Fragments on Proverbs 173–189

the things dear to God alone: namely, what the prophets made clear to us about Christ alone and his disciples, and whatever anyone may say that brings one close to Christ, and that only. [Prov 4:26] In agreement with this is: "Unless the Lord builds the house" and "guards the city"; that is, unless the Lord gives us strength to direct our steps toward him, we labour in vain, if we do not call on him in supplication but set about things in self-will. [Prov 5:3] For both open harlots and the teachings of those who hold other doctrines are glib, deceiving the hearts of the innocent by fine speech. The greatest safety, then, is not to be caught at the start; for once caught, it is hard to escape. Their charm lasts only as far as hearing them. Fat signifies pleasure, from which is born uncleanness, whose offspring are wickedness and ignorance; nothing more bitter than these will be found among created things on the day of judgment. [Prov 5:9] From this we know that the irascible part prevails in the demons: "Merciless," it says, "is their anger, and sharp their wrath"; for they hunt to destruction those who obey them. That is how they honour those who honour them. [Prov 5:11] Through their vices the wicked wear away the flesh of Christ and squander his blood, counting it common. For "he who eats my flesh," he says, "and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day"; but "he who eats the body and drinks the blood of the Lord unworthily eats and drinks judgment on himself." [Prov 5:14] There was a time when evil was not, and there will be a time when it will not be; for the seeds of virtue cannot be blotted out. This man too persuades me of it, who was "nearly", but not completely, in every evil; and so does the rich man judged in Hades for his wickedness, yet pitying his brothers; and to pity is the finest seed of virtue. [Prov 5:15] Knowledge is both a well and a spring: to those who are beginning in the virtues it seems a deep well, but to those who are free from passion and pure it is a spring. So too the Saviour sat at the spring; it was about the sixth hour. Understand by "spring" the divine knowledge, not the well of water. Just as a spring lies ready without toil, that is, running water for the thirsty, so a well is drawn with toil by those who wish to draw. And just as a spring never ceases flowing, so Scripture as perceived by the senses has an ever-flowing course, easy for those who thirst to honour God; and just as a well gives toil to those who draw from it, so does contemplative knowledge to those who wish, through it, to accomplish the virtues of soul and body, to understand divine things, and to lay hold of the kingdom of heaven.

[Prov 5:18] Here "wife" signifies the knowledge of God, which was given to us from youth; Solomon above calls it the teaching of youth, for he says: "Son, let not evil counsel overtake you" (meaning the devil, as having counselled evil), "which forsakes the teaching of youth and has forgotten the divine covenant." Forgetting and forsaking come after the acquiring of knowledge, as disease comes after health, and death after life. Together with this, note that the same knowledge is called mother, wife and sister: mother, since the one who taught me begot me through her, as Paul begot the Galatians through the Gospel; wife, because, living with me, she bears virtues and right doctrines, since "wisdom bears prudence for a man"; sister, because she and I have come from the one God and Father: "Say," it says, "that wisdom is your sister." [Prov 5:19] Grace and friendship set free; virtue and knowledge set free the rational soul; for grace and friendship are virtue and knowledge. If the hind is born of friendship, the colt is born of the graces; so the hind is the symbol of contemplation, the colt of freedom from passion; for the one by nature comes from the virtues, the other from knowledge. The hind is the symbol of the contemplation of bodies and incorporeal things and of the knowledge of God; friendship is the symbol of love for God and neighbour; the colt, of freedom from passion. The contemplation that knows God usually comes from the virtues of the soul; love by nature comes from wisdom; and freedom from passion from the virtues of the body. He urges us always to keep company with such graces; and whoever loves to dwell with them will not only converse with God but also come to live in his house. Virtue is proper to rational nature; it is called friendship, and it makes those who follow it friends of God through the knowledge of God. The one who keeps company with the friendship of virtue and with that of knowledge is … among those who benefit. [Prov 5:20] Some think this is said of outside wisdom, with which it is not good to linger because of the deceits in it; others take it of wickedness, and interpret "do not be much with her" thus: it is entirely impossible for a person to abstain from evil thoughts, but it is possible not to linger in them; these he also calls arms. [Prov 6:1] Everyone who stands surety for his friend, Christ, as righteousness and truth, hands over his own soul to the enemies, who are accustomed to make war on people, because of his friendship with the Saviour. For friendship is spiritual, the knowledge of God, by which the saints too are called friends of God: as John the Baptist was the friend of the bridegroom, and Moses and the apostles: "No longer," he says, "do I call you servants, but friends." [Prov 6:4] Do you see the contest and the vigilance? The sleep of the soul is

