Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Wine is a luxurious thing; on sinning against a king, and on abandoning quarrels; the sluggard who does not labor because of cold begs; a just king scatters every evil; no one can say his heart is clean. To be avoided are diverse weights and measures, sleep, the bread of deceit, the revealing of secrets, the desire for vengeance, the devouring of holy things, and a hasty inheritance; but to be pursued are the lamp of the Lord, mercy, truth, and clemency.
Vulgate Text: Proverbs 20:1-30
1. Wine is a luxurious thing, and drunkenness is tumultuous; whoever delights in these will not be wise. 2. As the roaring of a lion, so also is the terror of a king: he who provokes him sins against his own soul. 3. It is an honor for a man to separate himself from quarrels; but all fools are mixed up in insults. 4. Because of the cold, the sluggard refused to plow: he will beg therefore in summer, and it shall not be given to him. 5. As deep water, so is counsel in the heart of a man; but a wise man will draw it out. 6. Many men are called merciful; but who shall find a faithful man? 7. The just man who walks in his simplicity shall leave behind him blessed children. 8. The king who sits on the throne of judgment scatters all evil with his gaze. 9. Who can say: My heart is clean, I am pure from sin? 10. Diverse weights and diverse measures: both are abominable before God. 11. By his pursuits a child is known, whether his works are clean and right. 12. The hearing ear and the seeing eye: the Lord made both of them. 13. Do not love sleep, lest poverty oppress you: open your eyes, and be filled with bread. 14. "It is bad, it is bad," says every buyer; and when he has gone away, then he boasts. 15. There is gold, and a multitude of gems; but lips of knowledge are a precious vessel. 16. Take the garment of him who stood surety for a stranger, and take a pledge from him for outsiders. 17. The bread of deceit is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel. 18. Plans are strengthened by counsel, and wars are to be waged with guidance. 19. With him who reveals secrets and walks deceitfully and opens wide his lips, do not associate. 20. He who curses his father and his mother, his lamp shall be extinguished in the midst of darkness. 21. An inheritance hastily acquired in the beginning will in the end lack blessing. 22. Do not say: I will repay evil; wait for the Lord, and He will deliver you. 23. Diverse weights are an abomination before the Lord; a deceitful balance is not good. 24. By the Lord are the steps of a man directed; but who among men can understand his own way? 25. It is ruin for a man to devour holy things, and after vows to retract. 26. A wise king scatters the wicked, and bends the arch over them. 27. The lamp of the Lord is the breath of man, which searches all the secret parts of the belly. 28. Mercy and truth preserve the king, and his throne is strengthened by clemency. 29. The exultation of young men is their strength; and the dignity of old men is gray hair. 30. The blueness of a wound cleanses away evil, and blows in the secret parts of the belly.
1. WINE IS A LUXURIOUS THING, AND DRUNKENNESS IS TUMULTUOUS; WHOEVER DELIGHTS IN THESE WILL NOT BE WISE.
For "wine is a luxurious thing," the Hebrew has "wine is a mocker" or "a scoffer." So Aquila and Theodotion. Which various authors explain in various ways.
First, the Chaldean translates it as "wine is for mockery." Pagninus renders it: "wine makes one a mocker," for drunkards laugh at everyone and everything, and turn all laws and sacred things into games, trifles, and jokes. Vatablus renders it: "he who is given to wine is a scoffer, he who causes tumult, who loves it. Aben-Ezra renders it: "mocker of wine," that is, "A mocker is the man of wine, that is, the one addicted to wine."
Second, the Zurich Bible translates it: "wine is a playful thing," because it makes people playful and ridiculous; for it gives many spirits, which cause unbounded merriment that dissolves into laughter, games, and jests. Hence that saying of Homer cited by Stobaeus: "Wine has driven even the wisest man to sing, to laugh softly, and to dance."
Third, the Syriac translates: "wine is strong, and drunkenness is disgraceful." See about the strength of wine in 3 Esdras 3:10 and 18. Hence Varro considers that the word "vinum" (wine) derives from "vis" (force), because it does violence to reason, the mind, and the whole person.
Fourth, Symmachus and others translate: "wine is pestilent." For the Hebrew word לץ (lets), meaning "mocker," our Vulgate and the Septuagint sometimes render as "pestilent," as if to say: wine is a thing supremely harmful and pestilent, because it snatches away reason, which is as it were the life and soul of man, by which man is rational, so that man seems to be a beast and a brute; hence he pours himself out into every license and wantonness. Therefore the Septuagint broadly and forcefully translate it as ἀκόλαστον, which signifies many things: first, wanton; second, lustful and shameless; third, bold and impudent; fourth, prodigal; fifth, intemperate and immoderate; sixth, immodest, untamed, unbridled; seventh, wicked, abandoned, impious. All these apply to wine, for wine makes drunkards wanton, shameless, impudent, prodigal, intemperate, untamed, wicked. Properly, ἀκόλαστον is said as if from α, that is "without," and κόλασις, that is "chastisement" — not the kind called punishment, but the kind that is restraint of appetite — as if to say: unchastised, unrestrained, unbridled, one who does not chastise or curb the impulses of lust and desire that wine excites. Hear Gellius, book 19, chapter 2: "That pleasure," he says, "which is excessive in taste and touch, as wise men have judged, is the foulest of all things, and those especially who have given themselves over to these two bestial pleasures, the Greeks call by the gravest terms of vice: ἀκόλαστος or ἀκρατεῖς; we call them either incontinent or intemperate." Hear St. Basil, homily On Drunkenness: "Incontinence itself," he says, "openly flows from wine as from a certain fountain, which far surpasses all the madness of brute animals toward females; for brute animals do not exceed the bounds of nature, but those who are overwhelmed by wine seek the female in males, and again the male in the female." And St. John Chrysostom, homily On Drunkenness: "For what evil does drunkenness not do? It makes pigs out of men, and even worse than pigs; for the pig indeed wallows in mud and feeds on dung; but the drunkard feasts at a table more abominable than that, devising illicit unions and lawless loves."
Our Vulgate, following the Septuagint, translates: "wine is a luxurious thing," where "luxurious" means the same as "luxury." For "luxury" here signifies not only lust and sexual matters, but any kind of excess. Hence the Apostle, alluding to this, says in Ephesians 5:18: "Do not be drunk with wine, in which is ἀσωτία," that is, excess, wantonness, debauchery, filthiness, shamelessness, from luxury. St. Ambrose, book 2 of On Duties, chapter 21, reads: "Wine is prodigal, and drunkenness is insulting;" prodigal, because it consumes and squanders wealth. Hence St. Ambrose adds: "It is prodigal to abound in sumptuous banquets and much wine. It is prodigal to exhaust one's own wealth for the sake of popular favor." For wine loosens the spirit and makes one effusively joyful and merry, so that one pours out one's possessions, makes enormous gifts, and dissipates all one has, for which, once sober, belated repentance seizes him. Again, it is prodigal because it makes drunkards lavish in wantonness, loud laughter, mockeries, insults, the revealing of secrets, curses, gluttony, and lust; for this prodigality, or luxury, signifies any excess by which a man flows out into what is unlawful.
Therefore wine is a luxurious thing, because it creates every kind of excess; and it is tumultuous, because it stirs up tumults, quarrels, and fights. And so wine, says Jansenius, is called "a luxurious thing" because it provokes men to excess, prodigality, lust, and every kind of wantonness and impudence. He therefore attributes two evils to wine or drunkenness: one pertaining to immoderate pleasures, the other to disturbances and anger; one to the concupiscible faculty, the other to the irascible. Hence St. Ambrose, in his Exhortation to Virgins, says: "Drunkenness is the mother of all shameful deeds, the storm of the body, the shipwreck of chastity." Moreover, wine is ἀκόλαστον, that is, untamable, because once it takes hold of a man, it invades the citadel of the mind, so that man cannot resist it, but allows it to dominate him; indeed from one bout of drunkenness he is drawn to another and another, for the sweetness and habit of wine draw him thither.
Hear St. Basil, homily Against Drunkenness: "For when much unmixed wine has been poured in," he says, "like a certain tyrant it seizes the citadel, and from the very summit causes enormous tumults in the soul, sparing nothing and no one, not even the ruler himself; but first it reduces reason itself to slavery, then confuses and disturbs that disposition and order which learning has produced, with indecorous laughter, a horrible voice, rash anger, unbridled lust, and frenzy and madness toward every pleasure."
This is what Solomon says in chapter 23:29: "Who has woe? Whose father has woe? Who has quarrels? Who has pitfalls? Who has wounds without cause? Who has bloodshot eyes? Is it not those who linger over wine and are eager to drain cups?"
AND DRUNKENNESS IS TUMULTUOUS. — In Hebrew: "and strong drink is raging." Strong drink (sicera) refers to every intoxicating beverage. The Chaldean renders: "strong drink intoxicates." Others: "wine makes one a mocker, and strong drink a disturber." Pagninus: "strong drink makes one tumultuous." The Septuagint has δεριστικόν μέθη, that is, "drunkenness is injurious, insolent, or insulting." So also the Syriac. For as St. John Chrysostom says, homily 54 to the People: "Just as when enemies approach a city and lay siege, great tumult arises from the disturbance, so it happens in the soul when wine creeps in." The same author, homily 51: "Where there is drunkenness," he says, "there is the devil; where there are shameful words, where there is excess, there demons dance." Aben-Ezra more precisely: "The drunkard," he says, "creates tumult and shouts for them to pour him more wine."
Morally, Solomon here notes three harms of drunkenness: first, that it makes drunkards mockers and ridiculous like monkeys; second, that it makes them lustful, wanton, and filthy like pigs; third, that it makes them quarrelsome and aggressive like dogs and lions.
To represent this symbolically, the Gesta Romanorum imagines that Noah, who was the inventor of wine (Genesis 9:20), mixed the blood of four animals into the vine and wine, namely of the monkey, the lion, the pig, and the lamb; for wine intoxicates, and makes some drunkards into buffoons like monkeys, others fierce and cruel like lions, others slippery and foul like pigs, and others gentle, mild, and pious like lambs.
Hear St. Basil, homily 44 On Drunkenness: "Drunkenness," he says, "is a voluntary demon, placed in our souls by pleasure. Drunkenness is the mother of malice, the enemy of virtue; it renders a brave man cowardly, turns a temperate man wanton; it knows not justice, it extinguishes prudence. For as water is opposed to fire, so immoderate wine is opposed to reason, etc. What, I ask, are drunkards other than the idols of the Gentiles? They have eyes and do not see." St. Ambrose, in his book On Elijah and Fasting: "Drunkenness is the fuel of lust, drunkenness is the incentive of madness, drunkenness is the poison of folly. It changes and shapes the senses of men; through it, men become neighing horses, etc. They lose their voice, they change color, their eyes blaze, they pant at the mouth, they snort through their nostrils, they burn in fury, they lose their senses." St. Jerome, on Galatians chapter 5: "Drunkenness holds the fourteenth place among the works of the flesh according to the Apostle. For drunkards shall not possess the kingdom of God. And the Lord said to His disciples: Take heed, lest your hearts be weighed down with wine and excess. By wine man's senses are overturned, his feet stumble, his mind wavers, lust is kindled, etc. A certain noble orator beautifully described a drunkard roused from sleep, saying: Once roused, he could neither sleep, nor stay awake drunk. By this statement he expressed in a way that the man was neither dead nor alive." St. John Chrysostom, homily 57 to the People: "Where there is drunkenness, there is the devil. Such was the table of that rich man Dives, and therefore he was not master even of a drop of water." And again, homily 1: "A drunkard is a voluntary demon, a living corpse, a disease that admits no pardon, a ruin that has no excuse, the common disgrace of our race. For the drunkard is not only useless in gatherings, or in private and public affairs, but by his very appearance he is most offensive to all, exhaling the foulest stench, belching and yawning."
Among the philosophers, let Seneca stand for all, writing thus to Lucilius: "Say how shameful it is to take in more than one can hold, and not to know the measure of one's own stomach. How many things drunkards do for which they would blush when sober! Drunkenness is nothing other than voluntary insanity, etc. Drunkenness both intensifies and exposes every vice, and removes the sense of shame that stands in the way of evil designs. When an excessive force of wine has taken possession of the mind, whatever evil lay hidden emerges." And shortly after: "Consider what disasters public drunkenness has wrought. It has betrayed the fiercest and most warlike nations to their enemies; it has thrown open walls defended by stubborn war for many years; it has driven the most defiant, those who refused the yoke, under the rule of another; it has conquered by wine those unconquered in battle." and that anger is born from wine; for wine inflames the blood, and thereby stirs up bile. For this reason the Nazirites, so that they might live free from anger, were commanded to abstain from wine. So far that author.
WHOEVER DELIGHTS IN THESE WILL NOT BE WISE. — For "delights" the Hebrew has שגה (soge), meaning "going astray"; but to go astray in wine and love is to delight in them, as is clear from chapter 5:19; for whoever delights in something, his whole mind wanders and roams in it, that is, he is wholly occupied in it, clings to it and feeds on it. Hence the Septuagint translates: "every imprudent person is entangled in such things"; or as Procopius reads: "he who mixes with these is not wise"; the Complutensian, "everyone who destroys himself (depriving himself of reason through wine and as if stripping off his mind) will not be wise"; the Chaldean, "whoever goes astray in it"; the Syriac, "whoever is inflamed by it." The sense is, says Salazar, as if to say: Wine not only nourishes lust and kindles anger, but also extinguishes the light of reason and wisdom — not only because in drunkenness reason and mind are in exile, but because heavy drinkers, even when they are sober, tend to be foolish. Hence that well-known saying of Menander: "Much unmixed wine compels little wisdom." Galen touches on the cause: because unmixed wine tends to attack the head, and dulls the senses immersed in the brain with excessive moisture. Hence that saying of Heraclitus, cited by Stobaeus, sermon 5 On Temperance: "The wine-loving man staggers and is led by a beardless boy, having a moist soul, not knowing where he is going; but the dry soul is wisest and best." He calls that soul "dry" whose edge excessive moisture from wine has not dulled by blunting the senses.
Again, wine excites the passions of the concupiscible and irascible appetite, which disturb the judgment of reason so that it cannot discern the truth; for this requires a calm mind and a temperate body. Hence Hosea, chapter 4, says: "Fornication, wine, and drunkenness take away the heart"; see the discussion there.
Finally, the human soul, gorging itself on wine, lowers itself to material and carnal things, and becomes like beasts and brutes; for wisdom resides in spiritual things abstracted from the senses, as is evident in the Angels. The intemperate man therefore grows dull and brutish like a pig; the temperate man is sharpened, he tastes and understands like an Angel. Hence σωφροσύνη among the Greeks signifies both temperance and prudence; and accordingly sobriety, according to Aristotle, Ethics book 6, chapter 5, is called σωφροσύνη as if σώζουσα τὴν φρόνησιν, that is, "preserving prudence," and, as Socrates says in Plato, as if σωτηρία τῆς φρονήσεως, that is, "the salvation of prudence and wisdom." Sobriety therefore is the mother of wisdom, the pillar of fortitude, the helmet against wantonness, the charioteer of the eyes, the guardian of benevolence, the circumcision of thoughts, the castration of luxury, the harmony of soul and body; it prevents shameful works, promotes continence, bends the heart, and applies reason as a rule to prayers and vows. Drunkenness and temperance produce entirely opposite effects.
Hence also the philosophers, in order to be fit for the study of philosophy, carefully abstained from wine-bibbing, gluttony, and luxury. And, as I stated in the Paradiso: "It is by no means befitting a philosopher to be occupied with the pleasures of taste and touch." Hence when someone asked Plato: "Whence do you have such great wisdom?" he replied: "Because I have consumed more oil in my lamp than wine in my cup." Aristotle also in his Problems admits "that lovers of sweet things are foolish." Nor is it inconsistent with what is written about wisdom in Job: "It is not found in the land of those who live pleasantly."
Hence, as Dionysius says in book 4 of his Proverbs, chapter 5, Cyril writes: "Wine is honey in the mouth, but venomous gall in the head; it is wholesome in the mouth, it burns in the belly, it fumes in the head, it batters the senses, it confuses vigor, it destroys the imagination, it takes away the mind, it clouds the sight, it loosens the nerves, it makes the tongue stammer and become disgraceful, it sets the hands trembling, it inflames the chest, it foams with lust, it weakens the generative power, it disorders the steps, and ravages the whole body, so that from the sole of the foot to the top of the head there is no soundness in it." So far Dionysius.
First, Lyranus, Hugo, Dionysius, and others take the divisions of waters to mean that primordial separation of waters by which God at the beginning of the world divided the upper waters from the lower, interposing the firmament between them, Genesis 1:8, that is to say: Just as God originally divided the upper waters from the lower, so He divides the heart of the king, now raising it up so that it thinks and undertakes great and lofty things; now pressing it down so that it thinks and deals with lowly and humble things: indeed He now raises the king himself up to be powerful, and now casts him down to be abject and common, as He cast down the proud Nebuchadnezzar.
2. AS THE ROARING OF A LION, SO ALSO IS THE TERROR (Hebrew אימה ema, that is, "terror") OF A KING; HE WHO PROVOKES HIM SINS AGAINST HIS OWN SOUL.
For "lion" the Hebrew has כפיר (kephir), that is, a young lion or lion cub: for this one, with its young stomach growling from hunger, roars more for prey than an aged lion. We heard and explained the first hemistich of this verse in the preceding chapter, verse 12. The Septuagint translates: "the threats of a king do not differ from the fury of a lion; and he who irritates him sins against his own soul." For "irritates," Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion translate ὑπερθαίνων, that is, "he who insults"; Pagninus: "he who becomes angry with him"; the Syriac: "the fury of a king roars like a lion; he who inflames him with anger sins against his own soul"; Rabbi Solomon: "he who provokes the king to anger." The Hebrew מתעבר (mitabber), being in the hitpael form, signifies an action reflected back on the agent, or an action that ends in a passion, as if to say: passing into anger, and causing anger to pass upon himself — that is, by bursting forth in insults and curses through his own anger, he provokes upon himself the anger and vengeance of the king. The Complutensian adds καὶ ἐπιμιγνύμενος, that is, "and he who mingles" — namely himself in the king's affairs, says the author of the Greek Catena. Hence St. Ambrose, book 2 of the Apology of David, chapter 3, reads: "The anger of a king does not differ from the anger of a lion; he who provokes him and mingles with him sins against his own soul," that is, against his own life, because by exposing it to the anger of the king, he places it in certain danger of death and vengeance — as Clitus, who criticized Alexander, was killed by him. Second, "against his soul," that is, against his conscience, because he wounds it with the most grievous crime of disobedience, irreverence, and contempt (Romans 13:1 and following). The phrase "mingles" or "associates" could also be taken thus, as if to say: Not only he who provokes the king's anger sins against his own soul, but also he who mingles and associates with the one who provokes. For just as fire burns not only the wood placed before it, but also what is nearby by creeping along, so too the anger of the king rages not only against the guilty who provoked it, but against their parents, friends, and associates.
Relevant here is Isaiah 25:4: "The spirit of the mighty is like a tempest driving against a wall." Sometimes the most agitated spirit of the king rages and storms, rising suddenly, driving dark clouds of threats, overturning whatever stands in its way, stirring up seas, and growing ever more threatening against the firmest buildings and the most ancient oaks; and to calm and restrain it belongs to Him alone who "commands the winds and the sea," for "it is not in man's power to prevent such a spirit."
St. Ambrose adds: "Beware therefore lest anyone provoke the power, lest the soul, entangled in the nets by vice, be unable to free itself." That is to say: Do not provoke the anger of a king, because by provoking his anger you stimulate his power; and anger armed with power is untamable. For it is like a net in which anger on one side and power on the other entangle and bind the king's soul, so that he cannot free himself from this vice of anger; for as soon as he wishes to lay aside his anger, power and majesty intervene, declaring that they have been injured and demanding vengeance. The exception is the case where a king commands something against God: for then the anger of God is to be feared more than the anger of a king.
Hence St. John Chrysostom, homily 5 On the Words of Isaiah, praising the priest Azariah who rebuked King Uzziah when he wished to offer incense to God contrary to right and law — for this is the proper role of priests and bishops: "He did not regard," he says, "the pride of the ruler; he did not weigh how great a thing it was to restrain a mind intoxicated with desire; he did not heed that saying of Solomon: 'The threats of a king are like the anger of a lion.' But raising his eyes to heaven, and considering those punishments and that tribunal, and fortifying himself with these thoughts, he made his charge against the tyrant. For he knew, I say he knew, that the threat of a king is like the fury of a lion — but only for those who look to the earth. But for a man who had heaven before his eyes, and who had so made up his mind that he would sooner lay down his life than see sacred laws violated, that king was more contemptible than any dog. For nothing is weaker than he who tramples divine laws; and conversely nothing is more powerful than he who defends divine laws. For he who commits sin is the slave of sin, even if he has ten thousand crowns on his head. Conversely, if anyone practices justice, he is more regal than the king himself, even if he were the lowest of all."
This verse is aptly joined to the preceding one, because wine and drunkenness make the drunkard impudent, irascible, and mad, so that he assails anyone with insults and quarrels, and does not spare even the king or prince; thus he brings the king's anger and vengeance upon himself. So says Baynus. The king is also aptly compared to a lion, and the anger of the king to the roaring of a lion, because just as the lion stands supreme among animals and is their king and prince, so too the king among the people; and just as loftiness sharpens anger in a lion, so too injured majesty sharpens fury in a king. Therefore he who provokes and goads the king provokes and goads a lion; for a lion, unless goaded, does not grow angry, but once goaded it becomes enraged and cannot be calmed. So too the king bears a lion, as it were, in his heart, so that if you goad him, you will feel the lion's claws.
3. IT IS AN HONOR FOR A MAN TO SEPARATE HIMSELF FROM QUARRELS; BUT ALL FOOLS ARE MIXED UP IN INSULTS.
That is, in contentions, for these burst forth into reproaches and insults. In Hebrew: "It is glory for a man to rest (Aquila: to refrain) from strife; whoever mixes himself in strife is a fool." The Septuagint: "It is glory for a man to turn away from insult; but every fool is entangled in such things." Symmachus: "It is glorious to separate oneself from hateful contention."
For "are mixed" the Hebrew has יתגלע (vitgala), which the Syriac and Chaldean translate as "mocks." "Everyone who is foolish," they say, "mocks" — namely, contention — that is, he takes up quarrels and lawsuits as if laughing and jesting; but afterwards, feeling their damage, he repents too late. Rabbi Solomon translates: "will be exposed," as if to say: the reproaches and disgrace of the fool who does not separate himself from contention will be revealed and exposed. For those who are angry and quarreling cast in each other's faces all vices and reproaches, even secret ones that they know, and publicly reproach one another. Hence Symmachus also translates: "but the fool is revealed, or reveals himself." Aben-Ezra connects this verse to the preceding one, as if to say: the king bestows honor on the quarrelsome man when he has ceased from quarreling and freed himself from dissensions — that is, the very man by whom he had been provoked to anger. But this is too restrictive, for these proverbs are general, and therefore often disparate and not connected to each other. Therefore by this maxim, as by many others, Solomon dissuades from lawsuits and quarrels, and meets an unspoken objection, thus identifying and cutting off the source of evil, as if to say: Men are accustomed, when they are touched by a rather harsh word, to take up lawsuits, and they use the reputation and honor of their name as a pretext for this desire. For they say: So-and-so has injured my honor; therefore I must bring a lawsuit against him to recover my honor taken away by him. Again, if a lawsuit has been begun, and in its course they discover that it is unjust, or very troublesome and harmful, they refuse to withdraw from it or step back, lest they seem to have begun it unjustly or rashly, or to yield victory to the opposing party. But they err, because the honor and glory of a man is not to begin a lawsuit, and if one has been begun, to withdraw from it.
The first reason is that lawsuits bring a thousand cares, troubles, sorrows, dangers, disgraces, and expenditure of wealth, etc., which cause far more damage than the profit that can be hoped for from a lawsuit, even if it were decided in our favor — which is itself uncertain and doubtful. It is the part of a wise man, therefore, to cut off a lawsuit before it is born, or to cut it down immediately once it has arisen.
The second reason is that lawsuits take away peace and charity, which surpass all the goods of the world. Hence Cardinal Bellarmine truly said: "An ounce of peace and charity is better than a pound of victory." What is more honorable than peace? What is more glorious than charity?
The third reason is that lawsuits, unless they are cut short, grow immensely and become immortal and irreconcilable, according to chapter 17:11: "The wicked man always seeks quarrels; but a cruel angel shall be sent against him." And chapter 18:6: "The lips of the fool mingle themselves with quarrels, and his mouth provokes strife." Therefore wise men compare a lawsuit to a serpent, which, once it has inserted its head through a hole, then brings its whole body through, insinuates itself and creeps in. Thus one lawsuit sows another, and another without end, just as one strawberry plant produces another and another until it pervades the whole garden. Therefore Solomon wisely says in chapter 17:14: "He who releases the waters," he says, "is the beginning of quarrels; and before he suffers insult, he abandons the judgment." And Ecclesiasticus 28:10: "Abstain from strife." See the discussion there.
The fourth reason is that a lawsuit with one's neighbor begets an internal lawsuit within the soul; for the soul of the angry and litigious man seethes perpetually with a thousand passions, disputes and litigates with itself, while anger and the desire for vengeance contend and clash with right reason, which forbids it. Hence St. Ambrose, and after him Dionysius, says: "Contention is the assault of truth with the confidence of clamor. It is better to emigrate with peace and grace than to cohabit with contention and discord. It is better to depart without a lawsuit than to resist with quarreling." For as St. James says, chapter 3:15: "This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, animal, and diabolical; for where there is zeal and contention, there is inconstancy and every evil work." The source of all evil is pride, and thence the hatred hidden in the heart, by which one does not wish to yield to his neighbor, nor to be reconciled, much less to seek reconciliation and be the first to ask for it. For men of the world consider this base and inglorious.
But they err, because it is honorable to seek the work of heroic virtue, namely reconciliation and friendship. Therefore he who is first to take it up, who anticipates the opposing party and asks for peace — this man is without doubt magnanimous, because he is the victor and master of anger and vengeance, and therefore worthy of great honor and glory; and because he extinguishes and destroys enmity both in himself and in his enemies. This is a heroic, magnanimous, and glorious work. That this is so is clear from the custom of God; for God, to whom all honor and glory belong, anticipates sinners with His grace and urges them to be willing to be reconciled to Him; indeed, for this He sent Christ, according to that saying of the Apostle: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself." God therefore, by His own example, honored, adorned, and glorified this work — namely, that one should be the first to reconcile himself to his enemy. For who would consider shameful there what God has considered fitting for Himself?
Hear St. Basil, cited by Antonius in the Melissa, part 2, chapter 68: "In contests of wickedness, the more wretched is the one who prevails, because he departs more burdened with sins." And St. Gregory Nazianzen: "It is better to be honestly defeated than to win dangerously and unjustly. Those who have a warlike disposition hunt for their glory from public misfortune and boast of their own distinction." And St. John Chrysostom in the same place: "Why do we rashly fight among ourselves? Why do we wage war against one another, we who have been commanded to love those who hate us?"
The philosophers who followed Solomon teach the same. Euripides in the Andromache: "From a base beginning," he says, "the tongue of man produces great quarrels. But wise men take care not to stir up any contention among friends." The same in the Protesilaus: "When one of two people conversing becomes indignant, the one who does not oppose him is wiser." Demosthenes, provoked by someone's insults: "I would not wish," he said, "to descend with you into this kind of contest, in which the one who is defeated is actually better than the victor." Aristippus, assailed by someone's insults: "It is in your power," he said, "to speak evil; but it is in mine to hear rightly." Musonius, in his sermon Whether a Philosopher Should Bring a Lawsuit for Injuries Against Someone: "It is better," he says, "and more worthy of a lofty man, to overcome an injury than to pursue a lawsuit. Whoever is magnanimous cuts off the lawsuit and spares his adversary." Pittacus, though he could have avenged himself on the one who wronged him, spared him, saying: "Pardon is better than vengeance. For the former belongs to a gentle nature, the latter to a savage one." Pythagoras: "Consider it great skill," he said, "by which you can bear the ignorance of others." Theophrastus: "He who avenges himself on an enemy at his own cost gives rather than takes a punishment; do not avenge yourself on enemies in such a way that you harm yourself more than them." Plutarch, treatise On the Benefit to be Derived from Enemies: "Silence," he says, "in the face of others' insults bears something noble, Socratic, or rather Herculean. For that man cared no more for offensive words than for a fly." Seneca: "Nothing is more shameful than to wage war with one with whom you have lived on familiar terms." Valerius Maximus: "Complete victory is to be silent toward one who cries out, and not to answer one who provokes." For one has reward and glory from his patience, and from healing his neighbor. Therefore, just as nothing is more unsightly than to answer those who are raging, so nothing is more useful than to be silent when provoked. Finally, the wise man, knowing that saying of Seneca to be true — "To be censured by the wicked is to be praised" — is not moved by insulting words.
4. BECAUSE OF THE COLD, THE SLUGGARD REFUSED TO PLOW: HE WILL BEG THEREFORE IN SUMMER, AND IT SHALL NOT BE GIVEN TO HIM.
In Hebrew: "he will ask at harvest and nothing" — supply: he will receive or find. For "cold" the Hebrew has חרף (choreph), which properly signifies "reproach" or "rebuke," as the Septuagint translates. From this it comes to mean winter, which being gray, rough, and cold is as it were the reproach and disgrace of the whole year; and from this, childhood and adolescence, which through imprudence commit many things worthy of laughter and reproach. For "to plow" the Hebrew has חרש (charas), which means first, to plow; second, to fabricate; third, to be silent; fourth, to become deaf. For "will beg" the Hebrew has שאל (schaal), which means first, to ask; second, to beg; third, to lend; fourth, to borrow or request.
First, the Chaldean translates: "the sluggard endures penury and is not silent; he will ask at harvest and will have nothing." The Syriac: "the sluggard is in want; he asks at harvest and there is nothing." That is to say: the sluggard, while enduring penury from his failure to plow and labor, is not silent but everywhere complains and exposes his poverty; hence he asks in vain at harvest, and no one cares to give to him since he is unworthy on account of his laziness.
Second, the Septuagint translates: "the sluggard, though reproached, is not ashamed; likewise he who borrows grain at interest at harvest time." That is to say: the sluggard is so idle and torpid that even if someone reproaches him for his laziness and the resulting poverty, he is not ashamed — preferring to be torpid and beg with shame rather than provide for himself with labor. Such is he who, having refused to plow in winter, is compelled at harvest to receive grain on loan at interest, when he has nothing from which to repay. For he prefers the burden of debt and usury together with idleness and torpor, to enjoying the fruit of his own labor and plowing at harvest.
