Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
He graphically and ingeniously depicts through various symbols and enigmas the miseries of old age and death, so that by these he might impel the young to spurn the vanities of pleasures and pursue truth and the true worship of God, before they exchange youth for old age. Whence he concludes in verse 13: Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is every man. Here then is an elegant enigma of old age and the agony of death, in which through 21 symbols are noted 21 defects, miseries and vices of old age.
The first is, verse 1, affliction from various diseases; the second, displeasure and weariness with all things; the third, verse 2, that the celestial motions and influences forsake the old man; the fourth, continuous drippings and catarrhs; the fifth, verse 3, failure of the guardians, that is, the senses; the sixth, the crippling of the strongest men, that is, the legs and shins; the seventh, the diminution of the grinders, that is, the teeth; the eighth, the dimness of those who see through openings, that is, the eyes; the ninth, verse 4, the feebleness of voice from the closing and constriction of the doors in the street, that is, the arteries in the chest; the tenth, the lightness of sleep and nocturnal wakefulness, so that they awaken at the voice of a bird; the eleventh, failure of the ears and hearing; the twelfth, verse 5, fear, dread and stupor; the thirteenth, grey hair similar to the almond tree white with blossoms; the fourteenth, swelling of the belly, feet and legs like a locust; the fifteenth, loathing of food, whose appetite the caper stimulates; the sixteenth, departure from life, that he will soon go to the house of his eternity; the seventeenth, the funeral which will be celebrated with the common lamentation of friends; the eighteenth, verse 6, the breaking of the silver cord, that is, the contraction of the spinal marrow of the back; the nineteenth, the return of the golden band, that is, the contraction of the membrane, or covering of the brain; the twentieth, the breaking of the pitcher at the fountain, that is, of the veins and blood proceeding from the liver; the twenty-first, the breaking of the wheel at the cistern, that is, of the head drawing spirit from the heart.
Moreover, these vices and miseries of old age have place in all old men; whence the discussion here concerns all of them, but especially those who in youth exhausted their spirits and strength through banquets and youthful lusts: for they pay for the injuries of youth through the diseases of old age. Whence Osorius takes this whole chapter as referring to them. Hence some also apply it to Solomon, as if he himself here describes the miseries of his old age, resulting from the lusts of his youth. Cicero truly says: A lustful and intemperate youth delivers a worn-out body to old age. Aristotle also, in Book VI of the History of Animals, chapter 4, and in the book On the Length and Shortness of Life, and Pliny, Book X, chapter 36, teach that animals inclined to lust and prone to venery are of short life. Therefore you might say here the damages of youthful gluttony and luxury are are described; for we see that the bodies of the debauched are pale, cold, lean, withered, sickly, death-bearing, weak in brain and mind, and suffering from epilepsy, their eyes growing dark, their eyelids and hair falling out, the guardians of the house, that is, all the senses growing dull, suffering from phlegm and catarrhs; likewise their teeth loosen and fall out; likewise they rise at the voice of a bird, that is, on account of pains their sleep is light and brief, and they awaken at the slightest sound; the daughters of song grow deaf, that is, their ears and hearing are dulled; the almond tree blossoms, that is, they quickly grow grey; the locust grows fat, that is, their legs and belly swell; the caper is scattered, that is, all appetite perishes; they are full of nausea, weariness, and disgust.
Hear Boethius, Book III of the Consolation, prose 3: What shall I say about bodily pleasures, the desire for which is indeed full of anxiety, and the satisfaction of which full of repentance? What diseases, what intolerable pains they are accustomed to bring upon the bodies of those who enjoy them, as if a certain fruit of wickedness? And that the outcomes of pleasures are sorrowful, whoever wishes to recall his own lusts will understand. And St. Chrysostom, Homily "That no one is harmed except by himself": Those who lead a life of lust, he says, carry about bodies that are weak and softer than any wax, and filled with a whole army of infirmities; to which, as the crowning of their evils, the fear of gout and premature old age succeed, and their life is always with doctors and medicines.
Mystically, the old age, agony and death of a man represent the old age, fall and decline of a kingdom and commonwealth, or of a city, or of the whole world. Whence the Hebrews consider that here through enigmas is described the destruction of Jerusalem inflicted by the Chaldeans and the Romans. But Thaumaturgus, St. Athanasius in his Synopsis on Ecclesiastes, and Richard of St. Victor, in the treatise On Healing the Plagues that will occur around the end of the world, consider that here is described the destruction of the world, and the last plagues of the world, and the signs preceding the last judgment: indeed both parties consider this to be the literal sense; but in truth it is mystical, as is evident to one examining it.
Again, by old age and death you may understand any difficulty and misery of life, whether sent by God or by man, both public and private, which takes from a man the ability to do good; and therefore Solomon here advises that before it a man should do whatever good he can, and thus look out for himself and his eternal salvation in timely fashion.
Tropologically, the old age and natural death of man represent the old age and spiritual death of the sinner, when through sin he is stripped of grace, which is the light and life of the soul, and is wounded and injured in all the powers and faculties of the soul: and much more when through death he departs from this life into the second death of hell, where he is most miserably tortured and torn in all the members of body and soul. This enigma therefore is a figure of the sinful and damned soul. So St. Jerome, Albinus, Olympiodorus, Hugo and the others.
Vulgate Text: Ecclesiastes 12:1-14
1. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the time of affliction comes, and the years draw near, of which you shall say: They do not please me: 2. before the sun grows dark, and the light, and the moon, and the stars, and the clouds return after the rain: 3. when the guardians of the house shall be moved, and the strongest men shall totter, and the grinders shall be idle because they are few in number, and those who look through the openings shall grow dim: 4. and they shall shut the doors in the street, when the voice of the grinder is low, and they shall rise at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of song shall grow deaf. 5. They shall also fear the heights, and be terrified in the way; the almond tree shall blossom, the locust shall grow fat, and the caper shall be scattered: because man goes to the house of his eternity, and the mourners shall go about in the street. 6. Before the silver cord is broken, and the golden band runs back, and the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, and the wheel is broken at the cistern, 7. and the dust returns to its earth from which it came, and the spirit returns to God, who gave it. 8. Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes, and all is vanity. 9. And since Ecclesiastes was most wise, he taught the people, and recounted what he had done: and investigating, he composed many parables. 10. He sought useful words, and wrote most upright discourses, and full of truth. 11. The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails driven deep, which through the counsel of masters are given by one shepherd. 12. More than these, my son, do not seek. Of making many books there is no end: and frequent meditation is an affliction of the flesh. 13. Let us all hear together the end of the discourse. Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is every man: 14. and all things that are done, God will bring into judgment for every error, whether it be good or evil.
Verse 1: REMEMBER YOUR CREATOR IN THE DAYS OF YOUR YOUTH, BEFORE THE TIME OF AFFLICTION COMES, AND THE YEARS DRAW NEAR, OF WHICH YOU SHALL SAY: THEY DO NOT PLEASE ME
For in the time of your youth, the Hebrew has the time of your choices, that is, in the choicest and most flourishing time, namely the time of youth, in which therefore you should choose the best things. The Hebrews take this whole chapter as referring to the Jews, and their captivity both Babylonian and Roman, and adapt each detail to them individually. Hear St. Jerome from verse 9 of the preceding chapter adapting these and all following things according to the opinion of the Hebrews: "Rejoice in your youth, O Israel, and do these or those things, about which it has already been said, before the captivity comes, and your honor and glory depart from you, and your judges and saints (whom they wish to be understood by the sun, moon, and stars) are taken from you; before Nebuchadnezzar comes, or Titus the son of Vespasian, summoned by the prophets, and their prophecies are fulfilled. On the day when the angels presiding over the temple depart, and the strongest in your army are troubled, and the words of the masters are idle, and the prophets, who were accustomed to receive the light of their visions from heaven, grow dark; when the gates of the temple are closed and Jerusalem is humbled, and the Chaldean comes like the song of a bird, as prophesied by the voices of Jeremiah; and the daughters of song fall silent in the temple, the choirs of those who sing psalms; at that time, when those arriving at Jerusalem, the enemies themselves also fear the greatness of God, and in doubt on the way, dread the destruction of Sennacherib.
For they think this is said, and from on high they shall fear, and shall dread in the way. In those days the almond tree shall blossom: that staff and rod which Jeremiah saw at the beginning of his prophecy; and the locust shall grow fat, Nebuchadnezzar with his army; and the caper shall be scattered, the friendship of God with Israel." And after a few words: "Rejoice therefore, Israel, in your youth, before the silver cord is broken, that is, while your glory is still with you; before the golden band runs back, that is, before the ark of the covenant is taken away; before the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, and the wheel is turned upon the cistern, that is, while within the Holy of Holies are the precepts of the law, and the grace of the Holy Spirit, and before you return to Babylon, whence in the loins of Abraham you went forth, and begin to be crushed in Mesopotamia, whence you once set out, and all the grace of prophecy, with which you were once inspired, returns to your giver."
But these are Jewish interpretations, and foreign to the literal and genuine sense. Again Thaumaturgus and Richard of St. Victor, in the treatise On the End of the World, think that by this enigma is described the destruction of the world, and its plagues and signs preceding the last judgment. Hear Thaumaturgus: "It is worthwhile therefore that, while you are still a youth, you should fear God, before you are cast down by miseries, and that great and terrible day of the Lord comes; when neither the sun, nor the moon, nor the other stars will shine any longer. But the heavenly powers will be moved, the angels who are guardians of the world in the storm and upheaval of the whole universe. So that then both the mighty men and the women workers will be still, and they will flee into the dark inner rooms of their dwellings with all doors closed; and with lips pressed together, so that the voice through the lips, as if through twin millstones, will come forth most faintly; and all will rise at the voice of a sparrow, that is, of Christ the Judge; and all impure women will fall to the ground; likewise also the cities, and their bloodthirsty magistrates will expect vengeance from above, under the pressure of that most bitter and most bloody time, which will be like the blossoming almond tree. Then punishments will be present in such frequency as the multitude of locusts flying in; and sinners will be cast out from the midst like the black and most despised caper. And indeed the good man will set out rejoicing to his eternal home; but the wicked will fill all things with their mourning, and neither stored-up silver nor refined gold will avail them. For a great flood will encompass all things, until the pitcher and the vehicle of the wheel stand at the well, which it will happen to break at some point. When therefore the course of times ceases through the wheel, and life marked by water, and the age bearing the urn has passed, and men lie upon the earth: then the one salvation will be, if their souls have recognized their Creator, and have flown back to Him."
This sense is fitting, but mystical; wherefore preachers can use it as such in Advent, when they treat of the end of the world and the day of judgment. The literal sense therefore is about the miseries of old age, agony and death, as St. Jerome, Albinus, Lyranus, Hugo, Dionysius, Cajetan, Valesius, Sacred Philosophy chapter 66, and all the others teach, with the sole exception of Olympiodorus. For the words clearly signify that here the young are admonished to pass their youth rightly and holily in the fear and worship of God the Creator, before old age and death creep upon them.
The sense therefore is, as if to say: O youth, who are in the bloom and vigor of age, pleasure flatters you, Venus solicits you, companions urge you on, the flesh titillates, the devil impels: wherefore, lest you succumb to these and lose yourself, remember your Creator, namely that God is your creator, you His creature, which owes its whole being, however great it is, to the Creator, and depends entirely upon Him both in being and in preservation: for just as a ray depends upon the continuous influx of the sun continually producing it, so also the creature depends upon the continuous influx and, as it were, continuous production of the Creator, so much so that if God were to withdraw this influx, the creature would immediately fall back and relapse into its own nothingness, from which it was brought forth and produced by God through creation, just as a ray immediately perishes and vanishes when the sun departs. The preservation of the creature therefore is the continuation of creation, and, as it were, its continuous creation.
If therefore, O man, you are a creature of God, remember that your whole self, however great you are, belongs to God, not to yourself, not to your parents, not to any other creature. Render therefore to God what is His, render yourself, that you may acknowledge Him as Creator, revere Him, love Him, worship Him, and obey His will and law in all things; for He Himself will be your judge, and if you have served Him, He will confer heavenly glory; but if you have preferred the creature to the Creator, He will avenge this insult to Himself upon you with eternal fires. And so the name of Creator has emphasis; for the title of creation demands and extorts from the creature that it render to God its Creator, as to its complete and absolute lord and master, all submission, reverence, love, observance, fear, fidelity, hope, obedience. Wherefore Moses sharply expostulating with Israel: "God, he says, who begot you, you have forsaken, and you have forgotten the Lord your Creator. The Lord saw, and was provoked to anger," Deuteronomy 32:18. Hence for Creator the Septuagint translates ktisantos se, that is, of Him who created you; for which the Complutensian reads ktisantos se, that is, your possessor, according to that saying of Moses to Israel: "Is He not your father, who possessed you, and made you, and created you?" Deuteronomy 32:6.
For your Creator, the Hebrew has borecha, that is, of your creators in the plural, meaning your Creator: for the Hebrews speak of God in the plural out of reverence and honor, and to indicate the plurality of persons in the same one Godhead. The Hebrews in the Midrash, or Gloss, in the name of R. Akabia, by metathesis transposing the letters, read and expound cabbalistically as follows: First, remember borecha, that is, your pit, namely your grave, because in it you will be eaten by worms: while therefore you sumptuously nourish your flesh, remember the grave and the worms that will gnaw you. Second, remember beerecha, that is, your well, from which you were hewn, namely that in the fetid womb of your mother from vile and foul seed you were formed: thus you will learn to humble yourself, to spurn carnal things, to aspire to heavenly things, and to yearn for God; thus by wisdom, virtue and merits you will prepare for yourself a holy and pleasant old age.
For, as St. Ambrose says, Book I of the Hexaemeron: "Old age itself in good morals is sweeter, in counsels more subtle, in constancy for the second death more powerful, in repressing lusts stronger. The weakness of the body is the sobriety of the mind."
IN THE DAYS OF YOUR YOUTH. - We ought indeed always to remember God the Creator, but especially in youth, both because youth is blind and forgetful of God, since it is addicted to pleasures; and because the rest of life depends on youth: for as we are in youth, so we shall be in old age; and because many die prematurely in youth, since death so outstrips us that it often overtakes other ages; into which therefore if the memory of the Creator is deferred, it will be utterly taken away. Wisely says Seneca, in the book On the Brevity of Life, chapter 4: "Are you not ashamed, he says, to reserve for yourself the remnants of life, and to set aside for a sound mind only that time which cannot be devoted to anything? How late it is to begin to live, when one must stop! What such foolish forgetfulness of mortality, to defer sound counsels to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to wish to begin life at the point to which few have arrived?"
BEFORE THE TIME OF YOUR AFFLICTION COMES. - The Syriac: the days of evils; the Arabic: the days of your evil; the Tigurine: perilous times; the Septuagint: the days of wickedness; Thaumaturgus: before you are cast into miseries; Campensis: before the days full of evils come, namely the time of old age and death, when you will give to God an exact account of your youth, and for your merits will receive either eternal rewards or eternal punishments.
For old age is the time of affliction, because it is subject to a thousand diseases, weariness and miseries; whence the saying: "Old age itself is a disease," and indeed an incurable one, and as Nazianzen says in his poem On Sickness: "It is heavier than the Sicilian rocks," indeed than Etna, says Cicero, On Old Age.
Hear Gregory of Nyssa at the funeral of the Empress Pulcheria: "But perhaps it troubles you that Pulcheria did not reach old age. But what, tell me, do you see that is beautiful in old age? Is it beautiful to have itching and rubbing eyes? to have wrinkled cheeks? to have teeth falling from the mouth, and stammering of the tongue produced? to tremble in the hands? to be bent toward the ground? to totter and limp with the feet? to lean on guides? to be foolish and delirious in heart? to speak with absurd and inept voice?" And St. Augustine, in the book On Catechizing the Uninstructed: "When men, he says, wish for themselves old age, they wish for nothing other than a long illness." And Pope Innocent III, Book I On the Contempt of the World, chapter 9: "If anyone, he says, has advanced to old age, immediately his heart is afflicted, and his head is shaken, his breath fails and his breath stinks, his face is wrinkled, and his stature is bent, his eyes grow dim, and his joints totter, his nostrils drip and his hair falls out, his touch trembles, and his strength fails, his teeth rot, and his ears grow deaf. An old man is easily provoked, with difficulty called back, quick to believe and slow to disbelieve, tenacious and greedy, sad and querulous; swift to speak, and slow to listen; he praises the ancients, despises the moderns; he criticizes the present, commends the past; he sighs and is anxious, he is sluggish and infirm."
Hence old age is called by the philosophers the winter of life and the dregs of life. For Solon, when asked "what old age was," replied: "It is the winter of life." And Eratosthenes, cited by Favorinus, says that the flourishing part of life (youth) is spring; but that part which follows vigor and bloom (manly age) is summer and autumn; while old age is winter. So Maximus, Sermon 41, where he also cites Gorgias, who when asked by what means he had attained a long and vigorous old age, replied: "Never eating or doing anything for pleasure."
AND THE YEARS DRAW NEAR, OF WHICH YOU SHALL SAY: THEY DO NOT PLEASE ME. - that is, which displease me, because old age brings dullness, slowness, forgetfulness, carelessness, trouble, so that all things which previously were pleasant now create disgust and pain, and therefore you can truly call an old man sluggish and an elder more sluggish; wherefore then you will neither wish nor be able to take up the labors of virtue and penance, which you neglected in youth, indeed because of the habitual customs of pleasures you will not be able to be torn from the sins of your youth, as St. Basil beautifully teaches in Homily 4 On Penance. Whence Campensis translates: before the years come, in which it will not be permitted to do anything good.
Hence the old man is a burden to all, and first of all to himself, a weariness and disgust, because old men are peevish, anxious, difficult, suspicious, irascible. "Old age, says Nonius, is weariness and hatred, named from old age, because old men are hateful and wearisome to all." Hear Hippocrates and Galen in the Commentary on the Aphorisms III, 31, enumerating eighteen diseases of old age, afflicting the individual members: "Old men have difficulties in breathing, drippings with cough, dribbling of urine, difficulty urinating, joint pains, kidney ailments, dizzy spells of apoplexy, bad conditions, itching of the whole body, sleeplessness, moisture of the eyes and nostrils, dim vision, cataracts, heaviness of hearing." He adds in Commentary II, 39, 40: "Hoarseness, nephritis, gout, articular diseases, hip pains, and dispositions that are cold in the loosened intestine and spleen, and moreover frequent gasping, which the Greeks call asthma, coughs, curvatures of the back, recurvatures and distortions, and finally whatever other kinds of diseases arise from cold humors."
See Stobaeus, page 2, sermon 117, whose title is: Censure of Old Age, where he cites these maxims of the philosophers: of Antiphanes: "Old age is like a certain altar of evils: for all things seem to have fled to it;" of Philemon: "When you see an old man or some old woman, immediately know that he is unwell;" of Euripides: "What else is an old man than a voice and shadow? We old men are nothing else but a crowd, and we creep along as mere images and likenesses of dreams; the mind is no longer present, but we are thought not to be in our right mind. A long life brings infinite ailments;" of Herodotus: "I am indeed weak and bent: for old age drags us down, and stands by like a shadow;" of Menander: "An old man staying at home is a troublesome creature;" of Sophocles: "Nothing evil does not cling to a long old age, the mind is vain, works are useless, cares are superfluous: old age is morose, querulous, and anxious about the smallest things;" of Mimnermus: "Jupiter gave Tithonus an immortal evil, old age, which is to be feared more than even sad death;" of Democritus: "Old age is a comfortable imperfection: it has everything and needs everything;" of Favorinus: "In a long time much labor accumulates;" of Juncus: "The old man lies relaxed in summer, abstaining from food and drink, unlovable, enjoying nothing with pleasure: but perceiving troubles all too much.
But if at some point he has dared to go out to the forum, he moves those who see him to laughter, seeing dimly, not hearing those who shout, and while he tries to support himself in walking, falling, staggering from side to side: because he is even said to harm and pollute the common air of the city. Nor, if he is in an assembly among his tribesmen, is he counted; nor can he hold a magistracy, both because of the impediments already mentioned, and because he is hump-backed, wrinkled, deformed and weak. And in mind, as the proverb has it, he becomes a child again. In military service, what need is there to relate how he is left without any function and naked? He is not made a foot-soldier, not a horseman, nor an oarsman or soldier on a ship. For he can scarcely even sit, indeed even lying down is not without labor, since death is closely joined to him, and is now already leading him within its doors."
Whence he concludes: "Old age is the goddess of evils." To these add the verses of C. Laberius: As the creeping ivy kills the strength of trees: / So old age slays me with the embrace of years. / Like a tomb, I retain nothing but a name.
And the Comic poet: To old age, as to a sewer, all evils flow together. / The old man, as soon as he is old, neither feels nor has sense. / The old man is also unequal to the lightest expenses. / The old man, by living long, sees many things he does not wish. / The old man is more attentive to business than is proper. / The old man thinks he sees two suns. / Old age cannot survive its labors. / The last part of life does not pass by, but collapses. / Old triremes, cast aside, occupy the shore.
Verse 2: BEFORE THE SUN GROWS DARK, AND THE LIGHT, AND THE MOON, AND THE STARS, AND THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN
The phrase "and the light" has an exegetical function; for it explains how the sun, moon and stars grow dark, namely because their light is obscured and darkened for the old and dying man.
St. Jerome refers these things to the end of the world and the day of judgment: for then "the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken," Matthew 24:29; and "the sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood: before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes," Joel 2:31. So also Thaumaturgus, Olympiodorus, Cyril, Catechesis 15, and most precisely Richard of St. Victor, in the book On the End of the Age, who aptly applies each thing said here to the day of judgment; who again with Thaumaturgus takes the darkening of the stars as pestilence, which among other signs preceding the judgment was predicted by Christ, Matthew.
But the same St. Jerome and the others more correctly refer these things to the time of old age and death, of which here and in what follows there is a vivid description and representation: for in old men the eyes grow dim, and the sight is dulled, so that the light of the sun, as well as of the moon and stars, seems to them to be obscured and darkened. It is a hypallage, for the sun in itself, always most bright, never grows dark, but appears dark to the dark eyes of the old: because they see it through the internal darkness and internal dimness of their eyes, and therefore consider it dim, and because the illumination and use of the sun and all the stars is intercepted from them and perishes: indeed old men, because of the weakness of their sight, their optical or visual spirits failing, can no longer endure their light. So the Hebrews, Lyranus, Dionysius, Titelmannus and commonly the others. Indeed also the Chaldean who translates thus: "Before the splendor of the glory of your face, which is likened to the sun, changes; and the light of your eyes before it is blinded, and the beauty of your cheeks before it is darkened; and the pupils of your eyes, which are likened to stars, before they are extinguished: the eyelids of your eyes will drip tears, like clouds after rain."
To this pertains the proverb of the Arabs, Century 2, number 34: "Light your lamp before the darkness, that is, illuminate yourself with good works before death overtakes you."
And number 23: "Bathe in water before evening, that is, purify yourself by penance before departing from life." And Century II, number 45: "Consider your entrance into this world and your departure from it, because you were made a man from nothing, and in a moment you will become as if you had not been. Likewise consider who were before you -- kings, governors and nobles; consider how they departed from this world: and you will depart just as they did." And number 33: "Remember the time of sickness, and of old age coming after you: because wisdom and knowledge are better than a sword, and knowledge more excellent than wealth," as if to say: Acquire wisdom for yourself, so that through it you may foresee and meet the coming old age, the judgment of death, and eternity.
Symbolically, R. Solomon, following the Chaldean, interprets the darkening sun as referring to the aged and wrinkled face; the moon as the nostrils, which in old age, because of the failure of bright spirits and the hardness and density of the cartilages, are sooty and dark, and scarcely translucent; the light as the soul, or the mind growing faint and dark in reasoning, thinking, meditating, and remembering. Finally the stars as the cheeks that are dusky and blackened, having lost that vivid and bright bloom of youth.
But R. Haccados takes the sun as the heart, which like a sun diffuses the rays of its power throughout the whole body, but in old men grows dark and fails; the light as the bright and vital spirits, which are produced in the ventricle of the heart from the purest blood, and pervade the entire body; the moon as the brain, which by its roundness, whiteness, fragility, and moisture most aptly represents the image of the moon; the stars finally as the senses of the body, both internal and external, in which there also resides their own light of cognition. If all these grow faint, if they become dull, if they lose their strength, if they fail, and provide no use or only a feeble one to a man, you rightly say that "the sun, light, moon and stars grow dark."