sin in act; slumber is the first unclean thought formed in the soul; and drowsiness is the inclination toward the worse. The law, then, forbids sleep, the Gospel slumber; for the one cuts off sin in act, the other the wickedness first formed in thought: "It was said," he says, "to those of old, You shall not murder; but I say to you, You shall not be angry." [Prov 6:6–8] Note here that he calls the natural, harmonious movement of the ant wisdom; for the ant is said to be "wiser than the wise." And how is it not under a master, since all things are slaves of God? Perhaps God is called master in two ways: as creator, and as known. That is why Paul writes: "But now, set free from sin and made slaves of God" (that is, by virtue and knowledge) "you have your fruit for holiness, and the end, eternal life." If the ant, being irrational, has no share in such an end and such knowledge, clearly it is also free of such slavery; it is rightly said, then, that the ant is not under a master, in this sense of mastery; and yet it is said to be under mastery, under God as creator. [Prov 6:8] By the ant Solomon seems to sketch for us the practical way, and by the bee he signifies the contemplation of created things and of their Maker himself, which both the pure and the impure, the wise and the foolish, take for the health of the soul. The wax seems to me to stand for the things themselves, and the honey stored in it to be the symbol of their contemplation. And the wax will pass away ("For heaven," it says, "and earth will pass away"), but the honey will not pass away; for neither will the words of our Saviour Jesus Christ pass away, of which Solomon says: "Honeycombs are good words, and their sweetness is healing for the soul"; and David: "How sweet your sayings are to my throat, more than honey to my mouth." He has named "labour" the result of the labour of the virtues and of knowledge. And by kings and private persons he does not mean those who wear the diadem, or the poor on the dung heap; he calls kings those whose mind has been made wise toward God and is strong in the virtues. [Prov 6:9–10] This sleep by nature befalls only the rational soul; for here it signifies ignorance and lack of knowledge, from which vigilance makes a person "like a sparrow alone on a housetop." [Prov 6:13] One should consider here whether perhaps the adversaries come to know, through such movements of the body, the thoughts that are turning within us; since we believe that God alone knows the heart. [Prov 6:17] Everyone who eats the flesh of Christ and drinks his blood acquires righteous blood; and when the rational soul is deprived of it

is said to die: "For the soul," he says, "that sins, it shall die." And if there is righteous blood, there is clearly also unrighteous blood, which they gather in themselves who devour the food given to the peoples, the Ethiopians, and are fed on the bread of falsehood. Those who sacrifice to strange gods squander their righteous blood; but those who offer themselves as a sacrifice to the one God destroy the unrighteous blood. And it will surely follow the destruction of the unrighteous blood … But this now happens by nature; from the beginning it was not so. For the health of children does not come by the destruction of disease, since they are born with health from the beginning. [Prov 6:19] By slandering falsehood to one another, he brings them into divisions and lawsuits. Or else the brothers are those who have the gift of adoption and are under the same father, Christ; and the witness of unrighteousness tries to separate them by casting troubles and disputes among them. The word "kindles" is added, I think, because of the passionate thoughts that inflame anger toward wrath and hatred, and desire toward shameful deeds. These thoughts the holy Paul named the fiery darts of the evil one, which wound the soul and bring about death. [Prov 6:22] He commands us to bring along the mother, who is the wisdom that begets according to God. Yet he ought to have said the father, for he is better suited to be with the son. But since it is not possible to know God himself before the contemplation of created things, for this reason he commands us to bring along the mother, not the father, so that through the mother the son may see the father; for if she does not give birth to him, he does not see the light, which is the knowledge of God himself. [Prov 6:23] "For the commandment of the law is a lamp and a light." And perhaps the lamp is the Old Testament, for "he was the lamp that burns and shines"; and the light is the New Testament, for "I," he says, "am the light of the world": reproof of evils and instruction in good things. For "through the law comes knowledge of sin." [Prov 6:26] For the pleasure of wickedness is worth as much as one loaf. [Prov 6:30–31] If he is caught by true knowledge, the one who formerly stole, through lack of knowledge, from the knowledge and wisdom that our Saviour made foolish, will put away all false knowledge. He is said to repay sevenfold by praising God seven times a day; and by giving all that he has to God, he will deliver himself from the punishments prepared for the devil and his angels. [Prov 6:32] Everyone who has shared in wickedness is an adulterer with the devil, who first married wickedness and was a murderer from the beginning; and with him he brings destruction on his own soul. [Prov 7:4] Wisdom is our sister, because the one who made

