisdom therefore befits the elderly, first, because it is the ornament of old age; second, because old age is the end of man's life: and on a good end depends a good death, salvation, and eternal happiness; in old age therefore it is fitting for everyone to be wise; third, because it is for the elderly to teach the young prudence and virtue both by word and by example. Hence the saying: "The crown of the aged is great experience" (Sirach 25:8). See what was said there.
Verse 21: There Are Many Thoughts in the Heart of a Man
21. THERE ARE MANY THOUGHTS IN THE HEART OF A MAN; BUT THE WILL OF THE LORD SHALL STAND. — Aben-Ezra and Lyranus connect this verse to the preceding one, as if it gives its reason, as if to say: Receive, O son, the discipline of God and of your father, and do not turn aside after the thoughts and desires of your heart, because although the human mind teems with many thoughts, nevertheless none except the counsel of God can stand. R. Levi however takes this verse absolutely, and refers it both to the benefits and to the punishments that God inflicts for sins, as if to say: It cannot be that by your thoughts and counsels you frustrate the thoughts and counsels of God, by which He intends and determines to do good or evil to you and others. If therefore you have sinned, do not follow your own thoughts, so as to find means by which to escape the judgment of God and the punishments you deserve; but turn back to God in penitence, and beg pardon, and win His grace. For whatever else you may think and contrive, you will find it fruitless. For God knows a thousand ways and means of overturning it, and of establishing the benefit or punishment which He has decreed to inflict upon you, and He wills this decree of His to remain and to be carried into execution.
Finally, this general maxim signifies in general that the thoughts and counsels of men are various, uncertain, and fleeting; but those of God are one, certain, and stable. For by thoughts understand counsels, wishes, and decrees. Hence for will the Hebrew is עצה etsa, the Greek βουλή, that is, counsel. For he contrasts the counsels and providence of men with the counsels and providence of God, in that the former are uncertain and unstable, the latter certain and stable, according to Wisdom 9:14: "The thoughts of mortals are timid, and our plans uncertain."
Solomon says this with this end and fruit: First, to teach us not to trust in our own thoughts and counsels, but to submit them to the counsels and providence of God; for thus they will be stable and effective, and will bring matters to the desired end. Hence Tobias, dying, gave this counsel to his son, chapter 4, verse 20: "At all times bless God; and ask Him to direct your ways, and that all your counsels may remain in Him." Second, to teach us to conform our desires to the will of God: for thus they will be as prudent as they are holy. Third, to teach us to pray to God that He may direct our plans by His counsels, and inspire in us what is pleasing to Him, or sanctioned and decreed by Him. For if we rely on our own inventions, which are often contrary to God's counsels and will, we will labor in vain. For God's will and providence will dash and scatter all our counsels like smoke, just as He scattered the counsels of Joseph's brothers; for He brought it about that by selling him they made him prince of Egypt and of Pharaoh, who, wanting to destroy the infants of the Hebrews, instead multiplied them all the more (Exodus 1). But if we commit our counsels to God's providence, He will direct them and bring them to a happy outcome, according to what is said of wisdom, Wisdom 6:17: "Because she goes about seeking those who are worthy of her, and shows herself to them cheerfully in the ways, and meets them with all providence."
The a priori reason is: First, that the thoughts, counsels, and plans of men are many, and therefore various, unstable, and uncertain. For since man penetrates and foresees the future very little, while he wants to plan for it, he thinks of many counsels, by which his mind is pulled in various directions, so that he does not know what to choose and pursue. Hence what pleased him at first soon displeases; what he chose, he soon rejects: hence because he changes so often, his counsels waver and totter, and he often says what is worse, more useless, and more ineffective, or will prove to be so. But God is self-consistent; for He takes one counsel that is best and wisest, and by His providence and decree sanctions and establishes it, so that it is immovable, and therefore will be effective. So the Author of the Greek Catena: "The mind of man, he says, is unstable and changeable; but the mind and judgment of God is stable and unchangeable."
Second, because counsels for providently and wisely arranging future affairs depend on many secondary causes, which are contingent and therefore uncertain to man, because in themselves changeable: whence it happens that, while man relies on them, when they fail, he likewise fails, and all his counsels collapse and vanish. But God, since His providence directs and disposes all contingent things, brings it about that what He has willed and decreed certainly comes to pass; therefore it must necessarily happen in fact.
Third, because the will of man is weak, and cannot give efficacy to the things and causes he has devised; but God can give this efficacy. Therefore when God wills something with an absolute will, it must necessarily happen, nor can any demon or man prevent it, because His will is omnipotent as well as most wise, and therefore can scatter all the counsels of men and demons that are contrary to it, and can easily find and bring forth a thousand ways to accomplish the matter. This is what David says (to which Solomon here alludes, being his son): "The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of His heart from generation to generation" (Psalm 32:11).
Therefore in all matters, especially uncertain, doubtful, and perplexing ones, we must depend not so much on our own reason as on the mind of God, and seek counsel, and say with King Jehoshaphat, placed in straits and nearly destroyed by the Moabites: "In us indeed there is not such great strength that we can resist this multitude that rushes upon us. But since we do not know what we ought to do, this alone remains to us, that we direct our eyes to You." For the greater the dangers, the greater the aids God supplies; the more remote man is, the nearer God is, if He is called upon; the farther away is the help of creatures, the more present is the divine help, as is clear from the promises of Sacred Scripture and from the very experience of the faithful. For everyone has often experienced this very thing in reality within himself, and does experience it, and will experience it. This is what Solomon says in the following chapter, verse 24: "By the Lord the steps of a man are directed; but who among men can understand his own way?"
Verse 22: A Needy Man Is Merciful
22. A NEEDY MAN IS MERCIFUL; AND BETTER IS A POOR MAN THAN A LIAR. — The Hebrew has literally: the desire of a man is his mercy; and a good poor man is better than a man of falsehood. So also the Chaldean and the Syriac, which adds: than a rich man who lies.
Hence first, from the Hebrew R. Solomon explains it thus, as if to say: Mercy and piety especially bring it about that a merciful man is responsive to the desires of men; hence a poor man is more excellent than a liar, who promises mountains of gold and delivers nothing.
Second, Aben-Ezra, as if to say: A man desires to exercise mercy toward the wretched who need it, because piety and mercy especially befit a man: hence a poor man is better than a liar who makes a show of being merciful and beneficent, but disappoints hope.
Third, R. Levi translates it in a completely contrary way. For by חסד chesed, that is, mercy, he understands reproach and disgrace (for chesed is taken to mean disgrace in Leviticus 20:45, and elsewhere by antiphrasis); hence he translates: the desire of man is a disgrace, that is, vicious and disgraceful, since every thought and desire of the human heart from its very cradle is inclined and directed toward evil (Genesis 6:5). Therefore its craving and wishes aim at nothing other than the things of the flesh and the filth of matter, in which it agrees with mute and brute animals. And therefore the poor man, who cannot fulfill his desire, is better than the liar, who enjoys these vain and false things, and delights and gorges himself to satiety, indeed to nausea.
