1When thou shalt sit to eat with a prince, consider diligently what is set before thy face:Quando sarai assiso alla mensa del principe, pon mente, e fa attenzione a quelle cose, che ti son posta davanti:VVHEN thou shalt sitte to eate with a prince, attend diligently what thinges are set before thy face:Quando sederis ut comedas cum principe, / diligenter attende quæ apposita sunt ante faciem tuam. 2And put a knife to thy throat, if it be so that thou have thy soul in thy own power.E mettiti un coltello alla gola, sa pure sei padrone dell'anima tua.and set a knife in thy throte, if notwithstanding thou haue thy soule in thine owne power.Et statue cultrum in gutture tuo: / si tamen habes in potestate animam tuam. 3Be not desirous of his meats, in which is the bread of deceit.Non desiderare le sue vivande, perché elle son cibo che inganna.Desire not his meates, in which is the bread of lying.Ne desideres de cibis ejus, / in quo est panis mendacii. 4Labour not to be rich: but set bounds to thy prudence.Non ti affannare per diventare ricco; ma modera la tua sollecitudine.Labour not to be rich: but set a meane to thy prudence.Noli laborare ut diteris, / sed prudentiæ tuæ ponde modum. 5Lift not up thy eyes to riches which thou canst not have: because they shall make themselves wings like those of an eagle, and shall fly towards heaven.Non alzare gli occhi alle ricchezze, che aver non puoi: perocché elle prenderanno ale come di aquila, e voleranno per lo cielo.Lift not vp thine eies to the riches, which thou canst not haue: because they shal make to themselues winges as of an eagle, and shal flie into heauen.Ne erigas oculos tuos ad opes quas non potes habere, / quia facient sibi pennas quasi aquilæ, et volabunt in cælum. 6Eat not with an envious man, and desire not his meats:Non andar a mangiare coll'avaro, e non desiderare la sua tavola:Eate not with an enuious man, and desire not his meates.Ne comedas cum homine invido, / et ne desideres cibos ejus: 7Because, like a soothsayer, and diviner, he thinketh that which he knoweth not. Eat and drink, will he say to thee: and his mind is not with thee.Perché egli a imitazione dell'indovino, e dell'astrologo congettura quello, che non sa. Egli ti dirà: Mangia, e bevi; ma il cuore di lui non è con te.Because after the similitude of a southsayer, and diuiner, he esteemeth that which he knoweth not. Eate and drinke, wil he say to thee: and his minde is not with thee.quoniam in similitudinem arioli et conjectoris / æstimat quod ignorat. / Comede et bibe, dicet tibi; / et mens ejus non est tecum. 8The meats which thou hadst eaten, thou shalt vomit up: and shalt loose thy beautiful words.Tu vomiterai quello, che avrai mangiato, e farai getto di tue belle parole.The meates which thou hadst eaten thou shalt vomite vp: and shalt lose thy beautiful wordes.Cibos quos comederas evomes, / et perdes pulchros sermones tuos.
9Speak not in the ears of fools: because they will despise the instruction of thy speech.Non ti mettere a ragionare dinanzi agli stolti, perché sprezzeranno i tuoi sensati ragionamenti.Speake not in the eares of the vnwise: because they wil despise the doctrine of thy speach.In auribus insipientium ne loquaris, / qui despicient doctrinam eloquii tui. 10Touch not the bounds of little ones: and enter not into the field of the fatherless:Non toccare i termini dei padroni di tenera età; e non metter piede nel podere de' pupilli:Touch not the boundes of litle ones: and into the filde of pupils enter not.Ne attingas parvulorum terminos, / et agrum pupillorum ne introëas: 11For their near kinsman is strong: and he will judge their cause against thee.Imperocché il loro curatore è forte, ed egli giudicherà la causa di quelli contro di te.For their nerekinsman is strong: and he wil iudge their cause against thee.propinquus enim illorum fortis est, / et ipse judicabit contra te causam illorum. 12Let thy heart apply itself to instruction and thy ears to words of knowledge.Applica alla dottrina il tuo cuore, e le tue orecchie alle parole della scienza.Let thy hart enter into doctrin: and thyne eares to wordes of knowlege.Ingrediatur ad doctrinam cor tuum, / et aures tuæ ad verba scientiæ. 13Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die.Non privare il fanciullo della correzione: perocché se tu lo percuoterai colla verga, egli non morrà.Withdrawe not discipline from a childe: for if thou shalt strike him with the rod, he shal not die.Noli subtrahere a puero disciplinam: / si enim percusseris eum virga, non morietur. 14Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell.Tu lo percuoterai colla verga, e libererai l'anima di lui dall'inferno.Thou shalt strike him with the rod: and deliuer his soule from hel.Tu virga percuties eum, / et animam ejus de inferno liberabis. 15My son, if thy mind be wise, my heart shall rejoice with thee:Figliuol mio, se il cuor tuo sarà saggio, il mio cuore se ne congratulerà con teco:My sonne, if thy minde shal be wise, my hart shal be glad with thee:Fili mi, si sapiens fuerit animus tuus, / gaudebit tecum cor meum: 16And my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips shall speak what is right.E le mie viscere esulteranno, allorché le tue labbra esporranno documenti di giustizia.And my reines shal reioyce, when thy lippes shal speake right thinges.et exsultabunt renes mei, / cum locuta fuerint rectum labia tua. 17Let not thy heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long:Non portar invidia in cuor tuo ai peccatori; ma sta fisso perpetuamente nel timor del Signore:Let not thy hart enuie sinners: but in the feare of our Lord be thou al the day:Non æmuletur cor tuum peccatores, / sed in timore Domini esto tota die:
18Because thou shalt have hope in the latter end, and thy expectation shall not be taken away.Perocché averai alla fine quello che speri, e non ti sarà tolta la tua espettazione.because thou shalt haue hope in the later end, and thyn exaltation shal not be taken away.quia habebis spem in novissimo, / et præstolatio tua non auferetur. 19Hear thou, my son, and be wise: and guide thy mind in the way.Figliuol mio, ascolta, ed avrai saggezza: e indirizzerai nella via (il lei) il cuor tuo.Heare my sonne, & be wise: & direct thy minde in the way.Audi, fili mi, et esto sapiens, / et dirige in via animum tuum. 20Be not in the feasts of great drinkers, nor in their revellings, who contribute flesh to eat:Non frequentare i conviti de' buoni, né le gozzoviglie di quelli, che mettono insieme la lor porzione delle carni per banchettare:Be not in the feastes of great drinkers, nor in their comessations, which contribute flesh together to eate:Noli esse in conviviis potatorum, / nec in comessationibus eorum qui carnes ad vescendum conferunt: 21Because they that give themselves to drinking, and that club together, shall be consumed: and drowsiness shall be clothed with rags.Perocché questi sbevazzando, e pagando lo scotto si rifiniscono, e dormiglioni come sono si riducono ai cenci.because they that are geuen to drinking, and that pay shottes, shal be consumed, and drousines shal be clothed with ragges.quia vacantes potibus et dantes symbola consumentur, / et vestietur pannis dormitatio. 22Hearken to thy father, that begot thee: and despise not thy mother when she is old.Ascolta il padre tuo, che ti ha generato, e non disprezzare la madre tua quando sia invecchiata.Heare thy father, that begot thee: and contemne not thy mother when she is old.Audi patrem tuum, qui genuit te, / et ne contemnas cum senuerit mater tua. 23Buy truth, and do not sell wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.Compera la verità, e non alienare sapienza, la dottrina, e l'intelligenza.Bye truth, and sel not wisedom, and doctrine, and intelligence.Veritatem eme, et noli vendere sapientiam, / et doctrinam, et intelligentiam. 24The father of the just rejoiceth greatly: he that hath begotten a wise son, shall have joy in him.Il padre del giusto nuota nel gaudio: colui che ha generato un uom saggio, avrà in lui la sua consolazione.The father of the iust reioyceth with gladnes: he that hath begotten a wiseman, shal reioyce in him.Exsultat gaudio pater justi; / qui sapientem genuit, lætabitur in eo. 25Let thy father and thy mother be joyful, and let her rejoice that bore thee.Abbia questo gaudio il padre tuo, e la madre tua: ed esulti colei, che ti ha generato.Let thy father be glad, and thy mother, and let her reioyce that bare thee.Gaudeat pater tuus et mater tua, / et exsultet quæ genuit te.
26My son, give me thy heart: and let thy eyes keep my ways.Figliuol mio, dammi il tuo cuore: e gli occhi tuoi siano intenti alle mie vie.My sonne geue me thy hart: & let thyne eies kepe my wayes.Præbe, fili mi, cor tuum mihi, / et oculi tui vias meas custodiant. 27For a harlot is a deep ditch: and a strange woman is a narrow pit.Perocché fossa profonda è la donna impudica, e pozzo stretto l'adultera.For an harlot is a deepe dich: & a strange woman a narrow pitte.Fovea enim profunda est meretrix, / et puteus angustus aliena. 28She lieth in wait in the way as a robber, and him whom she shall see unwary, she will kill.Ella tende insidie sulla strada come un ladrone, e ucciderà quanti vedrà degli incauti.She lyeth in wayt in the way as a robber, and whom she shal see not circumspect, she wil kil.Insidiatur in via quasi latro, / et quos incautos viderit, interficiet. 29Who hath woe? whose father hath woe? who hath contentions? who falls into pits? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?A chi i guai? al padre di chi i guai? a chi le risse? a chi i precipizi? a chi le ferite, senza che si sappia il perché? a chi gli occhi salariati?To whom is woe? to whose father woe? to whom browles? to whom diches? to whom woundes without cause? to whom bloud sheeding eies?Cui væ ? cujus patri væ ? / cui rixæ ? cui foveæ ? / cui sine causa vulnera ? cui suffusio oculorum ? 30Surely they that pass their time in wine, and study to drink off their cups.Se non a quelli, che si stanno col vino, e si studiano di votar più bicchieri?Is it not to them that passe their time in wine, and studie to drinke out their cuppes?nonne his qui commorantur in vino, / et student calicibus epotandis ? 31Look not upon the wine when it is yellow, when the colour thereof shineth in the glass: it goeth in pleasantly,Non guardare il vino quando rosseggia, quando il suo bel colore risplende nel vetro: egli entra con grazia,Behold not wine when it waxeth yelow, when the colour therof shal shine in the glasse: it goeth in pleasantly,Ne intuearis vinum quando flavescit, / cum splenduerit in vitro color ejus: / ingreditur blande, 32But in the end, it will bite like a snake, and will spread abroad poison like a basilisk.Ma alla fine morde come serpente, e sparge veleno, come un basilisco.but in the end, it wil bite like a snake, and as a basiliske it wil powre abrode poysones.sed in novissimo mordebit ut coluber, / et sicut regulus venena diffundet. 33Thy eyes shall behold strange women, and thy heart shall utter perverse things.Gli occhi tuoi mireranno la donna altrui: e la tua bocca parlerà di cose perverse.Thine eies shal see strange wemen, and thy hart shal speake peruerse thinges.Oculi tui videbunt extraneas, / et cor tuum loquetur perversa.
34And thou shalt be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as a pilot fast asleep when the stern is lost.E tu sarai come uno che dorme in mezzo al mare, e come un piloto abbandonato al sonno, che ha perduto il timone:And thou shalt be as one sleeping in the middes of the sea, and as the gouernour fast a sleepe, the sterne being lost.Et eris sicut dormiens in medio mari, / et quasi sopitus gubernator, amisso clavo. 35And thou shalt say: They have beaten me, but I was not sensible of pain: they drew me, and I felt not: when shall I awake and find wine again?E dirai: Mi hanno battuto; ma io non ne ho sentito dolore: mi hanno strascinato, ma io non me ne sono accorto; quando mi leverò, e tornerò, a bere di nuovo?And thou shalt say: They haue beaten me, but I was not greeued: they drew me, and I felt not: When shal I awake, and finde wines againe?Et dices: Verberaverunt me, sed non dolui; / traxerunt me, et ego non sensi. / Quando evigilabo, et rursus vina reperiam ?
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Calmet
Sit. Saul sat at table, and the custom of lying down was adopted only a little while before the captivity. It was recent among the Romans. (Calmet)
Virgil
Soliti patres considere mensis. (Virgil, Aeneid 7:170.)
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Calmet
Throat. Restrain intemperance and talkativeness, Ecclesiasticus 31:12. Septuagint, "stretch forth thy hand, knowing that thou must prepare the like; but if thou be more insatiable, (3.) desire not his meats, for he has them of a deceitful life." They cannot afford real happiness, (Haydock) and to vie with the rich would only reduce them to poverty, Ecclesiasticus 13:2. St. Augustine (tr. xlvii. in Joan.) explains this text of the blessed Eucharist, observing, that we must give our life for our brethren, as Christ did for us. Before communion, we must slay the old man, and subdue our passions. (Calmet)
Haydock
Power. Protestants, "if thou be a man given to appetite." The situation of a courtier is very critical. (Haydock)
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Deceit. Poison. He wishes to discover thy secret.
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Calmet
Prudence. Be more solicitous for this, than to acquire riches. (Calmet)
Haydock
Yet this wisdom must be sober, Romans 12:3., and 1 Timothy 6:9. Septuagint, "being poor, do not stretch forth thyself to the rich, but prudently retire,["] ver. 2. (Haydock)
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Haydock
Riches. Septuagint, "to him, the rich man, he no where appears. He has prepared," etc. (Haydock)
Haydock
Like. Hebrew, "as the eagle, it will fly," etc. (Haydock)
We must therefore fix our hearts on more durable goods.
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Man. Hebrew, "eat not bread of an evil eye," the envious, or rather the sordid miser.
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Haydock
Like. Protestants, "as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: eat," etc. (Haydock)
He is still convinced that his guests will ruin him: or "like one guarding, or trembling for his soul." Septuagint, "swallowing a hair, he saith," etc. He is afraid of expense, and would allow himself as little as possible.
Haydock
Diviner. Such endeavour to speak what may come to pass, but are full of anxiety; so the miser's words are contrary to his real sentiments, (Calmet) as the diviner knows that he is imposing on mankind. (Haydock)
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Words. Thou wilt be disgusted, and repine, Ecclesiasticus 31:25.
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Ones. Hebrew and Septuagint, "ancient boundaries."
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Kinsman. Hebrew Gaal, "tutor, defendant, or redeemer," the Lord (Haydock) himself, Leviticus 25:25.
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Reins. Inmost affections.
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Haydock
Thou. Protestants, "surely there is an end." Marginal note, "reward." (Haydock)
The testimony of a good conscience affords the greatest comfort in death. Septuagint, "if thou observe these things, thou shalt have posterity." Hebrew, "hopes."
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Eat. Such feasts tend to corrupt the morals, and to misspend time.
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Rags. At death the indolent shall be exposed to shame.
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Calmet
Sell. Acquire as much wisdom as possible, and keep it with care. (Calmet)
Septuagint, "do not drive wisdom from thee."
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Pit. It is difficult to overcome this passion, when once it has got possession of the heart. We must therefore watch over it, and consecrate it invariably to wisdom, ver. 26.
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Him. Protestants, "increaseth the transgressors among men," (Haydock) and like a harpy, kills all whom she can entrap.
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Whose father. St. Jerome has read ab avi, instead of abo, (Calmet) which is an interjection, (Bochart) alas! or it means, "trouble." Septuagint, "drunkenness," (Chaldean; Calmet) or "sorrow." (Protestants)
Calmet
Falls. Septuagint, "hath sorrows." Hebrew, "babbling," (Protestants; Haydock) or discontents of mind. (Calmet)
Menochius
Cause. Drunkards often fall upon their best friends, as Alexander did on Clytus. (Menochius)
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Yellow. Or bright, as it is said there is only one red wine in Palestine.
Calmet
Pleasantly. Hebrew, "it goeth right," and is excellent. (Calmet)
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Basilisk, (regulus). Hebrew Tsiphoni, (Haydock) as asp. (Cerastes, etc.) (Psalm 90:13.)
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Women. Wine excites to lust. (Calmet) See Proverbs 20:1.
Haydock
Shall. Septuagint, "shall these." (Haydock)
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When. Septuagint, "in a great wave." Never is reason more wanted, nor less able to perform her duty.
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Drew. Chaldean, "plundered." Septuagint, "mocked at me."
Menochius
Again. This is the woeful effect of drunkenness, that men are not deterred from it, though they be sensible of its dreadful consequences. (Menochius)
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Modestie and discretion at the table of great persons.
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Mediocritie of riches, and contentment with meane state. Eate not with a niggard, lest he be secretly greued, outwardly dissembling, and thyself repent it. Aduise not the vncapable.
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Hurt not orphanes: for they are deare to God.
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Diligent studie of wisdom.
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Moderate chatisment profiteth youth.
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Vertues of children are ioyful to the parentes. Contentment with Gods wil. Hope of reward. Lerne and practise vvisdom. Sobrietie and Temperance.
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Honour of parents.
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VVisdom most precious.
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Concordance See. v. 15. and 16.
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Bodelie and spiritual puritie.
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So brietie alvvayes necessarie. Detest drunkennes.
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Drunkennes is deceiptful,
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dangerous,
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beastlie,
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hurtful to others.
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senselesse, and vnsatiable.
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St Athanasius of Alexandria † AD 373 On the Symbols 'Of the Essence' And 'Coessential.' 1
… though we know God to be a Father, we entertain no material ideas concerning Him, but while we listen to these illustrations and terms, we think suitably of God, for He is not as man, so in like manner, when we hear of ‘coessential,’ we ought to transcend all sense, and, according to the Proverb, ‘understand by the understanding what is set before us’ (
St Ambrose of Milan † AD 397 On the Duties of the Clergy 1.31
162. Therefore Solomon says well: “When thou sittest to eat at the table of a ruler consider diligently what is before thee, and put forth thine hand, knowing that it behoves thee to make such preparations. But if thou art insatiable, be not desirous of his dainties, for they have but a deceptive life.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John 47.2
… He made us debtors who first set the example. To the same effect it is written in a certain place, “If thou sittest down to sup at a ruler’s table, make wise observation of what is set before thee; and put to thy hand, knowing that it will be thy duty to make similar provision in turn.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John 47.7
… So, indeed, the words seem to imply when not more closely considered. “I lay down to sleep;” that is, I did so, because I pleased. “And I arose:” why? “Because the Lord sustaineth [will sustain] me.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John 84
… Such also is doubtless the meaning of what we read in the Proverbs of Solomon: “If thou sittest down to supper at the table of a ruler, consider wisely what is set before thee; and so put to thy hand, knowing that thou art bound to make similar preparations.”
John Cassian † AD 435 The Conferences of John Cassian 2.1
… For I must give the greater care and devotion in paying my debt, in proportion as I see that you ask for it the more earnestly, according to that saying: “When thou sittest to eat with a ruler consider diligently what is put before thee, and put forth thine hand, knowing that thou oughtest to prepare such things.”
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St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John 84
… “if thou turn it upon Him, He will nowhere be visible,” because He cannot be seen with such organs of sight as are thine. “For He will provide Himself wings like an eagle’s, and will depart to the house of His overseer,”
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St Athanasius of Alexandria † AD 373 Against the Arians. (Orationes contra Arianos IV.) 3.25
… and how again we become One in Him, and how far the Son differs in nature from us, and will stop the Arians from any longer thinking that they shall be as the Son, lest they hear it said to them, ‘Thou art a man and not God,’ and ‘Stretch not thyself, being poor, beside a rich man
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Origen † AD 254 Origen Against Celsus 6.44
… be through his own fault, in being slothful to partake of this “living bread” and “genuine drink,” by means of which the wings, nourished and watered, are fitted for their purpose, even according to the saying of Solomon, the wisest of men, concerning the truly rich man, that “he made to himself wings like an eagle, and returns to the house of his patron.”
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St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 An Address to Demetrianus 1
… Neither did I do this without the authority of the divine teaching, since it is written, “Speak not in the ears of a fool, lest when he hear thee he should despise the wisdom of thy words;”
St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews 3.51
In Solomon, in the Proverbs: “Say not anything in the ears of a foolish man; lest, when he hears it, he may mock at thy wise words.”
St Jerome † AD 420 Jerome's Apology for Himself Against the Books of Rufinus 3.43
… It is a glory to a man to turn away from evil words; but he that is foolish bindeth himself therewith. Love not detraction, lest thou be rooted out. The bread of lying is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel. He that gaineth treasures with a lying tongue followeth vanity, and shall come into the snares of death.
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Commodian † AD 313 The Instructions of Commodianus 71
… Assuredly, if thou hast the means, at once communicate also to thy brother. Be responsible to thyself for one, lest thou shouldst be said to be proud. I promise that thou shalt live more secure than the rich man. Receive into thy ears the teaching of the great Solomon: God hates the poor man to be a pleader on high.
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St Ambrose of Milan † AD 397 Concerning Repentance 1.13
… “What will ye? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of meekness?” But even the rod is not severe, since he had read: “Thou shalt beat him indeed with the rod, but shalt deliver his soul from death.”
St John Chrysostom † AD 407 The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom 53
Now what He saith is like this: “not as unsparing towards you, but rather as exceedingly sparing you, I enjoin these things. For he who spares his child, ruins it; but he who spares it not, preserves.” To which effect also a certain wise man said, “If thou beat thy son with a rod, he shall not die, but thou shalt deliver his soul from death.”
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St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Letters of St. Augustin 173.3
… For which reason Solomon also says: “Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 The Correction of the Donatists 6
… for he says, "Thou shall beat him with the rod, and shall deliver his soul from hell;"
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John Cassian † AD 435 The Twelve Books on the Institutes of the Cœnobia, and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults 10.21
… “For in all things ye were enriched in him, in all utterance and in all knowledge.” But concerning this poverty of the idler elsewhere he also writes thus: “Every sluggard shall be clothed in torn garments and rags.”
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St Ignatius of Antioch † AD 108 Epistle to the Philadelphians: Shorter and Longer Versions 4
… Fathers, “bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord;” and teach them the holy Scriptures, and also trades, that they may not indulge in idleness. Now [the Scripture] says, “A righteous father educates [his children] well; his heart shall rejoice in a wise son.”
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St John Chrysostom † AD 407 The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Gospel of St. John 87
… For he who gives to harlots is ridiculous and shameful, and will have many quarrels, and brief pleasure; or rather, not even brief, because, give what he will to the women his mistresses, they will not thank him for it; for, “The house of a stranger is a cask with holes.” (
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St Basil the Great † AD 379 De Spiritu Sancto 11
… For he who does not believe the Spirit does not believe in the Son, and he who has not believed in the Son does not believe in the Father. For none “can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost,” and “No man hath seen God at any time, but the only begotten God which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”
St John Chrysostom † AD 407 A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles 27
… Well, and so is luxury. For just as in a city, under an invasion of enemies when there has been siege and tumult, great is the uproar, so is it in the soul, under invasion of wine and luxury. “Who hath woe? who hath tumults? who hath discomforts and babblings? Are they not they that tarry long at the wine? Whose are bloodshot eyes?” (
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St Athanasius of Alexandria † AD 373 Persecution in Egypt 1
… Wherefore it especially behoves us to be sober, lest this heresy which has reached such a height of impudence, and has diffused itself abroad like the ‘poison of an adder
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John Cassian † AD 435 The Conferences of John Cassian 20.9
… For this saying of Solomon’s is true: “When thine eyes look on a strange woman, then shall thy mouth speak wickedly, and thou shalt lie as it were in the midst of the sea, and as a pilot in a great storm. But thou shalt say: They have beaten me, but I felt no pain; and they mocked me, but I felt not.”
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John Cassian † AD 435 The Conferences of John Cassian 23.7
… “They smite me but I have not grieved, and they have mocked me, but I knew it not.”