the incorporeal nature, the Father, also made her. Here he calls wisdom not the Son of God, but the contemplation of bodies and incorporeal things, and of the judgment and providence contained in it. [Prov 7:6] He now calls the flesh of a person a window; for through it the evil one works his deceits on people who wish to walk the broad and spacious way that leads to destruction. [Prov 7:8–10] Here one must note what Solomon says about wickedness: that it does not at first lead the person into the broad street, nor force him to walk by the passages of her house, or to draw near her corner, or to talk in the evening darkness; but if it sees someone giving himself over to pleasures, it at once meets him, having the look of a harlot, "which makes the hearts of the young flutter." [Prov 7:12] Those who roam in the broad streets take up thoughts of adultery, sexual immorality and theft; those who roam outside these pursue the pleasures that are against nature, seeking to lie with males, and take up images of other forbidden things. See that this may not be a charge against holy men too: whoever does not keep still but roams about will share in the charges brought against the dishonourable woman. Of thoughts, some are pure and some impure; and of lines, some are called straight and some broken; a corner is a broken straight line. The corner, spiritually understood, is the impure thought. That wickedness lies in wait at every corner shows that it deceives the soul through all the impure thoughts. [Prov 7:16–17] By the coverlets and the saffron and the rest he signifies deceitful speculations, or the various passions. [Prov 7:14] See how wickedness has no beginning of its own, but starts from the preludes of virtue; for to take a partner in a sacrifice is good. And when it has overthrown them, then it injects its poison, listing what lovers desire, all of which is able to bewitch, not by its own nature but by the folly of the hearers. In its meaning, wickedness seeks to shame our face through the coverlets and the bed and the rugs and the saffron and the cinnamon, since these signify evils and the various passions of pleasure that arise among the inventors of evil. [Prov 7:19–20] "After many days he will return to his house": Paul, looking very spiritually into the divine plan, says that death is destroyed as the last enemy; Solomon described it beforehand as the husband of wickedness, who took humankind in his hand like a bag of silver; even if, when one sins, one cannot at once foresee the fear of God. For he is patient and cares for the human race; for if he did not foresee the fear of God, he would have destroyed all at a stroke. [Prov 7:22] There are three kinds of heron: the kemphos, the