Fourth, the Zurich Bible translates: it is a pleasure for a man to do good; a poor man is better than one who denies, who denies alms to the poor.
Fifth, Vatablus: the desire of man is (or ought to be) his grace (namely of God, who was mentioned in the preceding verse), and a poor man is more excellent than a lying man, that is, a hypocrite who attributes something to himself.
Sixth, Baynus, as if to say: Man naturally desires to be called merciful, and to have the name and praise of a liberal and beneficent person, to such an extent that even misers are sometimes beneficent, in order to display their beneficence; but it is better to be poor and give nothing to others, than to be rich and simulate mercy through ostentation.
Seventh, Cajetan, referring the pronoun his to God who was mentioned in verse 21, thus translates and explains: the desire of man is his mercy, that is, the first and greatest desire of man is to experience God as merciful. The same author more aptly refers his to man, as if to say: Man's desire, appetite, and propensity is by its nature borne toward pitying and helping the wretched. For the Hebrew תאוה taava signifies eager desire: for the root אוה ava is the same as the Latin aveo, that is, I eagerly desire.
Eighth, more connectedly Jansenius, as if to say: Men desire to be able to be beneficent and generous to the needy, and they use this as a pretext for their desire and avarice, claiming that they desire riches on account of the beneficence and mercy to be shown to the poor. But better is a poor man who lives content with his lot, than one who falsely uses works of beneficence as a pretext for his desire to amass riches. Or thus: All men indeed by nature desire to be beneficent; yet it is better to be poor and unable to be beneficent, than to boast falsely of beneficence, and to proclaim a beneficence that one has never practiced.
Ninth, the Septuagint translates the Hebrew taava, that is, desire, as καρπός, that is, fruit (for fruit is the desire, that is, the thing desired and most ardently wished for by a farmer and laborer): to a man his mercy is fruit; but a just poor man is better than a rich liar. Now by fruit the Author of the Greek Catena understands merit and reward; hence he translates: great is the revenue that almsgiving, or mercy, brings to a man, as if to say: Almsgiving is an enormous income and return: because it brings an enormous reward and compensation from God. Almsgiving therefore is an estate more fertile than any field. Others take fruit to mean the effect and property that springs from and results from man's nature and disposition, as if to say: Just as from a tree or seed there springs and is produced fruit, for example an apple: so from man's nature and disposition spring humanity, beneficence, and mercy. For humanity is inborn in man, so that he is not a man who is not humane and merciful, but rather inhuman, cruel, and barbarous. Hence St. Chrysostom, homily 54 on Matthew: "God, he says, entrusted humanity and mercy not only to the will and free choice, but also sowed no small parts of it in nature itself; whoever does not have this falls away from the nature of man." Hence Job 31:18: "From my infancy, he says, compassion grew with me, and from my mother's womb it came forth with me."
Note here. Natural humanity and compassion is implanted in man by nature, so that seeing a fellow human being who is wretched, he naturally feels sorrow and pity for him: but supernatural mercy, by which one has compassion for a person not merely as a creature, but as a human being elevated to the supernatural state, namely as one capable of grace and destined for everlasting glory, especially if one has compassion out of charity and love of God, whose image the wretched neighbor is — this, I say, supernatural mercy is supernaturally grafted into man, but fittingly and suitably adapted to his nature, which, as I said, is inclined toward humanity and mercy. Hence just as a branch of one pear tree is grafted and inserted into a branch of another pear tree of the same kind, and through this grafting becomes better and more fruitful, and brings forth more and better fruits, as farmers teach and experience confirms: so likewise when supernatural mercy is grafted into our nature through God's grace, and through the merits and example of Christ, then indeed it gives greater and more excellent fruits and works of beneficence.
So much for the Hebrew and Greek reading. Now the question is by what reasoning our Latin translator rendered taava, that is, desire, as need, namely: "The need of a man is his mercy," that is, as he himself explains: "A needy man is merciful." I reply: because the Hebrews call the needy and the poor אביון ebion, that is, one who desires, because the poor person, lacking everything, desires everything, to relieve his need. Therefore the poor person is ebion, that is, one who desires many things (for the root אבה aba means to wish, to desire, to long for), desiring and full of desire, and as it were desire itself: because he seems entirely composed of desires. Hence to desire sometimes means the same as to be lacking and to be absent, as when we say that in a household furniture, children, maids, etc. are desired, that is, are lacking. Hence that ancient heretic wished to be called Ebion, that is, poor, because he had willingly and gladly become poor, testifying that he had been one of those who placed the price of their possessions at the feet of the Apostles, as Eusebius testifies, book III of the History, chapter 21. But St. Ignatius, in his epistle to the Philadelphians, aptly playing on the word, turns it back against him, and asserts that he is truly called an ebion, that is, a poor man, because he thought most poorly of Christ, stripping Him of divinity and saying He was merely a man. This man, he says, is truly ebion, that is, destitute of mind, and poor in sense rather than in wealth.
Hence learn morally that a miser, though rich, is poor; because he always lacks, always craves and desires more. Therefore our translator rightly renders: a needy man, that is, a desiring man, is merciful. Now our translator took desire to mean need, and hence by his, that is, of the desiring man, inasmuch as he is desiring, namely on account of need, from the need that makes him merciful. than a powerful man who turns aside from it through lies. In truth, the word 'just' is not in the Hebrew or the Latin Roman editions; it is, however, in the Greek, and there by 'just' you may more fittingly understand 'merciful,' about which the discussion preceded, as if to say: 'The fruit of a man is his mercy'; therefore a poor but just man, that is, a merciful one who shows mercy in affection and indeed in effect giving the little he has, is better than a lying man, that is, a rich man or one pretending to be rich, who mendaciously promises much while giving little. yet he is truly poor, because the more he has, the more he desires; but the one content with his own, even if he is poor, is truly rich. Moreover, a needy man is merciful, because, as Lyranus says: 'The experience of his own misery moves him to have mercy on others in affection, even if he is unable in effect,' according to that saying of Dido in Virgil, Book IV of the Aeneid: Not ignorant of trouble, I learn to help the wretched. For no one feels another's misery so keenly as he who has experienced the same in himself. For this reason Christ became incarnate, so that He might learn to have mercy on men: 'For He had to be made like His brethren in every way, so that He might become merciful,' says the Apostle, Hebrews II, 17. For the same reason God permitted St. Peter to fall into the sin of denying Christ, and St. Paul into the sin of persecuting the faithful, so that being penitent they might learn to sympathize with sinners and penitents. Indeed Aristotle in the Politics says: 'The elderly are inclined to compassion, because they are in greater need, and likewise women.' Therefore the needy person shows mercy in affection, and indeed in effect if he can; for he gives the little he has with a generous spirit and affection, when he cannot give much. Therefore, says Jansenius, our text signifies that a needy man is for the most part more merciful than a rich man, since through experience he knows how serious misery and want are, and therefore a poor man surpasses a lying rich man, who lies that he has nothing to give in order to avoid doing good. For the former, although he cannot, desires to do good; while the latter, although he can, does not wish to. Or it is signified that neediness confers this good on a man, that he is merciful toward other unfortunate people, and between two evils, namely poverty and lying, poverty is the lesser evil, although men greatly flee from it and consider it the worst of evils. According to the former understanding, it is signified that poverty confers two goods on a man, namely the will to do good and preservation from the sin of lying. For he can truly say that he is unable to do good. For here that saying of the Apostle is true: 'If the willing mind is there, it is acceptable according to what a man has, not according to what he does not have,' II Corinthians VIII, 12.