John Cassian † AD 435 The Conferences of John Cassian 24.11
… ‘They strike me but I am not grieved: and they mocked me but I knew it not;’ or this that is said in the Prophet: ‘And strangers have devoured his strength, but he himself knew it not’
Pope St Gregory I the Great † AD 604 The Book of Pastoral Rule 3.32
… Whence, also, the utterance of one that is stricken and yet sleeps is expressed by Solomon, who says, They have beaten me, and I was not pained; they have dragged me, and I felt it not. When shall I awake and again find wine (
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In Hebrew, if thou art a lord of the soul, or a man of the soul. Which secondly, Vatablus expounds, as if to say, If of the soul, that is of gluttony and concupiscence, thou art subject. Whence he translates, if thou wilt indulge thy gluttony, thou wilt put a knife to thy throat, that is, exposing thyself to the danger of death and destruction. Or, as Baynus says, as if to say, If thou shalt indulge gluttony, thou wilt create so much danger for thyself, as if thou wert putting a knife into thy throat and wounding and killing thyself. Whence the Syrian translates, put not a knife into thy mouth, if thou art a man animated (that is, carnal, indulging the flesh) because his bread is the bread of falsehood. For knife in Hebrew is שכין sackin, which Vatablus and others translate, thorns; and little knives like thorns are sharp. The Syrian on the contrary translates, put not a knife in thy mouth, but in the same sense, as if to say, Do not indulge gluttony, lest by indulging it, it as it were kill thee with a knife, and cast thee into the danger of death. The Septuagint: if thou shalt sit down to dine at the table of a powerful man, or a ruler, consider with great attention what manner of dishes are set before thee; put thy hand into them, but so that thou mayest certainly determine that thou also ought to prepare such things. Thus the Author of the Catena of the Greeks. "And put," as if to say, Rather put thorns in thy throat, and in that part by which we swallow food, by which thou shalt be slain, as if to say, It is better to be slain than to obey gluttony, or it is better to slay gluttony and concupiscence than to let it live and obey it. But it is clear that this sense is not literal, but mystical. The possibility of referring the gift. For grace in that very thing in which it is held, is referred." Hence Ecclesiasticus, chapter XIII, verses 2 and following, warns that the poor ought to avoid the banquets and associations of the rich, as too burdensome and costly for him: "He that, saith he, communicateth with one that is more honourable than himself, taketh upon him a burden; and he that associateth himself with one richer than himself, shall be in danger;" and verse 6: "If thou hast, he will live with thee, and will empty thee, and he will not be grieved for thee;" and verse 8: "And he will mock thee in his meats, until he hath emptied thee two or three times, and at last he will laugh thee to scorn." Secondly, R. Levi: This food, saith he, is wisdom, by which that part in man which obtains dominion is nourished, that is, the intelligent faculty. When therefore thou shalt sit down with a calm mind to acquire wisdom, it shall come to pass that thou understandest those things which fall under observation; if however thou shalt have thy soul in thy power, so that thou mayest feed on its foods, that is, if thou shalt obtain dominion over concupiscence, which rules the mind. "And put," as if to say, Rather put thorns in thy throat, and in that part by which we swallow food, by which thou shalt be slain, as if to say, It is better to be slain than to obey gluttony, or it is better to slay gluttony and concupiscence than to let it live and obey it. But it is clear that this sense is not literal, but mystical. Thirdly, R. Solomon, as if to say, When thou dost dine with a prince, carefully attend to understand what manner of man he is toward thee, whether he be avaricious or generous; and if thou shalt see him to be avaricious, eat nothing of his. Fourthly, our Salazar acutely, by "those things which are set before" understands not foods, but mental questions, problems, riddles, which in former times were wont to be proposed to one another by the wise at banquets. And so the sense is, saith he, exert all the effort and force of thy mind, so that thou mayest be skilled in the riddles and problems thrown at thee amid the feasting. "Put a sword in thy throat, if however thou hast thy soul in thy power." First, as if to say, Then when in this manner problems are thrown among the guests and conflict or struggle takes place, if thou art master of thyself, if namely thy mind be free and steadfast to thee, and thou hast not felt the injuries of wine; sharpen and polish thy tongue for answering, so that thou mayest cut through the knots of riddles and problems proposed to thee. The Septuagint add, and put thy hand, knowing that such things thou oughtest to prepare, that is, so enjoy sweetmeats and dishes soberly and frugally, knowing this, that it is necessary for thee also to devise similar parables and riddles for questioning. Fifth, and genuinely: Solomon here teaches the dangers threatening those who dine with princes, unless they conduct themselves soberly, wisely and circumspectly in such situations; and in order that they do so, he admonishes them here, as if to say: When thou shalt sit at the table of a prince, as his guest, gather thy mind, and carefully and diligently observe those things which are set before thee, namely the feasts, likewise the actions, pursuits, intentions, and whatever things are to be done by the master or prince in the banquet; observe, I say, lest delights and wines seduce thee, and transfer thee into excessive hilarity or drunkenness as if with mind disturbed; whence it will come to pass that thou mayest disclose thy secrets or those of others, or burst forth into words or deeds that are rash, injurious, harmful or suspect, which may create danger to thee or others regarding goods, reputation or life, because "in wine is truth," III Esdras III, 10 and 18; therefore "put a knife to thy throat," that is, restrain thy gullet, and the consequent itching to speak arising from it, by a constant and firm purpose of preserving sobriety and silence, just as if thou wert thrusting a knife inwardly into thy throat, or placing and pressing it externally. It is a catachresis, as if to say: Do not loosen the reins of thy gullet and concupiscence; for it is better to have a knife inserted or applied to thy throat to close off thy gullet and jaws to thyself, than by eating, drinking and chattering cheerfully to incur danger or the indignation of princes, as Horace says in his Art of Poetry: Kings are said to press with many cups, And to torture with wine those whom they have labored to examine. And Theognis: "Wine does violence to me, and I am no longer master of my own mind." For this torture of wine, namely of wine, is more powerful than the torture of the rack; for from the heart of the sober man wine draws out all secrets into the mouth of the drinker and the intoxicated, so that he may disclose and betray all things. "But if thou hast power over thy own soul," as if to say: Thou wilt place the knife of continence and mortification in thy throat, if indeed thou art master of thy soul, that is, of thy appetite, so that thou mayest be able to rule, moderate and restrain it; for if thou canst not do this, no knife will close thy jaws. Hear Pliny, book XIV, final chapter: "Then (when wine has loosened the rigidity and vigor of the mind) the secrets of the soul are brought forth; some make their wills, others speak deadly things, and do not contain words that will return through the throat, how many have thus been destroyed; and commonly truth is now attributed to wine." Most excellently of all St. Ambrose: "Many indeed use wine as a rack, and those from whom tortures do not draw forth the voice of betrayal, they attempt by drinking, so that they may betray the state of the fatherland, the safety of citizens, the counsels of their defense; for virtue generally overcomes pain, but drink excludes faith. I have known many who, lacerated by the rack, denied their own name. Who among cups concealed what he wished to hide?" Therefore the knife of abstinence is to be applied here, equally as that of silence. For, as St. Basil says in the Rules more fully explained, Rule 13: "Silence is a kind of gymnasium of speaking well." That this is the genuine sense of this passage is evident both from the very words of the sentence, and from what follows: "Desire not of his meats, wherein is the bread of deceit." From which it is clear that the matter here concerns food and gluttony, as if to say: Do not covet his foods, even if they are sumptuous and delicate, because they are deceitful, that is, deceptive, so as to drag thee into ruin. Thus Lyra, Hugo, Dionysius, Baynus, Jansenius, Vatablus, and others throughout. Cajetan also agrees, except that he explains "put a knife to thy throat" thus, as if to say: If thou wishest to understand what is set before thy face, thou wilt place a multitude of knives around thy throat, that is, thou wilt think and consider thyself as placed under a multitude of swords hanging over thy throat, so that by this consideration thou mayest understand whether thou art master of thy soul, that is, that thou art not master of thy life, since thou art occupied among so many swords, and therefore thou shouldest conduct thyself carefully and take counsel for thyself: for כי indeed in Hebrew is a negative, and has the same force as "not." A matter is explained by the example of Dionysius, tyrant of the Syracusans, whom when Damocles praised as blessed, Dionysius ordered him to be placed, as Cicero says in the fifth book of the Tusculan Disputations, on a golden bed spread with the most beautiful woven coverlet, painted with magnificent works, and he adorned many abacuses with silver and chased gold; then he ordered chosen boys of excellent form to stand at table, and to serve him attentively at his nod; there were present perfumes, garlands; incense was burned; tables were heaped with the most exquisite foods: Damocles seemed to himself to be fortunate. In the midst of this display, he ordered a gleaming sword suspended from the ceiling by a horsehair to be let down, so that it hung over the neck of that blessed man, and so he neither looked upon those beautiful attendants, nor the full silver work, nor stretched forth his hand to the table, for now the very garlands were falling away: finally he begged the tyrant to allow him to depart, because he no longer wished to be blessed. Wherefore Ptolemy, prince of astronomers, as is found in the Preface to the Almagest, when invited by the king to dinner, excused himself saying, "It happens to kings as it happens to those considering paintings, which when seen from afar please, but when near do not delight." Tropologically, this table is the Church, in which the strong and heroic examples of the virtues of Martyrs, Confessors, and Virgins are set before us for imitation. Whence St. Gregory, book IV on I Kings, chapter IX, explaining tropologically that passage: The cook therefore took up the shoulder, and set it before Saul, whom Samuel was designating to anoint as king by the command of God: "To eat the shoulder," he says, "is to hide inwardly what is commanded outwardly by strong action, through purpose in the mind: for as if placing a shoulder before oneself and eating it, he was advising each chosen one, who said: If thou sit at the table of the powerful, attend wisely to what is set before thee, because thou ought to prepare similar things. For at the table of the powerful he designated the virtue of the shoulder; and when he said: Attend wisely to what is set before thee, he taught him to whom he spoke to place the shoulder before himself; but he insinuated that he ought to eat it, because he said: Thou ought to prepare similar things; for preparing similar things we shall eat them, because while we propose to do the strong things which we hear, as if eating we store up in the belly of the heart the foods of life." Symbolically, this table is the table of wisdom, that is, of Holy Scripture and divine law. Thus St. Ambrose, book I of the Duties, chapter XXXII: "When thou sit," he says, "at that table of the powerful, understand who this powerful one is; and placed in the paradise of delights, and seated at the banquet of wisdom, consider what is set before thee. Divine Scripture is a banquet of wisdom, individual books are individual courses: first understand what delicacies are in the courses, and then put forth thy hand so that what thou read, or what thou receive from the Lord thy God, thou might carry out in works; and represent the grace conferred upon thee in thy duties, as Peter and Paul did, who by preaching rendered a certain return to the giver of the gift, so that each might say: But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me hath not been void, but I have labored more abundantly than all of them." And more fully and completely, chapter XXXI: "And so that banquet in Proverbs is not about foods, but about good works; for how do souls feast better than on good deeds? or what else can so easily fill the minds of the just as the conscience of a good work? what food is more joyful than to do the will of God? which food the Lord himself remembered to abound for himself alone, as it is written in the Gospel: My meat is to do the will of my Father who is in heaven. Let us delight in this food, of which the Prophet says: Be delighted in the Lord. They delight in this food who have comprehended the higher delights with wonderful ingenuity; who can know what that pure and intelligible delight of the mind is. Let us therefore eat the bread of wisdom, and be filled with the word of God; because not in bread alone, but in every word of God is the life of man made to the image of God." The Author of the Catena of the Greeks adds: If "ruler" is read in the singular number, as some read it, he understands by ruler or prince Christ; but if in the plural, "rulers," understand by rulers and princes the designated Moses and the other Prophets. By the table moreover and the dishes, he understands the saving doctrine of Christ the Saviour and the rewards of eternal life; by reclining at table, however, any faithful teacher, turning over honest deeds and wholesome sayings in his mind repeatedly, and also faithfully delivering the divine teachings of Christ the Lord; by the application finally of hands to the foods set before, it is signified that a beginning must be made from good works, and by the very deed itself, not by words alone, we must openly show ourselves to be true imitators of Christ: for those who do not enter this way, but turn themselves to the fleeting comforts of this life, wait in vain for those eternal goods, since they will never obtain them. By the table of the rulers of the Prophets he designates the oracles. "And put thy hand to it," as if to say: Do not fix thy foot in history alone, but according to it and its knowledge thou must apply thyself to virtues, so that from this thou mayest nourish thy soul. Thus the Author. Allegorically, by this table he understands the Incarnation of the Word and the whole economy and life of Christ in the flesh. St. Bernard (or whoever is the author: for the style argues that it is not St. Bernard's), sermon 2 on the Supper of the Lord, on this saying of Solomon, whose beginning is: "Thou hast sat at the table of the rich." First, he says, the first course of this table is the obedience of Christ; second, poverty; third, the death of Christ to be revered. "Thou therefore who sittest at the table of the rich (Christ), with the courses which we have set before thee placed before thee and humbling thyself, attend not negligently but diligently to the Incarnation of the Lord's sacrament, which is set before thee; attend, I say, that thou mayest learn in returning thanks not to be slow or sluggish, that thou mayest learn to give thanks for each gift: attend, I say, that no gifts of God be deprived of the debt of thanksgiving, neither great, nor middling, nor small." And after some things: "But what is that which seems terrible? This is: because thou must prepare such things for thyself. Note, that by suffering with him, dying with him and being buried with him, and so forth; for it is worthy and very expedient for thee to suffer with him, die with him, be buried with him who suffered, died and was buried: for such things were made for this, that by all these things the life of the Christian might be configured and conformed to them; for he who as a member of Christ says that he remains in Christ, ought to walk as he walked; for on account of his cross it was said: They that are of Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with the vices and concupiscences; on account of his burial it was said: We are buried together with Christ," etc. See the following, where he reviews all the actions and passions of Christ in the courses of this table, which are proposed to us to be imitated and expressed in our conduct. Again, more aptly and pressingly, St. Augustine, tractates 47 and 48 on John, understands by this table the Eucharist: "What table is that of the mighty," he says, "except that from which is taken the body and blood of him who laid down his soul for us? And what is it to sit at it, except to approach humbly? And what is it to consider and understand what is set before you, except to think worthily of so great a grace? And what is it thus to put forth your hand, so that you know that such things you ought to prepare, except what I have already said: that just as Christ laid down his soul for us, so also ought we to lay down our souls for the brethren? For thus also the Apostle Peter says: Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow his steps. This is to prepare such things; this the blessed Martyrs did with burning love, whose memories if we celebrate not in vain, and at the banquet at which they themselves were satisfied, we approach to the table of the Lord, it is necessary that, just as they, so also we prepare such things." Then St. Augustine adds: "Nor was this said as if we could thereby be equal to the Lord Christ, if we should endure martyrdom for him even unto blood. He presented himself to us as the vine, we cannot have a vine besides him. He who could imitate the dying one, could not, however, imitate the redeeming one," etc. He proves this from the following saying of Solomon, according to the Septuagint: "But if you are more eager, do not covet his foods: for it is better that you take nothing from them, than that you take more than is fitting for you: for these things," he says, "have a deceitful life, that is, hypocrisy. For in saying that he is without sin, he cannot show himself just, but feigns it, therefore it was said: for these things have a deceitful life. There is one alone, who both could have the flesh of man and could not have sin. Deservedly what follows is commanded to us, and by such a word and proverb human weakness is reproved, and it is said to it: Do not stretch yourself out, when you are poor, against the rich. For the rich one who is never bound either by inheritance or by his own debt, Christ is himself just and justifies others. Do not stretch yourself out against him, so poor as to appear a daily beggar for the remission of sins in prayer." St. Chrysostom is added, homily on Psalm XXII and CXVI: "From that table," he says, "they were made drunk, from which it was said: Coming to the table of the mighty, consider what is set before you, knowing that such things you ought to prepare. What is it that such things you ought to prepare, except the body and blood which you receive? For the Apostles themselves were also made drunk from that very chalice, of whom it was said: These men are full of new wine, when it was the third hour of the day. But how excellent is this chalice! See how great is the brightness from the sufferings of the Apostles and Martyrs," etc. St. Chrysostom proves this from that Psalm CXV: "You have prepared a table before me against those who trouble me: what shall I render to the Lord for all the things he has rendered to me? I will take the chalice of salvation," as if to say, The chalice of patience and martyrdom to him who suffered for me I will render, I will give blood for blood, life for life. For most excellently St. Jerome, epistle 22: "This is the only," he says, "recompense, when blood is compensated by blood, and we redeemed by the blood of Christ willingly fall for the redeemer." Moreover, if you weigh each word and apply it to the Eucharist, you will find a wonderful force in them. First indeed he says: "When you sit down to eat with a prince," namely with Christ, as if to say, In the Eucharist there is a banquet of Christ, in which the communicant as a guest feasts with Christ: both because Christ through the priest, as his vicar, immolates himself in the Eucharist and eats; and because just as the communicant eats Christ, so in turn he is eaten by him and incorporated, as St. Bernard says. Hear St. Thomas, Opuscule LVIII On the Sacrament of the Altar, chapter XX: "Third, concerning this manner, the reason of the remanducation of those eating worthily is to be considered, concerning which remanducation it is said that such ones eat and are eaten; and the reason for this is, that while the body of the Lord is worthily eaten by the faithful, it is not itself converted into the eater like other foods, but on the contrary the one truly eating it is spiritually changed into it; for the Lord makes you eating him a member of his body," etc. Which he then confirms by a threefold similitude. Secondly he says: "Attend diligently to what is set before thy face," which in Hebrew means, understanding understand, and perceive, as if to say: In the Eucharist sight and taste judge that the species of bread are exhibited to thee; but the intellect illuminated by faith understands, perceives and believes, not bread, but the very body of Christ under the species of bread is set before thee: attend therefore, and say with the Hebrews seeing manna rain from heaven, manhu, that is, what is this, that Christ offers himself wholly to me, that is his whole humanity with his divinity to be eaten? For in the Eucharist the greatest consideration is required, so that thou mayest esteem, revere, honor and adore the dignity and worth of so great a feast and food, as is fitting. Thirdly, he says: "Put a knife to thy throat," as if to say: Apply the knife of discretion and faith, by which thou mayest judge and separate this divine food from the common: "For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord," 1 Cor. XI, 29, as if to say: He who eats unworthily of Christ places as it were a sword in his throat, by which Christ passing through the throat, as far as lies in him, he wounds and kills: for he is guilty of the body of the Lord, that is, he sins so gravely as if he were destroying Christ himself, as the Jews destroyed him. Again, place the sword of continence in thy throat, lest after communion thou pour thyself out into feasts, trifles, laughter, foul speech, detraction, etc.; but gather thy mind within, and converse with Christ and enjoy him. Finally, know that after communion thou must continually use the knife of mortification, to cut away the passions and vices which displease Christ, so that thou mayest sacrifice thyself to him; die with him and crucify thyself. Whence Hugo says: "Place," he says, "a knife in thy throat, so that the old man in thee may be slain, and the new, that is Christ, may live." According to the opinion of Cajetan, thou mayest thus expound it, as if to say: Think of the shining knives and swords of the angels standing at the altar, as it were the soldiers and attendants of Christ, hanging over thy head and being brandished against it, if thou handlest so great Sacraments irreverently, carelessly, or unworthily. If thou wishest to adapt this knife to the consecrating priest, thus fashion it, as if to say: Thou, O priest, immolating Christ, think that thou carriest as it were a knife in thy throat, while thou utterest the words of consecration: for by those words as by a sword thou dost as it were dissect and immolate Christ, while by the force of consecration, or by the force of the words, thou placest the body of Christ under the species of bread in the paten, as if separated from the blood; but the blood thou placest under the species of wine in the chalice, as if separated from the body, so that thou mayest represent the death of Christ, although by natural concomitance, where the body of Christ is, there also is the blood of Christ, and vice versa. Furthermore Christ in this Eucharistic banquet exhibits to us ten miracles: it behooves us to prepare ourselves for him through his grace in like manner. The first is transubstantiation, by which the substance of bread and wine, the accidents alone remaining, by the force of consecration is transubstantiated and converted into the substance of the body and blood of Christ. In like manner a sinner now penitent ought in this banquet to transubstantiate himself as it were, so that he who was before carnal may become spiritual; he who was proud, gluttonous, lustful, envious, wrathful, by the force of the body of Christ may become humble, sober, chaste, liberal, meek, according to that in Ephes. cap. IV, 23: "Put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth." Put on, I say, Christ, nay rather transubstantiate yourselves into Christ, so that ye may say with Paul: "And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me," Gal. II, 20. Thus the external appearance of man will be the same as before, but his inner soul will be changed, and he will be another, namely transformed into Christ, so that whosoever shall see such a Christian may think he sees Christ: for a Christian ought to be the image of Christ, and as it were another Christ, says Nyssenus, tract. What the name Christian means. Whence he infers: "Christianity is an imitation of the divine nature," namely an imitation of the likeness of God, in which Adam was created, according to that in Gen. I: "God made man according to his image and likeness;"; and the profession of Christianity is, that man be restored to his pristine and ancient happiness, namely that he be restored to the pristine likeness of God, to which he was first created: for in this primeval creation, and likeness of God, consists his happiness. Fourth, "if thou hast power over thy soul," signifies the knife of discretion, mortification and continence both of gluttony and speech, etc.; it is not the possession of anyone, but of him alone who, as the Hebrew has it, is בעל נפש baal nephes, that is, lord and master of his own soul, so that he may rule over its appetite and affections, and know how to moderate, bridle and govern them. Again, this dominion of the soul and quieting of the passions is the effect of the Eucharist; but in such a way that it requires our cooperation and labor: for if we cooperate with the graces given through the Eucharist, we shall suppress vices, we shall rule over our affections, we shall be lords and kings of our own soul. Thus St. Catherine of Siena from a single communion obtained this dominion of her soul, nay, such equanimity, that amid both prosperity and adversity she maintained the same countenance, with a mind always constant and unperturbed. Fifth, the Septuagint adds, "knowing that thou must prepare such things," as if to say: In the Eucharist thou not only eatest Christ, but art also eaten by Christ, says St. Thomas; for thou shalt not change me into thee, but thou shalt be changed into me, says Christ through the mouth of St. Augustine: do therefore so that thou seasonest thyself with those gifts and virtues, that thou mayest present to Christ a savory feast from thyself. "This," says St. Augustine, "the blessed Martyrs did: for they presented to the Lord such things as they had received from the Lord's table." All Christians likewise ought to imitate the same, each in his own state: for as each state has its own cross, so also it has its own martyrdom. Whence St. Bernard in the Sentences: "Martyrdom," he says, "without blood is threefold: frugality in abundance, which David and Job had: generosity in poverty, which Tobias and the widow exercised: chastity in youth, which Joseph used in Egypt." I have shown this same thing to many in Hosea XI, at the end of the chapter. St. Chrysostom elegantly assigns the reason a priori, in Psalm XCV: "The practice," he says, "of piety is a certain bloodless martyrdom, that is, an evident and professed testimony, and how? Hear and consider: in every tribunal what else is proposed to the Martyr than to deny God? but while he contends against this proposition, he receives the manifest crown of martyrdom. But over these holy ones who suffered without blood, there is surely in place of judge and tribunal the very conscience itself, in which the Martyrs are made to preserve justice and never to fail from God." The same, in homily 3 on the epistle to the Thessalonians, teaches that patience in sickness is a long and slow martyrdom. And St. Augustine, sermon 40 On the Saints, thus determines: "Not the shedding of blood alone is martyrdom, nor does that burning of flames alone give the palm: the crown is reached not only by death, but also by contempt of the flesh. Without injury to the Saints who died in persecutions, it may be said that to afflict the flesh, to overcome lust, to resist avarice, to triumph over the world, is a great part of martyrdom." Second, that with the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, by concomitance, his soul is also placed with all its sanctity, with the beatific vision and love, and with all his natural and supernatural ornaments and gifts. Again, that the hypostatic union is placed, and the very hypostasis of the Word with all his divinity, and all his divine perfections. Behold, Christ proposes all these things to us in the Eucharist, we eat all these things when we receive the Eucharist. In like manner we ought to offer and consecrate to Christ not only our body, but also our soul and its powers, intellect, will and memory, likewise the interior and exterior senses, and all our strength, thoughts, intentions, actions and operations, so that all may be borne and directed toward Christ, his love, honor and praise; nor should we look to anything else from without, not applause, not delights, not riches, not honors. Third, that Christ here humbles himself supremely; for since he is immense, he encloses himself wholly in a small host, nay, in every point of the host. Learn to humble thyself from Christ, O guest of Christ! for it is unworthy that where God humbles himself, there man should be proud, says St. Bernard. Again, Christ hides himself in this Sacrament, so do thou hide thy virtues and gifts, so that thou mayest wish to be open and pleasing to God alone. Moreover, Christ in many churches, especially in villages and desert places, lies hidden, forsaken and unknown, so that for many days, and perhaps months, he lies alone, nor is he visited by anyone, nay, he is even exposed to the corruption of the air, mold and filth, especially where priests are negligent and irreligious: so do thou also learn to lie hidden and to endure, if like St. Alexius thou art neglected, despised, and thrust into a corner of the house. Christ lies hidden alone, and thou wishest to be open to all, to be honored and revered by all! Fourth is this: Christ in the Eucharist is wholly in the whole host, and wholly in each part of the host; so also do you give yourself wholly to Christ in your whole life, and wholly in each part of your life, hour and action. "For, as St. Bonaventure says, the Lord offered His undivided and whole body, therefore I am wrongly divided, and defraud Him even by the smallest part of myself." "He that is with a wife is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and is divided," says the Apostle, I Cor. VII; but in the Eucharist he is taught and strengthened to present himself undivided and whole in things both divine and human, both in marriage and in Religion. For thus in prayer the whole mind of the communicant is intent upon God, so as not to forget his family, but to ask grace from God for administering it rightly; thus in turn he is wholly intent upon his family, so as to govern it for no other reason than for God, and for the glory of God. Such was Nonna, the mother of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who, as he himself says in her Encomium, frequently receiving the sacred synaxis, "was wholly in domestic matters, and wholly in divine matters." This especially befits Priests and Prelates: for it is theirs to mingle action with contemplation, so that they may appear to be wholly in action, and wholly in contemplation. Whence St. Gregory, in the second part of the Pastoral, cap. VII: "Let the rector," he says, "diminish care for internal matters in the occupation of external affairs, not abandoning the provision of external matters in the occupation of internal affairs." Fifth, which follows from the preceding, is that Christ in the Eucharist is impassible: for although the species of bread be pierced by a sword, harmed, burned, yet the body of Christ hidden beneath them cannot be pierced, harmed, burned, nor even touched; just as if an Angel were hidden beneath them, he could not be pierced, harmed and touched. Imitate this impassibility of Christ. "Christ," says St. Thomas in the Opuscule On Impassibility, "can suffer from no external agent, not from fire, not from water, not from a sword, etc. You therefore, since you cannot be impassible, be nevertheless a sufferer with a certain impassibility," that is, suffer so strongly that you may appear to be impassible. Sixth: Christ in the Eucharist is insensible, both passively: for He cannot be perceived by any sense, and thus He deceives and dulls the sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, which perceive nothing other than the species of bread and wine; and actively, because, as St. Thomas teaches, and from him Francis Suarez, III part, Quest. LXXVI, art. 7, disp. LI, sect. 3, Christ in the Eucharist, because He is not coextended in place, but is as it were contracted into a point of place, naturally cannot feel, hear, see those standing by, nor even Himself: because visible species and other sensible things require extension to place; the very power of sight requires the same, so that it may operate and see. I say naturally, because supernaturally it can be done by the power of the divine Spirit: for God can supply either defect, either by itself imparting to the eye of Christ the visible species of objects, or by elevating them, so that they may act and influence the eye of Christ, although placed in a point of place. Finally, the visions of things which Christ has in heaven appear to be wholly communicated to Him in the Eucharist. For just as the substance of Christ is the same in the Eucharist as it is in heaven: so also He has the same accidents in both places, such as visions and sensations. Learn from Christ to mortify your senses, and to become insensible, so that you may live only according to mind and spirit like Christ, God and the Angels; for the senses draw toward concupiscences, but the spirit toward heavenly and divine things; the senses toward vices, the spirit toward virtues; the senses toward hell, the spirit toward paradise. Seventh: Christ offers you the remaining gifts of the glorified body, namely clarity, agility, subtlety: for Christ has an immortal, clear, agile and subtle body: so also do you present to Him your body and mind pure through chastity, clear through the splendor of good example, agile through fervor, subtle through contemplation. Eighth: Christ granted the power of consecrating and confecting the Eucharist not to one, not to ten, not to a hundred, but to many thousands of men, and indeed to all priests, even the impure, adulterers, murderers, blasphemers, schismatics and wicked; nor did He take it away on account of any enormity of their crimes; and He willed to suffer this unworthiness for our benefit, so that this divine sacrifice and the nourishment of eternity might be abundantly supplied to us everywhere and always even through unworthy priests, and we might not be deprived of so great a good on account of their malice. Everywhere therefore He furnishes this divine table and this heavenly banquet to anyone with wonderful generosity. Do you therefore in turn exhibit to Christ a broad and love-expanded heart, so that you also love and cherish even your enemies, and repay them benefits for injuries and blessings for curses. For even if they themselves do not deserve this love, Christ deserves it. Therefore for the love of Christ love those who do not love you, and love Christ again in them, bless Christ in them and do good to them. Ninth: The Body of Christ in the Eucharist is without the mingling or confusion of parts and members: for although all are together and in the same point, and are not coextended with the surrounding air or place, yet each retains its own temperament, its own union, its own connection, its own order, and every internal disposition, which does not depend on respect and measurement of place. For the head of Christ is connected not to the belly or feet, but to the neck, the neck to the shoulders, the shoulders to the breast, the breast to the belly, the belly to the thighs, the thighs to the shins, the shins to the feet: similarly you also, even if you are occupied in a humble and small office or rank, nevertheless in all things preserve order and decorum, so that you do and perform each thing discreetly, prudently and decorously. Thus you will do splendid things: for the beauty and excellence of a work consists not so much in its magnitude and excellence as in its manner, order, decorum and perfection. Whence Sirach, cap. XXXIII, 23: "In all," he says, "your works be excellent." Tenth: Christ in the Eucharist feeds all the faithful of the whole Christian world, unites them to Himself and incorporates them, and imparts to them His spirit of divinity, so that they now seem to be not so much men as certain human gods, and certain divine men, and this not only all together, but also each individually: for just as red-hot iron by the force of fire ignites whatever wood, so the flesh of Christ by the force of divinity joined to itself ignites men and makes them divine. This therefore is the outpoured charity of Christ, by which He Himself, as our head, communicates to us individually as His members His spirit and His life, gathering all into one body, and into one as it were perfect and complete hypostasis, and we all die into Him and are as it were incorporated into Him, just as parts of food suitably applied within are incorporated into us through the channels of nature, and become one hypostasis with us, when our spirit extends itself to inform and vivify them. Whence the Apostle, I Cor. X, 17: "One bread, one body we, though many, are all who partake of the one bread." One bread, because this bread is not converted into the substance of those eating it (as happens with earthly and corruptible bread), but on the contrary it converts those eating it into itself, and makes them one with itself, communicating its properties and its form to them. Truly a wonderful counsel of God, that He might draw us to Himself and make us partakers of His spirit and life, He unites Himself hypostatically in one individual of our nature to human flesh, then gives us this flesh clothed in the species of bread and wine as food, and through that food joined and mingled with us, He transfuses into us His spirit and divinity connected to that food, so that in this way He might sanctify us all and bring us to His unity and life. No manner could be devised more sweet, more efficacious, more admirable or more wise. Imitate this immense charity of Christ, so that you strive to unite all, both foreigners and those of your household, both Asians and Indians and Europeans, both enemies and friends, both poor and rich, all in Christ, indeed in Christ the head, and to pierce them into His bowels. For this reason Christ instituted the Eucharist, so that He might unite to Himself as it were the head all the faithful and the whole Church as body and members really and substantially, and incorporate them, so that Christ might be in all things, live and act in all. Whence Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis IV Mystagog.: "In the Eucharist," he says, "we are concorporeal and consanguineous with Christ." And Cyril of Alexandria, lib. IV in John cap. VII: "Just as," he says, "if someone pours melted wax into another wax, it is necessary that one be mixed with the other throughout: so he who receives the flesh and blood of the Lord is so joined with Him that Christ is found in him and he in Christ." If you do this, you will fulfill what the Seventy say here: "For such things it behooves you to prepare."