Third, our Vulgate translates it best, with which Symmachus agrees when he translates: "because of the cold the sluggard will not plow, and he will ask at harvest and will not find." And the Zurich Bible: "on account of the cold the sluggard does not plow, but begging at harvest he will take away nothing." Vatablus: "and he will ask his servant about the harvest, whether it is good, and there will be none."
The obvious, easy, and plain sense is, as if to say: The sluggard in winter, fleeing from labor and cold, neglects to cultivate his land; therefore he will gather no harvest in summer, but will be compelled to seek by begging either alms or a loan in order to live. But there will scarcely be anyone to give to him, both because by his laziness he has made himself unworthy, and because no one will lend to him, knowing that on account of his poverty he cannot pay and is unable to repay. Relevant here is the Apostle's proverb, 2 Corinthians 9:6: "He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly; and he who sows in blessings (that is, abundantly and generously) will also reap from blessings." And: "If anyone will not work, neither let him eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
Tropologically and anagogically, the Fathers refer this to torpor in good works, especially almsgiving, by which the lazy neglect to do good and to labor in this life, fearing the harshness and troubles of virtue out of idleness, and therefore in the next life they will beg; but no one will help them, according to the parable of the virgins asking for oil when the bridegroom came (Matthew 25). For as the Apostle says, Galatians 6:8: "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows in his flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows in the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good; for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." So St. Gregory, part 3 of the Pastoral Rule, admonition 16: "Because of the cold," he says, "the sluggard does not plow, for constrained by idleness and torpor, he considers and ignores the good things he ought to do. Because of the cold the sluggard does not plow, for he fears small evils from the opposite side and neglects to do the greatest works. And it is well said: 'He will beg in summer, and it shall not be given to him.' For he who does not now sweat in good works, when the sun of judgment blazes more fiercely, has appeared, because he vainly seeks entrance to the kingdom, receiving nothing he begs in summer." Hugh Cardinal offers two other explanations. The first is: "The sluggard (that is, the lukewarm) because of the cold (of charity) refused to plow" — that is, he refused to serve in the field or vineyard of the Church. "Therefore he will beg in summer" — namely, on the day of judgment. The latter explanation: A man, growing lukewarm from the cold of charity, does not wish to break open the field of his heart with the plow of penance and to sow it with good works. "He will therefore beg in summer" — namely, when death is now imminent, the illness is growing worse, and the fever is raging, he will ask for time for penance, "and it shall not be given to him."
Rabbi Solomon adds: "Because of the cold," he says, "the sluggard refused to plow, that is, fearing the chill, he lies idle and sedentary, performs no work, and does not devote himself to the study of the law." And Rabbi Levi: "The idle man," he says, "at the beginning of things will not strive to plow his body, that is, to prepare himself to receive the formation of instruction, and therefore he will be unable to attain wisdom, nor will he expend any effort in it; as a result the mind given by God will not bear its proper fruits." Moreover, the present life is aptly compared to winter, the future life in heaven to summer — both because this life is full of sorrow, harshness, ignorance, and darkness, and because it is destined for plowing, that is, for labor to bring forth the fruits of happiness and glory. In the future and heavenly life, however, when the fog and cold of this life have been dispelled, the eternal day of the divine Sun will shine with perpetual brilliance and warmth, and will give a harvest of all happiness. This is what is said in the Song of Songs 2:11: "Now the winter has passed, the rain has gone away and departed, flowers have appeared in our land." And Psalm 125:6: "Going forth they went and wept, casting their seeds. But coming they shall come with exultation, bearing their sheaves." The Hebrew proverb is relevant here: "He who did not prepare on the eve of the sabbath what he might eat on the sabbath day will not eat on the sabbath" — that is, he who does not labor to gather for himself the merits of good works in this life will not receive the reward of eternal life and glory in the next. For this age is the time of labor and merit, but the future is of rest and reward.
5. AS DEEP WATER, SO IS COUNSEL IN THE HEART OF A MAN; BUT A WISE MAN WILL DRAW IT OUT.
The Syriac: "deep waters are the word in the heart of a king." For "but" the Hebrew has "and"; but "and" in Hebrew is used for "but," "for," "although," and any other conjunction, since the Hebrews lack these. Hence in this passage the Septuagint also translates "and" as "but."
First, Aben-Ezra explains it thus: Just as deep waters are cold and clear — for they are not disturbed by anyone's feet — so wisdom and counsel, with which the heart abounds in prudence, will be sincere and clear. "But a wise man," etc. — that is to say: a man, after he has become possessed of prudence, will draw counsel from his own heart, that is, he will be his own teacher and will acquire this by his own industry. Hugh adds: Counsel of a man, he says, is compared to deep water on account of its cleansing, on account of irrigation, on account of fruitfulness, and on account of refreshment.
Second, Rabbi Solomon explains: The doctrine of the wise man is stored away in the inner chambers of his mind; but let a prudent disciple approach him, from whose depths he will fish out and draw forth — as if to say: Women are like springs bursting forth above the ground, which immediately pour out all the water they receive; for thus women blurt out whatever they know. But prudent and cautious men are like deep wells, who conceal their learning, and therefore their mind, like a well, always abounding with new water of doctrine through continuous meditation and study, increases and fills up the same. Therefore a wise man will continuously draw from them and learn, so that he too may make his own mind a deep well of learning.
Third, our Salazar considers this to be a hypallage, and therefore the words should be arranged thus: The doctrine in the heart of a learned man is deep like a well; therefore he who draws it out will certainly become and be a wise man. For just as wells springing from the deep — the more water you draw from them, the more abundantly they overflow, since the waters flow of their own accord to the place recently emptied — so too it happens with teachers: the more people draw deep doctrine and wisdom from them, the greater and deeper the wisdom flows in them. Then studious hearers of wisdom are admonished that it is not easy or obvious to acquire learning, but that it must be drawn out with great labor like the deepest water. "The man who draws it out will be wise" — this embraces the chief duties of an excellent listener: namely, silence, lest he pour out what he has heard; humility of mind and docility, so that he may adapt himself to the teaching; perseverance, so that he may reach the deepest doctrines of wisdom; effort and strength, lest he grow faint. And he shows that all these things are necessary for acquiring wisdom.
Fourth, properly and genuinely, by "counsel" understand the hidden thoughts, plans, intentions, and schemes of a shrewd and cautious man: for these are deep; but nevertheless they can be extracted and drawn out by a wise man, according to that saying: "The heart of all is perverse and inscrutable; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). Hence Lyra understands "counsel" as "secret." So Vatablus, who translates: "like deep water is the counsel in the heart of a man; but a man of understanding will elicit it." And he explains it thus: it is difficult to extract counsel from the mind of a man. And Rabbi Levi: "Counsel," he says, "hidden in the heart of a man is not easily explored, but only after a singular investigation, since it is like deep water, beneath which things are difficult to reach; but a prudent man by diligent searching and careful study will draw out counsel from that man's mind." And the author of the Greek Catena, translating and explaining from the Septuagint: "Even if counsel in the heart of a shrewd man is hidden like deep water, nevertheless a prudent man will draw it out," as if to say:
"Even if the counsel of a wily man is as deep as some abyss or well, nevertheless a prudent man will draw it out and bring it into the open light." And Jansenius understands this of the thoughts and plans by which a wise man has decided what to do. For such plans and decisions of the mind, the man who truly has a manly spirit does not readily reveal to anyone as women do, but keeps them hidden in the inner chambers of his heart, like deep water, so that not just anyone can easily fish them out and understand them. Nevertheless, a prudent man, endowed with much intelligence, knows how to extract from the depths of another's heart, and as it were to draw out like deep water, the counsel hidden in the heart. For he knows how to use various approaches to penetrate what was the hidden counsel in the heart of a man. For he employs many circumlocutions and conversations seemingly remote from the matter, he reveals certain things of his own, and does many other things, by which he comes to perceive what was hidden.
This proverb therefore signifies that shrewd men are deep and secretive, and that through wisdom and cleverness they devise various practices and methods for fishing out the plans and secrets of others. Accordingly, apply this equally to any kind of counsel with which the heart of the wise man is full, and by which he himself instructs, advises, and teaches others, whether in civil, economic, or spiritual matters; for these, being deep, are difficult to grasp. But nevertheless a prudent man, continuously drawing them out, listening and meditating, will finally grasp them. Thus Paul spoke wisdom in mystery (1 Corinthians 2). Thus Christ taught deep wisdom through parables, which His hearers grasped only with difficulty; the Apostles, however, questioning Him privately, learned their meaning and intent with Christ interpreting. For the rest, being worldly and natural, did not grasp the sublime and deep counsels of Christ, for they seemed paradoxes to them — such as: "He who wishes to come after Me, let him take up his cross and follow Me. He who hates his soul in this world will keep it for eternal life. If you wish to be exalted, humble yourself. Die, so that you may live. Be poor in spirit, so that you may be rich in heaven. If you wish to be happy, suffer persecution for Christ." But the wise, that is, true Christians, spiritual and religious people, grasp these and exhaust them by putting them into practice.
The Septuagint translates "will draw out" as ἐξαντλήσει, that is, "will bail out"; by which word it is signified that to draw out and extract the deep counsels of a shrewd man, one needs not only a rope and bucket, but also a pump, indeed a tube-machine (for the water in its depths is so confined that it does not admit a bucket, but only a tube or channel). For just as deep waters are raised up and drawn through narrow tubes by suction or the attraction of air, so by the shrewd and skillful investigation of the wise man, the counsel hidden in the heart of a man is drawn up to the mouth and elicited. For the air hidden and compressed in the tubes is drawn upward by the pump's suction, and therefore the water is forced to rise from its depths to fill the interior space of the tubes that the air vacated when drawn upward by the pump, leaving a void. Similarly, when wise men mix various questions and inquiries, they hear various responses, from which, by comparing them with each other, they elicit the secret hidden in the heart of the respondent — indeed they compel him to confess and reveal it, lest he appear empty-headed or foolish. For wise men from causes deduce effects, from antecedents consequents, from signs they conjecture about the thing of which they are signs, and from connected things they divine what commonly accompanies and follows. For given one of two connected things, the other necessarily accompanies and is given. Finally, from topics and topical arguments, dialecticians search out, infer, and collect much.
Understand that these things are true for the most part. For sometimes the opposite occurs; for there are some so cautious and guarded that you could more easily draw water from a pumice stone than elicit a secret from their mouth and heart. Therefore such men are highly valued in the courts of princes; for princes, who want their counsels to be most secret, communicate them only to those who are tenacious at keeping secrets. Hence the first precept they give their ambassadors is to conceal the secrets of their prince, but to fish out those of others. For in secrecy lies the force and sinew of accomplishing a task, as I have noted elsewhere. Therefore in courts you may see from time to time a great contest among ambassadors, as some try to fish out the secrets of others, while others strive studiously to conceal them; and the one who excels in wisdom and shrewdness wins. Some use this technique for fishing out secrets: they invite others to a banquet, treat them lavishly, ply them with wine and toasts, and when they have become merry and drunk, they seek out their secrets. "For in wine there is truth, and what lies hidden in the heart of the sober man floats on the tongue of the drunk."
6. MANY MEN ARE CALLED MERCIFUL; BUT WHO SHALL FIND A FAITHFUL MAN?
The Hebrew literally has: "the multitude of a man will proclaim a man of his mercy, or of his grace; and a man of אמונים (emunim), that is, of truths, or of fidelities, firmnesses, and constancies — who shall find?" Hence First, Aben-Ezra, that is, the son of Ezra, thus translates: Many men proclaim their own generosity, like the Pharisees who sounded a trumpet when about to give alms (Matthew 6:2). But who shall find a faithful man who bestows benefits and does not trumpet them? Or who is it that speaks the truth about himself?
Second, Pagninus translates: "everyone will proclaim the mercy of a great man, but who shall find a truthful man?" For it is written: "Every man is a liar" (Psalm 115:11). That is to say: many are found who are merciful, but few who are truthful. Or, as if to say: many with their mouth proclaim and extol to the heavens the generosity of their benefactors; but those who in deed are faithful, that is, who repay and compensate benefits with benefits, are very rare. So Rabbi Levi.
Third, the same Rabbi Levi explains it thus: Many are those who exercise mercy once or twice; but those who are faithful in it, that is, constant and perpetual, are very rare.
Fourth, Cajetan translates: "many are called men of grace, but who shall find a faithful man?" That is to say: many are those who willingly accept gratuitous benefits and give thanks; but those who faithfully take care of others' property entrusted to their care are very few. As if to say: it is a magnificent thing to bestow favors on others, but to entrust one's own property to another for administration is unsafe and dangerous, for few faithful men are found; for all seek their own interests.
Fifth, Vatablus translates: "many call upon the man upon whom they have bestowed benefits; but who shall find a faithful man?" That is to say: how few are there who, though asked and called upon by their benefactor, are found to remember the benefit received, to be grateful, and to repay? Others translate: "many wish to be called beneficent, but they do not live up to their name in faithfulness, responding little to their reputation."
Sixth, our Salazar explains: Many are those who mercifully distribute their goods to others, and few who are faithful, that is, just, so as not to seize what belongs to others, or to restore what has been seized. As if to say: it is easier to exercise mercy than to keep justice; it is easier to share one's own goods than to restore what belongs to others, or not to covet them. For thus we see many make alms from plunder, and even give them to the church; but they are unwilling to restore them to their owners, lest they appear to be robbers and unjust.
Seventh, Bede, Rabbi Solomon, Jansenius, and others explain it thus: Many are called merciful, but few are faithful in mercy. Many have the name of being merciful, but few have the reality, that is, the substance and truth, because in giving alms they seek ostentation, profit, or some other self-interest; hence they do it pretendedly, not faithfully, that is, truly and sincerely for the sake of God. So that there is an antithesis between being called merciful and being faithful, as if to say: many are called merciful and faithful, but few really are.
Eighth, broadly and adequately: Scripture customarily joins mercy and faithfulness, or truth and justice, and by mercy it understands a liberal and unowed work of virtue, but by faithfulness a necessary and owed duty, which is manifold, just as the laws and offices to which each person has bound himself are manifold. Solomon therefore says: It is easy to be merciful, because he who at will exercises mercy from time to time is called merciful and is praised by all as such. But to find a man who is faithful in all things, that is, who sincerely, completely, and faithfully carries out all that the laws require of him, as well as all that his office obliges — that is difficult. For many give alms, but meanwhile they plunder, deceive, and defraud others: many therefore are merciful, but few are faithful. For a faithful man must be faithful at all times, and is obligated to fulfill very many things by faithfulness, which to fulfill all of them faithfully is difficult. Hence Lyra and Dionysius apply this to faithfulness in the correction of vices, as if to say: "Many men are called merciful" who nevertheless are not so according to truth, but are rather fainthearted, leaving vices unpunished; therefore it is added: "But who shall find a faithful man" in the correction of vices, according to the office imposed on him? That is to say: it is rarely found. On account of which it is said in Luke 18: "When the Son of Man comes, do you think He will find faith on earth?" — that is, faithfulness, that is, a faithful man who, setting aside human fear and favor, does justice. So far Lyra. Hence St. Augustine, sermon 13 On the Saints, from newly discovered texts: "Are there not in you," he says, "the bowels of Christian piety, so that you weep for a body from which the soul has departed, and do not weep for a soul from which God has departed?" That is to say: rare is the man so faithful that he does not flatter his friend or abandon the truth.
For here is opposed the איש חסדו (is chasdo), that is, the man of his mercy — that is, devoted to his own works of piety, which his own devotion suggests to him — to the איש אמונים (is emunim), that is, the man of truths, fidelities, firmnesses, and constancies. As if to say: he who is faithful not once but everywhere and always, consistent with himself and constant, like Saints Constantius and Constantine. The man of fidelities, therefore, is he who subordinates his own advantages to faithfulness, who discharges all his duties with integrity and faithfulness, who in temptation does not allow himself to be moved from his duty, who allows himself to be led away from what is fair and just by neither threats, nor promises, nor gifts, who resists iniquity even to death and martyrdom, who corrects those whom he is duty-bound to correct, and spares no one, however powerful. It is easy, then, to find a merciful man, because both the kindness of nature and the praise of men invite to mercy. But a faithful man — one who in any adversity remains true to God and men, who is consistent with himself in every virtue everywhere, who courageously resists the wicked, who sacrifices his life for the faith, who when all others fall away from the faith alone perseveres in it, like Tobit (1:5) — who shall find him? Surely such a man is rare and hard to find.
A rare bird on earth, and very like a black swan.
Abraham was a man of fidelities, who proved faithful to God even to the immolation of his son Isaac. Joseph was a man of fidelities, who showed himself faithful to his master even to the point of calumny and imprisonment. Hence Mattathias, on his deathbed, exhorting Judas and his other Maccabee sons to show faithfulness to God in the persecution of Antiochus: "Now," he said, "pride and punishment have been strengthened, and it is a time of overthrow and angry indignation. Now therefore, O my sons, be zealous for the law, and give your lives for the covenant of your fathers, and remember the works of the fathers, which they did in their generations; and you shall receive great glory and an eternal name. Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was credited to him as righteousness? Joseph in the time of his distress kept the commandment and became lord of Egypt. Phinehas our father, by being zealous with the zeal of God, received the covenant of an eternal priesthood. Joshua, when he fulfilled the word, became a leader in Israel." And Judith 8:22, exhorting her people to constancy in the siege of Holofernes: "They should be mindful," she says, "of how our father Abraham was tested, and being proved through many tribulations, was made a friend of God. So Isaac, so Jacob, so Moses, and all who pleased God passed through many tribulations faithful. But those who did not receive tribulations with the fear of the Lord, and brought forward their impatience and the reproach of their murmuring against God, were destroyed by the destroyer and perished by serpents." Thus God praises Moses for his faithfulness, Numbers 12:7: "Not so My servant Moses, who is most faithful in all My house." And He adds the reward: "For I speak to him mouth to mouth, and openly, and not through riddles and figures does he see the Lord." And Christ commends and rewards the Apostles for their faithfulness: "You are those who have persevered with Me in My trials, and (therefore) I dispose to you, as My Father has disposed to Me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom" (Luke 22:28).
Moreover, the Septuagint, translating the Hebrew רב (rab), meaning "much" or "multitude," as "great" or "greatness," renders thus: "Man is a great thing, and a merciful man is precious; but a faithful man needs to be found." St. John Chrysostom cites this proverb of Solomon in homily 4 on the Epistle to the Philippians, near the end. His words, which some cite inaccurately, read precisely thus: "A great thing is man — for what reason? And precious," he says, "is a merciful man. For this is a merciful man: indeed, to show mercy is to be God. Do you see how great is the power of God's mercy? It made all things, it wrought the world, it made the Angels solely out of goodness. For this reason He also threatened hell, so that we might attain the kingdom; and we attain the kingdom through mercy. By what reasoning, when He was alone, did He do so many and such great things? Was it not out of goodness? Was it not out of kindness?"
Note what he says: "Indeed, to show mercy is to be God." That is to say: it is the proper endowment of God and the divinity to communicate Himself, to do good, and to have mercy on the wretched, to such a degree that this seems to be His proper character and nature, and that God seems to be God through beneficence and mercy. Therefore those who imitate this become divine and are as it were certain gods on earth, according to that saying of St. Gregory Nazianzen, On the Care of the Poor: "Be a God to the afflicted."
Moreover, the author of the Greek Catena reads and explains from the Septuagint thus: "Man is a great thing, since he was created according to the image and likeness of God. But if a man has embraced mercy in practice, along with the other virtues, from being great he becomes precious. Meanwhile, to find anyone among men who for the sake of God's honor and out of faithfulness does his duty, is an exceedingly rare thing and a matter of great difficulty — since 'it needs' here means the same as 'it is arduous or difficult' to find such a person." And St. Ambrose, on Psalm 118, octonary 18: "It is truly a great gift if a man knows himself, and it is a certain form of justice to be born more for the world than for oneself. Hence Solomon says: Man is a great thing, and precious is a merciful man; but a faithful man needs to be found. And truly great is he who is the interpreter of the divine work and the imitator of God. For it was a man who was able to say: Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. He cultivates the earth, he uses the sea as a possession, as a great champion he admires the ornaments of heaven. The nature of things would have vanished, had not one been added by divine providence to make use of them. For after God made the heaven and earth and seas, after He brought forth all creeping things, birds, and living creatures, He made man, whom He set above the living animals. About whom the heavenly sentence not undeservedly resounded: Let Us make man in Our image and likeness." The same St. Ambrose, in his third speech at the funeral of Emperor Theodosius, volume 5, applies this maxim to Theodosius and celebrates his mercy and faithfulness.
Finally, St. Hilary on Psalm 118, letter Yod: "Man is a great thing," he says, "and a merciful man is precious; but a faithful man needs to be found. For what is so difficult, or what is so arduous a work, as to find one who remembers that he was made according to the image and likeness of God, who, intent on the study of the divine words, has known the nature of his soul and body, and has perceived the origin and nature of both kinds, and to what end his institution and birth tend? And for this reason man is a great thing. For this name, when through neglect of the knowledge of the things mentioned above he has fallen into vices, he loses — being now judged unworthy to be called man. And since he was made according to the image and likeness of God, according to prophetic and evangelical reproaches, he is called a serpent, or offspring of vipers, or a horse, or a mule, or a fox, and the proper quality of his name, once he has fallen from innocence, will be taken away."
Therefore man as merciful is a great thing, but man as faithful is a necessary thing; for everywhere there is need for faithfulness and faithful officials and ministers, to whom we may entrust ourselves and our affairs, especially matters of conscience and salvation. Such was St. Paul, who therefore says in 1 Timothy 1:12: "I give thanks to Him who strengthened me in Christ Jesus our Lord, because He counted me faithful, appointing me to the ministry." Christ sought such ministers, namely priests and bishops, and taught that they should be sought in the Church (Matthew 24:45): "Who, do you think, is the faithful and prudent servant whom his master has set over his household, to give them food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, shall find so doing. Amen I say to you, he will set him over all his goods." And Christ, writing to the Bishop of Smyrna (Revelation 2:10): "Be faithful," He says, "unto death, and I will give you the crown of life." And verse 13: "Antipas," He says, "My faithful witness, who was killed among you." And in chapter 1, verse 3, Christ Himself is called "the faithful witness." And chapter 19:11: "Behold," He says, "a white horse, and He who sat upon it was called Faithful and True, and with justice He judges and makes war." Faithful to God and to the Church was the Archdeacon St. Lawrence, who being roasted on a grill said: "On the gridiron I did not deny You, God, and being put to the fire I confessed You, Christ. You have tested my heart and visited me by night; You have examined me with fire (a sharp examination indeed), and iniquity has not been found in me."
7. THE JUST MAN WHO WALKS IN HIS SIMPLICITY SHALL LEAVE BEHIND HIM BLESSED CHILDREN.
For "in simplicity" the Hebrew has בתומו (betummo), that is, "in his integrity." Pagninus: "in his perfection." Thus Job 1:1 and frequently elsewhere, a just and holy man is called "simple," that is, of blameless life and pure from wickedness. More precisely, therefore, Lyra says: "In simplicity," that is, without a fold of falsehood. He would have spoken more fully had he said: without a fold of iniquity or sin. Therefore Vatablus translates literally from the Hebrew: "The children of the just man walking in his uprightness are happy after him." The Chaldean: "He who walks in his simplicity is just, and blessed are his children after him." The Septuagint: "He who lives without blame, that is, blamelessly in justice, will leave behind his children blessed." This means, says the author of the Greek Catena: "He who practices justice before God and men saves both himself and also those who hear him." Rabbi Levi says: The upright man, taking the path of integrity and fairness, not only is himself preserved from calamities, but his offspring too is most dear to divine providence on account of the parent's merits; and the same offspring, when honestly formed by its parent for divine worship, deserves to experience the special propitious providence of God.
Note the word "walks," that is, he continually progresses and advances. Hence St. Bernard, sermon 49 on the Song of Songs: "To walk," he says, "is to advance. The Apostle was walking who said (Philippians 3): 'I do not consider that I have grasped it'; and he adds: 'But one thing, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, etc.' Therefore it is the one who is not walking but sitting whom the darkness of death is in danger of overtaking. And who is sitting, except the one who does not care to advance?" For "blessed" the Hebrew has אשרי (asre), that is, "blessednesses to his children after him." As if to say: not one, but manifold, indeed every kind of blessedness will be given to the children of the just man.
The first blessedness is justice itself. For the just man, walking in simplicity, that is, in justice and uprightness, educates his children in the same and makes them like himself, simple, that is, just and upright. For simplicity, that is, the justice and duty of a parent, obliges him to this; for it is the parent's duty to live in uprightness and to raise his children in it. This is the source of the other blessednesses: because the just man forms his children to justice, God therefore blesses both him and them, and heaps upon them and makes them happy with every good. For He promised this in Exodus 20:5, saying: "I am the Lord your God, mighty and jealous, visiting (that is, punishing) the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me; and showing mercy to thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments."
The physical reason is that children are a portion and as it were members of their parents. Therefore when a father acts well or badly, he is punished or rewarded not only in himself, but also in his children, as in parts and members of himself. Thus Adam, by sinning, transmitted both guilt and punishment to all his descendants, as being his parts and offshoots. The moral reason is that God gave this restraint to parents so as to hold them back from sin and keep them in duty and in His worship — namely, by threatening to punish their evil deeds even in their children, and by promising to reward their good deeds in their posterity. For great is the care and solicitude of parents for their children, and for the sake of making them blessed they do many things that they would not do for themselves.
The second blessedness, then, by which God blesses the children of the just, is the favor and blessing of men. For all people applaud and bless the children of upright parents who are themselves upright, as happened to the younger Tobias, to whom his father-in-law Raguel said: "May blessing be upon you, my son, for you are the son of a good and excellent man" (Tobit 7:7). So Aben-Ezra: He who treads the path of integrity, he says, will be called just, and will leave blessed children after him. For these, on account of their parents' integrity, will be honored by others, so that they will even be declared blessed. We attain blessedness, therefore, from the uprightness of our parents. So also Lyra.
The third blessedness is abundance of the goods of this life — prosperity, power, and glory. For God had promised the Jews that if they lived justly, He would give these to both them and their children, according to Psalm 111: "Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in His commandments. His seed shall be mighty on earth (the Chaldean: his children will be strong in the law), the generation of the upright shall be blessed. Glory and riches are in his house."
The fourth and highest blessedness promised to the just and the children of the just is eternal glory and happiness; for this certainly and always comes to them, while temporal blessedness is often denied, and this depends above all on the good upbringing of parents. For a certain sign of the divine predestination of children is the good education of parents, just as of the reprobate it is bad education. Hence Tobias on his deathbed gave this final admonition to his son, chapter 4:23: "Do not fear, my son; we lead a poor life indeed, but we shall have many good things if we fear God and depart from all sin and do good."
St. Cyprian cites this proverb in his treatise On Works and Alms and explains it thus: a father who does justice, that is, gives alms, makes his children rich and blessed. For simplicity is the name given to the simple and candid generosity of the alms-giver. Hence the Apostle says, 2 Corinthians 9:11: "That being enriched in all things you may abound in all simplicity," that is, in almsgiving. But hear St. Cyprian: "If therefore you truly love your children, if you show them the full and fatherly sweetness of charity, you should labor all the more to commend your children to God by righteous deeds. Do not think of the father for your children who is temporary and weak; but prepare for them the One who is the eternal and firm Father of spiritual children. Assign to Him the resources that you reserve for your heirs; let Him be the guardian of your children, the caretaker, the protector against all worldly injuries through His divine majesty. Patrimony entrusted to God is not seized by the state, not invaded by the treasury, not overturned by any forensic accusation. The inheritance placed in safety is that which is kept with God as its guardian." He then proves the same from Scripture, saying: "This is to provide for dear ones in the future; this is to care for future heirs with fatherly piety, according to the faith of Holy Scripture which says: 'I was young, and have grown old, and I have not seen the just man forsaken, nor his seed begging for bread. All the day long he shows mercy and lends, and his seed is in blessing.' And again: 'He who lives without blame in justice leaves behind him blessed children.' Therefore you are a transgressor and traitor as a father if you do not faithfully provide for your children, if you do not look after their preservation with religious and true piety. You who strive for an earthly rather than heavenly patrimony, commending your children to the devil rather than to Christ, you sin twice and commit a double crime: both because you do not prepare for your children the help of God the Father, and because you teach your children to love patrimony more than Christ."
An illustrious example of this is found in John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow, chapter 201, about the son of a man from Constantinople, whose father, spending all his goods on the poor, left him no other inheritance than Christ as his guardian; who thereupon procured for him the only daughter of a noble and wealthy man as his wife, and with her the whole of her inheritance.
8. THE KING WHO SITS ON THE THRONE OF JUDGMENT SCATTERS ALL EVIL WITH HIS GAZE.
Vatablus: "by looking." The Chaldean: "all the wicked from his presence." The Septuagint: "when a just king sits upon the throne, no evil opposes itself (that is, presents itself, says the Scholiast, does not stand) in his eyes." The author of the Greek Catena: "no evil presents itself in his eyes."
The sense is, as if to say: A king who from the lofty throne of his majesty surveys, governs, rules, and judges his kingdom, by this very gaze of his alone puts to flight and scatters all crimes and criminals. For all who are conscious of evil, fearing the king's judgment, anger, and vengeance, flee and hide themselves; and those who were devising or about to devise some crime, fearing the king's severity, restrain their mind and hands from crime. For they see that the king is not idle or at leisure, but vigilant and sharp in taking his throne, that is, in exercising his authority, discharging his royal office, and strenuously wielding the power entrusted to him by God — so that he shows himself a father and protector to the good, and terrible and avenging to the wicked, bestowing ample rewards on the former and sharp punishments on the latter. This proverb therefore teaches how great is the force of the authority and vigilance of kings and princes when they strenuously discharge their duty; and how great is the force of their decrees and judgments when they are administered with equity and authority, and are firmly executed. The Persian in Aristotle's Economics says truly: "As the horse grows fat under the master's eye, so indeed justice flourishes in the presence of the prince."
Note: the phrase "who sits on the throne of judgment" involves and embraces many things. First, it signifies that the king ought to be upright and keen, so as to pronounce just judgment from the throne, and to reward the pious and punish the wicked. Second, that he ought to be wise, so as to distinguish good from evil and judge the just from the unjust. Third, that he possesses the most ample power of judging. Fourth, that he ought to judge in person and not entrust everything to his counselors, magistrates, and judges; rather, he ought to watch over them and judge whether they are sincere, whether they allow themselves to be corrupted by bribes, whether they administer justice through favoritism and partiality, etc. For in this way he keeps everyone in their duty and scatters all evil by his vigilance and his gaze. Hence Ptolemy Philadelphus, as Aristeas reports, posing individual political questions to each of the seventy interpreters of Holy Scripture, posed this question to the one who was fifteenth in order: "What is most important to observe in a kingdom?" To which he answered: "To keep oneself uncorrupted by bribes, to devote a great part of one's life to vigilance, to cultivate justice above all things, and to acquire friends of this character. For God loves the just." Then to the fifty-fourth he posed this question: "What preserves a kingdom?" To which he answered: "Care and reflection, lest anything be done wrongly by those in charge and committed against the people, as you do when God grants you outstanding understanding."