See what was said there.
Mystically, Bede refers these words to the poverty and want of the mind: 'By the needy,' he says, 'he means the humble person who ceaselessly remembers that he lacks eternal goods; for such a one, in order to obtain mercy from the Lord, never refuses to show mercy to his neighbor. About whom he subsequently adds: And better is the poor man than the liar. For better is the humble in heart, who trusts nothing to his own works, than he who, deeming himself worthy of the name of man on account of the excellence of his virtues, is deceived, not knowing that while he transfers the glory of God to himself, he loses through pride the good deeds he has performed.'
Moreover Lyranus reads: 'Better is the poor just man than the lying man,' and explains it thus, as if to say: Better is the poor man who does not turn aside from the truth of justice,
Verse 23: The Fear of the Lord Is Unto Life
23. THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS UNTO LIFE: AND HE SHALL ABIDE IN FULLNESS WITHOUT BEING VISITED WITH EVIL. — In Hebrew: the fear of the Lord is unto lives; and the satisfied one will spend the night, he will not be visited by evil; the Chaldean: the fear of the Lord is unto life; and he who is satisfied by it will spend the night and will not be visited by evil. I will discuss the Septuagint version below. R. Levi explains it thus, as if to say: The fear of God is established for a life bounded by no limits; therefore he who fears God, filled with satisfaction, will endure, and will never be pressed by hunger, nor burn with bodily desires, nor will anything evil be recalled to his memory that might snatch away his thought, since he is restrained by divine fear from desiring shameful things. Vatablus: the fear of the Lord brings life, satisfies, and causes one to dwell in such a way that no evil befalls. Lyranus and Dionysius explain it thus, as if to say: The filial fear of God, which out of love of God guards against offense, leads to the blessed life; and in fullness, namely of blessedness, one will dwell (in perpetuity) without the visitation of the worst one (for so they read instead of 'worst thing'), namely the evil demon, to whom no access to the Blessed is open. For Solomon seems to allude to that saying of his father David, Psalm CX: 'You shall walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample the lion and the dragon. Because he has hoped in Me, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he has known My name.'
By 'life' understand vigor, health, longevity. For, as the poet says: 'Life is not merely living, but being well.' True life therefore is vigorous, healthy, long-lasting: for that which is miserable, weak, and fleeting is death rather than life, as St. Gregory says. By 'fullness' understand satisfaction, as the Hebrew has it; for a satisfied belly is full of food; therefore satisfaction is the fullness of the stomach.
He commends the fear of God from four excellent qualities and fruits. The first is life, that is, vigor and health; the second, satisfaction; the third, sweet sleep and rest; the fourth, deliverance from all evil. It is a prosopopoeia. For the fear of God is here compared to the good and strong constitution of a vigorous and robust man. For just as a man of good and firm constitution has a vigorous life and a strong stomach, so that he desires, eats, and digests whatever foods are suited to his nature, and satisfies himself with them. Whence it happens that from good foods well digested, sweet vapors and exhalations ascend from the stomach to the head, and breathe into the brain, and thus induce a sweet and pleasant slumber: whereby it happens that no malignant, bilious, or melancholic vapors into the head are admitted, which might present to it sad phantasms and specters, and inject bile or sadness and fear: so likewise the fear of God is the best constitution of the interior man and mind, which wins for it vigor, health, and strength of spirit, and a good stomach, namely a good conscience (for this is the stomach of the soul: for, as St. Augustine says, Tract. 32 on John: 'The belly of the inner man is the conscience of the heart'), which supremely desires, eats, and digests the dictates of the divine law, God's inspirations, the exhortations and examples of the Saints, etc., as heavenly foods of the soul, and satisfies itself with them. Whence it happens that the soul, imbued by their rumination as if by certain divine exhalations, rests peacefully in God and divine things, and as it were falls asleep, saying with the Psalmist, Psalm III: 'In peace, in the selfsame, I will sleep and rest.' This rest produces and brings forth for it a wonderful joy, free from all grief, sadness, and evil.
First therefore, the fear of God brings life, indeed lives, namely temporal and spiritual, present and eternal, of nature, grace, and glory, according to that saying of Ecclesiasticus I, 12: 'The fear of the Lord will delight the heart, and will give joy and gladness and length of days.' I assigned the reasons in that place.
Second, the fear of God brings satisfaction: for God alone, being infinite and an immense good, can fill and satisfy the soul and its immense capacity. Therefore fear, that is, the love of God, because it brings God and God's grace with it, satisfies the mind; while the fear and love of the world, feeding it with the husks of swine, namely with meager and perishable goods, that is, gold, silver, wine, delicacies, and the pomps of the world, cannot satisfy it, but leaves it hungry, dry, and famished. Again, the fear of God satisfies the body and belly, because he who fears and loves God, content with little, does not greatly desire earthly things, being satisfied as long as he has necessities, so that he says with St. Paul: 'I have all things and abound,' Philippians IV, 18. And truly, since he has with him the Author of all things, what want could he suffer?
Third, this satisfaction breathes into and showers upon the mind a rest and a wonderful sleep of tranquility, so that amid all the changes and tumults of the world it remains always like itself, quiet, peaceful, and unmoved, according to that saying of chapter XII, 21: 'Whatever befalls the just man will not sadden him.'
Fourth, this rest expels all sadness and every evil, and stirs up perpetual joy and jubilation of mind, so that in adversity as well as prosperity he gives thanks to God, rejoices, and says with the Psalmist: 'I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall be always in my mouth,' Psalm XXXIII. Hence he does not fear the terrors, illusions, and phantasms, scruples and temptations of demons and men; but with St. Anthony he laughs at them and mocks them, saying: 'The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life: of whom shall I be afraid?' Psalm XXVI, 1. Therefore even if he suffers something for justice or for the condition of this mortality, he does not grieve but rejoices, and says that word of the Apostle: 'For those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose,' Romans VIII. Therefore every evil is turned into good for him.
The a priori reason therefore for this statement is that he who fears God has Him as his defender, who summons every good for him and wards off every evil, indeed repels it with the shield of His providence and omnipotence. Who then can harm him? What should he himself fear? 'If God is for us, who can be against us?' Romans VIII, 31. This is what the Church professes in prayer and asks in the collect for the Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi, saying: 'Grant us, O Lord, to have a perpetual fear and love of Your holy name, for You never cease to govern those whom You establish in the firmness of Your love.'
