Fragments on Proverbs

… let us gather from Scripture the noun "prudence" and the verb related to it, "to be prudent", so that we may see whether the word has several meanings or signifies one thing. First, in Genesis, according to the Seventy, it is written: "Now the serpent was the most prudent"; according to Aquila, "cunning"; according to Symmachus, "most cunning". So, as far as this expression of the Seventy goes, one might say that prudence is not a virtue; for the serpent did not have virtue, but cunning, which one also blames as a kind of knavery. This is how prudence is understood here by the Seventy, according to which the cunning one has been called prudent. The Gospel according to Luke also seems to know this meaning, when the Saviour is recorded as saying in the parable: "And the Lord praised the unrighteous steward, because he acted prudently," that is, knavishly, craftily. And perhaps "praised" is said, not of praise in the proper sense, but in a looser use, as we say that someone is praised even in indifferent matters and in the various indifferent arts, as if marvelling at the dexterity that shows sharpness and agility of mind. So too: "Be prudent as serpents," that is, not unacquainted with the serpent's cunning tricks. For you need to be disposed, as the apostle put it, "so that we may not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs." At any rate, the serpent deceived by his cunning the woman who was not prudent. And the sons of this age are not wiser, but more prudent, than the sons of light; and not even this simply and absolutely, but "in their own generation." But the word "prudence" also signifies something else: "God," it says, "founded the earth by wisdom, and prepared the heavens by prudence," that is, by virtue, not by knavery. The Gospel too knows this meaning, in the parable of the prudent virgins. For here prudence is clearly taken as the opposite of folly, which is a vice (from it the fools and the foolish virgins are so called), as is prudence, from which the prudent and the prudent virgins are so called. If the fool is bad, and the prudent man is his opposite, then the prudent man will be either bad or good; for the opposite of what is bad cannot be something indifferent. But the prudent man, the opposite of the fool, is not bad; otherwise the prudent virgins, formed by prudence, would not have gone in with the bridegroom to the wedding. It remains, then, that prudence is good and the prudent are good. By this reasoning prudence is a virtue, and the prudent are such by sharing in prudence, by which the Lord prepared the heavens.

… in transpositions and inversions. For when the speech turns about in its order, and what is being said seems to be interrupted by something said in between, there arises the hyperbaton, also called a turning of speech. And again, when the wording is interchanged in what is called anastrophe, there is as it were a turning of the speech. For example, the psalmist says: "Because I kept silent, my bones grew old." Inverting it, one will say: "Because I kept silent from crying to you all the day, my bones grew old," so that it means: "Since I ceased from crying, supplication and praise to you, therefore my bones dried up." (Of the same.) [Prov 1:3] "True righteousness" can be said in contrast to the righteousness that is an image. For Christ is righteousness itself; and the righteousness in each of the righteous is an image, by sharing in it, and looks to Christ as its pattern; with reference to him, I think, it was written: "The Lord is righteous and has loved righteousnesses." It is contrasted also with symbolic righteousness, for there are many symbols of the truth in the law; and also with false righteousness. But in the Hebrew and in the other translators "true" is not added, since righteousness admits of no contrast. There are three criteria in us: sense, of things perceived by the senses; reason, of things spoken; and mind, of things intelligible. And one directs judgment when he has obtained divine grace before all else; for "a man's steps are directed by God"; since he is mortal, how could he understand his own ways? The other translators rendered it "judgment and uprightness", since no one without discernment has judgment, nor anyone crooked uprightness. And perhaps the virtues are uprightnesses, as the vices are crookednesses. [Prov 1:4] Verse 4: "That he may give cunning to the innocent." The one who is ignorant of malice falls under the cunning of the malicious, being himself simple. As of blameworthy innocence, then, it is said: "The innocent believes every word"; that is why it added: "But the cunning comes to repentance," that is, he repents of what he believed rashly. This innocence the apostle, speaking well of it, called simplicity, saying: "I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts be corrupted from the simplicity that is toward Christ." We must, then, guarding against the cunning of the evil one, be guileless as doves in ourselves, but prudent as serpents toward those who plot against us. "For in malice," it says, "be infants, but in your minds be mature." Innocence, then, is twofold: blameworthy, as has been said, and praiseworthy, as in "I walked in my innocence." [Prov 1:5] Verse 5: "And the man of understanding will acquire steering." For "if a knowledgeable man hears a wise word, he will praise it and add to it." The one who has become a man of understanding will add further, both in practice

and in contemplation, so as to direct the wealth that comes from these. What the human mind lacks is the steering that comes from God; the man of understanding who has it, and is wise besides, will suffer nothing terrible. Such a one, sailing with knowledge toward God, will reach the harbour of his will. But the one who is not such will suffer shipwreck concerning faith, or concerning hope, or concerning love, or concerning some one of the virtues. And one who has been shipwrecked concerning these might fittingly say: "I came into the depths of the sea, and a storm overwhelmed me." And one must always say: "May I be delivered from those who hate me, and from the depths of the waters." (Of the same.) Verse 5: "And the man of understanding," it says, "will acquire steering." [Prov 1:6] Verse 6: "He will understand a parable and a dark saying." For spiritual things are interpreted by spiritual. "But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him." For whatever the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets in parables and dark sayings becomes easy to understand for those who share and partake in the Holy Spirit, taught by the Spirit himself. For one who is unsealed and without a pilot cannot come to know the divine Scriptures. [Prov 1:7] Verse 7: "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord." The word "beginning" signifies rule, as in "With righteousness is the throne of rule"; and also the introduction to some teaching, as in "The beginning of a good way is to do what is just," that is, instruction in conduct; and he calls "good way" the contemplation that leads to wisdom. "Beginning" also signifies the cause of a thing's existence, as in "I am the beginning and the end": the beginning as giving being, the end as the source of perfection. Here, then, the beginning is the instruction that introduces one to wisdom, consisting in the fear of God. For fear as a passion is the expectation of terrible things; those who come into fear of punishment turn away from wickedness. This should not properly be called fear of God, even if it touches those who fear "him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna"; it is the fear that perfect love casts out. But the fear of God is true reverence in worship, by which one "greatly delights in his commandments" with a genuine longing, turning them into works; and it is the beginning of the wisdom of God by way of introduction. You will find it in its fullest form in the one who has been perfected in wisdom, of whom it is said that "there is no want to those who fear God." Verse 7: "And piety toward God is the beginning of perception." Of divine perception, that of the inner man, by which we see the true light, hear the hidden oracles, feed on the bread of life, perceive the fragrance

of Christ, and touch the word of life. This is the beginning of perception: piety toward God, that is, … [Prov 1:8] Verse 8: "Hear, son, the instruction of your father, and do not reject the precepts of your mother." By "father" we understand the words of Scripture; by "mother", the unwritten traditions of the church, such as fasting on Fridays and other things of the kind. So he says: Do not wish to hear everything from writings. One may also understand natural fathers, or else spiritual teachers; for the church is their mother too. [Prov 1:9] Verse 9: "For you will receive a crown of graces on your head." For we are saved by many graces of God. [Prov 4:25] Verse 25: "Let your eyes look straight." Those see straight who have thoughts free of passion and true doctrines. When he says, "Let your eyes look straight," he indicates the sight of the soul. And when he urges, "Eat honey, son, that your throat may be sweetened," by honey he means figuratively the divine teaching, which perfects spiritual knowledge. But wisdom also touches the soul: "Love her, that she may embrace you." And the soul, united to wisdom in an embrace, is filled with holiness and purity. Moreover, the soul's sense of smell perceives the ointments of Christ. [Prov 5:3] Verse 3: "Do not attend to a worthless woman; for honey drips from the lips of a harlot woman." Do not attend to deceitful teaching that entices by fine words. [Prov 5:4] Verse 4: "But afterwards you will find it more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two-edged sword." He calls punishment a sword, as in "You are wounded by my sword"; or else the judgment, which is like a sharp sword searching out the hidden things of the heart. [Prov 5:6] Verse 6: "And her paths are slippery and not easily known." Her paths are slippery and not easily known, because, through the long familiarity of those who love her, she rolls on from evils to evils; she is slippery, she deprives of the kingdom of heaven, and she sends to Gehenna. [Prov 5:11] Verse 11: "When the flesh of your body is worn away." By the wearing away of the flesh he indicates licentiousness, which is a kind of corruption. And through their vices many wear away the flesh of Christ and squander his blood, counting it common. [Prov 5:14] Verse 14: "I was nearly in every evil." "I was nearly." There was a time when wickedness was not, and there will be a time when it will not be. But there was never a time when virtue was not, nor will there 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 in every evil; and so does the rich man