Tropologically, for old men the light of mind and reason grows dark and fails: whence they intermittently become delirious; teachers and admonishers also fail them, because hardly anyone dares to teach or admonish an old man. Again Hugo takes darkness as adversities and calamities, likewise the lapse from an honest life into a vicious one. So also St. Bonaventure, and even St. Jerome, whom hear: "Lest, when you have sinned, the sun of justice set for you at noon, and the light of knowledge perish, and the splendor of the moon, that is, of the Church, be withdrawn, and the stars set, of which it is written: Among whom you shine like lights in the world, holding the word of life," Philippians 2:13; and elsewhere I Corinthians 15:41: "Star differs from star in brightness. Before the clouds return after the rain: lest the prophets, who irrigate the hearts of believers with their word and their rains, after they have perceived that you are unworthy of their shower, return to their seat, that is, to Him who sent them." For to the blinded sinner, Christ
AND THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN. - The Chaldean: the eyelids of your eyes will drip tears, like clouds after rain; Campensis: and dimness covers your eyes; Lemnius: dimness and fog of the eyes with tearful bleariness. Thaumaturgus and Richard of St. Victor, in the treatise On the End of the World, take the return of clouds as a flooding of sea and rivers, which will precede the last judgment and the end of the world.
More literally, Francis Valesius, Sacred Philosophy chapter 66, takes clouds after rain as perpetual catarrhs, produced from the perpetual vapors of the stomach, from which old men suffer due to a failure of heat: for a weak heat is unable to digest food. Wherefore those things turn into rawness, vapors and fumes, which, raised up into the brain by its coldness, as Galen attests, are resolved into phlegm and catarrh. The clouds therefore signify vapors, the rain catarrhs, for the vapors are condensed into catarrhs, and drip constantly in old men, whereas the young dry them up and consume them by the vigor of the strength they possess in abundance.
Titelmannus adds that by clouds after rain is signified the dimness and clouding of the brain after much watery humor from weeping, the spontaneous flow from the eyes and nostrils, the expectoration of phlegm, etc. So also Vatablus takes clouds as the dimness of the eyes, which usually follows weeping in old men. Finally the dying shed tears, and indeed the involuntary tears of the dying are a sign of impending death, as Hippocrates attests.
Pineda, Book VIII On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 3, considers that Solomon here describes his own diseases in old age, which he had contracted from the most intemperate lust of his youth, and here notes his frequent and most troublesome catarrhs, one succeeding another, like clouds returning after rain, and therefore, with God avenging, that he spent his day in heavy sadness. But, as I said at the beginning of the book, it is uncertain at what age Solomon wrote this book; especially since in old age he became deluded and licentiously worshiped idols, while here on the contrary he professedly inculcates the fear and worship of the one God: wherefore he seems to have composed these things before his fall, which occurred in old age: for if he had repented after his fall in extreme old age, he would certainly have given manifest signs of his penance and sorrow, which however are nowhere to be found. So many think, although others feel otherwise.
Symbolically, Isidorus Clarius explains clouds after rain thus, as if to say: Even a clear sky after rains appears cloudy to old men, whose eyes are dim. Moringus takes clouds after rains as the various diseases of old age, succeeding one another in turn. Finally Lyranus takes it as tribulation upon tribulation of old age.
Tropologically, St. Jerome takes it as the failure of doctrine: his words I recited a little earlier. Again clouds after rain are the threats and punishments which God sends upon the blind and ungrateful sinner, because he has rejected the rain of heavenly illuminations, graces and benefits, indeed has abused them for his own pleasures against God and God's honor.
Verse 3: WHEN THE GUARDIANS OF THE HOUSE SHALL BE MOVED, AND THE STRONGEST MEN SHALL TOTTER, AND THE GRINDERS SHALL BE IDLE BECAUSE THEY ARE FEW IN NUMBER, AND THOSE WHO SEE THROUGH THE OPENINGS SHALL GROW DIM
For "shall be moved," Pagninus translates: shall move themselves; Cajetan and the Tigurine: shall tremble; Campensis: shall have been weakened. The Hebrews, who consider that here is described the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, take the guardians as angels, whose voices were heard in the temple shortly before the city's destruction, saying: "Let us depart from here," as Josephus attests, Book VII of the War, chapter 12. Similarly Thaumaturgus, who considers that here is described the destruction of the world and the signs preceding judgment, takes the guardians as the angels presiding over the world, of whom Christ says: "The powers of the heavens will be shaken," Matthew 24:29.
But Olympiodorus: The guardians of the house, he says, that is, the prelates and eminent saints who guard the Church, having seen so many plagues, and especially Antichrist, will tremble, and some will even fall from the faith. But all the others consider that here are described the miseries of old age, preceding death.
You will ask who the guardians of the house are, that is, of the body: for this is the house in which the soul dwells, which therefore has its guardians, who guard it lest it be expelled from it by disease or force. First, Cajetan takes it as memory, vigilance, and foresight, for these guard the house, that is, the body, from the injuries of weather, diseases and enemies, and in old men they waver and fail. Second, Olympiodorus takes it as the eyes and powers of the soul; Moringus, the powers of the body: for all these dwell in the body as in their house. Third, Hugo takes it as the nutritive and appetitive power, likewise the nerves and spirits; R. Haccados, the muscles with the nerves, by which the bones are clothed and, as it were, guarded. Fourth, St. Jerome, Albinus, the Gloss and St. Bonaventure take it as the ribs and bones: for these guard and surround the tender belly and intestines, and support the whole flesh; whence the Chaldean translates: the trembling hips.
Fifth, Dionysius properly takes it as relatives and household members, who guard the old and dying man. Sixth and most aptly, Lyranus, Titelmannus and Valesius, Sacred Philosophy chapter 66, take it as all the senses: for all of them, but especially the eyes and ears, keep watch as guardians and sentinels, lest any harm enter the body; these equally are disturbed in old men, because they are dulled, injured, and fail, so that they can scarcely perceive and feel sensible things, and are afflicted and hurt by pain. Whence the author of the Greek Catena: "Then, he says, the robust senses of the soul will waver because of the anguish of departure." Hear Pliny, Book VII, chapter 50: "Nature has granted men nothing better than the brevity of life. The senses grow dull, the limbs grow torpid, sight, hearing, walking, and even the teeth and instruments of eating die before us." He makes an exception however of the musician Xenophilus, whom he asserts lived 105 years without any bodily inconvenience; and adds that "old men are least affected by pestilence."
Moreover all the senses are most vigorous in the head; therefore in it are the guardians of the house, that is, of the body; hence Pineda takes the disturbance of the guardians as the trembling of the head, from which old men suffer. But because the chief senses, namely the ears and eyes, are noted in verse 4 by the daughters of song and those who see through the openings. Hence seventh, more distinctly, more orderly and suitably with Clarius, Vatablus and Emmanuel Sa, by these guardians you may take the hands and arms: for these are rightly joined to the strongest men, that is, the legs; these equally guard the body, both because they remove and ward off all harmful things from it; and because by working they procure for it food, clothing, a house, and other things necessary or useful for its safety, preservation and protection; and because by fighting they defend and protect it from enemies. Moreover the arms and hands are disturbed in old men, because they become trembling, affected with gout of the hands, contracted, sluggish, curved, wrinkled, emaciated, and stiff.
Tropologically, the guardians of the spiritual house, namely of the holy soul, are both the guardian angels, who after negligence and contempt of their inspirations abandon it saying: "We have tried to heal Babylon, and she is not healed: let us forsake her," Jeremiah 51:9; and the spiritual senses of the mind, which in the just man who is lukewarm and slothful, and still more in the sinner, are dulled, so that he neither sees, nor hears, nor smells, nor touches, nor tastes saving, heavenly and divine things: which is a certain sign and harbinger of his impending ruin and death.
AND THE STRONGEST MEN SHALL TOTTER. - The Hebrew: and the men of strength shall be perverted; the Septuagint: the strongest men; Symmachus: the strong men have perished; Aquila: the men of fortitude shall go astray; the Syriac: the lords of strength shall be disturbed; the Arabic: the men of power shall return. Olympiodorus: when the powerful have been bent crookedly; Cajetan: they shall be bent; Pagninus: they shall bend themselves; the Tigurine: they shall waver; Campensis: the limbs, by which we are now strong, shall be deprived of their strength.
The Hebrews explain this as the strongest of the Jews slain or captured in the destruction of Jerusalem. Others take it as demons, who will tremble on the day of judgment, to be condemned by the Judge. Others as powerful, wise and skilled men, who will either fall from the faith in the persecution of Antichrist, or be struck by the terrible signs and plagues which God will send upon the impious world, to destroy and ruin it at the end of the world. But these things pertain to the miseries of old age: whence the Chaldean takes the strongest men who totter as the arms, which tremble in old men; Cajetan, the bending and diminution of the body; Moringus, the failure of strength. The Carthusian properly says that men who in their prime had been most robust, totter in old age and are deprived of strength.
Most fittingly you may take the strongest men as the legs and shins: for these are the strongest members of a man, which in old men waver under the weight of the body, as the animal and motive spirits fail, and the youthful vigor dries up. Hence the legs of the lame man healed by Peter are called supports, Acts 3:7. Again the legs are called "pillars," Song of Songs 5:15. So St. Bonaventure, Albinus, Lyranus, Hugo, Titelmannus and Valesius, Sacred Philosophy chapter 66. Aristotle adds in the Physiognomics: Whoever, he says, have well-jointed, sinewy and robust legs, are strong in soul, and are referred to the masculine type. Likewise those who have bony and sinewy hips are strong. Those who have large and sinewy feet are strong; those who have small and narrow ones, are soft: they pertain to women; those whose toes are curved are shameless, and are referred to birds with curved talons; those whose toes are joined are timid, and are referred to quails.
And he adds: The lion, the strongest of animals, has strong and fleshy legs, a youthful gait; but walking slowly he proceeds magnificently, and shakes himself in the shoulders. Thus far Aristotle.
Tropologically, in the slothful just and in sinners the strongest men totter, fail and slip, that is, the virtues, which are like bones and sinews, that is, the strength and fortitude of the soul, and especially patience, magnanimity, constancy; in whose place succeed impatience, pusillanimity and inconstancy and levity of spirit, because they rashly leap from good to evil, from virtues to vices.
AND THE GRINDERS SHALL BE IDLE BECAUSE THEY ARE FEW IN NUMBER. - The Hebrew: and the grinders shall cease, because they will be diminished; Symmachus: and the mills shall have ceased; St. Jerome in his earlier edition: and the grinders shall cease. Thaumaturgus and others refer these things to women workers, namely to women who grind, who according to the custom of Palestine used to grind grain sitting at the mill, as if to say: The women grinders will cease grinding because of a lack of grain, since there will be an extreme scarcity of provisions, such as there was in the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and will be in the destruction of the world at the day of judgment.
Mystically, Olympiodorus refers this to the Jews, who, as if grinding in a mill, bear the heavy yoke both of the law and of servitude; for in the destruction they were reduced to a few, and scattered through all nations, everywhere treated as slaves or bondsmen.
But literally it notes a defect of old age, namely the scarcity and dulling of the teeth; whence old men are called toothless: for the teeth are like millstones, which by chewing grind food: many of these fall out in old men, are worn down or rot, and therefore they are few in number and scarce. Hence the Chaldean translates: your teeth will become duller, and too weak for chewing food. For the teeth in old men loosen and become dislocated, and become decayed and corroded. And so they fall out, or become unfit for chewing.
Mystically, St. Jerome takes the grinders as teachers, who by explaining sacred doctrine to the people, like teeth open up and break it into pieces; they will be diminished when, through the death of the grinders, that is, the masters, "one will be taken, and one will be left," Matthew 24:41. The rest who survive will be enveloped in darkness, and as if through dark openings will look at the truth. Again, by the grinders who chew and ruminate food, you may understand the meditation and rumination on Sacred Scripture, sermons and divine things: for this fails and languishes in the slothful just man, and still more in the sinner.
AND THOSE WHO SEE THROUGH THE OPENINGS SHALL GROW DIM. - In Hebrew baarubboth, that is, in openings, or windows and mirrors; the Syriac: the visions shall grow dim in the windows; the Chaldean: your eyes shall be darkened, which see through the openings of your head; the author of the Greek Catena: the pupils of the eyes shall be darkened; Campensis: when the sight, which now looks out as if from little caverns, shall begin to fail; the Tigurine: those gazing through windows.
The Hebrews by the seers understand the prophets who failed in the destruction of Jerusalem. Thaumaturgus: At the day of judgment, he says, all, struck with fear of the plagues, will flee into the dark inner rooms of their houses, with all windows closed; so that no one, says Richard of St. Victor, will dare to open the doors of the house and look through them: for men will wither with fear and expectation of the things which will come upon the whole world, Luke 21:26; wherefore then human commerce will cease.
But I say those who see are the eyes, or the pupils of the eyes with their optic nerves: for the eyes see through their openings, that is, the hollows of the eyebrows in which they are set; the pupils see through the corneal tunic, which is windowed. Now, both the eyes and the pupils grow dim in old men. Whence the Chaldean clearly translates: your eyes, which see through the lattices of your head, will grow dim. For, as Valesius rightly teaches, chapter 66, in old men both from dryness and from the accumulation of excretions the fluids of the eyes thicken, and the anterior membranes dry up and wrinkle; whence, especially when poverty of spirits sets in, the brightness of the spirits is lost, and in some the optic nerves are also blocked. In old men therefore the eyes grow dim, both because they are bathed in a scanty light of spirits; and because the crystalline humor thickens and darkens, says R. Haccados, and the white of the eyes itself, as it were, darkens and discolors.
For, as Galen says, Book VI On Common Diseases, Commentary IV, 28: A very great quantity of luminous animal spirit proceeds from the brain to the eyes; when this fails, and the blood darkens because of coldness, the eyes equally darken and grow dim. Wherefore it is rare and remarkable what is said of Moses, dying at the age of 120, in Deuteronomy 34:7: "His eye was not dimmed, nor were his teeth loosened."
Moreover the eyes are formed last in the embryo, and die first in a man; conversely the heart is the first living and the last dying: for when a man is dying, gradually life and the vital spirit return from the outermost parts to the innermost and to their source, namely the heart; and there where it began, it dies and is extinguished. Finally in the eyes shine the heart, soul and life; whence to close the eyes, says Aristotle, is the symbol of the timid; to have fixed eyes, the sign of the constant and fearless; those from whose eyes little sacs hang, are lovers of wine: those whose eyes fall heavily, are lovers of sleep. Small eyes indicate the faint-hearted: they are referred to the monkey; just as very large eyes indicate the stupid: they are referred to oxen; sunken eyes indicate the malicious: they are referred to the monkey; prominent eyes, the foolish: they are referred to donkeys; slightly sunken eyes, the magnanimous: they are referred to lions; but more so, the gentle. Thus far Aristotle in the Physiognomics.
And Pliny, Book XI, chapter 37: "The eyes, he says, by the use of light distinguish life from death;" and again: "Indeed in the eyes the soul dwells. We discern with the soul: the eyes as certain vessels receive and transmit its visible part: thus a great thought blinds, the sight being drawn inward. Thus in the falling sickness, the eyes though open see nothing, the soul being darkened." Similar to these enigmas of Solomon about the old man and old age are the enigmas about man found in Blessed Alcuin, or Albinus Flaccus, in the Dialogue with Pippin, son of Charlemagne: "What, he says, is man? A slave of death, a passing traveler, a guest of a place. To what is man similar? To a fruit. How is man placed? Like a lamp in the wind. Where is he placed? Within six walls: which? above, below, before, behind, right and left. How many companions does he have? Four: which? heat, cold, dryness, moisture. In how many ways is he changeable? Six: which? hunger and satiety, rest and labor, waking and sleep. What is sleep? The image of death. What is man's liberty? Innocence. What is the head? The summit of the body. What is the body? The dwelling of the soul: what is hair? The clothing of the head. What is the brain? The keeper of memory. What are the eyes? The guides of the body, vessels of light, indicators of the soul. What are the nostrils? The channels of odors. What are the ears? The collectors of sounds. What is the forehead? The image of the soul. What is the mouth? The nourisher of the body. What are the teeth? The mills of bites. What are the lips? The valves of the mouth. What are the hands? The workers of the body. What are the fingers? The plectra of strings. What is the lung? The keeper of air. What is the heart? The receptacle of life. What is the liver? The guardian of heat. What is the bile? The arouser of anger. What is the spleen? Capable of laughter and joy. What are the legs? The pillars of the body. What is blood? The humor of the veins, the nourishment of life. What are the veins? The springs of the flesh."
Tropologically, by the eyes of the body you may understand the eyes of the mind, which are intelligence, vigilance, faith, prudence, foresight of future things that pertain to salvation, and especially of impending death, judgment, hell, etc., all of which grow dark and are obscured in the sluggish just man, and more so in the sinner.
Verse 4: AND THEY SHALL SHUT THE DOORS IN THE STREET, WHEN THE VOICE OF THE GRINDER IS LOW, AND THEY SHALL RISE AT THE VOICE OF THE BIRD, AND ALL THE DAUGHTERS OF SONG SHALL GROW DEAF
The Septuagint: in the weakness of the voice of the grinder; the Syriac: through the lowering of the voice of the grinders; the Arabic: in the feebleness of the voice of the grinder. The Hebrews, who refer all these things to the destruction of Jerusalem, explain it as the closed gates of the temple. Mystically Olympiodorus expounds it as the obstinacy of the Jews, for whom therefore the door of salvation is closed, while they engage in the street, that is, in the marketplace of the present life and the Jewish law. But Thaumaturgus and Richard of St. Victor, who refer these things to the day of judgment, take it as the fear of the last plagues of the world, by which all, struck with terror, will shut the doors of their houses; or of famine, on account of which the grinders will shut the doors of the mill, lest the neighbors, hearing the voice of the grinder, rush to seize the flour.
Hugo the Cardinal adds, who takes it as the closing of the doors of houses, shops and temples out of fear of Antichrist, so that no one dares to teach publicly, and, as St. Bonaventure says, to profess the faith.
But the others more suitably take these things literally as the miseries of old age and death. Whence first, Vatablus takes the doors in the street and the lowness of the voice of the grinder as the mouth, nostrils, lips and food which can no longer be ground by old men, nor can the sound of the grinders be heard while food is chewed and ground by the teeth (whence they are also called molars). Second, Olympiodorus takes the doors in the street as the channels of the vital spirits, which are necessary for sensing and moving the body: for these are blocked in old men; whence follows a feeble voice, weak sense and movement. Whence the Chaldean translates: and your feet will be hindered from going out.
Third, the Hebrews take the lowness of the voice as the belching and rumbling of the stomach, whose function is to grind and digest food: for when in old men the stomach is cold and weak, it cannot digest food, but turns it into gas and belching. So also Clarius takes the lowness of the voice of the grinder as the weakness of the digestive faculty for digesting food; and the Chaldean says: the appetite for food will be taken from you: for weakness is followed by lack of appetite. And Campensis: when the doors of the street, through which food passes, begin to close, when the growling of the stomach has died, and the man has become so weak that he is awakened by the voice of a little bird.
Fourth, St. Jerome: "The closed doors in the streets, he says, they wish to be taken as the feeble steps of an old man, who always sits and cannot walk; and they interpret the lowness of the voice of the grinder as referring to the jaws, because he cannot grind food, and barely, with breath restricted, is his thin voice heard." The interlinear Gloss adds: Young men, it says, are accustomed to play in the streets; but old men flee these games, and with the door closed, sit sadly at home. Fifth, Vatablus takes it as the double opening of the nostrils, as it were a door, which in old men is often blocked by phlegm, from dripping mucus or catarrh. Sixth, Pineda considers the liver to be the street, or marketplace, in which is the workshop of the whole body, from which the entire body takes its nourishment; and the closed doors to be the veins, which because of the scarcity of blood in old men grow flaccid, and as if empty and exhausted, are folded up and compressed.
Seventh, very aptly others refer the closed doors in the street to the channels of vital operations and senses closed up in old age and the agony of death, namely to the closed eyes, closed mouth, closed nostrils and ears. The street is the whole face, open and visible, distinguished by the various senses and faculties, as by doors and workshops. Eighth, precisely and genuinely the internal doors are the vocal arteries, the external are the lips, which are the doors of the street, that is, of the neck and chest, which metaphorically because of its breadth, open and exposed outward, is called a street, just as Plato received his name from the breadth of his shoulders, when previously he was named Aristocles: for platys in Greek means broad. For doors the Hebrew has delataim, a dual form, that is, two doors, by which he properly signifies the two lips: for these are properly the two doors of the head and chest; through which air, breath and voice enter and exit; it also signifies the two arteries, one the esophageal, namely the gullet by which food is transmitted to the stomach; the other the vocal, by which breath is drawn in: both are closed in old age and death, as if to say: In old men and the dying, the lips are constricted and closed, as well as the arteries; they are closed, I say, both because of the failure of heat and spirits, and because of the phlegm and catarrh, which falling into the artery and throat suffocates almost everyone at death, since because of the failure of strength they cannot spit it out and expel it, and therefore cannot breathe, and so are suffocated. Finally, by the street you may best understand the artery itself, both the vocal and the esophageal, or gullet, because through the esophageal, as through a street, food walks from the mouth and passes to the stomach; through the vocal, the breath passes from the mouth to the lungs, to cool the heart: now the doors of the street will be the openings, or the ends of each artery, or its beginning and end in the stomach or lung; in old age and death each of these openings is closed: whence it happens that a man can neither breathe, nor eat, nor live.
In lowness, that is, because of lowness, or with lowness, that is, with thinness and feebleness of voice, which is caused by the lowness, that is, the feebleness of the grinder, meaning the weakness and contraction of the lung: for the lung is, as it were, the mill of breathing and voice, but in old men it produces a weak voice, because being weakened it draws in and inspires little air for them. So Cajetan. Or of the grinder, that is, the jaw: for the interior mill of air and voice is the lung, the exterior is the maxilla or jaw, which is the seat of the teeth: for since these in old men are few and weak, they do not sufficiently reverberate the vocal breath; but allow it to flow out, whence it happens that the voice does not sound articulately and distinctly, but flows out and is heard confusedly. So Lyranus, Hugo of St. Victor, Dionysius and others.
Again, the arteries in old men are often closed when phlegm drips down; whence in them arise hoarseness, frequent gasping, asthma and coughs, which accompany old men even to death, as Hippocrates and Galen attest: for all these make the voice either hoarse or feeble. Valesius adds to the former sense about the lips, Sacred Philosophy chapter 66 (who however takes the street as the face, spread out and facing all), who says that in old men the doors are closed when they compress their lips inward, in order to speak, and thus block the empty places of the teeth, so that they reverberate and strike the vocal breath with the lips as with teeth; and so they produce a voice, but a low one, that is, soft and thin because of the softness of the lips.
Nor does Titelmannus go far away, who takes the street as the space between the lips, namely the opening and gape of the mouth through which both food and air for breathing and speaking enters and exits: for this is narrowed and closed in old men; hence follows the lowness of voice, for because of excessive cold, he says, the lips of the dying person are so constricted, the breast from which the voice proceeds is so hardened, that they can scarcely emit a faint voice through the mouth. The author of the Greek Catena translates: and all the way of the present life is cut off; but he, with the voice hissing between the teeth, speaks feebly and obscurely.
Mystically, St. Jerome takes these things as referring to the foolish virgins, who, having delayed to obtain oil, found the doors of the bridal house closed, Matthew chapter 25, verse 11.
Tropologically, the doors in the street, that is, the arteries and lips are closed in the dull just man and in the sinner, because both are slow and sluggish to pray, to invoke God, praise Him, and give Him thanks, and to converse with others about Him and divine things; hence they disdain and flee from pious conversations, which is a sign of the impending death of the soul; and if at times compelled by companions to speak about God, they do it so unwillingly, coldly, languidly, and insipidly, that they seem as if they were grinding.
AND THEY SHALL RISE AT THE VOICE OF THE BIRD. - The Septuagint: they shall rise at the voice of a sparrow; the Chaldean: they will be awakened from sleep because of the voice of thieves who walk in the night. The Hebrews, referring these things to the destruction of Jerusalem, explain it as if to say: The Jews will rise up to go into the Babylonian captivity, aroused by the voice of Jeremiah predicting and threatening the same.
