Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Title Page
Commentaries on Sacred Scripture by Rev. Fr. Cornelius a Lapide of the Society of Jesus, formerly Professor of Sacred Scripture at Louvain, afterwards at Rome. Carefully revised and annotated by Augustin Crampon, Priest of the Diocese of Amiens.
New Edition. Carefully purged of errors which had crept into the previous edition. Volume Nine: On Ecclesiasticus.
Paris. Published by Louis Vives, Bookseller and Publisher, 13 rue Delambre, 13. 1891.
Votive Dedication: To Jesus, One and Three; To Jesus, the Twin Sirach; To Jesus Christ, the Antitype
Moses and the Prophets celebrate Jehovah as three-in-one in the uncreated Holy Trinity of the Godhead — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Sirach here presents to us Jesus as threefold in the created triad of three men sharing the same name: Jesus Sirach the author of the book, Jesus Sirach the translator, and Jesus Christ the antitype of both. There the triad is of the Persons of the Trinity in the same undivided essence of God; here it is a triumvirate of Jesus in the same specific essence of man. The mystery of the former is ineffable and inexplicable, as I showed in the prologue to Isaiah; the salvation and redemption of the latter is likewise admirable and ineffable. There Jesus our love stands as mediator between the Father and the Holy Spirit; here He stands as mediator between grandfather and grandson. For both each Sirach prefigures our Savior to the life by name, by teaching — indeed by prophecy — by action, by holiness, by suffering, by resurrection, and by posthumous glory, like another Job, as will clearly appear from the course of the work, especially chapters 1, 24, 36, and 51.
Wherefore our one Jesus breathes, speaks, teaches, preaches, and prophesies in the twin Sirach, so that He Himself appears to be the soul, mind, and spirit of both.
There is one sun, but shining through a round and dense cloud by the condensation of its rays, it gleams as double and then triple, so that a parhelion appears like a threefold sun. Likewise there is one sun of wisdom, that is, the sun, Jesus Christ; but in each Sirach, as in a parhelion and twin sun, He shines forth as threefold. Therefore these are three suns of wisdom — or rather one sun gleaming in the twin parhelion of the one and threefold Jesus. Behold for you Jesus, three and one: for He is twofold in Sirach, the third in Christ; twofold in type, one in antitype; twofold in image, one in exemplar; twofold in shadow, one in body. For each Sirach signifies and represents Jesus Christ typologically, as a shadow and image. You therefore, Jesus Sirach, illuminated by heavenly light from Jesus Christ — that is, from the Word of the Father who was to become incarnate, and in God's foreknowledge already incarnate — you bore witness to your faith, piety, and zeal toward God, and you breathed forth your wisdom, virtue, and spirit to the Hebrews and to the posterity of all ages; now from heaven, by your prayers, breathe the same upon all. You, Jesus Sirach the younger, as a true son and heir of the ancestral faith and zeal of the fathers, by translating this book of your grandfather, you share with Greeks, Latins, and all other nations his faith, wisdom, and spirit, and you slay the faithlessness of any unbelievers and the wicked, and their faithless impiety, and you uproot errors and vices with these sacred maxims. For you said in chapter 50, verse 27: "My soul hates two nations: and the third is not even a nation, which I hate: those who sit on Mount Seir, and the Philistines, and the foolish people who dwell in Shechem." You therefore hated the Idumeans, the Philistines, and the Shechemites — that is, the Samaritans — as sworn enemies of the Church and people of God.
Both of you were preludes to Christ Jesus, who likewise hates the Saracens, the Pagans, the Heretics — He hates, I say, not them, but their errors and heresies, for He strives at the cost of His own blood to bring them to knowledge of Himself, to faith and salvation. You have illuminated all of Jerusalem, both the earthly and now the heavenly, with threefold and everlasting splendors of your grace and glory, and you continue to illuminate it. Grant to this age, I beseech you, that we may see her, occupied by the Saracens, restored by right of return to your faith and Church, and rejoice. You trod the Holy Land with your feet, taught it with your mouths, sanctified it with your hands: now the Hagarenes trample it with polluted feet, contaminate it with sacrilegious mouths, and defile it with unclean hands. Restore it to the ancestral truth and holiness which it drank and sucked from you as from a mother's breasts, so that all its inhabitants may acknowledge, worship, and celebrate the true God and His only-begotten Son Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world. Thus it shall by right of return be given back to its Jesus and Yeshua, to its Savior, I say (whom it once bore for the world), and to salvation. Amen.