in Hades, judged for his wickedness, yet pitying his brothers. And to pity is the finest seed of virtue. [Prov 6:24] Chapter 6, verse 24: "To keep you from a married woman." From the teaching of those who hold other doctrines and their slanderous word. [Prov 6:25] Verse 25: "Nor be carried off by her …" Let not the sorceries of her elegant phrasing carry you off. [Prov 7:5] Chapter 7, verse 5: "From the strange woman …, if she assails you with words that charm." The teaching of many gods. For she teaches sweet things, being glib: pleasure and love of money. [Prov 11:29] Chapter 11, verse 29: "He who does not deal kindly with his own house will inherit wind." Dealing kindly with his wife, as with the weaker vessel; with his children, so that they do not lose heart; with a sister, being useful in her needs; with his slaves, giving them what is just and fair. [Prov 23:1] Chapter 23, verse 1: "If you sit to dine at a ruler's table, understand intelligently what is set before you," [Prov 23:2] verse 2: "and put out your hand, knowing that you must prepare such things." The ruler's table is the words of the prophets, which one must hear, lift up from the history to contemplation, and so seize them eagerly. Do not stop at the bare event, nor be content with the first course; you are invited to dine, not to breakfast. Seek not so much the historical as the intellectual meaning. For since it is a ruler's table that is set before you, seek to be fed on nothing low, nothing earthy, but on whatever is spiritual and heavenly. [Prov 30:15] Chapter 30, verse 15: "The leech had three daughters." The leech is the devil, since he sucks out the blood of souls, that is, their vital power. He has daughters and not sons; for there is nothing manly about him, but all pleasure made effeminate. Hades, or wickedness, is a daughter of the devil, destroying souls and never having its fill; the love of a woman, or the godless teaching of deceit, which is never filled; and the earth not filled with water, a sandy and barren soul, always watered by the Scriptures but none the better; and upon all of them is the fire of punishments.

… of words and thoughts; and mind is the contemplation of intelligible things. Just as through the senses the mind applies itself to things perceived by the senses, so through the virtues it beholds intelligible things; that is why wise Solomon teaches us that piety holds the place of the principle of perception. [Prov 1:7] Those who acquire wickedness set wisdom at nought by being wicked; and not having the fear that makes the beginning of perception, they become insensible and set wisdom at nought. How? By not practising it nor pursuing it; for "everyone who does evil hates the light." Yet wisdom is not dishonoured by its own nature, but by their ignorance. The pious, however, choose instruction, so that, being purified in soul, they may receive wisdom, which does not enter a soul that devises evil. But those who do not have the fear of God that makes the beginning of perception are insensible to wisdom and instruction, and set both at nought, like those who do not accept the Old Testament and slander the Creator as cruel. [Prov 1:9] Just as the head and the neck here signify the mind, so the crown and the collar here signify knowledge. For this is the custom of the Holy Spirit: he has given many names to God and his angels, to the mind, to virtue and knowledge, to ignorance and wickedness, and to the devil himself and his angels. He does not set down the names at random, as some think; they are marks of different activities: of God working on us through the angels, and of us in him, and of demons against us. [Prov 1:14] These are joint heirs with the adversaries, who share in the same wickedness as they; and "common" is what does not belong to the one God. See an evil concord, and destruction. [Prov 1:17] The net is eternal punishment, the manifold penalty brought by the just Judge on unclean souls for the destruction of wings that have grown wrongly. And the winged ones are we human beings, who have the power, if we wish, to fly up. [Prov 1:20] He now calls "ways out" the soul that has gone out from wickedness and ignorance. Such was the exodus of the children of Israel, which took place after the birth that comes from God's judgment and teaching. And he calls the same soul "broad": "Open wide your mouth," it says, "and I will fill it"; and "You too, be widened," says Paul in the letter to the Corinthians. By the soul that goes out in this way wisdom is hymned; and in a land widened by the virtues she speaks boldly. [Prov 1:21] By "the tops of her walls" he means the highest freedom from passion; for those who love the law set a wall about themselves, and for that wall David too prays, saying: "Let the walls of Jerusalem be built," that is, the parts of such a soul that had fallen down, clearly on the occasion of Uriah. [Prov 1:26] How then does Solomon say earlier, "He who rejoices over

one who perishes will not go unpunished"? Or perhaps Wisdom rejoices in the way she rejoiced at the "perishing" of Matthew the tax collector, and at the perishing of the robber who believed in Christ? For in the one Wisdom destroyed the robber, and in the other the tax collector. [Prov 1:27] The siege is moral teaching, overthrowing the badly built soul when God lays siege to it. Just as infants are between the righteous and the unrighteous, so all human beings are between angels and demons, being neither demons nor yet called angels, until the consummation of the age. [Prov 1:32] He said "they wronged infants", of whom Christ said, "Do not cause one of these little ones to stumble." [Prov 1:33] The one who is free from passion rests without fear of any evil thought, and before long will dwell in the kingdom of God, as one who has heard and kept his commands, because he hoped in him. [Prov 2:1] One hides the commandment of God by doing it, or by not doing it for vainglory; which is why the demons too, by not allowing us to do it, are said to snatch it away. [Prov 2:5] Then you will understand how the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and how it brings about the knowledge of God, when in faith and longing you stand in need of him. But wisdom and understanding must be present beforehand for one to be able to understand the fear of the Lord. Let us put this before those who set wisdom and understanding at nought and wish to take refuge in fearing God as in something easy. [Prov 2:12] For if Christ does not deliver us, we shall walk the evil way as though it were good. The saints say everything that is faithful; others do not; and the devil says nothing faithful, that is, worthy of belief. For here he calls the devil "a man", as in the Gospels, since "an enemy man sowed the tares." And the greatest danger, it seems, is to meet with evil counsel and with deceitful, treacherous and wicked men. [Prov 2:17] If evil counsel, crushed or darkened, is a movement of the mind, how did it forsake the teaching of its youth? And how did it forget the divine covenant? For he speaks to us of evil counsel as of a rational living being. Or else he now calls the devil evil counsel; for he counselled evil when he said: "I will set my throne above the stars, and I will be like the Most High." And he forgot the divine knowledge, forsaking the teaching of his youth; this youth shows his former state, in which he too was admired. And if wisdom can give understanding to the young, where there is much unruliness, …, much more is she helpful to the old. [Prov 2:19] Those who are overtaken by the years of life, through the works of the life to come that lasts for ever, these overtake

the straight paths of the untroubled and undivided life; they are not overtaken by his mercies into the paths of the straight, everlasting life. For "the Lord loves those who pursue righteousness," and the counsel of the evil one will not overtake them; but those who trust in the devil do not lay hold of the straight paths of life, nor will they turn back to the kingdom of God. [Prov 3:1] That man forgets the law who does not live lawfully; that man remembers the law who lives by it; that man keeps the words of God who not only does them but also counsels others to do them; but that man destroys them who is unwilling to do them and hinders others. For it is not the hearers of the law who will be justified. [Prov 3:8] Healing is the health that comes from virtue to your way of life; and the grace and care of God come to your reasonings and thoughts. When the powers of the soul, that is, the virtues, receive care, then "all my bones will say: Lord, Lord, who is like you?" For the remembering power of the soul, once it has received care, will surely say, "I remembered God and was glad"; likewise the power of sight will say, "I considered your works and was amazed"; the desiring power, "Lord, before you is all my desire"; and the reasoning power will say, "I considered the days of old." The same will happen with the other powers. [Prov 3:15] That is, she has nothing difficult for those who are willing, as the desire for money has. A pure mind draws near to wisdom, since it knows the good; but the impure will be far from her. [Prov 3:18] Adam, after the transgression, is prevented from partaking of this tree, since "from the fruits of righteousness a tree of life is planted"; and the tree of life is the wisdom of God. Justly, then, every lawless person is prevented from touching this tree. [Prov 3:19–20] God founded the earth by wisdom, and through his perception the depths broke open and the clouds poured out dew. What he here called earth, the holy Paul named breadth; the heavens spoken of here he calls height, in the letter to the Ephesians; the depths, spoken of figuratively, he names depth; and the dewy clouds he calls length. All these are symbols of rational natures, distributed among worlds and bodies in proportion to their state. This also fits the Son of God. But the faithful soul too is earth bearing fruit a hundredfold; and it is wise from its fatness, which is wisdom, since God founds it upon wisdom; for he settles it, making the gathering of teaching and its firmness out of wisdom; and as it ever advances he makes it heaven, the purest creation, the dwelling of angels and of intelligent beings, having received perception