Moreover the Septuagint translates: the fear of the Lord is unto life; aphobos, that is, the fearless one, will dwell in places where there is no knowledge; the Scholiast: the wandering and satisfied one will spend the night without evil visitation. Therefore the Septuagint seems to contradict the Vulgate version, as if to say: The pious man, who has the fear of God, will attain to life; but the impious man who lacks the fear of God, drunk as it were with his desire and vices, will wander about, and will stumble and rush headlong into whatever comes his way, and fearlessly without dread will cast himself headlong into every crime, and thence into hell. The pious man tends toward eternal life in heaven, but the impious toward perpetual death in hell, where there is no knowledge of God or of truth. So says the author of the Greek Catena.
But this meaning is contrary to the Hebrew, Chaldean, and Latin Vulgate; therefore it seems certain that the Septuagint translators did not intend it when they translated the Hebrew into Greek. Therefore the word aphobos does not denote the impious man devoid of the fear of God, but the fear of God itself, as if to say: the fear of the Lord is aphobos, that is, the fear of God is without fear, it is undaunted and intrepid, as the Complutensian editors translate. This is the paradox of fear. For the fear of God excludes all dread of other terrible things, just as the fear of death and hell drives out every other fear, and just as the light of the sun obscures the light of the stars, according to that saying of Christ: 'Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell,' Matthew X, 28. Do you wish then to fear nothing? Fear God. For the fear of God expels every other fear. Whence Ecclesiasticus chapter XXXIV: 'He who fears the Lord,' it says, 'will tremble at nothing, and will not be afraid, for He is his hope.' See what was said there. That this is the meaning is clear from the Hebrew, Chaldean, Vulgate, and the other interpreters.
Verse 24: The Sluggard Hides His Hand Under His Armpit
24. THE SLUGGARD HIDES HIS HAND UNDER HIS ARMPIT, AND DOES NOT BRING IT TO HIS MOUTH. — For 'armpit' the Hebrew has tsallachat, that is, a pot or jar; others say a frying pan or dish. Whence the Zurich Bible translates: the sluggard puts his hand into the dish and does not draw it back to his mouth; R. Solomon: the sluggard places his hands under the pot when it is removed from the fire, so that he may warm himself by it; Aben-Ezra: 'The idle man sits idle, just as if he had his hands hidden and buried in a vessel; therefore, since through laziness he finds nothing to eat, he will not be able to bring his hand to his mouth;' Lyranus: 'The sluggard hides his hand under the cauldron, that is, in cold weather he interrupts his meal for the sake of warming his hands;' Cajetan: 'The sluggard puts his hand in a hot pot, and, soothed by its warmth, does not want to pull it out and bring it to his mouth;' R. Levi: 'The same thing happens to the lazy man as if he had enclosed his hands in a small dish from which he could hardly pull them out; for through sloth his hands seem numb and bound, so that he performs no work; and although food is lacking, so that he ought to earn it by some necessary skill for passing through life, yet he cannot command his hands to produce anything by which he might sustain life, which those words suggest: Nor does he bring it to his mouth,' etc.
Another translates: the sluggard stores his hand in the frying pan, and he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth, as if to say: The sluggard sooner allows the food in the pot to spoil than to immediately put it in his mouth, because indeed things that are fried and roasted immediately become hot, and unless they are taken out at once, they perish by burning. Our translator renders it 'under the armpit': for the Hebrew tsallachat metaphorically signifies this, because the armpit, being concave and deep, has the appearance of a pot or jar. Whence Baynus, Pagninus and others, and indeed the Septuagint and the Syriac translate 'in the bosom'; for under the armpit, as it were in the bosom, the lazy and cold hide their hands, so that they may warm up and grow numb. Therefore he graphically depicts the habit and posture of sloth. For thus we see lazy people sitting idle and inert with their hands folded under the armpit, so that through inertia, torpor, and cold they can barely endure to pull a hand from the bosom and bring it to the mouth.
'Ascella' or 'axilla' is said diminutively as if a small wing, just as 'maxilla' from 'mala,' and 'paxillus' from 'palus'; for arms are to a man what wings are to a bird. So says Priscian. Others better derive 'ala' from 'axilla' by removing the middle letter. So Cicero in the Orator: 'For how,' he says, 'did your axilla become Ala, unless by the flight of the coarser letter? which letter elegant usage of the Latin language also plucked from maxillis, taxillis, vexillo, and paxillo.'
Therefore first, the extreme laziness of the sluggard is signified and blamed here, by which they prefer to lie torpid rather than eat. It is a hyperbole. For hardly anyone so lazy is found who, when hungry, would not bring his hand to his mouth to put in food, to drive away hunger and satisfy the growling stomach. Yet there are some so torpid and cold, says Baynus and Jansenius, who prefer to lie numb rather than eat; for cold and torpor dull and quiet hunger, so that they feel none or very little. For these it is troublesome to take food, or wash the face, or comb the hair, or be without for even a short time the warmth they seek in the bosom, or the comfort of oil. In sum, it is signified that the laziness of some is so great that they refuse and decline even what is easiest to do and necessary for body or soul. That this is the meaning is clear from chapter XXVI, 15, where this saying is repeated and explained: 'The sluggard,' it says, 'hides his hand under his armpit, and it wearies him to bring it to his mouth.'
Second, it is signified that the sluggard sits idle with idle hands and does not wish to work to procure food: therefore he has nothing to eat and bring to his mouth. Whence Vatablus translates literally from the Hebrew: the sluggard hides his hand in his bosom, he will not even bring it to his mouth, as if to say: He will have nothing to put in his mouth. And thus the Vulgate version can be explained: Nor does he bring it to his mouth, as if to say: Nor does he apply it to procuring food for his mouth.
For these reasons the hieroglyphists depict sloth as an ugly old woman, poorly dressed, sitting with her head resting on her left hand whose elbow rests on her knees; on the right she holds a rope, on the left a torpedo fish or a snail carrying its house, with this motto: 'The idle one is numb'; an old woman, because the elderly are sluggish; poorly dressed, because 'sloth is the nurse of poverty,' says Seneca, in the book On Benefits; sitting, because it makes people idle. Whence St. Bernard, spurring on the slothful: 'O shameless man,' he says, 'thousands of thousands minister to Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stand before Him, and you presume to sit?' With head bowed and drooping, because 'through torpor strength and talent drain away,' says Isidore, Book II of the Soliloquies. She holds a rope, because it binds men and makes them unfit for work. She carries a torpedo fish, because this delays and stops ships in mid-course: whence it is also called the remora. The tortoise is the slowest creature in movement, just like the slothful person. So says Cesare Ripa, in the Iconologia, page 8.