For this reason St. Louis, the illustrious king of France, sat in judgment twice each week, in order to hear and decide the cases of widows and the wretched that had been neglected by the senators, with equal justice and clemency. The same king, on his deathbed, left among other instructions this one to his son Philip: "In the administration of justice be severe and upright, doing what the laws decree, and turning neither to the right nor to the left. Listen diligently to the complaints of the poor, and strive to understand the truth. Let it not be enough for you to have chosen the best men of the realm as judges, but moreover keep watch over them and investigate how they discharge their office." For a king who entrusts everything to his counselors or officials yields to them his throne and chooses for himself a footstool, on which, sitting like a child or ward, he allows himself and the kingdom to be ruled by them — a state of affairs that creates dishonor for himself, envy toward the officials, and hatred and indignation throughout the whole commonwealth.
Fourth, this phrase signifies that when the king sits thus on the throne of judgment as God's vicar, he is particularly enlightened, directed, and strengthened by God for scattering all evil, according to chapter 16:10: "Divination is on the lips of the king; in judgment his mouth will not err." See the discussion there.
The king, therefore, is like the sun, whence the first king of the Persians was called Cyrus, that is, "sun" — for in Persian, Cyrus means this. First, just as the rising sun, gloriously seated in its chariot and throne, puts to flight the darkness and wild beasts, and indeed thieves, murderers, adulterers, and all other criminals who, fleeing the light, seek darkness to conceal their crimes, so likewise a just and wise king, by his gaze as if by sunlight, scatters all the shadows and darkness of sinners. Second, just as the sun traverses and illuminates each region of the earth in succession, to enlighten, warm, and fertilize them, so let the king from time to time visit his provinces; for by his presence he will scatter many crimes, settle many disputes and difficulties, refresh his subjects, hear them, comfort them, remove excessive burdens from them, and confer great benefits. "Princes should visit the distant parts of their empire more often. How often do we recall that the divine Augustus traveled to the West and East with Livia as his companion?" says Tacitus, Annals book 3. Indeed, if the King of Spain, at the beginning of the Belgian tumults, had gone to Belgium, as Charles V had done, or had been able to go, he would have quieted those disturbances which have lasted until now and are almost incurable. Diotogenes says excellently in Stobaeus, sermon 48 On Kingship: "To judge and distribute to each his due is the proper work of a king, who is as it were a god in the world." More divinely, St. Thomas, book 3 of On the Government of Princes, chapter 3, compares the king to the highest angel, who is enlightened by God in order to enlighten others.
Third, the sun places its throne, as it were, at the meridian: for there it shines more brilliantly and hurls its most powerful rays to all parts of the world, filling all things with its light and heat. So let the king place the throne of his judgment in the capital, so that situated in the middle of the kingdom as in a center, he may survey all the provinces of his kingdom as the circumference of his circle, and judge, and kindle them with zeal for justice and virtue. Fourth, just as the sun is pleasant, agreeable, and cheerful to strong eyes, but appears like lightning, disagreeable, and harmful to weak eyes, so the face of the king is joyful to the good and terrible to the wicked, so that by his very aspect alone they are struck and flee. What is said of the king, understand of any prince, prelate, rector, pastor, bishop, governor, indeed of any head of a household — for he is like a king in his own home and family.
Symbolically, the author of the Greek Catena says: The king sitting on the throne of judgment is God, who residing in the heavenly court surveys, corrects, and scatters all evil from there. Again, this king is Christ, who on the day of judgment will remove from the earth all evils and all evil men, however hidden, by His gaze, voice, and sentence, and will banish them to hell. So Bede, Salonius, and Hugh.
Mystically, St. Augustine, in his book On Correction and Grace, chapter 13, and others say: The king is Christ, who, now sitting at the right hand of God, from there illuminates the minds of sinners with the rays of His grace, drives away all evils and sins from them, and leads them to God's grace and every virtue, according to Psalm 44: "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the rod of direction is the rod of Your kingdom." Where St. Augustine says: "A king is so called from ruling; but he does not rule who does not correct. For this purpose is our King the king of the upright; just as a priest is named from sanctifying us, so a king from ruling us." And shortly before: "Your arrows are sharp, O Most Mighty One; peoples shall fall beneath You, in the hearts of the king's enemies." Where St. Augustine says: "The enemy of Christ was slain so that the disciple of Christ might live; an arrow was sent from heaven, Saul was struck in the heart, etc. O sharp and most powerful arrow, by receiving which Saul fell so as to become Paul!"
Tropologically, the king sitting on the throne of judgment is the mind and reason, which, while occupying the throne of kingdom and judgment in man, puts to flight and scatters every evil of errors and vices that the senses and other faculties — especially concupiscence and the appetite, both concupiscible and irascible — suggest. Hence a king is so called as if "acting rightly" (recte agens), says Isidore. The mind, therefore, when it acts rightly and compels the other faculties to act rightly, is a king. Therefore the wise man gives governance to his mind, not to appetite, not to concupiscence. Let him place the mind therefore on the royal throne of judgment, so that it may command the other faculties and compel them to obey the mind. In this way the kingdom of the soul becomes peaceful, noble, holy, and glorious. So Rabbi Levi. Hence the saying: "You will be a king if reason rules you." Hear St. Gregory on the 5th Penitential Psalm, verse 23: "'When the peoples assemble together, and the kings, to serve the Lord': By kings," he says, "you shall understand those who direct the movements of their souls according to God's will and dominate them in the manner of kings, while presiding in the eminence of reason as on a royal throne, subjecting all opposing things to servitude, and when all is pacified, establishing in themselves the laws of equity and the rights of innocence."
Other theologians and philosophers concur with Solomon. Antonius in the Melissa, part 2, chapter 1, cites St. Irenaeus saying: "Every just king possesses the priestly order," that is, the authority, right, and duty to scatter profane things and sanctify holy things. And Democritus saying: "A prince should use reason in opportune circumstances, boldness against enemies, and benevolence toward subjects." And Isocrates saying: "See to it that you appear grave and to be feared, leaving nothing that is done unexplored; but clement by establishing punishments lighter than the offenses." And Diodorus saying: "A king who fulfills his office well ought to be just, magnanimous, truthful, and liberal in giving, and greater than any desire — assigning punishments lighter than the crime, but favor greater than the benefit, both to subjects and to friends." And in chapter 6, he cites St. John Chrysostom saying: "A prince is recognized not by his precious garment and belt, nor by the voice of a herald, but by the fact that he restores what has collapsed, corrects what has been badly established, takes notice of everyone, and does not allow justice to be taken away by the more powerful." Agapetus the Deacon admonishes Emperor Justinian in his Admonitory thus, number 2: "Like a helmsman, the Emperor's most watchful intellect keeps perpetual vigil, holding firmly the rudder of equity and powerfully repelling the violent waves of iniquity, lest the vessel of the worldly commonwealth be dashed against the waves of injustice." And number 9: "The Emperor's attentive soul ought to be polished like a mirror, so that it may always gleam with divine splendors and learn from them the distinct judgments of affairs; for nothing so enables one to see what must be done as to keep it perpetually sincere." And number 27: "Impose upon yourself the necessity of keeping the laws, since you have no one on earth who can compel you. For thus you will show that you yourself revere the laws, reverencing them before others; and it will be clear to your subjects that transgression of the laws is not immune from danger." And number 28: "Consider sinning and not restraining sinners as the same. For if anyone in a city leads a just life himself but tolerates those who live wickedly, he is judged by God as a partner of the wicked. But if you wish to be approved in both ways, just as you honor those who do the most noble things, so be angry with those who commit the most foul." And number 30: "Since the kingdom of the world has been entrusted to you by God, beware of employing any of the wicked in the administration of affairs. For whatever they do wrongly, he will render account to God who allowed them the opportunity to sin. Therefore promotions of magistrates ought to be made with great and diligent scrutiny." And number 36: "To make the dominion of your empire admirable, consider that you must have as great an anger against yourself when you sin as you have against sinning subjects. For no one can correct one who possesses such great power except his own reason, which is stirred from within the sinner himself." And number 42: "Judges of affairs must be listened to with attentive mind. For the discovery of justice is difficult to grasp, and it tends easily to escape those who are not very attentive. But if, setting aside the eloquence of speakers and the plausibility of what is said, they penetrate to the deepest depth of intentions, then at last they will draw out what is sought from them; and they will be innocent of a double crime: neither betraying what is honorable themselves, nor allowing others to commit it." And number 46: "Just as the eye is innate to the body, so the Emperor is adapted to the world, given by God for the administration of things that are of use. Therefore he ought to look after all men as his own members, so that they may advance in good things and not be dashed against the stumbling block of evils." And number 48: "Be to your subjects, most pious Emperor, both formidable on account of the excellence of your power, and lovable on account of the generosity of your beneficence; and let them neither despise your severity because of love, nor neglect love because of severity; but displaying a gentleness that is not to be despised, while chastising with stern severity a familiarity that is to be despised." The golden saying of Euripides in the Syleus about a prince is: "Let him be fair and just to the just, but the greatest enemy on earth to the wicked." And of Isaiah: "Those who punish the unjust prevent injury from being done to the rest." And of Hyperides: "The ways of beginning evils must be blocked." And of Pythagoras: "Those who do not exact punishments from the wicked want the good to be injured."
9. WHO CAN SAY: MY HEART IS CLEAN, I AM PURE FROM SIN?
In Hebrew: "Who shall say: I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from my sin?" So Symmachus. The Septuagint: "Who shall boast that he has a chaste heart, or who shall dare freely say" (for this is what παῤῥησιάσεται means, as the Complutensian, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Jerome read in book 1 Against the Pelagians, who translates: "who trusts," for which the Romans and St. Augustine substitute καυχήσεται, that is, "shall boast") "that he is clean from sins?" Whence it is clear that the Septuagint, like our Vulgate, for זכיתי (zickiti) in the piel, meaning "I have cleansed," read זכיתי (zachiti) in the qal, meaning "I am clean in my heart"; and they took מהטאתי (mechattati), meaning "from my sin," for מחטאת (mechattat), meaning "from sin," so that the yod is not an attached pronoun but paragogic, as it often is elsewhere.
Calvin, in book 3 of the Institutes, chapter 13, section 3, argues from this passage and similar ones that no one in this life is truly just, so as to have a heart intrinsically pure from sin, but that it is always infected and disordered by some greed, or by some perverse movement of pride, lust, or similar concupiscence. Therefore all his acts are sins, and accordingly he does not possess intrinsic justice, but is justified by the extrinsic justice of Christ imputed to him. But this is a heresy condemned by the Church and the Council of Trent, session 6, and indeed by Sacred Scripture, in which Christ says: "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). And David, Psalm 50:12: "Create a clean heart in me, O God." And Psalm 118:4: "Blessed are the undefiled in the way." And Paul, Ephesians 1:4: "That we might be holy and immaculate in His sight."
Therefore interpreters explain this proverb of Solomon in various ways, all aptly, so that it may not seem to contradict the other sentences of Sacred Scripture already cited. First, Cajetan responds that in the Hebrew we have: "Who can say: I have cleansed my heart and purified myself from my sin?" As if to say: Who should proudly arrogate to himself and to his own powers justice and cleanness from sin, when this is the work of God, not of man, of grace, not of nature? Let him say therefore: God has cleansed my heart, not I. Second, St. John Chrysostom on Psalm 142, on the words of verse 2: "Do not enter into judgment with Your servant"; Gabriel Vasquez, II-II, disputation 200, chapter 4; and Salazar explain it thus: Who says, that is, who dares to say and boast that he is pure from sin? Hence the Septuagint translates: "who shall boast," that is, who shall boastfully proclaim that he has a chaste heart? What is censured here, therefore, is not a simple affirmation, but pride, boastfulness, and vainglory — because some, like the Pharisee in the Gospel, boast of their innocence or justice, and ascribe it to themselves, not to God. For even though some are just and clean of heart, they ought not to boast of it or vaunt themselves, both because this cleanness is not their own work but God's, and because he who is just today may become unjust tomorrow, and fall into sins through innate frailty, as most do fall.
Third, St. Augustine on Psalm 149, Bede, Jansenius, Baynus, and Bellarmine, book 3 of On Justification, chapter 4, explain this regarding the uncertainty of grace, and prove it from here against the heretics and Catharinus, who hold that the just can certainly know that they are just and pure from sin. So that the sense is: No one, however just, certainly knows that he is just, that is, that he is in the grace and friendship of God; for they do not have an infallible testimony of their grace and justice, and many things lie hidden in the depths of the heart, which man himself does not see or perceive, but God alone does. This sense adheres closely to and agrees with the Vulgate version, as well as with the Hebrew text, which has: "Who shall say: I have cleansed my heart and am pure from my sin?" As if to say: Who knows with certainty, so as to dare to say and assert, that he has done true penance and through it has cleansed himself from past sins — especially, says Aben-Ezra, those committed in adolescence? According to that saying: "Concerning a forgiven sin, be not without fear" (Ecclesiasticus 5:5).
Fourth, others explain it thus: No one can live long without at least venial sin. For granted that at times a just person may be pure from all sin, even venial — as when he has been recently baptized, when he has made a full confession and been absolved, when he elicits vehement acts of contrition and charity — nevertheless he cannot long endure in this state of purity without relapsing through the innate tinder of sin, according to Ecclesiastes 7:21: "There is no just man on earth who does good and does not sin." So St. Augustine explains, book On the Good of Virginity, chapter 48, and St. Jerome, book 1 Against the Pelagians, and St. John Chrysostom, homily 3 On Lazarus. The Hebrew word זכיתי (ziechiti) favors this explanation; for the root זכה (zacha or zachah) means to be clean from every stain, flaw, or blemish. Hence זך (zach) is called "clean" — that to which nothing of stain or flaw is mixed, sincere, clear, irreproachable; and זכוכית (zecuchith) is called "crystal," on account of its cleanness and transparent clarity, so that the sense is: Who would dare to say that he has a heart entirely pure from every stain, indeed a crystalline heart, that is, pure, sincere, clear like crystal, in which no blemish, not even a slight and venial one, is present? That is to say: no one.
Fifth, St. John Chrysostom, in his sermon 6 On the Earthquake and Lazarus, takes "sin" to mean the tinder of sin, or the remaining defilements of concupiscence left from sin, which no one in this life can be free from. Even if someone is just, he says, even if he is a thousand times just and has ascended to the very summit, so that he is free from sin, he cannot be clean from defilement; even if he is a thousand times just, he is still a man. For who shall boast that he has a chaste heart, or who shall trust that he is clean from sin? Therefore we are commanded to say in prayer: "Forgive us our debts," so that by the custom of praying we may be reminded that we are liable to those punishments. For Paul the Apostle, the vessel of election, the temple of God, the mouth of Christ, the lyre of the Spirit, the teacher of the whole world, who traversed land and sea, who tore out the thorns of sin, who cast the seeds of religion — he was richer than kings, more powerful than the wealthy, more a philosopher than the philosophers themselves, more eloquent than orators; he had nothing and possessed all things; he dissolved death by his shadow; he put diseases to flight by his garments; he raised trophies on the sea; he was caught up to the third heaven and entered paradise; he preached Christ as God — yet he says: "I am not conscious of anything against myself; but I am not thereby justified" (1 Corinthians 4:4). He who had acquired such a great multitude of virtues says: "He who judges me is the Lord." Who then shall boast that he has a chaste heart, or who shall trust that he is clean from sin? It is therefore impossible for any man to be immune from sin. For what if someone says: he is just? He is merciful? He loves the poor? But he has some vice, or he assails people with insults at the wrong time, or he is led by vainglory, or he does some other such thing — for not all things need be enumerated.
Moreover, this tinder of concupiscence is most clearly seen in lust and sexual matters. For the concupiscence of these things is so innate in man that no one can have a heart pure from them without sometimes feeling impure and obscene imaginations, stimulations, and movements — unless God grants this by a singular gift to someone, as He granted to St. Thomas Aquinas, who after driving away a prostitute sent to tempt him, while praying and falling asleep seemed to himself to be girded by Angels with the belt of chastity, and henceforth was free from all sensation of lust. Our Blessed Aloysius Gonzaga had the same gift, and for this reason was called an Angel. Hence the Septuagint translates: "Who shall boast that he has a heart chaste" (namely, from unchaste and foul thoughts and stimulations of lust)? The remedy for these is humility and the humble invocation of God's grace. Hence St. Augustine, On Holy Virginity, chapter 51: "This good (of virginity)," he says, "the greater I see it to be, the more I fear for it lest pride destroy it. Therefore it is not man but God Himself who guards the good of virginity, God who gave it; and God is charity. Therefore the guardian of virginity is charity; and the dwelling place of this guardian is humility. For there dwells He who said that His spirit rests upon the humble and quiet one who trembles at His words (Isaiah 66). For I say faithfully: married people who are humble follow the Lamb more easily, even if not wherever He goes, certainly wherever they can, than virgins who are proud."
The a priori reason is that the movements of this appetite and concupiscence are most natural to carnal man, as to other animals. Therefore they often anticipate reason, so that the will is forced to feel them unwillingly, even though consenting is within its choice. For we have already lost the bridle of original justice, by which Adam so restrained and curbed these movements that they could not arise unless he saw and willed it. Therefore, just as an ulcer, say a boil, perpetually putridly bubbles and vomits pus, and just as a sewer continually exhales foul vapors, and just as a burning furnace continuously shoots out smoke and sparks of fire, so likewise concupiscence, especially of lust, continually exhales foul imaginations and movements of desire.
The antistrophe of this maxim of Solomon is that of St. John, 1 Epistle, chapter 1:8: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." See the discussion there.
10. DIVERSE WEIGHTS AND DIVERSE MEASURES: BOTH ARE ABOMINABLE BEFORE GOD.
That is to say: a double and diverse weight, a double and diverse measure — when someone uses a larger one when buying and a smaller one when selling — makes a thing abominable to God and men, because it creates injustice and overturns human society and commerce, which depend on justice and just weights and measures. See the discussion at chapter 11:1 and chapter 16:11. In Hebrew: "a stone and a stone" (because stones were formerly used as weights), "an ephah and an ephah — both of these are an abomination before the Lord." That is, as Vatablus says: to use diverse weights and diverse measures — the Lord detests both. The Septuagint: "a large weight and a small one, and double measures are unclean before the Lord." St. Jerome on Ezekiel chapter 25: "A large and a small balance — both are abominable in the sight of God."
Mystically, first Rabbi Levi explains: It is not lawful to add weight to truth so as to amplify it more than is right; nor to subtract from it so as to diminish it more than is right. Second, St. Gregory, homily 4 on Ezekiel: "Diverse weights," etc. "We know," he says, "that in the double weights of merchants one is larger, the other smaller; for they have one weight by which they weigh for themselves, and another weight by which they weigh for their neighbor — preparing lighter weights for giving, but heavy ones for receiving. Every man, therefore, who weighs what belongs to his neighbor differently from what belongs to himself, has diverse weights. Both are therefore abominable before God: for if he loved his neighbor as himself, he would love his neighbor in good things as he loves himself; and if he looked at himself as he does at his neighbor, he would judge himself in bad things as he judges his neighbor."
Third, the author of the Greek Catena reads from the Septuagint thus: "A small and large balance, and different measures — both are unclean before the Lord; but he who does such things is also hindered in his pursuits." Which he explains thus: An evil mind and deceitful disposition of the soul — the kind that uses smooth and agreeable speech but produces no work, or only an unclean one — these are detestable before the Lord. Or by the small and large measure, in any thing or action, deficiency and excess are denoted; for each has an accompanying vice. Or those use a double measure who wish to receive benefits from others but never bring themselves to return the same. For he who does such things is hindered in the works of his hands, that is, he will have no successful outcome. So far that author.
Fourth, Cassian reads and explains from the Septuagint thus, Conference 21, chapter 22: "A large and small weight, and double measures, are both unclean before the Lord, and he who does such things will be shackled in his devices. Accordingly, not only in the way we have described, but also in this way we must take care that we do not have unjust weights in our hearts, nor double measures in the storehouses of our conscience — that is, lest we ourselves, presuming upon a more relaxed indulgence to soften the rule of strictness, burden those to whom we preach the word of the Lord with stricter precepts and heavier weights than we ourselves are able to bear. When we do this, what are we doing but weighing or measuring the merchandise and produce of the Lord's precepts with a double weight and measure? He adds the reason: For if we dispense things one way for ourselves and another for our brothers, we are rightly rebuked by the Lord because we have deceitful balances and double measures, according to that sentence of Solomon which says: 'A double weight is an abomination to the Lord, and a deceitful balance is not good in His sight.' In this way also we avoid the guilt of deceitful weight and double measure, we inadvertently incur, if we display before our brothers, out of desire for human praise, certain more rigorous practices which we were accustomed to exercise privately in our cells — that is, affecting to appear more abstemious and holier before human eyes than before God's."
11. BY HIS PURSUITS A CHILD IS KNOWN, WHETHER HIS WORKS ARE CLEAN AND RIGHT.
For "pursuits" the Hebrew has מעלליו (maalalav), that is, undertakings, pursuits, thoughts, contrivances, exercises, plans, inventions, occupations. For the root עלל (alal) means to meditate, think, attempt, contrive, do, designate, and declare the force and power of the mind. Hence עליל (olel) is the name for a child, who is always doing and contriving something; and תעלולים (taalulim) is the name for the games which children devise, by which they indicate the character and inclination of their mind.
For "is known" the Hebrew has יתנכר (yitnakker), which properly means "is recognized, is understood." Sometimes however it means the opposite, namely: "is hidden, conceals himself, or alienates himself." Hence Rabbi Levi and Aben-Ezra translate: "in his pursuits a child conceals himself, even if his work is pure and right," as if to say: the nature of a child is not easily known from his works. For some children are cunning, dissimulating, and deceptive, so that they conceal their pursuits and plans. Thus it happens that what they do has the appearance of uprightness on the surface, but their mind is impure and swarms with wickedness. Rabbi Emmanuel translates: "in his works a child shows himself as a stranger," as if to say: sometimes children show themselves in childhood to be different from what they will be in manhood; for they change their character and habits, and become estranged from the ways they will have in old age. Or rather: a child, when he exercises clean and right works, estranges himself from infancy and childish age, because he conducts himself nobly beyond his years, so that he seems to be not so much a child as a man or an old man.
But יתנכר (yitnakker) properly means "is recognized, is understood," and that this is how it should be translated here is clear from what precedes and follows; for thus the speech flows smoothly and clearly, as if to say: By his pursuits a child is known, what kind of man he will be. For if his works in childhood are clean and right, they will probably be such also in his manhood. Or: By his pursuits a child is understood, whether his works in old age will be clean and right; for the word "are" is not in the Hebrew — the Hebrews leave the substantive verb to be understood. Hence here you should understand both "will be" or "are going to be" and "are."
Again, yitnakker derives from nachar, which root both in its letters and in its meaning alludes to כרת (kara), that is, "digs, digs through." For when the eye of the body or mind knows and perceives something, it seems to penetrate and dig through it with its sharp edge. Hence Plato held that vision occurs by the emission of species from the eyes to penetrate and as it were dig through the object seen; although more correctly Aristotle and the Peripatetics hold that vision occurs not by emission but by the reception of species from the object, for through them the thing seen is penetrated and as it were dug through by the eye. Therefore, just as a treasure, or veins of gold and silver, are sought out and found by experts — for they know certain signs from which they recognize that gold lies hidden there, for example, if the outer surface of the earth does not produce herbs and shoots but is barren and smooth; if the color of the earth approaches the color of gold; if particles or veins of gold and silver appear in it, as Gregorius Agricola teaches, book 1 of On Metals. Hence Pliny, book 33, chapter 4: "The mountains of Spain," he says, "dry and barren, and in which nothing else grows, are forced to be fertile in this good (gold)." And he adds: "Those who seek gold first of all remove the 'segulum' — for so is the indicator called; it is a channel in which the sands are washed, and from what settles a conjecture is drawn, so that sometimes it is found right at the surface of the earth, with rare good fortune." The segulum is a type of earth on the top soil from which miners recognize that a vein of gold lies beneath. Therefore, having seen these signs, they dig through the earth and extract the hidden gold. So similarly, children in childhood give signs and samples of future probity, which shrewd men seek out and as it were dig through. These signs are: if their works are clean, that is, pure from all wantonness and impurity; and right, that is, free from fraud, pretense, simulation, deceit, lying, wickedness, and malice. From these, shrewd men conjecture that their works in manhood will be similar, indeed greater and heroic. And so nature preludes in children what it will produce in men, according to that verse of Ovid: "Heavenly genius rises swifter than its years, And suffers the hard losses of ungrateful delay."
Thus St. Ambrose as a boy, delighting in sacred things, gave a prelude that he would be a priest, indeed a bishop; and so he offered his hand to his sister to be kissed and announced that he would be a bishop. Thus St. Thomas Aquinas as an infant would turn over papers, especially one on which was written "Hail, Mary," and when it was snatched from him by his nurse, he demanded it back with all his might, and when it was returned he swallowed it — by which he portended that he would be devoted to books and to the worship of the Blessed Virgin. Thus St. Nicholas as an infant, abstaining from sucking his mother's breasts on Wednesdays and Fridays, gave a sample of his future abstinence and holiness. I have recounted more examples of this in my commentary on 2 Timothy 3:15.
Hence the Spartans would display to boys the instruments of all arts, and to whichever they spontaneously ran and with which they occupied themselves, to those they would apply them; for in those pursuits to which natural disposition draws a person, everyone excels. Solomon therefore signifies that from the character and habits of childhood one can generally discern what the course of the whole future life will be. Understand this proverb as commonly and for the most part true, but not always — both because children who are cunning sometimes dissemble their inner plans, and because sometimes they degenerate from themselves, especially when they fall in with bad companions, so that they are entirely different men and do and desire other things than they did as children. But for the most part, as a person is in childhood, so he is also in manhood. Therefore all theologians and philosophers, and specifically Plato and Aristotle in the Politics, teach that the greatest care must be given in the commonwealth to children, so that they may be rightly educated; for children are the seedbed of the commonwealth — as children are formed, so they turn out as men. Solomon therefore admonishes parents and teachers here to watch over the character of children and to strive to investigate their vices and inclinations, so that they may then be able to correct them and bend them toward virtues.
Moreover, the Septuagint manuscripts vary here. The Complutensian reads: "in his pursuits the youth will be hindered; with a holy man, and right is his way," as if to say: a holy man will hinder and restrain the depraved pursuits of a youth, and will moderate his ways and actions and make them right. The Roman edition: "in his devices the youth will be hindered; with a holy man, and right is his way" — that is, as the author of the Greek Catena clearly translates: "The youth, conversing familiarly with a holy man, will make his way straight." Cassian, Conference 21, chapter 22, and others punctuate differently; for they refer the first part of the verse to the preceding verse in this way: "A large and small weight, and double measures are unclean before the Lord, and he who does such things will be shackled in his devices" — that is, he will be caught in bonds, restrained, and punished. Then they add as if a new maxim: "A youth with a holy man (if he associates with one); his way will be right."
12. THE HEARING EAR AND THE SEEING EYE: THE LORD MADE BOTH OF THEM.
The Septuagint translates: "the ear hears and the eye sees; the Lord made both of them," or "both are the work of the Lord," as the author of the Greek Catena translates, who first explains it thus: Just as the eye that sees rightly sees the works of the Lord, so the ear that hears rightly hears the wonders of the same Lord. Both therefore happen through the work and operation of the Lord, as if to say: God gave man not only the power of seeing and hearing, but also its right use — both physical, so that the ear rightly perceives sounds and the distinctions of sounds, and the eye rightly sees and discerns the appearances of all colors; and even more the moral use, so that we may use our ears for hearing honest, chaste, and holy things, and our eyes for gazing upon the same. Whence he leaves it to be inferred that man ought to give thanks to God for this right use of the senses, to comply with and obey Him, and to use them for God's honor and good pleasure — namely, to open his ears only to hear God's law, psalmody, divine offices, the sciences, and honest matters, etc.; and to open his eyes only to gaze upon God's creatures, so that from them he may recognize and praise the Creator. For this purpose God gave man eyes and ears. See St. John Chrysostom, homily 11 on the Epistle to the Romans, and homily 22 on 1 Corinthians.
Second, our Salazar aptly refers this verse to the preceding one. For since Solomon had premised, he says, that from the first pursuits and efforts of a child his talent and character are discerned — whether he is docile in hearing and keen in observing — he aptly adds: "The hearing ear and the seeing eye: the Lord made both of them," as if to say: in these matters no deliberation or freedom intervenes; for the fact that someone is docile in hearing and keen in observing is a part of nature created by God Himself, and therefore shines forth not a little even in children who are not yet capable of deliberation and reason. And so "in the soul there are sparks which, excited by the spirit of a teacher, seize upon a generous tinder for learning; otherwise they languish into cold ashyou shall have blown nothing," says Petrarch, Dialogue 81. Levi says: "These two senses, namely sight and hearing, render a particular service above the others, so that a man may become accomplished and truthful in morals and the feelings of the soul." And Vatablus: "The one who hears, namely the precepts, and the one who sees what is good — the Lord makes both." Others refer this to the good order of obedience. For this exists when superiors with the eye, that is, with good counsels, administer all things, and the people obey them with an obedient ear, as if to say: both are the gift and blessing of God; for in both consists the pillar, safety, and happiness of the commonwealth and of any college or congregation.
Third, others refer this to God, as if to say: God gave man eyes to see and ears to hear; how much more does He Himself have the most watchful eyes and the keenest ears for hearing, according to Psalm 93:9: "He who planted the ear, shall He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see?" Against those who said in verse 7: "The Lord will not see, nor will the God of Jacob understand." And: "The clouds are His hiding place, and He does not consider our affairs, but walks about the circuits of heaven" (Job 22:14). He signifies therefore that all things are naked and open to the most bright eyes and most attentive ears of God. "For the ear of jealousy hears all things, and the tumult of murmuring shall not be hidden" (Wisdom 1:10). Relevant here is that saying of Pliny, book 2, chapter 7: "God is entirely sense, entirely sight, entirely hearing, entirely soul, entirely mind, entirely His own."