23:3
"In which," that is in which things, namely foods; or "in which," namely in food: for this is contained in the foods, just as the singular is contained in the plural: it is a synthesis. In Hebrew, do not covet his delicacies, and (that is because) he himself is bread of lies. Thus Aquila and Theodotion. The Chaldean, do not desire the dishes which are foods of lies; the Syriac, if he is a man of insatiable appetite, do not desire his food; the Septuagint, but if you are insatiable, do not covet his foods: for these obtain a false life; the Author of the Catena of the Greeks: "For often with a deceitful life they are joined together." Which he explains thus, as if to say, "Do not covet the vain and fleeting comforts of this life, which the greedy and those devoted to fleshly pleasures never cease to seize and pursue insatiably." Clearly Vatablus, do not covet his delicacies, since it is deceptive food. This verse is connected with the preceding one, as is evident from the pronoun his, namely of the prince, of whom the discourse went before, as if to say: When you sit at the table of a prince, put the knife of sobriety and continence in your throat, if indeed you have in your power your soul, that is the appetite of your soul and gullet, so that you are able to restrain them. Do not therefore covet his delicate foods (for these are signified by the Hebrew במטעמותיו matammotav), because they themselves are bread of lies, that is foods that are deceptive and false. Furthermore the Septuagint from the preceding verse repeat the בעל נפש baal nephes, that is master of soul, or, as they understand it, having a soul, that is appetite of soul and gullet; whence they translate, but if you are insatiable, do not covet his foods: for these obtain a false life, as if to say: Even if you are insatiable and most gluttonous, do not nevertheless covet the feasts of a prince, because those often deceive life, and with them death is swallowed, because, to omit other things, the feasts of princes are often infected with poison: for which reason princes are accustomed to employ tasters, who taste the foods beforehand, so that in them poison, if there be any, may reveal itself, and thus they abstain from them and avoid the danger. Thus once in Italy poison was given in Setine wine, which is delicate, and that in a golden cup. But why deceptive? First, Isidore Clarius: Delicate foods, he says, are deceptive, because they mostly consist of light things and of very thin substance, which tickle and delight the palate, but do not nourish the eater, nor strengthen him; for true food is that which nourishes and strengthens a man, such as solid foods, which have more substance, and less flavor. Second, Aben-Ezra: They are, he says, bread of lies, that is of a man speaking lies. Third and genuinely, the delicacies of a prince are called bread of lies, both because they entice and deceive even a sober man by their delightful allurement, so that he eats more than health and sobriety require, and so that he immoderately gulps down delicate wines, and becomes drunk and intoxicated. They deceive therefore, both because they intoxicate and madden a man; and because these wines deceive the drinker, and make him talkative, cheerful and garrulous, so that poured out in cheerfulness he betrays his own secrets and those of others, by which he not rarely destroys himself and others. Cajetan adds that royal tables are called deceptive because princes often invite to a feast those whom they intend to capture and kill, as Haman was taken from the feasts of Ahasuerus to the gallows; and in our memory the Duke of Alva invited certain princes in Belgium to a solemn banquet, whom he captured in it and shortly after by order of King Philip punished with death. When therefore you recline at table invited by a prince, think that his feasts are deceptive and treacherous, and that as many swords hang over your gullet as delicacies are offered. Beware therefore of gluttony, of talkativeness, of every other danger, and prudently provide for your affairs as much as you are able. Fourth, our Salazar separates this verse from the preceding one, and constitutes it separate, and thus explains it: Solomon attacks excessive appetite for unjustly acquired wealth, and says: "Do not desire his foods," that is, do not covet or aspire to that excessive abundance of riches and delicacies in which he rejoices "in whom is bread of lies;" for such riches are deceptive and false, and indeed quickly abandon the possessor, and migrate to others. This verse agrees moreover according to this exposition with the two following: "Do not labor to become rich," etc. And below: "Do not raise your eyes to riches," etc. But from the Hebrew it is clear that this verse depends on the preceding one; for among other things the pronoun his argues this, which in the Hebrew since it is affixed, can only refer to the preceding, namely the prince. Again "delicacies" properly signify not riches, but delicate foods. Finally that the discourse here is about foods is evident from verses 1 and 2. Morally, learn here that the delights and all the pleasures and pomps of this world are not true, but deceptive, and this for many reasons, on account of which they are called in Hebrew the bread of lies in the plural; and in Latin they are called delights (deliciæ), because they are enticements (illiciæ), that is, allurements, from alluring, that is, deceiving and deluding. For besides the reasons already stated, first, they lie in having the truth of pleasure, when they contain only an empty appearance and shadow of it; for they are thin, vile, meager, brief, which tickle only the surface of the flesh and the senses, but do not penetrate the interior of the soul and desire, so as to refresh and satisfy it. Truly Climacus in the work of Maximus, sermon 27: "The pleasure of foods, he says, is perceived only as far as the palate, and there it has its limit; beyond the palate no distinction is felt of the things that are taken in, since all things afterwards equally by nature are reduced to foulness." In the same place St. Basil: "The belly, he says, is a faithless merchant, keeping nothing in store, retaining the inconvenience of many things, but not preserving the things themselves." And Epictetus: "Take care that you are not nourished by the foods which are taken into the belly, but by the joy of the mind: for those are turned into excrement, and at the same time their praise perishes; but the mind separated from the body remains incorrupt forever." Secondly, because pleasures soon depart, and departing end in sorrows, and fix the stings of sadness equally in the mind as in the body, according to that: "The end of joy is occupied by sorrow," Proverbs XIV, 13; for they create nausea of the stomach, heaviness of the head, sleeplessness, griping pains, flatulence, phlegm, fevers, burning sensations, stone, pleurisy, apoplexy and a thousand other diseases and afflictions. Whence Ecclesiasticus XXXI, 23: "Wakefulness, he says, choler and torture to the man without prudence." St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration 38, calls delights precious dung: "Neither let the earth and sea, he says, offer us precious dung as a gift: for I am accustomed to honor delights with this name; but let us delight in discourse and in the divine law." St. Jerome, a disciple and follower of St. Gregory Nazianzen, gives the same name to delights. Most excellently St. Chrysostom, homily 45 on Matthew: "By delights, he says, old age creeps in more quickly, by delights the senses are dulled, by delights thought is retarded, more quickly the mind is covered with darkness, the body is dissolved, a greater abundance of filth is stored up and laid away; thus from a great heap of the afflicted, a ship too heavily laden with burdens, frequent shipwrecks occur: for what then? answer, I beseech you, do you strive to make your body fat for this reason? so that we may lead you to be sacrificed, or so that we may place you sacrificed on the table? Certainly fat birds are even useless for salting." The same, homily 58 on Matthew: "What foulness of delights does not bring about evil? It makes swine out of men; nay rather much greater ones: for a pig wallows in mud and is nourished by dung; but this man builds for himself a more abominable table, devising wicked mixtures: this man is certainly separated from a demoniac by no distinction; he is equally foolish and mad: and we pity those possessed by demons; but we turn away from this man and hate him, because he willingly draws madness upon himself, and makes his mouth, eyes, ears and the other instruments of the senses simply sewers of the bitterest pleasure." The same, homily 13 on the first epistle to Timothy, explaining that passage chapter V: She that liveth in delights is dead: "For he lives, he says, only for the belly (the glutton), dead to the other senses, and neither sees what ought to be seen, nor hears what it is necessary to hear, nor speaks what ought to be spoken. Just as someone dead lying in bed, with eyelids closed and eyes shut, has no sense at all, so also this man, nay far worse is this man affected than that one; for that one feels neither good things nor bad things, but this man loses the sense of bad things only, and feels nothing good at all." Hear also Blessed Lawrence Justinian in the Wood of Life, treatise On Poverty, chapter III: "If you strive to gather money, he says, you will rob the one who has it, or you will be torn by desires; if you wish to shine in dignities, you will supplicate the giver, and you who desire to go before others, you will blush at the humility of asking; if you desire power, you will be subject to the plots of your subjects and will lie exposed to dangers; if you seek glory, distracted through all hardships you will cease to be quiet and secure; if you choose a voluptuous life, who will not despise and cast away the servant of the vilest and most fragile thing, namely the body?" Third, because at feasts, with loosened tongue, many lies are spoken by the guests, flatteries, hypocrisies, frauds, etc. For which reason St. Augustine employed reading and discussion at table, so that he might exclude harmful tales and detraction; indeed he never went to banquets, even when invited, following the example of St. Ambrose, as Possidius relates in his Life. Fourth, because the one inviting often lies about his love, when he conceals hatred or a similar wicked affection in his heart. For he almost always invites others, not for their benefit, but for his own advantage, so that he might bind them to himself and obtain from them something which he desires; indeed he invites the suspect or enemies, so that he might fish out their counsels in wine, or so that he might draw them into partnership in crime, or so that he might harm and injure them either in reputation, or in health and life. I have said more about the deception of delights and the benefits of frugality in Daniel 1:16. See also St. Jerome, book II Against Jovinian, who thunders at length against the luxurious and gluttonous.
23:4
This maxim is easy: for it forbids excessive zeal for becoming rich and excessive desire for wealth, as if to say, Do not torment and exhaust yourself so that you might heap gold upon gold, riches upon riches, and strive to accumulate without end; for this is the vice of avarice, and the constant torture of the avaricious soul, which often drives a man to usury, frauds and other illicit arts, so that by fair means and foul he might heap up riches immensely, by which he loses his soul and thrusts himself into hell. "But set a limit to your prudence." A limit cannot properly be set to prudence itself, since it is the measure of all virtues; for it is itself virtue balanced in the middle of right reason, balancing and directing all the other virtues. By prudence therefore here understand skill, industry and foresight for acquiring wealth, as is clear from the Hebrew בינה bina, that is, intelligence. And from the following verse: "Do not raise your eyes to riches which you cannot have." Hence Aben-Ezra: "Refrain," he says, "from the prudence by which you use yourself to acquire riches, which is the prudence, that is, the skill of the avaricious." The sense therefore is, as if to say, Do not be too skillful, industrious and provident in seeking ways of gaining and modes of becoming rich; but set a limit to this industry of yours, which true prudence dictates, so that namely you do not wish to heap up more riches, even by just and lawful means, than is required for your use and your family's condition. For what purpose will you gather riches, which you store away in chests and cellars, to be of no use, except that they be gnawed and consumed by rust and moths? Others explain it, as if to say, Do not desire riches that are impossible or illicit, but set a limit to your riches by prudence, in the genitive case, so that namely the limit which prudence suggests might moderate your zeal for becoming rich and your riches. Thus St. Thomas explains it, II-II, Question 170, article 4, to the third: "It is signified," he says, "not that prudence itself is to be moderated, but that according to prudence some limit is to be imposed." But this limit is that you do not acquire riches except by lawful and just arts and moderate ones, which suffice for living honorably. This sense fits aptly with the following verse: "Do not raise your eyes to riches which you cannot have." The Hebrew words literally have: "Do not labor to become rich; cease from your intelligence." Which words, because they are general and unlimited, can be variously limited and derived to various particular senses; yet all finally end in the same place and come together into one. First therefore Pagninus translates, do not labor to become rich, do not cease from your intelligence, as if to say, Do not pant after riches lest the desire for riches rob you of intelligence, that is, sound mind and wisdom. So also R. Levi: When, he says, you have obtained what is sufficient for you, do not be further troubled about accumulating wealth; for this keeps you far from wisdom, since you spend time in heaping up riches, with a purpose altogether different from that which ought to be proposed in acquiring wealth; for the latter are prepared so that they might be a help to a mortal, by which freed from all cares he might be able to devote himself wholly to the investigation of wisdom and prudence. Second, Cajetan, do not labor to become rich, and cease from your intelligence; this is, he says, it is not enough that you refrain from labor to acquire riches, but moreover turn your intelligence and mind away from the thought and love of riches, so that you do not even think about them. For thus you will be able, with a quiet and serene mind, and therefore fruitfully to devote yourself to the study of wisdom and virtue. Third, Aquila translates, do not labor to become rich from your intelligence, as if to say, Do not strive to heap up riches, because however much you heap up, you will not be truly rich, but only rich "in intelligence," that is in your opinion and estimation: for in reality you will be poor, since the more you heap up, the more you will desire to heap up: for The love of money grows as much as money itself grows. But he is poor who is not content with his own, but always desires more, and like one famished hungers and thirsts. Others explain, "from your intelligence," that is, without your intelligence, as if to say, Do not wish to become rich without reason and labor through mere fortune, through usury, through rapine; but strive to become rich through intelligence, that is through your industry: for this is lawful and honest, but the former is unlawful and unjust. Fourth, the Chaldean translator renders it, do not approach the rich, but in your understanding withdraw from him, that is to say, do not dine with the rich, nor live splendidly with them and go about with great retinue, horses and carriages: for thus you will squander your wealth and reduce yourself to poverty; but follow the dictate of prudence, that you separate yourself from them, and being separated live privately in sobriety and frugality: thus you will live at peace and increase your resources. But the Syriac translator renders it, do not draw near to the rich, but approach him wisely, that is to say, do not be familiar with the rich, lest you consume your substance with him; but nevertheless, when you have need of his aid and mutual assistance, approach him prudently, that he may help you and do you good. Fifth, the Septuagint translates it, do not extend yourself, when you are poor, to the rich; but refrain in your own consideration; the Complutensian and Royal editions, do not contend, when you are poor, with the rich; clearly the Author of the Greek Catena, if you are poor, do not contend with the rich; but using your prudence abstain from such contention; for ennoia in Greek means the same as thought, intention, opinion, likewise prudence, sense, understanding, etc. There are some poor people, but proud, who imprudently wish to make themselves equal to the rich, and to compete with them in the splendor of food, clothing, household, furnishings and other things. Solomon reproves these here, both because they extend themselves beyond their strength and means, and spend more than they have: wherefore they act as if a small boy wished to extend himself and make himself equal to a grown man; and also because by immoderate expense they immediately exhaust themselves and their family, and reduce themselves to poverty, which is mere imprudence and folly; for, as St. Chrysostom says, in the homily "That no one is harmed except by himself": "The poor, while they desire to be equal to the rich, suffer an incurable madness, they rave, they rage; for the same disease generates different ailments in each." Mystically the Author of the Greek Catena: He condemns here, he says, those manifestly who think they have divine mysteries equally explored as God himself. For every man is poor according to himself; but God alone is absolutely rich. Do not therefore vainly strive to search into the mysteries of God, which cannot be investigated by reason, with your mind. But Solomon thus, that is to say, "Do not be overly anxious about increasing learning, gathering things in a cursory and desultory manner, and with voracious reading; for finally you will consign all these to oblivion." For just as food not chewed is swallowed by devouring, and often comes up undigested: so those who read through many things rapidly and in passing, and as it were devour them, retain little and immediately forget what they have read. Again, apply this maxim to those who strive beyond their strength to fast, to pray, to afflict the body, to labor, that they may excel in holiness and virtues, and equal the holy Anchorites, Martyrs, indeed even the Apostles. In this they are arrogant and foolish: for they lose the health of the body, nor do they attain the holiness of mind. That is indeed holy: "Measure yourself by the foot of great men," but within the limits of your nature and the grace destined to you by God; for it is as holy as it is prudent: "Measure yourself by your own foot: Let not the shoemaker go beyond his last: Each one follows the seeds of his own nature: Do not be wise in high things, but fear: wherefore in great things even to have wished is enough." For even if you strive with utmost strength, you will never attain to the holiness of the Blessed Virgin, or of St. Paul, or of St. Lawrence, or of St. Francis, because God gave them far greater grace than to you. Whence St. Paul, rebuking the pseudo-apostles, who made themselves equal to the true Apostles, indeed preferred themselves to them, II Corinthians X, 12: "For we dare not, he says, to insert ourselves, or compare ourselves with some, who commend themselves; but they themselves, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves with themselves. But we will not glory beyond measure, but according to the measure of the rule, by which God has measured to us, the measure of reaching even to you. For we do not superextend ourselves as if not reaching to you; for we have come even to you in the Gospel of Christ." Where for superextend-
23:5
In Hebrew, for your eyes will fly away in it, that is toward it (namely עשר osher, that is wealth, which lies hidden tacitly in העשיר hashir, that is you become rich, from which preceding verse: for osher is masculine among the Hebrews, as Plutus is among the Latins, that is wealth), and not itself; because by making it will make wings for itself, as an eagle will fly into heaven. R. Solomon refers to in it to the labor and study of becoming rich, from which it preceded, as if to say: If for a moment you turn away your eyes, and close them, that study vanishes, both because the mind and appetite of man is inconstant and fickle, and because the labor and anguish of acquiring wealth is troublesome to man, and torments him: he therefore, feeling this, quickly sets it down and casts it away. Now לאינכו veenennu, that is and not itself, can be taken in two ways: first, as if to say: When itself, namely Plutus (that is wealth) are not, or do not exist; second, as if to say: And not itself, namely it is in your right or power, that is, as Our translator rendered it, "which you cannot have." Therefore First, this maxim can be taken concerning wealth already acquired and possessed, so that it might signify their inconstancy and fugacity, as if to say: Do not fix your eyes, mind and heart on your wealth, because you cannot have them for long; for they are fleeting, and immediately fly from one to another like eagles, which fly from the earth into heaven; for to have is taken in the perfect act for to have held and firmly to possess. This is signified by the Hebrew veenennu, that is and not itself, as if to say: Plutus does not have stable existence, consistency and constancy; but like a restless, wandering and fleeting bird it passes and flies away, so that it no longer appears or seems to be. Whence the Zurich Bible translated it: Would you direct your eyes to that which soon is not? For wealth takes wings for itself, and like eagles flies into the air; Vatable: Do you cast your eyes on them, when they are none? For in preparing they will prepare wings for themselves and will fly into heaven; the Chaldean: If you bind your eyes to it, it will not be provided for you; the Syrian: If you fix your eyes on it, it will not appear to you. Concerning the fugacity of riches see St. Chrysostom, homily 1 on Genesis, whose words I have cited at Amos VI, 5, to that passage according to the Septuagint: As if standing they thought, and not as if fleeing. And the golden homily on Eutropius, whose beginning is: "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity," where he sets before the eyes vividly the vanity and fugacity of wealth and all the pomp of the world: it exists at the end of volume V. And homily 11 on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, where he compares riches to a fugitive and faithless slave. Furthermore, this fugacity of wealth is aptly compared to an eagle flying into heaven. For an eagle flies so high that it escapes not only the sight of men, but also of other birds; for it flies far above all others, so that it can be captured by no one, but can capture and prey upon all: thus however much you try to capture wealth, it will fly away like an eagle most high, and will escape not only your hand and touch, but also your sight. Second, more simply and aptly Baynus, Jansenius and others refer this maxim to wealth not already acquired, but to be acquired, which surpass our strength, as if to say: Do not covet in your heart and follow with your eyes wealth which surpasses your strength and faculties, or which your industry cannot acquire; because if you pursue those, they will fly away like eagles into heaven, so that you cannot attain them. The emphasis is in the Hebrew: Will you make your eyes fly away, as if to say: The desire for excessive and impossible wealth is mere flight of the eyes and mind, indeed a flying away: for it causes the mind to fly away from itself to that which is impossible to attain; for the eyes of such wish to compete flying with the flight of eagles, but are overcome: for eagles fly so high that they escape all the keenness and stroke of the eyes. Again, suppose you attain wealth with your eyes like eagles, would you therefore seize them with your hand and make them your own? certainly not: for you would no more occupy them than flying eagles, which by following with your eyes you make your own. This maxim therefore teaches that avarice and concupiscence of the eyes must be guarded against, and the study of enriching oneself must be moderated according to the lot, art and industry given by God; for if we exceed this measure, we shall labor in vain with God opposing. Following Solomon, Sirach, chapter XI, 10, in like manner calls away from excessive study of wealth: "For if, he says, you have pursued, you will not apprehend, etc.; there is a man laboring and hastening, and grieving, the impious, and so much the more will not abound." See the remarks there. Moreover, "those which thou canst not have" can be understood in two ways: first, that is to say, those which thou canst not physically obtain, because they transcend thy strength and faculties; secondly, that is to say, those which thou canst not obtain ethically, that is, lawfully and with a good conscience, so that the sense is: Do not through usuries, frauds, and unjust contracts aspire to illicit riches; for thou canst not obtain or retain those in good faith and honesty: wherefore by the just judgment of God, those shall justly flee from thee, as from an unjust invader or possessor, and shall fly away. To this pertains that saying of Cato: "What thou canst do, attempt that; lest by the weight of the work pressed down, thy labor should fail and what thou hast attempted in vain thou shouldst abandon." It is a prosopopoeia: for riches are here introduced as birds and eagles, which make wings for themselves, by which they snatch themselves away from the avaricious who pursue them and fly away very far. And riches are rightly compared to eagles: first because the eagle excels other birds in strength, in flight, and in preying, so that it permits no bird to fly over it, being superior to all, inferior to none, so that it preys upon all, but is itself prey to none: in like manner impossible or illicit riches surpass all the study and effort of the avaricious man, so that they do not allow themselves to be seized and preyed upon by him, but rather prey upon him and expose him to the rapine and prey of others. Truly Apuleius in the Floridian Tales, book I: "When," he says, "the eagle has raised itself to the level of the clouds, with a nod of the element it glides to the left or right with such a mass of body, directing its sail-like wings whither it pleased, with a small rudder of its tail, thence looking down upon all things; there with the tireless rowing of its feathers from afar, and with a somewhat hovering flight almost in the same place suspended, it circles about and seeks whither especially it should hurl itself downward in prey like a thunderbolt." Secondly, eagles fly most swiftly, and when they have caught food on the earth, they immediately fly away into the sky: so also riches, especially impossible and illicit ones, and when they have shown even a slight hope of being possessed, and have vainly deceived the avaricious and foolish man, they immediately fly away. The eagle, says Aldrovandus, is most strong and swift, and has feathers of remarkable firmness and hardness: alone among birds it is borne upward in a straight path, not obliquely, as other birds are. Hence it bears the thunderbolt beneath its feet, as it were the wrath of Jupiter: for "thunderbolts are beneath Jupiter"; but his thunderbolt denotes the swiftness, force and impetuosity of his flight. Just as therefore no bird dares to attack the eagle, but it itself attacks and strikes down others: so the prudent man does not pursue riches which surpass his lot and industry, lest he uselessly consume and squander the modest ones which he has, but pursues those which are measured out to him, and which he can attain by his own industry and labor. Wherefore just as it would be foolish for a hawk or a sparrowhawk to pursue an eagle, because it would be struck down and killed by the eagle: so are they foolish who pursue riches transcending their fortune, because they will not only not attain those, but will also lose their own, while the lesser fall as prey to the greater, as experience shows. Thirdly, eagles fly very high: so also riches elude and escape all the keen sight and thought of the avaricious man. The eagle, says Aldrovandus, has great wings, Ezekiel XVII, 3 and 7; it flies high, according to that of the Poet: "It also flying aloft and approaching the sky," so the majesty of him who possesses the sum of things obscures others with its brightness, and just as the most gleaming splendor of the sun when it has risen intercepts the light from all the stars. Others object this to the tyranny and rapacity of many princes, to whom thou canst not adhere without loss of thy things: but howsoever anyone has received it, it is so constituted by nature that what is owed is consumed by the stronger. This from Pierius; the same word for word Aldrovandus has in his work on the Eagle. Fourth, the feathers of an eagle mixed with the feathers of geese and other birds wear them away, dry them out and consume them: thus also riches wickedly and badly acquired devour and consume the other riches that are equal and justly obtained. Pliny teaches this concerning eagle feathers, lib. X, cap. III, as do Albert the Great, Aldrovandus, and Gesner in their works on the Eagle. For this reason the Egyptians designated pernicious power through the feathers of eagles. Hear Pierius, hierogl. 