white, and the one called the starry heron. Of these, the kemphos, being intemperate in mating, beds and mates with difficulty, cries out, and in mating sheds blood from its eyes, and lays its eggs badly and painfully. From the account of this creature Scripture signifies that those who obey wickedness are made like herons and have become like these birds through licentiousness. There is also another kind of kemphos that flies in flocks here and there over the sea, which sailors catch by baiting a line with many hooks; and it not only does not flee when it sees the ones that have been caught, but one runs ahead of another to be caught. So those who keep company with wickedness, each hurrying to outdo the other in pleasures, pierce themselves on a deadly death. [Prov 8:5] Here he has called virtue "heart", that which comes upon the heart, or the spiritual heart created by God. [Prov 8:10–11] Here he took wisdom as the genus of instruction and knowledge; for after putting instruction and knowledge first, he adds, "For wisdom is better than precious stones," as if instruction and knowledge were contained in wisdom, which is given through the Spirit as the word of wisdom; the same is also called the spirit of adoption. [Prov 8:13] Note that by "injustice", "insolence" and "pride" he means the unjust, insolent and proud man, naming him from his worst disposition. [Prov 8:14] That is, from me come good counsel and safety; for where this is, there the others are too. Do you see that everywhere the incorporeal things are set before the bodily, and rule them? [Prov 8:15–16] Then, having said that ruling itself comes about through her, he adds what is much greater: for this is to rule, to be able to use authority justly, which is better. Some take the kings as the saints and the great ones; the tyrants as those still at war with the flesh and tyrannizing over the passions. [Prov 8:17] Here he introduces love (agapē) as greater than friendship (philia), when they are not used of the same thing. Indeed, when the Saviour said to Peter, "Do you love me?", Peter, knowing who was speaking with him, gave himself the lesser word, "that I am your friend"; and when he heard the third time, "Simon son of John, are you my friend?", he was grieved that the Lord had given him the lesser word the third time. [Prov 8:18–19] That the wise man alone is rich and of good repute: for in him there is the possession of many things and the fruits of wisdom, which he sows to the Spirit and reaps life. By speaking of her own wealth she seems to say something like this: "You need no expense or novelty for love of me; it is enough only to love, and you will be loved in return." [Prov 8:21] And what is wonderful, that there should be righteousness in wealth, this too is with me, and all the other good things.

[Prov 8:22–23] The wisdom of God, being essence, was begotten before the ages and was eternal before creation; but when it took on a relation to things that come into being, then it became the beginning of God's ways, of those by which he creates and those by which he provides. So the "beginning" is joined to the creatures of which it became the beginning, that is, it is the relation to things that come into being; but the wisdom is eternal, existing in essence with God before the ages. [Prov 8:36] Impiety is sin against God; but he also acts impiously against his own soul who heaps up for his soul the punishment prepared for the ungodly. And it follows that those who hate wisdom love death, since wisdom is life. [Prov 9:1] Wisdom is to be taken here in two ways: I mean the wisdom given from the Holy Spirit, in words and in writing, to those who think as God thinks, through which the knowledge of God was made known to the world; and likewise the Son and Word of God who subsists in his own person, who brought all things from non-being into being by his wisdom. [Prov 9:2] By sacrifices he means here all the prophets who were sealed and slain at Christ's exhortation, because they mixed in the bowl of knowledge, for those of sound mind, the knowledge of him that is like sweet wine; for he says, "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul." He himself sacrificed them and sacrifices them, because he urges those who believe in him to die for him, as he himself dies for you. [Prov 9:3] If Paul the apostle is a slave of Christ, and Christ is wisdom, then Paul the apostle is a slave of wisdom; likewise we shall reason in the case of the other apostles and prophets, showing that they are slaves of his wisdom. [Prov 9:7–8] One must not reprove wicked people when they sin, but remind them of the fear of God, which will turn them from wickedness. Or else by the wicked he means those who are turning from sin and wish to come to repentance, but are still wicked and blind: be patient with them and do not reprove them for every single fault, lest they come to hatred at the very start; but when they become wise and are established, reprove them. Christ too did not reprove his disciples while they were still young, because old wineskins are not fit for new wine. Or by the wicked he means the senseless and foolish, or those wholly strangers to divine teaching, whom one must not reprove but admonish and teach. And if Ahab and Herod were reproved, they had already shared in the divine law, even if they transgressed it; that is why these too must be reproved. Or he seems to say this to the people of that time, who were more childish; otherwise why did John and Paul reprove? "One must not reprove the wicked when they sin"; for reproof to a person's face makes the sinner more shameless. We should do this with the wise and righteous, between the one reproved and the one reproving, not before many.