of what is, and coming to understand the exactness of things, as it were the many-sided wisdom of God's judgments. [Prov 3:21] Against wisdom alone the demons are powerless: they are not permitted to cast thoughts into the heart of the one made wise; for the mind that lays hold of the contemplations of wisdom becomes closed to unclean thoughts. A pure mind draws near to wisdom, since it knows the good; but the impure will be far from her. [Prov 3:23] The stumbling of a rational nature is an unclean thought or false knowledge; but the one surrounded by the counsel of God does not stumble in these. [Prov 3:25–26] Neither the attack of evil thoughts, he says, will frighten the one who has become wise, nor will the ungodly coming from outside destroy his strength, though they wish to strip him of what is good by nature; for no one will be able to take what cannot be captured. And yet what is more insolent than the ungodly? But you will overcome, he says, even the beast of every kind, being meek and gentle, since the Lord is with you. [Prov 3:24] From this we learn that almsgiving removes the frightening apparitions that come upon us at night, or even in contemplation; and not only these, but it also removes, from those who think in this way, the evil accusations at their departure and the harmful punishments at the judgment. The same is done by meekness, freedom from anger, long-suffering, and whatever by nature calms the troubled temper; for frightening apparitions usually arise from the disturbance of anger. [Prov 3:27] Do not refrain from doing good to the needy, not only with food, but also with knowledge of God, and wisdom, and commandments; and whatever is dear to God and brings one close to him, do not refrain from doing that good to the one who needs you. [Prov 3:29] This enmity toward one's neighbour works evil for someone, not only of the body but also of the soul. [Prov 3:33] Ignorance of the Lord is in the houses of the ungodly, but knowledge of God in the souls of the righteous. "The dwellings of the righteous are blessed" when Christ distributes the rewards to each according to his works; but to the ungodly he gives a curse and not a blessing. [Prov 3:34] Extreme wickedness, exalted to the utmost, is called pride. And the Lord resists the unrighteous as righteousness, liars as truth, and the proud as humility; that is why he is a friend to those who are humble in mind. This is the meaning of "He gives grace to the humble, but resists the proud." [Prov 3:35] Those who have learned and taught the divine wisdom will inherit heavenly glory; but the ungodly have raised up dishonour for themselves from Christ before angels and men. [Prov 4:1] By "instruction" he means moral virtue; by "understanding", divine knowledge; and a son of the virtues is one who has been formed according to them,

one who does what accords with virtue for no other reason than for virtue's sake. [Prov 4:2] "I give you a good gift": the heavenly kingdom, if you do not forsake my law. Note here that he calls the mind a good gift, in contrast with the one who "receives gifts in his bosom unjustly and does not prosper"; for by those unjust gifts he means the things of the evil one, and the mind that receives them does not prosper in its ways. [Prov 4:9] The crown of graces is the commandments of God, which give the crown of the kingdom in return to those who do them; and the crown of delight is the knowledge of God, which shields us and drives away every passionate thought and all false knowledge. [Prov 4:11] These many ways lead to one way, the one who said: "I am the way"; by many ways he meant the virtues that bring one to the knowledge of God. [Prov 4:10] The years of life will be multiplied for the one who hears the heavenly Father through the prophets, and receives his words through the only-begotten Son, so that he may be directed in the ways of righteousness in this life and be saved for the life that lasts for ever. [Prov 4:15] The place of this army is wickedness and "knowledge falsely so called" and whatever is unacceptable to God; for ungodly thoughts are enemies, which kill souls. [Prov 4:16] If the Lord gives sleep to his beloved, and the ungodly are not his beloved, then the Lord does not give sleep to the ungodly; from this one can also show persuasively that demons by nature do not sleep. [Prov 4:18] The virtues go before us and give us light in the present life, which, compared with the life to come, which is day, is called night, "until the day is set right," the day on which the Sun of righteousness rises. Or else: they do not leave us until they have established us in safety; for this is the property of day, to dissolve darkness, as Christ too said: "He who walks in the day does not stumble." [Prov 4:19] The opposite is true of the ways of the ungodly: since they did not know or understand, they walk in darkness. They stumble, but they have no pardon, as if they stumbled through ignorance; for they made the darkness for themselves. See how virtue makes light even in darkness, and wickedness makes darkness even in light. The ungodly do not know the manner in which they sin, nor do they know the cause of their stumbling; they do not even know that they are transgressing, which is the mark of the utmost wickedness. [Prov 4:21] He calls the virtues springs, from which is born the living water of the divine words, which is the knowledge of Christ. And David says: "For the springs of the waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were uncovered," clearly at the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ. [Prov 4:25] "Let your eyes look straight," he said, that is,

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

part of the soul, which some call irrational and others the … part. The one who, from the good things he did and teaches, gains for himself and his disciples knowledge of bodies and incorporeal things here, and the kingdom of heaven in the age to come … ; but [the merciless] destroys not only his own body but also his soul, perishing in the fire together with those who obey him. [Prov 11:21] He lays hands on hands unjustly who becomes a teacher of evil deeds and doctrines; but he sows righteousness who puts forth words about the virtues and the knowledge of God. [Prov 11:24] Against those who sow their own and make it more are set those who gather and are diminished; for those who sow their own are those who sow to the Spirit and reap life; but those who gather and are diminished are those who sow to the flesh and gather corruption for themselves. [Prov 11:26] The grain is the divine word, which the Jews hid away and so left to the nations. Similar to this is what is said by our Saviour in the Gospels: "No one lights a lamp and puts it under the bushel, but on the lampstand, to give light to all in the house." For just as grain is food for the body, so divine knowledge is food for the soul; and whoever has the food of both and does not provide it, but demands payment for these things from those who have nothing to give, may leave it to the demons. It also writes "cursed by the people", because under the people of angels and of all the righteous standing at the day of judgment he will be accursed. [Prov 11:27] Carpentry, according to the Spirit, is the practical working of the good virtues; and the one who does what is owed to God seeks men pleasing to God, who receive what is owed to God, so that, as he himself, they too may …; but those who seek not good things but evil things will be … [Prov 11:30] This is the tree of life planted in the middle of paradise, which Adam was prevented from touching after his sin, having cast away the seeds of righteousness from which the tree of life grows.

"But by your hardness and your unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God." [Prov 13:22] The good man will make those who obey him like sons to a father inherit, and will adopt them for that one into the kingdom of heaven. [Prov 14:7] They are unconquerable, just as weapons provide safety; for nothing evil will stand against wisdom, since it is an invincible weapon; against it alone the demons are powerless. But to the fool all things, visible and incorporeal, are hostile. [Prov 14:9] By houses he here means bodies, for they are the houses of souls. The lawless owe it to those who know piety and contemplative knowledge to learn not only the knowledge of God but also all of the life-giving commandments, so that, having become pure, they may see God with the eyes of the mind; for this is the blessed end, which is kept for every rational nature. And the houses of the righteous are ready to receive all, as the Lord commands. [Prov 14:14] By "thoughts" he now means the divine visions and the habits of the virtues, to which he has opposed the bold-hearted man in the ways of the mind. "For out of the abundance of the heart the lips speak," said the Lord; for the good man intends not to do evil, but to do good. But the bold-hearted man, acting and speaking as a fool, will be filled with scourges and the taking away of his goods, and at the end will lose his soul. [Prov 15:10] … reprove those who sin; but those who hate them and die together with the shamefulness of their sins will melt away wretchedly with the evil one who invented them. And the instruction of the innocent, the sinlessness, becomes known to those who pass by wickedness. [Prov 15:15] Stillness is abstaining from wickedness in act and in sight, which the good keep at all times; but the eyes of the mind and of the body of the wicked devise evils all the time. [Prov 15:24] The man of understanding is not in the Hades of sinners; the ways of life are the thoughts of the divine words and works. The man of understanding always does and teaches these, so that, turning aside from Hades, he may be saved together with his disciples. [Prov 16:7] Those who do not do his commandments are his enemies; and they become his friends when they run to the righteous, confessing their evil deeds; and, led by them out of these, they will walk, like them, in the ways that give life; as Paul proclaimed, "Who, being once enemies, were reconciled to God through the death of his Son." Note that all enemies become friends through the righteous, so that Christ may say to all: "No longer do I call you servants, but friends."