Olympiodorus and the author of the Greek Catena, and St. Cyril, Catechesis 15, referring this to the destruction of the world, explain it as the resurrection, which will happen with the Archangel sounding the trumpet: "Rise, you dead, come to judgment;" and at the command of the sparrow, that is, of the Divine Word, who assumed a body of flesh; who because of His solitary stay on the cross said of Himself: "I have become like a sparrow alone on the rooftop," that is, on the cross, Psalm 101:8. St. Bonaventure explains it as those who will receive the preaching of Antichrist in the night of unbelief; others as those who, having heard his voice, will flee out of fear. This sense is mystically apt.
But literally Solomon speaks of the insomnia and light sleep of old men, as if to say: Old men, because of a dried-up brain, and the weakness of heat and failure of spirits, or because of the abundance of vapors ascending from the stomach to the brain and agitating it, have light and scanty sleep; whence at the voice of a bird, for example a rooster or a little sparrow, they awake and get up, to satisfy the necessities of nature, especially to relieve the bladder. So Hugo, Bonaventure, Dionysius, Titelmannus, Valesius, Cajetan, Arboreus and the others.
Hear St. Jerome: "Moreover, that he rises at the voice of a bird shows that, with the blood now growing cold and the moisture dried up, by which materials sleep is nourished, he awakens at a slight sound, and in the middle of the night, when the rooster has crowed, he quickly gets up, being unable to turn his limbs on his bed any longer."
Tropologically, St. Jerome: Through penance the sinner rises from the sleep of vices, aroused by the voice of the priest, or the bishop, and especially of Christ who cries out in the sinner's heart: "Rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will illuminate you," Ephesians 5:14. More aptly you may take these things as referring to the sluggish just man and the sinner, who is aroused at the voice of a bird, that is, of a sensual, light and vain thing, but gives attention to vain songs, poems and fables, disdaining true and salutary things.
AND ALL THE DAUGHTERS OF SONG SHALL GROW DEAF. - The Syriac: the daughters of glory; the Arabic: the daughters of the rich; Vatablus: the daughters of the voice; Campensis: the instruments of song; St. Jerome in his earlier edition translates: they shall be struck dumb, that is, they will not be able to sing songs, as they used to. In Hebrew it is iisschu, that is, they shall be humbled, depressed, or bent; the Tigurine: they shall be suppressed. The Hebrews explain it as if to say: The choirs singing psalms in the temple shall cease, when the Jews have been led into captivity. But St. Bonaventure, as if to say: In the time of Antichrist the truth will not be heard, or rather, though heard, it will not be heeded.
More fully Olympiodorus explains it thus about the day of judgment: "Then the daughters of song shall be humbled, that is, the rational souls of mortal men, which have delighted too much in pleasures, and in the sound of the organ, and in the sweetness of song and musical instruments. Or understand the souls of masters who teach falsely and of lying prophets, which with the resonant fluency of words, as with a certain sweet song, have occupied the ears and mind of their hearers with pernicious pleasure. But also the very souls of the Jews, which are daughters of the song of the prophets, will be humbled, because they did not listen to the prophets singing and calling them to faith in Christ, just as Isaiah sang: I will sing to my beloved the song of my beloved; and others of the same kind. All the aforesaid souls of sinners therefore will marvel and be stupefied, when they are led to the way of judgment, and see from on high the Son of Man coming in the clouds in the glory of His Father."
These things are apt, but mystical; for literally he speaks of the failure of hearing in old men.
You will ask, what are the daughters of song: first, Thaumaturgus takes them as female singers, who delight themselves and their company with soft and sweet melody: "All impure women, he says, will fall to the ground." Second, Cajetan takes them as musical instruments, whose sound grows deaf for old men. Third, Vatablus following Aben-Ezra takes them as the vocal arteries, throat and lips, by which songs are sung, as if to say: Singing fails in old men, by which however the young were accustomed to be fed and delighted. Whence the Chaldean translates: and your lips will be weakened from saying a song. Fourth, the daughters of song are the songs themselves, just as the son of man is a man, as if to say: Old men will not perceive or hear singing, as they used to when they were young.
Fifth and genuinely, the daughters of song are the ears: both because the ears were made for this one purpose, to hear voices and songs, wherefore they seem to have been born from them and to be their daughters: for the delightful object, for example singing, produces in the ears a sensation, namely a delightful hearing; wherefore it seems to be, as it were, its parent and mother. Whence Aquila translates: and all things that contribute to singing shall be bowed down, as if to say: All musical harmony, and every concord grows deaf for old men, because their deaf ears barely hear it, nor are they any longer delighted by it: for to the ears of old men the same thing happens as I said about the eyes in verse 3: and moreover in the ears through old age the internal and innate air, in which sensation or hearing takes place, wastes away, says Valesius. Hence therefore arises in old men a distaste for music.
Hear St. Jerome: "That the daughters of song also grow dumb, or, as is more accurately found in the Hebrew, grow deaf, signifies the ears: because the hearing of old men becomes heavier, and they are unable to discern any differences among voices, nor to delight in songs."
Which indeed Barzillai also says to David, not wishing to cross the Jordan, II Kings 19:31. Truly Plato in the Axiochus: "Into old age, he says, whatever is ruinous in nature pours itself in a mass, so that it cannot be averted by any remedies, etc., and from some it exacts sight, from others hearing, often both as a pledge."
Tropologically, in the dull just man and more so in the sinner, the ears grow deaf, so that he hears neither admonishers, nor God's inspirations, nor the voices of conscience crying out about avoiding sin, about penance, about amendment of life, because he clearly gapes after his concupiscences; wherefore he is deaf to the heavenly voices of angels, while he is wholly intent on the vain songs of the Sirens, that is, of pleasures, by which he is ensnared and demented.
Verse 5: THEY SHALL ALSO FEAR THE HEIGHTS, AND BE TERRIFIED IN THE WAY; THE ALMOND TREE SHALL BLOSSOM, THE LOCUST SHALL GROW FAT, AND THE CAPER SHALL BE SCATTERED: BECAUSE MAN GOES TO THE HOUSE OF HIS ETERNITY, AND THE MOURNERS SHALL GO ABOUT IN THE STREET
For "shall fear" the Hebrew has iirau, for which the Septuagint and Symmachus, reading with a different vowel pointing irau, translate: they shall see. Whence Symmachus: upon this also from on high they shall see, and there will be terror in the way; Campensis: then from heaven they shall fear evil falling upon them.
The word "heights" is taken by some as a nominative plural, as if to say: The exalted and strong also fear in old age. So Emmanuel Sa. Or the exalted and great will all fear the presence of Antichrist, and out of fear will worship him, as St. Bonaventure and Hugo of St. Victor say: The heights, he says, that is, the lofty members of the body, fear, that is, they become trembling, so that rightly the old man can say: "Fear and trembling have come upon me: and darkness has covered me," Psalm 54:6. Or, as Lyranus and Valesius say, as if to say: The exalted powers of the soul, namely the mind and reason, will fear approaching death, because of the dread of the judgment to follow, and because they do not know which way they will take, whether they will go to heaven or to hell.
But in truth "heights" is in the accusative case; for the Hebrew has: from on high they shall fear. The Hebrews, who think the destruction of Jerusalem is predicted here, consider these things to pertain to the trepidation of the Jews; because fleeing the Chaldeans and Romans they will take refuge in the heights of the mountains, but even there they will dread, judging no place safe from the enemy. St. Jerome adds from the opinion of the Hebrews that those arriving at Jerusalem, even the enemies themselves, will fear the greatness of God, and in doubt on the way will dread the destruction of Sennacherib.
But Thaumaturgus, referring these things to the day of judgment, translates: likewise also the cities and their bloodthirsty magistrates will expect vengeance from above, under the pressure of that most bitter and most bloody time, which will be like the blossoming almond tree: for they will fear the heights (that is, the exalted greatness, anger and vengeance of God. Again, as Richard of St. Victor says, they will also fear in lofty fortresses and cliffs and inaccessible places, judging that no security will be theirs there). And they shall dread in the way (so he reads, but incorrectly, since it should be read separately as "in the way," that is, in a flat place), because these will be accessible to Christ the Judge.
These are opposed, but mystical; for literally he continues to describe the miseries of old age, agony and death. The sense therefore is, says St. Jerome (whom Albinus, the Gloss, Vatablus and others follow), as if to say: Old men will not be able to climb steep places, and with weary knees and trembling steps, wavering even on a flat road, they will dread stumbling. Cajetan adds: Old men, he says, are afraid to climb high places, because they fear lest something falling from above might injure them. Clearly Campensis says: terrors will invade them wherever they go; Arias: and dismayed in the way; the Tigurine: they fear both a high place and low places in the way, as if to say: They not only fear high and steep places, but also flat and easy ones, as if they were nerveless and without strength.
And Titelmannus: "Old men, he says, now dying are said to fear the heights and to dread in the way, because because of weakness and failure they become greatly fearful, and as soon as they have heard even a slight little noise, they look upward, as if something bad were threatening them from above, and they greatly dread the terrors that usually come from the sky, such as thunders and lightning. They also have an imagination weakened by defect; whence it happens that they frequently imagine or fear that evils will come upon them from above, when there is nothing. When walking in the way they are also always fearful."
Again, old men fear the heights, that is, arduous, dangerous, difficult things, because cold restricts them, and makes them timid and fainthearted, just as heat makes the young spirited, indeed bold and reckless. Whence Aquila translates: with trembling they fear in the way, that is, in a flat and easy place. The Septuagint: terrors in the way, thence stupors, which compel them often to stop in the way, so that they cannot proceed because of fear and constriction of spirits. In this respect old men are like timid animals, for example geese, which when about to enter through any gate, however large and tall, incline their heads, lest they strike them against the posts and lintel. This is caused by excessive fear and a defect of imagination or the estimative faculty; for they do not know how to compare the length of their neck with the height of the gate, so as to judge that the gate far exceeds it, and therefore that there is no danger of striking their head: wherefore fear compels them to choose what is safe, namely to incline their head.
In a similar way cold and fear in old men makes them fearful, and injures their estimative faculty, so that they do not sufficiently measure or estimate and compare their strength with the high and steep things that should be prudently undertaken, but judge their strength to be weaker and unequal to them: in which they often err, since they have equal, indeed greater strength.
Finally St. Bonaventure and Hugo consider these things to pertain to the trembling of the head and all the limbs in old men, with their knees now weary, and the joints and ligaments of the bones. Others, as if to say: Old men, because they are timid, fear the exalted lightning of heaven, winds, storms; hearing thunder they are dismayed. For they fear above others lest a lightning-stone, flying apart from the collision of thunder, strike their heads.
Mystically, old men and the dying, likewise the sluggish and sinners, fear the heights, that is, heavenly judgment, or, as the Hebrew has it, from on high, that is, Christ the Judge coming to judge from the clouds of heaven, and they dread in the way, namely of judgment, that is, when they will be snatched to the tribunal of the Judge, to receive their reward according to their works: heavenly, if they are good; hellish, if evil. So Olympiodorus and Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 15. Again they will dread the heights, because they will see the sun, moon and stars darkened, the powers of the heavens shaken, the angels and saints descending with Christ in fearful array, to judge and condemn the wicked.
The Chaldean adds that they will fear the heights, that is, the things already past which they did proudly against God; for of these God will demand an exact account from them: "Even the works, he says, which were before these, you will be fearing, whether you remembered them, and a small heap of stones will seem to you like a lofty mountain at the time when you walked in life."
THE ALMOND TREE SHALL BLOSSOM. - Symmachus translates: the watchful shall sleep. But he disagrees with the Hebrew, the Septuagint and the others, as St. Jerome attests. The Hebrew word saked signifies both watchfulness and the almond tree, which is the first among trees to awaken and blossom. Whence the Syriac, embracing both meanings, translates: and wakefulness will pour over him (for the old man suffers wakefulness at night, and is sleepless), and the almond tree will bud.
The Hebrews take it as the watchful rod (in Hebrew saked, that is, almond; for the almond tree is the first of trees to awaken from the severity of winter in spring, and to put forth flowers) which Jeremiah saw, chapter 1:11, threatening the Hebrews with scourges and destruction through the Chaldeans. Thaumaturgus takes it as severe plagues and punishments to be sent upon the wicked by God at the end of the world. Richard of St. Victor thinks that by the flowering almond tree is signified that the almond and other trees at the end of the world will shed their flowers without maturing into fruit, and therefore there will be a great famine: "He does not say, he says, that it will bear fruit, but that it will blossom, so that men under such want may see what they might hope for, and desire it all the more; and when afterwards they have lost what they had hoped for, they may groan more deeply. It will not therefore bear fruit, so as to sustain the hunger of the famished."
These things are apt, but mystical. But literally, the almond tree turning white most quickly and most densely with blossoms represents old age suddenly growing grey with many white hairs, says St. Jerome. Whence Campensis translates: the head shall be sprinkled with grey hairs; for grey hair arises in old men from the phlegmatic moisture of the brain. Grey hair therefore is a sign of approaching old age and death. Hence fortune-tellers, if a boy has dreamed that he is grey-haired, conjecture that he will die soon, says Pierius, Hieroglyphics 31, chapter 25. So it happened to the future emperor Galba, while he was sacrificing, that the hair of a boy among his attendants holding the incense-box suddenly turned grey over his whole head; which the soothsayers said portended a change of emperor, and that an old man would succeed a young one, and soon Galba, an old man of 73 years, succeeded Nero, who was taken away while still young at age 31. So Suetonius in Galba, chapter 10.
The blossom of the almond aptly represents grey hair: first, in color, which in both cases is white; second, in speed: just as the almond is the first to grow white with blossom, so a young man quickly grows grey and old, according to the saying of the poet: Old age, hastened by evils, creeps up unexpectedly, / Untimely grey hairs are shed upon the crown. Third, just as the blossom is proper to the almond, so grey hair is proper to man: "Grey hair belongs only to man and horses, but in man always first on the front of the head, then afterwards on the back," says Pliny, Book XI, chapter 37.
Fourth, the blossom of the almond and violet announces spring, so grey hair announces old age: "The first of flowers announcing spring is the white violet," says Pliny, Book XXI, chapter 11. Fifth, the blossom of the almond, quickly fading and withering, admonishes the young man of approaching death. Hear Pliny, Book XXI, chapter 1: "Nature produces flowers and scents day by day as a great (as is clear) admonition to men, that the things which bloom most spectacularly fade most quickly." Sixth, Pliny, Book XVI, chapter 25: "The blossom of trees, he says, is the sign of full spring, and of the year being reborn; the blossom is the joy of trees. Then they show themselves new and different from what they are: then with the varied paintings of colors they luxuriate even to rivalry."
Thus grey hair, blossoming with prudence and holiness, makes the old man venerable and ripe for heaven, that he may rise as a new and glorious man. Seventh, the almond tree producing flowers, soon from them produces fruit: so the old man, producing grey hairs, from them soon produces death. "Grey hairs therefore, says Hugo the Cardinal, are the flowers of death, announcing it as a fruit to be near at hand, because just as flowers end in fruit, so grey hairs end in death:" death therefore is the fruit of grey hairs, like flowers, through which old men become white and, as it were, candidates for death, and through it for blessed immortality.
Less correctly the Chaldean translates: the top of your spine will sprout because of leanness like an almond tree. Whence some Rabbis, as St. Jerome attests, interpret the sacred spine of the back, meaning that, as the flesh of the buttocks decreases, the spine, or the hip bone, grows up and, in a way, blossoms. And R. Haccados: the head of the bones will appear stripped of flesh and dry; Pagninus calls the part of the hip which is called the ankle. Also less correctly Cajetan, for ianets, that is, shall blossom, reading with a different pointing iianats, translates: it shall be rejected; others: it shall be irritated; others: the fruit of the almond shall be bitter, as if to say: Old men suffer from nausea and disgust of food, wherefore they reject almonds; because, since they are hard and enclosed in a hard shell, they can with difficulty be opened and chewed by toothless old men.
Worse still, Pagninus and some Rabbis translate: intercourse shall be rejected: for they wish the almond tree, which is the first to sprout and blossom, to be a symbol of generation; and others: watchfulness shall be rejected, as if to say: The old man is drowsy, and therefore hates wakefulness, as well as the guarding of the life of which he has grown weary.
Tropologically, old men are the slothful and lazy just; likewise sinners, who, torpid with idleness and softness, and as if without backbone, sit idle, and dare not attempt anything lofty or heroic, according to the saying: "Wisdom is too high for the fool," because he in his laziness estimates it as higher than his strength. Hence "the almond tree blossoms," that is, old men from time to time conceive desires for great virtues, and give the flower, that is, the hope, of great progress, but at the slightest temptation, as if a wind blowing, all these are shaken off; and so they relapse into their sluggishness.
Allegorically Salonius: The almond tree shall blossom, that is, "a rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise from his root," Isaiah 11:1, namely Christ will be born of the Blessed Virgin, who like an almond having skin, shell and kernel, will have flesh and soul, and will blossom, that is, will shine with miracles. But St. Bonaventure more aptly takes the almond as Antichrist, who will flourish with great signs and fictitious miracles. Whence Dioscorides, Book I, chapter 39: "Foxes, he says, if they have devoured them (almonds) with a certain food, will die." So Antichrist with his followers will be fox-like and fraudulent, and caught by his own deceits will perish.
But St. Gregory, Morals XXX, 20 or 12: "The almond, he says, shows its flower before all other trees. And what is signified by the flower of the almond, if not the beginnings of the holy Church, which in its preachers opened the first flowers of virtues, and anticipated the saints to come, like trees following after, for producing the fruits of good works? In which the locust was soon fattened, because the dry barrenness of the Gentiles was infused with the richness of heavenly grace. The caper is scattered, because when the Gentiles, being called, attained the grace of faith, Judea, remaining in its barrenness, lost the order of right living." Rupert says similar things on Revelation chapter 9.
Anagogically St. Cyril, Catechesis 15, takes the flowering almond as the resurrection of bodies to come after the winter of this age, when our bodies, like the almond, will blossom with a heavenly flower: "Ecclesiastes saw, he says, this coming of the Lord, and the consummation of the world, saying: Rejoice, O youth," etc. And a little later: "And what will happen when the Lord comes? The almond tree will blossom, and the locust will grow fat, and the caper will be scattered. Just as the interpreters say: The flowering almond signifies the passing of winter, so also our bodies after the winter of this age will blossom with a super-heavenly flower. And the locust will be expanded, that is, the winged soul, which is now surrounded by the body; and the caper will be scattered, that is, the wicked and thorny ones will be dispersed. Do you see how they predict the coming of the Lord?"
See what I said about Aaron's almond rod in Numbers 17:8, and about the watchful rod in Jeremiah 1:11.
THE LOCUST SHALL GROW FAT. - The Syriac: the locust shall be multiplied; the Arabic: the locust shall grow thick. Aptly to the almond he adds the locust, because natural philosophers report that the locust is more quickly fattened by almond blossoms; for we find by experience that man is very well nourished by almonds: well known are the marzipan confections, which are made from almonds, and are a delicacy for princes. In a similar way to the locust he adds the caper, which in color, swelling and taste is similar to the locust, and therefore is its food and fodder.
The Hebrews take the locust as Nebuchadnezzar with the Chaldeans, and Titus with the Romans, who like locusts devoured Jerusalem and Judea, according to Joel 1:4: "What the caterpillar left, the locust ate." Thaumaturgus takes the locusts as frequent and dense plagues which will precede the day of judgment, and will devour men and the whole world: "Then, he says, punishments will be present in such frequency as the multitude of locusts flying in." Richard of St. Victor properly takes the locusts, which will devour the fields and all growth. Whence also St. John, in Revelation chapter 9, verses 3 and 4, extensively describes the locusts preceding the judgment. See what was said there.
But literally all these things pertain to the miseries of old age, but various interpreters take the locust in various ways. In Hebrew it is: shall be burdened, or shall be a burden, hechagab, that is, the locust, or cicada, as the Tigurine translates. Whence first, the Tigurine translates: the cicada bears itself; and Clarius: the locust shall be weighed down; Vatablus: the locust is a burden to him, as if to say: The old man is so weak that he cannot even carry a locust or cicada; second, Cajetan translates: the buttocks shall be burdened, for these in old men are so heavy that when sitting they can scarcely rise. Pagninus however: the back shall be burdened.
Third, the Rabbis crudely take the locust as lust and venereal impulses, by which, because of the abundance of humors and gas, old men are not rarely agitated: for rawness and gas are stimuli of lust, as St. Jerome attests. Fourth, Valesius, Sacred Philosophy chapter 66, thinks the locust signifies the callous hardness of old men in the skin, which like a locust hardens into a crust because of dryness: for he takes the locust as a marine creature, which is of the genus of crabs, and is called a carabus or ostracoderma, that is, having a shell-like crust; fifth and genuinely, St. Jerome says that by the fattened locust is signified "the legs of old men swelling with phlegm, and weighed down with the tumors of gout." Whence the Chaldean translates: the ankles of your feet shall be swollen. Moringus notes that locusts have thicker thighs, especially in India, where Pliny, Book XI, chapter 29, teaches that they are three feet long and cut plants like saws.
St. Bonaventure takes the locust as the bloated swelling of the whole body of the old man, because of the weakness of heat, which cannot digest the abundance of phlegm and humors. Properly by the locust, pot-bellied and swollen with the foul juice of herbs, so that its whole body seems to be nothing but belly, you may understand the swollen belly of old men from the abundance of undigested food, phlegm and raw humors. Whence follows looseness of the bowels, moisture and flux: so Lyranus, Dionysius, Titelmannus, and Levinus Lemnius, Book of Similitudes and Parables chapter 48, where he treats these enigmatic parables of old age from a physical and medical perspective.
THE LOCUST SHALL GROW FAT, - that is, the belly, says Alcazar, on Revelation 9, page 523; for the locust is voracious and with a fat belly, so that it seems to be all belly, as if to say: The belly of the young man, which like a locust was insatiable, in old age will be affected with such satiety that neither almonds nor capers can arouse its appetite: for these two especially stimulate the appetite. This is what he says: The almond tree shall blossom, as if to say: Granted that the almond tree blossoms and produces soft and most delicious almonds, yet the locust, that is, the weak and prostrate belly, will by no means be aroused to eat them, but from disgust and nausea, as if already satiated, will reject the flower and fruit of the almond. Hence also the caper shall be scattered, that is, shall be rejected and dispersed by him, which otherwise is accustomed to provoke and stimulate the appetite.
Moreover, the locust at first slender, light, mobile, wandering and leaping represents youth, wandering, light and agile for pleasures; but the same when full of food, swollen and turgid represents old age swollen with phlegm and stiff with rawness.
Hear Rupert, on Revelation chapter 9: "The almond tree will blossom, and the locust will grow fat; which is the same, he says, as if to say: He who now walks green and upright, and leaps like a locust, will grow grey, and bent will scarcely begin to walk, and having swollen legs, will by no means, as then, shake himself nimbly and gesticulating in a leap: for the locust is fattened when, after the light youth has passed, the legs swell, as usually happens to old men."
Mystically Hugo: "The almond tree will blossom," that is, he says, "the rational power through faith, which by purifying makes the soul flourishing." "The locust will grow fat," that is, the concupiscible power through charity, which is the fatness and nourishment of virtues. "The caper will be scattered," that is, the bitterness of vices in the irascible power through zeal, which scatters all vices, so that here is mystically described the old age and death of vices, and the youth of virtues.
Tropologically, Salonius takes the fat locust as the abundance of spiritual goods; Hugo, also of temporal goods, given to the Gentiles through Christ; so also St. Gregory whose words I have already recited. More aptly you may refer these to old men, that is, old just men and sinners, as if to say: Just as the locust falls to the ground because of the weight of its belly, so the sluggish, from time to time impelled by God, or by superiors, or by companions, raise their souls and fly by desire to heavenly things, but immediately weighed down by the allurement of the belly, that is, of gluttony and luxury, fall back to the pleasures of the flesh.