19, cap. XI: The Egyptian priests signified the power of someone, which would be pernicious to all his associates and friends, through the feathers of an eagle. For such indeed is the force of this, that the feathers of other birds, if mixed together, appear to be worn away and in a certain manner devoured, which is also found to happen repeatedly in the hides of the panther and the hyena; for we have said that the panther's hide yields to the hyena's in its place. Pliny writes that there is the same antipathy between the walnut and the oak, with such great discord of nature that, if an oak is planted near a walnut tree, it dies completely. And there is also this, which is very similar to this miracle, which is reported of cardamom. This vegetable, very commonly used among the Persians, has the nature of drawing all moisture of the earth to itself in such a way that the remaining herbs sprouting around it are forced to wither, concerning which there is a proverb among Aristophanes. They call it by another name scaphon; it is iberis to Dioscorides, semeth to the Egyptians, nasturtium to the Romans. But philosophers discuss the cause concerning the eagle's feathers, because, since the bird itself is hostile to all others, that force of the animal itself is derived into its inanimate things also through the contagion of sympathy. Others perceive that there is a certain pestilential and foul-smelling force in the bird, on account of which things touched by it easily putrefy; the evidence being the remains of it from yesterday, neither sought by it itself, nor by any other animal whatsoever. But that contagion penetrates even into the feathers, which are reported as almost certainly burning foreign feathers placed next to them. Hence Jupiter is said to have given it dominion over birds, so that it is their king or queen: hence also the double-headed eagle is the insignia of empire and of the universal emperor. For this reason King Pyrrhus was acclaimed by his soldiers as an eagle; "I am an eagle," he said, "who am lifted up by your arms as if by feathers." Thus indeed impossible and illicit riches fly away most highly from the miser, like eagles from the fowler, under the appearance of which they venerate Jupiter. Whence Martial, lib. V Epigram.: Tell me whom you carry, queen of birds? The Thunderer. Why does he not carry thunderbolts in his hand? He loves them. Like a rival, and he gazes fixedly at the burning rays of the sun, he places his nest on a high rock, lest the hot robber approach nearby. Again the eagle, because it is dry and hot, is ingenious, keen, clever, cunning. Hence by the Poets it is called the bird of Jupiter, to accompany Jupiter, as the peacock accompanies Juno; to bring nectar to Jupiter, indeed to carry Jupiter. For this reason some formerly paid divine honors to the eagle. To this pertains the fable of the camel in Festus Avienus, fabul. 8, and others: "For the camel, repenting of itself, complained that bulls went forth distinguished by twin horns, while it was unarmed and exposed to other animals; it begs Jupiter to grant it horns. Jupiter laughs at the camel's foolishness, and not only denies the prayer, but cuts short the beast's ears." The moral: "Let each one be content with his own fortune, for indeed many who have pursued a better fortune have incurred a worse one." Thus those who pursue excessive or illicit riches lose the modest and their own. For the camel laden with merchandise is the symbol of the rich man and of riches; whence that saying of Christ: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." Matt. XIX, 24. And just as the camel cannot follow eagles, so neither can the miser immoderate riches. Whence the Egyptians, says Horus Apollo, lib. II, cap. C, represented a slow and sluggish man through the camel: "For this alone of all animals bends its leg in walking; whence it also obtained its name, since in Greek κάμηλος, as it were κάμψαυλος, appears to be derived from the bending of the legs." Wisely Ovid, IV Trist.: Believe me, he who has hidden himself well, has lived well, and each one ought to remain within his own fortune. A memorable example is found in the Lives of the Fathers concerning John the Little. For when he, having abandoned his fellow anchorite, wished to live alone without food obtained by his labor, in continuous contemplation like an Angel, after a few days he began to hunger and to be in want; wherefore returning at night to his companion, knocking at the door, he heard from him: "John has no need of food, because he has become an Angel;" for which reason he spent the whole night in the open air in hunger and cold; in the morning admitted by his companion and rebuked, he came to his senses and learned to labor, and by his labor to provide himself with food. There exists an elegant poem about him by Fulbert of Chartres at the end of his Letters, whose conclusion is this: "Since he could not be an Angel, he learned to be a good man." Whoever therefore cannot be an anchorite, let him be a good cenobite; whoever cannot be a cenobite, let him be a good cleric; whoever cannot be a cleric, let him be a good layman; for many are saved in marriage who would be damned in the clerical and celibate state. Plato wisely says in the Phaedo: "It is not permitted to any man," he says, "to depart from that duty which God has commanded him." And Ptolemy in the Preface to the Almagest: "He is foolish," he says, "who knows not his own measure. He who extends his knowledge beyond the skill which is in him is like a weak shepherd with many sheep which he cannot feed and govern." Divine Sirach, chapter III, 22: "Seek not," he says, "things that are too high for thee, and search not into things stronger than thyself." Again, tropologically thus expound it, as if to say: When the eyes of the flesh and of concupiscence fly away to their desires, which thou canst not lawfully have; do thou fly away from them in mind to God and heaven like an eagle. Whence the Blessed Gregory of Nazianzus, in the third Iambic to Seleucus, thus sings: As soon as thou knowest vice, fly swiftly With the flight of the mind, for nothing is swifter. Finally, the Septuagint, the Chaldean and the Syriac connect this verse with the preceding one, so that all things from verse 1 hitherto signify that the banquets and associations of princes and the rich are to be avoided. Therefore they refer to in eum or in illum, which is in the Hebrew, to the rich man or prince; for thus the Septuagint has it, if thou shalt fix thine eyes upon him (the prince, or the rich man), he shall nowhere appear; for wings are prepared for him, and he returneth to the house of his prefect or governor, as if to say: If thou fixest thy hopes on the powerful or the rich, thou art deceived: for he, when thou hast most need of him, shall withdraw himself, and leaving thee shall betake himself to his own, for example to his prefect or governor: or by prefect understand God, who rules over and presides over all the powerful, as if to say: Trust not in the powerful, because he shall soon die, and shall not appear; for the life and soul of men, especially of the powerful, is winged, and quickly flies away to God the prefect of life and death, that it may be presented to him as to a judge, to be adjudged according to merits either to heaven or to hell. To this pertains that passage from Ecclesiasticus X, 11: "All power is of short duration." Moreover, St. Jerome in chapter XVII of Ezekiel, and the Septuagint thus reads: "In a good sense," he says, "the eagle is spoken of, because the just man made rich makes himself wings like an eagle, so that he may return to the house of his predecessor. And in Isaiah chapter XL it is written that the just bring forth feathers like eagles, run and are not weary, walk and do not hunger." He has similar passages in chapter I of Zephaniah, where however for predecessor is less correctly read precursor. Anagogically Bede: "Raise not," he says, "thy mind to search into the mysteries of the Godhead, which thou canst not penetrate: for these are open only to the heavenly birds," namely to Angels and the Blessed; for these are eagles, which by their merits as by wings have flown up to heaven, according to that passage from Job XXXIX: "Shall the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high?" Where St. Gregory, book IX of the Morals, chapter XVI, understands by the eagle the Saints and the sublimity of things and contemplation. The same thing the ancient Romans understood by the shadow, who in the apotheosis of their Emperors, from the pyre on which they burned their bodies, sent forth an eagle, as if that eagle were carrying the soul of the Emperors flying upward to heaven, as Herodian testifies, book IV. Whence Dio, book LVI: "The eagle," he says, "carried the soul of Augustus from the pyre up to heaven." Tropologically, aspire not to offices and virtues higher than thy state and degree; for these shall fly away from thee: for example, thou art poor, be not overly liberal in giving, lest thou impoverish thyself, and be unable to give further; be liberal in affection, where thou canst not be in deed; thou art called to the lot of Martha, aspire not to the lot of Mary Magdalene; thou art a craftsman or farmer, aspire not to the state of a noble or a doctor; thou art a grammarian or rhetorician, do not presume to set thyself above or prefer thyself to a philosopher or theologian; thou art a religious, aspire not to affect the pastoral office or the episcopate; thou art a subject, aspire not to seek the office of rector: for honor, like an eagle, flees those who pursue it, and pursues those who flee from it. The Chaldean thus has it: If thou shalt bind thine eyes upon him (the rich man, who has gone before), he shall not appear to thee; because making he shall make himself wings, like an eagle which flies to heaven, as if to say: If thou bindest thy hope to the rich man, he, when he sees thee reduced to misery, shall despise thee as one afflicted on the ground, and returning to his own loftiness shall fly away to his fellow rich men: just as an eagle when it has descended to the earth, remains there but briefly and takes food, and having taken it, immediately flies back to heaven.
23:6
In Hebrew, do not eat bread with an evil eye; and do not covet his dishes, because as he has estimated in his soul, so he himself, namely judges and speaks, or so he himself, namely deems and judges it to be, that is to say, Whatever he imagines and conceives in his fantasy, this he deems to be or to become in reality: in which matter he often errs and is deceived. For the melancholic, the envious and the like, who have a corrupted fantasy, fashion and imagine for themselves many sad, suspicious, exotic, foreign, horrible, fearful and anxious things, which do not exist on the part of the thing itself, but only in their false imagination. Whence to those suffering from hydrophobia and vertigo, to whom all things appear to spin, we say: "Do not fear, the house does not spin, but your brain spins; the spinning is not in the thing, but in your fantasy." Wherefore Our [translator] aptly and clearly renders it, because in the likeness of a soothsayer and diviner he esteems what he does not know. In Hebrew it is שער shaar, which by means of שׁ and שׂ signifies many things: first, to think, to esteem, to conjecture; second, to shudder and to bristle; third, a phantom, or something terrifying and horrible; fourth, a gate; fifth, a measure and to measure, that is to say, The miser and sordid man prescribes at table a meager measure; if anyone should exceed it in eating or drinking, he bears it ill, even if outwardly he says: Eat, drink. Or, as if it signifies: The miser measures and counts what anyone eats or drinks, indeed as if he computes each morsel. Thus Isidore Clarius. Hence a wonderful variety of versions; for Cajetan renders it, because as bitterness is in his soul, so he himself, that is, he says, as bitterness is hidden, so he hides himself from you; the Zurich [Bible], for inwardly in his mind he lies, and doing this he says to you: Eat and drink; but his heart is not with you. Vatable, because as he thinks in his soul, that is in his mind, so the matter stands, namely: "Eat and drink, he says to you; but his heart is not with you;"; the Chaldean, do not eat with him who has an evil eye, because as a gate is raised up, so he is lifted up in his soul; the Septuagint, do not attempt to eat with an envious man, nor covet his food; for as if someone should swallow a hair, so he eats and drinks; Symmachus, as one conjecturing in his mind, so he eats and drinks; the Syriac, do not eat with a gluttonous man, because as a man swallows pitch, so you eat and drink with him, and his heart is not with you; Aben-Ezra, as a man who in his mind determines and turns over a thought about you, thus addressing: Eat and drink, so will he conduct himself; others, as a phantom was in his mind, so he himself is, he says: Eat, etc. Bread with an evil eye is the bread of the miser, and therefore of one sordid, envious and malicious, who namely regards with malicious eyes one eating cheerfully; for he fears lest you consume too much, and deprive him of his provisions and as it were impoverish him. Thus Aben-Ezra, R. Levi and R. Solomon, who explains it thus: It is grievous and harsh to the miser if you eat of his food, just as if you were to pour the bitterest gall into his mouth: for the word shaar signifies early figs that are bitter, Jeremiah chapter XXIX, 17. Thus he. The Syriac by evil eye understands the glutton; for he regards food with malice, as things which he thinks to devour greedily, to waste and to squander. Others by evil eye understand the sorrowful and malicious man, who plots harm against you, and, if he could, would poison the food to destroy you. Whence the Chaldean renders it, his heart is deceitful toward you. Hence Cajetan by evil eye understands him who interprets good words or deeds badly, and turns them to evil. More aptly from the Septuagint and Chaldean do many understand by evil eye the envious man, who envies the happiness of others, according to that saying of Christ: "Is thy eye evil (that is, envious) because I am good?" Matthew XX, 15. Thus the sense will be, that is to say, Do not eat with him who envies you, because, although he simulates friendship and invites you, saying: Eat and drink; yet because he hates you in his heart, hence his invitation is feigned and dangerous. For there is danger lest he poison the food or drink, and thereby kill you, or lest he overwhelm you with food and drink to your shame and ruin, so that namely you reveal your secrets, or say or do something too freely or unsuitably, by which you create harm and disgrace for yourself. Whence mystically some understand by the envious man the devil, who envies our salvation, who, although he appears to favor us, while he invites us to the pleasures of the world, is nevertheless in mind alien from our happiness: therefore we are warned not to desire from his food, that is from the pleasures of this world, to which he draws us: which if we do, what we have consumed will have to be vomited up sometime, either now through penance, or afterwards through punishment, when each will give as much punishment as he has immoderately immersed himself in delights. But more properly others everywhere interpret by evil eye the avaricious man: for with an evil eye, that is a sickly, sad and envious eye, he looks upon those feasting more liberally, and is tormented by their feasting, because he sees his own consumed and eaten more freely: thus indeed Sirach, following Solomon in the manner, calls the avaricious man livid, that is envious, and attributes to him an evil and wicked eye, cap. xiv, 8: "Wicked," he says, "is the eye of the envious, etc. An evil eye is toward evils, and he shall not be satisfied with bread; but he shall be needy and sad over his table." See the sayings there. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Do not eat with an avaricious and sordid man, and therefore envious of your refreshment, who namely, grieving at the feasting and cheerfulness of you and the other guests, envies it. "Because in the likeness of a soothsayer and diviner he esteemeth that which he knoweth not." For just as those men frequently persuade themselves of what is not and what they know not, so also the avaricious man. For he thinks others are of the same disposition as he himself is, since he measures others by himself, so that, just as he himself does not favor the guests at table from his heart, even if he simulates the contrary in words: so also he thinks the guests do not speak from the heart the pleasant and friendly words which they utter with him. Whence it is added: "Eat and drink, he will say to thee; and his mind is not with thee," that is, he does not favor from his heart what he offers. And what follows: "The meats which thou hast eaten thou shalt vomit up, and shalt lose thy fair words," that is, the feasts will be unpleasant to thee in the presence of the sordid man, and when thou noticest his sordidness, his table will displease thee, so much so that thou wouldst wish thou couldst vomit up the food eaten, and all the elegance of discourse and conversation which is wont to be employed at feasts will perish for thee, because it does not move the avaricious man to cheerfulness of spirit. Nothing which thou hast spoken that is fair at his table will profit thee, whether in praising his dishes, or in giving him thanks, or finally whatever thou hast spoken according to custom at table. Thus Jansenius and others. It is a metalepsis, as if to say: The food of the avaricious man will profit thee nothing, however delicate, nor pleasant and fair conversation at table: because when thou noticest his avaricious and envious hypocrisy, thou wilt grieve that thou hast been his guest, and thou wilt wish thou hadst never taken food with him, but rather that thou couldst vomit up all which thou hast taken with him. Otherwise Vatablus explains thou shalt vomit up, as if to say: The avaricious and envious man will set before thee feasts so insipid, sordid and unclean, that they will move nausea and vomiting in thee. Our Salazar appropriately interprets by fair words problems, enigmas and riddles which in former times were wont to be proposed to one another by the wise at feasts, as if to say: If thou hast proposed to the avaricious and envious man some difficult problem, enigma or riddle during the feast (which is his malice and crafty cunning), he will signify that he divines its meaning, after the manner of a soothsayer; and although he does not attain to it, nevertheless he will pretend that he has thoroughly mastered it, and will so despise it and hold it for nothing; wherefore "the meats which thou hast eaten thou shalt vomit up," namely thou wilt reject from disgust, and wouldst prefer to remain without food. Or, as if to say: He will say to thee: Eat and drink, that is, he will urge thee to stuff thyself with food and wine, not from benevolence, but from envy, namely so that through drunkenness and excess he may rob thee of mind and sense, and expose thee to be mocked by all, when forced by nature thou art compelled to vomit up the excess, and so thou wilt lose the fair words which thou wouldst have spoken, hadst thou been sober; for being drunk thou speakest nothing but deformed, inelegant and insipid words. In sum, this feast of the envious man will bring thee nothing of pleasure and honor, but much pain and disgrace. Note: An ariolus or hariolus is a diviner who conjectures and divines concerning future things (for this is what שער scaar means). Thus named, says Donatus: "As if fariolus, from faris, or from fando; for H and F were changed for one another in many expressions. Or from halando? for they were accustomed to exclude breath as it were a mortal soul, so that they might receive a divine one, whence also they gave forth a voice of this kind which is O E, because the sound O E has the force of exhalation." Thus Donatus. It signifies therefore that, just as an ariolus and a conjecturer conjecture those things which they do not know, as they themselves imagine, and therefore their conjecture, often false, is always uncertain and doubtful. Whence that old saying: "The haruspex laughs when he sees another haruspex;" he laughs namely at the foolishness of men, that they should believe him who divines from altars and the entrails of birds or victims, as if he were a true Prophet, when all his divination is mere conjecture and imposture: thus likewise the avaricious and envious man judges and conjectures those things which he does not know, nay those things which are not, nor shall be, but which he himself imagines, and which his avarice, melancholy and envy suggest to him, namely that you eat too liberally, that you break up all the feasts, that you distribute everything to the guests, and that you invite them to drink, and therefore that he will suffer a great loss of food and wealth, and that you intend this, namely that you might mock and trample upon his avarice: for he esteems you such as he himself is, namely false, avaricious, envious, which are all mere suspicions and often false. Wisely Elias of Crete in Oration 1 of Nazianzenus: "Just as," he says, "he who is free from vice is slow to suspect something evil: so on the other hand he who has given himself over to vice is usually prone to suspicion, especially of the same vice which he tacitly or openly imputes to his neighbor, as experience teaches and Cassianus and other masters of spiritual things teach. For the vice which you rashly impute to another, you have in yourself: for you measure others by yourself, and you think your vice is common to others, which are all mere suspicions and often false. Truly St. Eucherius, in his epistle to Valerian: "If you wish to be truthful," he says, "you will not be suspicious; for we do not suspect except those things which we do not know." And Nazianzenus, oration 8: "He does not easily suspect evil of another, who is not easily impelled to evil," as if to say: Upright men are usually not suspicious, but wicked men are. The Septuagint read the Hebrew שער scaar through ש, and therefore they translate it as hair: For just as, they say, if anyone swallows hair, so he eats and drinks; concerning which more presently. The Syriac translator renders it, as a man swallows pitch, so you eat and drink with him, that is to say: Just as pitch eaten does not nourish, but glues together the throat, obstructs, strangles and kills: so the food of the avaricious and envious man will not nourish you, but like pitch will torment you, torture you and strangle you. Thus Daniel, chapter 14, verse 26, suffocated the dragon of the Babylonians with a mass of pitch and hair thrown into its mouth, so that it burst. See the things said there. The Chaldean translator renders the Hebrew שער scaar as gate: Just as a gate is raised up, he says, so is he exalted in his soul. Which R. Levi explains, that is to say: Just as a gate is constantly open, so that men may go out and come in through it: so the mouth of the avaricious and wicked man speaks many false things, which afterwards he is forced to revoke and retract, being convicted of falsehood. But others explain it thus: Solomon advises, they say, that no one should enter into commerce with a malicious or captious man, so that he might avoid his deceits; for he is like a certain gate of those which are accustomed to be raised or lowered, which at first indeed stands open, and receives those who come kindly, but then suddenly shuts them in and holds them. And indeed since in this place the discourse is concerning riddles or enigmas, which were accustomed to be thrown about during feasts, this similitude of a raised gate is not unfitly applied to him who asks riddles and enigmas at feasts with the intention of captiously holding the hearers and shutting them in, so that they cannot escape. But that it is raised and exalted signifies that these things are said by the Chaldean of the proud and envious man, who namely envies another's wisdom and praise from the pride by which he himself strives to excel others in these things, that is to say: Do not eat with the proud and envious man, because although he may simulate himself to be your equal and companion, yet gradually he will raise himself above you, and will depress and despise your words and deeds, so that he himself may stand out above you; just as a gate appears to him who approaches it from a distance to be equal to him, but the nearer he approaches to it, the more does its upper threshold appear to be raised, so that far above his head it appears elevated and exalted. Moreover the Septuagint take this saying as if Solomon were counseling, not so much that no one invited by an envious man should go to that banquet, but that no one should invite an envious man: for he strives to disgrace and ruin the feasts, table and honor of the one inviting. Whence the Syriac, expounding the Septuagint in its manner, calls the envious man gluttonous; whence thus they translate, do not eat with a man envious, etc., for neither otherwise does he take food and drink than if someone should swallow a hair (the Author of the Catena of the Greeks has thread), as if to say he gorges himself, and like a glutton swallows down feasts and wines, just as if all were like the thinness of a single hair or thread. Or by hair is signified harm and poison: for hairs introduced into food block and suffocate the throat. "We have seen," says the Adagiographer, "someone strangled by a hair swallowed in milk." Whence the Syriac for hair translates pitch, which it is certain those eating suffocate and strangle. The Septuagint continue, do not therefore look upon him to invite him to you, that you may eat a morsel with him; for he will vomit it up, and will contaminate your words, because namely from gluttony he will vomit, and will be nauseated at your words equally as at foods, and will show that they displease him, and that he holds them in contempt and abhors them. Thus the Author of the Catena of the Greeks. The scope of this passage, he says, tends to this: Do not easily admit an envious man to your table; for since he is ungrateful, he will have no gratitude for your feasts: but neither will he cease to take in and gorge himself before he has cast out what he has taken in by vomiting; that is, he will conduct himself just as if he had evacuated by vomiting, or swallowed a hair, and will perceive none of those things, but will count them as nothing. But in a more sublime sense by the envious man, he signifies a man of illiberal and abject spirit, who scorns divine Scripture, and holds its majesty in contempt: do not therefore, he says, open to such a one the mystical senses of Scripture; but by the example of the hair he insinuates the doctrine of those teaching otherwise, so that it may suggest poison rather than nourishment. Thus he. Mystically also Bede takes this saying concerning heretics: "Do not eat," he says, "with an envious man, and do not desire his foods, etc. Do not speak with a heretic concerning the Scriptures, who envies human salvation, and would rather deceive than be corrected. Because as a soothsayer and interpreter of dreams esteems what he does not know: so a heretic presumes to interpret as he pleases what he does not understand in the Scriptures. Eat and drink, he will say to you; and his mind is not with you... Learn securely, he says, what I say, and do what I teach, when in those things which he himself teaches he does not have certain faith, knowing that he has fabricated what he teaches. The foods which you had eaten you will vomit up, and will lose the beautiful, etc. The perverted senses which you had learned from heretics, it is necessary that you either abandon by correction through penance, or after death be forced to pay penalties for these, and lose the words of confession, by which you had thought it right to favor them humbly as they were preaching."