Moreover the Septuagint adds the word 'unjustly,' and translates thus: he who unjustly hides his hands in his bosom will not bring them to his mouth; which the author of the Greek Catena explains variously from various sources: 'He who,' he says, 'unjustly hides his hand in his bosom, that is, seizes and conceals what belongs to others, will never have abundance, because he will always struggle with such barrenness and scarcity of things that even what he might bring to his mouth, that is, eat, will be lacking to him.' Another: 'He who has acquired the virtues that consist in action, yet does not put them into practice, truly deprives himself of genuine nourishment.' Didymus: 'He who lives wickedly and unjustly hides his hands against his soul, and does not cultivate his own land, how will he ever be able to be filled with bread? For virtues occupied with actions serve the purpose of hands, in that they bring to our mouth that bread which descended from heaven. Therefore such a person, because he is lazy and idle, will be utterly unable to begin any fruitful action.'
Another interpretation: 'He who knows the will of God and yet does not do it, will never possess eternal goods, as one who has shamefully hidden his hands in his bosom; therefore he who performs no work will also have nothing to put in his mouth. But notice how he expresses the character of the lazy man with a ridiculous figure, namely through hands hidden in the bosom.'
More precisely, more neatly, and more profoundly our Salazar says, as if to say: Those who take away the money of others by force and injury do not bring it to their own mouths at all, because more quickly than they can convert it to their own use, it will perish for them; for we know from experience that money taken by theft commonly goes to waste and perishes. Another and more fitting exposition is: 'He who unjustly hides his hands in his bosom,' that is, he who conceals money out of avarice, drawing in his hands and thrusting them into his bosom against all right and law; 'nor will he bring them to his mouth,' such a one indeed will not even dare to spend them for his own use: for such is the nature of misers that not only do they not spend their money on others, but they do not even dare to live on it themselves; for avarice, which restrains generosity toward the poor or friends, most sordidly forbids expenditures even for one's own benefit. This according to the Septuagint.
Mystically and tropologically, St. Gregory, Book XII of the Morals, chapter X: 'For the sluggard,' he says, 'it is labor to bring his hand to his mouth; because every idle preacher does not wish to do by works what he says. For to bring the hand to the mouth is to make one's works agree with one's voice.' Bede transcribed these words here.
Admirably St. Bernard, in Sermon 63 on the Song of Songs, enumerating the effects and damages of sloth: 'This cold,' he says, 'if once it has pervaded the soul, a certain rigidity of soul sets in, and vigor grows sluggish, weakness of strength is feigned, horror of austerity is intensified, fear of poverty troubles, the soul is contracted, grace is withdrawn, the length of life is prolonged, reason is lulled to sleep, the spirit is extinguished, the novice's fervor cools, wearisome lukewarmness grows heavy, fraternal charity grows cold, pleasure flatters, false security deceives, habit calls back. What more? The law is dissembled, right is abdicated, what is sacred is proscribed, the fear of the Lord is abandoned. Finally hands are given to shamelessness: that reckless, that shameful, that most disgraceful, that leap full of ignominy and confusion is presumed — from the heights to the abyss, from the floor to the dung heap, from the throne to the sewer, from heaven to filth, from the cloister to the world, from paradise to hell.'
Verse 25: When the Pestilent Man Is Scourged
25. WHEN THE PESTILENT MAN IS SCOURGED, THE FOOL WILL BECOME WISER: BUT IF YOU CORRECT A WISE MAN, HE WILL UNDERSTAND DISCIPLINE. — The Septuagint: but if you correct a prudent man, he will ponder the meaning; in Hebrew: if someone strikes the scoffer, the simple man becomes shrewd: and if you rebuke the intelligent one, he will understand knowledge; the Chaldean: strike the mocker, and the foolish will become shrewder (more cautious): and correct the prudent man, that he may understand knowledge; the Syriac: the fool, when he is scourged, the prudent one takes heed.
'Pestilent' men therefore here and elsewhere are called scoffers and mockers, who laugh at all things sacred and holy, and turn them into jest and sport, indeed ridicule and mock them; for these are supremely harmful and pestilent. These therefore are almost incurable, and must be restrained not by words but by blows, so that if not they themselves, certainly others may come to their senses and grow wise through their punishment. For 'fool' the Hebrew has pethi, that is, little, simple, rude, innocent, foolish. For 'will become wiser,' the Hebrew has iaraim, that is, he will become shrewd and cautious like a serpent. For natural philosophers relate, and among them Albertus Magnus, in the book On Animals, regarding the serpent, that if someone kills or burns a serpent, the other serpents, perceiving its stench and foul smell, flee, as if fearing that the same thing might happen to them; and thus by the example of one they grow wise and take care for themselves by flight; and that this is a singular remedy for purging a place infested with serpents. In a similar way Solomon bids us grow wise, so that when we see some wicked person sharply punished either by God or by a judge, we may guard against every crime. Whence St. Chrysostom, in Homily 17 on Genesis, teaches that God inflicted severe punishments on the serpent that deceived Eve, Genesis III, 14; and therefore imposed lighter ones on Adam, since he had already become more cautious from the serpent's punishment. Common is this saying: Happy is he whom others' perils make cautious. Thus because of the plagues of Pharaoh and the destruction of Amalek, Jethro came to his senses, converted to the Lord, and became a proselyte; so says R. Solomon. See Exodus chapter XVIII, 9.
Truly the Comic poet says: Punish one evil man, and you will correct a thousand. Delayed punishment harms the innocent twice over. Restrain a single criminal, and you have eliminated crime. Where there is no punishment for the wicked, there the good cannot exist. Lest the whole body waste away, we remove certain limbs. The scorpion must be crushed as soon as it appears. And Seneca: 'The wise man, from the correction of another's sin, amends his own.' This is what the Apostle decrees, I Timothy V, 20: 'Rebuke sinners before all, that the rest also may have fear.'
BUT IF YOU CORRECT A WISE MAN, HE WILL UNDERSTAND DISCIPLINE. — As if to say: The pestilent and foolish man can only be corrected by scourging and blows; but the wise man, corrected merely by words, will come to his senses and learn discipline, says R. Levi, according to that saying: 'The wise man by a nod, the fool by a club,' namely correct. Whence the Apostle to Titus, I, 12: 'Cretans,' he says, 'are always liars, evil beasts, lazy bellies, etc., for which reason rebuke them sharply.' Thus St. Stephen sharply rebuked the hardened Jews, calling them traitors and killers of Christ, Acts VII. For just as flints are split only by frequent blows of hammers, but sand by a light touch: so likewise hard hearts are cut open only by sharp blows and scourges; but soft ones by gentle correction.