[Prov 16:14] Here again wisdom is needed, to appease. Or the angel who knows the teachings about punishment is called the wrath of God; but the one who is wise in divine works and words, being of one mind with him, will not be terrified by him. [Prov 16:16] The nests of wisdom are the churches, or the tents in heaven; and wisdom is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And the nests of prudence, "more to be chosen than silver," are the practical virtues: justice, knowledge, wisdom, self-control, courage, long-suffering, forbearance, freedom from anger, almsgiving, faith with hope and love; through these, as through the rungs of a ladder, those who wish to go up and dwell there may enter the tents of wisdom without hindrance. [Prov 16:17] By instruction he means that of the fear of God: fasting, self-control, vigil, hymnody, and the instruction that comes upon us in sicknesses, as God's testing. By reproofs he means the commandments of God, for these reprove us when we sin. Here he calls the senses "ways"; and the one who guards them keeps his soul from death for life. For life is the holy Trinity, which gives life to all things and brought them from non-being into being. And the one who loves life and longs always to live in it will spare his mouth from words and works that are not of God, and will hold fast to the knowledge of God. [Prov 16:22] God is life; and the spring of the thrice-radiant Life itself is wisdom, knowledge and the virtues; those who drink from this spring share in immortality and life without end. To those who possess such a spring belongs understanding of the words of life. The instruction of fools is wickedness; and unreproved instruction is folly. [Prov 16:23] He has called knowledge "recognition", because it recognizes all things; and the heart of the wise understands what comes from its own mouth, both in the judgment of bodies and incorporeal things and in what they themselves teach and do. [Prov 16:28] The demons, learning teachings from the devil, attack the saints and contrive to try to separate them from knowledge, which by nature joins them in friendship with the heavenly powers. Solomon, I think, has shown this very thing by this proverb: calling the devil a crooked man; the deceitful lamps that go about, the evil demons taught by him; and friends, the saints, who through knowledge are joined to God and to one another. [Prov 16:29–30] The lawless man is the devil; he tests the friends of God and leads them away on ways to destruction and not good ones. And when he has deceived one of the saints, he fixes thoughts in his eyes and plots perverse things, lest the one he has caught should repent and be saved; and with his lips he whispers into that one's ears all evil designs, despair and every pleasure of licentiousness. He is a furnace

of all wickedness, and in it he burns the souls of those who will slip; but the divine Spirit shakes off the flame of this furnace, whistling a wisdom of dew. Yet many wicked people still go about the same way, accustomed to imitate the devil, their father. [Prov 16:33] Here he has called the hearts of the unjust "bosoms"; I think that everywhere the bosom signifies either the mind or knowledge. The devil takes the wicked to his bosom, and the Lord the righteous. [Prov 17:2] If everyone who commits sin is a slave, then everyone who has withdrawn from wickedness through virtue has mastered the demons, who are senseless masters; and he will become a house of the mysteries of God, giving to each of the brothers spiritual knowledge in proportion to his state: as Paul gave milk to those in Corinth, but nourished those in Ephesus with more solid food, discussing height and length and breadth and depth, and signifying by these dimensions the distribution of rational nature, which contains the teachings about God's judgment and providence, very deep as they are and beyond the human state. [Prov 17:3] Furnaces are the trials; for through trials God chooses the hearts of the elect, cleansed and spotless. [Prov 17:4] The heretic obeys the tongue of godless doctrines; and "obeys" shows the voluntary act, as one who has sinned against God's wise ordering. He obeys the tongues of the lawless who receives unjust thoughts from them and hastens to act according to them; to these the righteous is said not to attend, whether visible or invisible, that is, not to nurture them any longer in himself. [Prov 17:6] The faithful, he says, will see the inner principles of this world, which he figuratively called the mind's riches; but the unfaithful will not know the principle of even the least thing, because of the impurity of his soul. That the knowledge of God is the wealth of the soul Paul teaches when he says: "In everything you were enriched, in all knowledge and all wisdom." If anyone should wish to show that this is not the meaning of the proverb, let him say where those found riches who "went about in sheepskins and goatskins, ill-treated, afflicted, distressed." And how is it that the unfaithful does not have an obol, when many unfaithful people are clothed in great wealth, I mean the kings and rulers of this world? [Prov 17:7] By "faithful lips" he means good thoughts; and evil thoughts will be acceptable to the fool. For "what has righteousness in common with lawlessness?" Unless he repents and receives prudence and faith. [Prov 17:9] Through righteousness we hide injustice; through self-control, licentiousness; through love, hatred; through freedom from avarice,

avarice; and through humility we hide pride, and through meekness rashness, seeking the spiritual friendship that signifies holy knowledge. In Paul, too, some are said to have become fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of the Jerusalem above, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. [Prov 17:13] Here he calls the body the house of the soul, and again the soul the house of the mind; and the mind itself is called the eye of the soul. The one who has learned the divine knowledge and wisdom, yet has given himself up to wickedness and brings forth evil words instead of good, and does not wish to turn back and be saved: from his bodily house wickedness and evil will not depart, but they remain firmly in him, so that the final evils may come upon him, remaining immovable in him on the day of the Lord's wrath. Here he calls "house" the body formed for us by the Lord from the earth; and "will not be moved" means that wrath and affliction, sent by the Lord through men and demons, will not depart from the house of the one who has repaid evil for good to the person who did him good. If the one who repays evil for evil is lawless, how much more lawless is the one who repays evil for good! Such was Israel in the wilderness, to whom Moses says in Deuteronomy: "A crooked and perverse generation, is this how you repay the Lord?" [Prov 17:14] Here he calls knowledge the "beginning"; righteousness follows knowledge, for righteousness is born of knowledge. Want is ignorance; strife and fighting are all wickedness; and wickedness precedes ignorance. Why does he again accuse the poor? To draw us away from idleness. So authority does not come from appointment: if you wish to walk with boldness, be righteous. Strife and fighting precede want, that is, want of virtue in those who do injustice. [Prov 17:15] Like this is the one who calls bitter sweet and sweet bitter, naming light darkness and darkness light. [Prov 17:16] Here he calls wisdom and knowledge "riches". To the fool, why should there be the learning of wisdom and knowledge? For just as a vine cannot grow in the sea, so wisdom cannot bear the fruit of virtue in fools. For the riches of the fool are the follies in each of his affairs; through them he has become heartless and cannot acquire wisdom. In every matter, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, for "the Lord resists the proud"; and the one who is crooked in learning the things of God … [Prov 17:17] Here he calls Christ a friend, who for friendship with man became man. "No longer do I call you servants," he said to the disciples, "but friends." At every time let Christ be with you as a friend. And if the sons of Christ are friends of one another, the angels and righteous people are brothers of one another,

born by the Spirit of adoption; for this is why they are born of wisdom, so that they may guide people from wickedness to virtue and from ignorance to the knowledge of God. [Prov 17:20] The fickle one is the one who easily changes from virtue to wickedness, carried away along with evil thoughts. [Prov 17:21] Here he calls God the father, and the mother his love for humankind, which also caused him to become flesh and to endure sufferings for us. Our God and Father does not rejoice over a son who has been adopted but has not been instructed in the wisdom and knowledge of God, and has given himself over to wickedness and evil. But a prudent son gladdens his mother, the love of God for humankind, which also brings us to God himself and the Father, as sons who have been weaned and long for solid spiritual food; so that, as his Son Jesus Christ has become our brother by likeness, so we too may live in deed and word. Our mother is also the church, which God the Father joined to himself as a wife by the Holy Spirit; for through her he is always bearing sons and daughters for himself. Over those who have been instructed in the knowledge and wisdom of God both our Father God and our mother the church rejoice; but over the uninstructed they are deeply concerned and grieved, when we do not wish to turn and be saved but remain in wickedness. [Prov 17:24] Here he calls the face contemplation; for the contemplation of the thoughts of an understanding man is wisdom, knowledge and righteousness; but the mind's eyes of the fool, even while he is in the body, are at the extreme of wickedness and evil. [Prov 17:25] Wrath is sent from God the Father on the foolish son on the day of judgment; and to the church which bore him by the Spirit, and to the choir of the saints, there will surely then be grief at the destruction of the foolish son. And the prudent son has one who bore him who is also a mother, while the foolish son has only one who bore him. For a mother has also borne; but one who has borne will not necessarily also be a mother; for if what was born dies in wickedness and ignorance, she has borne but is not a mother, since what was born has not shared in the Spirit of adoption. The same will be understood of mothers according to the senses and of death according to the senses: for we shall call a woman both mother and one who has borne, but no longer the mother of a child who has died. [Prov 17:26] Someone does wrong, and sins, who takes the righteous man's righteousness from him or turns his disciples aside to injustice; for having them as his possession he has suffered loss: "for we do not seek what is yours, but you." By rulers he means those who reign in Christ. [Prov 18:2] The one who is led by the folly of the demons has no need of the wisdom or knowledge of God, because he has loved rather