Fourth, more fully and deeply, our Hieronymus Prado on Ezekiel chapter 12, verse 2, says: To see with the eye is to perceive clearly and openly; to hear with the ear is to rightly perceive and retain what you hear; "by seeing to see" and "by hearing to hear" mean the same thing. The reason for this meaning is that those ablatives, infinitives, or gerunds augment and complete the action of the verb, and convey the manner in which it customarily occurs. Since vision occurs through light, and hearing by receiving and retaining the word that is spoken, therefore "by seeing to see" means to discern clearly, and "by hearing to hear" means to retain rightly. Just as to speak with the mouth, or "by speaking to speak," is to speak thoughtfully or from premeditation, because truly the word of the mouth is what is conceived and thought in the mind. Since therefore these senses are the ministers of the intellect and will, entirely similar to their masters (for sight and intellect delight in and operate through clarity, while ear and will are captivated by sweetness and goodness), it follows that for an intellect not blinded, the seeing eye is used, and for a will not hardened by some immoderate desire, the hearing ear, as in Matthew 13:9 and Revelation 13:9: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" — that is, let him have a compliant and obedient will. Hence Psalm 17:43: "At the hearing of the ear he obeyed me." And Proverbs 20:12: "The seeing eye and the hearing ear — the Lord made both" — that is, for there to be a learned teacher and a docile hearer of the word is equally a wondrous work of God. He mentions these senses because, as Polychronius noted, sight and hearing alone receive admonition; for either by seeing the calamities of others we return to health, or by hearing the divine laws we become more diligent in the pursuit of virtue, and there is no other sense besides that leads to piety. So far Prado.
Rabbi Solomon adds: "The ears and eyes of mortals," he says, "are a divine work; God is supremely delighted by ears that hear reproof and by eyes that foresee the outcome of events." And Rabbi Levi:
"Ears were created by God for listening to instruction, and eyes for contemplating those things by which we are corrected; therefore do not love sleep, for eyes were made for sleeping only at appointed hours, and thereafter should be free for penetrating and seizing the lessons of instruction." He returns to forbidding laziness; for the companion, indeed the parent, of laziness is sleep, or rather the love and affection for sleep. For sleep is natural and owed to nature; but the love of sleep is usually vicious, because excessive. To sleep, says Cajetan, is a matter of necessity; but to love slumber is a matter of will and laziness, and this affection makes sleep longer than is needed. For he who loves to sleep continues sleeping far into the daylight and does not arise, but indulges in sleep until he satisfies his torpor, according to that saying of St. Dominic Loricatus: "Sleep begets more sleep, vigils beget more vigils." The sense therefore is: Do not love sleep, nor indulge in it at the pleasure of your lazy body, so as to spend the daylight and time destined for labor in idleness and drowsing, lest through idleness you fall into poverty, and it oppress you, and force you to waste away from hunger, indeed to die. Therefore open your eyes, wake up, shake off sleep, labor to provide yourself sustenance, and be filled
13. DO NOT LOVE SLEEP, LEST POVERTY OPPRESS YOU: OPEN YOUR EYES, AND BE FILLED WITH BREAD.
Pagninus: "fill yourself with bread"; "be filled," that is, "you will be filled." For often among the Hebrews the imperative is used for the future tense, as in Psalm 33: "Come to Him and be enlightened," that is, "you will be enlightened." For "lest poverty oppress you" the Hebrew has פן תורש (pen tivvaresh), that is, "lest you be deprived of your inheritance, lest you be impoverished." For the root ירש (yarash) means to inherit and possess, but in the niphal it has the contrary meaning, signifying to be driven from one's inheritance and impoverished — when someone goes from being a Croesus, not to a Cyrus, but to an Irus, and poorer than Irus. It is a metalepsis: for from sleep is understood laziness, from laziness idleness, from idleness the avoidance of labor, which begets poverty. Conversely, from the opening of eyes is understood wakefulness, from wakefulness rising, from rising labor, which begets fullness, that is, abundance of things. For these are connected like a chain, and one is inserted into and linked with another like ring into ring, so that from one you may infer and understand the rest.
Aben-Ezra connects this verse to the preceding one, as if to say: Ears were created by God for listening to instruction, and eyes for contemplating those things by which we are corrected; therefore do not love sleep, for eyes were made for sleeping only at fixed hours, since afterwards they should be free for penetrating and seizing the lessons of instruction.
with bread, that is, may you abound in everything necessary or suitable for sustenance; for among the Hebrews "bread" signifies any kind of food.
Mystically, as if to say: Shake off the sleep of laziness and concupiscence, and give yourself to good works, so that you may procure for yourself spiritual sustenance by which you may live for all eternity. This sustenance is the Eucharist and Sacred Scripture in the present life, and perpetual glory and happiness in the future. So Bede says: "Do not love the sleep of sin and inertia, of which the Apostle says: 'It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep,' lest, if you do not know how to keep proper watch, poverty oppress you in the future — that most grievous poverty, where you cannot find a single drop of water when thirsting, nor pour oil into extinguished lamps. Open the eyes of your heart to holy vigils, and by living well seek for yourself the fullness of heavenly joys."
The Septuagint goes in a different direction, for they translate: "do not love to slander, lest you be exalted; open your eyes and be filled with bread." Which some explain as referring to theft — which is the companion, indeed the daughter, of sleep, idleness, and laziness — as if to say: do not through idleness steal and plunder the goods and wealth of your neighbors, lest you be raised up onto the gallows and hanged. But for "to slander" the Greek is καταλαλεῖν, which means to detract not from wealth but from reputation: to speak against, to babble, to accuse. Therefore the Hebrew שנה (shena), which properly means "sleep," from the root ישן (yashan), meaning "he slept," the Septuagint translates as "slander," from the root שנה (shanah), meaning "he changed, altered" — that is, detracted from reputation. For a slanderer is accustomed to narrate things differently from how they happened, and thus to change and alter them for the worse, indeed to fabricate and lie. Hence in chapter 17:9 it says: "He who conceals a transgression seeks friendship; he who repeats a matter (Hebrew שנה shanah, that is, changes it) separates allies." Do not therefore slander and speak against your neighbor, lest you be exalted — that is, do not depress another by accusing him in order to exalt yourself. For the root of slander is pride, by which someone, in order to exalt himself, depresses another who is his equal or rival by censuring him. Hence St. Jerome, or rather Paulinus, writing to Celantia: "Never slander anyone at all," he says, "nor wish to seem more praiseworthy through the censure of others; learn rather to adorn your own life than to criticize another's." Add also Jerome in his letter to Rusticus: "It is the mark of sufficiently base men, who seek their own praise, to make others base; for they think they are praised through the censure of another. And since they cannot please by their own merit, they wish to please by comparison with the wicked."
For "lest you be exalted" the Greek is μὴ ἐξαρθῇς, which the Complutensian and the Royal Bible translate: "lest you perish." Cyprian, book 3 of the Testimonies: "lest you be exalted" — although some manuscripts have: "lest you be uprooted." But this Septuagint version, referring to slander of reputation, does not adequately correspond to what is added: "Open your eyes and be filled with bread." And the Hebrew שנה (shena) everywhere else means sleep, not slander. Therefore the Vulgate version, being more fitting and more accurate, is to be preferred.
14. "IT IS BAD, IT IS BAD," SAYS EVERY BUYER; AND WHEN HE HAS GONE AWAY, THEN HE BOASTS.
The Hebrew יתהלל (yithallel) means "he praises himself and boasts" that he bought a precious thing cheaply. For "bad" the Hebrew has רע (ra); for which the Chaldean, reading with different vowels as רע (rea), meaning "companion," translates: "a companion says to his companion what he has bought, and then boasts and proclaims it." In Hebrew: "bad, bad, says the buyer, and going away he praises himself." The word "himself" is redundant in the Hebrew manner, as if to say: when he buys the thing, he holds it in honor and value. Or the "himself" has emphasis, as if to say: when he has departed, claiming for himself the thing bought cheaply, then he boasts. That this is to be understood by aposiopesis is clear from the sense and meaning of the maxim. Some translate: "when he has lost it, then he praises." For things, when they are possessed, lose their value; but when they are lost, they are held in esteem and anxiously sought. This is human nature. Hence Rabbi Levi: "The possession of wisdom," he says, "is far different from the possession of other things. For when other things are valued at a price of silver, they are disparaged by the buyer and accused of defects, and a price equal to what the seller demands is denied. But after the buyer has departed, he praises the merchandise highly and regrets not having bought it, and so what he obtained seems cheap, and what he lacks seems excellent. But the very opposite happens in acquiring wisdom: for no one considers it useful to himself until he has obtained it."
Now first, Baynus refers this to the labors, hardships, and dangers that merchants undergo in order to grow rich, as if to say: many bad things, that is, many troubles, cares, and pains, merchants undergo to acquire merchandise and wealth; but when they have acquired them, they rejoice and boast. Hence that verse of Horace: "The tireless merchant runs to the farthest Indies, Fleeing poverty through the sea, through rocks, through fires." Hence mystically Salonius, and from him the Glossa, says: "He who desires eternal rewards says: it is bad, it is bad — because in the present he must endure, so that when he has departed from the world, he may boast, seeing that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which will be revealed in us."
Hugh Cardinal also concurs, who refers this proverb not so much to the endurance of labors as to penance. Mystically, he says, it is explained of one who with the coin of penance buys heavenly merchandise; "it is bad," he says — that is, it is too costly, too burdensome to repent. And when the buyer, that is the penitent, has departed from the marketplace of penance to the house of the heavenly fatherland, then indeed he will boast, because he got a good deal. He adds also that heavenly goods seem expensive not so much because they require many labors, but because they have not yet been displayed.
To this is added the explanation of Rabbi Solomon: "He who is rich in the knowledge of the sacred law," he says, "through the scourges of hardships and afflictions, often complains about this and cries 'alas!' on account of this torment and anguish; but when wisdom has been heaped up, he will proclaim as glorious the labors that he endured."
Second, the same Baynus says: By the example of merchants who praise and boast of the merchandise they have bought, so also, he says, it happens in the acquiring of wisdom, as if to say: "It is bad, it is bad" (that is, the seller demands too high a price), says the buyer; and when he has departed, then he will boast.
15. THERE IS GOLD AND A MULTITUDE OF GEMS; BUT A PRECIOUS VESSEL ARE THE LIPS OF KNOWLEDGE.
As if to say: Gold is precious, and a multitude of gems is precious; but far more precious are lips full of knowledge. For the word 'precious' is understood in the first clause and must be repeated from the latter clause by zeugma, as if to say: Men hold gold and gems in great esteem; but I place the true and highest value of things in a learned heart and mouth. For this pours forth masses of gold and as many gems as it does maxims. For when it discusses chastity, it pours forth golden maxims and, as it were, emeralds of virginity. When it reasons about temperance, it pours forth amethysts of sobriety. When about the love of God, it pours forth carbuncles of charity. When about patience, it pours forth jaspers of fortitude. When about constancy, it pours forth diamonds of martyrdom, etc. For by 'knowledge' here and throughout this book, not speculative but practical knowledge is understood, which consists in prudence and the pursuit of virtues.
By 'vessel' in the Hebrew idiom, understand 'instrument' and 'tool.' Hence the author of the Greek Catena beautifully translates from the Septuagint: 'There exists gold, there exists an abundance of precious stones, but more honored than both is the instrument of the lips of understanding.' The Hebrew reads: 'There is gold and a multitude of gems, and a precious vessel are the lips of knowledge.' The Syriac: 'and precious vessels and lips of knowledge.' The Chaldean connects this to the preceding verse, as if these are the words of a buyer who, having endured many hardships, that is, labors and troubles, has acquired knowledge, and glories, proclaims, and says: 'There is gold and a multitude of precious pearls, and precious vessels are the lips of knowledge,' as if to say: With little hardship and labor I acquired for myself knowledge, which is more precious than gems and gold. So also R. Levi.
Now first, R. Levi explains it thus, as if to say: There are those who abound in gold and precious stones, but nevertheless the truly precious things, such as the lips of knowledge, are not theirs.
Secondly, Baynus, as if to say: He who excels in the knowledge of the lips, that is, a wise and eloquent man, can most easily become rich by acquiring for himself wealth, gold, many pearls, and precious vessels: so that young people should have their first concern be wisdom, not trade or other arts by which riches are acquired. "It is easy," Thales of Miletus used to say, "for philosophers to become rich, if they wish": which he demonstrated in practice, for having foreseen through the course of the stars a future scarcity of oil, he bought up all the olives of the whole province; and so he became very wealthy.
Thirdly, Cajetan more aptly judges from the Hebrew that here the value of knowledge is compared with the value of gold and pearls. For the conjunction 'and' in Latin, and even more in Hebrew, is often a mark of comparison. Hence Vatablus translates: 'and like a precious vessel is the word of knowledge,' that is, a learned and erudite discourse.
Fourthly, more profoundly, our Vulgate, the Septuagint and others translate 'and' as 'but'; for the Hebrew vav, that is 'and,' is often adversative in Hebrew, meaning 'but.' Hence the Zurich Bible translates: 'A skillful mouth is more precious than gold, gems, and precious vessels.' This translation is somewhat freer in its wording but nearly captures the sense. Therefore knowledge here is not merely compared with, but preferred to gold and gems, as if to say: In gold one praises its brilliance, solidity, and value; but knowledge, that is, prudence, virtue, and wisdom, shines more, is more solid, constant, and precious. The Tagus and certain other rivers, but few and exceptional ones, are gold-bearing and carry flakes of gold: but more gold-bearing are the lips of the wise; for they carry the gold of wisdom, virtue, and charity. Such were the lips of St. John, Patriarch of Constantinople, who was therefore surnamed Chrysostom, that is, 'golden mouth'; and of Blessed Peter of Ravenna, who was therefore called Chrysologus, that is, 'golden word,' for the sweetness and elegance of his eloquence. Hence by Pope Sixtus III, at the command of St. Peter the Apostle and St. Apollinaris the first Bishop of Ravenna, who appeared to him in a dream, though still young in age, he was made Archbishop of Ravenna. So too the wisdom and eloquence of St. Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine was golden, indeed gem-like.
All the praise and endowment of pearls "consists in their whiteness, size, roundness, smoothness, and weight," says Pliny, book IX, ch. 35. So a man of knowledge, that is, a wise and eloquent man, especially an apostolic one, has the praise of whiteness in chastity, of size in magnanimity, of roundness and spherical shape in resignation of spirit and obedience, of smoothness in modesty and composure of manners, of weight in gravity and prudence. See the 13 qualities of pearls which I applied to religious and apostolic men at Revelation 21:21.
Moreover, the Hebrew penimim signifies not only pearls or unions, but also precious stones, as the Septuagint translates, or gems, as our Vulgate translates. Therefore a wise and eloquent man possesses the qualities of the carbuncle, sapphire, beryl, diamond, and other gems which I enumerated at Revelation 21:19 and following. Some translate penimim as 'most hidden' or 'innermost things,' both because pearls are innermost within their shell, and because they are drawn from the deepest depths of the sea; for from there sailors fish them out. So deep is the heart of the wise man, and like an inexhaustible ocean of wisdom, from which the listener should continually fish out wisdom all the way to the bottom, so as to penetrate its innermost meanings and search out the profound secrets of its sayings and maxims. This is what I said at chapter 3:13: "Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, and who abounds in prudence." He adds the reason saying: "Better is the acquiring of it than the trading of silver, and its fruit than the finest and purest gold; it is more precious than all riches; and all things that are desired cannot be compared with it." And chapter 8:19: "My fruit is better than gold and precious stone, and my produce than choice silver." See what I said there; and Job 28:15: "Fine gold shall not be given for it, nor shall silver be weighed in exchange for it," etc.
BUT A PRECIOUS VESSEL ARE THE LIPS OF KNOWLEDGE. — 'Vessel,' that is, first, an instrument producing and, as it were, modulating with sweet harmony the melody of knowledge; second, a vessel, that is, a man's furniture and part of his riches: for all furniture is called a 'vessel' by the Hebrews, says Jansenius; third, properly a vessel, such as a jar, amphora, mixing bowl, or cup containing and adorning wisdom, the most precious thing. Therefore the word 'vessel' signifies first, that just as a vessel, such as a jar or mixing bowl, is full of wine, so the heart and mouth of the wise man is full of knowledge; second, just as a bowl is filled with wine to be offered to guests: so the wise man is wise not for himself alone, but offers and shares his wisdom with others through his mouth and lips; third, just as the mixing bowls from which the rich draw and drink wines are usually skillfully crafted and artistically adorned with gold and studded with gems as if with little eyes, both for adornment and to make the drink more pleasant: so likewise the wise man skillfully crafts, distinguishes, arranges, and composes his sayings and discourses, so that it appears to be a certain elegant and skillfully composed bowl. For wisdom and eloquence consist above all in the order and apt arrangement of things and maxims, their joining and connection. For thus a neat and fitting structure and fabric, as it were, is achieved, so that it can be perceived and grasped by the listeners, and thus flow into their minds and persuade them of the things that pertain to virtue and salvation. For just as the beauty and strength of an army consists in the battle line of the camp being duly arranged and ordered — for this is impenetrable to enemies and therefore unconquered and victorious over all, while a disordered and confused mob hinders itself and offers itself to the enemy to be trampled — so likewise the energy and force of a speech consists in the apt sequence and arrangement of what is said, so that each matter and argument is placed in its proper order, where it will have more weight, efficacy, charm, beauty, and elegance: for thus it teaches, delights, moves, and penetrates the minds of listeners so that they cannot resist it. See Cicero in the Orator.
Hence Themistocles, fleeing to the king of Persia and delivering an oration before him, said that a speech was like embroidered tapestries which, when unfolded, display the order and elegance of the painted scenes. So Plutarch in his Apophthegms. Augustus Caesar, writing to his Maecenas, censured the wantonness in his style and the extravagance in his composition; hence, imitating and representing it, he appended this closing: "Farewell, honey of the nations, ivory of Etruria, silphium of Arezzo, diamond of Lupernas, pearl of the Tiber, emerald of the Cilnii, jasper of the potters, beryl of Porsenna, may you have a carbuncle as a poultice of adulteresses." So Suetonius in his Life of Augustus.
16. TAKE THE GARMENT OF HIM WHO HAS STOOD SURETY FOR A STRANGER; AND FOR FOREIGNERS, TAKE A PLEDGE FROM HIM.
A 'surety for a stranger' is one who gives surety, or pledges, for another, that is, for a stranger: for this is what the Hebrew zar signifies. Again, 'for foreigners' in Hebrew is 'for a foreign woman,' or 'an unknown one,' namely not a thing but a woman; for this is what the Hebrew nochria signifies, for which the Royal and other codices better read with the Vulgate and Pagninus nochriim, that is, 'for foreigners.' For the Rabbis wrongly added vowel points and point nochriim as nochriam; for nochriam is not standard in Hebrew and signifies nothing, although they did this with good intent, namely to indicate that the true reading is nochria, as is noted in the margin.
The sense therefore is, as if to say: If someone gives surety for foreigners, namely for a foreign man or a foreign and unknown woman, to protect yourself and secure your interests, take a pledge from him, and if he has nothing else, take his garment as pledge, so that if either or both break faith, or are unable to pay, you may recover your property from the pledge. The reason is that dealing with a foreigner is uncertain and slippery, since he is not well known and lives far away: therefore if he will not or cannot pay the debt, he slips away and returns to his own people; hence the creditor cannot compel him to pay. You can summon a citizen and neighbor before the city magistrate, but if you summon a foreigner, he will flee. Thus a Frenchman will have difficulty compelling a Spaniard, a German a Pole, an Englishman a Scot, an Italian a Greek, to pay a debt: for if one tries to compel him, the debtor will return to his Spain, Poland, Scotland, or Greece, and thus escape the creditor's hands. For who would pursue him in such remote lands? Or who would dare bring a lawsuit against him among his own people? Therefore whoever wants to protect himself should demand a surety for a foreigner and take a pledge from him, so as to more securely and quickly extract payment of the debt. For when the foreigner is slow or evasive in paying, his surety is also slow or evasive in paying, since he does not want to pay another's debt from his own pocket. Therefore to compel him quickly and securely to fulfill his guarantee, take a pledge from him, especially if the surety himself is also a foreigner, as can be translated from the Hebrew; for the Hebrews lack cases, and so the same noun can signify any case. Hence the Zurich Bible translates: 'If a stranger has given surety, seize his garment, that it may be his pledge for the foreigner.' Better, however, our Vulgate translates in the genitive: 'the surety of a stranger,' that is, of a foreigner. There follows:
'And for foreigners, take a pledge from him.'
That this is the sense is clear from chapter 27, verse 13, where in the Hebrew the same statement is found word for word; and there likewise our Vulgate translates: 'Take the garment of him who has pledged for a stranger; and take a pledge from him for foreigners.' Furthermore, if this pledge belonged to a poor man, namely a garment in which the poor man was accustomed to sleep, it had to be returned to him before evening; however, it could be taken from him again in the morning according to the old law given in Exodus 22:26. Although that law properly pertains to a poor debtor, especially from a loan, as is clear from verse 25, not to a surety, though it can be extended to him by analogy: for a surety is the debtor of the one for whom he gave surety. Hence Deuteronomy 24:10 extends it to any debtor who owes something to another in any manner.
This verse is now missing in the Roman Septuagint and other editions; however, the Complutensian editors (and from them the Royal) who supplemented in the Septuagint what was missing, indeed accommodated the Septuagint to the Hebrew and Vulgate version, render this verse thus: 'Take the garment of one who pledges for another, and for a stranger take a pledge from him' (the Chaldean: 'pledge it'). One old manuscript of the Septuagint reads thus: 'Take the garment of him who has stood surety for a stranger and has pledged himself for a foreigner.'
Directly therefore and expressly this maxim warns creditors to protect themselves in dealings with foreigners, and therefore to demand a surety and take his garment as pledge, so that since the surety cannot go without his garment, he will be compelled to urge the foreigner to pay the debt at once in order to recover it. Indirectly and tacitly it warns sureties not to be rash and hasty in pledging, especially for foreigners, as spendthrifts and cheaters are, since the creditor will take their garment as pledge and exact the entire debt. For when the creditor does not wish to pursue departing foreigners, he will approach the surety and demand from him the pledge given and the entire debt. See what I said about the danger of suretyship in chapter 6:1. R. Solomon, on chapter 27, verse 13, and certain others take 'take' and 'seize' in the potential mood (δυνητικῶς), meaning 'it can be taken and seized,' or 'it deserves to be taken,' or 'it will actually be taken and seized,' as if to say: He who easily and rashly gives surety for a foreigner deserves to have his garment and pledge taken from him; indeed, if the foreigner defaults, the judge will condemn the surety to pay the pledge and the entire debt of the foreigner, and therefore will take from him his garment and remaining possessions. With a similar expression the Psalmist says, Psalm 144:5: "Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke," that is, the proud and puffed up, like mountains, if they are touched by God, that is, struck by lightning or afflicted with a similar blow, as they deserve, will soon go up in smoke and turn to ashes. So St. Jerome at that place.
According to this sense, R. Levi explains it tropologically, as if to say: "He who has stood surety for a stranger," that is, he who gives in to concupiscence, which alienates the mind from God and the law, is stripped of all his possessions, and for it he will pay the entire debt of sins to which concupiscence entices. Vatablus takes 'stranger' to mean an infidel and heretic; for he who pledges for one who lacks faith exposes his own faith to danger and his possessions to plunder.
Allegorically, Christ, pledging for the debt and fault of Adam the stranger and of sinful men alienated from God, was stripped of His garments and coverings, and thus hung completely naked on the cross, and on it as on a bed of death He fell asleep.
Mystically, Hugo says: 'Take the garment,' that is, the concern for worldly things, of him who has pledged for souls and for strangers. More precisely, our Salazar says: Take from prelates and pastors their garment, that is, their finer bed-coverings, so that they may not sleep but rather keep watch and be wakeful. For they have bound their faith for the souls of their neighbors; and therefore, in order to obtain grace and salvation for them from God, an austere life befits them, with vigils and sleeping on the ground.
17. SWEET IS THE BREAD OF DECEIT TO A MAN (Complutensian, deceitful; Author of the Greek Catena, of the deceiver), AND AFTERWARD HIS MOUTH SHALL BE FILLED WITH GRAVEL.
The Complutensian and Royal, 'with pebbles'; the author of the Greek Catena, 'with little stones'; others, 'with sand,' so that sand is opposed to flour, from which bread is made: just as gravel stones are opposed to bits of bread.
You ask, what is "the bread of deceit," or deceitful bread? I respond: literally and grammatically, deceitful bread is stony bread, mixed with pebbles or sand. For it presents the appearance of true bread, but lies and deceives those who eat it. For when they eat it, at first they see and taste morsels of bread: but when they chew and grind it, they find it full of pebbles, which injure their teeth and palate, according to Lamentations 3:16: "He broke my teeth one by one, He fed me with ashes." See what I said there.
Now beneath this bark of the letter, or parable, "the bread of deceit" parabolically signifies first, food and riches acquired by deceit, namely by usury, fraud, and injustice. Hence the Zurich Bible translates: 'Sweet is bread acquired by fraud to a man; but at last his mouth shall be filled with gravel.' For just as bread mixed with gravel and pebbles appears fine to the beholder but is troublesome to the one chewing it, since it is stony and gritty: so riches and pleasures acquired by fraud seem sweet at first; but in the end they are found to be ruinous, when they pierce, torment, and flay the conscience, which is the mouth of the soul, with a thousand scruples, anxieties, lawsuits, the burden of restitution, etc. especially when the fraudulent are condemned by a judge, or their fraud is detected and punished by God. Then therefore what was unjustly acquired cannot be digested, but torments the mouth, the stomach, and the whole man.
Secondly, "the bread of deceit" signifies by synecdoche any riches, delights, and pleasures, even those justly acquired. For if anyone indulges in or craves these through gluttony, pride, avarice, or another vice, they seem sweet at first; but at last they are felt to be pernicious, just as if one were eating stony bread. For he will be punished either by men, or by God, or by the remorse of conscience, or by the nausea and damages that follow gluttony and other vices. Hence mystically Bede, and from him the Glossa, say: "In whatever member one has sinned more, in that member he shall be punished. He who has sinned more with his tongue is said to burn more in it, since his mouth is said to be filled with a gravel stone, which is a fiery stone — as happened to the rich man who feasted splendidly every day, when burning in hell he sought relief for his tongue, which had flowed with superfluous words during his feasting" (Luke 16).
Therefore this maxim parabolically signifies that in pleasures, self-indulgence, gluttony, and every vice that appears pleasant, there lies hidden its own gravel, its own pebbles and scruples, which torment the one who indulges in them far more than all the prior pleasure delighted him. For every sin has this nature and habit: that first it soothes the senses with a certain sweetness and tickles and delights the mind; but afterward it injures the teeth of those who eat, whether through the remorse of conscience or through the manifold punishment due to sin. Hence the Poet says: 'Spurn pleasures; pleasure bought with pain does harm.'
Wherefore Aristotle admonished that "we should contemplate pleasures not as they come but as they go," that is, not from the front but from behind. For when coming they flatter with a painted appearance, but when departing they leave behind repentance and pain. So Laertius, book V, ch. 1. And Socrates, comparing pleasure to itching and scratching: "How wonderfully," he said, "nature has arranged that these two things accompany each other: pleasure and pain." For those who itch scratch themselves with pleasure, but soon after the scratching they feel themselves bitten and stung. The same Socrates said that "those who had trained themselves in continence and frugality had far more pleasure and less pain than those who with the greatest care prepared entertainments from every side." For the pleasures of the intemperate, beyond the torment of a guilty conscience, beyond infamy and poverty, frequently bring even to the body more distress than delight. On the contrary, the things that are best are also the most pleasant, if one becomes accustomed to them. So Laertius, book II, ch. 5.
Thirdly, the author of the Greek Catena translates: 'the bread of a liar'; for ψεύδους from ψεῦδος means 'bread of deceit'; but ψεύδου, if you note the last syllable with a circumflex accent, means 'the bread of a liar.' Now the bread of a liar consists of flatteries, arts, and frauds with which a liar strives to delight others and exalt himself. For these at first are pleasant both to the one speaking and to the one hearing: but at last, when their falsity and vanity are discovered, they torment both, as happens to heretics and Jews, as I shall presently show.
Some take 'gravel' here in the arithmetical sense; for pebbles (calculi) are customarily used for reckoning and counting money, and they give this meaning, as if saying: Those who administer the property of others and by lies and frauds convert it to their own use, at first enjoy its benefits; but when they are compelled to give an account for it before their masters, or judges, or confessors in confession, or before God on the day of judgment, then their mouths will be filled with calculi, that is, with the numbers and reckonings by which they defrauded another's property, which they will then be unable to sort out and settle.
Others take the gravel stone as a condemnatory ballot. For anciently judges passed a sentence of condemnation by casting a black pebble into an urn; and of acquittal by casting a white one, as if to say: The mouth of the liar and defrauder shall be filled with a gravel stone, that is, he shall be condemned either by a judge or by God.
Moreover, our Salazar takes 'gravel' to mean smaller weights, such as drachmas and scruples. Hence 'scrupulous' people are called those who minutely weigh and ponder petty matters, as if to say: Those who in life defrauded or plundered the property of others, and enticed by pleasure heaped up great weights of plunder without caring or thinking about it — these in the hour of death will be distressed by the scruples of conscience and will feel every least fault stinging them, so that they are tormented and overwhelmed by remorse. If you refer this to God the Judge, the sense will be: "And afterward his mouth shall be filled with gravel," that is, of former pleasure and delights; yet this will remain: namely the experience of a most severe examination, in which the Judge will not only weigh great thefts and robberies on the scales of His judgment, but will also use scruples, that is, the most minute weights, to weigh even the lightest faults.
But the Hebrew chatsats signifies gravel, not arithmetical, nor condemnatory, nor relating to weights; but natural, namely a rough, sharp, and piercing pebble which, mixed with bread, injures the teeth and palate. For it alludes to katsats, that is, 'to cut off the extremities,' and to chatsa, that is, 'to halve,' meaning to cut a thing into two or three middle parts. Hence chets means 'arrow,' from 'piercing,' because it divides and halves what it touches. Therefore the sense originally assigned is genuine and authentic.
Mystically: For heretics the bread of deceit is sweet, that is, false doctrine, which they gladly serve to the people in place of the bread of the Gospel; but afterward they are forced to realize that what they offer is not true bread, when they cannot defend their doctrine but are driven to vomit it out and cast it away, especially at the judgment of God and in hell. There, then, Arius, Nestorius, Calvin, and their like will see that their heresy was the bread of deceit, and that it has been turned into gravel, that is, into the bitter punishment and fire of hell. So Jansenius. Hence the Glossa takes the gravel to mean the bitterness of repentance succeeding the pleasure of concupiscence.