Verse 26: He Who Afflicts His Father and Drives Away His Mother
26. HE WHO AFFLICTS HIS FATHER AND DRIVES AWAY HIS MOTHER IS SHAMEFUL AND WRETCHED. — For 'afflicts' the Hebrew has mescadded, that is, devastates, destroys, plunders, pillages, ravages, also afflicts, as is clear from Psalm XVI, 9: 'From the face of the wicked who afflicted me.' Whence first, Pagninus translates: he who destroys his father's goods will drive away his mother, a son causing shame and making them blush; the Zurich Bible: he who gives harm to his father and drives out his mother is a disgraceful and shameful son; Vatablus: he who plunders his father and drives away his mother is a son causing shame and reproach, namely to his parents; Aben-Ezra: he who orders his father to be ruined and seeks to drive out his mother, this son is shameful; R. Solomon: 'He who destroys his father and drives away his mother brands them with ignominy and wears out a wicked path. Thus when Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian (Ishmael) offering worship to idols and exposing his private parts, she expelled both son and mother with reproach from the house.' So he says; R. Levi: 'He who brands his parents with ignominy and reproaches on account of his wicked behavior, and also because he indulges his desires, this one, I say, has his parent plundered by robbers in order to share in the spoil with them. Or even if perhaps he has borrowed from them, these creditors come to his parent to demand payment of what the son owed, and for the same reason the mother is put to flight. Therefore it is necessary that sons be properly raised by their parents from an early age, lest ruin be brought upon them.'
The meaning therefore is, says Jansenius, as if to say: He who by his impious life afflicts his father and strips him of his goods, whether by violence or by squandering of goods; and causes his mother to be forced to flee and leave her house or homeland, either because she cannot bear the insolence of her son, or because through him she has been reduced to poverty and can no longer remain in the house and homeland — such a man is plainly shameful and worthy of all reproach and disgrace. Worthy also to be, both here and in the future, wretched, because he makes his parents wretched. The Hebrew can also be translated differently, so that the statement has greater weight, in this manner: 'He lays waste to his father and drives away his mother — a shameful and reproachful son,' that is, one who lives a shameful life often strips his parents of both goods and home: or, he sins as much as one who drives his parents to destitution and exile.
Again, if instead of mescadded with shin you read mesadded with sin, it means he who beats, breaks, or crushes his father: sadad means to break and crush clods when the field is plowed, that is, to harrow. Whence the Septuagint translates: he who dishonors his father and drives away his mother will be confounded and will be subject to reproach; the Chaldean: he who mocks his father and drives away his mother is a shameful son, worthy of confusion; the Syriac: he is a son incurring shame and causing confusion, as if to say: He who despises his aging father, declining into the earth through death, as a worthless clod, heaps reproaches and injuries upon him, and as it were tramples and crushes him underfoot — this one burdens both himself and his parents with the heaviest ignominy and reproach, and therefore is and will be wretched.
For this dishonoring and affliction of parents is usually a presage, indeed a lure, of future unhappiness. The a priori reason is that such a person openly shows himself an enemy of nature and a foe of all honorable conduct, says the author of the Greek Catena. For nothing is more disgraceful than to afflict and injure those from whom you received your nature and every good thing. Again, just as the honor of parents is the honor of children, so the disgrace and reproach of parents is the disgrace and reproach of children, especially when they themselves inflict it upon them: therefore men are wont to censure and execrate such persons as criminals. And God, the Author of nature, severely avenges this injury to parents, and chastises injurious children with heavy afflictions, so that they live wretchedly and unhappily everywhere, and suffer from their own children the same troubles, injuries, and reproaches that they themselves inflicted on their parents, as frequent experience attests. Famous is the story of the father who, being ignominiously dragged out of the house by his son as far as the threshold of the door, said: 'Stop, my son, for this far I dragged my own father.' Thus God avenges injury to parents by retaliation; for the father represents God the Father to his children and acts in His place. Whence Plato, in Book XI of the Laws, teaches that parents should be honored by children 'as certain divinities: No other such and so efficacious image,' he says, 'can be had in the home, if they are rightly and fittingly honored by their children'; therefore he asserts that the precepts of parents should be received by children as oracles. Thus Cain, by killing Abel, afflicting and dishonoring his parents Adam and Eve, was struck by God with trembling of limbs and wandered wretchedly as a vagabond and fugitive, Genesis IV, 12. Thus Absalom, striving to strip his father David of his kingdom, hung caught by his hair in a tree, and perished pierced by three lances from Joab, II Kings XVIII, 14. See what I said about honoring parents at Ecclesiasticus III, 1 and following.
Symbolically, the author of the Greek Catena takes the father as the mind and the mother as the senses, as if to say: He who studiously repudiates the right paths of the mind, and, abandoning the road of right judgment, enters upon the contrary one, will be confounded. These words can also be referred to heretics: for they, rejecting the truth and preferring falsehood to it, dishonor God the Father as far as it is in their power; and they provoke the Church, the Mother of God. So he says.
Finally, spiritual sons, that is, disciples, Religious, subjects, who vex and afflict their teachers, Prelates, and superiors, bring upon themselves perpetual reproach and the unhappiness of the present and future life.
Verse 27: Cease Not, My Son, to Hear Instruction
27. CEASE NOT, MY SON, TO HEAR INSTRUCTION, AND DO NOT BE IGNORANT OF THE WORDS OF KNOWLEDGE. — In Hebrew it is affirmative: cease, my son, to hear instruction, to err from the words of knowledge. It is a concession and irony, as if to say: I grant that, if it pleases you, you need not hear instruction; I leave you to your deafness; but know that through it you will stray from knowledge. Whence our translator clearly rendered the meaning by adding the negation: cease not to hear instruction, my son; the Chaldean: grow, my son, and hear discipline, and do not cease from the words of his mouth. The Septuagint agrees, saying: the son who neglects to keep his father's discipline will ponder wicked words, or turns over wicked speeches (that is, things) in his mind, as if to say: 'He who never ponders divine precepts in his mind, stirs up and belches forth unclean thoughts,' says the author of the Greek Catena.
Moreover Vatablus, Baynus, Cajetan, and other Hebraists take these words as referring to bad teaching; whence from the Hebrew they translate thus: cease, my son, to hear instruction that leads you to stray from the words of knowledge. So Pagninus; or: Desist, my son, from hearing teaching that leads astray from the words of knowledge. So Vatablus and Aben-Ezra: Cease, he says, and refrain from error, and set a limit to your wandering. R. Levi goes further, who thinks that here an excessive pursuit of philosophy is forbidden, lest anyone spend his entire life on political philosophy, but rather should assiduously devote himself to true wisdom, that is, to forming character and acquiring and increasing virtues. But our Vulgate version, which the Septuagint supports, is clear and true; for the Hebrew musar means good teaching, namely the discipline and correction of the wise. Knowledge means the same thing; for knowledge here is commonly taken for sense, prudence, and wisdom. Therefore the second hemistich is connected with the first and denotes its fruit and effect, as if to say: My son, do not cease to hear the sound teaching of your father; for thus it will come about that you will not be ignorant of, but will be well versed in, the words of knowledge, that is, the prudent and sensible words that your father repeatedly places in your ears and sounds forth. Hence the Syriac translates: remain, my son, listen to correction, lest you forget the word of knowledge.