to have need of folly than of wisdom. [Prov 18:4] Just as water gives life to plants, so the word of a man whose mouth is trained in the virtues refreshes, and gives wings toward God to those who wish to be made wise. By the river that leaps up he means the indescribable wisdom of the graces of the all-holy Spirit, the ever-flowing wisdom of the thrice-radiant one Godhead. [Prov 18:5] The one who accepts the wickedness that belongs to the devil and acts according to it in contemplation and word admires the face of the ungodly; it is not holy to turn aside what is just in judgment, in the account of bodies. [Prov 18:6–7] … rashness, separating the soul from the meek, gives it over to death. [Prov 18:8] It is not the fear of God that throws down the sluggish who would repent, but the fear of the demons, for they rouse them to despair; or else the fear of the Lord, separating them from the sluggish one and rousing them out of wickedness through good works to repentance. The effeminate in soul and body is the one who is dissolute and soft, who can neither teach himself nor wishes to learn from others. Or else the fear of evils casts down beforehand those who are sluggish toward virtue, since they have nothing to embolden them for what is to come; and a man who is womanish in his choice will not have the virtue that nourishes; they will hunger when they see the kingdom opposite them while they are tormented in torment. [Prov 18:10] He calls the wealth of the knowledge of the Lord and the effective working of the Word "strength"; for he alone knows the things before, the present things and the things to come. He commanded, saying, "Let there be light," and heaven and earth and the things in them were brought from non-being into being; and they show that he alone is Lord and God. Through an upright life the righteous run to him, and through contemplation they are lifted up. Or: from the creatures, or from their greatness, it is clear that God is almighty. [Prov 18:13] This saying is to be used against those who have not received knowledge from God but try to teach others. For David says: "To hear the voice of your praise, and then to tell others of your wonders"; and Solomon says: "What your eyes have seen, speak." For many who have not even made a beginning of virtue not only urge others to achieve it, but also force and command them. [Prov 18:14] Here he calls God "man"; for the one who has served him in his commandments calms toward himself God's anger at the judgment. Likewise also with things of the senses. Just as our Lord is said to become a leopard at a loss toward those who offend, and a stone of stumbling to the unbelieving, so too he is said to be faint-hearted toward sinners. He may also call the evil one faint-hearted, and every demon that has fallen from virtue and knowledge.

[Prov 18:16] He has called the upright life a person's gift, which enlarges him and makes him worthy of the fullness of God; this he calls the seat of rulers, that is, of the holy powers. For the seat of the mind is the best habit, which keeps the one seated in it hard to move or unmoved. [Prov 18:18] Knowledge ends folly; for knowledge is the lot of rational nature; and among rulers it determines that something is to be, and they do it; for all bow to the one who has divine knowledge. Or else by "contradictions" he here means the thoughts raised against us by the demons, opposed to virtue and hastening to separate us from God. The lot of knowledge ends these for us, and commands the ruling demons to withdraw, since the one who has divine knowledge is allotted to God, from himself and from others. [Prov 18:21] Or he means the soul, which is capable of life and death; by these the freedom of the will is shown, in the present and in the future, to enjoy its fruits, good or evil. [Prov 18:22] Whoever has found good wisdom has found the graces of God. The one who holds fast to wickedness is foolish and ungodly, as is the devil, its inventor. [Prov 19:4] The wealth of knowledge and wisdom adds many angels to us; but the impure, whom he calls poor, is separated even from the angel given to him from childhood. For spiritual friendship is virtue and the knowledge of God, through which we are joined in friendship with the holy powers; since people who repent become a cause of joy to the angels. So too the Saviour calls friends those who were once servants, having counted them worthy of his greater contemplation. So too Abraham, rich in knowledge, set that mystical table before his friends who appeared at midday. But Saul is separated even from the friend he had, because of his wickedness; for it is written: "And the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord choked Saul," calling the angel the Spirit of the Lord; for "he makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire." That angels have been entrusted with human beings the Lord teaches in the Gospels, saying: "See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for their angels always behold the face of my Father in heaven"; and again Jacob: "The angel who delivered me from all evils." [Prov 19:5] All who blaspheme the Creator because they do not know the teachings about judgment and providence are false witnesses, and they will not remain unpunished on the day of judgment; and again, all who, troubled by their own passions, think that virtue cannot be achieved accuse the Lawgiver unjustly. [Prov 19:6] The vulgar render the

fear, not honouring the dignity, but being flatterers they show partiality; but the true man will not flatter evil but will reprove it. [Prov 19:7] Everyone who hates his poor brother (poor in the sense of "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven") will be far from the love of God and of the angels. Or: everyone who hates a brother who is poor in virtue is also far from friendship with the passions of life. He has named the knowledge of God "good understanding", and it usually draws near to those who know it, the pure in heart; and the one who is persuaded by them to learn is prudent and will find it. The one who does much evil by works and words brings wickedness to completion, which is all sin; and the one who completes words against people for their destruction, and blasphemies against God, will not be saved. [Prov 19:10] Neither delight of the soul nor delight of the body is of benefit to the fool; for he will trample the one underfoot, being a pleasure-loving swine; and by the delight of the senses his flesh will be moved to passions and will hurl blasphemies against God, even if he is made free from being a slave, he will do this. [Prov 19:11] If the one who boasts rightly boasts in the Lord, and our Lord is wisdom, then the one who boasts rightly boasts in wisdom. The boast, then, of the long-suffering and merciful man is wisdom and his knowledge; and it comes upon the lawless, freeing them from wickedness: now as a possibility, but in the age to come of necessity. [Prov 19:12] Our Lord is a consuming fire and an angry lion: toward sinners he burns and consumes, as wood, grass and straw, the flesh that wars against the spirit; but toward those who do right he is light and dew, showing them the inner principles of created things, quenching the fiery darts of the evil one, and cooling the heat that comes from action. [Prov 19:13] … He has named the impure soul a harlot, and her hire he has called her state, from which prayers do not become pure. [Prov 19:14] To teach sons about virtue and the knowledge of God belongs to the fathers; but to give wisdom to children belongs to the Lord; for here he calls wisdom a wife: "Love wisdom," he says, "and she will keep you; honour her, that she may embrace you." [Prov 19:16] The commandments, in relation to God who gave them, are called commandments; but in relation to the mind that walks in them, they are called ways. The one who keeps them guards his soul from death for life; but the one who despises them will die the endless death. [Prov 19:17] So it is with things of the senses; but as the sun surpasses the moon, so does the one who has mercy on those poor in virtues and restores them by instruction and admonition … of the Lord; and to give a gift to God is

he has named purity of heart; for we are counted worthy of knowledge by God in proportion to our freedom from passion. [Prov 19:19] What he says concerns the things of this life; but I think that the great loss consists in being deprived of the contemplation of created things, and "adding to the soul" means the disappearance of the natural thoughts about God, when the soul has fallen wholly into irrationality. And the Saviour says in the Gospels: "What will a man profit if he gains the whole world but loses his soul and suffers loss?" Here the loss of the soul indicates ignorance of bodies and incorporeal things, and the "suffering loss" the utmost irrationality. [Prov 19:23] If the fear of the Lord leads to life for a man, and the fear of the Lord is wisdom and instruction, then the life of a man is wisdom and instruction; so to know wisdom and instruction is to know Christ and his teaching. The fearless one, then, will dwell in wickedness and ignorance, in which Christ is not. Those who live in wickedness and ignorance do not visit the fear of God within themselves, nor hope for mercy upon themselves; nor is Christ in them, because they do not wish it. [Prov 19:24] The one who does not live rightly hides his hands in his soul unjustly, not wishing to work his own land, that is, his body, nor to be filled with the bread of the soul. For the practical virtues have the role of hands, which bring to our mouth the bread that came down from heaven and gives life to the world through divine wisdom and knowledge. [Prov 20:1] If "their wine is the wrath of dragons," and wine is licentious, then wrath is licentious, making people licentious; and anger is insolent, for it comes from boiling wrath. And if the Nazirites abstain from wine according to the law, then it is laid down by law that the Nazirites are to be free of wrath. [Prov 20:2] Here he has plainly called Christ king; for the one who provokes him by sins sins against his own soul. [Prov 20:4] As the fool is not ashamed of reproach, neither is the one who borrows grain at harvest to sow, since it will be repaid to the lender from his farm, even if the borrower should happen to die. If it is possible at harvest to borrow grain from those who have worked their land in the six years, that is, to imitate the virtues of the righteous and the prophets who shone in the six ages before the coming of Christ, who also fed the widow and orphans in the seventh year, so that they may be repaid in the kingdom of heaven the reward for showing their virtues, as having become the first fruits of the virtues. [Prov 20:7] Clearly the one who has begotten according to virtue … image