Anagogically, Cyril, Catechesis 15, takes the locust as the soul, which in the resurrection, fattened, in Greek pachynthisa, that is, expanded, from the constraints of the body as from a prison will fly to God. Again, the almond tree dense with flowers is a herald of abundant fruit. Hear Pierius, Hieroglyphics 51, chapter 23: "The almond tree, clothed with flowers before all others, not only displays the hope of its own abundance, but also promises a fertile year for other crops. Whence Virgil, seeing it flowering first of all, deterred by nothing, not even the severity of January, advises us that from the multitude of its flowers we can conceive the hope of a joyful harvest in the grain, with these verses: Observe also, when the nut tree most abundantly in the forests / Clothes itself in bloom, and bends its fragrant branches; / If the fruits prevail, the grain will follow equally, / And a great threshing will come with great heat."
So Virgil, Georgics Book I. In a similar way old age, pregnant with merits as well as years, is a herald of the great crown and glory impending in heaven; for an upright old man has one foot in the ground and the grave, the other in heaven. The almond tree therefore is a symbol of hope, and of hoped-for fruit and glory.
More aptly Olympiodorus takes the locusts as the bodies of the damned, fattened by gluttony and pleasures, which hell will feed upon, so that it seems to grow fat on them.
AND THE CAPER SHALL BE SCATTERED. - Symmachus: the strength of the spirit shall be dissolved. But he disagrees with the Hebrew and the Septuagint, says St. Jerome. The Hebrews, as St. Jerome attests, interpret the scattering of the caper as the dissolution of friendship with God, by which the Jews were delivered to the Chaldeans and Romans; for the Hebrew abiiona signifies love and friendship, from aba, that is, he willed, he loved; whence ab and abba, that is, father. Hence one translator renders: mutual alliance shall be scattered.
Thaumaturgus refers it to the day of judgment, that on that day the wicked are to be removed from the midst like black and despicable, and thorny (says Cyril, Catechesis 15) capers. "So sinners will be cast out from the midst, like the black and most despised caper," says Thaumaturgus. St. Bonaventure: the caper will be scattered, he says, that is, the carnal and the luxurious, out of fear of the torments of Antichrist, will depart from the faith. Richard of St. Victor interprets the scattering of the caper as famine and extreme poverty: for the caper is a cheap food. Whence the proverb, "you who can live on capers, anthia."
But literally these things pertain to the defects of old men. The caper in Hebrew is abiiona, that is, love, desire, appetite, greediness, concupiscence, and hence caper: for it stimulates the appetite and desire for food, especially if taken with vinegar and honey or oil, as Galen and the physicians teach, and daily experience. The sense therefore is, as if to say: In old men the appetite for food perishes, say Cajetan and Moringus; in them also the appetite for sexual pleasure and luxury perishes: for the caper stimulates this (whence some derive caper from the Greek word kaprao, that is, I excite to luxury), says Valesius: "because the lust of old men grows cold, and the organs of intercourse are destroyed," says St. Jerome. So also St. Eucherius in the Formulae, St. Bonaventure, Albinus, Hugo, Lyranus and others. Whence the Chaldean translates: you will be prohibited from intercourse; Pagninus: concupiscence shall be scattered; the Tigurine: the appetite will reject things offered; Vatablus: that concupiscible power shall be scattered or extinguished.
Finally, in old men every appetite for any thing and any pleasure perishes; for they suffer from weariness and disgust of all things, because the concupiscible power is weak in them, as is every other faculty. Whence R. David: "The desiring soul, he says, dissolves its covenant with the body." Somewhat differently Marinus in the Lexicon translates and explains: "The will, he says, will weaken (namely the old man); for in the old man only the concupiscible power remains, and it torments him, since he cannot accomplish what he desires."
Pineda adds that by the scattered caper is understood one that is flowering and open, which is unfit for eating: for when the caper opens, it seems to be scattered and, as it were, dispersed; therefore the scattered caper fittingly represents an age on the decline, which is neither precious nor in delights, nor suitable for seizing pleasures; and it does not stimulate a man to base pleasures, as the still tender and closed caper does; since it has not yet opened into a flower, the opposite effects and representation obtain.
Finally Valesius, by the caper, which usually grows in uncultivated places, ruins and graves, takes it as death and funeral rites, as if to say: Old men will finally reach the point where the caper occupying the graves is scattered, that is, the grave is opened in which the old man now dead is placed. But this explanation is unfitting, indeed less true, foreign and far-fetched. For here the signs of old age are treated, rather than of death: for he will give the signs of death in verse 6.
Moreover, what carnal men consider a defect of old age, is its praise, honor and reward, namely that in it concupiscence is quieted. Whence Cicero, On Old Age, from Plato, Republic Book I: "O excellent gift of age! Since indeed it takes from us what is the most vicious thing even in youth, namely pleasure."
Tropologically, the caper is scattered when the appetite for heavenly food, namely holy doctrine, the Eucharist and spiritual things, languishes in the old man, that is, in the sluggish just man and the sinner, to such a degree that even if you set before him the most delicate dishes of those things, he disdains them all as if nauseated; wherefore he himself causes nausea to God, so that He vomits him from His mouth, Revelation 3:16.
Anagogically, Olympiodorus: "With the just flourishing (like heavenly almonds), he says, but sinners delivered to eternal punishment, the caper is scattered and vanishes, which, since it has a certain bitterness and saltiness, represents the anxiety and solicitude of sin. But sin itself, since it is a certain privation and does not truly subsist, will be reduced to nothing and will cease, when men, after the judgment is completed, will no longer sin in this world." Hence also the Syriac translates: the caper shall be scattered, and wickedness shall cease, which the thorns of the caper represent; the Arabic: pride shall be dissolved. For the caper, although it benefits those with spleen diseases, yet it harms the stomach and other members, as Pliny attests, Book XIII, chapter 23, and Book XX, chapter 15, treating of the caper: "One must beware, he says, of its foreign varieties; since the Arabian is pestilent, the African hostile to the gums, the Marmarican to the womb and to all flatulence, the Apulian causes vomiting, and moves the stomach and bowels."
Dioscorides adds, Book II, chapter 169: "The African, and especially the Marmarican caper is extremely flatulent; the Apulian causes vomiting; and that which is brought from the Libyan and from the Red Sea is wonderfully pungent; for it raises blisters in the mouth, and eats away the gums to the bone: wherefore it is not unreasonably condemned in foods." Aptly therefore the caper signifies the wicked and malicious, especially the gluttonous and luxurious; for the caper stimulates gluttony and luxury.
BECAUSE MAN GOES TO THE HOUSE OF HIS ETERNITY. - In Hebrew: because man goes to the house of his age; the Chaldean: for man declines to take care of himself in the house of his grave; the Syriac: of his labor; the Arabic: man has set out to the dwelling of his age; Campensis: the house of another age; the Tigurine: the everlasting house.
And so the house of eternity into which the dying man goes, first, is the very state of death, so that henceforth he dwells among the dead, and does not return to life and the living in this world for all eternity; second, it is the tomb. So the Chaldean and St. Jerome. Whence Ulpian calls it perpetual burial in the Digest, On the Violation of Graves, L. 3. The old inscription on tombs is well known: "He placed for himself this eternal seat." And that epitaph of Petronius Antigenides: This is an eternal house; here I am placed; here I will be forever. And that of Psalm 48:12: "Their graves are their houses forever."
Third, it is the eternal house of the pious in heaven, of the impious in hell, according to each one's merit or demerit. For this is what "his" signifies, as if to say: which each one has merited for himself and obtained by his own merits. So Richard of St. Victor, who also weighs the word "eternity," as if to say: "All things there are immovable, nothing transitory, and whether immovable goods or immovable evils." Therefore, if you are wise, "in all your works remember your last things (especially the most happy or most miserable eternity: for one or the other certainly awaits you, indeed expects you), and you will never sin," Sirach 7:40.
Mystically, the Hebrews apply this to their captivity, and truly, because it is eternal, and will always endure until the end of the world. Better Thaumaturgus refers it to the day of judgment, and assigns the house of eternity to the just and elect, but the going about and mourning to the wicked and reprobate: "And indeed the good man, he says, sets out for his eternal home; but the wicked will fill everything with their mourning, and neither stored-up silver nor refined gold will avail them." So also Olympiodorus and St. Bonaventure.
Thinking on these things, Theodore the Studite, about to die, making his will in the year of the Lord 826, concluded it thus: "Brothers, farewell; for I enter upon a journey from which there is no return; which all from the beginning of time have entered upon, and which you also afterwards, when this life is done, will enter upon. But I know not, my brothers, where I go, and what judgment awaits me, or what place will receive me." So Michael the Studite in his Life.
Wherefore Gregory of Nazianzus in his Tetrastichs, page 4359: Always, he says, do attend to your salvation. / Especially under the last day of life, / Old age comes, the herald announces the departure: / Let all prepare themselves: God the Judge is at hand.
The same in his Distichs: "Live for everlasting eternity;" and, as Zeuxis said, "paint for eternity." Ruminating on the length of eternity, Theodore sent farewell to the ample riches and joys of earth, as transient and vain, and embraced the monastic life in the monastery of St. Pachomius. So the Life of St. Pachomius says.
Recently the Most Reverend Lord Godfrey, Bishop of Bamberg (whose spiritual conversation I enjoyed at Wurzburg when coming to Rome), had this fixed in his mind: "Every day I stand at the door of eternity," so that I may soon enter its house. Let each person fix this same thought in mind and say: Shortly I must die to time and temporal pomp; live therefore for eternity and everlasting goods: "Death, says St. Bernard, is at the doors for the old, but in ambush for the young, because of the various accidents of youth:" "for young men, says Macrobius, fall into diseases more easily, suffer illness more gravely, and are cured with more difficulty."
AND THE MOURNERS SHALL GO ABOUT IN THE STREET. - First, the parents, relatives and friends of the deceased: for they are accustomed to surround and encircle the bier, to bid a last farewell to the deceased, and to perform funeral tears and rites. This going about, says our Lorinus, suggests a restless, anxious mind, agitated by love and grief conflicting with each other, the body also variously tormented even to mental disturbance and madness from the bitterness of grief. Again, the word "shall go about" pertains to the bier-bearers and the running about of the mourning women; for the professional mourners, flute-players and elegists were accustomed to sing elegies and dirges to the flute or trumpet, running about the funeral with clapping of hands, plucking of cheeks and hair, and tearing of breast and garments. For this was the pomp of the funeral, and the lamentation for the dead.
Second, properly you may take this going about, because of old they used to go about the tombs, both pagans and Christians; whence St. Jerome on Ezekiel chapter 40: "When I was, he says, a boy at Rome, etc., I used to go about the tombs of the apostles and martyrs with others of the same age on Sundays." Xiphilinus on Severus: "He was honored, he says, by the running about of his children;" Appian, Book I, at the funeral of Viriathus: "Infantry and cavalry running about in troops in a circle, with their arms praised him in barbarian fashion."
Dio, Book 46, at the funeral of Augustus assigns the first place for going about to the priests, the second to the knights; and Book 59, at the funeral of Drusilla: "Separately, he says, the equestrian order rode about the tumult of her pyre." Moreover at the funeral of commanders and illustrious men, soldiers and others used to go about the pyre three times with trumpets sounding, and to throw torches, indeed even weapons onto it, to testify to their love for the deceased and their grief.
Hear Virgil, Aeneid XI, at the funeral of Pallas: Three times around the kindled pyres, girt with gleaming arms, / They ran, three times on horseback they circled the sad fire / Of the funeral, and from their mouths gave forth wailing.
In Lucan, Book VIII, Pompey says he does not want this pomp of a funeral: So that the whole army, mourning, might go about the fire / With weapons cast down. Valerius Flaccus, Book VIII of the Argonautica: Then with the Minyans making three armed circles. / The shaken pyres trembled, three times the air shuddered / With grief, with the trumpet sounding, they threw / Torches then with a final cry.
Moreover they ran on the left side, with standards reversed, for the sake of mourning. Hear Statius, Book VI of the Thebaid: And they encircle, as is the custom, on the left / The pyre, and standing, bend the flames with dust. / Three times they drove curved courses, and weapons struck / Against weapons resound: four times the arms produced a horrible crash, / Four times the arms of the serving-women a soft lamentation.
Servius adds, in Book VI of the Aeneid: "The circle of the people standing about remained at the pyre, responding to the lamentations of the chief mourner, that is, the leader of the mourning, as long as the last word was spoken, ilicet, which means 'you may go.'" Macrobius, Book II On the Dream of Scipio, chapter 3, asserts from common practice: "The institutions of very many nations and regions have established that the dead should be accompanied to burial with song, from this conviction, that after the body the souls are believed to return to the origin of musical sweetness, that is, to heaven."
Symbolically, some take the mourners in the street as the moist, bleary and weeping eyes of old men, "in the street," that is, in the face, in which as in a street is all the business and activity of the senses.
Mystically, angels both good and evil stand about the dying person, to seize his soul, and therefore they will go about mourning.
St. Anthony, about to die, bade his followers farewell thus: "I indeed, he says, my little children, according to the words of Scripture, am going the way of the fathers. For now the Lord invites me, now I desire to see heavenly things; but you, O my dear ones, I admonish not to suddenly lose the labor of so long a time. Consider that today you have taken up the religious endeavor, and let the fortitude of the will you have begun grow. Sigh for Jesus, etc. Be diligent to keep the commandments of the Lord, so that after your death, the holy ones may receive you as friends and acquaintances into eternal tabernacles, etc. Farewell, my dear ones: for Anthony departs, and will no longer be in the present age." So St. Athanasius reports in his Life.
The daily discourse of that great Simeon Stylites inculcated nothing other than eternity and eternal happiness, "commanding them to look up to heaven and fly there, and to depart from earth, and to apprehend by vision the kingdom that is expected, and to fear the threats of hell, and to despise earthly things, and to await future things," says Theodoret in the Philotheus, chapter 28; and in chapter 30, he commemorates this teaching of the admirable Domnina: "It is necessary to compare future things with present, eternal with momentary, glory with affliction: for the latter has what is momentary, but the former has what is eternal."
Finally, eternity is the house of God, who accordingly is "the High One, dwelling in eternity," Isaiah 57:15. For just as time is the measure of the duration of men: so the aeon is that of angels, and eternity that of God, as St. Thomas teaches, Part I, Question 10, articles 3 and 4. they used to go about the tombs, both pagans and Christians; whence St. Jerome on Ezekiel chapter 40: "When I was, he says, a boy at Rome, etc., I used to go about the tombs of the apostles and martyrs with others of the same age on Sundays." Xiphilinus on Severus: "He was honored, he says, by the running about of his children;" Appian, Book I, at the funeral of Viriathus: "Infantry and cavalry running about in troops in a circle, with their arms praised him in barbarian fashion."
The Chaldean: Round about, he says, the angels will run, demanding you for judgment like mourners who go about the crossroads, to reckon the account of your sentence; and the Arabic: And the elect, he says, have now traversed the street.
Verse 6: BEFORE THE SILVER CORD IS BROKEN, AND THE GOLDEN BAND RUNS BACK, AND THE PITCHER IS SHATTERED AT THE FOUNTAIN, AND THE WHEEL IS BROKEN AT THE CISTERN.
Symmachus: before it is cut from the silver cord. For "is broken" some Hebrew codices read ierachec, that is, let it be lengthened, that is, let it be stretched and by stretching broken; the Complutensian reads ierctec, which the Rabbis translate: let it be bound, constricted, contracted, that is, let it become shorter; our translator better renders: let it be broken, as is clear from the Septuagint who translate: let it be overturned; the Syriac: let it be torn apart; the Arabic: let it be dissolved.
It is a hysterologia, or hyperbaton, that is, a disturbed order. For after the hidden enigmas of the miseries of old age, which he has recounted up to this point, he returns to the aim and end proposed in verse 1, and he inculcates and presses it, as if to say: Remember, O youth, your Creator in the days of your youth before the silver cord is broken. So St. Jerome, Albinus and others.
You will ask, what is the silver cord? The Hebrews take it as the glory and magnificence of Jerusalem, which was broken and scattered in its destruction by the Chaldeans and Romans. Thaumaturgus and Olympiodorus take it as silver and wealth, which like cords are accustomed to entangle the avaricious in many sins, to be broken and abolished on the day of judgment, and therefore to be despised. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 15, takes it as the folding together of the stars that will occur at the day of judgment, according to that saying of Christ: "The stars will fall from heaven;" and that of Isaiah 34:4: "They will be folded up like a scroll of heaven;" for the stars are white, and shine like silver.
Richard of St. Victor properly takes the silver cord, as if to say: Nobles are accustomed to hang precious things by silver cords; but on the day of judgment, from fear and horror of the common devastation, they will break them and throw them on the dunghill. all will desire it, because life itself will come into weariness and hatred for all.
But these are mystical; for literally it notes some misery of old age. Whence, first, the Chaldean takes the silver cord as the little tongue, or ligament of the tongue, by which the tongue is bound to the palate. Whence he translates: before your tongue is struck dumb from speaking. Second, Cajetan takes it as the chain of humors, in which the life of man consists; Lyranus, the harmony of the elements, and the tempering in the human body.
Third, St. Bonaventure takes it as the wrapping and contraction of the nerves, which are white and as if silvery, and gird and bind the body, and in old age and death are loosened and dissolved: whence it happens that old men suffer from paralysis, spasm, apoplexy, gout of the hands, and gout of the feet. Fourth, Hugo takes it as the continuation of life; for just as a cord is woven from the continuation of threads, so life is woven from the continuation of days and times. Fifth, Moringus takes it as philarguria, or the love of silver and money, that is, avarice, by which as by a cord the souls of avaricious men are bound, which is broken in death.
Sixth and genuinely, the silver cord is called the spinal marrow of the back with the distribution of the nerves that arise from it; for by the nerves as by certain cords all the parts of the body are bound and secured. For this marrow is white, and shines with a silvery color; when it is broken, dissolved or loosened, a man becomes paralytic (as many old men suffer from paralysis), and in death it is always dissolved; but earlier in old men it is bent, and therefore the back is curved, and the whole man leans forward toward the earth and gazes at the stones; whence he is also called silicernium (stone-gazer).
To this pertains that saying of Cornelius Gallus: We are contracted, and in a wondrous way we ourselves diminish: / You would think it is a diminution of our body. And this of the same poet: And he becomes entirely three-footed and four-footed like a little infant, / And through the sordid ground, pitifully, he crawls. And that of Ovid, Book XIV: And with trembling step comes feeble old age, / Which must be endured for a long time.
Wherefore all the Hebrews interpret this cord as the thread of the sacred spine of the back, which beginning from the brain at the back of the head extends all the way to the buttocks, through eighteen joints and nodes of the back. So Valesius, Sacred Philosophy chapter 66, Hugo and others. Pineda adds that it is called a cord because it reaches to the ends of the back, and is poured out and divided into certain small and thin cords, as into filaments resembling a horse's tail. Also the nerves, which emerge from that sacred spine through the openings of the vertebrae, are very numerous and very thin, and at the same time, coming together through their conjugations, they make, as it were, a cord, composing one thicker nerve. Moreover, it resembles silver in its white color, both because, like the brain, it is bloodless; and because of its excellence similar to the brain, and for this reason it is enclosed in the vertebrae as by certain fences, and protected by a thin membrane; and also so that the animal spirits, which are diffused through it, may be most clear and most bright. Thus far Pineda from Andrea Laurentius, Book X of the Anatomy, chapter 12.
To this adds Cardinal John Vitalis, who lived three hundred years ago, in the Moral Mirror of Sacred Scripture, under the word Death, who considers that by the silver cord is denoted the continuation of the marrow, which binds the spondylial bones, which by some physicians is called the nuca; and it is called, he says, a cord because it extends from the last part of the brain, and from there descends binding the spondylial bones all the way down; silver because of its usefulness and nobility: since, as Constantinus says, by its warmth it tempers the coldness of the bones, by its unctuousness and moisture it irrigates the dryness of the same, by its substantial property it nourishes and preserves the animal virtue, and by means of certain nerves administers continuous sensation and motion, in the manner of quicksilver, to all the members placed below the neck. Thus far Vitalis.
Symbolically, the silver cord, as well as the golden band, is the bright life of man, say St. Jerome and Albinus, and especially the bright and rosy youth, in which a man is vigorous and flourishing. So also Hugo, the interlinear Gloss and Titelmannus, who also adds the reason: Because, he says, just as from the touch and twisting of fragile linen a cord is made, so life is woven from individual days, succeeding one another in mutual order and a certain connection, and these brief; it is silver because life is of value, and enjoys light, which the life of the damned lacks, dwelling in darkness, pitch and fire, and therefore resembling a pitchy cord. The life of the blessed therefore is golden, because it is most precious; that of wayfarers is silver, because of middle value; that of the damned leaden and pitchy, because most worthless.
It is called a little cord, not a rope, because life is small and brief, according to Job 14:5: "The days of man are short." Richard of St. Victor adds: "The body is called a cord, says St. Bonaventure, because by certain laws of nature it binds the soul to itself."
Anagogically, in death the silver cord perishes, that is, worldly eloquence ceases, which produces a pleasing sound in the ears, and ties and binds words to words, according to the saying: "Friend, how did you enter here without having a wedding garment? But he was struck dumb," Matthew 22:12. Again, Olympiodorus takes it as the doctrine of Sacred Scripture, which restrains and binds the affections and vices, which the sinner casts away and breaks; and in death all salutary doctrine grows deaf and vanishes, for in the dying the hearing is dulled, and all sense, intellect, cognition and thought, especially the sublime and heavenly, which pertains to eternal salvation.
AND THE GOLDEN BAND RUNS BACK. - For "runs back," the Hebrew is iaruts, which if from the root ruts
So also Titelmannus: "By the silver cord," he says, "understand the continuous extension of the nerves throughout all the members of the body. By the golden band, the connection of the veins and arteries, which similarly extend throughout the whole body. For it is established from the teaching of the physicians that nerves are spread throughout the whole body, which bind all its members together like a cord, and make them cohere with one another. Likewise, veins and arteries spread through all the members: so that through the veins nourishment, and through the arteries breath, is conveyed to each member. And just as a nerve, from its natural quality, appears white and somewhat milky, representing the color of silver in some way, so veins and arteries are more reddish, on account of the blood, and more similar to gold in color. Moreover, the veins and arteries are distributed through the individual parts of the body with a most wonderful arrangement and skill, in much the same way that bands are woven together through an artistic composition. And hence it comes about that we call the extension of the nerves a silver cord, and the arrangement of the veins and arteries a golden band. How in death both the silver cord is broken and the golden band contracts, is sufficiently evident to anyone who considers that all things immediately after death dissolve into dust." So Titelmannus.
Fourth, Cardinal John Vitalis takes the golden band as the vital spirit that is in the heart: "Because just as a woman's band," he says, "holds the hairs of the head together, lest they fall out and scatter, so the vital spirit holds together all things that are in the human body, lest they be corrupted: so that it is rightly called golden, both on account of its preciousness and on account of its perpetuity; because the heart is always in perpetual motion as long as a man lives."
Fifth and genuinely, the golden band is the meninx, that is, the thin membrane which contains the brain, serving as its wrapping and, as it were, a band enclosing it; hence if it is broken or injured (as happens in death), the person must necessarily die. It is called golden because it is spread out and yellow like gold; because it is warm; and because it is most precious like gold, to the point that many physicians, among whom is Francisco Valles, judge that the principle of sensation belongs to it rather than to the brain. Hence it also adheres so inseparably to the brain that when the brain dries out and shrinks (as happens in old people), it too contracts and wrinkles, and thus recedes from the skull of the head and draws back into itself. Hence the skull dries out and becomes bald, just as when the earth dries out, its herbs and shoots wither. This, therefore, is the cause of baldness. So Francisco Valles, Sacred Philosophy, chapter LXVI.
More clearly the Chaldean, who translates: and let your brain be broken in your head; and Vatablus: and let the collection of golden fluid disperse; Campensis: that golden fat.
Symbolically, St. Jerome takes the golden band, as well as the silver cord, as the soul and life: "The silver cord," he says, "indicates this bright life and the breath which is bestowed upon us from heaven. The return of the golden band also signifies the soul, which returns thither whence it descended." So also Albinus, Lyra, Hugh, Denis, the Glossa, and Titelmannus, whom hear: "I think the soul of man can be called a band, because just as a band binds all the hairs of the head together into one, lest they scatter — and once it is removed, they disperse into their multitude — so the soul in the body, enclosing all the members, so many and so diverse, as it were within the compass of its power, holds them together at once, lest they fall apart from one another: but once it is removed, all things dissolve. Moreover, the rational soul is rightly called a golden band because of its excellence, namely because it was created in the image and likeness of God, displaying a magnificent glory in this nobility of its condition, and surpassing all bodily forms, just as gold by its brilliance and nobility excels all other metals."