Verse 28: An Unjust Witness Mocks Judgment
28. AN UNJUST WITNESS MOCKS JUDGMENT, AND THE MOUTH OF THE WICKED DEVOURS INIQUITY. — In Hebrew: a witness of Belial will mock judgment, etc. For Belial, that is, 'without a yoke,' signifies a very impious man who throws off every yoke of the law, a rebel, an apostate, such as Lucifer was in the beginning, as I said in chapter VI, verse 12. Whence some translate 'witness of Belial' as 'witness of the devil,' that is, diabolical. Thus the false witnesses who accused the innocent Naboth of blasphemy are called witnesses of Belial, that is, sons of the devil, as our translator renders it in III Kings XXI, 13. For, as St. Augustine says, Tract. 42 on that passage of St. John VIII: When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it (namely of lies; for this lies hidden in the word 'liar'). 'Just as,' he says, 'God the Father begot the Son who is Truth, so the devil when he fell begot as it were a son, the lie.' And further: 'For perhaps you are a liar, because you speak a lie, but you are not the father of lying. For the lie that you speak, you received from the devil, and you believed him.' Just as therefore the truthful are members of Christ, who is Truth itself, as the Apostle testifies, Ephesians IV, 15: so liars are sons and members of the devil, who is the father of lies, as St. Augustine teaches in the book On Lying. Our Salazar confirms the same point at greater length here. For 'mocks' the Hebrew has ialits, which can secondly be translated as 'interprets,' 'utters,' 'speaks.' For 'devours' the Rabbis translate 'covers,' 'hides.' Whence First, R. Solomon translates and explains it thus: The unjust witness utters against another and testifies those things from which, by right, in courts he would be subjected to blows and death. 'And the mouth of the wicked devours iniquity,' that is, iniquity and crime devour the wicked; others: he interprets judgment, that is, he inclines it to the other, evil, and false side.
Second, Aben-Ezra: The unjust witness, he says, will affirm that his testimonies are true and sincere; as if he were an interpreter of judgment, that is, of truth and justice, or certainly he will pronounce mockeries in court; the mouth of the wicked covers, that is, conceals, iniquity and crimes. So also R. Levi.
Third, others say, as if to say: The unjust witness mocks judgment, that is, the law of God which decrees: 'You shall not bear false witness.' He likewise mocks judgment, that is, the vengeance of God, as well as the judgment against liars and perjurers, according to that saying: 'A false witness will not go unpunished.' For he thinks that his falsehood escapes the notice of men, and is neither noticed nor punished by God.
Fourth, Cajetan translates: the unjust witness will cause judgment to be mocked, that is, he exposes the sacred sentences of judges to mockery and ridicule, when by his false testimony he twists them to injustice, and causes the guilty to be acquitted and the innocent to be punished: which is to mock judgment and judges, and to make them ridiculous.
Fifth, Vatablus translates: a useless or worthless witness mocks equity, and his mouth devours, that is, dissembles, iniquity, and covers and hides evils in his heart, as if to say: He hides iniquity within himself, while he keeps his premeditated wickedness stored up, so that at his own time he may pour it out against others, according to that saying: 'Under his tongue are labor and sorrow,' Psalm IX.
Sixth and genuinely: 'The unjust witness mocks,' that is, despises, disregards, and as if laughing casts away, 'judgment,' that is, justice, because against it he rashly gives false testimony. Hence he mocks the judgment and sentence of judges, because by testifying falsely or obscuring the truth, he perverts it as a thing of nothing. He also mocks 'judgment,' that is, the vengeance of God, because he neither believes nor fears that it will come upon him, but he is deceived. For by the true judgment of God he will be condemned, and will pay the penalty in the fire that is prepared for the devil and his angels; for he has obeyed him who is the father of lies. Whence it follows: 'Judgments are prepared for scorners.'
AND THE MOUTH OF THE WICKED DEVOURS INIQUITY.
'Of the wicked,' both of false witnesses, about whom the discussion preceded, and of all others whatsoever, as if to say: The wicked most eagerly and fully commit crimes, and swallow them into the stomach of conscience as if devouring them, with that very eagerness, magnitude, and abundance with which the famished devour bread and delicate foods, as if to say: The wicked are gluttons not so much of wines as of crimes. So say Bede and Lyranus, who note that 'devours' is used because the wicked man does not chew or weigh the gravity of his crime and the punishment hanging over him; for if he did, he would certainly feel and taste its bitterness, and would reject and vomit it out. To this pertains that passage of Job XV, 16: 'A useless man, who drinks iniquity like water.' For liars, perjurers, drunkards, the lustful, and other wicked people devour crimes like feasts. Well known is that impious jest of the parasite and scoffer who, flattering the lust of Henry VIII, King of England, who wished to marry Anne Boleyn, when the king asked 'how great a sin it would be to know both mother and daughter?' (for it was reported that Anne was Henry's daughter), sacrilegiously replied: 'The same as devouring a chicken along with the hen,' as Sanders reports in the History of the English Schism.
Second, 'the mouth of the wicked devours iniquity,' that is, without shame or modesty, they lie impudently, as if lying were a thing of nothing, indeed something playful, laughable, and delightful, in which sense Christ says that the Pharisees strain out a gnat and swallow a camel, Matthew chapter XXIII.
Third, Baynus explains 'devours,' or, as he himself translates, 'conceals,' as referring to unjust judges who patronize false witnesses, as if to say: A witness of Belial, that is, a worthless witness of no honor and reputation, swearing falsely mocks judgment and justice, and the mouth of wicked judges protects, covers, and conceals them; and thus by consenting to and cooperating in their iniquity, he transfers it to himself and as it were devours it, as if to say: Courts were established so that iniquities exposed through true witnesses and the sentences of good judges might be punished. But it happens far differently time and again, when a witness of Belial speaks false testimony in court, and covers the truth by lying, or while he keeps his premeditated iniquity stored within himself, to pour it out against others at his own time, according to that saying: 'Under his tongue are labor and sorrow,' Psalm IX. Moreover the Septuagint goes a different way: for they derive 'ed,' that is, witness, from iaad, that is, to agree, to promise, to betroth; whence they translate: he who pledges surety for an imprudent boy injures justice. Or, as the author of the Greek Catena clearly translates: he who binds his word for a foolish boy injures justice: the mouth of the wicked devours judgments. Which an anonymous commentator in the same place explains mystically: 'By the pledge of justice, he denotes offense, just as by the boy he denotes the weakness and blindness of human nature.' Aquila and Theodotion: he will devour or swallow the law, that is, he will transgress the law boldly, just as if he were swallowing it down. But in the literal sense, first, you may explain it thus, as if to say: He who vows and offers to God in religion, or to a temple for the clergy or priesthood, an imprudent and foolish son, reserving others more prudent and more excellent for himself and the world, this man injures justice, that is, the justice and holiness of God: for since God is the best and most excellent, He demands that the best and most prudent be offered to Him. Whence Cain is blamed as a violator and profaner of God, because he did not offer the best as Abel did, but the worst of his flocks to God, Genesis IV.
Second, as if to say: The father who betroths a wife to his underage or imprudent son injures the justice and sanctity of marriage: because he exposes it to the danger of dissolution and violation, lest the minor, when he grows older, or the imprudent one through imprudence, violate and break the rights of marriage. For the Greek engouaomai is said of the father when he stipulates a wife for his son, and the Hebrew 'ed,' if you derive it from iaad, that is, to betroth, means the one betrothing.