… and the blameless one will leave blessedness to those who come after him, and the righteousness of his upbringing to the end. [Prov 20:20] Elsewhere he has said that the one who speaks evil dies; and so too Christ: and the one who speaks evil of the church will be deprived of faith, which was a light to him before his slander. He might also be speaking of the outer darkness, which is why it is said in the future tense. And Christ can be called father and mother: father of those who have the Spirit of adoption, mother of those who need milk and not solid food. For Christ, speaking in Paul, became father to the Ephesians, revealing to them the mysteries of wisdom, and mother to the Corinthians, giving them milk to drink. [Prov 20:21] The pleasure devised for us by the evil one, which he calls a portion hastily gained at first, "for a time makes your throat fat," but "afterwards you will find it more bitter than gall." [Prov 20:22] Do not say, moved by pride, "I alone will fight the enemies"; but wait for the Lord and call on him, so that he may help you. Do not trust in yourself as if you could act without the Lord; for that without him there is no helper David says: "For I will not trust in my bow." [Prov 20:10] Among things of the senses we speak of a large and a small weight, in which gold, silver, bronze, silk and whatever else is weighed; and of measures for what is measured in vessels, grain, wine, oil and pulse. But I think that what some call rash cowardice is also a large and a small weight; and in general every excess and deficiency is a large and a small weight, for both are vices, and double measures. Again, the one who wishes to be treated well by others but does not choose likewise to refresh others has double measures, not obeying the commandment that says: "Whatever you wish people to do to you, do likewise to them." [Prov 20:12] It is not the ear that hears evil that is the Lord's work, but the one that attends to good things; nor is the eye that sees evil the Lord's work, but the one that sees and pictures divine things. For the one who hears the Lord and looks at his commandments is the Lord's work; and the same is to be said of the other members of the body. You will use this saying against those who accuse this body of ours and insult God. [Prov 20:13] That is: do not sleep much, but be watchful; and so that you are not lifted up into Gehenna, do not slander; through the virtues open the eyes of your soul, and through wisdom be filled with intelligible bread. One who weighs himself by the works of the Lord and

of the devil is an abomination to the Lord. [Prov 20:23] By a deceitful balance he means the mind, which by nature judges things justly but turns aside, by the inclination of free will, for the sake of friends or money. [Prov 20:25] Do not be quickly moved, he says, to make a promise to God, lest, when need or the desire for more takes hold of you, you begin to regret it and insult God by preferring something else to him. Regret over good things does not happen to the righteous but to the unrighteous; let the unrighteous, then, promise nothing to God without consideration, for after vowing comes regret. To pledge something quickly to the Lord, that is, to consecrate something of one's own, and then soon to regret it, is a snare to a man. [Prov 20:26] The winnower of the ungodly is Christ; he will fall upon the ungodly like a lion upon its prey; and the wheel is that of the threshing floor, separating the chaff from the grain; or the wheel he will bring upon them is the punishment that cannot be escaped. [Prov 20:27] The storerooms of the belly are the mind, the heart and knowledge, where all teachings, divine and ungodly, are laid up. Just as someone who has lit a lamp wishes to find something among the things lying in the storerooms, so the Lord, by the light of his knowledge, searches the storerooms of people in their words and deeds; and to people who know the knowledge of the Lord it is light. If, then, the light of the Lord is the knowledge of the Lord, and the light of the Lord is the breath of human beings, then the knowledge of the Lord is the breath of human beings. He has called the devil, who seems to shine in ignorance, a lamp that empties the mind of good knowledge and disguises itself as an angel of light. And since the ungodly did not choose to know the light of the Lord nor to walk in it, they reckoned ignorance as light; and if they held ignorance as light, clearly they also did the works of the devil, the inventor of ignorance. Those who walked with him in ignorance will be with him for ever and ever; but those who walked in the knowledge of the Lord, with the Lord. [Prov 21:3] This saying rejects sacrifice through irrational animals; for a sacrifice to God is a broken spirit. [Prov 21:8] If the works of the Lord are pure and upright, and the mind is one of his works, then the mind was created upright and pure by God, and we ought to keep it upright toward him against the evils that come upon us from the evil one. [Prov 21:9] He has set the plastered and common house against the corner in the open air. If the plastered and common house is wickedness, the corner in the open air is virtue; the corner in the open air, then, is action that lays hold of contemplation and is illuminated by the Sun of righteousness. Paul too rightly called the high priest of the Jews a plastered wall to be struck by God; and the Saviour in the Gospels called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs. And it is well that he said

"on a corner", where the stone lies that was rejected by the builders and became the head of the corner, which is Christ; and "common" is what does not belong to the one God. [Prov 21:14] A secret gift is what the right hand does while the left hand does not know; the one who spares his gifts to the needy raises strong wrath against himself on the day of judgment. [Prov 21:16] The gathering of the giants is wickedness and ignorance; and the giants are the demons; that is, the one who wanders from the way of righteousness will rest among great sins. [Prov 21:19] It is better to be without a wife than to live with such a woman. And David says: "In a desert land, pathless and waterless, so I appeared before you in the sanctuary." The desert land, then, is the soul that has virtue and does not have the old men dwelling in it, those corrupted according to the old desires of deceit; that is why the devil finds no rest in it, since he goes with difficulty through waterless places seeking rest and finds none; for he is king of all that are in the waters, that is, of those who live at ease in the enjoyment of fleshly pleasures. And again: "The ways of her house are close-kept." If that is said of wisdom, then the quarrelsome, talkative and angry woman is wickedness, which makes the one who lives with her quarrelsome, talkative and angry. [Prov 21:20] The wisdom of the Lord will rest in the heart of the righteous wise man; but foolish men slander it so as to destroy it. [Prov 21:22] Wisdom is a fortified city in which the wise dwell, pulling down reasonings and every high thing raised against the knowledge of God. By fortified cities he means the souls fortified and held in power by ungodly demons and wicked people, who exalt themselves against the knowledge of God; the wise man, mounting their fortress, pulls down their apparent safety, fenced about by wisdom in this way. [Prov 21:23] Whoever guards mouth and tongue, mind, temper and desire, keeps his soul from the affliction at the judgment. [Prov 21:24] It is the same person, conceived in different ways: rash, the one who does anything without fear; self-willed, the one who wishes to be free without judgment; boastful, the one who exalts himself with greater things than he has; pestilent, the one who, besides harming himself, also passes it on to others; for he is so harmful as to pass his wickedness on to others; and the one who bears a grudge is lawless. [Prov 21:26] For there is also a good desire. It belongs to angels never to desire the desires of wickedness; to demons always to desire evil things; to human beings sometimes to desire and sometimes not. "All the day" means through the whole of life; so too "Be in the fear of the Lord all the day" means through the whole of life.

[Prov 21:31] By the horse he means the mind, which is attacked by the devil and fights back: "For you will mount upon your horses," it says, "and your riding is salvation"; and the Lord said of Paul, "to carry my name." [Prov 22:1] He has called a good name the virtue signified by its proper name; for this is truly a good name, which has a good thing for its meaning. So we shall not praise an unjust woman because she is called Justice, but the one who has justice, even if she is thought unjust. And above silver and gold is divine wisdom. [Prov 22:2] … meet one another: the rich man, through almsgiving, cleansing his temper and acquiring love; and the poor man, through poverty, being taught humility. For he wishes the one to be instructed and the other to share, so that the one may be grateful and the other merciful. [Prov 22:4] Whoever has wisdom and the fear of the Lord will inherit life and glory and heavenly wealth; for Noah had all these "generations"; so did Abraham; so did those who were made disciples by Peter. [Prov 22:7] In the age to come those who have been enriched in everything, in all knowledge and wisdom, will rule over the impure who are deprived of this wealth. Who the servants are and who the masters, it is not necessary to make public, because the teaching about them is mystical and deeper. According to the letter it shows the instability of human life; but also in oligarchies the rich rule the poor; and in another sense those who have knowledge rule those who do not. And the faithful from the nations lend teaching to those from Israel, whom formerly they obeyed; yet formerly those lent to many nations and ruled them; but now, since the kingdom has been taken from them, the reverse has happened. [Prov 22:8] God loves the man who is cheerful in the commandments and a giver in almsgiving; as Paul too says, "He who shows mercy, with cheerfulness"; and the Lord brings to an end the vanity of works through virtue and knowledge. [Prov 22:9] He calls the virtues of the soul a person's gifts, by which, conquering the devil, he makes himself precious to God and takes his own soul away from the demons who had possessed it. [Prov 22:10] He wishes the person to be cast out of his worst disposition, together with the contentiousness he had, through spiritual teaching. The devil too, being pestilent, must be driven out of the soul; for if he sits in it, he dishonours all right thoughts through his uncleanness. That the soul is a council the apostle too shows, where he brings in thoughts accusing or defending: "Their thoughts," he says, "accusing or else excusing one another"; and where there is accusation and defence, there is also