Anagogically, the golden band is the glory of the blessed and eternal life, or rather the most noble harmony of body and soul, which will be granted to the elect in the resurrection. So Denis and Lyra. St. Bonaventure agrees: "The golden band," he says, "is the emblem of priestly or royal dignity, to which a diadem is given; because then both shall return to their source, namely to Christ and to God, who alone will then reign in the blessed, and will make them priests and kings," I Corinthians XV, 25; Apocalypse V, 10.
You will ask: what is this golden band that will return, that is, will roll back and contract in old age and death? The Hebrews take it as the Ark of the Covenant, which was lost in the Babylonian captivity and carried away by Jeremiah. Thaumaturgus, referring all these things to the end of the world and the day of judgment: "Then," he says, "just as hidden silver, so also refined gold will be of no use." So also, more or less, Richard of St. Victor. Cyril, however, in Catechesis 15, explains it: "Before the sun is worn away." Olympiodorus interprets it as the flower and beauty of gold, or its repository and chest, and all precious things that will perish at the end of the world, or indeed that will perish for every rich person at death, as if to say: Remember your God, O young man, before that time comes when avarice will be destroyed and neither gold nor silver can be of any profit. So too Titelmannus takes the band of gold, or the golden band, as the purse of gold in which the greedy delight.
But literally these things pertain to the miseries of old age and death. Hence first, Hugh takes the golden band as the broad nerve, which after decoction has a golden color, and in death is broken. Second, Cajetan translates: and the fountain of gold will be broken, that is, the binding together of the elements and humors, which is the fountain of constitution and life, and therefore precious like gold, will be dissolved, and thus the person will die. So he. Third, St. Bonaventure by the golden band understands the wrapping of the veins and arteries, golden on account of the blood, which they contain.
Instead of "band," Hugh and some others incorrectly read "life." A "band" is a head covering, or a linen case, in which women wrap the hairs of the head: for this is what the Hebrew word גלה gulla signifies. The Septuagint translates it as ἀνθέμιον χρύσιον (golden flower-ornament), by which, although Cyril in Catechesis 15 takes it as the anthemin plant, which, he says, is a well-known herb, having many leaf-buds like rays, Pliny nevertheless, in Book XXII, chapter XXI, writes that it is called chamomile on account of its apple-like scent, and adds that it has "small flowers, either white like rue, or honey-colored, or purple;" Dioscorides says "the flowers in the middle are golden." Hence Olympiodorus here translates it as "flower of gold," for ἄνθος means flower. Lorinus thinks it is what is commonly called chamomile. See Dioscorides, Book III, chapter CLIV. Hesychius in his Lexicon calls it marjoram. Suidas and Thaumaturgus translate it as "chosen gold." Better, however, the same Olympiodorus, according to Budaeus, thinks that ἀνθέμιον, or ἀναθέμιον, is the same as ἀναθήκη, that is, a repository and case, such as a band is. Hence the Vatican codices, as well as St. Jerome in the old edition, following the Septuagint, translate it as "golden band." Symmachus agrees, who translates: and what surrounds it is struck, and what encompasses it is wounded.
[Continuing from previous page:] it is derived, it means "let it run, let it run back"; but if from רצץ ratsats, it means "let it be crushed." Hence Thaumaturgus interprets it of gold and riches to be destroyed at the end of the world and melted by the fire of the world's conflagration. Another renders: let the rose of gold be pressed; another: let the golden fountain be broken.
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AND LET THE JAR BE BROKEN (Syriac: let it be shattered; Arabic: let it be destroyed) AT THE FOUNTAIN. — Cajetan: let the pitcher be broken at the fountain; another: at the spring. The Hebrews take the jar as the tablets of the Decalogue, contained in the Ark of the Covenant as in a fountain, which were broken in the captivity. Thaumaturgus takes it of the end of the world: for then the blows will be so great everywhere that they will overturn even jars standing beside the fountain. Richard interprets it that the malice and envy of men will then be so great that they will pour out even the jars of their neighbors, from which they had drawn waters from the fountain, so they have nothing to drink; likewise the wheel, as follows, over the cistern — that is, the rope and buckets with which they drew water from the well — they will smash, so they cannot draw water. But literally, this passage deals with the miseries of old age and death.
First, therefore, Aben Ezra, Hugh, and Clarius take the jar as the gallbladder; the fountain as the liver. Hence the Chaldean translates: and let your gall be broken in your liver; or, as Costus has it, the gall of your liver. Second, Cajetan and others take the jar as the breath, and the fountain as the lungs, as if to say: Before your breath is cut off by disease and death, and the lung is closed, which draws in the air and cool breath to fan and cool the heart — for it is the fan of the heart. Third, many take the jar as the body; the fountain as the four elements, as if to say: Before the body is crushed in death and flows back into its elements, from which it was compacted. So the Author
The Catena of the Greeks: "As a jar," it says, "broken at the fountain, the water runs back again into the fountain: so the dissolved body returns to the earth, prepared for the Maker of all things, so that it may be reformed." So also Titelmannus takes the breaking of the jar at the fountain as the dissolution of the body — which, like an earthen jar, was formed by God from the clay of the earth to receive in itself the water of life — into the parts from which it was fused and compacted together, and this beside the fountain, because the water of the rational soul does not perish, being immortal; but once the jar — that is, the body — is broken, it runs back to the fountain, that is, to God, who gave it, namely to the abyss of divine goodness whence it flowed. Moreover, the parts of the jar do not perish, but remain beside the fountain, because the body is not annihilated, but only dissolved: hence God in the resurrection will once again unite and join together the dissolved parts.
This meaning is fitting, but general and mystical: for these riddles, distributed among different things, denote the different parts and members of the human person. Fourth, Lyra takes the jar as the framework of all the members, which draw life from the fountain — that is, from the heart — namely the vital spirit, and which is dissolved and broken in death. Another takes the jar as the heart itself, which has the form of a jar, and draws spirit and life from the fountain, that is, from the soul. Fifth, Rabbi David takes the jar as the belly, which is split at the fountain — that is, in the tomb — because just as people carry a jar to the fountain as to its proper place, so they carry the belly and the whole deceased person to the tomb, so that it may return to the earth from which it came.
Sixth, St. Bonaventure takes the jar as the bladder, "which," he says, "draws urine from the liver, whence, as from a fountain, the filtrate of the blood and other humors flows into the whole body: and the bladder in the dying is broken" — that is, dissolved. So also Valles and Titelmannus, whom hear: "Just as a jar is a vessel receiving water drawn from the fountain, so the bladder is a receptacle of the humors proceeding from the liver, as from the fountain of all humors: for from there blood and other humors are conveyed to the rest of the members. Therefore, the jar is broken at the fountain in death, when the bladder ruptures and breaks, and no longer receives humors from the liver as it used to."
Seventh and genuinely, by the jar understand those receptacles of blood and veins which receive blood from the liver as from a fountain, which in death are broken — that is, they fail and are dissipated; for when the liver fails, the blood likewise fails, which irrigates, moistens, and nourishes the whole body, and through the vital spirits which it supplies, gives it life, and communicates to each member of the body its sensitive and motive power. So Vatablus. For in the liver is the fountain and origin of all blood and humors; life consists in moisture and heat, death in dryness and cold. For this reason the Egyptians carried a jar before their god Osiris, and by it signified moisture — that is, water and the Ocean — because water was the productive cause of all things, especially living things, as Pierius attests, Hieroglyphics 56, chapter XXI, who also in chapter XXII adds the contest between the Egyptians and the Persians: for the Persians said their fire was the principle of all things, and therefore God; but the Egyptians attributed the same thing to water. So they placed a jar full of water, with the bottom perforated but sealed with wax, over the fire. Soon, when the wax was melted by the force of the fire and the holes were opened, the water flowing out from the jar extinguished the fire beneath it: and so it showed itself more powerful than fire — by which act the Egyptians defeated the Persians.
Tropologically, the jar is broken at the fountain when holy works, proceeding from a holy mind, are overturned. Again, when grace, whose author and fountain is the Holy Spirit, is lost through mortal sin and returns to the Holy Spirit as to its fountain.
Anagogically, St. Bonaventure takes it as the emptying out of worldly and natural wisdom, which is drawn up by the jar of curiosity; Olympiodorus, however, as the emptying out of holy faith and the knowledge of the present life, which will take place in heavenly glory: for then, when we shall see the very fountain of knowledge, namely God, face to face, all the dark and imperfect knowledge of this life will be done away with, I Corinthians XIII, 10.
AND LET THE WHEEL BE BROKEN OVER THE CISTERN. — For "let it be broken," the Hebrew is נרוץ narots, which can be translated both as "will be broken" and as "will run across," as I said shortly before; hence the Septuagint translates: and let the wheel roll to the cistern. In Greek it is συντροχάση, that is, "let it run together"; now to run together is the same as for the wheel to collide and break, and to fall into the pool together with the jar, says the Scholiast; the Syriac: and let the wheel run (Arabic: spin) over the well; another: let the wheel be compressed over the pool; another: the wheel will be broken, or scattered in the pit; Cajetan: the wheel will be broken at the well; the Zurich Bible: and let the wheel placed over the well run.
The Hebrews interpret the breaking of the wheel over the cistern, as well as the jar over the fountain, as the breaking of the tablets of the law contained in the Ark of the Covenant, which occurred in the Babylonian and Roman captivities. But literally these things pertain to the miseries of death. Hence first, Clarius takes the wheel as the skull, which is shattered in the tomb, or as life, which runs on broken wheels, as it were, and plunges headlong into the pit of the grave. Second, Cajetan takes it as the breath or respiration by which we breathe as long as we live, which in death is taken away and ceases when breathing fails; it is aptly called a wheel, because the drawing in of breath — namely inhalation and exhalation — occurs in a quasi-circular motion to the well of the lungs. Third, John Vitalis, in the Moral Mirror of Sacred Scripture, under the word "Death," takes the wheel as the changeableness of the sensitive appetite, which is in the whole body, for sending in and sending out that water, namely natural heat through all the members.
Fourth, Olympiodorus, St. Jerome, and others think the same thing is signified by the breaking of the wheel over the cistern as by the breaking of the jar over the water, which I have already discussed. Fifth, more fittingly, Valles, chapter LXVI of Sacred Philosophy, takes the breaking of both the jar over the fountain and the wheel over the cistern as referring to strangury or ischuria — that is, difficulty in urinating — from which the elderly suffer: "For the fountain," he says, "is the liver, and its channel and path through which the urine flows; the jar is the bladder, which stands above it; the wheel is the kidney, which draws the watery urine and transmits it to the bladder; the cistern is the vena cava and the liver, from which the serum of the blood is drawn, which is the material of urine: all of which in the elderly are broken — that is, weakened, loosened, dissolved: therefore the elderly, because of the weakened retentive power of the bladder, first pass urine with difficulty, then do not pass it at all; and so gradually the vital parts are submerged and suffocated by the water of urine, and the person dies."
So also St. Bonaventure, Laevinus Lemnius, and others. For when the kidneys, which like a jar drain off the watery humor from the blood, become calcified, and sometimes stony fragments, like pieces of pottery, fall broken as little stones into the bladder; or when stones are also generated in the bladder from dry excrement, then either the urine is suppressed or is excreted with difficulty, dripping drop by drop. Titelmannus, however, just as he takes the breaking of the jar over the fountain as the breaking of the bladder, so he takes the breaking of the wheel over the cistern as the breaking down of the bowels, through which feces are expelled, just as urine is expelled through the bladder: "By the breaking of the wheel over the cistern," he says, "can be understood the destruction of the channel of impure waste: for the wheel is the instrument by which impure and dirty water is drawn from the cistern; for a cistern usually contains muddy water, and must be frequently cleaned. So the belly is like a certain impure cistern always containing filth within itself, which must be emitted through the privy to purge the unclean cistern; and the wheel, by which this purging is accomplished, is taken as the channel and the privy itself." Therefore the double filthiness of the belly is described by this double riddle, in an honorable and elegant circumlocution.
Sixth and genuinely, the wheel is the head, the cistern is the heart, from which the head draws all the vital spirits through the senses, which reside in the head: for when the heart fails in the elderly, the brain and head also fail, and when it dies, they likewise die together. So Lyra, Vatablus, Emmanuel Sa, Denis, and others. Hence in the elderly we see the head trembling, and the heart palpitating and fearful.
Note that the brain and head are aptly compared to a wheel, and the heart to a cistern. First, on account of roundness: for just as a wheel is round, so also the head; hence from גלגל gilgal, meaning wheel, comes גלגלת gulgoleth, meaning head. The Chaldeans say gulgolta; whence Golgotha, that is, the place of the skulls and heads of those who were executed; hence Christ was crucified there. Second, on account of mobility: for just as a wheel is mobile, so also the head, which rotates and turns in all directions through the vertebrae of the neck. Third, on account of the rotation of thoughts, imaginations, desires, volitions, and intentions, by which the soul of a person is constantly rotating and turning in the head.
Fourth, on account of the dizziness from which the elderly suffer in the head due to the deficiency of spirits and the abundance of humors, which weak heat cannot consume, but agitates and whirls in circles, and thus produces vertigo. Finally, the head is placed above the heart, as a wheel over a cistern: for the heart is the fountain of heat and the origin of the vital spirits of the whole body, but especially of the head.
Less aptly Clarius takes the wheel as the skull, which contains the brain and is its seat. For in death the skull is not shattered, since it is bony and hard; indeed skulls, collected together with other bones in cemeteries, endure intact for very many years, and hence it is called "cranium," from κράνος, meaning helmet, because like a helmet it protects the brain (which by its nature is very soft) from injury, as Galen attests in Book VIII of On the Use of Parts, chapter IX, where he calls the skull an immovable wall placed around the brain.
Symbolically, by the wheel as well as the jar, understand the soul bound to the fountain or cistern — that is, to the body — as if to say: Just as when the jar is broken at the fountain, and the wheel by which water is drawn from the cistern, fountain, or well by a rope is disrupted, it is now impossible to draw water from it: so when the faculties and natural and vital forces fail and are exhausted in old age, the soul and life can no longer be retained; but with the soul returning to God its Creator, the body with its spirits and humors runs back and dissolves into its fountains and cisterns — that is, into its elements. So the Chaldean, who translates: and let your body run down into the midst of your tomb. So St. James, chapter III, 6, says of the tongue: "It sets ablaze the wheel of our birth" — that is, the whole order, course, period, and cycle of life. See what was said there.
So also St. Jerome, who accordingly judges the breaking of the jar and the wheel to be riddles of death. And the Scholiast: "The present life," he says, "because it revolves, is a wheel: therefore before it thrusts us down to the underworld, let each one take care of himself." Olympiodorus reads: before the wheel is rolled over the pool; that is, is broken by rolling, and falls into the pool or cistern, together with the water itself, which potters pour over their work: "The wheel," he says, "is taken as this life of ours, on account of its revolutions and movements, according to the saying: The voice of Your thunder was in the wheel. He therefore implies that before the wheel of this life hurls us headlong into the pool, let us take care of our own salvation." See St. Jerome.
Therefore St. Nilus in his Exhortation: "Laugh," he says, "at the wheel of life spun without order: but beware the pit into which it casts down those who sleep in this life." He therefore sleeps and is foolish who lives for this life; but he watches and is wise who lives for the future and eternal life. With a similar figure, Phocylides says: ὁ βίος τρόχος, that is, life is a top, because like a top it spins. A certain philosopher, asked what and how brief the life of man was, answered not with a word but with an act: for he spun himself around in a circle, implying that it should be measured by the duration of a single turn. Therefore Agapetus the Deacon wisely says in his Exhortation to the Emperor Justinian, chapter XI: "A certain cycle," he says, "of human affairs revolves, which now one way, now another, agitates and carries things around: and there is inequality in these things, because nothing in the present remains in the same state. It is fitting, therefore, most powerful emperor, that in this ever-turning change of affairs you maintain an unchangeable knowledge of piety."
And Isidore of Pelusium, Book II, Epistle 158: "Time," he says, "imitates the appearance of a wheel, inasmuch as it twists upon itself and revolves."
Tropologically, Thaumaturgus takes both the jar over the fountain and the wheel over the cistern as the time given to us in this life for washing away sins, both through baptism and through tears and the sacrament of penance.
Anagogically, Titelmannus takes the breaking of the wheel over the cistern as a symbol of the resurrection, as if to say: Just as that wheel which is placed over the cistern must be violently held there, enclosed by iron fittings and fixed with nails; but after it is broken, or the bonds — that is, the nails by which it was held fast — are shattered, then it plunges into the fullness of water, and there finds rest: so the soul of a person in this mortal and corruptible body is, as it were, violently detained, as in a prison and a workhouse, bound by the natural framework; and when these bonds are broken in death, the soul passes into the fullness of water — that is, into the abyss of divinity — and there enjoys full rest. Nor should it seem surprising that the soul in the body is compared to a wheel, for just as a wheel in its fastenings is constantly moved and turned about, so the soul in this corruptible body rarely rests, but is continually tossed about by excessive changeableness.
And just as that wheel which is above the cistern, by revolving over the cistern, draws water from it — yet has no rest until it collapses into it — so the soul also, in the state of this body, while it turns toward that abyss of divinity and occupies itself revolving around it, draws waters of grace from it for consolation and refreshment; yet it will not have full rest here, until, broken free, it runs back to that abyss, so that it can fully immerse itself in it. Here applies that saying of Plato, that σῶμα (body) is called as if σῆμα (tomb), because the body is like a prison and dungeon of the soul; from which therefore the soul longs to fly out, so that it may possess its freedom in heaven.
Moreover, all the miseries of old age and death, represented by these riddles, apply indeed to all the elderly and dying, but most of all to those who have spent their youth in pleasures and have exhausted and corrupted their natural powers through lusts. Therefore Solomon here especially warns the young to restrain themselves from these things, saying at the end of the preceding chapter: "Remove anger from your heart, and put away evil (the wickedness of pleasure and lust) from your flesh. For youth and pleasure are vanity. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth" — so that from anger and strife, as well as from pleasure and lust, you may restrain yourself, "before" through them, sooner than usual, there comes "the time of your affliction" — that is, lest a premature old age full of miseries overtake you, and from that, death. The origin of semen; these therefore, through lusts, with the semen exhausted, fail and give way: whence arises strangury, gas, kidney stones, etc.
Therefore I showed at the beginning of the chapter, in the Synopsis, that each of these miseries, recounted from the beginning of the chapter up to this verse, arise from the lust of youth, and that old age is accelerated by them; now I shall show the same thing in the four riddles mentioned in this verse.
Therefore for lascivious and lustful young men, through gluttony and debauchery, the golden band prematurely draws back — that is, the meninx contracts along with the brain — and from this arises baldness, because semen descends principally from the brain; therefore by excessive emission of semen the brain is injured, which is why the lustful suffer from epilepsy, apoplexy, hair loss, migraine, and other diseases of the brain and head; and they become forgetful, trembling, pale, languid, and infirm, as the physicians teach and daily experience demonstrates: for we see that the lustful, like those with a diseased spleen, have their brains weakened and afflicted.
Therefore Aetius, in the passage soon to be cited, asserts that lust "does not at all conduce to the reasoning powers of the soul; on the contrary, it rather congeals and stupefies the understanding." Simplicius in his Commentary on Epictetus, chapter XLVII: "All continence from bodily pleasure," he says, "strengthens the mind's capacity for reason." "Lust," says St. Ambrose, "calls back from reason, takes away good judgment, and troubles the foolish." And St. Jerome: "Love of beauty is the forgetfulness of reason, and close to madness — a shameful vice, wholly unfit for a sound mind;" and again: "For who, while using pleasure, can attend to anything at all with his mind?"
From this the "silver cord" is broken — that is, the marrow of the spinal column is contracted and injured, through which the vital spirits pass from the brain to the lower parts, because this marrow originates from the brain at the back of the head; therefore when the brain is injured by lusts, the marrow must necessarily be injured. Hence Plato said that semen is an outflow of the spinal marrow, as Plutarch attests in Book V of On the Opinions of the Philosophers, chapter III.
Again, from excessive lust and emission of semen, the "jar is broken at the fountain" — that is, the blood of the liver is poured out: for semen is the purest blood; hence when the semen is poured out through excessive lust, blood follows and is discharged: from this arises consumption and the spitting of blood. So Hippocrates, Book II of On Common Diseases; Celsus, Book III, chapter XXII; Aetius, Tetrabiblon I, Sermon 3, chapter VIII, whom hear: "Many men have spat blood from excessive sexual intercourse: partly from the violent compression and straining of the spirit, partly from the connection with the veins and arteries which lead to the genital parts." When blood and spirit fail — much of which is poured out in the semen — the liver, stomach, and heart likewise fail; whence follow languor, fainting, cachexia, pallor, emaciation, and other harms to health, as the same authors teach.
Furthermore, for the lascivious the "jar is broken at the fountain" — that is, the kidneys and bladder contract diseases: for in the kidneys is the
Finally, in these same persons the "wheel is broken over the cistern" — that is, the head is injured, since when the heart, liver, and stomach fail, it can no longer draw from them nourishment, blood, or the vital spirits necessary for any kind of motion and sensation. Therefore sight, hearing, and all the senses become dull and fail. Hence Theotimus, unable to endure without lust, preferred to endure blindness, which the doctors had predicted for him if he continued in lust. Hence he exclaimed: "Farewell, beloved light," as St. Ambrose narrates, Book IV on Luke, chapter XVII.
But why the head feels the harms of lust more than the other members, Viegas of Evora gives two reasons, Medical Articles, chapter XLVII: The first is that the brain and head are the extremity, in which the drawing power ceases, since it cannot draw from the other side; and the lower parts draw in continuous succession up to the brain. The second is the softness of the brain and spinal marrow, which yields more easily to the pulling parts than do the solid parts. Hence the lascivious and lustful have a diminished brain and an exhausted spinal marrow. Therefore Galen wisely and truly says, Book II of On Health: "If, driven by pleasure, that bait of evils," he says, "we are impelled to sexual intercourse, it will certainly come about that not only the powers of the body, but almost all the powers of the mind as well, will be broken, and will utterly perish together with life itself: for frequent intercourse loosens the constitution of the body, hastens old age, brings gray hair prematurely, causes incontinence of the nerves, gout, arthritis, trembling, dullness of the senses, torpor of the mind, a bad condition of the body, rawness of the humors, and weakness of all the bodily powers and the functions flowing from them," etc.
Aetius adds here, Tetrabiblon I, Sermon 3, chapter VIII: "Diseases of the kidneys and bladder, foul breath, toothache, inflammation of the uvula, spitting of blood, ulcers in the members, fever, and all evils."
Therefore St. Isidore truly concludes, Book II of Sentences, chapter XL: "Chastity is the security of the mind and the health of the body." And Plutarch in his Precepts on Preserving Health asserts that "the healthiest practices have been rightly said to be these: the use of food short of satiety, cheerful readiness for labors, and the conservation of the natural seed." He adds: "For intemperance in sexual intercourse, because it greatly weakens the faculty by which nourishment is produced, generates an abundance of excrement."
Verse 7: AND LET THE DUST RETURN TO ITS EARTH WHENCE IT WAS, AND LET THE SPIRIT RETURN TO GOD, WHO GAVE IT.
Dust, that is, Adam, or man — namely the body of man — formed from adama, that is, from earth and dust mixed with water, or from clay, by God, according to what God threatened Adam after his sin: "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken: for you are dust, and to dust you shall return," Genesis chapter III, 19, and chapter II, 7. See what was said there.
So St. Paul the first hermit, as St. Jerome attests in his Life, greeting Anthony who had come to visit him: "Behold," he said, "the one whom you sought with such great labor: abundant gray hair covers his limbs rotting with old age; behold, you see a man who will soon be dust." And soon, predicting his own imminent death: "But since the time of my rest has now come, and, as I have always desired, to be dissolved and to be with Christ, my course being completed, there remains for me the crown of justice — you have been sent by the Lord to cover my poor body with earth, or rather to return earth to earth." And St. Mary of Egypt to Zosimas, who wrote down her life as received from her own lips: "Bury, Abba Zosimas, the poor body of wretched Mary. Return to the earth what is its own, and add dust to dust."