Hence Galatinus, book VII On the Secrets of the Faith, ch. 15, aptly explains this verse concerning the Jews: for to them the lie of their faithlessness is delightful. For since they hate Christ and the truth, they delight themselves with the Talmudic fables of the Rabbis as with the sweetest banquets; but their mouth will be filled with gravel, that is, with the eternal punishment of hell. For a gravel stone, he says, since it is hard, cannot be chewed, nor consumed, nor swallowed, nor spat out, when the whole mouth is full. So the punishment of hell is most harsh and endures, and in no way can it be escaped, nor ended, nor diminished, nor softened by any moisture of tears. This is what Jeremiah prophesied about them, 9:3: "They have bent their tongue like a bow of falsehood and not of truth, etc., and they have not known Me, says the Lord." And verse 5: "They have taught their tongue to speak falsehood; they have labored to commit iniquity." This is what St. Paul foretold about them, 2 Thessalonians 2:9, namely that God would permit the Jews to follow the Antichrist: "Whose coming," he says, "is according to the working of Satan, in all power and signs and lying wonders, and in all seduction of iniquity to those who perish, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe a lie, that all may be judged who have not believed the truth but have consented to iniquity." The signs, riches, and delights of the Antichrist will therefore be for the Jews the bread of deceit, which will soon be turned for them into gravel and torment.
18. PLANS ARE ESTABLISHED BY COUNSEL, AND BY WISE GUIDANCE WAGE WAR.
The Syriac says: war occurs because of provocation, as when someone provokes another to a duel or war by an injurious word or deed. R. Solomon explains it thus, as if to say: When you come to fight against Satan, undertake it armed with the helps of penance, prayers, and fasting. For 'are strengthened' in Hebrew is ticon, which the Chaldean translates 'are directed'; R. Levi, 'are set right': "When," he says, "someone is entangled in conflicting thoughts, by taking counsel he will enjoy tranquility and peace; this happens when these mental enterprises are collected together, the true separated from the false, contemplation completed in its full dimensions, and the mind settled. But if two or other thoughts conflict with each other, vigorously wage war against the one whose influence blocks you from the crown of virtues; for thus you will be safe from those most serious difficulties in which you are entangled: for conflicting thoughts by which one is distracted cause a perturbation of equal forces regarding the order of things.
Our Vulgate and others commonly better translate it as 'are strengthened.' For strength includes direction and adds force to it. 'By wise guidance,' that is, by the counsels by which wars are governed and directed to a successful outcome and victory. For this is what tachbulot signifies; the Septuagint: 'and by methods of governing wage war'; Cajetan: 'by ingenuity,' namely by skill, sagacity, and cunning, which is most evident in the stratagems by which experienced generals overcome the enemy and win outstanding victories. The Hebrew tachbulot alludes to chibbel, that is, 'mast, ropes, cables'; and to chobel, that is, 'helmsman of a ship.' For just as a skilled navigator, aptly extending ropes and sails to the winds and moving the rudder, directs the ship to its intended port: so the commander of an army, aptly arranging and directing soldiers by his counsels, arts, and stratagems, directs the army to victory. Hence wise kings have what they call a 'war council,' that is, counselors expert in military affairs, who devise and suggest plans for skillfully conducting war. Hence our Salazar takes 'rudders' (gubernacula) to mean energetic commanders and experts in the military art: for these prudently manage wars, just as jurists in peacetime justly and peaceably administer the state. The Septuagint in the Greek Catena supports this, translating thus: 'Plans are strengthened by counsel; and by the skill of commanders war is waged.' Hence Emperor Leo, On Military Affairs, ch. 1, no. 41: "It is the proper duty of a commander," he says, "to surpass his subjects in prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance." And ch. 2, no. 7: "The commander must be circumspect, prudent, and shrewd, turning his mind with a certain swiftness in all directions; for when unexpected disturbances occur, they immediately require the devising of present assistance."
The sense therefore is, as if to say: "Plans," that is, the thoughts, designs, and proposals of men, which are in themselves uncertain, unstable, and changeable, are strengthened and confirmed by the prudent counsels of wise counselors, so that from uncertain they become certain, from unstable stable, from changeable unchangeable. The reason is that many counselors foresee all difficulties and all ways and means of accomplishing a task; and when these have been perceived and wisely ordered, the matter becomes clear and morally certain, so that nothing in it need be changed or altered. Furthermore, he who relies most on counsel undertakes the matter with certainty and fearlessness. For in these counsels he prudently plants his foot: for he prudently hopes for a successful outcome; and if it does not succeed, he is free from blame and disgrace: for he has that which defends him, the counsel of the prudent. This maxim therefore signifies that in wars and affairs to be undertaken, industry, counsels, arts, and stratagems are worth more than the abundance and strength of soldiers; and that an active commander who is skilled in the art of war will accomplish more than any external forces and fortifications.
Hence Alexander the Great, when asked by what means he had defeated so many enemies in so short a time, replied: "By counsel, eloquence, and the art of command." So Plutarch, discourse IV. And Gideon, with only three hundred soldiers, by sounding an equal number of trumpets and smashing jars with burning torches inserted in them, representing a vast army, struck such terror into the Midianites that he routed and put to flight their innumerable ranks (Judges 7:18). So Abraham, with three hundred and eighteen household servants, attacking the unready and sleeping enemy by night, defeated the armies of four kings (Genesis 14:15). So Judith, pretending to be a fugitive, killed Holofernes and scattered the entire Assyrian camp (Judith 13:11). So the Romans "gained possession of every place by their counsel and patience" (1 Maccabees 8:3). So Samson, by tying burning torches to the tails of three hundred foxes, inflicted an enormous disaster on the Philistines and burned all their crops (Judges 15:5).
Wherefore Emperor Leo in his Tactics, or On Military Affairs, which he composed for the war to be undertaken against the Saracens, ch. 1, no. 3: "The art of command," he says, "is that in which training, study, or industry is employed together with the collection of stratagems, that is, of military counsels and trophies." And ch. 3, no. 2: "Before all especially military matters, take counsel with those officers who seem to you suited for this purpose, of which class the turmarchs and the rest are. But when the counsel seems to have some firmness, strive with all zeal and diligence to carry through to completion the matter you have deliberated upon." And no. 6: "Moreover, employ as advisors men experienced in affairs, provident, perceptive, partners in your hardships and prosperity, clever at devising plans, faithful, who will not comply with you out of flattery, nor with the one who undertakes the matter, nor with each other; but who say what they think, who are of simple and uncorrupted mind, and seek no profit from these matters, but at the very moment explore what is most useful." And no. 9: "Deliberate slowly, unless some necessity requires speed; when you have deliberated, if there is no impediment, act promptly." And ch. 20, no. 7: "It is great praise for a commander to be temperate in diet and vigilant; for at night we deliberate more about serious matters, and conclusions are reached more easily at night, when the mind is at rest from all external tumult of affairs." And no. 8: "Say one thing to enemies, do another. Do not share serious and secret matters with many, but with few, and those your most faithful friends. For it is often necessary to deceive enemies in this way." And no. 108: "Have the sun, wind, and dust at the backs of your men and in the faces of the enemy; for the enemy's eyes, whether dulled by the sun alone or their breathing obstructed by dust, or their bodies pierced through by the wind, will easily yield you the victory." Vegetius says similar things, book III, ch. 9. I said more about the usefulness of counsel at chapter 1:3, on those words: "The intelligent man shall possess rudders of governance."
19. DO NOT ASSOCIATE WITH HIM WHO REVEALS SECRETS, AND WALKS DECEITFULLY, AND OPENS WIDE HIS LIPS.
Many from the Hebrew make this a two-part sentence. For the Hebrew reads word for word: 'one who reveals a secret goes about as a tale-bearer, and with one who opens wide, or entices with his lips, do not mix yourself.' Hence the Septuagint translates it in a two-part manner: 'he who reveals a mystery walks deceitfully, and with one who seduces with his lips do not associate.' The Complutensian and Royal read: 'he who reveals counsels in an assembly goes about with a double tongue, and with one who extends his lips do not mix yourself.' The author of the Greek Catena more clearly: 'he who opens secret counsels in an assembly goes about as a double-tongued man; moreover, with him who opens wide his lips, do not mix yourself.' Vatablus: 'he who reveals a secret walks about as an informer, and with him who entices men, do not mix yourself with his words,' as if to say: Flee the counsel of an informer, and moreover of a flatterer. Cajetan: 'he who reveals mysteries walks about as a spy,' as if to say: He who reveals secrets is not so much a friend, as he pretends to be, but a spy and informer. Or, as if to say: From this you will recognize that someone is not a friend but a spy, if namely he reveals and betrays your secrets. For he is double-tongued, because he speaks amicably in your presence, but in a hostile and enemy manner among outsiders, to whom he betrays you and your plans.
But because, if you make it a two-part sentence, there is no connection between the latter hemistich and the former, our Vulgate better translates the Hebrew in the dative (for Hebrew nouns can be any case), and thus makes a single, connected sentence in this manner: 'With him who reveals a mystery, or secret, and walks deceitfully like an informer, and opens wide his lips, do not associate.' For three vices are noted here, connected among themselves, each flowing from the other in order. The first is to reveal the mysteries, or secrets, of another entrusted to him, which is a crime of unfaithfulness and betrayal; the second, to walk deceitfully as a spy and informer. For a spy acts and speaks deceitfully in order to fish out secrets and carry them to others. The third is to open wide his lips, that is, to flatter with ample, specious, and magnificent words; for spies commonly use these to fish out secrets which they then betray to others. He therefore warns that one must beware of a traitor who abounds in these three vices: who by lavish flattery fishes out secrets and then carries them to others. Hence the Zurich Bible translates: 'Do not enter friendship with one who reveals a secret, or who goes about like a merchant and is smooth of tongue.' For the Hebrew rachil signifies a merchant, and thence an informer: because just as a merchant merces, so an informer carries the words and deeds of others to others and spreads them about. The same is signified by our Vulgate, the Septuagint and Pagninus, when they translate 'opens wide'; for a flatterer and seducer opens wide his lips, narrating or promising ample and specious things, in order to entice and capture the listener, and especially to fish out his secrets which he then betrays to others — which is properly what Solomon intends here. For all these things pertain to the revelation of a secret and its betrayer. For this is a grave crime, hateful and harmful. I gave the fundamental reason at Sirach 27:19. Hence it is clear that the Hebrew patha signifies not only 'to entice' and 'to deceive,' but also 'to open wide,' because the deceiver opens wide his lips beyond the limits of truth and fidelity to false, specious, vain, and deceptive things, by which he may capture another. Hence at chapter 24:28, the Septuagint translates the Hebrew patha as 'do not open wide your lips.' And at Deuteronomy 11:16, the Septuagint translates patha as 'let not your heart be opened wide,' that is, as our Vulgate explains, 'let not your heart be deceived,' namely, that being sated with the goods of the land you do not become wanton like calves and open wide your heart beyond the worship of the true God to the adoration of foreign gods, which is the greatest deception and error.
Note: For 'opens wide,' the Hebrew has pothe, which the Syriac first translates as 'hastens'; for it translates thus: 'He who is faithful in spirit conceals a matter, and with him whose lips are hasty do not associate,' as if to say: The faithful man is slow to speak and conceals secrets; but the unfaithful man is rash and hasty in speaking, and therefore easily pours out secrets: therefore do not associate with him. And so some explain 'opens wide his lips' as: He who is wordy and garrulous: for such a person has a longer tongue than is proper, as is commonly said, and lips wider than they should be, because they rashly dilate and extend beyond the bounds of fidelity to secrets and the silence owed. They prove this from Aristotle, who in his Physiognomics teaches that those who have extended lips and a large gaping mouth are excessively talkative and biting, and are compared to dogs. Albert the Great adds that the same persons are revealers of secrets: for these two things always cling to each other — talking much and keeping no secret. So Plutarch teaches in his book On Talkativeness, where he says that these two vices are habitual to babblers and talkative people: uncovering secrets and always adding something to what they have heard from others.
Wherefore Seneca, Epistle 110 to Lucilius: "Nothing will be equally beneficial for maintaining comfortable tranquility as speaking as little as possible with others and as much as possible with oneself. There is a certain sweetness of conversation which creeps in and flatters, and not otherwise than drunkenness or love draws out secrets."
Secondly, properly patha signifies 'to entice, attract, flatter, adulate, seduce, deceive.' For those who strive to deceive others flatter and cajole them, so that by their blandishments they may trick and capture them, just as fish and birds are caught with bait. Hence the Zurich Bible translates: 'Do not enter friendship with one who speaks flatteringly,' namely, beware of the flatterer and his flattery: just as Ulysses guarded against the Sirens and their enticing songs; and just as travelers beware of treacherous dogs who bite while fawning. Others: 'With one who entices, or deceives, or flatters, or seduces, do not associate.' So R. Solomon, Aben-Ezra, and others.
The counterpart to this maxim is that of the Arabs, Century I, no. 36: "Do not open your secret to apes," that is, to mockers and revealers. For just as apes reproduce the gestures of the people they observe by imitating them: so mockers and betrayers represent the words and deeds of those they mock and betray by narrating them to others. And that saying, Century I, no. 56: "Do not cast reproach upon your brother"; or, as others translate, 'do not make known the foulness of your brother.' And so Ben-Sira, Alphabet 2, letter shin: "Refrain from quarreling with your neighbors; and if you notice something bad in your companions, do not broadcast their shame with your tongue." If therefore you see something blameworthy in a friend, be silent; if something praiseworthy, speak out and praise it. For, as the Arabs say: "When you magnify the one you see, he will magnify you whom he does not see." And again: "Praise enriches, defamation exacts a fine."
20. HE WHO CURSES HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, HIS LAMP SHALL BE EXTINGUISHED IN THE MIDST OF DARKNESS.
The Hebrew reads: 'in the blackness or obscurity of darkness'; the Chaldean: 'like the gloom of darkness'; the Syriac: 'like the dark pupil.' For this is called in Hebrew ischon, from its resemblance to a little man, or pupil, which appears in the eye. Hence the Greek kore, as the Septuagint translates, signifies both 'pupils' (of the eye) and 'girls' or 'young women.' From the Septuagint therefore you may translate: 'his pupils,' or 'his daughters,' 'shall see darkness,' as if to say: His daughters will die in their girlhood before marriage: and so the hope of his lineage and progeny will be extinguished. 'Curses' means: he assails them with insults, mockery, abuse, and derision; or he wishes upon them death, plague, or some other evil; or in a similar manner he is injurious, abusive, or harmful to them by words or deeds.
Note 'and mother,' that is, 'or mother': for it suffices for guilt and punishment to curse either one, as is clear from Leviticus 20:9. Hence the Septuagint translates: 'The lamp of him who curses his father or mother shall be extinguished, and the pupils of his eyes shall see darkness'; Symmachus: 'his torch shall be extinguished in darkness,' that is, in obscurity, or in a moonless night; others: 'in the pupil of night' or 'of gloom,' that is, in the blackest and most obscure night: for the pupil of the eye, being very black, is hence a symbol of blackness, gloom, and obscurity.
You ask, what is this "lamp," and how is it to be extinguished in the midst of darkness? I respond first: "Lamp" by its light is a symbol of brightness, excellence, fame, reputation, and glory. Hence it is commonly said that someone 'obstructs the lights' of another when he obscures his fame and glory. The sense therefore is, as if to say: He who is abusive or harmful to his father or mother, even if he is otherwise distinguished and illustrious by many titles, will obscure all these titles and extinguish all his honor, brightness, dignity, and glory, and will bury them in the darkness of impious cursing of his parents, and of the ignominy, disgrace, and infamy that follows from it; indeed not only himself, but also his whole family and its splendor he will darken with the stain and gloom of this impiety and infamy. This sense is plain, obvious, and common.
Secondly, 'lamp' is a symbol of reason, knowledge, and prudence, as if to say: They will be punished with great ignorance, says Vatablus, so that, deprived of reason and bereft of mind, they will seem not so much men as beasts, because they have of their own accord lulled to sleep or extinguished the light of natural reason, which dictates that parents are to be honored. Hence our Salazar explains it thus, as if to say: The son who violates his parents and drives them further away from himself with curses and abuse — 'his torch shall be extinguished in a moonless night,' that is, reason and counsel will fail in him, and he will dwell in black night. Because he who lacks his own counsel and does not have at hand the exhortations and instructions of his father or mother, acts in night without sun, without moon, and without torch. And indeed for him who has injured his parents, a fitting punishment is the lack of counsel and reason. For he who has completely put off his humanity and has in a way defected to the beasts through his savagery, is rightly punished in those goods that most distinguish man from beasts, namely in reason and counsel.
Thirdly, 'lamp' is a symbol of children, grandchildren, and descendants. For just as one lamp lights another and another, and through it propagates its light: so a father, as it were, breathes his spirit and life into his children, and propagates it through grandchildren and descendants. Hence many of the ancients supposed that the soul of man, as well as of the horse and beasts, is born from 'traduce,' that is, that the soul of the child is transmitted and generated from the soul of the parent, just as the light of one lamp is transmitted from the light of another. But this is an error; yet it is true that the vital spirits and consequently the life of the child are transmitted from the spirit and life of the parent. Hence that line of Lucretius, book II: 'And like runners they pass on the torch of life.' And Plato, book VI of the Laws, teaches that parents pass on life to their children, just as runners passed on lit torches which they had received at the beginning of the course from the official, and having completed the course they passed them to others, and these to others and others; and the one in whose hand the torch was extinguished was considered unlucky, base, and inglorious: so a father who died without children, so that in him the lamp of the family was extinguished, was considered unfortunate and inglorious. Again, a father's life and glory survives after death and lives on in his son, whom he leaves after himself as another self. Solomon therefore says that for those who curse their parents, the lamp will be extinguished, that is, the generation and progeny of children, so that they either do not beget children, or if they do, the children soon die, and so the man himself and his name dies out and passes into the darkness of death and eternal oblivion. For he who does not honor his father deserves to lack the honor of fatherhood, namely, not to become a father. He who despises his begetter is worthy to be deprived of begetting and generation. Conversely, God in Scripture is said to prepare a lamp for pious children, that is, children and an illustrious and splendid posterity, as to David and to Christ, saying: "I have prepared a lamp for My anointed" (Psalm 132:17). And concerning Abia: "For David's sake the Lord his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, to raise up his son after him" (3 Kings 15:4). The lamp of King David, therefore, is his royal posterity, that is, the sons and grandsons succeeding David in the kingdom in order. Therefore this sense is very fitting for this passage, and equally consistent with the phrasing and with Scripture.
Fourthly, 'lamp' is a symbol of life. For just as life is sustained by the radical moisture: so a burning lamp is fed by oil, and when this fails it languishes and dies. Hence that saying of Polyxena in Euripides' Iphigenia: "Farewell, beloved light," that is, farewell, life; behold, I die. For fire is lively and seems to live; hence it was considered by some to be a living being, not only because it is nourished like other animals, indeed is omnivorous and insatiable; but because it also seems to possess feeling, which appears especially when it is extinguished, since as one not lacking a vital principle it cries out, flares up, hisses, strives to avenge itself, and resists struggling, just as other living beings that are killed by a violent death do, says Pierius, Hieroglyphics 46, ch. 14. The sense therefore is, as if to say: He who curses his parents will be deprived not only of children and posterity, but of life itself, either by a judge or by God, according to the law He ordained, Leviticus 20:9: "He who curses his father or mother shall be put to death; he who has cursed father and mother, his blood shall be upon him"; and this "in the midst of darkness," when a lamp is most needed, that is, in youth, says Cajetan, when he most needed to live — he will die an untimely death, childless, buried in eternal oblivion. Pierius adds, ch. 9: But the Vestal fire, he says, which the Roman virgins tended with such great diligence, seemed to represent a higher and more divine life: and so they supported it both with guarding and nourishment, because it seemed an eternal symbol of that higher life. And among portents, as Dionysius and others report, if by some accident it happened to be extinguished, this was considered a presage that the city would perish. Hence Camillus said to the citizens: "What shall I say about the eternal fires of Vesta, and the sacred pledge of empire that is kept in the custody of her temple?" And Virgil, Aeneid II: 'And from the innermost shrine he brings forth the eternal fire.'
One sometimes sees a lamp at the base of a statue: some consider this to signify eternity. So far Pierius. Indeed, at Rome in the cemeteries of St. Priscilla, St. Sebastian, St. Lawrence, and others, in the tombs of martyrs and the faithful, we see everywhere placed earthenware lamps, as signs of their faith, hope, and reviving virtue, and tokens of triumph, life, and glory, indicating that although dead to the world, they yet live to God in the hope of eternal life, awaiting the glorious resurrection of the body. This lamp likewise of one who curses his parents will be extinguished, because they will be deprived of eternal life and will go to the underworld, to the outer darkness.
Fifthly, 'lamp,' that is, light and fire, is a symbol of piety, holiness, religion, divine worship, and divinity itself. Hence lamps are used in Mass and the Divine Offices, and are hung near the bodies of martyrs, as we see at Rome in the church of St. Cecilia 80 lamps burning continually night and day. I enumerated seventeen reasons and analogies for why fire befits God and divine things at Leviticus 9, at the end of the chapter. The sense therefore is, as if to say: He who is abusive and impious toward his parents extinguishes in his mind the lamp, that is, the light of piety, holiness, and divine worship; because he casts off the fear, love, and obedience of God who commands that parents be honored, and appears entirely profane, impious, and atheistic. Hence Plato, book XI of the Laws: "The worship of the gods," he says, "is like a prelude to honoring parents." Hence again the lamp is a symbol of the priesthood, as in Jeremiah 25:10: "I will destroy, etc., the light of the lamp," that is, I will destroy the priesthood whose duty it is to tend the lamps, and the temple in which they were lit, and I will overturn the sabbaths and sacred rites that were celebrated by their light. Wherefore priests of old carried before them lighted lamps, torches, and tapers. Hence that saying of Clement of Alexandria in the Protreptic concerning the priests of Bacchus: "Extinguish the fire, O priest, revere the lamps, O you who carry torches! The light convicts your Iacchus." Lipsius in his Electa and Martin de Roa, book II of his Singularia, ch. 16, demonstrate this at greater length.
Sixthly, 'lamp' is a symbol of dominion, wealth, kingdom, and empire; because just as fire is the king of the elements, so the prince is of men. Wherefore lamps, torches, and fires were customarily carried before kings, as I showed at Jeremiah 1:13. Hence it arose that by the sacred writers especially, the lamp is taken to signify kingdom and kings, splendor and glory, just as purple and torches signify magistracy, and others of that kind. So it is said in 2 Samuel 21:17: "You shall not extinguish the lamp of Israel," that is, the kingdom or the king. And the Royal Prophet says: "I have prepared a lamp for My anointed," that is, a kingdom and empire for my king. John the Baptist is called a lamp, first because he bore the torch before Christ, the true king of gods and men, as He entered the earth; either professing His authority and sovereignty by this symbol, as it were; or the wedding which He had come to celebrate with His bride the Church. He is also called a lamp because he was not himself the light, but the herald of the light, and therefore a shining lamp; and because he contained that fire which had come to send fire upon the earth, he was burning. This lamp was first lit in the womb of his parent, when both boys, not yet even brought to the light, the one gave light, the other received it; then it was more fully inflamed when they came together at the Jordan on the day of purification. So our Martin de Roa, book II of the Singularia, ch. 17. Solomon therefore signifies that sons, even if powerful princes ruling far and wide, if they are abusive and impious toward their parents, by God's just vengeance are to be stripped of this power, dominion, and kingdom, as happened to Absalom, who impiously invaded the kingdom of his father David, and who, suspended by his hair from a tree, was pierced through with three lances by Joab (2 Samuel 18:14).
Seventhly, 'lamp' and light are a symbol of joy, prosperity, and happiness; for these refresh and gladden the mind, as light does the eyes. Hence concerning the wicked we heard at chapter 13:9: "The lamp of the wicked shall be extinguished." And Job 18:6: "The light shall grow dark in his tent, and the lamp that is over him shall be extinguished." And 29:3: "When His lamp shone upon my head, and by His light I walked through darkness," that is, when I enjoyed prosperous fortune, when I was abundant, happy, and fortunate. The lamp of one who curses parents is therefore extinguished in darkness, when in punishment for his impiety God takes away his prosperity and changes it into calamity, and his happiness into unhappiness, namely by making everything turn out badly for him and rebound upon his cursing head, which did not hesitate to insult his father. "In darkness" therefore means 'through darkness,' when the most grievous darkness overwhelms it. This happens both at death, which removes all the brightness and happiness of the wicked; and also in the time of temporal divine retribution, which is frequently signified by darkness. On the contrary, of the just man it is said: "Your light shall rise in darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday" (Isaiah 58:10). And again: "Who among you fears the Lord, who has walked in darkness and has no light?" (Isaiah 50:10). For when the day of death and divine retribution arrives, the virtue and brightness of the just are not overcome by those shadows, but rather shine forth more brightly and overcome the darkness: but on the contrary, the brightness of the wicked is overcome and crushed by those shadows.
This sense is very fitting, as well as common and ample, and embraces all the others; for the lamp and light are a symbol of joy and happiness, and of all things that produce pleasure and gladness, or are held in honor, delight, and esteem; of this kind are riches, fame, power, dominion, kingdoms, empires, triumphs, glory, and other things of this sort.
Symmachus translates: 'His torch shall be extinguished in a moonless night,' that is, in the densest darkness, when he will have light neither from a lamp nor from the sky. For all the light of night comes from the moon and stars.
Symbolically, the moon represents the mother, just as the sun represents the father. According to the saying of Joseph: "I saw, as it were, the sun and the moon and eleven stars adoring me," that is, I saw my father, mother, and eleven brothers adoring me (Genesis 37). For just as at night, in the absence of the sun, the moon provides light: so in the absence or death of the father, the mother offers the son comfort, counsel, and admonitions of salvation; if the moon becomes moonless, that is, if the mother is absent or dies, the son deprived of both father and mother is left without all comfort and counsel. Solomon therefore says: The son who assails his father and mother with insults or abuse deserves to be bereft of both, as well as of children, namely he deserves to be neither a father, his children being lost, nor a son, his parents being dead; for thus every lamp of his is extinguished both above and below.
Mystically, by 'father and mother' understand prelates, pastors, and princes; for he who curses these, the sevenfold lamp already enumerated will be extinguished for him. Hence the author of the Greek Catena says: By 'father,' understand here God; by 'mother,' the justice of the law: and he who has assailed these with curses, or otherwise scorned them, the lamp, that is, the light of knowledge that was in him, will be extinguished. And the pupils of his eyes will see darkness, namely the terror and obscurity of the future judgment.
21. AN INHERITANCE OBTAINED HASTILY IN THE BEGINNING WILL IN THE END BE WITHOUT BLESSING.
In Hebrew and Chaldean: 'in the end it will not be blessed'; the Septuagint: 'a portion hastened at first will not be blessed in the last.' There is here in the Hebrew what the Masoretes call keri and ketib, that is, a variant of reading and writing. For it is written mebochelet with chet, a root found only here and at Zechariah 11:8, where I explained it at length. For it signifies a detestable thing which we abominate and vomit out in disgust, such as 'a hasty inheritance,' especially one acquired by theft and evil arts, says Aben-Ezra. But the reading should be mebohelet with he, that is, 'hastened,' as the Septuagint, Symmachus, Theodotion, Pagninus, and others translate; the Zurich Bible, 'premature'; Vatablus, 'precipitated,' or 'acquired with haste'; Aben-Ezra, 'heaped up from plunder': for such are often the things that are scraped together quickly and hastily by fair means or foul. For the root bahal implies speed of time with passion and precipitancy, and means 'accelerated, hastened, rushed, disturbed, struck with sudden terror.' It agrees in meaning, as well as in its letters transposed by metathesis, with habal, which signifies sudden vanishing; hence hebel means 'vanity,' and from it Abel was named, because, quickly killed by his brother Cain, he suddenly vanished. So here too bahal becomes habal, that is, riches quickly acquired quickly vanish.
The sense therefore is, as if to say: Inheritances and riches quickly and hastily acquired lack blessing, that is, success, happiness, abundance, and fruit; because far from increasing, they gradually diminish and fail — partly because they are scraped together hastily and tumultuously, and therefore imprudently, and often by fair means or foul (for haste is opposed to deliberation and counsel, by which things are usually established and reach a happy outcome); partly because the heir produced them quickly without great labor, indeed easily: hence he esteems them less, and guards and preserves them less; for what one has produced with great labor and sweat, one cherishes, cares for, and diligently preserves, says R. Levi. So that this maxim says the same as that of chapter 13:11: "Wealth gotten in haste will diminish; but that which is gathered little by little by hand will be multiplied"; where I explained it at length. R. Solomon gives the example of the tribes of Gad, Reuben, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, which, because they hastily took their portion on this side of the Jordan, were the first exposed to enemy attack, and the first to be devastated by Hazael king of Syria in the time of Jehu king of Israel and Joash king of Judah (4 Kings 10:33).
Therefore you may rightly apply this maxim to parents who by fair means or foul accumulate riches to leave a large inheritance to their children after them; for these are not rarely disappointed in their hope, and often leave their children poor. The reason is that ill-gotten gains ill depart; and as is commonly said: 'From ill-gotten wealth the third heir takes no pleasure.'
Secondly, Cajetan fittingly explains it thus, as if to say: The inheritance which a young son hastens to enter upon before the death of his father lacks blessing; because it cannot be managed and preserved by him, but is youthfully and recklessly squandered, consumed, and wasted. Hence the common saying: "If you are a vulture, wait for the carcass"; if you wish to enjoy and be satisfied with your father's inheritance and make use of it, wait for your father's death, like a vulture, which kills no animal but feeds on those that are dead or killed by others. The example is in the prodigal son, who by demanding too hastily his portion of the inheritance from his father, consumed it by living luxuriously with harlots. Hence he was reduced to such poverty that he was forced to become a swineherd and feed pigs (Luke 15).
Thirdly, 'is hastened' can be taken as 'is quickly and hastily consumed,' as if to say: The inheritance that is quickly and hastily consumed will lack blessing, that is, will more swiftly fail and be squandered. For thus gluttons and young people, when they approach the table of feasts and riches with hasty greed, immediately consume, devour, and squander it. It is a metalepsis.
This threefold exposition arises from the threefold meaning of the verb 'is hastened.' For first, 'is hastened' means 'is hastily acquired'; second, 'is hastened' means 'is hastily entered upon and seized'; third, 'is hastened' means 'is hastily consumed.'