a council. And the pestilent man dishonours all, as insolent; or else, wishing to establish his own opinions, he casts out those of others with dishonour. Cast him out of the spiritual assembly; and not only will he be cast out, but also the things that go with him: strifes, contentions, fights, and all that makes a pestilence. [Prov 22:11–12] The Lord who keeps our souls also shepherds us with spiritual knowledge, coming down to us and saying: "I am the good shepherd"; and the lawless man dishonours him. And if Christ is king of those who are ruled and shepherd of the sheep, he will one day be the king alone of the sheep, when they have passed to royal dignity. [Prov 22:13] Our enemy the devil "goes about like a lion, seeking whom he may devour"; fearing him, the sluggard shrinks back from the work of the virtues. And if a lion seeks to hunt someone in the ways of righteousness, which is the devil, in the broad streets that lead to destruction he himself, with the army of his demons, murders those who obey him. [Prov 22:14] The deep pit is the devil; and the one hated by the Lord is the one who does not attend carefully to himself. Job was not hated by the Lord, but fell into the mouth of the lawless one for the sake of testing; but the one hated by the Lord is left to the end in the pit, being a lover of pleasure in the knowledge of sin. [Prov 22:15] Far from the heart of the fool is the rod from the root of Jesse, Christ, who will shepherd his people, the new Israel, in the pasture of his sheep. [Prov 22:16] Just as the devil slanders us before God, taking from us the virtues which he did not give us, so we too slander him, taking from him the vices which we did not give him. Inasmuch as we take vices from him, we take as from one poor in virtues; inasmuch as we give him our virtues, to our own loss, we give as to one rich in wickedness. "Perhaps," he says, "as giving little to a ruler": the one in whose presence he slanders, gaining more, is the more harmed in his soul. [Prov 22:17] Whoever attends to the all-wise words of God and does what he commands has set his heart and known that they are good. He hears the words of God who does what they command: "For not the hearers of the law are righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified." [Prov 22:19] And if you set your heart to know and to do, he will make known to you his way, which said: "I am the way and the truth." [Prov 22:20] Whoever has enlarged his heart through purity will understand the words of God, the practical, the natural and the theological; for the whole treatment of Scripture is divided in three: into ethics, physics and theology; and to the first belong the Proverbs, to the second Ecclesiastes, to the third the Song of Songs.

These, understood through purity, are written on the heart, [Prov 22:21] so that you may answer, as one ready to make a defence to everyone who asks you an account of the hope that is in you, whether in order to learn or in order to object. And you too, question in turn those who can be questioned; but do not force the one who is poor in knowledge; that is why he adds: [Prov 22:22] "And do not dishonour the weak in the gates." [Prov 22:27] Those who receive base thoughts, and so honour the evil one, should strive as far as they can to repay the worse thoughts with good ones; for if they cannot do this, they will take the bedding that is under the soul's sides, that is, virtue. [Prov 22:28] The one who moves the boundaries of piety turns it into superstition or impiety; the one who moves the boundaries of courage makes it rashness or cowardice; and the same must be understood of the other virtues, and of doctrines, and of the faith itself. Above all this must be observed with the holy Trinity: for the one who does not confess the Holy Spirit as God dissolves baptism; and the one who names other gods besides introduces a crowd of gods. Nor must one move the ancestral ordinances about each matter, which for this reason ought to remain. [Prov 23:1–3] Here he calls the devil a ruler; and his tables are false witness, abuse, slander, evil counsels, shameful desires and every satanic practice. When these are set before you by the evil one, understand them with the mind, and put to them your thought, which is the hand, knowing that you must prepare such things as ought to stand beside you on the day of the Lord, when he renders to each according to his works. And if you are rather greedy and reach for the high things, the more and the greater, which are divine and of God, do not desire the evil one's dishes; for these belong to a temporary life, which is false. The divine Scripture must be understood intellectually and spiritually; for knowledge of the senses according to the history is not true. [Prov 23:4–5] If you wish to drag the divine meaning down to the letter, by outward sight only, it, finding no footing, flies off to its own house, which is its proper contemplation, having wings prepared for it by the Holy Spirit who presides over it, which are the spiritual gifts. It goes away, then, high above itself, so to speak, beyond the ether. So not to

depart from the letter, but to be insatiable for it, belongs to a false life. [Prov 23:6–7] If the envious man eats the food of impiety and is drunk with the wine of lawlessness, and one must not dine with him, then one must not be impious and lawless; for these vices spoil spiritual knowledge. [Prov 23:9] Say nothing understanding, he says, that is, deep and mystical; for you must not throw your pearls before swine. [Prov 23:10] Do not move the eternal boundaries of piety; and do not enter the land of those who have orphaned themselves from God by having the wickedness of the demons, through which they were deprived of the heavenly Father; for the Lord who redeems them from darkness into the most brilliant light is strong. [Prov 23:15–16] An upright son: his lips will dwell on wisdom, and wisdom will converse with him and remain; but the crooked will fall away from her. [Prov 23:17] If by the fear of the Lord one turns away from evil, he rightly urges us to turn away from every evil through all our life. [Prov 23:21] Everyone who is drunk with wickedness, and who goes whoring away from wisdom into ignorance, will become poor in divine grace and will not put on the wedding garment; everyone who is drowsy in the night of the demons will instead wear the flame of Gehenna, afflicting the flesh that is wounded like a rag. [Prov 23:22] One of the elders said that the soul is the mother of the mind, meaning by soul the passionate part of the soul, temper and desire; for through the practical virtues it brings the mind into the light; for through courage and self-control we acquire wisdom and the knowledge of God, which are the virtues of temper and desire. He might also call the Old Testament a mother, not to be despised. [Prov 23:31] Here he calls "men" the writings of the teachers; and those who have done and taught and made their journey toward heaven he has named "walks". For many who taught did not make their journey toward heaven, because they did not keep what they taught; but the one who converses "in walks", that is, who both does and teaches, walks worthily of the calling with which he was called by God. Sin in thought is like a bowl; and sin in act like a cup; and the pestle is what cooks call a grinder; for … strikes many times and does not open the place that it strikes; but to the disciples the Lord says, "Knock, and it will be opened to you." [Prov 23:33] A mind that has received a foreign thought or teaching will meditate on evil thoughts; but the one who has kept himself will inherit life. [Prov 23:35] Insensibility is a terrible thing; then you will say, when struck in conscience, "I did not take trouble to see to it that I should obtain the rewards and be delivered from the torments; they mocked me,

that is, they reproached me; and I, though willing, did not know when was the dawn of the soul and the knowledge of sin." [Prov 24:3] The house of the virtues is built with divine wisdom, and set upright with understanding, the fear of God and knowledge. [Prov 24:6] The one who suffers shipwreck concerning faith, or some one of the virtues, is without a pilot for the war against the opposing powers, both in theology and in the virtues; but the one who fights with a pilot seems to have sense on earth. And a heart that takes counsel, doing everything with counsel, goes before the help of God. The same can be said of every virtue; for there is shipwreck concerning self-control, and love, and avarice; and likewise concerning each doctrine of the catholic and apostolic church shipwreck happens. If we must fight the opposing powers with a pilot, our life on earth is like a sea battle; for if we will it, we sink them by prayer of the heart and a mind turned to God; but if we do not will it, we are sunk. And if we are attacked by them, even if their war is great and violent, it is nothing; only let us fence ourselves with fasting and self-control, and we shall cut them and their weapons to pieces like a spider's web. And if, according to the Lord's word, where two or three are, the heart, the mind and the soul agree to hold fast to his commandments, the Lord is with us. [Prov 24:7] Understanding all that God does, and doing all that he teaches, they in no way transgress his word. The gates of the wise are the practical virtues and the contemplation of the mind, through which the wisdom of God enters. They turn aside neither to the right nor to the left, because they reckon that they are in councils of good and evil, and they lay hold of the good and cast off the evil. [Prov 24:8] Those who do not wish to be instructed under the wisdom and knowledge of God meet eternal death through the present death. [Prov 24:9] The fool is the one who has tasted the sweetness of God's wisdom but then left it and gathers with folly; that is why he died together with his sins. And if wickedness diminishes virtue, clearly virtue also destroys wickedness; and this will happen in the age to come, until wickedness fails; for "will be defiled" means "will be destroyed"; and uncleanness is destroyed either by the practical life or by sharp punishment. [Prov 24:11–12] This saying is to be used for those who have been counted worthy of divine knowledge, so that they do not neglect teaching, when many are being led away by wickedness to death; and do not spare to buy back with your own blood those who are being killed through their innocence; buy them back, giving money or a profitable word. And if you say, "I do not know this man," he will convict you of lying, and you will be guilty of two things, lying and murder. For he who formed the breath himself