Hence Sacred Scripture calls death a dissolution — namely, the separation of the soul from the body, that is, the dismissal and laying down of the body into its elements. Plato and the philosophers imitated the same: hence Plutarch in his Consolation to Apollonius calls death the separation of a composite thing, and cites that verse of Epicharmus: He was composed, and was separated, and went back again whence he came: Earth indeed to earth, the spirit to the heights above. Therefore, while living, die often, so that when dead you may live: Lest you die, it is needful to outrun death by death. Hence also the lyric poet: We are dust and shadow; dust is nothing but smoke: But smoke is nothing; therefore we are nothing.
AND LET THE SPIRIT RETURN TO GOD, WHO GAVE IT. — As to its Maker, so also as to its Judge (for this is what the Hebrew Elohim signifies), so that it may render to Him an account of all its actions exercised throughout its whole life, and according to its merits receive either rewards or punishments. Therefore the dust, or body, returns to the earth in one way, and the spirit — that is, the soul — returns to God in another. For the body returns because it is corrupted and dissolved into earth, as into the matter from which it was formed; but the spirit, or soul of man, is not corrupted, but remaining immortal, returns to God as its Judge, inasmuch as it was created by Him in His image and likeness — namely, rational, free, spiritual, immortal — so that by doing good it may attain eternal glory, or by doing evil may undergo everlasting hell.
Hence, therefore, and from similar passages, it is clearly evident that the soul of man is immortal, inasmuch as it is not produced from the seed and transmission of parents, but was immediately created by God, who is therefore called the Father of spirits. Hence St. Jerome: "Those are to be laughed at," he says, "who think that souls are sown together with bodies, and are generated not by God but by the parents of the bodies. For since the flesh returns to the earth and the spirit returns to God who gave it, it is evident that God is the Father of souls, not men." So also Cassian, Conference VIII, chapter XXV. And St. Augustine, Epistle 3 to Volusian: "Who is there now," he says, "even the most ignorant fool, or what mere woman, who does not believe in the immortality of the soul and the life to come after death?"
The same, Book I of On the Literal Meaning of Genesis, chapter IX, proves from this passage of Solomon that the soul of the first man — namely Adam — was created by God from nothing; he doubts, however, concerning the souls of his descendants, whether they are said to be created by God in such a way that they are nevertheless propagated from Adam's stock.
Solomon presses upon the young man, inclined to pleasures and lusts, the immortality of the soul and the judgment to be undergone before God on account of them, because these two truths put a sharp bridle on pleasure and lust. Hence we see that those who devote themselves entirely to pleasure and luxury, in order to do so freely without fear of punishment, gradually become atheists, and deny the immortality of the soul, judgment, heaven, hell, indeed all divinity. Therefore the Chaldean translates: remember your Creator, that you may glorify Him in the days of your youth.
Again, from the fact that the soul, departing from the body, returns to God its Maker, the error of the Pythagoreans, Origenists, and similar groups is refuted — namely μετεμψύχωσις, that is, the transmigration of souls from one body into another. For they held that the soul migrates successively into one body after another, or is turned into a demon or an animal.
Finally, St. Augustine, Book I of On Free Will, chapter XII, interprets the souls' return to God as a return of souls to heaven; but he retracts and explains this in Book I of the Retractations, chapter I: "In another place," he says, "when I was discussing the soul, I said: He will return more securely to heaven. But I should have said more securely 'going' rather than 'returning,' on account of those who think that human souls, because of the merits of their sins, have fallen or been cast down from heaven into these bodies. But the reason I did not hesitate to say this is that I said 'to heaven' as though I were saying 'to Him who is its author and maker' — just as Cyprian did not hesitate to say: Since we possess the body from earth and the spirit from heaven, we ourselves are earth and heaven. And in the Book of Ecclesiastes it is written: Let the spirit return to God who gave it. This must certainly be so understood that we do not oppose the Apostle who says that they had done nothing good or evil before they were born. Therefore, without controversy, the original homeland of the soul's blessedness is God Himself. He did not beget it from Himself, but created it from no other thing, just as He created the body from earth. For as regards its origin, by which it comes to be in the body: whether it was from that one soul which was first created, when man was made into a living soul, or whether individual souls are always so made for individuals — this I did not know then, nor do I know it yet."
So he says; but now from the Church's interpretation and definition it is certain that human souls are not propagated from parents, but are individually created by God for each one as they are born, and are infused in the act of creation.
Verse 8: VANITY OF VANITIES, SAID ECCLESIASTES, AND ALL IS VANITY.
Syriac: every thing is vanity; Arabic: for all things are vain. This is the theme which Ecclesiastes proposed at the beginning of the book as needing to be proved, and now, as though proved, repeats it, and draws and collects it from what has been said as a conclusion, confirmed by every kind of induction. "For since, says St. Jerome, all the toil of mortals, about which the whole book has argued, comes to this — that the dust returns to its earth and the soul goes back whence it was taken — it is a great vanity to labor in this world and acquire nothing for the future," especially since one will be judged for these things and condemned to hell if he has violated God's law out of love for them. This is therefore the epilogue, in which Solomon gathers up the summary of his whole discourse, so as to fix it more deeply in the reader's mind, and so that the reader may know what he should especially retain from it in memory and put into practice. Let the teacher and preacher do likewise.
Moreover, the Chaldean translates more explicitly: when Solomon king of Israel contemplated the vanity of this age, and the vanities which the sons of men produce, Ecclesiastes said in his word: All things are vanity.
This maxim was explained at length at the beginning of the book; therefore nothing needs to be added here.
Verse 9: AND SINCE ECCLESIASTES WAS MOST WISE, HE TAUGHT THE PEOPLE (knowledge, as the Hebrew, Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic add), AND HE RECOUNTED WHAT HE HAD DONE: AND SEARCHING HE COMPOSED MANY PARABLES.
In Hebrew it is: he further taught the people, as if to say: Not only the contents of this book, but many other things not contained in it, he taught the people. Hence it is clear that Solomon taught them many times, both by teaching with the living voice and exhorting to virtues and the worship of God, and by doing the same through writings for all ages: for The spoken word perishes, the written letter endures. In a similar way, Job taught the people subject to him, chapter XXIX, verse 20 and following. For this is an outstanding endowment and praise of a prince.
The Hebrew is: and moreover because Ecclesiastes was wise, he further taught the people, as if to say: The wiser Ecclesiastes was, the more diligent he was in teaching, because he knew that this wisdom had been given to him by God so that he might teach others with it, especially those subject to him, and make them upright by it, and advance them toward eternal happiness. Hence Hugh: "He did not suffocate his discoveries," he says, "as if smothering a child in the womb; but he brought them forth into the light; he sent his streams abroad and distributed his waters, just as he himself had taught," Proverbs V, 16.
Furthermore, Thaumaturgus refers the phrase "and moreover" to what preceded, in this way: "Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes, all is vanity, and moreover;" which Thaumaturgus explains thus: "I say therefore, as I also said at the beginning, that the vanity with which men are occupied is wondrous, and so superabundant (this is what 'and moreover' means) that no one can embrace the whole of it in his mind." But our translator and the rest more correctly refer 'and moreover' to what follows — namely, to 'wise' — as if to say: Since Ecclesiastes was moreover wise, that is, most wise.
Thaumaturgus thinks that Solomon here complains about the listlessness of his hearers and their dissolute life, so that they would reject this sermon and ones like it: "Moreover," he says, "this effort of mine, though preaching wisely, is superfluous for that people, who neglect justice and reject teaching and care."
AND HE RECOUNTED WHAT HE HAD DONE. — In Hebrew אזן veitzen, that is, he made them hear, as Aquila translates, that is, he recounted; St. Jerome: he made them hear; Syriac: he listened; Pagninus: and he made them listen; Vatablus: and he stirred up zeal by teaching. Less correctly Cajetan: and the people listened to Solomon teaching with such wisdom and grace. Chaldean: and he attended to the voice of the wise; others in Pagninus's Lexicon: by hearing he weighed and investigated, pondered, and balanced the words of the parables. The Septuagint, reading אזן ozen with different vowel points, meaning ear, translate: and the ear (of Solomon, or rather of the people hearing him) will search out the ornament of the parables; Arabic: and his ear was enriched with the ornament of similitudes.
WHAT HE HAD DONE — both in building, whence he described in a book the structure of the temple he had built and the offices of the ministers, as is evident from II Chronicles XXXV, 4; and the deeds he had accomplished, as he recounted them in chapter II and following, asserting that in all things he had found vanity; and especially the teaching, parables, and maxims which he had discovered and composed by meditation, had taught, dictated, and handed over to scribes to be written down: for it is the work of Ecclesiastes — that is, of the preacher — to recount these things.
AND SEARCHING HE COMPOSED MANY PARABLES. — Fittingly our translator, for תקן chikken, meaning "he will investigate," reads with different vowel points in the participle not choker, meaning "investigating," because the conjunction vau — meaning "and" — is missing; yet the Chaldean supplies and understands it, translating: and he searched the books of understanding, and very many parables of understanding. Hence it is clear that Solomon not only composed new parables and maxims invented by himself, but also listened to, investigated, arranged, corrected, and brought into better form the sayings of ancient wise men as well as more recent ones of his own era.
For all these things are signified by the Hebrew תקן ticken, which properly means to direct, correct, arrange, and compose a thing, so that its individual parts harmoniously and fittingly correspond to one another and to the whole composition, just as songs, verses, and odes are composed. Hence Campensis translates: by diligently searching all things, he found many things pertaining to wisdom, and wisely restored many things said by others. Again, Rabbi David translates ticken as: he weighed, pondered, and compared things with one another, as those do who weigh two weights in a balance. "I will incline my ear to a parable," Psalm XLVIII, 5, as if to say: Solomon, when he listened to others, employed the judgment and weight of his ears for pondering; when he recounted something to his hearers, he also weighed the importance of things while speaking, and the weight and dignity of each one; and he listened to his father David saying the same — because David too inclined his ears to his own parables. See what I said about Solomon's parables at the beginning of Proverbs.
Verse 10: HE SOUGHT USEFUL WORDS, AND WROTE THE MOST UPRIGHT DISCOURSES, FULL OF TRUTH.
The Septuagint: Ecclesiastes sought to find words of delight, a writing of uprightness, words of truth; the Hebrew: he sought words of delight, that is, pleasing, agreeable, and, as Cajetan translates, desirable, such as are useful, as Aquila and our translator render it — namely, words which a wise and upright man ought to and does will, and which, as Olympiodorus says, are conformable to the divine will, and whoever follows them attains the glory of eternal happiness. Hence Vatablus explains it as if to say: He sought words of delight, that is, true insights about what should be sought and what avoided, and thus about the highest good and evil.
St. Jerome takes "words of delight" as the secrets of the divine will and providence: "Beyond these things," he says, "he added that he wished to know the causes and natures of things, and the arrangement and providence of God; and therefore wished to know how each thing was made, so that what David, after the dissolution of body and soul, hoped to see upon his return to heaven, saying: I shall see Your heavens, the works of Your fingers — this Solomon strove to discover now in the present life: but the truth, known to God, the human mind, walled in by the body, cannot comprehend."
The Chaldean, however, takes "words of delight" as the secrets of hearts: "Solomon," he says, "who is called Ecclesiastes, sought in his wisdom to judge the judgment concerning the thoughts of the human heart, and without witnesses; then it was said to him in the spirit of prophecy from the face of the Lord: Behold, it is already written in the book of the law by the hand of Moses for the teachers of Israel, words right and faithful: by the testimony of the appointed witnesses every matter shall be established."
But these things are far-fetched and less than true: for God alone is the knower of hearts, that is, the inspector of the secrets of the heart, and Solomon knew this very well; therefore it is not credible that he wished to search into those things. Most excellently, therefore, St. Jerome translates in the Vulgate: he sought useful words; hence there follows:
AND HE WROTE THE MOST UPRIGHT DISCOURSES. — The Hebrew and the Septuagint have: and a writing of uprightness, supply "he sought" — that is, the scroll of the law, the Hebrews say: for zeal for this was commended to the king by Moses, Deuteronomy XVII, 17; and to Joshua himself by God, Joshua I, 8. Better, our translator, for כתוב catub, meaning "written," reading with different vowel points כתוב catob, meaning "to write," translates: he sought to write, that is, he wrote uprightness — that is, the most upright discourses. For all these things pertain to the parables and maxims dictated and written by Solomon. Hence St. Jerome in the old edition translates: to find words of delight, and to write correctly the words of truth; Aquila: and he wrote correctly.
But if you wish to retain catub, meaning "written," explain "written" as referring not to Moses but to Solomon himself. Vatablus translates: A writing of uprightness, that is, he says, what he could rightly commit to letters, or he endeavored to hand down wisdom in an even style. Better, you may explain "words of uprightness" as upright words — that is, words directly conformable to right reason, truth, justice, the law, and the divine will as their standard and rule — not crooked, not twisted, not perverse, as are the words of the wicked, according to what Wisdom says of herself, Proverbs VIII, 8: "All my words are just; there is nothing crooked or perverse in them." Hence Thaumaturgus explains "upright" as pleasing to God: "I," he says, "so advanced in age and having traversed a long span of life, have wearied my mind in searching out, through the mysteries of truth, those things which are pleasing and acceptable to God." A more recent translator renders clearly: the uprightness of the words of truth has been written down.
Verse 11: THE WORDS OF THE WISE ARE LIKE GOADS, AND LIKE NAILS DRIVEN DEEP, WHICH THROUGH THE COUNSEL OF MASTERS HAVE BEEN GIVEN BY ONE SHEPHERD.
Thaumaturgus puts it clearly: "I have found that minds are no less stirred by the admonitions of the wise than if goads and nails were driven into their bodies. Hence I hope there will be those who will recount to posterity those teachings full of wisdom, entrusted to them by a faithful shepherd and teacher, much more abundantly and elegantly, and so harmoniously, as if they had heard them from one mouth." The Chaldean: "The words of the wise are compared to goads, and like nails they are fixed to teach knowledge to those who are empty and without knowledge; just as a goad teaches the ox. And the princes of counsel who have rules and doctrines, which were given by the hand of
Moses the prophet, who alone shepherded the people of the house of Israel in the desert, with manna and with quails."
Solomon shows the usefulness, power, and efficacy of his wisdom and teaching — namely, that the words of wisdom and of the wise (of whom he himself was the chief) sting the mind like goads or spurs, and are deeply and intimately fixed in the mind like nails. So St. Jerome: "Lest he should seem," he says, "after the law of God, to burst forth rashly as a teacher and claim for himself a doctrine which Moses had undertaken not so much of his own accord as first at God's anger, then at His inspiration, he says his words are the words of the wise, which like goads correct the erring, and with a stinging spur rouse the sluggish steps of mortals: and so they are firm as nails driven deep and solid, and are put forth not on the authority of one alone, but by the counsel and consensus of all the teachers. And lest the wisdom of all should be despised, he says it was granted by one shepherd — that is, although very many teach, yet the author of this teaching is the one Lord. This passage tells against those who think the God of the Old Law is different from the God of the Gospel, since one shepherd instructed both. The wise men, moreover, are the prophets as much as the apostles."
Then he aptly adds by way of annotation: "At the same time it must be noted that the words of the wise are said to sting, not to caress, not to handle wantonness with a soft hand, but to inflict on the erring and (as we said above) the slow the pains and wounds of repentance. If anyone's speech therefore does not sting but gives pleasure to the hearers, it is not the speech of a wise man. For the words of the wise are like goads: since they provoke the sinner to conversion, they are firm, given by the council of the saints and granted by one shepherd, and founded on a solid root. By this goad I believe it was not yet Paul, but still Saul, who on the road, confessing his error, heard: 'It is hard for you to kick against the goad of God.' Acts IX, 5."
LIKE GOADS. — The Septuagint: ὡς τὰ βούκεντρα, that is, like ox-goads, by which sluggish oxen and donkeys are pricked to move faster and plow more vigorously. Hear Olympiodorus: "For just as goads prick oxen and urge them to cut the furrow with the plow, so too the words of theologians rouse us who plow with good hope to cut a spiritual furrow, so that when the field of our heart has been cleared, we may plant beautiful shoots of virtue in it. They are also like red-hot and glowing nails, which are driven more deeply and easily into wood: so too the words of wise theologians are driven deep into the innermost recesses of our understanding." The Syriac translates: like rods, with whose blows teachers spur their students to study.
AND LIKE NAILS DRIVEN DEEP. — The Hebrew: like nails planted; the Septuagint likewise πεφυτευμένα, that is, planted; for which the Arabic and Olympiodorus read πεπυρωμένοι, that is, fiery and glowing: for these, he says, are driven into wood more easily and deeply. Aquila and Theodotion add "memorable," that is, fixed in, explaining "planted" as "fixed in." By these admonitions of the wise, we are, as it were, nailed together with Christ crucified, since through them we crucify our vices, passions, and all the movements of private affections and desires: for just as a nail driven in holds the thing to which it is fastened, so doctrine holds a person, says Vatablus. The Syriac, instead of "like nails," translates: like plowshares.
This is what the Apostle says, Hebrews chapter IV, verse 12: "For the word of God is living and effective, and more penetrating than any two-edged sword: reaching even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow."
Akin to this saying is the maxim of the five ancient Rabbis in Pirke Avoth, chapter II: "Warm yourself at the fire of the wise, if you can: but beware lest you be burned by their blaze: for their teeth are sharper than the teeth of foxes; they sting like scorpions, and their words burn like torches and reduce to ashes."
So also St. Gregory explains in his homily on the Gospel: "The words of the wise are compared to nails and goads, because they do not know how to caress the faults of sinners, but to sting them. Here belongs that saying of God through Jeremiah: 'What has chaff to do with wheat, says the Lord? Are not My words like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer shattering rock?'" Jeremiah XXIII, 28 and 29.
Where St. Jerome says: "Beautifully," he says, "perverse teaching is compared to chaff, which has no substance and cannot nourish the peoples of the faithful, but is crushed to straw between the hands. And he immediately teaches that such is the doctrine of heretics, 'who all,' he says, 'deceive their hearers by flattery.'" On the contrary, the faithful preacher is compared to fire and a hammer, who, being most removed from every appearance of flattery, "announces," he says, "future punishments to deter men from sinning, and threatens the chaff of sinners with fire, so that the hard hearts of heretics, untamable as flint, may be crushed by the hammer of his speech."
Understand that these goads are to be applied to the lazy, slow, and obstinate; for with the diligent, energetic, and obedient, speeches should be flowing, pure, clear, and soothing, says St. Ambrose, Epistle 19. For the former are driven by fear, the latter by love. Columella prescribes the same for oxen, Book II, chapter II, and Book VI, chapter II: "Let the plowman," he says, "frighten the ox with his voice rather than with blows, and let blows be the last remedy for those that refuse;" this about the veteran ox; but about the young bull: "Let him never provoke the young bull with a goad, because that makes him balky and prone to kick; yet let him occasionally correct him with a whip." And again: "Let the oxen be fearful of blows and shouts."
WHICH THROUGH THE COUNSEL OF MASTERS. — The Hebrew: through the men, or lords, or authors of collections or congregations — those, namely, who collect the sayings and teachings of the ancients, or rather who sit and preside in a collection, that is, an assembly, college, and council. The Chaldean calls them masters and teachers of the ways; St. Jerome in the old edition translates: given to those who have assemblies; the Septuagint: which from counsels have been given by one shepherd; the Syriac: which are joined as masters of the thresholds, given by one shepherd; the Arabic: which they understood from the treasures of their works, from one shepherd; another: the words of the wise are like goads and nails firmly fixed, supporting the collected household goods.
But the Hebrews, with our translator, genuinely translate: authors of collections, compilations, or congregations, as I said. The Zurich Bible: among collected leaves; Campensis: like renowned studious men, who impress upon others what has been given (others say: handed down) to them; Rabbi David: like nails are the words of the wise, who gather wise sayings in their books; another: masters of colleges or congregations; another: lords of students gathered in a school, or authors of compilations, who collect many excerpts from here and there into one volume.
The meaning of our translation is, as if to say: Through the congregations and counsel of masters (for which many codices, especially manuscripts, fittingly read with the Septuagint: council, and this is what St. Jerome has) — that is, through their unanimous consensus, as if all were speaking from one mouth — the words of the wise have been handed down firm and certain, inasmuch as they have all been taught by one shepherd and master, namely God and Christ.
Hence learn that the doctrines of wisdom which are in the Church were not recently invented, but were handed down from God and Christ to the first prophets and apostles, and communicated by them successively to others and yet others, until they finally reached us. Again, learn how much faith and reverence is owed to the Fathers and other teachers of the Church. Moreover, Cajetan enumerates these teachers: "Abraham," he says, "was the first author of the congregation through circumcision; Moses was the author of the congregation through the law; then the Judges, authors of congregations for the worship of the one God against various idolaters; then the prophets, gathering the people from evil ways to God. All of these, therefore, were given by one shepherd, God, to feed the people with the divine word."
St. Paul wisely admonishes, II Timothy chapter II, 2: "The things," he says, "which you have heard from me through many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men;" for these teachers, as Thaumaturgus says, "having received those most wise teachings from one good shepherd and teacher, will all, as if from one mouth, and in harmony with one another, hand them on, expounding the doctrine entrusted to them more elegantly and more copiously."
Counsel. — I have already said that others read "council." The Hebrew אסופות asuppoth means collections, compilations (as compilations of sayings from the philosophers and the Fathers were collected by Damascene, Bede, Antonius in the Melissa, St. Maximus, St. Bonaventure, and others), congregations, assemblies. Therefore the council of teachers is the same as the assembly, collection, congregation, and consensus of teachers. So a royal council is called the royal Senate itself, or the Counselors of the king. The Septuagint translates it as συνθέματα, that is, compositions, frameworks, joinings together, also compacts, signs, tokens; some read συντάγματα, that is, constructions, constitutions; hence Olympiodorus: these words, moreover, have been handed down to us from constitutions; but other manuscripts have: from compositions. "By constitutions or compositions, understand the works of God, which are arranged and constituted with a wonderful and supreme order and harmony, from which by a certain proportion and likeness we are led to some knowledge of God the Maker. You may also take constitutions in this place as the covenants of both Testaments — namely, Old and New."
BY ONE SHEPHERD. — Campensis: by the one shepherd, God; the Zurich Bible: by one shepherd, the Holy Spirit; the Chaldean takes the shepherd of the people as Moses. Better, Salonius and the rest: The one shepherd, they say, is God; the teachers are the prophets and apostles. For here He aptly calls God a shepherd, to persist in the metaphor of goads, with which shepherds spur on oxen and beasts of burden to move forward, as if to say: Although there are very many teachers who instruct the people, yet the one author, fountain, and origin of all true doctrine is God and Christ, who accordingly in the Old Law appointed the high priest as His vicar — as the supreme teacher and judge of the Synagogue — whom He commanded all to heed and obey in all things, Deuteronomy XVII. Much more so in the New Law, He appointed St. Peter, and the Roman Pontiffs succeeding him, as the teachers and shepherds of the whole Church, John XXI, 16, so that from one shepherd the unity of faith and doctrine might be drawn and preserved, and there might be no straying into various heresies and errors, as St. Cyprian teaches solidly and elegantly in his book On the Unity of the Church.
For thus the hierarchy of the Church ends in a monarchy, which is the best form of government: for the monarch is the Pope. Hence of old the σύνθημα, that is, the watchword of the orthodox and true Christian, was — and still is — to be united in faith and subject in obedience to the Roman Pontiff. Hence St. Jerome, Epistle 57 to Pope Damasus, asking him whether three hypostases should be spoken of in the Godhead, or only one: "From the priest," he says, "I seek the victim of salvation; from the shepherd, the protection of the sheep, etc.; I speak with the successor of the fisherman and the disciple of the Cross; following no one first except Christ, I am joined in communion with your blessedness — that is, with the chair of Peter. Upon that rock I know the Church to be built. Whoever eats the lamb outside this house is profane: if anyone is not in the ark of Noah, he will perish when the flood reigns."
From what has been said, it is clear that Hunnius, Whitaker, and similar innovators erroneously — in order to keep the Roman Pontiff further away from this passage — understand the one shepherd as Solomon himself, because kings are called shepherds; and the wise men as the collectors of Solomon's sayings. For the shepherd here is called not a king or ruler, but a teacher and illuminator, who feeds others with his doctrine, the chief of whom is God, from whom all teachers and wise men — even those who existed before Solomon — drew their wisdom, as Solomon says here. See Gretser in the Defense of Bellarmine, volume I, Book III, chapter IV.