Mystically, worldly men, because they hasten to inherit the earth and enjoy present things, thereby lose future goods and the heavenly inheritance. So Cain, building a city on earth, lost the city above (Genesis 4): "Those imitate him who hasten to the feast of earthly happiness and do not await the future dedication of the kingdom of the Son of God (whence that saying of the Wise Man: 'An inheritance obtained hastily in the beginning will in the end be without blessing'), as Enoch, that is 'Dedication,' awaited, 'who walking with God was not found, because God took him.' For the just through faith in the seventh age of the world have dedicated to themselves hope for rest, and their hope is directed to that which is not seen in the present. 'For we have not here a lasting city,' they say, 'but we seek one that is to come,'" says Rupert, book IV on Genesis, ch. 10.
Just as Esau, then, greedily, avidly, and prematurely craving Jacob's pottage, sold and lost the rights of the firstborn to him (Genesis 25:34): so the wicked, because they prematurely and impatiently crave happiness and pleasure, accept what the world offers on earth, and therefore lose the heavenly happiness which the just, waiting with long hope and patience in the tribulations of this world, obtain in heaven. Hence the Apostle, Hebrews 11:1: "Faith," he says, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." See that entire chapter. The author of the Greek Catena concurs, who explains it thus, as if to say: Malice at first gulps down pleasure with greedy jaws; but in the end it casts its follower down into a curse. Virtue, on the other hand, which begins with labor, ends at last in blessing. Or a 'hastened portion' here means one that has been undertaken with excessive haste and commotion, according to that verse: "Then the princes of Edom were in haste" (Exodus 15). So he.
Morally, learn here how great an evil hasty precipitation and rashness are, and how contrary to wisdom and prudence, which require counsel and maturity for acquiring spiritual as well as bodily riches. Hence the maxim of Augustus Caesar was: speude bradeos, that is, 'make haste slowly,' as Gellius attests, book X, ch. 11. And the Comic playwright: "Safer are the things provided by slow counsels than those rushed by hot counsels. Deliberate on useful things; delay is the safest course. Take counsel at night." Sallust: "Before you begin, deliberate; once you have deliberated, prompt action is needed" — a maxim that Aristotle praises, book VI of his Ethics. Bias: "Undertake a business slowly, but persevere steadfastly in what you have undertaken." Terence in the Phormio: "May the gods prosper what you do, but step by step"; and as Plutarch says, "with an ox's pace." Sophocles in the Oedipus: "Hasty prudence is dangerous." The mime Publilius: "War must be long prepared for, that you may conquer more quickly." Quintilian: "That precocious kind of talent does not easily come to fruit." The common saying goes: "Those who are wise as boys and, as it were, before their time, turn out foolish in old age." Aelius in Gellius says he likes a certain sharpness in youthful talents, just as in unripe fruits, for this at last matures; moreover, maturity brings timely sweetness: the rest rot before their time. Homer hints at this, Iliad I, where Pallas stands behind Achilles and restrains him as he reaches for his sword.
The usual companions of haste are error and repentance, according to the saying: "For many, precipitation is the cause of evils." And: "A hasty bitch bears blind puppies." St. Jerome to Pammachius: "Wise," he says, "is that saying of Cato: 'Soon enough, if well enough.'" So those who consecrate themselves to virtues too hastily acquire rushed and fleeting ones rather than solid and enduring ones. For precocious things tend to wither quickly; but what grows gradually is durable, according to Horace: "It grows like a tree through hidden time." Hence Pindar, Hymn 8 in the Nemeans: "Virtue increases," he says, "as when a tree rises with verdant dew, raised among wise and just men to the clear sky."
Tropologically, St. Gregory, Pastoral Rule, part III, admonition 21, adapts this maxim to, indeed hurls it against, the avaricious, who craving transient and obvious things lose the eternal, like tenants on earth and exiles from heaven: "When they desire any profits of the present world," he says, "and are ignorant of what losses they will suffer in the future, let them hear what is written: 'An inheritance obtained hastily in the beginning will in the end lack blessing.' For from this life we take our beginning, that we may come to the lot of blessing in the end. Those therefore who hasten to inherit in the beginning cut off for themselves the lot of blessing in the end; because, while they desire to multiply here through the wickedness of avarice, there they are disinherited from the eternal patrimony." Bede, however, says: "'An inheritance obtained hastily,' etc., that is: 'He who receives the position of governance before he has learned to be subject, that is, before his time, hastening and acting prematurely, will in the end lack the reward of blessing that is owed to good rulers; he who has approached the mystery of the altar unlearned and rash, will in the last day lose the grace of reward that is promised to those who minister well. It can also be taken this way: he who in the present wants to avenge his own injuries will lack the crown of patience in the future. And this sense seems most fitting for what follows: "Do not say: I will repay evil; wait for the Lord, and He will deliver you."'
22. DO NOT SAY: I WILL REPAY EVIL; WAIT FOR THE LORD, AND HE WILL DELIVER YOU.
In Hebrew veioscha lach, that is, 'He will save you, He will be to you a Jesus.' For the name Jesus, that is 'savior,' is derived from iascha, that is, 'He saved.' The Septuagint: 'Do not say: I will avenge myself on my enemy' (St. Cyprian, book III of the Testimonies, and To Demetrianus reads: 'I will avenge myself on my enemy'), 'but wait for the Lord, that He may be your help'; the Syriac: 'I will repay evil for good': better others: 'I will repay evil for evil.' For it properly forbids vengeance and retaliation, namely that evil not be repaid with evil. For 'to repay' means to return like for like or equal for equal. Hence Aben-Ezra: "Do not say," he says, "that you will repay tit for tat to those who have done you evil." For that appetite for returning like for like in evils is very vehement in man and, as it were, innate in him; and some nations are so inclined to this that they consider their honor, indeed their happiness, to rest in it. The author of the Greek Catena: "Do not avenge yourself," he says, "but wait for the Lord, who said: 'Vengeance is Mine, and I will repay'" (Romans 12:19).
DO NOT SAY — in your heart, and much less with your mouth, both because by pronouncing aloud the evil of vengeance you confirm the purpose of vengeance conceived in the heart; partly because you scandalize others; partly because there are those who think themselves bound in conscience to carry out what they have said, even if it is evil and injurious to another — such as are today the Puritans, who are 'purer,' or rather more impure, in England.
The fundamental reason is that to repay evil for evil is not an act of justice but of vengeance, which is unlawful and forbidden by all law; therefore evil must be repelled with the shield of patience, not the weapon of vengeance. Moreover, he who inflicted evil upon you gave you the occasion for great virtue and merit; therefore he did not offer you evil but a great good; for he gave you the material for a great victory and crown. Wherefore he deserves not hatred but love, not vengeance but rather gratitude. Those therefore who injure us by word or blow are not torturers but goldsmiths of crowns: hence they are benefactors, not malefactors, and so great a benefit of theirs (material, not formal, because it does not come from their mind and intention) must be repaid with an equal benefit. See what I said on this matter at Romans 12:17; Sirach 28:7 ff.; and 1 Peter 2:23.
Wait for the Lord, and He will deliver you. — He does not say 'and He will avenge you,' although this too often truly happens, but 'He will deliver you,' to signify that the injured party should desire his own deliverance, not the punishment and harm of the injurer. The Chaldean: 'Hope in God, and He will save you.' For 'wait,' the Hebrew has kawe, a word used of those who with great desire of soul are intent upon someone and look to him, and await and embrace him and apply him to themselves. It therefore signifies that the injured person should flee not to friends, not to bodyguards, not to soldiers, but to God; should look to Him, direct all his hope toward Him, and await from Him his deliverance; therefore he should embrace God with his whole heart and apply Him to his injury and pain as the most effective medicine and the most certain consolation. This is what our Jesus, that is, our Savior, does for His beloved who trust in Him and direct toward Him the full gaze of their mind. Look therefore to Him, and He in turn will look upon you with the eye of fatherly providence and will save you, according to the Psalmist's words: "As the eyes of servants are on the hands of their masters, as the eyes of a handmaid are on the hands of her mistress, so our eyes are on the Lord our God, until He have mercy on us" (Psalm 123:2). Observe with what eagerness dogs look at their master while he is dining, to receive food from him; with equal eagerness look to Jesus, and He will feed you with every good.
This maxim therefore instructs the one who suffers injury and teaches him what he ought to do, and suggests to him an invincible panoply with which to conquer and overcome everything. This panoply is patience, meekness, resignation of spirit, and hope in God. For by enduring through these he conquers, first, the injury, however atrocious and manifold, as Christ our leader conquered, as St. Peter testifies in the passage already cited.
Secondly, he conquers the very person who injures him, when he shows that he is not moved by his injuries, but rather made stronger and loftier by them, and repays good for evil; by which charity, as if by fire, he kindles the heart of the other and wins it over to himself, and compels it to love him who loves, and thus turns an enemy into a friend.
Thirdly, he conquers himself, namely his own anger, desire for vengeance, and impatience, and over all these and all other movements of the soul he rules and commands like a king. The patient man therefore is master of himself and king of his soul, and consequently of the devil, indeed of all devils, who, having once been conquered by anger, now strive to arouse all to the same.
Fourthly, he conquers the bystanders and hearers. For these, having heard of his unconquered patience, admire, love, and honor him.
Fifthly, he conquers God Himself, and draws from Him help to deliver him from all evil. Conversely, the impatient man is conquered: first, by the injury of his neighbor; second, by the one who injures him, and he confesses that he is wounded and subdued by him; third, by his own anger and impatience, and by the devil who stirs it up; fourth, by the bystanders, who mock him; fifth, by God, who abandons him and exposes him to greater injuries.
Take up, therefore, this maxim, apply it to yourself, chew on it and practice it, whoever you are that suffer, and you will find in it relief from every evil. St. Augustine truly says: "A curse, repelled by patience, returns to its author, with the one who was targeted unharmed." Hence Jeremiah, a type of the suffering Christ, assailed with so many insults and blows by the Jews, fleeing to God, says at chapter 17:14: "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for You are my praise." And shortly after: "And I was not troubled following You as my shepherd, and I did not desire the day of man, You know. What went forth from my lips was right in Your sight. Do not be a terror to me; You are my hope in the day of affliction." And David, fleeing Absalom, assailed with curses by Shimei: "Let him alone," he said, "let him curse according to the command of the Lord, if perhaps the Lord will look upon my affliction, and the Lord will repay me good for this cursing today" (2 Samuel 16:11).
Solomon is echoed by Sirach, Sirach 1:29: "The patient man will endure until the time, and afterward there will be a return of joy." And chapter 2:4: "Those who fear the Lord keep His commandments and will have patience until His visitation." And verse 2: "Do not be hasty in the time of distress (affliction); endure the support of God, unite yourself to God and endure, that your life may increase in the end." And verse 6: "Trust in God, and He will restore you, and direct your way, and hope in Him." And St. Ignatius, in Antonius's Melissa, part II, ch. 89 and 90: "Stand firm," he says, "when you are beaten, like an anvil. It is the mark of a noble athlete to be beaten and to conquer; but especially for God's sake all things must be endured by us, that He Himself may endure us. Patiently bear with one another in meekness, that God may always bear with us gently." St. Gregory of Nazianzus, at the same place: "In the fables," he says, "there is said to be a certain plant which, when cut, sprouts again, which is said to contend with the sword, which lives by death and is born by being cut and grows by being consumed. Such seems to me to be the wise man, who in disturbances achieves brightness, for whom trouble is the material of virtue, and who is made more adorned by adversity. It is useful to conquer boldness with meekness and to make better those who do us injury by patiently bearing what they inflict on us. Nothing is stronger than those who are prepared to bear all things." St. Chrysostom at the same place: "Nothing equally makes us venerable," he says, "as enduring injury. God is accustomed not to avert evils from the beginning, but when they have come to the summit and grown, when nothing has been left untried by the enemies and they have tried everything, then all at once He converts everything into the greatest tranquility, and beyond everyone's expectation He establishes and strengthens things in the best way. When someone offends you, do not look at him but at the devil who impels him, and pour out all your anger on the devil; but pity the one who is impelled by the devil." St. Basil at the same place: "If you grow angry at one who reviles you," he says, "you have approved the reviling. For what is more foolish than anger? But if you are not moved at all, you have put to shame the one doing injury, by your very conduct declaring your temperance." St. Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of St. Basil, in Maximus, Sermon 42: "The progress of insults and abuse," he says, "is stopped by gentleness in bearing them. For if anyone avenges insult with insult and abuse with abuse, he will increase these very vices by feeding what is absurd with the same. A firm and undoubted hope of grace, and its enjoyment, belongs to those who wait with patience."
23. A WEIGHT AND A WEIGHT IS AN ABOMINATION BEFORE THE LORD: A DECEITFUL SCALE IS NOT GOOD. but bad, indeed very bad. It is a litotes: for less is said and more is meant. In Hebrew: 'scales of deceit are not good'; in Chaldean: 'it is not pleasing before Him.' We heard this maxim at verse 10, and at chapter 11, verse 1, where I explained it.
Mystically, St. Ambrose on Psalm 61, reading from the Septuagint: "A double weight is execrable to the Lord, and a deceitful scale is not good"; and he explains: "In which he signifies those who meditate plunder with an insatiable heart but pretend sobriety in their countenance. Such are the scribes of the Jews, who impose heavy burdens of harsher observance on others, not having a right yoke for their own soul, but bent by leaning toward iniquity: and they themselves are fugitives from their own precepts."
Again, others apply this to those who humble themselves before God in secret but publicly exalt themselves before men. Hear St. Bernard, Sermon 42 on the Canticle: "A weight and a weight," he says, "is an abomination before God. What then? You depreciate yourself in secret, weighed on the scales of truth within yourself, and then outside, lying about your worth, you sell yourself to us at a greater weight than you received from truth! Fear God and do not do this most wicked thing, so that
24. BY THE LORD THE STEPS OF A MAN ARE DIRECTED (a strong and vigorous man who undertakes great and arduous things: for this is what the Hebrew geber signifies; hence Gabriel, that is, 'the strength of God'): BUT WHAT MAN CAN UNDERSTAND HIS OWN WAY?
The Septuagint: 'but how can a mortal man have thought out his ways?' In Hebrew: 'From the Lord are the steps of a man,' supply: 'they depend, they are, they are directed; and how can a man understand his way?'
Solomon borrowed this maxim from his father David, Psalm 37:23: "By the Lord (in Hebrew, 'from the Lord') the steps of a man are directed, and He shall will his way." Where for 'are directed' the Hebrew has conannu, that is, as St. Jerome says, 'are made firm'; others, 'are prepared' or 'fitted'; others, 'are ratified'; others, 'are perfected.' For the root conen is used of any fitting that includes in itself firmness, certainty, and solidity. 'Steps' and 'way' signify works, pursuits, actions, and the entire manner and course of life. For all these things in man, as a wayfarer, are not stable but are a perpetual motion and passage, as St. Ambrose says from Origen. It signifies, therefore, that it belongs not to man but to God and His providence to arrange, order, establish, prosper, perfect, and lead to a happy end the actions, state, and entire life of man. For all these things are signified by 'are directed.' Moreover, the actions of man are twofold, namely natural and supernatural: the former God directs by His natural and common providence, the latter by His supernatural and special providence. Hence concerning natural things the Rabbis and Baynus explain it thus, as if to say: A man setting out for somewhere else does not know when, what, or what kind of journey he should undertake, especially at a crossroads or junction; nor does he know what will happen to him on the journey, and when and how he will return home. The faithful more aptly take this of supernatural things. Hence David, Psalm 37, applies this maxim to the just man (for this is geber, that is, a strong man), whose steps, that is, actions and pursuits, God directs, that is, seconds, moderates, and prospers, so that he may reach the goal of eternal happiness. Therefore He directs him, that is, governs and protects him amid so many adversities, temptations, and dangers, lest he fall into sin (except venial). And if he has fallen into mortal sin, He immediately raises him up, as He raised David when he had fallen into adultery and the murder of Uriah. Hence he adds: "When he shall fall, he shall not be dashed to pieces, because the Lord puts His hand beneath him."
This direction of God, therefore, is manifold: for first, God directs our actions when from eternity He destines and preordains them, so as to rouse man to them in due time, according to that text: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works (that is, for good works) which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10).
Secondly, when in due time He rouses man to them and directs him by illuminating his mind and impelling his will toward them.
Thirdly, when He suggests to man the manner of carrying them out in an orderly and happy way. So He directs the steps of the traveler when He suggests safe roads to him: for often unless we were directed by God, we would choose dangerous roads on which we would fall among robbers, either temporal or spiritual, such as demons, evil companions, scandals, temptations, and enticements to sin.
Fourthly, when He removes obstacles and opponents to our endeavors, as when He removed for St. Paul the obstacles of Jews and Gentiles opposing the preaching of the Gospel. Hence Paul himself asks the Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians 3:1, saying: "Pray for us, that the word of God may run and be glorified, even as it is among you; and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith."
Fifthly, when He directs man in execution, lest he err or fall, and if he has erred or fallen, He corrects and raises him; if he is weary, He sustains him; if faint-hearted and despairing, He lifts him to hope; if doubtful, He shows him what he ought to choose. This is what the Church prays daily at Prime: "May the splendor of the Lord our God be upon us; and direct the works of our hands upon us. Deign to direct and sanctify, to rule and govern, O Lord God, King of heaven and earth, today our hearts and bodies, our senses, words, and actions in Your law and in the works of Your commandments, that here and forever, with Your help, we may deserve to be saved and free."
Sixthly, when He seconds and prospers them, so that they attain their desired end, for example, that preachers, confessors, and teachers illuminate, convert, and sanctify their hearers. So Christ, with God directing, "rejoiced as a giant to run His way, etc., nor is there anyone who can hide from His heat" (Psalm 19:6). And the Apostles, of whom Isaiah says, chapter 52:7: "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who announces and preaches peace!"
Seventhly, when He suggests to man that state of life, those occupations and pursuits, that manner of life, in which He foresees that he will live without danger of sin and falling, and will reach directly the glory and happiness of eternity, by continually giving the grace which He foresees will be congruous and efficacious: hence God must be prayed to unceasingly that He may suggest it; for upon it depends our salvation, predestination, election, and eternal happiness. Hence we should pray frequently with the Psalmist: "Perfect my steps in Your paths, that my footsteps may not be moved" (Psalm 17:5). And: "Direct my steps according to Your word, and let no iniquity have dominion over me" (Psalm 119:133).
Eighthly, when He perfects them, so that from day to day we may grow and be perfected in the intensity and breadth of virtues. This is what the Church prays to God on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas: "Direct our actions in Your good pleasure, that in the name of Your beloved Son we may deserve to abound in good works." Hence St. Prosper, book I On the Calling of the Gentiles, ch. 101, teaches that God is the author of all virtues and every good: "That no one can walk rightly," he says, "unless the Lord directs, is clear from that saying of Solomon: 'By the Lord the steps of a man are corrected; but how can a mortal man understand his ways?'" And Bede here: "Whoever among men walks the right path with their steps, this happens not by the freedom of human will, but by the governance of Him to whom Isaiah says, chapter 26: 'All our works You have wrought for us.' But who among men can understand his way? In this," he says, "it is manifestly clear that whatever good anyone has, he does not have it from himself, but through the grace of God: nor by the freedom of his own will can he understand what he will be like, how or how long he will live."
Hence of the bride, that is, the Church and the holy soul directed by God the Bridegroom, it is said at Canticle 7:1: "How beautiful are your steps in sandals, O daughter of the prince! For it is God who works in us both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will" (Philippians 2:13). Moreover, R. Levi explains this maxim of Solomon thus, as if to say: "The steps of one who walks are from the Lord, since he needs divine assistance to be present and accompany him at each step." And the author of the Greek Catena: "The sense is," he says, "he who still savors mortal and earthly things: how can such a one understand the right life, or sanctify and consecrate the ways of the Lord?" See what I said at chapter 16:9.
BUT WHAT MAN CAN UNDERSTAND HIS OWN WAY? — In Hebrew: 'and Adam, how will he understand his way?' Adam from adamah, that is, man from the earth, as if to say: Man made from earth, and creeping on the ground like a worm, how will he know the lofty way that leads him to heaven? The 'and' can first be taken as causal, meaning 'for,' to give the reason for the preceding hemistich, as if to say: The steps of a man must be directed by the Lord: for man by himself cannot understand his way, namely, to foresee and anticipate by what road he should walk securely, what he should do, what he should choose when in doubt, what is the way and method for successfully accomplishing things: for all these exceed man's foresight and require the divine. For often a man thinks he walks the straight path of virtue and walks the crooked path of vice; thinks he is going to Jerusalem while he goes to Jericho; thinks he is entering the way to heaven and enters the way to hell, according to chapter 16:25: "There is a way that seems right to a man, and its end leads to death." Again, he thinks he is taking the road to happiness and takes the opposite. Haman, invited with King Ahasuerus by Queen Esther, thought he was going to glory, but was going to the gallows. Aesop, caught on the road by a magistrate and asked where he was going, answered that he did not know. The magistrate, thinking himself mocked or insulted, led him off to prison. Then Aesop said: "Did I not truly say that I did not know where I was going? For I was going to prison, and I did not know it." So every day when we leave home, we do not know where we are going: for often contrary to our intention we are drawn elsewhere by those we encounter. Therefore, when we go out, let us pray with the Psalmist: "Show me Your ways, O Lord, and teach me Your paths," so that God may direct our steps in such a way that we may bring about some good for ourselves and others, and avert evil and sin either by word or by our presence.
Secondly, the 'and' can be taken as an inferential particle indicating the result and consequence, to signify the same as 'therefore,' as if to say: It belongs to God alone to direct the steps of a man, and to foresee and order them so that they may be good and may reach a happy outcome. For this only He can do whose role it is to know and appoint for all their end and the means appropriate to the end: who then among men would dare arrogate to himself this foreknowledge and ordering? For what depends on God's direction cannot be perceived and penetrated by man. So roughly Cajetan.
According to both explanations, God's providence is commended to us, and His particular care regarding the pursuits, affections, and works of man in this life: and understanding this, let us not lean too much on our own prudence, but depend on God in all things, committing ourselves to His direction, according to Tobit 4:20: "Ask God to direct your ways, and that all your counsels may abide in Him." This is what Jeremiah confesses to God in chapter 10:23: "I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not his own, nor is it in a man to direct his own steps."
From this you may gather that the cause why one person is happy and another unhappy is not fortune, not natural disposition, not the heavens, but God: for God according to His pleasure and free choice makes whomever He wills happy, not only if he is prudent but also if he is imprudent. The prudent man, even if not always, yet often prospers in his actions so as to have happy outcomes: partly because he prudently arranges everything to turn out well; partly because he deserves that God direct and prosper his actions. St. Thomas, book III Against the Gentiles, ch. 92, asks what the cause is why someone is fortunate, that is, why good things and good outcomes come to him beyond expectation; and he responds that the proper cause of good fortune is God, and the benevolence and choice of God, by which He governs and directs someone happily for the most part, for example, to dig in such and such a place where he finds a treasure: and that He sometimes uses the ministry of angels suggesting or persuading it; but that the heavens and their influence do not properly cause good fortune, but sometimes dispose to it accidentally, for example, when they incline someone to dig, and the finding of a treasure is accidentally connected to that digging. For the heavens do not incline you to dig here where the treasure is rather than elsewhere where it is not. Therefore since the heavens cannot combine these two things, it follows that the heavens are not per se the cause of good fortune. For God therefore nothing is fortuitous, because He Himself is the ruler and director of fortune. Finally, why one is happy and another unhappy I taught at length at Genesis 30:27.
Symmachus for 'way' translates trokhian, that is, a track or chariot-path, which is a symbol of life, or of a smooth and unobstructed manner of living, which God alone both knows and suggests to the man He loves. For just as a chariot rolls smoothly and freely along a track, so through a manner of living suited and fitted to himself, each person easily and freely runs to the goal, namely to happiness and eternal glory, with God as the charioteer. Hence conclude that no one should swerve from the road onto which he is led by God's call; for this is his 'chariot-path,' that is, easy and inclined toward the destined end. This, I say, is his magia, that is, his 'chariot road': because through it he does not so much walk as he is carried along, than which nothing is sweeter or more pleasant; but the remaining roads which a man enters not from God's impulse but from his own counsel are difficult for him, rough, wandering, and leading to precipices, etc.
Hence the Gentiles made and worshipped Janus as a god, as the indicator of the road; and Mercury as the guide of the road; and they called upon and invoked Domiducus as a god who would lead the new bride home, although Juno was also called Domiduca for the same reason. Hear St. Augustine quoting from Varro, book VI of the City of God, ch. 9: "If the bride must be led home," he says, "the god Domiducus is employed; that she may be in the house, the god Domitius is employed." More truly, Christians invoke the true God as the director of holy steps and actions; for they know that they cannot set upon the way unless God goes before, according to that text: "They shall walk after the Lord" (Hosea 11:10). Hence St. Augustine, book II Against the Two Epistles of the Pelagians, ch. 9: "This," he says, "is the nature of the human will, that to evil indeed its own will comes first, but to good the will of its Creator comes first."
A notable example of this maxim was Littorius, who, as Prosper attests in his Chronicle and Baronius records for the year 439, fighting for the Emperor Theodosius and the Romans and trusting in his Huns, was defeated and captured by Theodoric king of the Goths, who placed his hope in God and besieged and took Arles. Hence Salvian, alluding to Littorius without naming him with this maxim of Solomon, book VII On God's Governance, says: "And so that general of our side recognized this, who entered as a captive the very city of the enemy which on that same day he had presumed he would enter as victor. He proved indeed what the Prophet said: 'The way of man is not his own, nor is it in man to walk and direct his steps.' For because he considered his way to be under his own control, he had neither the step of direction nor found the way of salvation. 'Contempt was poured out upon the prince,' as we read; 'he was led astray in a trackless waste and not on a road, and was brought to nothing like running water.' In this indeed, beyond the very misfortune of events, the present judgment of God was manifest, so that whatever he had presumed he would do, he himself suffered. For because without divine help and God's leading he believed the enemy would be captured by him, he himself was captured; he arrogated to himself the height of counsel and wisdom and incurred the disgrace of recklessness; the bonds which he had prepared for others, he himself endured." Then he shows the same thing in detail through elegant antitheses: "And what, I ask, could have been a more evident judgment of God, than that he who had the confidence of a plunderer should become the plunder, that he who presumed a triumph should become a triumph, that he should be surrounded, seized, bound, and carry his arms wrenched behind his back; should see bound the hands he had thought warlike; should become a spectacle for boys and women, should see barbarians mocking him, should endure the mockery of both sexes, and he who had had the greatest pride of a brave man should die the death of a coward?"
25. IT IS A SNARE FOR A MAN TO DEVOUR HOLY THINGS, AND AFTER VOWS TO RETRACT.
So the Roman edition. Others read 'to examine.' And Franciscus Lucas in his notes here contends that it should be so read. There is here a fivefold reading, which the rash boldness of scribes has produced. For instead of 'to devour,' some read 'to devote'; others, 'to vow'; others, 'to denounce'; others, 'to invoke.'
First, then, Bede, Salonius, Lyranus, and others read: 'It is ruin for a man to devote the saints,' that is, to bind oneself by vow to persecute the saints, say Salonius and Bede; or to make frequent vows to the saints, say Lyranus and Hugo: for this is a snare for one who afterward repents of his vows, so as to violate them. So Acts 23:12: "Forty men bound themselves under a vow, saying that they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Paul." Moreover, 'devotavit,' although it may now seem a barbarous word, was nevertheless formerly in use; for it is used by Apuleius, book IX of the Metamorphoses: "The powers of heaven which you suddenly devoted by swearing falsely." And Cicero in the Paradoxes: "What force held Cocles alone on the bridge against all the enemy's forces? What devoted father Decius, and what his son, and sent them against the armed forces of the enemy?" For so it reads in the ancient manuscripts.
Secondly, others read: 'It is ruin for a man to vow to the saints,' that is, to rashly vow and consecrate one's possessions, or oneself, to the saints; for afterward, claiming back his possessions and his liberty, he transgresses his vow.
Thirdly, Cajetan and others read: 'It is ruin for a man to denounce the saints,' that is, to blacken the saints, to injure their reputation, and to assail them with insults and blasphemy.
Fourthly, others read: 'It is ruin for a man to invoke the saints,' that is, to invoke them and by prayers and vows call down their help from heaven to one's aid, and afterward to retract and annul these vows, as some do when they have obtained what they vowed for.
But the true reading is: 'It is ruin for a man to devour holy things.' Our Vulgate reads cades, that is, 'holy,' that is, 'the saints.' But with different vowel points others read codes, that is, 'holiness,' that is, 'the sanctuary,' or 'what is sanctified,' that is, things sanctified and consecrated to God. Hence the Hebrew literally reads: 'It is a snare, or trap, for a man to devour, or precipitate, holiness, that is, holy things, and after vows to turn to seeking [a way out].'
Now the whole difficulty is what it means to devour the saints, or, as the Hebrew has it, holiness. First, Vatablus translates and explains it thus: "Man's sin devours holiness, and after vows we are accustomed to ask; that is, man's sin, which is a stumbling-block, customarily destroys that divine help which is truly and supremely holy; and afterward we are accustomed to ask what was the reason we did not obtain what we seek by vows." R. Solomon concurs: "When a mortal is bound by the guilt of sin, then he devours, that is, destroys and corrupts, the holiness granted by God." So also R. Levi and others, as if to say: It is a detriment to a man to devour a thing consecrated or owed to God, and afterward to seek vows by which God may be appeased; to signify that the vows of the sacrilegious and wicked (for all the wicked devour and destroy the sacred thing, namely virtue and grace) are empty and displeasing to God.
Secondly, Cajetan, as if to say: It is a snare for a man to devour sacred things, such as the firstfruits and other things due to priests by law or offered to God; and it is also a snare for a man after vows have been made to inquire whether the vow is binding, or the manner by which one might be freed from the obligation of a vow and not pay what he vowed — so that by this verse a double kind of sacrilege is signified, namely plundering things consecrated to God, and violating a vow.
Thirdly, Baynus, Jansenius, Franciscus Lucas, Salazar, and others commonly explain it thus, as if to say: It is a great sin and offense, and a cause of the gravest ruin to oneself, when one, after seizing for himself the goods of the holy and the just and devouring the innocent people of God like morsels of bread, turns to vows. For thus usurers and other devourers of commonwealths are accustomed near death to promise and designate generous almsgiving, to be distributed to the poor, or divided among monastic communities, or applied to other pious uses; and trust in such vows frequently gives cause for perpetual ruin. Thus 'to devour' is taken as 'to despoil,' as in Habakkuk 3:14: "Their exulting was like that of one who devours the poor," that is, despoils, ruins, impoverishes, "in secret." And chapter 1: "Why do You look upon those who act wickedly and are silent when the wicked devours one more just than himself?" And Psalm 35: "Let them not say: 'We have devoured him.'" And often elsewhere. Therefore to devour the saints, or, as some read, holy things, is to strip holy and just men of their goods, or even to despoil them of life, or to consume the things that have been given and consecrated to the saints by vow or offering. These things are a snare and ruin for man, because they are the cause of enormous calamities and destruction.