[Prov 9:12] The one who is carried about by every wind of teaching, having suffered shipwreck in the faith, has destroyed himself and others, as one who shepherded under the wind. For he has left the ways of the commandments of the one who said, "I am the vine, you are the branches, and my Father is the vinedresser." The one who does not gather the divine knowledge together with the virtues does not gather the immortal fruitfulness of the eternal kingdom; and unfruitfulness is wickedness and ignorance. [Prov 9:17] To touch gladly the divine words, which are like bread that gives life, and the divine thoughts in the hidden contemplation of the mind. The breads of the soul are the virtues, which our Saviour commanded us to practise: fasting, self-control, prayer and the like; in secret, so as not to be seen by people. [Prov 10:4] By "a man" he means the one who has become poor in the word; and by "hands", the deeds of wisdom. [Prov 10:5] The man of understanding, not consumed by afflictions and misfortunes, bears the fruits of righteousness; but the lawless man is ruined even by better things. [Prov 10:17] He calls "unreproved instruction" the soul's evil way of life, which brings it both destruction and error. But the way of life guards the innocent not only from eternal ruin but also from every hardship of the evil of this life; and by the innocent he means those who endure ill-treatment from someone and practise innocence in love. Or thus: "unreproved" is the instruction that has a show of piety but is untrained and unexamined; for one who is not reproved, and who does not make known his thoughts and reasonings to others, goes astray through conceit. [Prov 10:18] "Cover" means "do not allow to lift its head." Or by "enmity" he means wickedness, through which we become enemies of God; the enmity against God and people that the evil one produces in our heart the righteous shake off, and with their lips they hymn God whenever the evil one casts such enmity at them. "For if, being enemies," says Paul, "we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son." And if enmity is wickedness, friendship is virtue and the knowledge of God, through which we become friends of him and of the holy powers; and in this friendship those who are his friends are also friends of one another. [Prov 10:24] "Lord, before you is all my desire," says David; that is, we must desire what is pleasing to God and befits the righteous, so that our prayer may be acceptable before God; but the ungodly is carried off to eternal destruction by desiring and doing what is not dear to God. [Prov 10:27] If the fear of the Lord adds days, and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, these days are parts of wisdom, made by the Sun of righteousness; for the one who advances adds knowledge and illuminations. For such days David too prays, saying: "Do not take me away

in the midst of my days." Abraham, having fulfilled these days, died an old man and full of days. And the Lord adds the divine visions as days to those who fear him in faith; but the years of the ungodly, seen to be without wisdom and without divine grace, have been made few. [Prov 10:30] He calls a person's life "the age", as Paul does: "I will never eat meat again" (literally, "for the age"), "lest I cause my brother to stumble"; for he named "the age" what extends along with the duration of his life. For the righteous, he says, will not give way so as to sin when troubled by the evil one. But the ungodly who sin will not only fall from the kingdom; they will inhabit the fire and not the land. [Prov 10:31–32] That is, it is full of grace. By "the mouth of the godly" he now means the mind and the heart, which hymns God through the lips; but the mouth of the ungodly, which speaks evil, is turned away from God so as to belong to the evil one. See what comes from the one and what from the other. [Prov 11:7] For the righteous man, having his aim fixed on what is to come, surely obtains what he expected when he dies. Or else he directs us to the resurrection: in the one case what is remains and is not destroyed; in the other, even what is is extinguished; for they boast only in the present age, those of whom it is said, "whose glory is in their shame." [Prov 11:8] "The ungodly is handed over in his place" is not said as if the godly were liable to the penalty; but since there is a snare set by the evil one against the righteous, when the righteous is rescued the ungodly falls into it. The godly is snatched away by God, while the ungodly, abandoned, falls into it, as in: "The sinner was caught in the works of his own hands." Or else, since the righteous man, as a man, is liable to some sins, the ungodly man came and did evil to the righteous, and so delivered him from his sins and from the punishments to come, but took the penalties on himself. And he is handed over by himself, by his own wickedness, as one who has handed himself over to a base mind. [Prov 11:14] That is, discernment about what should be done or not; or else so as to manage one's own life; for it is a great and unbearable surge. Such people, carried about by every wind, suffer shipwreck in their life or in the faith, and fall from God like the leaves of a tree, those who have no wisdom of God. And if salvation is in counsel, and not simply in counsel but in much counsel, then no one is saved in bodies or in money, nor by nature, as those say who bring in natures. [Prov 11:17] Here he has plainly called the soul a body; and Christ too in the Gospels calls the soul a body, saying: "The lamp of the body is the eye." By lamp he meant the mind, for it is what receives knowledge; and by body the irascible and desiring