Verse 12: BEYOND THESE THINGS, MY SON, DO NOT SEEK. OF MAKING MANY BOOKS THERE IS NO END: AND FREQUENT MEDITATION IS AN AFFLICTION OF THE FLESH.
As if to say: In this book up to now, O reader, I have more than sufficiently described for you the way and method of living well and blessedly; therefore there is no reason for you to seek more than these things, or to turn over other books with idle curiosity; for just as there is no end to making many books, so too there is no end to reading them. For human curiosity is immense and has no limit; therefore unless you set a measure and fix a boundary for it, it will distract you from the one true and highest good into many empty things, and will sharply torment you, because frequent meditation, which frequent reading produces, and writing even more so, is an affliction of the flesh.
Again: beyond these things — namely, those handed down by one shepherd through the counsel and assembly of teachers, that is, through the prophets, apostles, Fathers, and doctors — do not seek; therefore it is superfluous to write or read more useless books. So St. Jerome: "Apart from these words," he says, "which have been given by one shepherd and put forth by the council and consensus of the wise, do nothing, claim nothing for yourself; follow the footsteps of the elders, and do not depart from their authority. Otherwise, for the one who seeks many things, an infinite number of books will present itself, which will drag him into error, and will make the one who reads much labor in vain. Or at least he teaches that brevity should be pursued, and meaning should be followed more than words, against the philosophers and the teachers of this age, who try to assert the falsehoods of their doctrines by variety and multiplicity of words. By contrast, divine Scripture is confined within a brief compass, and as much as it expands in meanings, so much is it compressed in words. For God has made a consummated and abbreviated word upon the earth, and His word is near, in our mouth and in our heart."
The Hebrew has: and moreover, by these be warned, or beware — namely, lest you seek more — as our translator and Vatablus shrewdly noticed and rendered. St. Jerome in the old edition translates: and moreover, from these things, my son, beware of making many books, which have no end, and much meditation is a labor of the flesh. So also the Septuagint and the Syriac. The Chaldean translates to the contrary: for thus it reads: and moreover, my son, do not seek; of making many books there is no end, and frequent meditation is an affliction of the flesh. The Latin Vulgate agrees; the Arabic also approaches: they received, he says, authority from them; O my son, preserve this: you will make many books whose usefulness has no end, and in meditating upon them there is labor for humanity.
Finally, Thaumaturgus interprets it thus: but why say more? since there is no profit in much speaking, and I would not advise you, my friend, to write useless things and what is less fitting, since in them nothing remains beyond toil. The Zurich Bible translates differently: Lastly, my son, he says, take heed, being warned, for to make many books would be an endless task; and Campensis: Consider yourself warned by these few words, my son; but to touch upon all things cannot be accomplished even in very many books, and the labor of much writing wearies the body.
Finally, for "moreover" the Hebrew is יותר iother, which can be translated as: more excellently, more outstandingly. Hence some explain it as if to say: Seek nothing more — that is, nothing more excellent, nothing more worthy, nothing more useful — from elsewhere than from the sayings and writings of the wise, and especially from this my Ecclesiastes; it will abundantly supply you with the most excellent teachings and counsels for living well and blessedly, so that you should hold in little esteem and despise the discourses or books of philosophers and profane teachers in comparison with it. For you will learn much more, and holier and more divine things, from this one book than from all the rest.
OF MAKING MANY BOOKS THERE IS NO END. — He says this not to censure writers and the zeal for writing, since after Solomon all the prophets, evangelists, and apostles, as well as the Greek and Latin Fathers, to say nothing of others, wrote many books useful to the Church and the commonwealth; but first, to show that just as in other things, so also in study — namely, in writing and reading — there is its own vanity and vexation, namely affliction of the heart: for thus he himself explained it in chapter I, verse 17. So St. Jerome.
Second, to censure the itch for writing: for many itch to write and publish books, driven only by the vain glory of a name, when their books are of little use or unworthy of the press, especially when they contain errors, heresies, superstitions, obscenities, etc. Juvenal truly says, Satire 7: An incurable itch for writing grips many, And grows old in their diseased hearts.
Third, to advise the wise man to read and write little, and, setting aside profane things, to devote himself to the study of Sacred Scripture. For, as Hippocrates says at the beginning of the Aphorisms: "Art is long, life is short;" therefore spend a short life on short and few things, but those that bring salvation. Leave, therefore, the vain and wordy books of others. For, as St. Augustine says in his book On Christian Doctrine, the last chapter: "And when he finds there (in Scripture) everything that he has usefully learned elsewhere, he will find there much more abundantly those things which are found nowhere else at all, but are said only in those Scriptures, with a wonderful profundity and wonderful humility." And also Cicero, Tusculan Disputations I: "For anyone," he says, "to commit his thoughts to writing who can neither arrange nor illuminate them, nor attract the reader with any delight, is the act of a man intemperately abusing both his leisure and his letters."
Hence Stobaeus, Sermon 19, recounts that Socrates, Aristarchus, and Favorinus (who censured his contemporary Plutarch for writing so much) refused to write anything. And Aristippus, a disciple of Socrates, said to someone boasting of having read a great deal: "Just as," he said, "those who eat the most are not healthier than those who take what is sufficient, so too those who have read the most are not to be considered more studious and learned, but rather those who have read what is useful."
Their reasons were: first, that to read, write, and absorb so many books is an enormous toil and weariness of mind and body. Second, that so many books diminish the exercise of the intellect, since people complacently fall asleep over the writings of others. Third, that they harm the memory and blunt it: for when students read such varied material, they retain nothing, because the later drives out the earlier. Hence St. Thomas, when asked by what way and method one might become learned, answered: By reading only one book, as is recorded in the Chronicle of St. Dominic, Part I, Book III, chapter XXXVII. Our James Lainez, the second General Superior of the Society of Jesus, said and did the same: for he had only one book in his room, and read it from beginning to end; and having done so, he returned it to the library and took another from it to be read in the same manner. Fourth, that in the writing and reading of so many books much time is consumed and wasted, through so many circumlocutions of veiled truth, which when delivered briefly and plainly is understood more easily and clearly.
These reasons, however, do not prevent it from being useful to write many books, when something new is presented, or something is explained in a new and better way; or when the necessity of responding to heretics and other adversaries demands it; or when matters treated by others at length and confusedly are presented in a brief, clear, and orderly method, as Justinian did, who reduced two thousand books of the ancient jurists into a brief code of modern law. Clement says admirably, Book I of the Stromata: "Children indeed are of the body, but the offspring of the soul are written works." In books, therefore, you behold the soul of the wise man. Peter Damian, Book I, Epistle 6: "I took my book, which I embraced like an only son, with the sweet tenderness of a womb." Peter of Venice, Book I, Epistle 20: "Very many have written and produced successful commentaries on the divine Scriptures; if they labored from a zeal to help others, and consecrated their toils to the divine glory, not their own, they still live in their books even though they have departed, and the fruits of their works continually sprout as long as the book lives."
Proclus, in his oration on Chrysostom: "Let not an abundance of writers call one away from the task of writing; let it rather urge and provoke, and change one's writings to the pattern of others. He who writes good books spreads the nets of salvation." Seneca, Epistle 33: "Truth lies open to all; it has not yet been preempted. Much of it has been left even for those to come."
Vincent of Lerins, censuring from the Apostle the profane novelties of words invented by innovators and heretics: "Do not say new things," he says, "but in a new way."
Indeed in this our age, learned and religious men have so illuminated poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics, controversies, scholastic and moral theology, as well as spiritual and mystical theology, and especially Sacred Scripture with their writings, that they have published many things hitherto unheard of, unlocked many things unknown and closed, and raised many to the summit of the sciences; so much so that since the birth of Christ, scarcely any age has been more learned, more subtle, more profound, and this in every kind of knowledge.
The a priori reason is first: the immense breadth, depth, and obscurity of the sciences, from which it follows that once one is explained and mastered, there always remains and is discerned another and yet another, deeper and more obscure, and this without end or limit — which is why there always remains material for explaining new questions and writing new books. For first thoughts open the way, says Dionysius, to later reflections, and those better ones, according to the saying: δεύτεραι φροντίδες σοφώτεραι (second thoughts are wiser). No one drains the sea and the immense treasure of wisdom. Therefore that saying of Terence, Prologue to the Eunuch, is as true — "Nothing is said which has not been said before" — as it is true that nothing is dug from the veins of gold and silver, nothing drawn from gem-bearing rivers, nothing of water or liquid exhausted from fountains and rivers anew, which has not been dug, drawn, and exhausted before, but with ever-flowing other and other waters, metals, and riches — other, I say, individually, but the same in kind.
The second reason is the immense capacity of human talent, curiosity, and zeal for knowledge, which always investigates new things, so that where the earlier scholars left off, the later ones begin to search deeper still, as can be seen in scholastic philosophy and theology: for daily new doctors raise new questions, and discover new distinctions, divisions, sections, and subtleties; heretics too discover new errors and heresies which must be refuted with written books. How much light, method, depth, and order did St. Thomas and the Scholastics add to St. Augustine and the Fathers? "Every day," says Seneca, Book VI of the Natural Questions, "the frenzy of luxury thinks of something more refined, something more elegant, scorning what is customary." "Nor indeed," says Cicero in On the Best Kind of Speaking, "did the grandeur of Plato deter Aristotle in philosophy."
The third is the diversity of temperaments and tastes, which makes one reader prefer this writer, another prefer a different one; just as at table, one person likes this food, another likes another; and in the marketplace, one person favors the wares of this merchant, another those of a different one. Therefore, just as at a banquet, to satisfy everyone's appetite, many dishes must be offered, and in the market many wares: so also in learning, many books even on the same subject must be offered, so that if one does not please a particular reader, another may, or a third, or a fourth, etc. "It is useful," says St. Augustine, Book I of On the Trinity, chapter III, "for many books to be written by many authors in different styles, but not with a different faith, even on the same questions, so that the matter itself may reach the greatest number — to some in this way, to others in that way."
Finally, it pertains to the magnificence of God and the adornment of the world, and to the complete fullness of things, that just as there exist many and varied individuals of each thing and species, so too there should be on display many and varied treatises and books of the arts and sciences: for this contributes to the variety and abundance of learning, since every intellect has its own genius, acumen, judgment, method of speaking and writing, grace, and style, and always something in which it excels and surpasses the rest.
Accordingly, Origen published six thousand books on Sacred Scripture, as St. Epiphanius attests. "Marcus Varro," says St. Augustine, "read so much that we marvel he had any time left for writing; he wrote so much that we can hardly believe he was able to read anything." Hence those other magnificent libraries of kings and wise men, equipped with so many thousands of outstanding books in every field and celebrated throughout the world: that of Ptolemy Philadelphus (which contained five hundred thousand books, says Josephus, Book XII of the Antiquities, chapter XI, and Eusebius, Book VIII of the Preparation, chapter I; or even seven hundred thousand, says Gellius, Book VI, last chapter), of Trajan, Vespasian, Origen, Pamphilus, St. Augustine, etc., and the most numerous modern ones in every province; among which, "like the moon among the lesser fires," shines the Vatican Library, erected by Nicholas V. How pleasant, how useful, how learned it is to dwell among them, and to handle with hand, eyes, and mind the thoughts of so many wise men! Is not this to live one's life among the Muses, to dwell in the gardens of Alcinous, to inhabit an earthly paradise, to hold a perpetual banquet amid the delights of the mind?
Moreover, it is the reader's task to select and read the better and more useful books, and to ruminate on what has been read, and store it in the memory as in the belly of the mind, like a guest at a banquet who selects and eats the better and more wholesome foods. But it is the writer's task not only to write useful things, but also to bring something outstanding, whether in the substance or in the manner and method of writing, so as to charm the reader with a rare grace: for those who write commonplace things, or who lack the grace of writing, are thrust into a corner, so that they are neither read nor see the light of day. Finally, "he who ascends the podium (for teaching or writing) carelessly, descends without glory." Do not, therefore, be hasty and rash in publishing the offspring of your talent. "Let the gestation be that of an elephant, and let it be kept back until the ninth year."
Mystically, St. Jerome says: There are many books that disagree with the one and true Book, namely Christ. But all the Prophets, Gospels, Epistles, etc., are one book, because they speak and proclaim one Christ: "For whatever you say," he says, "if it is referred to Him who in the beginning was with God, and was God the Word, it is one volume; and innumerable books are called one law, one gospel. But if you dispute about diverse and contradictory things, and by too much curiosity lead the mind hither and thither, even in one book there are many books. Hence it was said: In much speaking you will not escape sin. Therefore of such books there is no end. For everything good and true is enclosed within a certain boundary; but wickedness and falsehood are without end: and the more they are sought, the greater their number grows." So also Olympiodorus, who adds that the books of the pagans and heretics are called many because they do not conspire toward one end, but oppose one another, and what one establishes, another overturns. He then concludes: "That there is no end, understand as meaning that one revolves endlessly around vain things, or that vain things do not have the proposed end and fruit which we could attain by pursuing them; or that the multitude of books circulating throughout the world is infinite.
AND FREQUENT MEDITATION IS AN AFFLICTION OF THE FLESH. — For "meditation," the Hebrew is להג lahag, which is scarcely found elsewhere; hence it is variously translated by various authors. The Syriac translates: speech; Pagninus: teaching; the Zurich Bible: reading; Cajetan: eloquence.
Verse 13: LET US ALL HEAR TOGETHER THE END OF THE DISCOURSE: FEAR GOD, AND KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS: FOR THIS IS THE WHOLE MAN.
This is a recapitulation, in which in a few words — indeed, in a single maxim — he summarizes everything already said. Hence St. Jerome in the old edition: "The end," he says, "of the whole discourse, and very easy to hear, is that we should fear God and keep His precepts: for to this end was man born — that recognizing his Creator, he should worship Him with fear, and honor, and the performance of His commandments. Since indeed when the time of judgment comes, whatever has been done by us will stand before the Judge, and long await the uncertain sentence, and each one will receive according to his works, whether he has done evil or good."
Pagninus: the end of every word that has been heard; Campensis: let us hear the end of the whole matter; Vatablus: in summary, all has been heard — and he explains it thus, as if to say: I have taught you all things — namely, that all things in the world are vain, indeed vanity itself. Therefore the sting and the sharp goad of the fear of God and divine judgment, he drives into his readers here at the end of the discourse. Let the preacher do the same, so that in the epilogue he may most effectively and briefly repeat the whole sermon, and fix in the minds of his hearers what is of greatest importance.
Hence the Chaldean translates partly literally, partly mystically: the end of the matter — the things that have been done in the world in secret are all destined to be made public and known to the sons of men; therefore fear the word of the Lord, and keep the commandments of the Lord, and do not sin in secret; and if you have sinned, be admonished to repent; for such should be the way of all people.
Admirably, St. Ephrem, in the Sermon on St. Julian the Anchorite, volume III: "What," he says, "is perfection? Perfection is the end of every discourse and every action. For it is written: The end of the word — hear it all — fear God and keep His commandments. For the things that happen to each of us in this world, whether sad and grievous, or joyful and glad, have an end: and therefore they are also consumed and destroyed by time. But what remains after the departure of this life is eternal and immortal. Let us therefore keep the day of judgment and retribution in our minds, so that our will may be made perfect in the Lord." So Ephrem, volume III, On Julian the Anchorite.
Moreover, the end of Solomon's discourse is the same as the end of man's existence: for just as a horse is born for running, and this is its end; a bird for flying, an ox for plowing, a dog for barking, fire for heating, water for moistening, etc.: so man is born for knowing, loving, fearing, and worshipping God, so that at last, enjoying the vision and possession of Him, he may be made blessed. Even the Gentiles saw the same thing dimly, such as Socrates, Plato, Cyrus, and Xenophon, whose thoughts Cicero reports in his book On Old Age, at the end. Hence he concludes: "I depart from this life as from an inn, not as from a home: for nature gave us a lodging to stay in, not a place to dwell. O glorious day, when I shall set out for that divine council and gathering of souls, and when I shall depart from this crowd and cesspool!"
FEAR GOD. — Campensis: reverence God; in Hebrew Elohim, that is, the Creator, Governor, Observer, Judge, and Avenger of all. Hence St. Clement, Epistle I, derives the name "God" (Deus) from δέος, that is, fear. For "the first gods in the world were made by fear." But the fear meant here is understood both as initial and servile fear, by which we fear God's judgment, vengeance, punishment, and hell — hence there follows: "And all things that are done, God will bring into judgment" — and more especially filial fear, by which out of love and reverence for God, who is everywhere present, we reverence Him and take care lest even in the smallest thing we offend His eyes — just as children reverence their dearest parents and take care not to do anything that displeases them. So St. Jerome and others. Hear St. Bernard, Sermon I on the Canticles: "Finally, above all human pursuits and worldly desires, he set the fear of God and the keeping of His commandments. Rightly indeed, for truly the first of these is the beginning of wisdom, the second its consummation, if indeed it is clear to you that true and perfect wisdom is nothing other than to turn away from evil and do good; and likewise that no one can perfectly depart from evil without the fear of God; nor is there any good work at all apart from the keeping of the commandments." The same, Sermon 20: "Very greatly indeed," he says, "must I love Him by whom I exist, live, and have understanding. If I do not love, I am ungrateful and unworthy. He is truly worthy of death who refuses to live for You, Lord Jesus, and is dead; and he who does not savor You is a fool; and he who cares to exist except for Your sake is counted for nothing, and is nothing. Finally, what is man, unless You have made Yourself known to him? For Your own sake, O God, You have made all things; and he who wishes to exist for himself and not for You begins to be nothing among all things. Fear God and keep His commandments: this, he says, is the whole man."
Hence it is clear that "keep His commandments" depends as an effect upon "fear God." For the fear of God causes the keeping of God's commandments; because we fear and reverence God, we therefore strive to keep His commandments diligently, lest we displease Him even in the smallest thing, but please Him in all things, and He Himself may find delight in us everywhere and in everything. Therefore he who fears God strives so to accomplish his works that they may be pleasing and delightful to God, and God may feed upon them, as it were, as His delights, and take pleasure and joy in them.
Hear Cassian, Conference XI, chapter XIII: "This fear," he says, "is generated not by the terror of punishments, nor by desire for rewards, but by the greatness of love; by which a son reverences even the most indulgent father, or a brother his brother, or a friend his friend, or a spouse the other spouse, with an anxious affection, fearing not blows or insults, but even the slightest offense to love, and in all things — not only in actions but also in words — is always stretched taut by an awe-struck piety, lest the fervor of love toward oneself grow even the slightest bit cold. The magnificence of this fear Isaiah, one of the prophets, elegantly expressed: The riches of salvation, he says, are wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is His treasure," etc.
Therefore he who fears God loves God and does His will in all things. "But the will of God," says St. Cyprian in On the Lord's Prayer, "which Christ both did and taught, is this: humility in conduct, steadfastness in faith, modesty in words, justice in deeds, mercy in works, discipline in morals; not to know how to do injury, and to be able to bear it when done; to keep peace with one's brothers; to love God with the whole heart, to love in Him what is Father, to fear what is God; to put absolutely nothing before Christ, because He put nothing before us; to cling inseparably to His love, to stand faithfully and bravely by His Cross; when there is a contest over His name and honor, to show in speech the constancy by which we confess; in interrogation the confidence by which we contend; in death the patience by which we are crowned: this is to wish to be a co-heir with Christ, this is to fulfill the commandment of God, this is to accomplish the will of the Father."
FOR THIS IS THE WHOLE MAN. — Syriac: for this is what has been given by one maker to everyone; Arabic: but hear the end of the discourse, every matter: fear God and keep His commandments, for this profits every man; Chaldean: for thus should be the way of all people; the Scholiast: for this is the whole man; Vatablus: because this pertains to every man; the Zurich Bible: for in this consists the perfection of all people; Campensis: for by this alone is acquired whatever can truly and solidly make one blessed; Cajetan: this alone is the divine, fixed, and stable good in every person; Arias: one does one thing, this is the work, this is your end and the cause of life; another: in this consists the whole life of a blessed man. With a similar goad Moses urges the people, saying: "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you, except that you fear the Lord your God, etc., and keep the commandments of the Lord?" Deuteronomy X, 12, 13. Now
THIS IS THE WHOLE MAN — what does this mean? First, our Ludovicus Alcazar in chapter I of the Apocalypse, note 48, explains it thus: "For this is the whole man." This, namely the riddle of the dying man, which I proposed throughout this chapter; for Ecclesiastes sets all of this forth summarily in these words, as on a tablet to be contemplated; just as if some preacher, preaching about death, at the end of his sermon, in order to impress the image of death more vividly upon his hearers, were to hold up the skull of a deceased person and exclaim: "This is the whole man" — that is, to this every man will come: therefore whoever you are, O man, know that you are going to die and will be reduced to a skull and bare bones: therefore while you live and are vigorous, fear God and keep His commandments. But this meaning seems forced and strained, or at any rate symbolic, and to weaken the force of the sentence.
Hence all the rest judge that the pronoun "this" genuinely points not to the preceding and remote riddles, but to what immediately preceded: "Fear God and keep His commandments."
Second, our Cosmas Magalianus on Epistle II to Timothy, chapter IV, verse 5, annotation 2, number 3, explains it thus: "This is the whole man" — that is, this is the definition of man, so that if you ask: What is man? Solomon would answer: He is one who fears God; for the rest indeed appear to be men, but in reality they are proud lions, grasping harpies, savage tigers, ravenous wolves, etc. So Epictetus says: "He is not worthy of the name of man who is not devoted to virtue."
But hear Cosmas: That symbolic preacher, having embraced all the tenets of divine philosophy in his golden book, at the final crowning point of his work — as if asked by someone what man is, whom Jeremiah never found anywhere, and whom that Cynic philosopher, in the Athenian marketplace, with the infinite crowd of people looking on, preceded by his lantern, could not find — defines it thus: "Fear God and keep His commandments; this is the whole man." Where the Septuagint speaks more plainly: "In this," they say, "consists the whole man." Those are not worthy of the name of man (I declare openly) who use curling irons to please the eyes, who wear their hair combed back from the forehead, who walk about in silk garments; who, throwing their cloak from one shoulder to the other, want to jostle passersby in the streets. He who fears God and keeps His commandments — this is the man we are looking for: this is the one who fills the earth; this one does not wear the mask of a false man, as do the profligate and intemperate, but the appearance of a true one, as do the modest and frugal.
This same meaning is also indicated by St. Bernard, Sermons I and 20 on the Canticles, whose words I recited a little before; and by St. Chrysostom, Homily I on the Incomprehensible Nature of God: "For without knowledge," he says, "we shall lose even the fact of being human: for fear God, he says, and keep His commandments, because this is what every man is;" and St. Jerome here: "He who is still a man," he says, "and has not yet received the name of God, has this as the rationale of his being — that while placed in the body he should fear God."
Third and genuinely: "This is the whole man" — that is, for this was every person born, fashioned, and made — namely, to fear God and keep His commandments; therefore let no one excuse himself from them on account of age, sex, infirmity, rank, or any other condition: whether a child, a woman, a sick person, a rich man, a prince, or an emperor, each must keep them; for this is the whole man — that is, to this every person is bound by natural, divine, and human law.
Again, "the whole man" — that is, the total man, or the complete man — as if to say: Whatever a person is, whatever a person has, must be devoted to this — namely, to fear God and keep His laws: therefore all senses, all members, all the powers of soul and body must be directed to this one end, according to that saying: "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with all your strength," Deuteronomy VI, 5, and Matthew XXII, 37. Therefore devote your intellect to knowing God, your will to loving Him, your memory to remembering Him constantly, your eyes to reading His commandments, your ears to hearing them, your hands and feet to carrying them out, etc.
Hence St. Augustine, Book XX of the City of God, chapter III: "What could be said more briefly, more truly, more healthfully? Fear God, he says, and keep His commandments; because this is the whole man. For whoever is this, is certainly a keeper of the commandments of God, since he who is not this is nothing: for he is not reformed to the image of truth, remaining in the likeness of vanity."