So in this year 1628, La Rochelle, the invincible Zion of the heretics, which had devoured so many holy things and saints, with the saints avenging their own, indeed God's, injuries, on the very feast of All Saints came into the power of the most Christian and invincible King of the French, Louis XIII came. Nor is there any doubt that while he fought with such pious courage for the holy faith and the worship of the saints, the saints in turn fought for him, since all the powerful machines and machinations of the hostile fleet were suddenly turned and hurled back by the winds against the fleet itself, so that one may truly sing to the most Christian king those lines of Claudian about Theodosius fighting against Eugenius: 'O one too beloved of God, for whom the sky goes to war, and the conspiring winds come to the trumpets!' On the same feast of All Saints recurring through the Octave, the Emperor Ferdinand II, most pious and most fortunate, a few years earlier, with the illustrious hero the Duke of Bavaria, conquered Prague and virtually all of Bohemia, and restored it, wrested from the Hussites and Calvinists, enemies of the saints, to the Church and to himself as the legitimate king. That this victory was won under the patronage especially of SS. Wenceslaus, Adalbert, and Vitus, the patrons of Bohemia, was shown by unmistakable signs; indeed it was foretold by the very apparitions of the saints themselves, who consequently, fighting for the orthodox, hurled missiles like thunderbolts against the heretics, who were twice as numerous, so that one may here apply the words of the thunderbolt-wielding Barak (for barak in Hebrew means 'thunderbolt') fighting against Sisera: "From heaven they fought against them; the stars, remaining in their order and course, fought against Sisera" (Judges 5:20), just as of old the two thunderbolts of war, the Scipios. So in this age the Habsburgs.
So Constantinople, with the Holy Spirit as avenger, on His very feast of Pentecost, fell into the hands of the Turks, captured by Mohammed in the year of the Lord 1453, from the Greeks who were fighters against the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as they denied that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. What do these things signify, indeed cry out, if not: 'Learn justice, being warned, and not to scorn the gods.'
This sense is plain, easy, obvious, and therefore common. But it does not sufficiently connect the first hemistich with the second, nor aptly enough explain 'to retract vows,' a word that indicates that both hemistichs speak about vows.
Fourthly, therefore, I shall suggest a new sense, which is indeed more elaborate but deeper, and most aptly connects the first hemistich with the second, which I submit to the reader's judgment. This phrase 'to devour the saints' is not to be taken literally; for there is no nation so barbarous (except the Brazilian cannibals, who were unknown or unseen by Solomon and the Jews) that literally devours saints. It should therefore be taken figuratively, as a proverb or proverbial phrase meaning to name and invoke the saints so hastily and precipitately that you seem to swallow and devour them. Thus those who rush through the Litanies by saying at top speed: 'Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint James,' etc., and leave no space for the bystanders to respond to each, 'pray, pray for us,' seem to devour the saints, that is, the names of the saints. Similarly, those who by hasty vowing tumultuously invoke the saints, saying: 'Holy God, if You give me offspring, I will consecrate an ox to You. St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, if you give me an abundance of grain, I will offer you thirty measures of wheat. St. Abraham, St. Isaac, St. Jacob, if you obtain for me from God a large family, I vow to you a daily nighttime lamp.' Which seems to have been common among the Jews.
These, I say, were said to 'lua kodes' or 'cades,' that is, to devour the saints or holy things, because just as food is said to be devoured when it is sent whole into the stomach without chewing or eating, and in being devoured it, as it were, flies down: so the saints are devoured, that is, the prayers and vows made to the saints, when they are rashly and inconsiderately blurted out without prior consideration and deliberation, whole, that is, undiscussed. For 'lua' in Hebrew means to precipitate, swallow, absorb, destroy, corrupt.
So at Job 6:3, for what we have as: "Hence my words are full of sorrow," Vatablus translates: 'my words are swallowed up'; others: 'my words are precipitated,' that is, rashly blurted out. Hence Pagninus in his Lexicon says that 'lua' means 'to speak,' of the kind that is 'to utter a vow.' Hence some translate: 'It is a snare for a man to devote holiness,' that is, to vow, sanctify, and consecrate something to God with formal words; 'and after vows to seek' something worse to substitute for the better thing vowed to God. So the Latins are said to 'devour' words, because they precipitate and absorb them, by speaking, listening, or reading hastily, as book-gluttons do. Hence Cicero, for Sestius: "The very word itself," he says, "he devoured in every manner of mind and body." And Plautus in the Poenulus: "Sweet ears devour this little speech." Hence 'to devour someone's speech' is used for 'not to pay attention.' Hence Cicero in the Brutus: "His speech," he says, "thinned by excessive refinement, was brilliant to the learned and attentive listeners, but was devoured by the crowd," that is, it was passed over without being understood. This meaning is derived from those who pass down food without tasting it, as if with a numbed palate.
Hence again, 'to devour someone's name' means to forget the name. So Plautus in the Trinummus: "He unwittingly devoured, that is, forgot, the name just now." In a similar way the saints and the vows made to the saints are devoured.
That this is the sense seems clear, first, from the fact that the other interpreters explain this phrase, 'to devour the saints or holy things,' as meaning 'to rashly and hastily vow something to the saints.' Hear the Septuagint: 'It is a snare for a man to sanctify something of his own; for after he has vowed, it happens that he repents.' Or, more clearly, the author of the Greek Catena: 'The man who rashly sanctifies something of his own possessions to God (that is, vows and consecrates it) casts a snare upon you, since after a vow has been rashly made repentance very frequently follows.' And he gives the example of Jephthah, who rashly vowed that if he were the victor in battle, he would sacrifice to God the first thing that came out of his house to meet him; but it was his daughter who first met him, and so he sacrificed her to God with sorrow and repentance. Likewise Ananias and Sapphira, who after vowing their possessions to God stole back a part, and for this were punished with death by St. Peter (Acts 5). The Chaldean concurs: 'It is a snare,' he says, 'for a man who has vowed holiness (or, as others translate, to the sanctuary), and afterward his soul touches him,' that is, sorrow and regret of soul; the Syriac: 'It is a snare for a man who has vowed holiness, and afterward repents of the vow.'
Secondly, the same is shown by the connection of the first hemistich with the second; for the second explains the first, as if saying: 'Ruin' — in Hebrew, 'a snare' — 'is it for a man to devour the saints,' that is, to rashly and hastily, after the manner of one who devours, vow something to the saints, and 'after vows to retract'; that is, shortly after the vows you rashly made to the saints, to revoke them; for this is properly what 'to retract' means. Hence in Hebrew it reads: 'and after vows to turn to seeking an escape,' namely by tracking down ways and reasons by which to free yourself from the vow you regret. The metaphor is taken from a hungry person who devours food, that is, swallows it whole without chewing or grinding it with the teeth, and sends it intact into the stomach. For by this he overburdens and weighs down the stomach, which is therefore forced to 'retract' the food, that is, to minutely chew over and digest what it can, and to reject and vomit back what it cannot. In a similar way, he who rashly vows something in haste, upon perceiving after the vow has been pronounced the difficulty or impossibility of fulfilling it, retracts it, thinking how he might redeem, diminish, change, or annul it. A rash vow, therefore, is a snare for the one who vows; because just as a snare catches, binds, and strangles ensnared birds: so this vow catches, binds, and strangles the conscience, while it torments, distresses, pierces, and sometimes suffocates and kills it — namely when the one repenting of the vow violates and transgresses it. Therefore such a person devours the holy things and the saints twice: first, when he rushes and rashly pronounces a holy vow to them; second, when he devours again the vow already uttered, that is, violates, destroys, and consumes it. It is therefore the same thing: 'It is a snare for a man to devour the saints and holy things,' as: 'It is a snare for a man after vows to retract,' that is, to revoke and violate a vow already uttered.
Thirdly, this exposition encompasses all the others and unites them all in itself; for he who devours the saints, that is, rashly vows something to the saints — he rashly devours and devotes to the saints; he devours, that is, blackens and dishonors the saints; he vainly invokes the saints for his own aid; he also devours, that is, despoils the saints of what is owed to them by vow; for he devours holy things, as some read, that is, the holy things which he vowed to the saints. For whether you read 'to devour the saints' or 'holy things,' it comes to the same thing; for holy things are devoured when the holy things hastily vowed to them are devoured: just as we say that by tyrants churches and monasteries are devoured when their goods are plundered.
Fourthly, because Solomon explains himself thus at Ecclesiastes 5:1, saying: "Do not rashly utter anything (in Hebrew, 'do not be hasty with your mouth'), nor let your heart be swift (in Hebrew, 'let it not hasten') to bring forth a word (a vow) before God"; which he explains when he adds: "If you have vowed anything to God, do not delay in paying it. For an unfaithful and foolish promise displeases Him, etc., and it is much better not to vow than after a vow not to render what was promised." What could be clearer?
26. A WISE KING SCATTERS (the Chaldean, disperses) THE WICKED, AND BENDS THE ARCH OVER THEM.
The first part agrees with verse 8: "A king who sits on the throne of judgment scatters all evil with his gaze." See what I said there. Note 'scatters'; for it teaches the manner in which the assemblies, counsels, and forces of the wicked are to be broken, namely by scattering and separating them; for thus they cannot combine counsels and forces into one, and individually, while they are separated, they are easily overcome. Here therefore that saying is true: "If you wish to reign, divide," that is, separate and pull apart; for by separation the agreement and strength of a wicked multitude is destroyed. The first part, therefore, is clear; but the second is obscure. For the question is: what does it mean 'to bend the arch'?
First, the Hebrew reads: 'He causes to return,' or 'He brings back upon them the wheel'; and the Septuagint: 'He sends upon them trokhon,' that is, 'a wheel'; the Chaldean: 'He rolls them upon the wheel'; the Syriac: 'He brings back upon them the chariot.' For he seems to allude to the deed of David, who sawed the impious Ammonites he had conquered and drove iron chariots over them (2 Samuel 12:31). The metaphor is borrowed from threshing, which in Syria, Italy, and other places is customarily done with wheels and horses; for this is a symbol of punishment and chastisement, according to Isaiah 28:27, describing the chastisements of the pious through the metaphor of threshing: "For black cumin," he says, "is not threshed with saws, nor shall the wheel of a cart go around upon cummin." And shortly after: "He who threshes shall not keep threshing forever, nor shall the wheel of a cart crush it, nor shall he grind it with his hooves."
Therefore by 'arch' here, understand not of a building but of a wheel, namely the rim, or the outermost surface and curve of the wheel: for just as a vault in a building is an arched chamber, so a vault in a wheel is the curvature and rim of the wheel, for an arched wheel can be called 'vaulted' by catachresis. For what roundness is in a wheel, the round vault is in a building: therefore just as a building seems round because of its vault, so a wheel seems vaulted because of its roundness. This sense therefore seems very fitting and genuine, and the word 'wheel,' which is in the Hebrew, Greek, Chaldean, and Syriac, demands it. The sense is, as if to say: A wise king with sharp torments, such as the wheel, scatters and destroys the wicked. So R. Solomon, R. Levi, Aben-Ezra, Vatablus, Pagninus, Baynus, Jansenius, and others.
Again, the wheel, or 'arch of the wheel,' can be taken for a kind of torture or punishment customary among the ancients, which was called trokhós, that is, 'the wheel.' Hence Cicero, Tusculan Disputations V, says that "a happy life does not mount upon the wheel." For they tortured the accused on the wheel to elicit the truth, just as now they torture on the rack, which was called trokhizesthai, that is, 'to torture and examine on the wheel.' The wheel was therefore a wooden instrument in the shape of a wheel, on which the bodies of slaves and accused persons were stretched and spun around for examination; such as what the French commonly call the 'pilori' (pillory): hence the wheel is different from the rack. For they bound the accused to the wheel, bending and fastening feet, hands, and the whole body to the wheel; and thus turning the wheel they spun them around, and sometimes over or beside a fire, and thus roasted them. Hence Tertullian in his Apology, speaking of martyrdoms and martyrs: "Although," he says, "you now call us 'faggot-folk' and 'half-axle men,' because bound to a half-axle post we are burned amid a circle of brush." And Josephus, in his book On the Maccabees, ch. 9 ff., teaches that they were tortured by Antiochus on the wheel, and calls the punishment of the first of the seven brothers the wheel: "He is ordered to be bound and tied to the wheel, with the spokes stretching his body." And of the third: "When, already exhausted by the draining of so much flowing blood, deprived of hands and feet, he saw that death was near." And of the fourth: "Parts and pieces of the body hung in a most horrible sight." Hear also the pagans. Seneca in the Hercules Furens: 'Twisted Ixion is whirled on the flying wheel.'
Another: 'Ixion revolves, and both follows and flees himself.' Tibullus, book I, Elegy 3: 'The guilty limbs are turned on the swift wheel.'
For they spun the accused at the greatest speed by turning the wheel, now in one direction, now reversed in the other with changed motion; whereby it happened that in this rotation the innards were poured out and all the limbs were twisted and torn apart. Hence Euripides in the Phoenissae: "Limbs," he says, "were torn from limbs, as if hurled from a sling." And Josephus, of the Maccabee: "With the intestines loosened on both sides and the veins stretched." Moreover, they hung a stone from the feet of the accused bound to the wheel, so that the body would be pressed more by that weight. They also added or placed fires beneath. Hear Josephus: "A fire is prepared, and as he was fastened to the wheel, he is cast upon the fire on the catasta, and thus with the spokes stretching the body and the flames contracting it, then with the ribs laid open the vital organs of the sides are burst." Thirdly, the accused stretched on the wheel by hands, feet, and whole body, they flogged. Hence Aristophanes in the Peace: "On the wheel let him be dragged to be flogged." Fourthly, they mutilated the accused by amputating limbs. Hear Josephus: "While he is still speaking, he is skinned like a brute animal, his tongue is pulled out, and he himself is thrown into a frying pan." This is still done by the Germans to those guilty of atrocious crimes on the wheel, by crushing their limbs, especially through bone-breaking, or even by cutting them off; otherwise the German wheel is quite different from the wheel of the ancients. Finally, Virgil, Aeneid IV, describing the punishments of the damned in the underworld, sings thus: 'Others roll a huge stone, and stretched on the spokes of wheels they hang.' See here our Ludovico de la Cerda, and Plutarch in his Nicias, Ammianus Marcellinus, book XXI, and Nicephorus, book VII, 24. Hence the author of the Greek Catena: "He will bring the wheel upon the wicked. By the wheel, however, he denotes the inevitable punishment that is appointed for sinners in the underworld." And indeed, those who are read to have been caught up in ecstasy to that place saw wheels in the underworld and the damned tormented on them. For with these things Christ, the wisest king, torments them, says Bede.
Hence also St. Augustine on Psalm 11, near the end, reads this maxim of Solomon from the Septuagint and applies it to the wicked going in circles: "The wicked walk in a circle," that is, he says, "in the desire for temporal things, which revolves like a wheel in the repeated circuit of seven days, and therefore they do not arrive at the eighth, that is, at eternity, for which this Psalm is titled. So also it is said through Solomon: 'For the wise king is a winnower of the wicked, and he sends upon them the wheel of evils.'" With this most bitter torment of the wheel, therefore, the wise king, punishing the wicked, scatters and routs them.
The trokhós, that is, 'wheel,' could also be taken as trokhalia, that is, 'pulley,' which was a frequent kind of torture in martyrdoms, as Baronius teaches in the Martyrology, on December 7. For there is celebrated the martyrdom of "St. Servus the martyr, who under the Arian king Hunneric was beaten with clubs, raised aloft by pulleys, and with a swift blow dropped by the weight of his body onto stones, and scraped against the sharpest rocks; he obtained the palm of martyrdom." For a pulley is properly a wheel containing a revolving wheel, through which a drawing rope is threaded that, when pulled, hauls the accused bound and tied by the arms upward, or when released drops him downward. This torture was therefore called 'elevation to the pulleys,' and at Rome and in Italy it is still common, and is commonly called 'la corda.' Of this it is rightly said: 'He bends over them the wheel,' or 'the revolving arch'; for with this punishment and similar ones a wise king strikes terror into the wicked, puts them to flight, and scatters them. For from the wheel, as the chief and most well-known type, he understands by synecdoche every kind of punishment with which the wicked are punished by kings. This sense seems very fitting and entirely genuine, and touches especially wicked judges, governors, magistrates, and rulers, whom the king punishes with the torment of the wheel, with which they themselves unjustly tortured other innocent people.
...a gallows, that is to say: A wise king suspends the wicked in an arch, and thereby puts to flight and scatters the followers of their wickedness. For thus in ancient times they used to hang criminals from arches, by inserting rings into them through which the rope for hanging was threaded, as is still done in some places, especially in Lombardy. For those arches are more convenient for hanging, and are often at hand, and last longer; since it would be laborious to erect a separate gallows and cross from wood for each criminal. Hence I have seen in some places triangular gallows erected from a triple column of sides; and these sides are most excellently and firmly joined and interlocked with each other through an arch. Therefore a wise king curves the arch over the wicked, when from the curved and arched vault he bends and hangs their stubborn neck.
Hence learn how great is the power of a king for good as well as for evil. Whence the sevenfold riddle: What is the worst thing? A tyrant. What is the longest thing? Time. What is the shortest thing? A favor. For men are forgetful of favors. What is the best of all things? God. What is most to be desired? The salvation of the soul. What is the most shameful thing? Evil demons. What is the most powerful thing? A king.
Second, others understand by the wheel the revolution of fortune and dignity, that is to say: A wise king by his prudence rotates the fortune and dignity of the wicked, bends it down and turns it downward, so that those who stood at the summit of high positions, when the wheel is turned, are cast down to the lowest place. So Seneca, in Book II of On Clemency, says: "Fear heights rather than love them, lest fortune, turning the wheel, send you down from there empty and vain." The Hebrew ישיב yashib supports this, meaning he causes to return, he turns, revolves, and rolls down the wheel.
Third, Bede, Lyranus, and others understand by the arch a triumphal arch, which kings customarily erect as a trophy over conquered wicked enemies, that is to say: A wise king tames, subdues, and subjugates the wicked, and over their conquered wickedness raises a triumphal arch, as Saul did when he defeated Amalek, 1 Kings 15:12. For this is the duty of kings, as well as their honor and glory, which God and the state promise and prepare for the king who persecutes the wicked, namely certain victory over them, and after it a triumph and triumphal arch as a lasting monument of victory, that is to say: A wise king curves the arch over them, that is, he so destroys and buries the wicked that upon their corpses he builds an arch either as a sign of vengeance or as a sign of triumph. The Hebrew אופן ophan, meaning wheel, is therefore taken for an arch, which is round like a wheel, namely a triumphal arch. So Titus and Vespasian, having defeated the wicked Jews who killed Christ, erected a triumphal arch at Rome, on which was carved the triumph of Titus, which still stands and is visited to this day. Likewise Constantine the Great, having defeated by heavenly aid five tyrants — Diocletian, Maximian, Maxentius, Maximinus, and Licinius — through the sign of the Holy Cross appearing in the sky with this inscription: "In this sign you shall conquer," raised a standard marked with the cross of Christ, and a triumphal arch, which is still seen at Rome and is called the Arch of Constantine. Theodosius did the same, having subdued Maximinus, Arbogastes, and Eugenius.
Fourth, our Salazar takes the arch to mean the magnificent palaces and mausoleums that the wicked have built for themselves, that is to say: A wise and prudent king removes the wicked from their midst, and lest their memory pass down to posterity, if they have raised up any massive tombs or mausoleums as monuments for posterity, he rolls these down or curves them over upon them, that is, he demolishes them and levels them to the ground, as Josiah is reported to have done in 4 Kings 23; for he cast down the sepulchers of those who had burned incense to idols in groves and sacred woods, and reduced their bones to ashes. Or alternatively: This wise king not only cuts off the wicked, but also destroys their palaces and structures, which is the punishment that laws today prescribe for traitors, namely that their houses be leveled to the ground and sprinkled with salt, so that no monument of theirs may remain.
Finally, by the arch can be understood a gallows and gibbet, that is to say: A wise king hangs the wicked from an arch, and thereby puts to flight and scatters the followers of their wickedness. For thus in ancient times they used to hang criminals from arches, by inserting rings into them through which the rope for hanging was threaded.
In Hebrew it reads: He causes to return, or he brings back the wheel upon them.
27. THE LAMP OF THE LORD IS THE BREATH OF MAN, WHICH SEARCHES ALL THE SECRET DEPTHS OF THE BELLY.
First, some with Aben Ezra understand by the lamp of the Lord God's own knowledge, which penetrates and sees through all things, even the most secret things of hearts. Hence they translate from the Hebrew: The spirit of man is a light to the Lord, who searches all the innermost depths of the belly, that is to say: To God man's spirit is bright, that is, clear and open; for He searches through and sees all the inmost things of the mind. The spirit, therefore, that is, the secret thought and intention of man, which is hidden from others, lies open to God, and is as clear to Him as light; for He searches all the innermost parts, according to that saying of Jeremiah 17:9: "The heart of all is perverse and unsearchable: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart and try the reins."
Hence the Septuagint translates: φῶς Κυρίου πνοὴ ἀνθρώπων, ὃς ἐρευνᾷ ταμεῖα κοιλίας, that is, the light of the Lord is the soul of man, which (the Lord) searches the recesses of the belly. "It is signified," says the Author of the Greek Catena, "that nothing in man is so deeply hidden that it is obscure to God, since even the soul itself, when He searches it, is a light to Him, that is, it lies as open to Him as light itself." God therefore pervades and sees through the innermost recesses of the soul. Hence the Scholiast translates: λαμπτήρ, that is, the torch of the Lord is the spirit of man, which searches the innermost chambers (others say, the rooms) of the belly.
Second, others take the lamp or light of the Lord to mean God's favor and goodwill, which like light refreshes and gives life. Hence they translate: To be gladdened by God is the life of man, and it penetrates the whole body.
Third, others translate the Hebrew נשמה neshamah, meaning breath or spirit, with Rabbi David as speech; for speech is produced by the spirit striking the tongue against the palate, lips, and teeth in a certain manner, that is to say: The lamp of the Lord is the speech of man, that is, the speech of a pious and learned man is a "lamp of the Lord," that is, a clear and fiery light, by which God illumines the minds of hearers, kindles them with love of Himself, and indeed pervades their inmost parts, filling and illuminating them on every side with the light of His knowledge and ardor. Or, that is to say: The speech of man is a lamp and light given by God, so that through it a man may reveal his secrets to another, indeed so that another may penetrate his hidden things from his speech, and gather what his mind and inner feelings are. For as St. Jerome says: "The mind and conscience shine forth in the mouth." And Philo, in the book That Every Good Man Is Free: "Just as," he says, "things hidden in darkness are concealed until a bursting light reveals them, so the mind hides my thoughts in an invisible place, until the voice, in the manner of light, uncovers them all."
Fourth, others take the breath of man to mean the vital spirit and life itself of man; for this consists in breathing, that is to say: The vital spirit and the very life of man is like a light derived and kindled from a lamp, that is, from the light and vital spirit that is in God; for God is uncreated and essential life itself, from which all life of angels, men, and animals flows forth, as a ray from the sun. So the Author of the Greek Catena says. For a lamp is a symbol of life; just as a lamp is nourished by oil and air, and when these fail it is extinguished, so life is nourished by the radical moisture and by breath or spirit, and when this fails it weakens and dies. Again, just as one lamp lights another nearby: so a father communicates his life to his son. Hence Plato, in Book VI of the Laws: "Those who beget," he says, "and nourish children, hand on life like a torch from one to another." And that verse of Lucretius which I cited at verse 20: And like runners they pass on the torch of life. Hence arose that superstition about lamps, whereby they would take an omen whether offspring would be viable, which St. Chrysostom records and criticizes, Homily 22 on the First Epistle to the Corinthians: "Indeed," he says, "when a name is to be given to a son, setting aside the calling upon the Saints as the ancients used to do, they light candles, and giving them names (of pagans), they call the son by the name of whichever lasts the longest, conjecturing from this that he will live longer." Hence also that saying of Plautus in the Curculio: "You yourself, boy, are splendid to yourself — you shine like a candle." Hence again they would bring forth lamps and lit torches to the betrothed at weddings, to signify that through the nuptial act they would communicate the light of life to the offspring to be begotten by them. This is what the pagans signified when they imagined that Prometheus stole light from heaven and, by inserting it into human bodies, animated and vivified them.
Fifth and genuinely, the breath or spirit of man is his very soul, or mind, as Pagninus translates it. For in Hebrew this is called נשמה neshamah, meaning spirit, because the soul manifests itself through breathing, and is likewise preserved in man, that is to say: The soul of man is like a luminous spirit, or a spiritual light derived and illuminated from the immense light, or from the most luminous spirit of God, through which it knows both itself, indeed its inmost depths, and God its Creator — which other animals do not do. The spirit of life, therefore, which God breathed into the face of Adam, placing in him a rational soul, Genesis 2, is like a lamp, indeed a torch to the other powers of the soul, furnishing them with light and knowledge, by which light placed within it the soul traces and sees through its inmost thoughts, desires, and intentions. "For who among men knows the things of man, except the spirit of man which is in him?" 1 Corinthians 2:11. And not only its own, but it also searches out and sees through those of others. Hence our Salazar aptly explains it thus: "The lamp of the Lord is the breath of man," that is, the mind is indeed a light sent by God into man, or certainly a great and most splendid light — a lamp surpassing all other lamps is the human mind; for the brightness of other lamps fails when any opaque body is placed before them and does not penetrate further: but the mind penetrates all things, so that not even the obstruction of the densest body can prevent its light from reaching the inner secrets of the heart and detecting the hidden thoughts in the souls of others.
Now the light of this lamp, namely the soul, is twofold: one is natural, namely the natural light of reason, with which man is endowed by God above all other living creatures — which embraces two most noble powers, namely the intellect and the will, by which man can understand and desire all things that are in the world. The other light of the soul is supernatural, namely grace with its virtues. For this is like a lamp and heavenly light, derived and kindled from the divine light, guided by which man far better and more clearly than by the natural light of reason searches out, knows, and directs the secrets of the belly, that is, the inmost thoughts of the mind, both his own and sometimes also those of others. Hence Baynus, connecting this verse with the preceding one, says: These things seem to refer to the wise king who, while exercising the judgments of God and in some way discharging His office on earth, needs divine wisdom and light by which he may distinguish the wicked from the good and search out the secrets of hearts, which Solomon himself did when he listened to two women contending over the dead and living infants, 2 Kings 3.
St. Jerome (or rather Rabanus) understands this passage in reference to the latter supernatural light of grace, Book I on the Lamentations of Jeremiah, chapter 1, 20: "The lamp of the Lord," he says, "is the breath of man, which searches all the secrets of the belly. For the light of grace that comes from above provides the breath of man for life; and this light is said to search all the secrets of the belly, because it penetrates the hidden things of the mind, so that those things which were hidden from the soul it brings back weeping before her eyes. Hence Jeremiah himself says in the preceding verses: My belly aches; and to show what he meant by his belly, he added: The thoughts of my heart are troubled. Therefore by the name of womb the mind is rightly understood, because just as offspring is conceived in the womb, so thought is generated in the mind; and just as food is contained in the belly, so thoughts are contained in the mind." And St. Gregory, Book II of the Moralia, chapter 18: "What," he says, "is our belly but the mind? which, when it receives its heavenly food, namely understanding, being refreshed, without doubt governs all the members of our actions. For unless sacred Scripture sometimes expressed the mind by the name of belly, Solomon would certainly not have said: The lamp of the Lord is the breath of man, which searches all the secrets of the belly. Because indeed, when the grace of heavenly regard illuminates us, it manifests to us all things hidden even in our own mind."
The same author, Part III of the Pastoral Rule, Admonition 13: "The lamp of the Lord," he says, "is the breath of man, which searches all the secrets of the belly, as if to say: The illumination of the divine breath, when it comes into the mind of man, illuminating it shows it to itself — those evil thoughts which before the coming of the Holy Spirit it could bear but could not weigh." Vatablus agrees, who translates and explains it thus: "The illumination of the Lord is the soul of man, or is in the soul of man, because the spirit of man without the Spirit of God does not know itself."
Again, grace serves as breathing for the soul; for whatever breathing provides for the body, divine grace provides for the soul. Hence St. Cyprian, in his Oration on Pentecost, teaches that from that spirit which we draw come "breathing, aspiration, sighing, expiration, and inspiration;" breathing signifies life, expiration signifies death, aspiration signifies a breath poured out upward, inspiration signifies a breath sent into the interior, and sighing signifies a panting interrupted by pain. Therefore, when Solomon says that God's grace is the breathing of the soul, he implies that this grace is for it like breathing, because the spirit lives from its breeze, and when it fails, the spirit virtually dies.
Why grace is compared to spiritual light and is called light and lamp — I have assigned many reasons for this at 1 John chapter 1. Grace, therefore, is a light that searches all the secrets of the belly, or as others translate, all the chambers of the mind, namely all the powers, faculties, and recesses of the mind, and it illuminates, directs, purifies, and kindles them, and provides everything to the mind that light provides to the eyes and body.
Finally, a force and energy lies hidden in the expression lamp of the Lord; for this contains the root and cause of the whole sentence, as if to say: The cause and root why the spirit and mind of man, especially when illuminated by God's grace, penetrates all the secrets of the mind, even another's, is that it is a lamp of the Lord, that is, a lamp and created light kindled from the very fountain of light that is in God: for since the created mind is a participation in the divine and uncreated light, hence it also participates in divine knowledge and insight, so that, just as God penetrates and sees through the secrets of hearts, so it too, as a ray of divine light, can search out the secrets of hearts — not indeed seeing them clearly as God does, but from signs and conjectures with marvelous sagacity skillfully tracing, inferring, and, as it were, peeping through a crack. This is what the Psalmist says, Psalm 4:7: "The light of Your countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us;" because "the natural light of reason," says Lyranus, "is a certain impression of the divine light;" and much more so is the supernatural light of grace, revelation, and direction from God.
28. MERCY AND TRUTH PRESERVE THE KING, AND HIS THRONE IS STRENGTHENED BY CLEMENCY.
The Hebrew reads: And he supports his throne with mercy; the Septuagint: Mercy and truth are a guard for the king; Aquila and Symmachus: They will preserve the king, and will surround his throne with justice; Lucifer of Cagliari, in his Apology for St. Athanasius, reads: "Mercy and truth are the king's protection, and the just shall surround his seat." The Hebrew חסד chesed signifies piety, mercy, clemency.