23:9
In Hebrew, because they will scorn the understanding of your words; the Septuagint, in the ears of the imprudent say nothing, lest perhaps he mock the wise (St. Cyprian, book III of Testimonies, reads sensible) words of yours. "The foolish" here understand in the perfect act, who namely in his foolishness, that is hardened in imprudence and vices, is unteachable and incorrigible: for otherwise it is the part of the wise to teach the foolish who wish to learn; that they may become wise and endowed with virtue. "In the ears" is the same as "with the fool hearing," as Vatable translated it. Note however what is further, namely secret, high and sublime things (for we are accustomed to speak these in the ear), so that the secret mysteries of our faith are not to be entrusted to the foolish, who do not grasp them, and therefore mock and despise them. Whence the Author of the Catena of the Greeks thus translates, and thus explains: To the ears of the foolish commit nothing secretly, lest perhaps he mock your prudent words. Here that saying of Christ the Savior is insinuated at the same time and declared: "Give not that which is holy to dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest perhaps they trample them under their feet," Matt. vii.
23:10
In Hebrew, do not move the boundaries of the age, that is, from ancient times, or from long ago established. Thus Vatablus; the Chaldean, do not change the boundary which is from the age; the Septuagint, do not transpose the eternal boundaries, and do not enter into the possession of orphans. Symmachus, μὴ μετακινήσης, that is, do not transmove the limits of the age. For in place of "little ones" in Hebrew is עולם olam, that is, of the age, that is, secular, ancient and old: Our text reads עוללים olelim, that is, of little ones; or עלם elem, that is, a boy who hides at home, and this corresponds more fittingly to "orphans," which follows. For just as in chapter xxii, verse 28, he forbade the removal of the boundaries of any fields: so here he forbids the removal of the limits of the fields of little ones and orphans, and the violation of their rights. For little ones and orphans, because they lack judgment and strength on account of their tender age, are thus subject to the injuries of neighbors. Solomon therefore forbids these here, as if to say: Do not touch, that is, do not by touching move and transfer the boundaries of fields, so as to invade the possessions of little ones, who cannot resist you, and occupy their portion; and do not enter the field of orphans, so as to occupy it, or by making a way through it, or by conducting an aqueduct through it, or by some other burden or servitude, making it subject to you contrary to right and justice. FOR THEIR KINSMAN IS STRONG. — The Chaldean, because their redeemer is strong, and will judge their cause against you; Aquila and Symmachus, their avenger is strong; in Hebrew, he will litigate their case with you, or against you. For "kinsman" in Hebrew is גאל goel, that is, assertor, avenger, kinsman, blood relative, redeemer, who namely once among the Jews by right of kinship, or took upon himself the cause of an injured or slain kinsman, and avenged his blood and death, as is evident from Numbers xxxv, verses 12, 19, 21, 24, 25, 27; or if it concerned the goods of a blood relative, he was accustomed to redeem the thing devolved from him and sold, and to take it back to himself: such was the brother, and failing him the uncle, and after him his sons, namely the cousins of the deceased, and thereafter the remaining blood relatives each in his own order. It was his duty to take the wife of his brother who died without children, so as to raise up seed for the dead brother, and to beget and name a son in his name: just as Booz took Ruth, chapter ii, verse 20, and chapter iv, 4. Hence the Septuagint translates goel now as redeemer, now as kinsman, now as relative, now as affine, now as liberator. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Do not invade the fields or goods of little ones and orphans, because although they are destitute of the aid of parents and kinsmen, so that they cannot repel your injury, yet they are in the care and guardianship of God, who is strong, indeed almighty: for he himself is their goel, that is, kinsman, guardian, curator and avenger, and therefore will conduct their cause against you, and will condemn you for injustice and rapine, and will punish you according to your deserts. Moreover, God is called goel, that is, kinsman or blood relative of men, because he created them, and as it were begot them to his image and likeness, so that they might have a spiritual, rational, free, immortal soul, etc., similar to himself, Genesis ii. But properly God is called goel, that is, kinsman of the poor and orphans, because he, as it were, takes to himself those abandoned by all, receives them into his care, and as it were adopts them as sons, so that he might have a special regard and providence for them above all others. For just as a magistrate and prince in a commonwealth takes orphans to himself, so as to be their guardian and curator, and commits their guardianship and care to the most faithful, who in the name of the magistrate protect and care for them: so in exactly the same way God takes them to himself, who is the supreme prince, judge and avenger of all; for it is God's to embrace and care for those who are neglected and abandoned by others, according to that: "To you the poor is left, to the orphan you will be a helper," Psalm ix, 34. The poor therefore, especially in will and spirit, and orphans are as it were the children of God's providence; hence God is called "Father of orphans and judge of widows," Psalm lxvii, 6. Their glory therefore is this, that with the Psalmist they can say, Psalm xxxii, 20: "Our soul waits for the Lord, because he is our helper and protector; because in him our heart will rejoice, and in his holy name we have hoped." And he in turn says to each of them what he once said to Abraham: "Fear not, I am your protector, and your reward is exceeding great," Genesis xv, 1. Thus in the Life of St. Onuphrius, which Paphnutius the Abbot, an eyewitness, wrote, we read that he himself and similar Anchorites were entrusted by God to the singular care of Angels, inasmuch as they, abandoning men and abandoned by men, emulating the life of Angels, it was fitting that they should be singularly the care and concern of Angels. Whence St. Onuphrius relates therein that he was led by an Angel into the desert, and daily received bread and water from the same Angel, and on the Lord's days also the sacred Eucharist; indeed, he was not rarely caught up by the same Angel into heaven, that he might enjoy the fellowship of the Blessed, and in this manner lived for seventy years in the desert, seeing no man, with gladness. "And when he was dying," says Paphnutius, "I heard the voice of many Angels praising God, and the ether resounding with Angelic songs brought ineffable joy to the stars, through which the heavenly hosts conveyed the soul of the renowned soldier to the heavens." Again, when Scripture calls God goel, it insinuates that the Son of God, namely Christ, was to assume our flesh, and was to become our kinsman, indeed our brother, neighbor and redeemer, so that by right of kinship He might redeem us and vindicate us into liberty. Hence He assumed poverty: for He was born in a stable, lived in a lodging, died naked on a cross, that He might signify that He is singularly the kinsman, relative, guardian and redeemer of the wretched and poor, according to that of Isaiah lix, 20: "When the Redeemer (in Hebrew goel) shall come to Sion, and to them that return from iniquity in Jacob." And cap. lxi, 1: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me, etc., that I might comfort all that mourn." And cap. xli, 14: "Fear not, thou worm of Jacob, I have helped thee, saith the Lord; and thy Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel." And Job cap. xix, 25: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth, and I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God my Saviour." Christ therefore is the goel, that is the kinsman, relative, brother, guardian, curator, liberator, redeemer, advocate, judge and avenger of men, especially of the poor, orphans and wretched. "He himself shall judge their cause against thee" (who oppressest them), as their avenger and their whole judge. In Hebrew, He himself shall plead their cause with thee, or against thee, that is to say, He Himself as it were the advocate shall prosecute the cause and case of the poor against thee who afflictest them, shall conduct it in judgment, shall act and carry it through: and shall show thee guilty, convince thee and condemn thee. Who therefore dares to touch the little ones and orphans, though destitute of mind and help, who dares to assail them? surely none other than one mad, who dares to touch and assail God Himself, who is the Father of the poor, who with God like giants contends, and dares to provoke Him to war, indeed to single combat. Hence Isaiah prophesied concerning Christ, as St. Luke relates cap. iv, 18: "He hath sent me to preach the gospel to the poor." And David, Psal. lxxi, 4: "He shall judge the poor of the people, and shall save the children of the poor, and shall humble the oppressor." And vers. 12: "He shall deliver the poor from the mighty, and the poor man that hath no helper."
23:12
In Hebrew, bring thy heart to discipline, and thine ear to words of knowledge; the Chaldean paraphrase, introduce thy heart to doctrine; Vatablus, accommodate thy heart to instruction; the Septuagint, give, or give over, thy heart to discipline; and apply thine ears to words of sense or understanding. Which the Author of the Chain of the Greeks thus expounds, as if to say, Enslave thy heart to practical use and habit; but when thou hast happily attained to practical virtue, then seek also the contemplative, as if to say, Give thyself first to the active life, and when that is perfected, give thyself then to the contemplative life. But this sense is mystical and anagogical. For it is established from what has been said many times, that knowledge, doctrine, understanding, sense, discipline, etc., in this book signify the same thing, namely ethical or practical knowledge, which consists not in dry speculation of virtues, but in ardent practice. To this, therefore, Solomon admonishes that the heart and ears must be given: the ears, that they may hear it, and having heard it may obey; the heart, that it may meditate upon it, understand it, love it and practice it: for thus doctrine will flow into morals, and will exert itself in the senses, hands, feet and other members. The word "enter" signifies first, the effort and endeavor of acquiring doctrine, that is wisdom and virtue, on account of its difficulty, repugnant to our corrupted nature and concupiscence. As if to say, Stir up and impel thyself with great effort to undertake the way of virtue, which will be difficult to thee at first, but by use itself will gradually become smooth and easy. Whence Seneca, book II, epistle 51: "Just as," he says, "virtues retained cannot go forth, and their guardianship is easy; so the beginning of entering into them is difficult (he gave the reason), because this first thing is for a weak and sick mind to fear the untried." St. Ambrose places the difficulty of approaching virtue in another way: "When," he says, "one renounces wickedness, virtue is immediately acquired. For the departure from malice works the entrance of virtue: and by the same effort by which crime is excluded, innocence is joined." Hence Rabbi Solomon thus translates and expounds: Bring thy heart to doctrine, that is to the place, for example to the school in which thou mayest be instructed in wisdom. Secondly, the word "enter" signifies subjection and attention: just as an ox submits and bends its neck to the yoke, so the student submits and bends his ears and mind to discipline, according to that passage in Ecclesiasticus vi, 25: "Put thy feet into her fetters, and thy neck into her chains; bow down thy shoulder and carry her." He gives the reward in verse 30 of the same place, that these fetters will be the bases of virtue, and the chains a robe of glory. Thirdly, it signifies the close embrace of doctrine: just as form enters into matter, and conversely matter into form; and just as a seal impressed upon wax is most closely joined to it, so that the seal enters into the wax and imprints its image upon it, and conversely the wax enters into the sculpture of the seal to receive its image and have it impressed upon itself: so doctrine enters into the ears and mind of the disciple while it instructs them; and conversely the ears and mind of the disciple enter into doctrine while he drinks it in and impresses it upon himself. Fourthly, the word "enter" signifies the capacity and amplitude of doctrine, that is of virtue, so that we seem not so much to contain it as to be contained by it, and to enter into it. For just as great and abundant light enters into the eyes, and conversely the eyes into the light: so likewise knowledge enters into the knower, and conversely the knower enters into knowledge, especially practical knowledge, while he accommodates it to himself and transfers and conveys it into his mind and morals. Thus a vehement sensible thing enters the sense (for example color the sight, sound the hearing), and conversely the sense enters the sensible thing through vehement sensation. Thus the great and burning love of God is like a great fire and furnace, which seems not so much to enter into those who love as to surround and embrace them. Such is the love and joy of the Blessed in heaven, concerning which Christ therefore says in Matthew xxv, 21: "Enter into the joy of thy Lord;" because this joy will be so great and so vast that in it, as in an Ocean, the Blessed seem to swim, sink and be absorbed. Hence those phrases of St. Paul: "Put on the new man," Ephesians iv, 24. "Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience," Colossians iii, 12. For these virtues are as it were splendid and divine garments, into which man enters, and with which he clothes, surrounds and adorns himself.
23:13
In Hebrew, do not withhold correction from a boy; the Septuagint, do not cease to correct the little one. Note: "The rod" properly is a ferule and chastisement of wanton boys, made and composed by nature and God for this purpose, just as a bridle is for a horse and a halter for a donkey. Whence we see boys fear rods, and by fear of them restrain themselves from all petulance, and indeed apply themselves diligently to letters, from which they otherwise shrink, finally perform strenuously all things that are commanded. For boys, since they are not capable of reason and virtue, nor can they restrain their passions by the bridle of continence, but are driven like little beasts by their imagination and appetite, hence both this one and that one must be restrained and directed by the rod. Hence "the rod" is a symbol of discipline, which chastises the wantonness of youth and forms morals toward honesty. Wherefore the rod is accommodated by Homer throughout to Pallas, the goddess of all wisdom. The companions of Ulysses are said to have been transformed into the forms of brutes by one end of the rod, namely by false persuasion and foolishness, and by the other end of the rod, namely by true discipline and knowledge of things, to have been restored to human form: thus Pierius, hieroglyph. 15, cap. xlix. More truly and effectively St. Benedict, striking a wandering monk vexed by a demon with a rod, freed him both from wandering and from the demon; "and thus the ancient enemy did not dare to rule in his thought, as if he himself had been struck by the blow," says St. Gregory, lib. II Dialog. cap. iv. For this reason in the Chapters of monks defects are chastised with the rod; for they are cured with the rod who are not amended by frequent admonition. Again, the rod signifies that a rector ought to chastise the errors of his subjects, but moderately. Hear St. Gregory, II part. Past. cap. vi, near the end: "Care must be taken that the rector exhibit to his subjects both piety as a mother and discipline as a father. And amid these things it must be provided with careful circumspection, lest either rigid severity or remiss piety prevail." And further below: "Which according to the voice of Paul that ark of the tabernacle well signifies, in which together with the tablets the rod and the manna are at the same time: because when sacred Scripture knowledge is in the breast of a good rector, if there is the rod of severity, there is also the manna of sweetness. Hence David says: Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me; for by the rod we are struck, by the staff we are sustained. If therefore there is the severity of the rod which strikes, let there be also the consolation of the staff which sustains. Let there be love, but not enervating; let there be rigor, but not exasperating; let there be zeal, but not immoderately raging; let there be piety, but not sparing more than is expedient; so that, while justice and clemency mingle in the citadel of rule, he who presides may both terrify and soothe the hearts of his subjects, and yet by soothing constrain them to the reverence of terror." He shall not die can be expounded in three ways: First, as if to say, If you strike him with the rod, you will free him from death both of body and of soul: for he will incur both if he is permitted to himself and to his liberty and concupiscence without punishment. The example of a youth is well known, who, corrupted by maternal indulgence, as happens, when he was being led to punishment for his crimes, exclaimed: "Not the magistrate, but my mother leads me to the gallows." Second, as if to say, The blow of the rod is not lethal, it will not kill the boy; but with a moderate sense of pain it will touch his flesh, so that his soul may be healed and he may learn to restrain his desires. The blow of the rod is not the blow of a dagger or sword, which kills, but is the blow of discipline and medicine, which cures vices. Whence St. Gregory of Nyssa, homil. 12 in Cant.: "Therefore it appears," he says, "that the voice of striking in this place denotes immortality, according to that in Deuter. xxxii, 39: I will kill, and I will make to live; I will strike, and I myself will heal again: whence also David says that from this rod arises not a wound, but consolation. Thy rod, he says, and thy staff, they have comforted me," Psalm. xxii, 4. Third, as if to say, Parents who love their children too much fear that if they chastise them frequently, their limbs will be weakened, so that they become infirm, sickly, and die sooner. But they err, for discipline and severe education make boys robust, so that they live long in health and vigor; but soft and indulgent education makes them flaccid, weak, infirm, so that they die quickly, as experience shows. Whence Aben-Ezra thus expounds: "He shall not die, that is, you will free him, lest his soul suffer a death similar to his body; or you will preserve him, lest he meet his day at an immature age." Thus also R. Levi. Thus the eagle, by beating its young with its wings, exposing them to the adverse rays of the sun, piercing them with its beak to blood, stirs them to fly and makes them vigorous and strong. The hawk, the bear, the nightingale, the deer and the swallow do the same, as I taught from St. Ambrose on Eccli. xxx, 13, at the end. The same St. Ambrose gives an example and specimen of severe education of children in the bird called the halcyon: "Deservedly," he says, "we wrap up, cherish, hide, and preserve the sons whom we so carefully clothe, stripping them of the wrapping of divine mercy; but the halcyon, whom it cast out naked, clothes with divine raiment," because in the rigour of mid-winter it commits them to be cherished by God, and to be protected against the heat of the sea. Symbolically, Rupertus, book IV on Genesis, chapter xvi, understands by the boy the recently created world, which God chastised with the rod of the flood when it behaved wantonly, so that future ages might know how much He opposes it on account of sins: "Rightly," he says, "and usefully, as the wisdom of God taught, He corrected the wanton and recently created world, behaving wantonly in flesh and blood, as a foolish boy, striking it with such a wound that it cannot forget it throughout its whole age." AND THOU SHALT DELIVER HIS SOUL FROM HELL. — The Septuagint: from death; others: from the grave; Cajetan: thou shalt make him escape from the pit, that is from the falls and ruins, he says, into which children are accustomed to fall, whose parents have loosened the reins of liberty and concupiscence; or from the pit, that is from the deep cave of ignorance, thou shalt lead him out through teaching. But the Hebrew word שאול scheol properly signifies hell, as Our translation renders it, and this is more forceful and significant. Solomon therefore teaches here that parents who love and treat their sons too indulgently, and do not chastise them when they sin, expose them to the danger of hell; and therefore instead of the rod they give them Gehenna, which is indeed great imprudence, nay rather wickedness and hatred of their children. If therefore, O father, thou lovest thy son, give him the rod of discipline, if thou dost not wish to give him the fire of Gehenna; for thou must give him one or the other, choose between the rod or Gehenna. Wherefore the predestination, election, salvation and beatitude of children depends on education, severe chastisement and the rod of parents. Conversely, a more licentious education, and the omission of chastisement and the rod of parents, is the cause of the reprobation and damnation of children; for from it they rush into crimes, on account of which they are reprobated and damned. Well known is the story of the five-year-old boy, who on account of his blasphemies was snatched from his father's bosom by demons to Tartarus, which St. Gregory recounts, IV Dialogues, chapter xviii. How many do you think are in hell, children who curse their parents, and will curse and hurl all curses and imprecations upon them for eternity, because on account of omitted chastisement they themselves became the cause of their eternal damnation! Nor without reason: for they were to them not parents of life, but of death; not of heaven, but of hell; not of happiness, but of Gehenna for eternity. For the habits which a boy acquires, he retains into old age until death: just as parrots, what they learn when young, they retain and speak even when they grow old; but when old they learn nothing new, though attracted by caresses or driven by blows, according to that saying: "An old parrot disregards the rod." Wherefore wisely Virgil, book III of the Georgics: Thou whom, he says, shalt form to study and the use of the rustic life, already urge on the calves, and set upon the way of taming, while the minds of the young are pliant, while their age is mobile.
23:15
In Hebrew: my son, if thy heart shall be wise, my heart also shall be glad, even I. It is a Hebrew pleonasm, similar to that of the preceding chapter, verse 19, and contains an auxesis, as if to say: I, I, I say, with my whole heart, with full and pure joy shall be glad and shall rejoice. The Septuagint: son, if thou shalt be wise, thou shalt gladden thy heart and my heart; the Chaldean: if thy heart is wise, I shall be glad in my heart.
23:16
In Hebrew, when thy lips have spoken righteousness; in the Septuagint, and thy lips shall cleave to my lips. After various goads applied hitherto, here Solomon spurs on the disciple of wisdom to its study, by the sting of filial reverence and paternal love, as if to say: Son, if thou lovest me thy father and teacher, as I know thou lovest me intimately, strive after wisdom, that is, honesty and virtue; for thus thou shalt heap upon thyself as well as upon me great good and great joy. For the progress of a son and disciple is the joy of a father and teacher, especially if he sees him to have made such progress that, having been made a teacher from a disciple, he speaks forth the right things he has learned, and teaches others: for thus he transmits and propagates wisdom, and through it himself and his own name and honor to grandsons and great-grandsons and other posterity of future ages for many centuries; for a father lives in his son, a teacher in his disciple, whom dying he leaves as heir to his doctrine and virtue, according to that passage in Ecclesiasticus, chapter xxx, 4: "His father is dead, and he is as if he were not dead; for he hath left one behind him that is like himself." Thus the Apostle rejoiced in the progress of Christian doctrine and life among the Philippians and Thessalonians, saying: "Therefore, my dearly beloved and most desired brethren, my joy and my crown," Philippians, chapter iv, 1; "For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of glory? Are not you in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?" I Thessalonians ii, 19. See the remarks there. AND MY REINS SHALL REJOICE, WHEN THY LIPS SHALL HAVE SPOKEN RIGHT THINGS. — "Reins," first, are the seat and symbol of affection, desire, concupiscence, and hence, if one obtains the thing desired and coveted, of joy. Thus Aben-Ezra. Wherefore the Mathematicians hand down that the spleen is ruled by the star of Saturn, the liver by Jupiter, the blood by Mars, the brain and heart by the Sun, the tongue by Mercury, the stomach by the Moon, the reins and seed truly by Venus, whom they therefore place in the power of Venus, says Pierius, hieroglyphics 33, chapter xl, and hieroglyphics 34, chapter xviii. Secondly, R. Levi: "Reins," he says, that is, thoughts; for the things we desire, we think of frequently; where the heart is, there also is the mind, as if to say: My thoughts shall be filled with gladness and pleasure, when I hear that thy lips have spoken right things concerning wisdom. Thirdly, "reins," because in them is the origin of seed, are the symbol of generation and offspring. Whence that passage in III Kings, chapter viii, 19: "Thy son that shall come out of thy reins." Hence reins are called so, because from them flow the streams of seminal fluid, says Varro. For seed is the foam of the most approved blood, which is sent from the liver to the reins; thence through passages suited for it by a winding course it flows to the genitals, which in Anatomies has been most clearly ascertained. The sense therefore is, as if to say: When I thy father and teacher shall see thee made from a son and disciple into a father and teacher of others, I shall rejoice with the inmost senses and affections of my soul, of which the reins are the symbol. For, as Aristotle teaches, book VIII of the Ethics, chapters xi and xii, grandfathers are wont to love their grandsons more than fathers love their sons; because in grandsons they see their own line propagated more, than in sons, and therefore themselves to be longer surviving in them: thus here Solomon teaches that he shall rejoice if his son learns wisdom, but far more shall he exult if he teaches the same to others and propagates it to posterity, so that he may bear for himself many grandsons and great-grandsons, as if from a father now become a grandfather. The Septuagint translates, and thy lips shall cleave to my lips in discourse, if they shall be right, as if to say: If thy lips shall be right, so as to speak right, honest and holy things, and teach others, they shall cleave and adhere to me and to my instruction and discourse, which I have put into thy lips as thy lips, just as a little bird is wont to put food from its mouth into the mouth of its hungry chicks. Again, they shall cleave, as if to say: I shall not cease to instruct thee, if I see thee instructing others; but I shall as it were affix my lips to thy lips, so that they may seem to cleave to thee, to continually suggest to thee honest things which thou mayest teach to others. For this is a great spur to a teacher to teach readily and steadfastly, if he sees his doctrine bearing great fruit, namely that by teaching he makes not only disciples, but also teachers, who scatter his doctrine among many and make them wise, that is, good and holy. The Author of the Greek Catena reads thus: If thy lips shall be right, they shall confer discourse with my lips, let not thy heart emulate sinners; which last words Our text and others reject into the following verse. The same Author explains it thus, as if to say: If thou shalt compare thy words with my words, and having followed my doctrine and instruction, then at length thy words shall be right; for since they are born from good beginnings and upright causes, they cannot but bring forth good thoughts. According to some, however, he indicates here that he will have many disciples and hearers, who together with good doctrine shall also hold the good method of doctrine. Morally, learn here that nothing brings true joy to the learner equally as to the teacher as wisdom, that is, honesty and virtue. For just as the farmer rejoices if his sowings bring forth a copious harvest: so the teacher rejoices if he sees himself producing copious fruits of virtue and piety in the disciple, and through him in others. For, as he says: "The farmer tills the earth, the philosopher cultivates the soul." And St. Gregory of Nazianzus in the Melissa, part I, cap. 50: "Nothing, he says, is more invincible than philosophy, nothing more tranquil; all things yield before the philosopher. Two things are unconquered, God and Angel; and a third is philosophy. For the philosopher is not material in matter, in body uncircumscribed, on earth heavenly, in affections undisturbed, everywhere inferior to others except in greatness of soul, and by yielding conquering those who think themselves conquerors. One wisdom I know, to fear God. For the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord." And elsewhere: "Hear the sum of the discourse, fear God, and keep his commandments. This is the whole man," Eccles. xii. Nay, and Socrates, when asked there what was the sweetest thing in life, answered: Discipline and virtue.
23:17
For esto the Zurich version renders persevere, namely unmoved, as a base and column founded in God and the fear of God, so that thou mayest not be moved from him by any storms of temptation, according to that Psalm cxviii, 38: "Establish unto thy servant thy word, in thy fear;" into which words see St. Ambrose.