For the Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins often, by an interchange of quantity, take the universal whole for the quantitative whole, or the complete whole. Therefore "the whole man" is the same as "the entire man"; hence again by metonymy, in which a thing is taken for its attributes — namely, man for the good, perfection, and happiness of man — you may explain it thus, as if to say: The whole man — that is, every good, every duty, every end, every virtue, every honor and praise, every perfection, every happiness of man in this life consists in the fear of God and the keeping of His laws; or rather: this is what every person, as great as he is, should aim at in all his words and deeds, and throughout his whole life — always and everywhere to set before his eyes the fear of God and to strive to carry out His precepts.
Hence the Chaldean translates: such should be the way of all people; St. Jerome: for this was man born. Hence Salonius also explains it as if to say: He who lives otherwise — namely, lawless and forgetful of the fear and law of God — is not a man but a beast; because he lives not rationally, which is the nature of man, but bestially — namely, if gluttonously, like a pig; if cunningly, like a fox; if arrogantly, like a bull; if quarrelsomely, like a dog; if enviously, like an ape, etc.
Following Solomon in his usual way, Plato judges that a man who slides into vices is not so much a man as a beast. Hence in Book IX of On the Just, he portrays the soul of man in this fashion: There is a certain mass of many heads of beasts compressed, as it were, into a wild globe; from this manifold mass of bestial heads there sprouts, as it were, a certain trunk from roots, which trunk is on one side a lion, on the other a dragon. Upon this trunk a human being is placed, holding a club in his hand, with which he beats the raging beasts. Finally, the skin of the human body surrounds all these things, through which it appears to be one animal that is a simple creature. The mass of many beasts he takes as the insatiable part of desire. The trunk composed of lion and dragon is the force of anger: which is called a lion when it supports reason, a dragon when it opposes it. The man is reason. After this, Plato commands that we should nourish that inner man rather than those beasts, lest through hunger, when the man fails, only the beasts remain in us.
By these things we are advised to understand the transmigration of souls not into various species, but into various habits. Thus according to Plato, he who is devoted to nourishment and is torpid day and night will be a tree; he who lives by plunder through desire, a kite; he who fights nobly, a lion; he who cruelly rages against the human race, a dragon; he who lives by civil reason, a man; he who investigates natural things, a hero; he who studies mathematics, a daemon; he who studies divine things, an angel. For the mind becomes such as the habit it has put on — such, I say, in the body, and such also outside the body. Hence that Platonic saying: "For the wise man, the law is God; for the foolish man, lust;" and this: "Blessed will be he who humbly subjects himself to the divine law; but wretched he who proudly scorns it."
On the duty of a true and Christian man, see Gregory of Nyssa, in his oration What the Name and Profession of Christian Requires, where he says that a man living impiously is not a man but an ape dressed in human clothing. Then he adds the definition of Christianity: "Christianity," he says, "is the imitation of the divine nature." For man was created from the beginning in the image and likeness of God, to which he is recalled through Christianity. Finally, he adds that for a man to live perversely and to express the divine majesty through bestial habits is a grave injury to the Godhead: because, he says, the Godhead appears similar to them, since His image — that is, the wicked man — is such.
See St. Hilary on Psalm CXVIII, at the verse: "Your hands, O Lord, have made me," at the letter Yod, beginning; and Lactantius, Book VII, chapter VI, beginning: "Therefore," he says, "the world was made so that we might be born; we are born so that we might know the Maker of the world and our God; we know Him so that we might worship Him; we worship Him so that we might receive immortality as the reward of our labors: for since the worship of God consists of the greatest labors, we are therefore rewarded with the gift of immortality, so that made like angels, we may serve the supreme Father and Lord in perpetuity, and may be the eternal kingdom of God. This is the sum of all things, this the secret of God, this the mystery of the world, from which those are alienated who, following present pleasure, have given themselves over to earthly and fragile goods, and have plunged their souls — born for heavenly things — in deadly sweetness, as in mud and filth;" and Blessed Peter Damian, Book I, Epistle 17 to Pope Alexander, where, treating this passage, he says that he who does not fear God or keep His commandments lacks reason, and therefore has the name of man indeed, but does not have the being of a man. St. Chrysostom gives an example, Homily 21 to the People, of holy Job, who, he says, in chapter I is described not by his appearance, but by his fear of God: "He does not say," he says, "that he had two feet and broad nails, but rather, giving indications of his piety, he said: He was simple and upright, and fearing God, and departing from evil — showing that this is man, just as another also says: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole man. But if the name 'man' gives such great exhortation to virtue, how much more the name 'faithful'; for you are called faithful because you both believe in God and hold from Him the entrusted justice, holiness, purity of soul, adoption as a son, the kingdom of heaven — and He has entrusted these things to you."
Moreover, when Job is called upright, the Septuagint translate it as ἀληθινός, that is, true — because he had retained in himself the image and likeness of God through good morals, says Origen in the same place — so that he was not a painted but a true man, that is, a true image of God. Philo, in his book On Abraham, explaining that passage of Genesis VI, 9 — Noah was a just man, perfect in his generation, and pleasing to God — says: "It must be known," he says, "that he calls him 'man' not in the common manner of speaking, as a rational mortal animal, but par excellence — one who truly corresponds to his name, having cast out from his soul the savage, rabid, and bestial passions of vice. The proof is that after 'man' he adds 'just,' saying: A just man — because no one who is unjust is a man, but rather a beast furnished with a human form; only to the pursuer of justice does this name belong."
Following these, Seneca, Epistle 77: "All things," he says, "are valued by their proper good: fertility commends the vine, bouquet the wine, swiftness the deer. You ask how strong pack-animals are in their backs, whose sole use is to carry loads. In a dog, keenness of scent comes first, if it is to track game; speed, if to catch it; courage, if to bite and attack. In everything, that is best for which it is born and by which it is judged. Man is born to enjoy God; he surpasses the other animals by reason; therefore he ought to excel in virtue and piety."
Finally, the whole man — that is, the perfect man (because the complete and the perfect are the same thing, says Aristotle, Book I of On the Heavens, text 1) — is the one who fears God and keeps His commandments: whatever else a person has, whether riches, or learning, or pleasures, or miters, or purple, or a kingdom — is wind, is vanity, is nothing. Hence Olympiodorus translates: this is the wise, complete, perfect man. So also Bonaventure, Lyra, Moringus, and others. For the perfection of man consists in the conformity of man to his model, which is God — namely, that he conform himself in all things to God and His will and holiness: willing what God wills, not willing what He does not will, loving what He loves, hating what He hates. For the fear of God here is understood as filial fear, which is consummated in the virtues, by which alone man is perfected and consummated, according to that saying: "The fullness of wisdom is to fear God," Ecclesiasticus I, 20.
Therefore, St. Chrysostom on I Corinthians chapter IX: "Paul," he says, "presented every man to God" — as if to say: Paul alone was the whole man, that is, the most perfect man, and the equivalent of all men, inasmuch as he alone expressed in himself every virtue and perfection that can be found in all men taken together.
Here applies that saying of Seneca, Book III of the Natural Questions, in the Preface: "What," he says, "is the chief thing in human affairs? Not to have filled the seas with fleets, nor to have planted standards on the shores of the Red Sea, nor, when land fails, to have wandered the Ocean seeking unknown regions, wronging others; but to have seen all things with the mind, and to have conquered one's vices — than which there is no greater victory. Innumerable are those who have had cities and peoples in their power: very few who have had power over themselves. What is the chief thing? To raise the mind above the threats and promises of fortune; to think nothing worthy of your hope: for what does fortune have that is worthy of your desire? Whenever you fall back from the company of divine things to human ones, you will be no less blinded than those whose eyes have returned from bright sunlight into thick shadow."
Then drawing out the rest from there, just as Solomon here deduces from the fear of God the keeping of His commandments: "What," he says, "is the chief thing? To be able to bear adversity with a cheerful mind; to endure whatever happens as if you had wished it to happen. For you should have wished it, had you known that all things come about by God's decree. To weep, to complain, to groan — this is to rebel. What is the chief thing? A mind brave and defiant against calamities, not only opposed to luxury but hostile to it, neither greedy for danger nor avoiding it, knowing not to wait for fortune but to make it, and to go forth against either kind intrepid and unconfused, struck by neither the tumult of the one nor the splendor of the other. What is the chief thing? Not to admit evil counsels into the mind, to raise pure hands to heaven; to seek no good that, in order to come to you, someone must give and someone must lose; to desire what is desired without an adversary — a good mind. As for the other things highly valued by mortals, even if some chance should bring them into your house, to regard them as bound to depart the way they came. What is the chief thing? To raise your spirits high above the accidents of fortune; to remember that you are a man, so that whether you are happy, you may know this will not last long; or if unhappy, you may know that this is not what you truly are. What is the chief thing? To have a free spirit, etc. If you say to yourself: Why am I raging? Why am I panting? Why am I sweating? Why am I turning over the earth? Why am I visiting the forum?" As that courtier of Caesar said to his companion, who, having read the Life of Antony, left the court and imitated Antony's withdrawal and holiness — by whose example St. Augustine records that he himself was converted, Book VIII of the Confessions, chapter VI: "Tell me, I ask you," he says, "by all these labors of ours, where are we striving to arrive? What are we seeking? For what cause are we serving? Can our hope in the palace be greater than to be friends of the emperor? And there, what is not fragile and full of dangers? And through how many dangers does one arrive at a greater danger? And how long will that last? But if I wish to be a friend of God, behold, I become one now." Augustine adds the holy and happy outcome of the matter: "He said this," he writes, "and troubled by the birth-pangs of a new life, he turned his eyes back to the pages, and read, and was being changed within, where You could see; and his mind was being stripped of the world, as was soon apparent. For while he read and turned over the waves of his heart, he groaned at one point, and discerned and decided on better things. And then and there he said to his friend: I have now broken away from that hope of ours, and I have resolved to serve God, and this I undertake from this hour in this place. If it grieves you to imitate me, do not oppose me. The other replied that he would join him as a companion in so great a reward and so great a service. And both, already Yours, were building a tower at the fitting cost of leaving all their possessions and following You."
Verse 14: AND ALL THINGS THAT ARE DONE, GOD WILL BRING INTO JUDGMENT, FOR EVERY ERROR, WHETHER IT BE GOOD OR EVIL.
All things — understand: that we have done or omitted; for God will demand from us an account of every good work that we could easily have done but omitted. So Olympiodorus. The Hebrew: because every work (Septuagint: deed) Elohim will cause to come or will bring into judgment for every hidden thing, whether it be good or evil. The word "because" signifies here another cause urging us to the fear of God and the keeping of His commandments — namely, that God will summon all people and all the works of people to the universal judgment, which will take place publicly before all people and angels, and will exact from each one a strict account of all their works, even the most secret ones, so as to reward the good with heavenly joys and the wicked with the torments of hell, and this without respect of persons or bribes, most justly and irrevocably — so that from it there is no appeal, no flight, no hiding places, no escape.
For every error — that is, by searching, discussing, weighing, judging, and punishing: these words must be enclosed as if in parentheses, as is clear from what follows — "whether it be good"; for this cannot cohere with "error," but must cohere with "judgment" which preceded: so Denis and Titelmannus. In Hebrew it is: for every hidden thing; Vatablus: for every secret thing; others: for every concealed thing — namely, error, that is, sin, as our translator shrewdly renders it: for because sin is shameful, it hides itself and seeks secrecy and darkness, while virtue, being honorable, seeks the light. Symmachus and the Septuagint: ἐν παντὶ παρεωραμένῳ, that is, concerning every act of contempt, or certainly concerning every thing done in ignorance; for we shall render an account even for an idle word, spoken not willingly but ignorantly, on the day of judgment, says St. Jerome.
The Complutensians translate: concerning every neglected thing — that is, concerning every precept and virtue which a person neglected to practice. St. Augustine, Book XX of the City of God, chapter III, reads: concerning every despised thing: "This means," he says, "concerning every (person), even he who seems contemptible (and therefore is not even noticed); because God sees even him, and does not despise him, nor pass him by when He judges" — as if to say: God will judge every person, however lowly and despised. The Arabic translates: concerning every matter by which they caused trouble.
It seems surprising that our translator rendered it: for every error (some incorrectly read 'guilt'; others, even worse, 'creature'): hence Francisco Lucas suspects, in his Notes, that the reading should be: for every hidden thing. For this is what the Hebrew נעלם nelam signifies. Hence the Royal Bibles, the Complutensians, and some others read: for every hidden thing, and St. Jerome says in his Commentary that he translated it thus. And the Chaldean: For, he says, all things that are done God will bring in the day of the great judgment, and it shall come about that He will reveal every word that has been hidden from the sons of men, whether good or evil.
Nevertheless, the Latin Bibles generally read: for every error; hence this reading, says Francisco Lucas, should not easily be removed from the Vulgate translation, nor is it altogether foreign to the Hebrew nelam, meaning hidden or concealed: for there is no error except about things that are hidden or concealed. Again, error denotes the ignorance, heedlessness, and inadvertence of a mind not sufficiently attentive to the work it is doing, so as to see whether it is good or evil; indeed, a person often does even a good work less attentively and less diligently than is fitting — rather lazily, negligently, and yawningly. Again, error is called a wandering of the mind or body: thus we speak of the wanderings of Ulysses, the wanderings of roads, forests, and labyrinths, the wandering moon, the wandering stars, because they do not move in a straight path like the fixed stars, but in an oblique course: so the mind wanders — that is, strays — in prayer and in good work. Therefore God will examine those errors in the judgment.
And this seems to be what the Septuagint intended when they translated: ἐν παντὶ παρεωραμένῳ, because παρορᾶν means to look carelessly, or through carelessness of a less attentive mind to pass something by, or to glance at something in passing, to neglect and contemn it, which therefore is hidden from and remote from the eyes. In this sense, the Hebrew nelam, meaning hidden; the Greek παρεωραμένον, meaning neglected; and the Latin erratum, meaning error — will all denote the same thing: namely, what was done through carelessness and inadvertence, ignorantly, negligently, and less attentively, as often happens with frail and thoughtless people. Therefore God will bring all these things into judgment, and will judge whether those things were good or evil which the person did not sufficiently judge, but did thoughtlessly and inadvertently. For then the Lord "will illuminate the hidden things of darkness and will manifest the counsels of hearts," I Corinthians IV, 5; And all the secrets of every heart shall lie open to all. Hence the Septuagint often translates the Hebrew עלם alam, meaning to hide, as: to pass over, to neglect, to despise, to scorn, as in Leviticus XX, 4; Deuteronomy XXII, 1; Isaiah LVII, 11; Nahum III, 11, and elsewhere, and sometimes translates it as: to act unjustly, as in Psalm XXV, 4; and what is acting unjustly other than erring? Finally, to hide the eyes, ears, and mind means for the Hebrews the same as not paying attention, neglecting, erring, as is clear from the passages already cited.
See and marvel here at the profound skill and insight of our Interpreter, who understood that by "hidden things" was signified the errors hidden and concealed from the negligent person. Hence the Psalmist prays, Psalm XVIII, 13: "From my hidden (errors) cleanse me, O Lord." And Jeremiah chapter XLIX, 10: "He has revealed his hidden (crimes)." So also Daniel chapter II, 22; Obadiah chapter I, 8; Habakkuk chapter II, 14; and Job, chapter IX, 28: "I feared all my works, knowing that You would not spare the offender;" for God sees many things in a person's actions, especially the internal ones, which the person himself does not see. Therefore "God will judge the hidden (errors) of men," Romans II, 16: "for the things that are done by them in secret, it is shameful even to speak of," Ephesians V, 12; and therefore "we renounce the hidden things of shame," II Corinthians IV, 2.
And this is the origin and root of the uncertainty of grace and of prudent and holy fear: for since a person does not deeply perceive his own actions, thoughts, and intentions, but only cursorily and, as it were, on the surface, he therefore does not know whether they are good or evil, whether they please or displease God, and is therefore struck with fear, and works out his salvation with fear and trembling. Grant, therefore, that every sin is an error and a mistake, according to that saying: "Those who work evil go astray," Proverbs XIV: they go astray because they do not sufficiently consider and weigh what kind of thing, how great, and how harmful the evil is that they do. For if they deeply pondered this, as the gravity of the matter demands, they would certainly not sin.
Yet not only these things will God bring into judgment, but also those which have the appearance of good and seem good to man — indeed, which are sometimes genuinely good in themselves: for He will examine whether we performed them with due attention, intention, effort, and diligence — for example, whether we carried out prayer, psalmody, meditation, fasting, almsgiving, etc. — and to many He will say: "MENE, TEKEL, PERES; you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting," Daniel V.
Therefore this is a remarkable goad pricking us, so that we may keep sharp watch over each of our actions and thoughts, and take care that they are in every way sincere, complete, and perfect, because "we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is proper to the body, according as he has done, whether good or evil," says Paul, II Corinthians V, 10.
Furthermore, concerning the form, place, time, the persons to be judged and those who will judge, and the other circumstances of the judgment, see the thorough discussion by Francisco Suarez, volume II, Part III, disputation 57, section VI.
WHETHER IT BE GOOD OR EVIL. — These words can be referred to "error," in the sense I have already explained. More fittingly, however, from the Hebrew you may refer them to "all things": hence from the Hebrew, by the common figure of hysterology, you may clearly translate, arrange, and explain: And every work or deed, whether it be good or evil, God will bring into judgment concerning every hidden thing — namely, to examine the work, whether in it there is secretly hidden anything of error, that is, of negligence, inadvertence, omission, and fault. Therefore God will search out, uncover, and make known all that is hidden in a work at the judgment, when He will search Jerusalem with lanterns, Zephaniah I, 12. Thus He searched out the hidden things of the Parisian Doctor, who was publicly considered an upright man, when, already deceased, He commanded him to proclaim publicly in the church, from the bier: "By the just judgment of God I have been accused, judged, and condemned" — by which words St. Bruno was struck, bade farewell to the vanity of the world, and withdrawing into the wilderness with his companions, founded the Carthusian Order, to secure for himself truth and true happiness, in the year of the Lord 1092.
Climacus, at step 7, recounts that Stephen the hermit, famous for his miracles, at the moment of death disputed with the demons accusing him, and said at various points: "Yes indeed, so it truly is; but for this I fasted for so many years. But at another point: Certainly not, you are lying: I did not do this. Then again: Yes, it is truly so, it is so; but I wept, but I ministered. And again: You accuse me truly. On some points he would say: Yes indeed, and what to say to this I do not have; therefore let there be mercy." Climacus adds: "And it was indeed a horrible and terrifying spectacle — that invisible and most savage judgment, in which (what is more terrible still) they even charged him with things he had not done." And after some further remarks: "This man, however, though his account was so fiercely demanded of him, departed from the flesh; what the judgment was, what its outcome, what the sentence, what the end of that accounting was, he left entirely uncertain."
How wise, therefore, is he who with St. Augustine in the Confessions says from the heart: "Nor did anything call me back from the deeper abyss of carnal pleasures, except the fear of death and future judgment, which through various opinions indeed, yet never departed from my breast." The same St. Augustine on Psalm XLIX, near the end: "He will come," he says, "and will not be silent, and will convict, when there will be no place for correction. I will set you, He says, before your own face. Now therefore do, whoever you are who is such, what God threatens to do to you. Remove yourself from behind your own back, where you do not wish to see yourself, dissembling from your deeds, and set yourself before yourself. Ascend the tribunal of your mind, be your own judge, let fear torment you, let confession break forth from you, and say to your God: For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me. Let what was behind you be placed before you, lest you yourself afterward be placed before yourself by God the Judge, and there be no place to flee from yourself, lest He seize you like a lion, and there be none to deliver." The same on Psalm LXXIX: "It is in your power how you await Christ's coming; therefore He delays His coming, so that when He comes, He may not condemn you. Behold, He has not yet come: He is in heaven, you are on earth. He delays His coming; do not you delay your resolution. His coming is harsh for the harsh, gentle for the pious. See therefore now what manner of man you are: if harsh, it is permitted you to become gentle; if gentle, already rejoice at His coming."
St. Jerome narrates about himself, in his epistle to Eustochium, On the Preservation of Virginity, that for a slight error of his youth — namely, that he read Cicero more eagerly than Sacred Scripture — he was seized and brought before the tribunal of the Judge: "Asked," he says, "about my condition, I replied that I was a Christian. And He who presided said: You lie; you are a Ciceronian, not a Christian; for where your treasure is, there also is your heart, Matthew VI. I immediately fell silent: and amid the blows (for He had ordered me to be beaten) I was tormented more by the fire of my conscience, pondering that verse of mine: But in hell who shall confess to You? And I began to cry out: Have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy on me, Psalm VI. This cry resounded amid the lashes. Finally those standing by fell at the knees of the presiding Judge, begging that He would grant pardon to my youth, and give room for repentance of my error — intending to exact the punishment later if I should ever again read books of pagan literature. I, constrained in so great a crisis, being willing to promise even greater things, began to swear and to call upon His name, saying: Lord, if ever I possess secular books, if ever I read them, I have denied You. Dismissed upon these sacramental words, I returned to the upper world, and to the amazement of all, I opened my eyes so drenched with a flood of tears that even the unbelieving would have been convinced by my grief." He then adds: "Nor was that sleep a mere slumber, or those empty dreams by which we are often deluded: witness that tribunal before which I lay, witness that sorrowful judgment which I feared. May it never happen to me to fall into such an inquisition again; I confess that my shoulders were bruised and that I felt the blows after I awoke, and that from then on I read the divine writings with as much zeal as I had not previously read mortal ones."
If St. Jerome was beaten at the judgment for reading Cicero, how greatly will the gluttonous be beaten, who serve their belly and Venus; the avaricious, who by force and fraud seize what belongs to others; the proud, who envy their neighbors, rage against them, calumniate them, and snatch away their position, reputation, and life? Therefore from this epilogue of Solomon let us learn constantly to set before the eyes of our mind the day of judgment, so that by its thought and fear we may carry out each of our actions so honorably, sincerely, cautiously, and exactly as we would wish to have done them when we stand before the tribunal of Christ, so as to render a strict account of them to Him who demands it, lest He find any error in them. For there the die will be cast — indeed, the definitive sentence will be pronounced — and it will be the irrevocable sentence of our entire eternity, either most blessed or most wretched. Therefore whether you eat, or drink, or sleep, or study, or do anything else, always with St. Jerome let there sound in your ears the last trumpet of the Archangel: "Rise, you dead, come to judgment." "For who," says St. Clement, Epistle I, "will be able to sin, if he always sets before his eyes the judgment of God, which is certain to be held at the end of the world?" And Boethius at the end of the Consolation of Philosophy: "A great obligation of uprightness is laid upon you, if you do not wish to pretend otherwise, since you act before the eyes of a Judge who sees all things."
He who said this knew well: O how much emptiness there is in the world! I leave 'croak' to the frogs, 'caw' to the crows, and vain things to the vain; I hasten to logic, which does not fear death's 'therefore.' "Spurn vanity, pursue truth; truth is above, vanity below." St. Bernard, Book V of the Life, chapter III. LIVE FOR ETERNITY. Whatever you undertake in this mortal life, you do for Eternity — whether wretched or blessed. This age, flowing — or rather, tossing — by hours and days, with the empty stream of passing things, tends toward the vast Ocean of ETERNITY.
"Remember that you have only one soul, and it is immortal, and that you will die only once, nor will you return from death to life; that you also have only one life, and it is short, and no other than the one you are now using; and that afterward there remains only one glory, and it is eternal: therefore strive to live for it." Blessed Teresa. ONE THING IS NECESSARY: EITHER WELL FOR ETERNITY, OR ILL.
O eternal Truth, true Love, dear Happiness, blessed Eternity, my God and my All! Grant that no vanity of the world may move us. Grant that those who read these things may learn to be wise, so that they may pass from vanity to truth, from earth to heaven, from death to life, from time to eternity, from misery to happiness, from this unclean world to You, the Lord our God, so that in You, as in peace, they may sleep and rest in that very thing. Grant us this wisdom, Lord Jesus, by which we may despise vain things as vain and pursue true things as true, for You are the eternal Wisdom of the Father; You the Way, the Truth, and the Life; until the day of true and blessed eternity dawns, and the shadows of vain and wretched mortality decline. "You are the Way of holy living, the Truth of divine teaching, the Life of everlasting blessedness. Let us follow You, Lord Jesus, through You, for You are the Way in Your example, the Truth in Your promise, the Life in Your reward," so that, enjoying the most delightful vision of You, we may live, be blessed, and be glorified forever, and immersed in the abyss of truth and divinity, singing a perpetual alleluia to the Trinity, we may ever exult with all the depths of our hearts: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."