Third and best, the Complutensian editors translate: he who pledges surety for an imprudent son injures justice, as if to say: He who recommends a son, nephew, or friend for benefices or offices, for example, to be a Pastor, Bishop, judge, counselor, senator, or governor of the state, and pledges that he is endowed with sufficient prudence and other qualities required for the office, when in fact he is imprudent and insufficient — this person gravely injures justice, that is, the right of the state or the Church, which justly demands that capable and worthy Bishops and leaders be placed over it, who may justly and holily administer sacred and secular laws. Therefore he who recommends the imprudent and inept, and pledges surety for them, is guilty of all the damages that will follow, and is bound to make restitution for them. He who therefore pledges surety for an imprudent and inept Pastor or Bishop is guilty of all the souls that perish through his fault, and God will require them on the day of judgment from both the sponsor and the Pastor or Bishop. Therefore he who is wise and wishes to safeguard his own soul will recommend none but outstanding men whose prudence and virtue have been long proven, unjust judges conceal the wickedness of the evil, whom brought to court they ought to have punished, and especially these false witnesses. should he recommend, nor should he allow himself to be drawn by the affection of blood and kinship, which blinds many and drives them to ruin.
Verse 29: Judgments Are Prepared for Scorners
29. JUDGMENTS ARE PREPARED FOR SCORNERS: AND STRIKING HAMMERS FOR THE BODIES OF FOOLS. — In Hebrew: and beatings for the back of fools; the Septuagint: scourges and punishments are prepared for the akolastois, that is, the intemperate (the Complutensian: the lustful), likewise for the imprudent; Theodotion: and crushings for the back of the demented. For 'striking hammers,' the Hebrew has mahalumot, that is, heavy blows by which a thing is battered, beaten, crushed: halam means to strike, shake, shatter, trample. The Chaldean translates: blows; Vatablus: welts; the Syriac: rods for a demented people. The meaning is, as if to say: Scorners mock the judgments of God and of men; but let them know for certain that those judgments are prepared for them, especially for this cause and fault, that they mock them: similarly also fools, that is, all sinners whatsoever, should know that heavy blows from God are prepared and threatening their backs, which like hammers will batter and crush them.
By 'judgments' understand both judgment properly so called, by which God condemns unjust witnesses and mockers of justice and judgment, either directly or through judges; and also the punishment inflicted on the guilty and criminal by the just judgment of God, or of kings, tyrants, or judges. Whence the Chaldean translates: pains. Our Salazar thinks that by 'striking hammers' there is an allusion to the breaking of legs (crurifragium), which was customarily inflicted on those who were crucified; for it is believable that this was usually done with mallets, so that the meaning is: 'Striking hammers for the bodies of fools,' or, as the Hebrew has, crushings or bruisings for the bodies of fools, that is, the cross and the breaking of legs for those foolish scorners, as if to say: So severely will it be dealt with those triflers that they will be forced to experience the ultimate punishments, namely the cross and the breaking of legs and the entire body. On crurifragium see Lipsius, On the Cross, Book II, chapter 14.
Lyranus refers these words to the punishments inflicted on the guilty by kings or judges: for some, he says, are hanged, others beheaded, others burned, others punished with other bodily penalties according to the various crimes committed by them, and this to the terror of others. Thus Nebuchadnezzar is called 'the hammer of the whole earth,' Jeremiah L, 23, because God with him as with a hammer struck and devastated all nations for their crimes. And Jael killed the impious Sisera with a hammer, Judges IV, 21. St. Augustine says admirably in his commentary on Psalm XXXVI: 'Why,' he says, 'does the wicked man applaud himself, because my Father made a scourge of him? He uses that one for service, but He educates me for my inheritance.' Bede refers these words to the punishments of hell: 'The reprobate,' he says, 'mock the judgment of divine command or threat; yet judgments of damnation await them already prepared, which like hammers on red-hot iron, so beat them in the furnace of hell without end.' I have seen enormous iron hammers lifted by water-powered mills, with which red-hot iron was beaten in the Ardennes, which certainly struck horror into those watching, and from them I imagined the hammers of hell, with which the reprobate are beaten on a burning anvil.
Most excellently Dionysius refers these words to punishments both to be inflicted by judges in this life and by God on the day of the Last Judgment: 'Judgments are prepared,' he says, 'for scorners of truth and equity, since God is prepared to judge and condemn them, according to that saying of Isaiah: The Lord stands to judge. And Jude says: Behold, the Lord comes to execute judgment and to convict the wicked. In divine and positive law also just judgments are instituted against such people, and striking hammers are prepared for the bodies of fools, that is, of the wicked, upon whom even in this life for various crimes various and bitter torments and scourgings, mutilations, hangings, breakings on the wheel, and similar kinds of death are inflicted; and also hellish punishments for the impenitent, as is said in the Apocalypse: For the fearful, and the unbelieving, and the accursed, and all liars, their portion will be in the pool burning with fire and brimstone.'
Mystically, the hammers of sinners are effective preachers, who by threatening the wicked with the menaces and scourges of God, crush and convert them, Jeremiah chapter XXIII, 29.
Finally, St. Augustine wisely teaches, at the end of his commentary on Psalm XXXI, that whatever scourges afflict us are not to be attributed to man or to the devil, but to God, who uses man or the devil to scourge us, as He used him in scourging Job in chapter I. For God, says St. Augustine, scourges His children for discipline, that they may be corrected; but the reprobate for punishment, that they may be tormented as an example to others; and no one has been, is, or will be without scourging in this life, not even the Only-Begotten Son of God Himself. The same Augustine, on Psalm XXXVII, at those words: Because I am ready for scourges: 'If my Father scourges me,' he says, 'I am ready for scourges, because an inheritance is being prepared for me. You do not want the scourge? The inheritance is not given to you. For every son must necessarily be scourged: to such a degree is everyone scourged, that He did not even spare Him who had no sin.'
To this sacred oracle of Solomon corresponds the oracle given to Pausanias, the Spartan general: Punishment must be paid by you; injury brings destruction. And the oracle given in Greek verse to Pisistratus: No one of men doing injustice shall fail to pay the penalty. Socrates asserted that 'states are best governed when the unjust pay penalties,' as Plato reports, Book II of the Philosophy. Lycurgus used to say that 'the state is maintained by two things, namely reward and punishment,' as Cicero reports in the epistle to Brutus, where he also cites Solon who, when asked 'what would be most most salutary for the state,' replied: 'If the good were encouraged by rewards, and the evil restrained by punishments.' Cato's judgment was that 'an injury, even if it brings no danger to the one committing it, is nevertheless dangerous to all.' As if to say: The punishment of a crime is not to be neglected, lest from the impunity of one person's injury, many be enticed to inflict a similar one on others with the hope of similar impunity. Seneca wisely says in the book On Clemency: 'Just as lightning bolts,' he says, 'fall at the risk of a few, but to the fear of all: so the punishments of great powers frighten more widely than they harm.'