23:18
From the Hebrew by repeating יקנא iekanne, that is, let him emulate, thus it can be translated with Aben-Ezra and Vatablo, let not thy heart emulate sinners, but rather emulate the fear of the Lord, that is, a man fearing the Lord, all the day, that is, at all times of thy life, as if to say: Let not thy heart grieve, let it not be afflicted, let it not torment itself, let it not envy that thou seest the wicked enriched and prospered, so that thou wouldst wish to emulate and imitate their manner of living and becoming rich; but rather emulate and imitate those who fear God, and that with vehement ardor and zeal; because although thou be impoverished for a time, and sustain adversities, yet "in the end," that is, at length either in this life or in the future, thou shalt obtain the prosperity and happiness which thou hast hoped for, and it shall not be taken from thee, but shall endure, and shall make thee blessed in eternity. For the Hebrew קנא kana, that is, to emulate, signifies a stirring of the mind, such as is in zeal. Hence when it is constructed with lamed, it signifies to be zealous, and to desire or seek after something ardently; but when it is constructed with beth, as is done here, it signifies to envy; whence thou mayest more aptly explain it, as if to say: Envy not sinners their happiness; but this envy is the cause of zeal: for he who envies another his happiness, desires it for himself, is zealous for it and seeks after it. He alludes to that of David his father, Psalm xxxvi, verse 1: "Be not emulous of the evildoers, neither envy them that work iniquity," as if to say: Emulate not, that is, torment not thyself, envy not the wicked and impious their prosperity, so that by this thou art stirred to desire it with them, so that namely thou mayest live impiously with the impious to procure for thyself through impiety riches, a good lot and fortune; because this is brief, vile and meager, nor is it to be compared with the price and reward of piety. Whence the Psalmist subjoins: "For they shall speedily wither away like grass, and like the green herbs they shall quickly fall away." Similarly Solomon subjoins here the reward of piety, saying: "For thou shalt have hope," etc. Whence R. Solomon thus explains: "Envy not the prosperity and happiness of the wicked, so that on that account thou shouldst follow their impious institutions, because thou shalt have hope," as if to say: For this is that on account of which thou mayest hope at the end. Thus also R. Levi. BECAUSE THOU SHALT HAVE HOPE IN THE END, AND THY EXPECTATION SHALL NOT BE CUT OFF. — In Hebrew, because there shall be to thee a latter end or final end, and thy hope shall not be cut off; the Septuagint, for if thou shalt keep it, there shall be to thee descendants, and thy hope shall not depart; the Zurich Bible, behold for thee there is a posterity; the Chaldean, that thy latter end be good, and thy hope be not consumed; the Syriac, that there be to thee a latter end, and thy hope perish not; Aquila and Symmachus, and thy hope shall not be destroyed; Pagninus, because there is to thee a reward; Cajetan, but there is an end, and thy hope shall not be cut off; Vatablus, there shall be to thee truly an end, that is, a reward: for a reward is reckoned by the name of end, which is given at the end of works; Aben-Ezra, because in the end thou shalt hope, that is, in the final part of thy life: for either old age is meant, or the children whom thou leavest after thee; and thy hope shall not be taken away; in Hebrew, shall not be cut off, because namely thou didst hope that God would bestow benefits upon thee, as upon one fearing and worshipping him. Aptly Jansenius: It is called, he says, by Hebrew phrase the reward of work, and that which man finally obtains, the fruit and advantage, as if to say: Truly for thee persisting in the fear of the Lord there is a certain latter end, that is, a certain sure hope of a reward laid up for thee in the future, or the reward itself to be given to thee in the end. Whence our Interpreter did not badly render the sense: "Because thou shalt have hope in the end," that is, by perseverance in the fear of God there shall be and shall grow in thee hope in that which thou shalt finally obtain. Or thou shalt have "in the end," that is, at length at thy departure that which thou now hopest for: so that hope be taken for the thing hoped for. Or when it shall already be time for thee to depart, thou shalt have good hope, thou shalt depart with good hope, and that which thou hast awaited shall not be taken from thee, thou shalt not be frustrated in thy expectation as the wicked shall be frustrated. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Envy not the happiness of the wicked, so that thou shouldst wish to emulate and imitate them and it, because that happiness has a swift end, and quickly like a flower or grass it shall wither and perish; but rather emulate those who fear God: because, although for a time thou be afflicted with them and labor, yet the hope of a great reward awaits thee, both in this life and in the future, which shall never be cut off; which is to say, there shall shortly be an end of thy labors and sorrows, and thy happiness and joy shall begin, which shall never be cut off. Note: "Thou shalt have hope" can be understood in two ways: first, properly, that is to say, "Thou shalt have," that is, thou shalt lay up "hope," thou shalt never cease to hope that thou wilt certainly obtain the reward promised to those who fear God, and indeed as virtue grows even unto death thou shalt grow likewise in this hope, whereas the wicked, as their happiness falls, lose hope and fall into despair of recovering their lost happiness. Second, "thou shalt have hope," that is, the object of hope, namely the thing hoped for, that is to say, thou shalt obtain the reward which thou hast hoped for so long a time, thy hope shall be turned into reality, faith into sight, expectation into possession. Wherefore Socrates, being asked in what respect the pious differed from the impious, answered: In hope; for they hope for the reward of their labors. Therefore hope is proper to the pious, but despair to the impious. "Nothing," says St. Chrysostom, "nourishes and sustains the soul so much as joyful hope and the expectation of good things." And Philo: "Hope," he says, "is the forerunner affection of the mind, joy before joy, inasmuch as it is the expectation of good things." And Nyssenus in the work of Maximus, sermon 38: "Of the good things that are expected, affliction is the flower; therefore for the sake of the fruit let us also pluck the flower." Hence the Apostle calls hope the anchor of our shipwrecked life, Hebrews vi, 19. Furthermore, this hope, or the thing hoped for, is partly eternal, namely heavenly happiness; partly temporal, namely a long and happy life. Likewise children and grandchildren equally long-lived and happy, as the Septuagint explains, according to that Davidic passage: "For they that work iniquity shall be cut off: but they that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the land," Psalm xxxvi, 9. The former hope is that of Christians, the latter of Jews. Concerning this hope and the reward of happiness promised to those who fear God, thou hast much in Wisdom chapter v, verse 16, and Ecclesiasticus chapter i, 12 and following. See the sayings there. And Isaiah chapter lxv, verse 13: "Behold," he says, "my servants shall eat, and you shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, and you shall be thirsty; behold, my servants shall rejoice, and you shall be confounded; behold, my servants shall praise with exultation of heart, and you shall cry out with sorrow of heart." See the same, chapter lxvi, 10. For, as Nazianzenus says, in the work of Antonius, in the Melissa, part II, chapter xciii: "The reward of virtue is to become God, and to be illuminated by the purest light." Attracted by this hope, by this reward, the ancient Ascetics and Anchorites willingly hastened to undertake all hard things out of fear and love of God: concerning which matter read Damascenus, in the History of Barlaam and Josaphat, chapter xii. Mystically, the Author of the Greek Catena understands by grandchildren pious thoughts and desires inspired in the mind by Christ, who is the father and grandfather of the faithful and the saints. By grandchildren, he says, or sons, he indicates in this place good thoughts, which indeed arise from a good mind: by the same name spiritual theorems are also designated. A soul therefore empty of such contemplations and thoughts is deservedly called barren and devoid of offspring. Moreover, good thoughts and wholesome feelings of the mind proceed from the spiritual spouse, namely Christ.
23:19
In Hebrew: hear thou, my son, and be wise, and make straight, or make blessed, thy heart in the way. For the Hebrew word אשר ascer properly means make blessed, from the root אשר ascar, that is, he was blessed: but if it derives from ישר iascar, it is the same as make straight (for the letters אהוי ehevi, among which are aleph and iod, are not rarely interchanged with one another). Hence the Zurich Bible translates it, be wise, so that thy heart may be blessed in the way. For, as it is said in Psalm i, 1, and elsewhere: "Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, etc., but his will is in the law of the Lord." And Psalm cxi, verse 1: "Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, in his commandments he shall delight exceedingly." It is the part of youths to hear the doctrine of the wise, and from it to direct in the way of wisdom and virtue all the thoughts, decrees and deeds of their heart. For hearing is the sense of discipline, as Aristotle says; for if they do not hear wisdom, but their own concupiscence and its followers, they will easily deviate from the way of virtue to the way of banquets and symposia, to which nature is inclined. Whence he purposely places this admonition before the following verse concerning symposia. Similar to this proverb is that of the Comic poet: "He who knows not the way to the sea, let him follow the river; he who knows not the way, let him choose the rod-bearer," that is to say, He who knows not the way of wisdom, let him ask a teacher, and follow the teacher. The Septuagint translates it, direct the thoughts of thy heart; for thoughts are as it were ways, by which the heart goes to the desires, executions and actions of the things thought; Pagninus, make thy heart walk (others, make it proceed) in the way; Vatablus, thou shalt make thy heart go in the royal way; Baynus, make go, or lead thy heart, that is to say, By the words and admonitions of the wise, as it were by goads, stir up thy sluggish heart, and drive it to undertaking, or strenuously pursuing the difficult way of virtue. Again, Rabbi Solomon thus expounds it, that is to say, "After thou hast obtained wisdom, thou canst safely enter the paths of thy heart, since a mind cultivated in wisdom will not urge thee to crimes." For thy heart will be, through wisdom, that is, through virtue, now purified, upright and holy, being conformed to the way and law of God. Aben-Ezra: "Correct," he says, "thy heart, and duly train thy mind;"; Rabbi Levi: "Accustom thy mind to excellent institutions, both as to morals and as to opinions." Finally the Syriac translates it, hear, my son, and be wise, and my thought shall exult in thy heart, namely thy heart to be wise, and to will and do what is right.
23:20
Solomon dissuades from banquets and feasting by a twofold reason: the first is that riches are consumed in them; the second is that they induce drowsiness, idleness, torpor and sloth, by which it comes to pass that a man, consuming by drinking and acquiring nothing by idling and sleeping, is reduced to extreme poverty, so much so that he is forced to be clothed in torn garments and to walk about in rags as it were in a patchwork made from various pieces. In the Hebrew there is no express mention of contributions, but a tacit one; for the Hebrew words literally have, be not among the drinkers of wine, and among the eaters or gluttons of flesh for themselves; because the drinker and the glutton shall be impoverished, and torn garments shall clothe sleep. It is a prosopopoeia: for to sleep and drowsiness, as it were to persons, action is here attributed, that is to say, Sleep causes him who is devoted to sleep to walk about torn, ragged and squalid. Cajetan refers "for themselves" to the mutual toasts of drinkers and gluttons and the sending of dishes: for their portions the guests send to one another, so that they may mutually invite one another to feasting and merriment, as Joseph did to his brothers, whom he received at a banquet, Genesis 43:34; so that the sense is, that is to say, Do not frequent banquets and feasts, in which drunkards and gluttons, toasting one another and compelling each to respond with equal draughts, and sending delicate portions of food, provoke, nay compel, one another to feasting and carousing. But our author better thought that by "for themselves" contributions are to be noted. For the ancients were accustomed, and even now are accustomed, gluttons and drinkers to arrange splendid feasts and banquets, contributing to themselves, that is among themselves, contributions: for each brought his own portion, either of meats, or of wine, or of other delicacies, to the common feast: which was therefore called a contribution, that is a collection and gathering. Whence the Council of Laodicea forbids this, cap. 55: "It is not fitting, it says, for ministers of the altar, or any Clerics, or even lay Christians, to celebrate feasts from contributions, which the common people call comessalia." The Septuagint understood this passage in the same way concerning these contributions, when they translate, be not a drunkard of wine, or frequent in contributions and purchases of meats; and Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus, be not with those who eat meats from contributions among themselves; the Chaldean, be not among those who feast on flesh, nor among those who are made drunk with wine; the Syriac, be not drunk with wine, and be not a glutton of meats. The sense therefore is, that is to say, Do not enter into society and friendship with those who, by frequently contributing portions and shares, establish sumptuous tables and banquets; because in these you will exhaust and consume your riches, and burdened with feasting and wine you will become drowsy, idle and slothful; by which it will come to pass that you are reduced to poverty and compelled to be clothed in torn garments. Whence the Septuagint translate, for every drunkard and fornicator shall beg, and every drowsy person shall be clothed in torn and worn garments; St. Ambrose, in the book On Elias and Fasting, cap. 8, reads, and he shall clothe himself in torn garments of folly, namely because by his own folly and foolish gluttony and sloth he is compelled to clothe himself; for gluttony as an inseparable companion is followed by lust, both by sloth, sloth by drowsiness, drowsiness by poverty and torn garments, as is evident in the prodigal son, Luke cap. 15:14. The Syriac, because the drunkard and intemperate in the voracity of meats shall perish, and he who sleeps shall be clothed in torn and rent garments; the Chaldean, because he who is drunk and voracious shall be afflicted with want, and shall be clothed in torn garments by drowsiness; Rabbi Solomon, sloth and sleep shall clothe his followers in torn garments. Morally, learn here how deadly gluttony is; for it squanders, loses and consumes all things; there is no gulf, no abyss, that absorbs more and precipitates wealth more than gluttony; the more it is filled, the more it hungers; the better it dines, the better it strives to sup. Diogenes wittily, when he read the notice of a certain luxurious youth's house being sold: "I knew, he said, that a house filled with wine and food would soon vomit forth its master." The same, when a youth reduced to poverty by excessive luxury was eating olives at supper, happening to pass by: "If you had dined thus, he said, you would not sup thus." Not without wit also Bion of Borysthenes, a philosopher of acute and grave mind, said to someone who had devoured his possessions: "The earth of Amphiaraus swallowed him, but you have swallowed the earth." There is no need here to recall the examples of certain ancient gluttons of old, who suddenly squandered their patrimonies through luxury, such as that Fabius who was surnamed Gurges from his devoured patrimony, C. Sergius, to whom the name Orata was given, because he devoured that kind of fish with great greed; Abidius a Roman citizen, whom Cato said had acted with impudence as a jest; the son of Aesop the tragedian, who, in order to plunge a greater sum of money more quickly into his belly, served dissolved pearls at his meal, and parrots and little birds commendable for their song, and kept in delights, and also bought at great cost, he did not hesitate to season instead of fig-peckers. Daily, alas! experience furnishes a great abundance of such examples, as daily auctions and proscriptions testify. See St. Gregory, lib. XXX Moral. cap. xiii. Mystically Clement of Alexandria, lib. II Pædag. cap. ii: "For every drunkard, he says, and fornicator shall beg, and shall be clothed in rags and tatters, every sluggard; for sluggard is he who does not watch unto wisdom, but is plunged from drunkenness into sleep. And in rags, he says, shall be clothed the debaucher, and through drunkenness shall be put to shame on account of those who behold him. For the holes of the sinner are those things which are torn from the fleshly garment, pierced through by lusts, through which shame is seen within the soul, namely sin, on account of which the garment shall not easily be preserved, which is torn asunder everywhere and rent, withering in many desires, separated and torn from salvation." Tropologically St. Gregory, lib. IV Moral. cap. xxv, expounds this passage acutely concerning detractors: "It should also be known, he says, that those who feed upon the detraction of another's life are surely saturated with the flesh of others (for he weighs those words of Job: And you shall be filled with my flesh). Whence by Solomon it is said: Be not in the feasts of drunkards, neither eat with them who bring flesh to eat; for to bring flesh to eat is in the discourse of detraction to speak in turn the vices of neighbors. Concerning whose punishment he then adds: Because they that are empty of drink and give contributions shall be consumed, and sluggishness shall be clothed in rags. For they are empty of drink, who intoxicate themselves from the reproach of another's life; but to give a contribution is, just as each one is accustomed to contribute food for eating on his part, so in the conversation of detraction to contribute words. But nevertheless those empty of drink and giving contributions shall be consumed, because it is written: Every detractor shall be rooted out. And sluggishness shall be clothed in rags; because despised and poor from all good works death shall find him, whom here the languor of his detraction occupied in seeking out the crimes of another's life." The same from St. Gregory Bede and the Gloss transcribed here. But the author of the Greek Catena adapts this saying first to the heretic, then to the slothful and lazy toward virtues: for thus he says: "Every sluggard shall be clothed," etc., who, in order to acquire virtue does not watch, nor applies himself to sobriety, he shows the garments of his soul torn and vile: for with sordid and base study he tears and rends them asunder. But the garments of the soul are right and sound doctrines, and true and sound understanding of the same brought forth into work and practice: which garments indeed the man studious and adorned with virtues, having obtained them bright and shining, walks clothed in white and shining at all times, and hates the tunic of flesh contaminated with filth. Thus he. Finally Cassian, lib. X Institut. cap. xxi, by the rags with which the sluggard covers himself, understands frivolous excuses of impotence or infirmity, etc., with which he himself veils his idleness: "Surely indeed, he says, he shall not merit to be adorned with the garment of incorruption, etc., whoever, overcome by the sleep of idleness or sloth, preferred to be covered not by the labor of his own industry, but by the rags of inertia; because he has fitted to his idleness not the garment of glory, nor of honor, but the ignominious veil of excuse," etc.
23:22
The Chaldean: obey thy father; the Syrian: despise not the old age of thy mother. This maxim is clear: for it admonishes the son of the obedience and reverence which he ought to show to his parents, whether when they expressly command something; or when they exhort, admonish or persuade; or when they instruct the son and train him to honesty. For always the son ought to hear his father, whether commanding, persuading, or instructing, and to listen to him and obey him as far as he is able. He adds the reason: He that begot thee, that is to say, Hear thy father, because he himself begot thee: for generation imposes upon thee this debt of hearing; for the father by begetting gave thee human and rational life, but rude and unpolished: he therefore ought by instructing to polish and perfect it, so that his generation may be perfect, which without that would be maimed and as it were only half complete. By the law of nature therefore the father ought to instruct the son, and the son to hear him, so that he may allow himself to be instructed by him. Thus birds instruct the young which they have begotten, by their voice and song to sing, by flight to fly, by hunting and seeking food to hunt: and the young in all things hear their parents and obey them, and thus become perfect in their kind. In like manner horses, camels, oxen, and even wild beasts, such as lions, leopards, bears, wolves form their young to all actions suited to their nature, and the young receive and follow their formation exactly. Again, it is the duty of him who has begotten offspring to nourish the same both in body and in soul. But as the nourishment of the body is bodily food: so the nourishment of the soul is doctrine and discipline. Parents therefore ought to provide both this and that, and children ought to receive them with filial affection. AND DESPISE NOT THY MOTHER WHEN SHE IS OLD. — For often an aging mother is despised by her growing sons, not only on account of the female sex, but also on account of old age, which is weak, peevish, morose, and sometimes wavers in judgment; whence she is despised by her sons, indeed sometimes even mocked as a delirious old woman. He admonishes therefore the son that he should always be mindful of his mother's right, and esteem and revere his mother even when old as his mother, thinking how many discomforts she endured for him nine months in the womb, how many labors, fears and anxieties, so that when born she might nourish, swaddle, educate, comfort him, and provide for him carefully in all things, even the smallest, and that for many years. See what is said in Ecclesiasticus iii, verses 3 and following, where I have treated this matter at length. Mystically the Author of the Greek Catena, by the old mother understands sound and hoary doctrine, concerning which he adds: "Buy truth," etc. By the name of mother, he says, sacred doctrine is signified in this place; he says therefore: That doctrine which seems to thee weak and infirm, is in itself strong and robust. Rouse thyself therefore, and thou shalt find thy mother sound and altogether vigorous: for thou by thy negligence and sloth makest her old and weak. Let the mind, he says, and the sense of thy soul direct thy steps rightly and piously. Thus he.
23:23
The Chaldean: possess. Truth, wisdom, doctrine and understanding are the same things, but they differ in their connotation. Whence the Zurich Bible translates: compare truth, wisdom, discipline and prudence, and do not sell them. He doubles, nay rather presses these together, to show how greatly truth is to be esteemed, inasmuch as it is, first, wisdom, by which we partake of the wisdom of God; second, doctrine, namely practical, which instructs and orders morals; third, understanding, by which we become intelligent, prudent and circumspect in every action. The sense therefore is, as if to say: With all study, all labor and price acquire and preserve for yourself truth and ethical wisdom, and do not sell it at any price of pleasures, riches or honors, that is, do not exchange or cast it away, because it itself is more precious than all gold and price, as was said in chapter iii, 14. Whence the Septuagint, the Complutensian and Royal editions (for in the Vatican manuscripts this verse is lacking) have: acquire truth, and do not reject wisdom; Vatablus: take care to acquire truth for yourself, and do not reject it, as those are accustomed to do who sell something. Among the Philosophers, Diogenes, Bias, Crates, Aristotle, Democritus and others did this, who despised riches, nay cast them away, so that they might devote themselves entirely to philosophy. Far more truly did Christian doctors do this, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Chrysostom, St. Hilary, St. Athanasius and others, who for the sake of Christian wisdom and virtue renounced all riches and pleasures from themselves. The same do Religious today, who follow that saying of Christ: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Hear the Nazianzen in his poem On Beatitude: Happy he who buys Christ with all his fortunes, And has made him the rule and law of a pious life. Second, others take do not sell properly, as if to say: Do not teach wisdom to others for gain, so that you might trade it like a merchant and sell it to them. Where note: Truth properly cannot be sold, because it is a vital act proper and inherent to each one, or its object, namely the conception and judgment of the mind conformed to the thing, when namely the mind conceives the thing as it is in itself; nor ought it to be sold, because truth is spiritual; which if it be supernatural, to sell it would be simony. Whence St. Augustine, in his tract On Christian Discipline, chapter 1, volume IX: "It is unworthy," he says, "and injurious, if wisdom be compared with money." See our Lessius, tract On Simony, doubt 13, where he teaches fully and exactly in which cases it is lawful to accept payment for doctrine, in which not: "It is lawful," he says, "for a teacher to sell his labor of teaching, his industry and his voice, but not wisdom itself, etc. Again, they sell truth, who unwillingly and only when wearied by great entreaties wish to open and teach it. "For what is bought with prayers is bought with flesh;" moreover those who trade in it and display it: these indeed sell it at the price of praise and glory. Finally, Rabbi Solomon thus expounds it, as if to say: "When you cannot obtain truth without payment, acquire it with payment of a price; but do not afterwards sell it: Just as I have acquired wisdom for myself at my own expense, so with payment made to me I shall imbue others with the same." Aben-Ezra thus: "Buy books in which truth is contained, and having bought them do not distribute and sell them;" Rabbi Levi: "Obtain knowledge of truth, and do not forget what you have known." The first sense is the genuine one.
23:24
In Hebrew: exulting shall exult the father of the just, and he who begets the just shall rejoice in him; the Septuagint: the father of the just nourishes well, and shall rejoice in his wise son with his soul.
23:25
Chaldean, who bore thee. The former maxim regards the father, the latter, which as it were is a conclusion drawn from the former, regards the son, as if to say: The father rejoices and exults wonderfully if he sees his son cultivate justice, live piously and holily. "For he who begat a wise man," that is, a prudent and upright man, "rejoiceth in him," because he rejoices both in the good of his son and in his own: for the good and honor of the son is the good and honor of the father, and moreover the disposition and seeds of virtue in children are drawn from and flow from parents; wherefore if men see a son of excellent character, they judge that he has derived these morals from his father and mother, or certainly has imbibed good seeds of morals and a good disposition, according to that saying of Horace: The brave are born of the brave and good: In young cattle, in horses is the virtue of their sires: nor do fierce eagles beget a timid dove. The father of a wise man, says R. Levi, rejoices on account of his distinguished deeds and undertakings, since moreover this is added, that he rejoices with greater care of God on account of his son's merits. In this therefore parents are lifted up with joy for the same reason that they are afflicted with sorrow and troubles on account of their son's foolishness. Hence turning to the son he draws out this conclusion: Therefore, O my son, thus establish thy life and character, thus live wisely and uprightly, that thou mayest affect thy parents with this great joy, namely that both thy mother and thy father may exult in thy virtue, thy distinguished deeds, thy fame and glory: render this consolation to thy mother, who bore thee for so many labors, troubles and dangers which she underwent in conceiving thee, bearing thee, nursing thee, rearing thee, that thou mayest obtain their blessing. For God hears and fulfills this blessing, as He fulfilled the blessing of Isaac dying given to Jacob, Genesis, chapter xxvii, 28. Mystically Bede: "Let God thy father," he says, "rejoice in thy justice, and let thy mother the Church also rejoice; but let also the priest who regenerated thee through the grace of baptism, who instructed thee from childhood, congratulate thee on thy good works."