First, St. Athanasius, in his Apology to the Emperor Constantius, takes truth in its proper sense; hence from this maxim of Solomon he presses Constantius to investigate, cultivate, and defend the truth both of religion and faith, and of his cause and innocence against the calumnies of the Arians. For this truth, and the worship and defense of the true religion, especially preserves kings and kingdoms, as we read of the ancient kings in the histories, and as we see with our own eyes in modern Spain, Germany, and France. But hear St. Athanasius, or rather the divine Spirit speaking in him: "Examine the matter as if truth were your counselor, which is the protection of kings and especially of Christians; it is safest to administer your kingdoms with it, as sacred Scripture says: Mercy and truth are the king's guard, and justice shall surround his throne. For when the wise Zorobabel preferred this to all else, he obtained the victory, and it was acclaimed by the whole people: Truth is a great thing, and prevails over all things," etc. And further on, praying God to grant Constantius a mind disposed to truth: "Lord Almighty, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, You through Your Word gave dominion to Your servant Constantius; illuminate his mind, so that, recognizing the calumnies, he may graciously receive my defense, and make it clear to all that his ears are established and fortified by truth, and that only just speech is acceptable to him: for thus You declared through Solomon that the throne of the kingdom is made fortunate."
Second, others take truth to mean truthfulness in speaking, faithfulness in promises, constancy in words and deeds. For these defend kings against all complaints, calumnies, plots, and machinations of subjects and enemies. Hence, in chapter 17:7, Solomon said: "Eloquent words do not become a fool, nor lying lips a prince," where I said more on this subject. So Vatablus says: A king ought to be clement and truthful; yet clemency is more important.
Third, most aptly, according to the phrase of Scripture, by truth you may understand justice: for this is customarily paired with and contrasted to mercy — the former being what is owed, the latter unowed and gratuitous — and both preserve the king, that is to say: Kings are exposed to the envy and plots of many; therefore they summon bodyguards and attendants as protectors of their person and life to surround and guard them. But I, the wisest king, declare and proclaim that there are no better, more faithful, or more powerful bodyguards and protectors of a king than these two, namely mercy and justice, and especially mercy and clemency: for these strengthen his throne and kingdom.
These two, therefore, are the champions who keep watch day and night for the king, and perpetually protect and guard him. The first reason a priori is that the king through mercy binds to himself the hearts of his subjects; through justice he defeats the frauds, plots, and schemes of enemies, and once these are defeated, he makes all the rest his friends through mercy. Therefore, while he has all as friends, there is no one he need fear or dread. Again, a king binds honest men to himself through clemency, and strikes down the dishonest through justice: so he has the former as friends, and the latter prostrate and subdued, unable to do harm. Added to this is the fact that a just and merciful king appoints officials, judges, and magistrates similar to himself, namely just and merciful ones, who, properly governing the people, keep them dutiful and loyal to their king. Hence Lucifer reads: "And the just shall surround his seat," namely just ministers and officials: for these customarily conform themselves to the morals of their king, and express and represent them in their own conduct.
Second, that mercy and justice are the two foundations and pillars sustaining every government, kingdom, and republic; for justice renders to each his due, and thereby brings about peace; mercy is generous to all, and thereby earns the goodwill and favor of everyone, and even makes enemies into friends. Now the stability of a king and kingdom consists chiefly in the love and goodwill of citizens and foreigners. The mercy of a king is seen especially in the defense of the wretched, aid to the poor, relief of the oppressed, moderation of punishment, clemency, and the mitigation or pardon of vengeance when circumstances and the time require it; justice in just laws, punishment of crimes, and retribution upon the wicked. "For mercy without justice," says Lyranus, "is faintheartedness, and justice without mercy is cruelty, which destroy the king and kingdom; but mercy stimulated by justice, and justice tempered by mercy, preserve the king and kingdom."
Hence of the true Solomon, that is, of Christ, and His perpetual kingdom, David sings, Psalm 44 (45):7: "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the scepter of Your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness. You have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your companions." Hence also Aristotle, Book V of the Ethics: "Justice," he says, "is perfect virtue, and the most illustrious of virtues, and neither the evening star nor the morning star is so admirable." Clemency, however, is the sweetest of virtues, and most pleasing to all, according to that verse in chapter 16:15: "In the cheerfulness of the king's countenance is life; and his clemency is like a late rain."
Third, that mercy and justice are most becoming to a king, and therefore make him most dear to God, so that God Himself is his guardian and protector: hence a king protected by God has nothing to fear from anyone. He is dear to God for this reason, because he imitates God: for God of Himself inclines toward mercy, and does not exercise justice of Himself, but compelled by the crimes of the wicked, who as it were wrest the scourge of vengeance from Him against His will. The same does a merciful and just king, as St. Thomas teaches, Book I of On the Education of Princes, chapter 16, citing this maxim of Solomon: "Mercy is very necessary for a prince; for it guards him, lest the fire of zeal and anger destroy him. Hence in Proverbs 20 it is said: Mercy and truth preserve the king. The fire of zeal ought to burn in the oil of mercy; but if this oil fails, the fire of zeal destroys princes, just as fire, if material oil is lacking, destroys the lamp. Gregory on Ezekiel: The severity of holy zeal must necessarily burn from the virtue of mercy." And further on: "To forgive everyone is as much a cruelty as to spare no one; for we must keep moderation: but since moderation is difficult, whatever will exceed what is fair should lean toward the more humane side." Therefore, when it is doubtful whether mercy or justice should prevail, a prince should rather incline toward mercy.
Therefore the politicians and Machiavellians err, whose principles they instill in princes are these: "Press down subjects, lest they rebel; burden them with taxes, so that by their poverty you may enrich and strengthen yourself. Oppress them with fear: let them hate, so long as they fear. Take away their strength, wealth, and spirit, to make them your slaves and bondsmen. Subdue cities with fortresses." Solomon here overturns these and similar maxims. For fortresses and the other things just mentioned are often nests of tyrants, as that man used to say; but a king strengthens his throne by nothing better than love and clemency: for clemency is the mother of all good things, as I showed from St. Ambrose at chapter 11:19. Seneca, Nero's teacher, saw this; writing to Nero in the book On Clemency he says: "There is no need to hide the sides of mountains behind many walls, or to surround them with towers; clemency will keep a king safe in the open; cruelty multiplies enemies." And Cicero, in the Second Book of Offices: "Fear," he says, "is a bad guardian of permanence, while goodwill is faithful, even unto perpetuity. For those who wish to be feared must necessarily fear the very people by whom they are feared."
So David, asking God for the stability of the throne for himself and his posterity, in order to obtain it, says: "Remember, O Lord, David and all his meekness." Writing on these words, St. Gregory teaches that David, by the merit of his singular meekness, obtained that God would perpetuate his kingdom in his posterity until the destruction of the Jews; indeed David himself indicates the same, 2 Kings 22:36: "Your meekness," he says ("which You have communicated to me"), "has multiplied me."
Receive now illustrious examples and maxims of kings and princes very similar to this one of Solomon. Alexander the Great established his empire through clemency, which was so great in him that Darius king of Persia, envying him, prayed to the gods that he might either surpass Alexander in clemency, or, if Alexander were stripped of his kingdom, that Alexander alone would rule the Persian empire. Antigonus, king of the Macedonians, when his friends urged him to fortify Athens with strong garrisons if he captured it, lest they ever revolt, replied that he had always held the opinion that "clemency can achieve more than violence." The same man, having been harsher at the beginning of his reign, when he had grown old governed his kingdom with clemency and mildness. But when his subjects marveled at the change in his character, he replied: "Before, the kingdom required it; now glory and goodwill, by which a recovered kingdom is preserved." So Plutarch in the Apophthegms of Kings. Pittacus, one of the seven sages of Greece, when the murderer of his son was sent to him for punishment, after investigating the case, released him, saying that "forgiveness is better than regret;" or as others have it: "It is better to pardon than to punish." So Laertius, Book I. Cato used to advise the powerful to use their power sparingly, since they could always use it, meaning that power made lasting by clemency and courtesy endures, but made fierce it is brief. Julius Caesar, having gained supreme power, respectfully restored the statues of Pompey that had been torn down. Then Cicero said: "Caesar, by replacing Pompey's statues, establishes his own," meaning that he did this not out of kindness to Pompey, but to win citizens to himself under the name of clemency, and thereby to stabilize his own kingdom. So Plutarch in the Apophthegms. Nero at the beginning of his reign was so clement that when about to sign the death sentence of a certain condemned man, he cried out: "Would that I did not know how to write!" Seneca attests this, Book II of On Clemency. Theodosius the Younger, when asked why he did not execute any of those who injured him, replied: "Would that I could even recall the dead to life!" Alfonso, king of Aragon, when accused of excessive leniency, replied: "I prefer to save many through my clemency and meekness than to destroy a few through my severity. For clemency belongs to man, ferocity to beasts. Through justice I please the good, through clemency the wicked. For nothing bends adversaries more than the reputation of placability and meekness." So Panormitanus, Book II of the Deeds of Alfonso. Truly Sallust in the Jugurthine War: "Neither armies," he says, "nor treasures are the defenses of a kingdom, but friends, whom you can neither compel by arms nor procure with gold: they are won by service and faithfulness."
29. THE GLORY OF YOUNG MEN IS THEIR STRENGTH: AND THE DIGNITY OF OLD MEN IS GRAY HAIR.
For "glory" the Hebrew has תפארת tipheret, meaning beauty, splendor, glory, magnificence, with which young men leap up and exult like young deer. For "dignity" the Hebrew has הדר hadar, meaning beauty, splendor, honor, excellence; the Septuagint renders: Wisdom is the ornament of youths, and gray hair the glory of elders; Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion: Strength is the ornament of youths; the Chaldean: The honor of youths is their strength, and the praise of the old is gray hair. The Author of the Greek Catena explains the Septuagint thus, that is to say: Just as gray hair renders an old man venerable, so wisdom renders a young man; the Syriac: The honor of old men is gray hair; Rabbi Solomon: Just as it is glorious for a youth to excel in strength, so gray hair is an ornament for the old. So also Rabbi Levi.
By gray hair, first, some understand figuratively sense and wisdom: for this is "gray," that is, ancient; and conversely the gray-haired, that is, old men, are wise through much experience. Hence some think that senium (old age) is derived from sensus (sense). So St. Isidore, Book II of On Ecclesiastical Offices, chapter 7: "The glory of old men," he says, "is gray hair, that is, wisdom, of which it is said in Wisdom 4:8: The gray hair of men is prudence." Likewise St. Jerome, Book II of the Commentary on Isaiah, chapter 3, near the beginning: "The glory of old men is gray hair. What is this gray hair? Without doubt it is wisdom, of which it is written: The gray hair of men is prudence. And although we read that men lived nine hundred and more years from Adam to Abraham, no one before Abraham was called presbyter, that is, elder, though he is shown to have lived far fewer years. Hence John also writes to old men after boys and youths, saying: I write to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning. And Rehoboam the son of Solomon lost his kingdom for this reason, because he refused to listen to the elders." These words of St. Jerome were transferred into Canon Law and are found in Distinction 84, final canon.
Second, others take gray hair in its proper sense, that is to say: White hairs adorn old men, and gray hair itself is their honor and dignity, which makes them honorable and venerable, especially because the whiteness and brightness of the head indicates the whiteness and brightness of the mind. Hence St. Isidore, Book XI of the Origins, chapter 2: "Gray hair," he says, "is called canities from candor (whiteness), as though it were candities. Hence the saying: Blooming youth, milky gray hair, that is, white. Moreover, old age brings many good things with it: for it frees us from most powerful masters, sets a limit on pleasures, breaks the impulses of lust, increases wisdom, and gives more mature counsels." The same author, Book II of Spiritual Differences, §15: "Old age," he says, "begins from the fiftieth year, and extreme age ends at the seventieth." St. Ambrose, Book III, Epistle 21 to Anysius: "Truly," he says, "that old age is venerable which grows white not only with gray hairs but with merits; for that is the reverend gray hair of the soul, shining forth in hoary thoughts and works." And Book I of On Cain, chapter 3: "Old age is venerable not when it is gray with years, but with character." And St. Chrysostom, Homily 4 on the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the moral section: "For indeed," he says, "we honor gray hairs, not because we value the white color more than the black; but because it is a sign of a life advanced in virtue, and seeing this we infer an interior grayness: but if they have done things contrary to old age, they become for that very reason more ridiculous. For we also honor a king and his purple and diadem, because these are signs of sovereignty; but if we were to see him spat upon while wearing the purple, trampled by his own bodyguards, strangled, thrown into prison, overthrown — would we then reverence the purple or the diadem? Would we not weep over the very spectacle? Therefore do not wish to be honored on account of gray hairs, when you yourself dishonor them; for they too must avenge themselves, since you confound a spectacle so splendid and honorable."
Third, by gray hair you may understand old age itself: for this is what the Hebrew שיבה sebah signifies, that is to say: The honor and dignity of old men is old age itself, which is seen both in gray hairs and in a grave countenance and step, and in the gravity and maturity of character and speech. This old age, therefore, is the gravity and sanctity of character, which is a dignity that is, as it were, divine. Hence Junius, the orator and philosopher, as recorded by Stobaeus, Discourse 116: "This," he says, "I consider the greatest and most beautiful gift given by the gods to men, through which they become in some way similar to the divine nature." And further on: "Old age expresses in itself a certain imitation of divine moderation." Hence Macrobius, Book II of the Saturnalia: "Old age," he says, "is to be revered by us, if we are wise;" for which reason he adds that the counsels and admonitions of old men should be received as oracles and responses of the gods, because they are as safe and certain as oracles.
Therefore old age is a certain divine dignity, and an old man among the young is like a certain earthly god. First, because old age is an image of the antiquity and eternity of God; hence God appeared to Daniel, chapter 7:9, as the "Ancient of Days," having white, that is, gray hair. He appeared similarly to St. John, Apocalypse 1:14. Hence St. Ambrose, Book III, Epistle 21 to Anysius: "What," he says, "is truly the age of old age but an unstained life, which is extended not by days or months but by centuries, whose duration is without end, whose longevity is without weakness? For the longer it is, the stronger; and the longer one has lived that life, the more mightily one grows into the perfect man."
Second, because just as God is impassible, free from all appetite, passion, and disturbance — such as anger, love, sadness, vengeance, etc. — "The gods," says the poet, "do not eat grain, nor drink fiery wine" — so also an old man, as the body grows cold, is free from the disturbances of the soul and masters them, which inflame the hot-blooded youth; indeed even the appetite for food and drink fails in the elderly, and therefore with Ceres and Bacchus, Mars and Venus also grow cold in them. Hence St. Chrysostom, Homily 4 on Hebrews, compares and equates an old man who masters his passions to a king: "An old man," he says, "is a king, if he wills it, and more royal than one who wears the purple, provided he has conquered the passions of the soul and subjected them like bodyguards. But if he is dragged from and cast down from his throne, and becomes a slave to the love of money, the adorning of the body, pleasures, drunkenness, anger, and lustful things, and has his hair anointed with oil, and disgraces his whole life through evil will — what punishment is such a man not worthy of?"
Third, just as God excels in wisdom, so does old age in its own way. Hence St. Jerome says that in old men everything fails except wisdom: for this alone flourishes. And St. Ambrose, Book I of the Hexameron, chapter 8: "Old age itself," he says, "in good morals is sweeter, in counsels more useful, in constancy to face death more ready, in restraining lusts more firm. The weakness of the body, too, is the sobriety of the mind. Hence the Apostle says: When I am weak, then I am powerful," 2 Corinthians 12:10. To this belongs that saying of Ovid, Book VI of the Metamorphoses: "Experience comes from ripe years." And that saying of the Comic poet: "Age is the seasoning of wisdom, and conversely wisdom is the food of age," that is to say: Wisdom is seasoned by old age, because in itself it is, as it were, unpleasant and unwelcome in a young man: for it is made more pleasing and lovable by old age; conversely wisdom nourishes and enlivens old age like food. Wisdom, therefore, adorns old age, and is in turn adorned by it.
Fourth, just as God counts a great progeny of men, animals, and created things: so also old men see a great offspring of children and grandchildren.
Fifth, just as God foresees and foretells the future: so also old men through long experience foresee and announce future things; hence they give sound counsels to the young about what should or should not be done throughout their whole future life. "For truthful divination is a testimony of divinity," says Tertullian, Apology 20, according to that saying of Isaiah 41:23: "Announce the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that you are gods."
Finally, old men, full and satisfied with days, and near to death, think of nothing but the passage to blessed immortality, so that joined to God they may enjoy His glory and blessed life for all eternity. Hence St. Chrysostom, Homily 37 on Genesis: "But you (O Abraham)," he says, "shall go to your fathers, departing in a good old age. He did not say: You shall die, but you shall go, as if he were about to travel and migrate from one homeland to another homeland." He then teaches that a good old age is not one that indulges in pleasures and the belly; but "he who has walked in the way of virtue," he says, "this one truly departing in a good old age, finishes his life, and finds the rewards and recompenses of his present labors."
You will ask, to what end and with what aim does Solomon assign this maxim?
I answer first, physically, so as to signify the disparity of the ages of old age and youth, and to attribute to each age its own beauty and honor: namely that the honor of youth is strength, and that of old age is old age itself, and consequently that the young exult in their vitality and vigorous strength; while the old rest in their elderly gravity and, as it were, take confidence in it. Therefore the young ought not to insult the old, nor should the old in turn despise the youthful gestures and movements of the young, but each should live content with his lot and age, cultivate mutual peace, and not demand from the other the works and manners of a different age. For labor befits the young, while rest, gravity, and maturity befit the old.
Second, morally, to signify that, although youth as well as old age has its defects and vices, yet both have their own gifts and endowments, and these of such a kind that through them both are useful and necessary to each other and to the state; for the state needs the strength of the young, and the wisdom and reverence of the old. And just as the young need the counsel and wisdom of the old, lest they act rashly with the bodily strength in which they abound, so the old lack sufficient strength and are compelled to use the labor of the young; and thus friendship easily arises between them, and they preserve a certain harmony in the state. So Jansenius and Baynus. What therefore Plutarch said about mixing wine with water — "a raging god is tempered by another sober god" — you may say the same about the fervor of the young being tempered by the maturity of the old. For just as the ardor of the young sharpens the torpor of the old, so conversely the latter moderates the former and reduces it to the mean. Hence St. Ambrose, Book I of On Cain and Abel, chapter 3: "The violent impulses of our youth," he says, "are calmed by the steadfast station of old age."
Third, Solomon here tacitly admonishes both the young and the old of their duty: namely the young, that they should exercise their strength and not allow it to wither through torpor and idleness, but use it for the good of the old and the state; and the old, that they should rest from the labor of the young, and moderate and direct it with their maturity and counsel. How useful the counsel and example of old men is to the young, St. Ambrose beautifully teaches in Book II of On Cain, chapter 3, near the end.
Fourth, so that strength may be a stimulus for the young to undertake arduous and heroic works of virtue and fortitude; while old age may console the elderly with the memory of past labors, virtues, and merits, and tacitly remind them of their dignity and virtue, lest they commit anything unworthy of it, anything juvenile and degenerate, but rather give the young a full example of maturity and moral composure. Hence St. Chrysostom, Homily 4 on the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the moral section: "It is absurd," he says, "if an old man sits in a tavern, if an old man hurries to the circus, if an old man goes up to the theater, running like a boy with the crowd; truly it is confusion and mockery, to be adorned on the outside with gray hair, but inwardly to have the mind of a child. And if a young man reproaches him, he immediately brings forward his gray hairs: you revere them first! But if you do not show them reverence, how do you expect a young man to revere your gray hairs? You do not revere these gray hairs, you say? But you confound them. God honored you, He gave you the whiteness of hair, He conferred great privilege; why do you betray that honor? How shall a young man revere that honor, when he has seen you given over to even more wantonness than himself? For gray hair is venerable when it does what befits gray hair; but when it behaves in a youthful manner, it will be more ridiculous than the young: how will you old men be able to admonish these young people, while you are intoxicated through your incontinence? For I do not say this now accusing the elders, but the young. For you who do these things, even if you reach a hundred years, seem to me to be young and like children."
Let Eleazar serve as an example, who, when ordered by Antiochus to eat pork forbidden by the law, unless he wished to be savagely tortured, "answered quickly, saying that he would rather be sent down to the netherworld. For it is not fitting for our age, he said, to pretend, lest many young people, thinking that Eleazar at ninety years of age had gone over to the life of foreigners, should themselves be deceived on account of my pretense and for the sake of a brief time of corruptible life, and through this I should bring stain and curse upon my old age. For even if in the present time I should escape the punishments of men, yet neither alive nor dead shall I escape the hand of the Almighty. Therefore by departing life bravely I shall appear worthy of my old age; and I shall leave to the young a courageous example, if with ready spirit and bravely I undergo an honorable death for the sake of the most grave and holy laws. Having said this, he was immediately dragged to the punishment," 2 Maccabees 6:23.
Hence St. Ambrose, celebrating Eleazar, Book II of On Jacob, chapter 10, says: "I am not so old that the fortitude of my soul does not grow young in me. Let it never happen to me that I, an old man, become an incentive for youthful error, I who until now was a model of salutary instruction. Old age ought to be a harbor, not a shipwreck of one's former life."
Following Solomon's customary pattern, Sirach issued these corresponding maxims: "The crown of old men is great experience, and their glory is the fear of God," Sirach 25:8. Where he crowned old men with a sevenfold crown. "The leader of the people in the wisdom of his speech, but in the understanding of the elders is the word," chapter 9:24. "What you did not gather in your youth, how will you find it in your old age?" chapter 25:5. "How beautiful is wisdom in the aged!" ibid. verse 7.
And the philosophers, whom Stobaeus cites, Discourse 116 — as Euripides in the Bellerophon: "O son, the hands of the young are indeed strong for action, but the judgments of the old are superior." The same in the Melanippe: "This is an old saying, that the works of the young, but the counsels of the old, have force." Alexis: "Old age is like old wine. Old age is more just than youth." Hippothoon: "Gray old age is a flower among men." For white hairs are like white flowers; and what fruits these flowers produce, Democritus teaches, saying: "Strength and beauty of body are good things, but old age is the flower of temperance and prudence." Antihonius: "The old age of lions is better than vigorous young deer." Pythagoras and Plato: "Old age is not so much near the end of life as near the beginning of living well and happily." Plutarch: "It befits the young to emulate their elders, according to Simonides: As the nursing foal follows the accustomed mare."
30. THE BLUENESS OF A WOUND CLEANSES AWAY EVIL; AND BLOWS REACH THE INNERMOST PARTS OF THE BELLY.
The plain sense, therefore, is this, that is to say: Just as dirt and stains are rubbed away with soap, and unclean cloths with lye, and other stains with salt, vinegar, and lye: so likewise the vices both private to a man and public to the state and commonwealth are rubbed away, wiped clean, and removed by beatings, wounds, and blows, especially those that touch, strike, and torment the belly, that is, the inmost parts of man. Again, just as an abscess or hidden sore is cured by cutting and opening it, so that the pus and discharge may flow out — and indeed when the sore is wiped clean, the pure flesh is united and made solid (for this is what the text alludes to) — hence the bruise of a wound is the same as the blow of a wound, that is, a blow that opens a wound; or the bruise of a wound means the livid pus and discharge flowing from a wound that has been cut and opened: so likewise the beatings and blows which God sends upon the wicked wound them, and by wounding them open their eyes and mind, so that the discharge of sins flows out through repentance and is wiped away; and once this is cleansed, the mind, as if polished, is restored to its health and purity. So St. Gregory, whose words I shall shortly recite.
So also Rabbi Levi. Therefore by bruises and beatings the wicked are corrected, or at least their evils, so that the wicked may abstain from vices, if not through love of virtue, then at least through fear of punishment they may restrain themselves from them. Thus pain is the medicine of pain in diseases both of body and of soul. Hence some Rabbis translate it thus: The bruise of a wound is medicine with pain, that is with suffering, and even the deepest wounds are healed with pain — that is to say: Just as wounds on the surface of the skin and in the soul are healed with pain, so also the wicked man is healed with pain. This is the genuine sense.
But since others add other interpretations that are not without value, I shall weave them in here, and following custom assign each to its author for greater credibility and weight. First, then, the Chaldean translates: Terrors and blows befall the wicked man, and the prick of a needle in the interior of his belly, that is to say: The wicked are punished with three kinds of punishment: first, by the terrors of an anxious conscience, and in turn by horrible specters, which either the imagination from fear, or God from His just judgment sets before them — as He set before the Egyptians in the plague of darkness, Wisdom 17:6 and following; and before the Arian king Theodoric, who while eating a fish seemed to see St. John the Pontiff and the consul Symmachus, whom he had unjustly killed, threatening him, and from that specter he contracted disease and death from terror; second, blows of every kind; third, deep pricks, like those of the sharpest needle, which pierce through the inner chambers of the belly and mind.
Second, the Septuagint translates: Bruises and wounds befall the wicked; and blows in the more secret parts of the belly; the Syriac: Crushing and torment befall the wicked man. Which some explain as a gradation of threefold punishment, or manner of striking. For with a sword, for example, one can first strike with the flat, which is a light blow without a wound; second, wound, cut, and mutilate with the edge of the sword; third, run through with the point of the sword. In a similar manner, says Salazar, God brandishes the sword of His wrath against the wicked: first indeed with the flat, then with the edge, and finally with the point He strikes them — inflicting first a bruise, then a wound, and finally a deep blow penetrating the internal organs. For those whom a bruise does not restrain, He strikes with a wound; and those whom a wound does not check, He plunges the sword most deeply into their organs. And so Solomon recounts the degrees by which the wrath of God blazes up against the wicked. This is what Solomon said in the preceding chapter, in the last verse: "Judgments are prepared for mockers, and hammers striking the bodies of fools."
Third, Rabbi Solomon, and following him Lyranus, translate it thus: The bruise of a wound is an emptying out in evil, and a blow in the belly; and they explain it thus: "The emptying out, namely of substance or riches in evil, that is, in wicked works, as happens to the prodigal and foolish, is, supply, the bruise of a wound, causally, because upon such persons bruises, wounds, and blows in the belly are customarily inflicted, that is, mortal blows reaching to the vital organs hidden in the belly" — just as excessive gluttony brings upon gluttons and drunkards dropsy, colic, kidney stones, and other diseases tormenting the innermost parts.
Fourth, Baynus explains it thus, that is to say: What we see happening in wounds of the body, the same is to be understood of wounds of the mind. The collection of pus in wounds serves for the health and purging of the evil, and blows that are dealt in the innermost parts of the belly — that is to say, diseases of the soul are healed in the same way through bruises and discharge collected into one place: when sins are recalled to memory, when we consider how enormous an evil it is to offend God, when we think about the gravity and ease of sinning, and sincerely grieving we seem to recall the purulence of the soul's wounds through repentance, as it were, to one place, and to purge it.
Fifth, others explain by hypallage: The bruise of a wound, they say, is the wound of a bruise, namely a wound dripping livid pus and discharge, that is to say: In an abscess and sore, the hidden purulent matter cannot be healed otherwise than by being deeply wounded and expelling the collected discharge. So also sins which shame covers and conceals cannot be remedied unless the soul is pierced through with deep sorrow and repentance, so that with shame broken through, the filth and discharge of sins flows out through confession; and when this is done and the conscience is cleansed, its wounds will close up again so that no trace of them remains. For this is the power and energy of repentance, which so heals and abolishes the wounds of souls that neither scar nor wart will appear, says St. Chrysostom. So profound sorrow wiped away the shame of St. Mary Magdalene at the public banquet.
Sixth, others aptly judge that what is taught here is the method of curing diseases and vices of the soul from the method by which physicians cure wounds and sores of the body. Hence they explain the maxim thus: Just as the bruise of a wound cleanses the evils of the body, and (that is, so) blows in the interior of the belly, supply, cleanse the same — that is to say: Just as a physician cures an abscess and wound by wounding and opening it so that the hidden discharge may flow out (for thus with it he cleanses away every evil): so likewise the hidden and deep-seated vices of the soul are not cured unless it is wounded through shame, anguish, and grief; for thus, when the wound of the hidden vice is opened, the discharge will flow out and the vice will be cleansed away. So St. Monica in her youth, being inclined to the taste of wine, when she was called a wine-bibber by an angry maidservant, struck to the marrow by this reproach and shame as by a wound, erased all desire for wine from her soul. "By this sting," says St. Augustine, Book IX of the Confessions, chapter 8, "she was struck and looked upon her own ugliness, and immediately condemned and cast it off: just as flattering friends corrupt, so quarrelsome enemies often correct." In a similar way, when some people are more sharply and bitterly rebuked for their vices, with shame and pain penetrating and, as it were, cutting the soul, they immediately cut those same vices away from themselves, as daily experience teaches. Blows in the interior of the belly, therefore, are deeds and words or witticisms that pierce the innermost soul of the hearer with pain, and thereby sting and cure it. This sense is very apt, profound, and illustrious.
For "cleanses" the Hebrew has תמרוק tamruq, meaning a rubbing, cleansing, purifying, removing of stains — applied to evil, that is, of evil and of evil people: for מרק maraq means to wipe, rub clean, polish. Hence Pagninus and Vatablus translate: The bruise of a wound is a cleansing medicine for evil, that is to say: "The bruises of a wound wipe clean an evil man and cleanse away his malice and vices." Or: "The bruises of a wound, that is, which are the cause of a wound, are the medicines of evil men, because these are not corrected by words but by scourges and the rod of discipline, indeed by deep blows that penetrate to the very bottom of the belly." Hence Cajetan also translates: Blows to the head will cleanse the evil man, and wounds the chambers of the belly. For just as pills and tablets pervade the chambers, that is, all the recesses of the stomach and belly, and from them wipe away phlegm and harmful humors, and thus heal the man: so likewise blows and tribulations penetrate the inmost recesses of the mind, and from them root out and wipe away whatever is vicious, and thus restore it to health and holiness. A bruise is a blow by which one is beaten so as to become black and blue; "of a wound" means up to the point of wounds from which blood flows, says Aben Ezra, who connects this maxim with the preceding one, that is to say: Just as strength adorns and polishes the youth, and gray hair the old man, so bruises and blows adorn the wicked man — both because punishment befits and, as it were, adorns guilt, and because it washes and cleanses it away, and thus purifies and polishes the wicked man: "Blows," he says, "are the cosmetics of the wicked, by which he is polished." A blow (plaga) properly is a stroke, beating, percussion; for in Greek it is called πληγή, in Doric πλαγά, from πλήσσω, that is, I strike; hence plagare means to strike, as in Zechariah 13:6, the crucified Christ says: "With these I was struck in the house of those who loved Me." And 4 Esdras 4:51: "Struck and chastised by women."