23:26
The Septuagint: a perforated vessel (others, a broken one) is the house of another, and the well of another is narrow. This indeed signifies that this verse coheres with the preceding one, and gives its reason. Whence first, some expound it, that is to say, O my son, give thy heart to wisdom, and to me its teacher; do not give it to a foolish harlot: for if thou shalt have given it to her, it will be absorbed as into a very deep pit, from which it will be difficult and almost impossible to extract it and restore it to wisdom. Thus Hugo, Dionysius and others. Secondly and rather, that is to say, O my son, apply (in Hebrew, give or entrust) thy heart to wisdom, so that by study of it, and to me its master thou mayest apply it wholly, and consequently give me thine eyes, that thou mayest direct them to the ways, that is to my laws to be read through, and more to be kept: for thus it shall come to pass that thou shalt not fall into the snares which the harlot prepares for thee, to draw thee into her net and pit and ruin: for the harlot adorns, polishes and ornaments herself, that she may snatch away the eyes and hearts of youths to herself like a siren, allure and destroy them. For nothing is so contrary and insidious to wisdom and virtue as lust and the harlot. By heart understand mind and will. Give me thy heart signifies and requires attention of mind to receive the discourse with the mind, says Aben-Ezra, who thinks תצרנה tissorna, that is let them keep, is placed by metathesis for תרצנה tarosna, that is let them run. The eyes of my precepts shall run through the paths, he says. R. Levi: "Give, my son, thy heart," that is, he says, desire nothing else, nor wish for anything other than to be enriched with virtue. "Let thine eyes keep my ways;" let them keep those ways, to which I have instructed thee in this book, so that namely thou mayest wage war against the desires of the body, and strive for the freedom of the mind. Since therefore the desires by which the mortal is chiefly drawn away are the allurements of lust and the pleasure of wine, he admonishes that one must abstain from these especially. That therefore we may reject the foul vice of lust, he says the harlot is like a deep pit. Note: He joins eyes with heart, because there is great sympathy of the heart with the eyes, so that the heart seems to be in the eyes, and the eyes in the heart. For what the heart loves, it directs the eyes to gaze upon it, so that by sight and intuition it may feed itself on the beloved object. Whence it is commonly said: "Where the eyes are, there the heart is, there love is; where the hand is, there is pain." Hence the eyes are leaders in love. "The eyes," says Cicero in De Oratore, "are those by whose intensity, then by relaxation, then by direction, then by cheerfulness we signify the movements of the soul." Again, eyes are fittingly joined with ways, because the eyes direct the one walking, so that he may walk the straight way, lest he turn aside from it into byways, nor strike against rocks and stones, or fall into a pit. Morally, God demands the heart of man, especially of the faithful and the holy, because the heart is the principle of life and of all thought, will and action. Hence the heart is the first to live, and the last to die; wherefore if God possesses the heart, he possesses the whole soul and the whole man. For the heart, that is the will, is as it were a queen, which commands and rules over all the senses, powers and members, either politically or despotically. For the will moves the intellect, that in what it loves it may find reasons and motives for loving; it moves the memory, that it may continually remember them, and represent them to itself for continual loving; it moves the eyes to gaze upon the beloved thing; the ears, to hear its praises; the touch, to embrace it; the feet, that they may walk to possess it; the hands, that they may seize it; and so of the rest. God therefore demands a gift from man. But what? The heart. Why? Because the heart is the most important thing in man, and by its power the whole man; for the heart embraces and governs memory, intellect and the other powers. For the heart here signifies, first, the mind; secondly, love, affection and will, which is the origin of all affection and action. God gave His heart to you, namely the Holy Spirit, as St. Thomas and Nyssenus say, or, as Eucherius in the Spiritual Formula, chapter 1, His Son who was in His bosom and bowels: "For God so loved the world, as to give His only begotten Son;" He therefore demands an equivalent gift in return, namely your heart. They relate that a certain Hermit asked God what gift he might desire by which he could merit His grace and heaven; but the answer was given to him by a shape-shifting demon, that this gift consisted of three parts, namely a new moon, the circle of the sun, and a quarter of a wheel: to wit, the new moon crescent-shaped represents the letter C, the circle of the sun the letter O, the quarter of the wheel the letter R. Join these three letters together, and you will have cor, that is the gift which God demands. Thus our Maximilianus Sandaeus relates in the Gift of the Heart of Julius, Bishop of Würzburg. Robert Olkot has something similar, or rather Thomas of Wales, lecture 12 on Proverbs. Thus Abel, offering his heart to God, pleased Him more than Cain. Whence Rupertus in Genesis IV: "Each one," he says, "offered, but did not divide rightly. For Cain, when he offered his things to God, had retained himself, keeping his heart fixed in earthly desire. God does not accept such a portion: 'But give, He says, my son, your heart to me.' But Cain retained his heart for himself, and offered the fruit of the earth to God. Abel, however, offering his heart first, then his own thing, offered a very great sacrifice." Thus Rupertus. Abel therefore, besides those most choice and fat offerings, offered his love, than which nothing is more choice or more pleasing to God. For what avail all offerings, even the fattest, before the eyes of God, if love is denied? "Operations," says St. Ambrose, book I On Jacob, chapter viii, "are commended by good affection." Hear St. Augustine (or whoever is the author: for the style argues it is not St. Augustine's), tract. On the Four Virtues of Charity, after the middle, vol. IX: "What does He (God) seek from you? What was said to Abraham: Give me your only beloved son; Wisdom says to you: Give me, my son, your heart. For if God possesses the heart, He possesses the whole soul and the whole man. For the heart, that is the will, is as it were a queen, which commands and rules over all the senses, powers and members, either politically or despotically. He Himself is the only beloved. Why do you fear to offer your heart? Offer a sacrifice, the contrition of your heart to the Lord your God, and say to Him with the Prophet: Thou wilt not have pleasure in holocausts. A sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit, a contrite and humbled heart God will not despise. Fear nothing when such a sacrifice is offered, and it will be acceptable to you, and what you have offered will remain whole." St. Bernard treats this opinion beautifully, in a letter to someone asking: What does God require from us? "Our heart," he says, "can produce nothing more worthy than that it restore itself to Him from whom it was made, and this is what the Lord demands from us, saying: My son, give me your heart. Then indeed the heart of men is given to God, when every thought is directed toward Him, turns and bends around Him, and wishes to possess nothing at all except Him, and thus binding its soul to itself loves Him, so that without Him all love is bitter. Nor would I say anything else about giving the heart as a gift than to capture it in all obedience to Him; and thus to submit it entirely to His will, so that it wishes nothing else than what it knows He wishes." From which he concludes: "Therefore the heart given to the Lord will adore Him in all things and for all things, and will give thanks; even if many things appear troublesome to our senses, it will receive no disturbance from the novelty of things; tested by the Lord through tribulations and harsh circumstances it will not be moved: deprived, that is, lacking, it will rejoice. Whatever is brought upon it, even if it has a harsh sense, as if impelling toward the heavens, it will receive. He who has given his heart to God will sing melodiously, and will say with the Prophet David: My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready, I will sing and make a psalm in my glory." He then adds the modes and degrees by which the heart is to be given and directed to God, which read in the work itself. Let us therefore pray constantly with our Father Alvarez, lib. III On Perfection, pag. 2, cap. xvii: Lord my God, and God of my heart, who ceases not to sound these words in my heart: "Give, my son, thy heart to me," by which thou dost earnestly seek the love of my heart, and dost inflame my will toward love with all my heart: grant, I beseech thee, to my heart perfect love of heart, which thou hast deigned to demand by precepts, counsels, benefits, persuasions, promises and threats: because no one will be able to render anything to thee, unless thou first benignly grant the same to him, and bestow it with a generous hand. Thou dost demand the love of my whole heart, saying: Love me with thy whole heart; and I indeed, if thou first givest it, restore to thee the foundation of my whole heart. Give therefore, O Lord, through thy infinite goodness, that I may love thee with my whole heart, namely that thy good pleasure and thy love may be preferred by me to all gifts and charisms, and that I may never overflow with harmful presumption toward loving creatures, or against thee, or above thee, or besides thee. Memory is stirred by an example in the Life of St. Henry Suso, cap. IV; for he, while burning with the most ardent desire for eternal wisdom, she exhibited herself to him in bodily form: now she bore the image of an elegant maiden, now of a most beautiful youth. And so, turning most sweetly toward him, smiling at him courteously, yet not without a certain divine majesty, she addressed him kindly with these words: "Give, my son, thy heart to me." Then indeed, prostrating himself at her feet, he gave her thanks most humbly and from the depths of his heart. Thence his love for her became more ardent, so that he desired to join her to himself as a spouse; wherefore, drunk with love, he exclaimed: "I with my whole heart, senses and mind embrace thee, the inexhaustible abyss of all desirable things, with the ardent affection of my heart." Meanwhile she sometimes communicated herself to his heart as the source and outflow of all good, in which he found at once whatever was beautiful, lovable or desirable: indeed it existed in her in an ineffable manner. Therefore repeatedly embracing her as a most welcome friend with weeping eyes and with a heart expanded immensely, he offered his whole heart to her, and from thence he was called a Minister of eternal wisdom. For a Pit Is Very Deep, the Harlot He said the same thing cap. xxii, vers. 14, where I explained it. Note: That profunda signifies this harlot's pit to be so deep a chasm that for those falling into it there is scarcely any hope of emerging. For thus in it the harlot detains her lovers with her honeyed snares and harlotrous arts, so that they cannot extricate themselves from her. Whence the Comic poet: Love is nothing else but sad and sickly pleasure; Nothing but sweet evil, nothing but sad good. It diminishes fame, it hinders better deeds: In short time it loses great riches. For pit in Hebrew it is שוחה scucha, which properly signifies a pit or ditch, into which those falling are lost; whence it is taken for corruption, desolation, destruction, grave. Hence the Septuagint renders scucha now as pit, now as vat, as in this place: for a vat is hollow like a ditch; now as filth, because ditches are wont to be muddy and filthy, as appears Job ix, 31; now as death, as Job xvii, 14 (where our translator renders it, putrefaction: "To putrefaction, he says, I have said: Thou art my father; my mother, and my sister, to worms"); now as corruption, as in Jonah ii, 7; destruction, or death, or slaughter, as Psalm ix, 15, Isaiah li, 14; now as worthlessness, as Psalm cxviii, 85; now as impassable, as Jeremiah ii, 6; now as a word, as Jeremiah xviii, 20 and 22. All these things are fitting for the harlot. First indeed the harlot is a most profound pit, into which lovers headlong rush, are lost and perish, both as to soul and as to body. It alludes to the houses and hovels of harlots, which appear not so much as houses but as caves, pits and lairs of beasts; whence also underground vaults are called, and thence the name of fornication: indeed not rarely in ditches of city walls and fortifications, with shrubs and brushwood they dwell, and there like foxes they lie in wait for passersby, and draw them to these wooded pits and corrupt them, as I have seen done in some cities of Germany. Mystically, these pits aptly signify youths seduced by harlots, from the height of civil and honest life, namely from the summit of honesty, reason and virtue, precipitating themselves into the most profound pit of lust, infamy and all shame and wickedness. Secondly, a harlot is death, because she kills the souls of her lovers and often their bodies as well; indeed, she is the cause that on account of her beauty young men quarrel among themselves, and slay one another by mutual combat. Hence St. Isidore, speaking of a fornicatress: "These," he says, "are they whom already a deadly Θ marks;" for by Θ judges of old condemned the guilty to θάνατος, that is, death. Whence that saying of Persius: "And it is able to prefix a black theta to vice." St. Chrysostom, however, in homily 49 on Matthew: "Lust," he says, "makes not only the wanton, but also murderers," as it made Herodias a murderer of St. John the Baptist. Thirdly, a harlot is a sepulchre, but whitewashed, says St. Chrysostom in Psalm 1, because outwardly she appears white and comely, but inwardly she is full of filth, putrefaction, venereal disease, and other maladies with which she infects and destroys her lovers; she herself is a sepulchre, in which lust buries the living. Whence Stobaeus, sermon 6 On Intemperance: "Diogenes," he says, "used to say that most men bury themselves alive, and putrefy themselves by bathing in moisture, and by venereal corruption. But when dying, they then command their body to be laid up in perfumes and aromatics; some even in honey, lest it quickly putrefy," as if to say, Diogenes mocked the madness of men, in that they themselves corrupt the living body, which ought to be preserved whole, with the filth and sordidness of lust: but the dead body, which must necessarily corrupt, they themselves season with balsam, myrrh and other fragrances, that they may keep it incorrupt: when living bodies ought rather to be seasoned for a longer life, and dead bodies ought to be left unseasonéd that they may quickly waste away. Fourthly, a harlot is filthy, nay, mere filth, because she is most poor, most sordid, most foul-smelling, full of stench, corruption, putrefaction. Whence St. Chrysostom, homily 29 on Matthew: "What," he says, "does one seized by lust differ from a demoniac? So it is that he is never in himself, but dwells in sepulchres. The sepulchres of harlots are their lodgings, since they are filled with much stench and much putrefaction. Neither threats nor exhortations will be able to bind him: he scorns all these bonds." Fifthly, a harlot is destruction both to herself and to her lovers and to the whole commonwealth; for she destroys the noblest youths and citizens thereof. Sixthly, a harlot is frivolity, because she is full of trifles, frauds and lies, by which she entices those who approach, ensnares and maddens them, so that she seems to be made and sewn together from these. Seventhly, a harlot is a perforated cask, into which, even if you pour the riches of Croesus, they flow out and are squandered, and she herself always remains in need, and stays poor and empty.
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He lies in wait in the way as a robber, and whom he shall see unwary, he will kill. — In Hebrew it is אכחתף kecheteph, that is, as prey and rapine. Hence first, Pagninus translates it, she also as prey will lie in wait, that is to say, Just as a cunning fox lies in wait for hens, and a wolf for sheep, that he may make them his prey and food: so likewise a harlot lies in wait for unwary and inexperienced youths, who are as simple sheep and hens, that she may plunder and seize their wealth, and indeed their health, reputation, life, and conscience: whence from wolves, that is, harlots, are called brothels. Secondly, Marinus in the Lexicon translates it, she also as rapine will lie in wait. It is an elegant Hebraism, by which an abstract is put for a concrete. Rapine, that is, most rapacious, namely a beast, or a plunderer and robber. Whence the Chaldean translates it, as a rapacious beast (that is, as a beast that seizes) will lie in wait with eyes. For a harlot is a most rapacious and voracious beast, indeed a collection of all beasts, so that she appears to be made up of all of them. For in a harlot there is the cunning of a fox, the greed of a wolf, the quarrelsomeness of a dog, the malice of an asp, the savagery of a tiger, the pride of a lioness, the virulence of a serpent, the ferocity of a dragon, as St. Chrysostom teaches, homily 45 on Matthew. The phrase "with eyes" can be referred both to "seizing" and to "lies in wait," that is to say, Other beasts lie in wait with eyes, but seize prey only with feet and claws; but a harlot surpasses beasts, for from a distance she not only lies in wait with eyes, but also seizes those who gaze upon her like a Siren, and draws them to herself and drags them along, just as a magnet draws iron to itself from a distance; and those seized she despoils, kills, and devours like Sirens. Thirdly, the Septuagint translates it συντόμως, that is, concisely, that is, briefly, quickly, suddenly, hastily, as the Syriac, R. Solomon, the Complutensian and Royal editions translate it; or rather concisely, that is, in the cutting and tearing of rapine. For beasts, when they seize a sheep or hen, immediately tear it with teeth and claws, rend and lacerate it, that they may devour it. Thus therefore from the Septuagint you would translate it, he (the fornicator) will perish in the cutting, because namely the harlot like a beast will tear him as prey, mangle and devour him. Fourthly, our translator clearly and forcefully translates it, he will lie in wait as a robber, because he takes rapine with Marinus for a plunderer, such as a robber is, or for אכחתף kecheteph, that is, rapine, others read it with different points אנרי coteph, that is, robber, thief, brigand. Whence the Zurich Bible translates it, she also just as brigands are wont to do, lays snares. So also R. Levi and Aben-Ezra. For first, just as a robber hides in caves, dens, forests, and almost always prowls in darkness and at night; whence a robber is called from hiding, or because he attacks from the side, says Festus: so also a harlot secretly lays snares, and almost always seizes prey at night. Again, she likewise blinds and maddens a man, and deprives him of the light of reason and judgment, that she may seize and plunder him as a blind man. Hear St. Chrysostom, homily 11 on I Corinthians: "Just as," he says, "robbers and those who break through walls— AND A NARROW PIT, ANOTHER'S. — "Another's," that is, a harlot, who is not your wife. She is compared to a narrow pit, first, because just as a pit is deep and dark, so that it appears to be an abyss, so also is lust and a harlot. Hear St. Chrysostom, homily 11 on I Corinthians: "When indeed," he says, "the soul is seized by shameless lust, just as clouds and darkness cover the eyes of the body: so when she has robbed the mind of the faculty of discernment, she allows nothing to be seen further, neither a precipice, nor hell, nor fear, but occupied by her tyranny thereafter it can easily be overcome by sin, and like a wall lacking windows raised up everywhere before the eyes, it does not allow a ray of justice to shine upon the mind, with absurd thoughts of lusts keeping it out everywhere." Secondly, just as a pit is narrow; whence that riddle of his: Tell in what lands, and you will be to me great Apollo, Does the space of three heavens not extend more than an ell? surely in a pit: so likewise narrow is the house, furniture, soul and all things of a harlot. Again, she brings herself and her lovers into extreme straits. Whence the Syriac translates it: A pit of anguish and tribulation. Thirdly, a well is full of mud and mire, says the Author of the Chain of the Greeks, and indeed filled with frogs and toads: thus also the harlot is wholly unclean and foul, and indeed carries a toad, that is a demon, in her breast. The Septuagint translates it, and a narrow well belonging to another. He alludes to private wells of another's house, which are wont to be narrow, as belonging to one house alone: whence often they do not suffice to give water to neighbors. Wherefore in many places individual houses have their own wells. The sense is, as if to say, Just as the well of another's house is narrow, and suffices for that one alone, not however for neighbors: so likewise the wife of another is narrow, who is bound by the law of matrimony to her one husband alone, and cannot extend herself to others without great perfidy and danger of life; for if the husband should learn or suspect that his wife loves another, he will pursue both to death, according to that in chapter vi, 34: "For the jealousy and rage of the husband will not spare in the day of revenge, neither will he yield to any man's prayers, nor will he accept for a ransom ever so many gifts." This is what Isaiah says in chapter XXVIII, 20: "The bed is straitened, so that one must fall out of it, and a short covering cannot cover both." See what is said in chapter v, 45, at those words: "Drink water from thy own cistern, and the streams of thy own well, etc., let them be thine alone, and let not strangers be partakers with thee." First indeed, just as a robber hides in caves, dens, forests, and almost in darkness and at night he prowls; whence a robber is called from hiding, or because he attacks from the side, says Festus: so also the harlot secretly lays snares, and almost at night seizes her prey. Again the same woman blinds and maddens a man, and despoils him of the light of reason and judgment, so that she may seize and plunder him as if blind. Hear St. Chrysostom, homily 11 on I Corinthians: "Just as," he says, "robbers and wall-breakers, when they wish to seize something precious, do so with the lamp extinguished: so also lust does in us; for there is in us perpetually a burning light of reason. That spirit of wickedness (namely lust) rushing in with great force extinguishes that flame, and straightway plunders and despoils all that is hidden." What lust does, this does the lustful harlot; for she is the allurement of lust and the very lust itself. Secondly, just as a robber first snatches the treasure, then the life: so also the harlot first snatches wealth and chastity (which is a great treasure), then health and life, and thrusts her lovers into death and hell. Wherefore St. Bernard, when he was a youth of elegant form, being tempted on the third night by his hostess to fornication, exclaimed: "Robbers, robbers!" and thus drove her away, suffused with shame and confused with fear lest she be exposed. In the morning, being asked what robbers he had seen at night, he answered: "Truly a robber was present, and the hostess was striving to take from me chastity, an irreplaceable treasure;" whence to escape these dangers of robbers, he entered the Cistercian Order. For if he is a robber who snatches wealth, how much more is he a robber who strives to snatch chastity, which is an incomparable treasure? Thus it is in his Life, book I, chapter III. Thirdly, just as robbers beset public roads, to attack those passing by: so also harlots: whence they are also called Street-walkers. More has been said about the snares of the harlot in chapter VII, 10. Mystically, adapt all that has been said of the harlot to concupiscence and to any illicit pleasure, as I said in chapter VII, 40 and following. AND WHOM HE SHALL FIND UNWARY, HE SHALL KILL. Hebrew: and transgressors in man he shall add; Syriac: and many men multiply iniquity; R. Solomon: rebels in man he shall add, that is, he shall increase the number of those who are offended against God among the Israelites; Aben-Ezra: robbers in man he shall add, that is, he joins others like to robbers. For the harlot, says R. Levi, contracts a partnership with parricides and robbers, and drives the unwary by her arts into that place where they fall by the hand of assassins. Cajetan: and sinners in men he shall add; Zurich Bible: transgressors he joins to himself; Vatable: he multiplies; because namely the harlot invites all to her love, thence to quarrels, brawls and murders: wherefore she kills the unwary, as Our translation aptly renders it. For from the Hebrew thus word for word you would translate: and transgressors to Adam he shall gather (if indeed iosiph, that is he shall add, you derive from non asaph, it signifies he shall gather), that is he shall kill. For in Hebrew death is called a gathering; whence to be gathered to the fathers is the same as to die; and to gather to the fathers is to kill. I have assigned the causes of this phrase in Hosea IV, 3, to those words: "And the fishes of the sea shall be gathered," that is they shall fail and die, as the Septuagint and Chaldean translate. Hence also Theodotion in this place translates: and transgressors in men he shall take away; the Chaldean: and he hunts the sons of the foolish; the Septuagint: and every wicked man shall be consumed. Truly St. Cyprian, On the Singularity of Clerics: "The time of struggle," he says, "is still being waged, and death through woman still rages," as if to say: Just as Eve, seducing Adam, brought sin and death upon all his posterity: so also a woman, a temptress and lustful, destroys the greater part of mankind, and drags them with her into lust, death and hell. St. Cyprian continues: "I lie, if we do not see from this the ruin of many. How many and what manner of Bishops and clerics together with laymen, after the struggles of confessions and victories overcome, after great deeds and signs, or wonders shown everywhere, are known to have been shipwrecked with all these, when they wish to sail in a fragile ship! How many lions has one delicate weakness subdued, which, though it be vile and wretched, makes great things its prey!" Whence exhorting he adds: "Far be this plague and pestilence, and hidden destruction. O how disorderly the proximity of woman shoots forth, whose vicinity is the theft of crimes!" as if to say: Just as cities and roads near to robbers, murders and robberies which are perpetrated by them constantly, are full and infamous: so also the harlot renders all things near her infested by her lusts and crimes which follow from them, so much so that the harlot, or she-wolf and brothel, appears to be the cave and theft of all crimes.
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29. Woe to whom? woe to whose father? to whom quarrels? to whom pits? to whom wounds without cause? to whom redness of eyes? — This gnome is directed against drunkards and the intemperate, and sets forth the many and grave harms of their gluttony and excess. Whence he adds: 30. ARE NOT THEY WRETCHED WHO TARRY AT THE WINE, AND STUDY TO DRINK OFF THE CUP? — "Woe to whom," that is, to whom great calamity and lamentation, if not to the drunkard and the intoxicated? To whom, I ask, does harm and ruin come? Who beats the air with complaints and lamentations? The drunkard. For "woe" signifies a notable groaning with beating of the breast and clapping of hands, on account of great disaster and sorrow, according to that: "And there were written therein lamentations, and canticle, and woe," Ezekiel ii, 9. See the things said there. Where St. Gregory says that "woe" denotes eternal curse and damnation of hell: this therefore is prepared for the drunken, as is evident from Galatians v, 21. WOE TO WHOSE FATHER? — Rightly: for the Hebrew אברי aboi is composed of אב ab, that is, father, and אוי oi, that is, woe. For drunken sons create for their parents a thousand sorrows, troubles, sadnesses, fears, quarrels, disputes and dangers. Secondly, others derive aboi from אכה aba, that is, he desired; whence they translate, woe to whom appetite or desire of having many things, which he consumes and wastes in drinking parties? certainly to the glutton and drunkard. Thirdly, others with Aben-Ezra translate, woe to whom poverty? For אכה aba signifies both to desire and to lack: hence ebion is called the needy and poor, because, lacking many things, he desires many things, as if to say, the drunkard is desirous of all things, in that he lacks all things. For drinking parties lead him to extreme want, and make him lack all things. Fourthly, the Syriac translates, woe to whom perturbation? and the Septuagint, woe to whom tumult? For wine stirs up tumults, and makes drunkards tumultuous. For when they have their brain entirely disturbed, and like a raging sea, they disturb all things and inflame quarrels. Fifthly, the Chaldean, woe to whom deformed appearance? For drunkards become livid, pale, gloomy, morose, and assume various deformed forms and shapes of beasts; now they snarl like dogs, now grunt like pigs, now roar like lions, now gesture like apes, now glare like bulls, now howl like wolves. WOE TO WHOM WOUNDS WITHOUT CAUSE? — For the drunkard, without offense or cause given by anyone, quarrels, curses, strikes; and therefore in turn is struck and beaten, and that more surely and with a more certain blow, inasmuch as he is struck by one who is sober and in command of himself, with a direct and firm hand. In Hebrew, woe to whom wounds freely? Cajetan, woe to whom blows to the head in vain? The Septuagint, woe to whom superfluous bruises? For those inflamed with wine quarrel rashly, fight, and wound one another. Hear St. Basil, homily On Drunkenness: "Alas! what are you doing, O man? a servant flees from a master who strikes and wounds; but you remain with wine, which every day strikes or beats your head." This is the first plague of wine, by which it of itself strikes and prostrates the brain, so that it is bereft of reason. There follows a second, by which wine through others, whom the drunkard provokes, inflicts proper wounds upon him, concerning which St. Ambrose, On Elias and Fasting, chapter XII: "In one day they drink the labors of many days, from drunkenness they rise to arms, cups are succeeded by weapons, for wine blood is shed, and wine itself has shed blood." Wherefore Fulgentius in Mythology, in the fable of Dionysus: "Jupiter," he says, "begot Bacchus from Semele. When Semele, four of his sisters were called: Ino, Autonoe, Semele and Agave. Let us inquire what this fable means. There are four kinds of drunkenness: first, wine-drinking; second, forgetfulness of things; third, lust; fourth, madness. Whence these four sisters were also called Bacchae, as if devoted to wine. The first Ino: for οἶνος in Greek, in Latin we say vinum; the second Autonoe, as if αὐτὴ οὐ νοοῦσα, that is, not knowing herself; the third Semele, as if σωμάλυσις, which we in Latin call a body dissolved. Whence she herself is said to have borne Father Liber (Bacchus), that is, drunkenness born of lust; the fourth Agave, who is therefore compared to madness, because she violently cut off the head of her son." Thus Fulgentius, whom some think to be St. Fulgentius of Ruspe, Bishop, who flourished in the year of the Lord 529. But this Fulgentius the Mythologist appears to be different from St. Fulgentius, since that matter of fables and style does not savor of the gravity of St. Fulgentius, as our Possevinus says in the Library. CUI RIXAE? — The Septuagint, cui judicia? that is, quarrels. For wine exhales hot vapors into the head, which inflame the brain and from there the bile; whence arise anger, quarrels, brawls, slaughter and blows. Thus daily experience teaches that the feasts and drinking parties of gluttons end in brawls and slaughter. Wherefore St. Chrysostom: "Just as oil, he says, feeds a lamp, so wine inflames anger, as if drinking cups were called by a fitting name the cups of friendship." There exists an ancient law of the Franks in the blessed Beatus Rhenanus, book II of the Deeds of the Germans, in this form: "Let no one invite a companion in arms or anyone else to drink; but if anyone shall be found drunk, let him be cast out until he acknowledges his fault, and let him drink water." Would that that law were restored to practice! CUI FOVEAE? — He reads שוח scuach through schin, that is, a ditch, a pit, a sepulcher, as I said at verse 27. Now they read שיח siach, through sin, that is, garrulity. Whence Pagninus, cui mussitatio? The Royal [version], cui murmur? The Complutensian [Polyglot], cui tristitia et ineptia? The Vatican [Polyglot], cui molestiae et tricae? Vatablus, apud quem nugae? The Syriac [version], cui mala? The Chaldean [Paraphrase], cui malorum congeries? For, as St. Chrysostom says, homily 10 on Genesis: "The more abundant use of wine is the cause of infinite evils." For the drunkard, dissolved by wine, pours forth the follies of his heart, suspicions, hatreds, secrets, curses, calumnies, by which he becomes the cause of a thousand evils to himself and to others. To foveae [he notes] first, that the drunkard, on account of the dizziness of intoxication, cannot fix his steps straight, but stumbles, strikes against things, and not rarely falls into ditches, or certainly with disturbed imagination imagines them for himself. Whence St. Ambrose, in the book On Elijah and Fasting: "Hence, he says, vain images, uncertain sight, unsteady steps; they often leap over shadows as if they were ditches." Secondly, a pit is a sepulcher. For, as St. Augustine says: "Drunkenness is a kind of burial of a living man;" for the drunkard buries and entombs reason and mind by wine, and from there the man himself, and takes on the appearance of a beast, indeed of an insensible and dead corpse. Whence St. Chrysostom, homily 10 on Genesis, calls the drunkard "a living corpse." Thirdly, a pit symbolically signifies any dangers into which the intoxicated man, as one burning with wine, recklessly and boldly throws himself. Truly St. Chrysostom: "The drunkard, he says, is a voluntary demon," because the drunkard thus rages, shouts, raves, and speaks and does every wickedness just as if he were an incarnate demon; but in this demon there is something worse, that he throws himself into these crimes willingly and freely, whereas the hardened demon can will or do nothing good, but only that which is evil. Whence it is not in the demon's power to return to the state of an Angel, but necessarily the demon is, and the demon perseveres. CUI SUFFUSIO OCULORUM? — In Hebrew, חכלילות chachlilut, that is, cui rubedo oculorum? Others derive chachlilut from כלל calal, that is, he consumed, he destroyed, he overturned, whence they translate, cui suffossio oculorum? For the eyes of drunkards appear suffused, and wet with wine, they seem to him as if swimming in it. The Septuagint, πελιδνοί, that is, livid (the Complutensian [Polyglot], black) eyes. The author of the Catena of the Greeks calls livid or black eyes those that are blinded and cadaverous, and filled with darkness; Aquila, κατάρεῖ, that is, empty; but it seems one should read ζαταρῶν, that is, laboring with distillation, namely with rheum and catarrhs; the Chaldean [Paraphrase], cui extrema oculorum prominent? Therefore all these things come down to the same thing, but they recount various conditions and damages of one evil of the eyes. For wine, first by ejecting fiery vapors into the head, makes the eyes red and as if fiery, which are a sign of boldness and shamelessness, as Aristotle says in the Physiognomy. For redness comes about from the concourse of blood and heat: just as on the other hand paleness in fear comes about from the flight of blood and heat. From redness follows dimness of the eyes: for eyes suffused with moisture grow dim and are blinded, hence their swelling, lividness, dimness and blackness. Hear Clement of Alexandria, II Paedagogus cap. II: "By immoderate wine the eyes are twisted and diverted, since on account of the abundance of moisture the sight floats as in a pool, and so they are forced to think that all things are turning in a circle; but they cannot count those things which are far off, as though they were single. And I seem to myself, being drunk, to see two suns, said that old man of Thebes. For the motion of sight from the heat of wine often apprehends the substance of what is one in a multiplied vision: for it makes no difference whether the sight sees, or that which is seen. For the same thing happens to the sight from both, which on account of fluctuation cannot perfectly comprehend the subject." And after some things: "Whose eyes are livid? are they not of those who spend their time in wines? etc. Solomon indeed shows that he who delights in excessive drinking is even dead to reason through livid eyes, which is a sign of the dead, announcing to him that death which is in the Lord: for forgetfulness of those things which pertain to true life tends toward destruction." Excellently Lucretius: When, he says, the force of wine has penetrated the keen air, and the burning moisture has spread into the veins, there follows heaviness of the limbs, the legs are hindered in their wavering, the tongue grows sluggish, the mind is wet, the eyes swim, clamor, hiccups, quarrels increase. Furthermore, for suffusio some read suffossio, others confusio, others confessio. Hear Francis Lucas explaining each of these here eruditely noted. 187: The eyes of drunkards, he says, are suffused, and the nose red, which the heat of the humors arising from wine produces. The force of the humors also causes the sharpness of the eyes to be dulled, and the eyes to be suffused with dimness, which diminishes the faculty of seeing. The trilingual manuscript of the College has confusio, which is similarly related either to redness: for drinkers have perpetual redness, which the modest have temporary; or to the humor by which the sight of drinkers is suffused. But it is an obvious error which the Nuremberg edition has, confessio, although the eyes confess and betray the study of drunkenness. The Chaldaic Paraphrase, in the Royal edition translated into Latin, is: And whose extreme eyes protrude? which could make for the reading suffossio; for those things which are dug under protrude, just as the earth protrudes which the mole digs under. But I do not sufficiently know what the Paraphrase designates, whether protruding eyes, or protruding cheeks, which in drunkards are drawn into wrinkles, or something else. Furthermore, continuous and frequent drinking of wine supplies heat, which gradually exhausts the humor of the eyes, and weakens the faculty of seeing, and finally extinguishes it in the dried-up organs, which could be signified by suffossio of the eyes; unless perhaps those who substitute suffossio for suffusio (for suffusio is indeed the most probable reading of our Interpreter) had regard to the fights of drinkers, who when they are delivered unarmed into battles, perhaps as is the custom with women, scratch each other's cheeks with their hands, and dig out each other's eyes. To this (to the fight I mean) the Greeks undoubtedly had regard, when they translated: Τίνος πελιδνοί οἱ ὀφθαλμοί, whose eyes are livid? for they are accustomed to strike with fists or cups, and to give each other livid eyes mutually. Moreover, they not rarely both designate and suffer things more serious than these, and to such a degree do they come, that they are led to the cross, where the ravens dig out their eyes from the torrents, and the sons of the eagle eat them. Thus Lucas. IS IT NOT FOR THOSE WHO TARRY LONG AT THE WINE, AND STUDY TO DRINK THE CUPS? — In Hebrew, is it not for those who delay over wine, and go forth to search out the mixture? that is, who draw out long delays in drinking bouts, and who carefully investigate and search out, where the wine is more excellent and generous for drinking? says R. Solomon and R. Levi. Vatablus, among those surely who pursue wine, who come to search out where wine is mixed; the Septuagint, is it not for those investigating where drinking bouts take place? The Chaldean, for those who investigate the house of mixing, that is the tavern and wine shop. The Syrian, for those who so detain themselves, as if it were a house of drinking. Soon he adds: Be not drunk with wine, but speak with just men, and walk with them, and weave together discourses, which he received from the Septuagint, concerning which the following verses. Drunkards therefore so thirst after wine, that they seem with Diogenes the Cynic to dwell and live in a tub, not to fill it, as he did, but to empty it; not to gaze upon the heavens, as he did, but to drain cups. Hence they not only drink continuously throughout entire days, but also nights in turn, and do not cease unless either overcome by sleep, or when drowsy they are carried from the table to bed like swine or corpses. Note: Wine is called by the Hebrews a mixture or mixing, because they are accustomed to mix thin wines with noble, sharp with mild, austere with sweet. Or rather, because the ancient Hebrews, being temperate, mixed and diluted their wines, which are noble, with water, as I have shown elsewhere. Most excellently does St. Augustine, sermon 231 On the Seasons, compare drunkards to marshes, in which nothing but frogs and serpents are born; and among other harms of drunkenness he recounts these: "And in them there is dimness of eyes, dizziness, weariness, and pain of the head, flushing of the face, trembling of all the limbs, stupor of soul and mind. In such is fulfilled what is written: Woe to whom? to tumult? to anger? to quarrels? to wounds without cause? to redness of eyes? Is it not to those who tarry long at wine, and to them who study to drink wine, and make it their study to drink cups? But those who wish to be such miserably try to excuse themselves saying: I hold my friend ungrateful, if, whenever I invite him to a banquet, I myself do not give him drink as much as he wishes. But let him not be thy friend who wishes to make thee an enemy to God, who is both thy enemy and his own: if thou shalt make both thyself and another drunk, thou shalt have a man as a friend, thou shalt have God as an enemy. And therefore wisely consider whether it be just that thou separate thyself from God, whilst thou joinest thyself to drunkenness." Hear the gifts of sobriety and the harms of drunkenness from Bede in the Collections: "Sobriety preserves memory, sharpens sense, purifies the mind, directs the countenance, maintains modesty, mitigates vices, fashions keenness, cleanses the ears, relieves the brain, frees the tongue, unfolds speech, nourishes the marrow, strengthens the blood, cares for the veins, binds the sinews, despises lust, restores sleep, prolongs old age, preserves mystery, and establishes man. Drunkenness is weakness, first it clouds memory, empties sense, neglects the mind, confuses the intellect, stirs up lust, entangles the tongue, hinders speech, corrupts the blood, dulls sight, disturbs the veins, blocks hearing, weakens the sinews, subverts sense, dissolves the viscera, burdens the brain, weakens memory, takes away strength, demands sleep, impedes the menses, blocks the spirit, stains the body, and defiles man by its vice and makes him without honor."
23:31
31 and 32. Look not upon wine, when it is yellow, when its color shall shine in the glass: it enters in smoothly, but in the end it will bite like a serpent, and like a basilisk it will spread poison. — In Hebrew, look not upon wine, when it is red, because in Palestine they do not have white wine, but only red, as grave men assured me in Rome, when it shall have given its eye in the cup. Our translator rendered it as yellow instead of red, because the yellow color is composed of green, red and white combined: that is, a tawny color, such as is the color of gold, honey and ripening grain. Whence this color is very pleasing to the eyes, and very much stirs appetite and the palate. Indeed in Italy we see many wines of a golden hue and golden color, which entice the eyes equally as the palate. Again, the yellow color is seen not only in red wine, but also in white: wherefore it is fitting for any wine. Finally, the yellow color approaches and pertains to the red, and is as it were a species of it. Whence Gellius, book II, chapter XXVI: "He asserts that the red color has many different species, which the Latin language does not demonstrate with individual and proper words, but signifies by one appellation of redness: for indeed the red color is called from redness, but fire glows differently, blood differently, purple differently, saffron differently. And yet from the very things themselves it borrows the words of colors, and something is called fiery, and flaming, and blood-colored, and saffron-colored, and purple-colored, and golden. For red and ruddy differ nothing in the word of red." But in the same place Fronto contends that in Latin also under the red and ruddy color these same differences are signified: "Tawny, yellow, reddish, crimson, glowing, sallow, chestnut, either sharpening or inflaming the red, or mixing it with green color, or darkening it with black, or gradually illuminating it with white." For "its color" in Hebrew it is "its eye." First, literally and properly, the Hebrews call the color an eye, and, as the Chaldean translator renders it, a splendor: for both light or splendor, and color, is the object of the eye and of sight. It is a frequent metonymy among the Hebrews: for the faculty is put for the object, namely eye for color. Whence the Syriac translator renders it, when it shall have presented in the cup its beautiful appearance; the Chaldean, when it shall have placed in the cup its color. Second, Cajetan: "The eye of wine," he says, "is called its transparency. For the natural eye is the part of an animal having in itself what is transparent and living; and because it is transparent and lively of the wine itself, it is called its eye." For generous wine is spiritous, and the spirit is ejaculated through bubbles or eyes of it. Third, the eye of wine is called the light of the sun, or of a candle or lamp, which received by the wine in the glass, and refracted or reflected by it, exhibits the appearance of a shining eye: for light is in the manner of a circular figure like an eye. Again, just as through the eyes of sorceresses bewitchment happens (for through them children are bewitched): so through these as it were eyes of wine those beholding are bewitched and enticed to drinking by the sight and their minds. It signifies therefore that the eyes must be restrained, lest we behold wine becoming yellow and golden: for it itself is alluring and seductive, and snatches to itself the palate of the beholder, just as the appearance of a woman snatches the lust of the beholder. Thus Eve, seeing the tree beautiful and pleasant to taste, was enticed to eat the forbidden fruit, and by it destroyed herself, her husband and all posterity. Restrain therefore the eyes, lest we behold wine becoming yellow and bubbling in the glass, because if you see it, you will drink it. For great is the power, great is the dominion of the eyes over the heart, great in turn is both the sympathy and servitude of the hearts toward the eyes: for wherever the eyes are borne, thither suddenly and stealthily they snatch with them the minds and hearts. Our translator much more aptly refers it to the palate and throat of the drinker, as if to say: Wine deceives both by color and by taste, because by taste it is smooth, sweet and delicate; for it enters into the throat directly, because it is pleasant and sweet to it; for indeed with a vinous flavor, which has sweetness, not soft and flowing, but sharp and fiery, it pricks and stimulates the fauces to drink it eagerly. Wine therefore walks and glides in straight paths, that is without offense, without harshness, gently and smoothly; and it appears straight, that is good, smooth and desirable. Thus straight is often taken for pleasant, as when it is frequently said in Scripture: "It was right in his eyes," that is it pleased him, and was grateful and pleasant to him. BUT IN THE END IT WILL BITE LIKE A SERPENT, AND LIKE A BASILISK IT WILL SPREAD POISON. — In Hebrew, and like a basilisk it will spread, namely its venom and poison. In Hebrew it is יפרש iaphris, which Aben-Ezra translates as it stings, on account of the spurs which the basilisk bears on its feet; R. Solomon, it separates, that is, it separates him from life; Pagninus, it will afflict with pain; the Chaldean, but its end is like a serpent bites, and like a bird that flies; Vatablus, like an asp it will sting; the Syrian, and consider the miseries, because the end of wine is like the wound of a serpent, and like a basilisk that flies; the Septuagint, but at the end like one wounded by a serpent he stretches out, and like one struck by a cerastes his poison is spread. The cerastes is a serpent with two horns: for κέρας in Greek is horn; that it is deceitful, hides itself in sand, and kills what is offered, Pliny and Nicander report. Whence the Author of the Chain of the Greeks thus explains: At the end, he says, both of soul and body you will die from wine no differently than if you had been bitten by a cerastes or some other venomous serpent; for he who is bitten by a serpent scarcely feels the pain of the bite at first; yet at the end he perishes. Now the cerastes is the worst and most cunning kind of serpent: for with its whole remaining body hidden under sand, it allows only its horns to protrude above; these however, when it moves and stirs them like a worm from time to time, it attracts unwary birds and other animals to itself. Moreover, as soon as they have flown or crept toward the horns as toward certain food, it immediately intercepts and kills them. Thus he. Albert the Great, Gesner and others wish the cerastes to be the dipsas; the dipsas is a serpent thus called in Greek, because by biting it excites thirst, by which it comes about that those bitten continually thirsty drink constantly, and finally by drinking they suffocate themselves or burst: thus also wine in drinkers sharpens their thirst, so that the more they drink, the more they thirst to drink, until they overwhelm themselves with wine, and not rarely kill themselves. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Wine flows smoothly, pleasantly and tastily through the throat into the stomach; but in the stomach, exercising its heat and intoxicating quality as if it were virulence, it infects and inflames the blood and spirits, and through them all the members, so that now it appears to be not wine, but the venom of a serpent and basilisk, which therefore creates burnings, fevers, catarrhs, nausea, vomiting, and a thousand other diseases, which often bring death, and moreover incite body and mind to lusts, quarrels, murders and every wickedness. Wherefore wine is more pestilential than any serpent and any poison, because this alone infects and kills the body; but the power of wine creeps from the body into the soul and mind, and in them it lulls reason and judgment to sleep, and as if destroys them, so that the soul, powerless over itself, is driven by imagination and the craving of gluttony, lust, anger, and other vices, which wine awakens and inflames. Whence St. Ambrose, in the book On Elijah and Fasting, chapter XVI: "Drunkenness," he says, "is the fuel of lust, the incentive of madness, the poison of wisdom;" and chapter XIV: "Who mixed such a cup of fury? Who poured such poison into minds?" and below: "You promise food, you inflict torments; you offer wines, you pour out poisons. For whatever harms is poison; it takes away the senses, burns the viscera, disturbs sleep, troubles the head. Indeed the power of wine is greater than that of poison. Finally poison is excluded by wine, not wine by poison. Rightly God through Moses compared wine not only to poison, but to the poison of dragons, saying: The fury of dragons is their wine, and the wrath of asps is incurable. And it is beautifully added, incurable; for many are cured from the poison of other serpents, no one from drunkenness; certainly poison wounds the flesh, wine the mind." Moreover our Martin of Roa, in book VI of Singulars, chapter XII, by serpent, or snake, understands a viper, and thus explains: Just as when wine has seized body and mind, we see all things disturbed and confused, we see two flames from one, the firmest columns totter: so also those things which are in the mind, the forms and images of things, or phantasms, it disturbs and mixes, and makes it so that a friend's secret, which when one was sober seemed the sweetest pledge of friendship, in drunkenness is a viper, which bursts the viscera so that it may escape; then when it has escaped, it first loses its author, and then torments others. This opinion agrees with what Plutarch says, who in his Commentary On Talkativeness: "They say," he says, "that whales, fish and vipers are burst by giving birth; but secrets which those who do not contain them let slip out, they destroy." Mystically, wine is any pleasure and enticement to sin; for sin is wine, not that which good vines produce, but that which our pestilent adversary offers: for "their wine is the gall of dragons, and the poison of asps, which is incurable," Deuteronomy XXXII, 33. The first sight of this is wont to appear fair and delightful to the unwise, who rejoice in the appetite for vengeance, the dominion of pride, and the taste of pleasure; but when it has passed through the throat of the mind and been transferred to the spiritual stomach, O what torments it excites, and with how many disturbances it burdens the soul! The Seventy, adding some things paraphrastically from their own, thus translate: Be not drunk with wine (the Vatican text has "wines," because a mixture of various kinds is more enticing and delightful, and more disturbs the brain and intoxicates. Whence the Nazianzen in the work of Maximus, sermon 30: "We consider it a loss," he says, "unless some external wine, like a tyrant, is mixed with the native wine.") Wine therefore mixed rages in the brain like a tyrant), but converse with just men (sober and wise), and converse in walks, that is, as the Author of the Catena of the Greeks translates more clearly: "But in porticoes and public walks converse familiarly with just men; for if you give your eyes to cups and goblets, afterwards you will walk more naked than a pestle," that is, you will be reduced to extreme poverty and nakedness. For a pestle, by which spices are pounded in a mortar or grapes in a wine-press, is made completely bare by constant pounding, indeed it is stripped and scraped; whence the proverbs: "Balder than a pestle," for very smooth and bald. "More naked than a pestle," for exhausted. "More blunt than a pestle," for dull and obtuse, such as drunkenness makes. "The vertigo of Hyperi, or the circumlocution of the pestle," of which Plato speaks in the Theaetetus, for one whose discourse revolves to the same point, or who always agitates the same thing, yet explains nothing; or, as Hesychius interprets, one who always does the same thing, yet accomplishes nothing, as drunkards begin many works but complete none, because they are wholly in the revolution of cups. Others refer "more naked than a pestle" to the revelation of secrets: for the drunk lay bare and utter all the secrets and hidden things of the heart. To this applies the axiom of Plutarch in his Morals: "The world is corrupted by water and fire; but the wealth of the luxurious by love and drunkenness;"; and of Menander: "Much wine causes little wisdom; shame and wine are wont to reveal to friends the character of friends." IT ENTERETH BLANDLY. — The Chaldean, rightly; in Hebrew, it proceeds in rectitudes, that is, it proceeds straight, pleasantly, blandly. Aben-Ezra refers this to the glass or cup, as if to say: Wine poured in proceeds straight into the cup, and appears straight and consonant with nature, so that it cannot cause harm. R. Levi: "Wine," he says, "exhibits a wonderful appearance in the cup; for it preserves the course of nature toward rectitude, and tends toward equality, as generous wine is wont to do, which when first poured on the surface of the cup, the more subtle part appears." R. Solomon refers it to the actions which appear straight to the drunken, though they be crooked and perverse. "When," he says, "someone is dissolved in drunkenness, whatever crimes he incurs, he judges them to be right actions, since he esteems all his undertakings and ways as straight." Vatable refers it to the color and splendor which wine casts directly into the eyes of those beholding it; whence he translates: Do not look upon wine when it is red, and when the cup renders its color proceeding straight. Hear St. Gregory, III part. Pastor. admonition 33: "Whence also through Solomon the voice of one struck and sleeping is expressed, who says: They have beaten me, but I felt it not; they drew me, and I perceived it not; when shall I awake, and find wine again? For the mind sleeping from the care of its own solicitude is beaten, and does not grieve; because as it does not foresee impending evils, so neither does it recognize what it has perpetrated. It is drawn, and in no way feels it, because it is led by the enticements of vices, and yet is not roused to its own guardianship. And indeed it wishes to awake, that it may find wine again, because although it is pressed down by the sleep of torpor from its own guardianship, it strives nevertheless to be awake for the cares of the world, that it may always be inebriated with pleasures; and while it sleeps in that in which it ought to have been diligently awake, it desires to be awake in that in which it could have laudably slept." See with what grave sleep the sinner is lulled after drinking the wine of pleasure, so that the wretched one is lacerated with fresh wounds inflicted upon him, and yet does not grieve; is drawn through the precipices of vices, is hurled from abyss to abyss, and yet does not feel it. Behold what a lethargy sin is, so that it takes away both the pain of wounds and the sense of ruin! On the contrary, the perspicacity of man is remarkable, and his vigilance most wakeful in the affairs of this world, in catching at the vanities of honors, in seeking out the allurements of pleasures, which Solomon immediately adds: "When I shall awake, and again shall find wines?" Seneca wisely, epistle 39: "Who, he says, has been so contemptuous an enemy to anyone as pleasures are to some? whose impotence and insane lust you could forgive for this one reason, that they suffer what they have done; and not undeservedly does this madness vex them: for it is necessary that desire, which transgresses the natural measure, go forth immensely. For that has its end, but empty things and those arising from lust are without limit. Necessity measures what is useful, what will you do with the superfluous? Therefore they immerse themselves in pleasures, to which, once accustomed, they cannot abstain. And for this reason they are most miserable, because they have reached the point that what was superfluous has become necessary to them. They serve their pleasures, therefore, not enjoy them, and they love their evils (which is the ultimate of evils). Then indeed is unhappiness consummated, when base things not only delight but also please; and there is no place for remedy, where what were vices have become customs." Symbolically, understand pleasure and concupiscence under wine, whatever it may be. For if these are frequented, they drive man mad, and occupy and claim him entirely for themselves. Whence tropologically, learn that the fruit of crime, especially when strengthened by habit, is insensibility of mind; for this seizes and corrupts the criminal like lethargy or apoplexy, so much so that he admits neither the warnings of parents, teachers, confessors, preachers, nor feels blows and scourges however sharp and hard, just as if he were deprived of reason, indeed of sense and soul, and were a log or marble. Wherefore he does not awake from the torpor of sins, but clings to it in a stupor and dies in it.
Machine translation from the Latin, not reviewed.
23:14
… At their death all men descend to the f. (Gen. 37:35; 42:38; 44:29, 31; Num. 16:30, 33; etc.) where they "are gathered to their fathers" (Gen. 25:8, 17; 35:29; 49:29, 33). All the dead are under the dominion of the f. (Os. 13:14; Ps. 15:10; 48:16; 88:49; Prov. 5:5; 23:14), which lies beneath the ocean (Job 26:5) and swallows all without distinction (Ps. 88:49). The "gates of the f." (Is. 38:10; Job 38:17; Ecclus. 51:9; Sap. 16:13; Ps. Sal. 16:2; III …
23:20
II. SYMBOL AND SYMBOLISM IN SACRED SCRIPTURE. - The term occurs in its etymological sense in the biblical version of the Septuagint and in the Vulgate ("dantes symbola") of Prov. 23, 20-21, to indicate the portion that the diners "put together" for the common meal.
23:26
Finally, mention should be made of the texts that recommend perfect conjugal fidelity (Prov. 5:15-20; 6:24-35; 23:26-28; Eccl. 9:1-13; Mal. 2:14 ff., etc.) or describe the ideal wife (Prov. 31:10-31; Eccl. 26:1-24) in opposition to the perverse one (Eccl. 25:17-36). For the preference of the …
Douay-Rheims (Challoner) · Vulgata Clementina · original Douay-Rheims (Douay 1609-10), transcription by EEBO-TCP (CC0) · La Sacra Bibbia, tradotta dalla Volgata da Antonio Martini (1769-1781) (LaParola (laparola.net), Martini OSIS text, Public domain (LaParola's electronic edition marks it 'Dominio pubblico')). Public domain.