knows everything, and renders to each according to the quality of his deeds, good to the good and evil to the wicked. That it is not according to quantity is clear: "For the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory to come." And if anyone wishes to take it of quantity, let him think the repayment is in proportion to each one's capacity, just as the gifts of the Spirit too are given in proportion to faith. [Prov 24:13] The one who is helped by the divine Scriptures eats honey; but the one who draws from the things themselves the principles from which the holy prophets and the apostles took them, in doing and teaching, eats the honeycomb. And to eat the honey belongs to anyone who wishes; but the honeycomb to the pure alone. Or else the allegory is to be called honey, and the honeycomb the literal examination and history, as containing the hidden and deeper meaning; for honey is in the honeycomb. The throat is the soul's power of nourishment, through which food passes to the belly. [Prov 24:14] If, then, you succeed in these, both the things of the meaning and those of the history, the wise doctrines themselves will become for you the perception of wisdom; for if you find the spiritual meaning of Scripture, your end will be good, so that it may be said, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones"; and you will not cast away your hope in what is to come. [Prov 24:15] Do not prefer the devil to the righteousness of God, in which the righteous are pastured; nor be deceived into filling your heart, which is the belly, with deadly foolish talk. Do not betray God for the sake of pleasure; for he is the pasture of the righteous, and will never forsake you. [Prov 24:17–18] God turns his wrath away from the one who has fallen, having mercy on him; but he is angry with the one who exults over the fall of his enemy. For everyone who rejoices over a soul that perishes is like the devil, who does not wish all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth; and the Lord in the Gospels has laid down that we are to pray for our enemies, that is, for people. [Prov 24:22] The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, is not fleshly, that is, not perceptible to the senses. Whoever is handed over to it after stumbling will be crushed, his bones struck by a pestle, and his bones will be destroyed, burned by fire. Or whoever is handed over to it for repentance will be crushed by the word of his wisdom like grain, so that he may become sweet bread. … those who are corrupted and grown old according to the desires of deceit the sword of God consumes to utter destruction. Or else the people who have come from wickedness to the knowledge of God it consumes, together with the sinews, out of their evil deeds, so that, putting off

… there will be one flock and one shepherd. [Prov 24:25] Those who reprove and examine their deeds by confession, and the thoughts of the better mind, will appear exalted before the Lord, proclaimed before all; and upon them will come, in the present age, the good blessing of their deeds and works and the intelligible contemplation of wisdom; and in the age to come, the distribution of rewards from the Lord. [Prov 24:27] The one who walks after God's commandments is built up for righteousness and holiness; for with wisdom a house is built, in soul and body, for God to dwell in; but wisdom will not enter a soul that devises evil. [Prov 24:30–31] For whether thorns or cattle destroy the field, unless there is someone to weed and guard it; so too the foolish man; wickedness is what spurs him on toward what brings the kingdom. The fence is the freedom from passion of the rational soul, formed from the practical virtues; and it is dug down and destroyed by the choice of the fool. [Prov 30:15–16] Corruption loves these things: Hades, love, and the harlot woman; for these have neither limit nor satiety. And there are three things that will be filled; and the fourth was not satisfied to say "Enough": Hades and the love of a woman, and the earth not filled with water; and water and fire did not say "It is enough". The earth always receives the seeds; whatever you sow, it desires. So too death and fire destroy what they desire. Such too is poverty; these things are consuming. Such too are sloth and idleness. Since someone may wonder why Hades has no satiety, though it consumes the human being, that is why, he says, these too have no satiety, nor do they stop anywhere. See to what he has compared sexual immorality: to Hades. [Prov 30:17] These ravens feed the righteous mystically, but punish the unrighteous, digging out the eyes of injustice, because they mocked the Father and God of all, and dishonoured the ancient knowledge that bore them. The eye of the Father is the law given us by him in righteousness. And those who dig out the eyes of the ungodly he called ravens, and those who devour him whole he named eagles, because the ones have been entrusted with partial purification and the others with complete purification; for God wishes even the ungodly to be saved. [Prov 30:31] The cock, the bird, is among us called alektor; and among the hens that live with it it is well known; the flocks of fowl follow it, perhaps because all go about it for the pleasure it gives; and it is brave toward all of them in love. So too the orders of angels toward the God of all, not only by fear, but also

by love, yield when he wishes them to understand his command and do it. So too it naturally is with the souls of the righteous: for to as many as are subject to his command he is pleased to make known not only the mysteries and depths laid up in the Scriptures, but also whatever is to happen in life to people, from people and from demons; he gives foreknowledge either through vision of the mind by the grace of the divine Spirit, or through initiation by an angel, or through revelation by a vision. [Prov 31:4] Here he calls the righteous rulers, who have power against the demons and the passions, which he called temper. Let them not drink of the sour wine of the heretics, which makes the mind drunk and clouds the senses, and which has something against the knowledge of God's wisdom; lest, having drunk, they forget the wisdom of God and can no longer judge rightly and understand the contemplation of knowledge, or help themselves and the weaker in soul. [Prov 31:6–7] To those in pain and despair over their sins, give to drink from the vineyard of the Lord unto drunkenness, that is, fasting, prayer, self-control, confession and all that makes the soul glad; and to those at the beginning, give the pains of sin to drink their fill, so that, having drunk, they may forget the poverty that comes from the demons. For the one who is drunk with the knowledge of the Lord forgets the practice of pains. [Prov 31:9] He calls poor the one deprived of knowledge, and weak the one unclean with sins. [Prov 25:5] The one who by a spiritual word kills the old man, corrupted according to the desires of deceit, sets his mind right in righteousness, which is called the throne of God; for wisdom, knowledge and righteousness by nature sit nowhere else than in a rational nature; and all these are Christ. [Prov 25:6–7] Appear as you are, and do not boast; but be silent among the wise, and listen among the elders. Do not say, "I will set my throne above the stars, and I will be like the Most High"; do not love the first places of the chief seat, but look to the last place; for it is better that it be said to you, "Come up to me," than that you be sent down to the last place with shame before the face of a ruler. Do not proclaim yourself prudent, nor reckon yourself righteous; for it is better that it be said of you: "Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name." [Prov 25:9] "Back" means what has gone before; and our friend is God, who became man out of friendship for us; for he himself said to the disciples: "No longer do I call you servants, but friends." [Prov 25:10] When the friend, Christ, reproaches you over

your sin, so that you may keep away from it, do not despise him, but withdraw and return to your first self-control, that is, to the love of God for humankind. [Prov 25:10a] By "grace" he means the commandments of God, and by "friendship" love toward God and neighbour. Let the one who loves God keep them in himself, so that he may not become a reproach before him when he renders to each according to his worth. And the Saviour in the Gospels says to the Jews who had believed in him: "If you remain in my word, you are truly my disciples"; and the truth has set us free from the curse of the law. If, then, friendship sets free, and the Saviour sets free, Christ is the truth and the friendship; and so all who have the knowledge of Christ are friends of one another. So it is in this friendship alone that the friends of one person are also friends of others. The one who has been taught about the virtues and practises them guards his own things in a way easy to settle. [Prov 25:12] Put a precious sardius into a golden earring, and the wisdom of the Lord into a mind free from passion and obedient to the Lord. [Prov 25:13] Just as water flowing from snow at harvest helps in the heat and refreshes from the burning, so is God to those who receive knowledge, wisdom and his commands; and as heat melts snow, so the exhortation of a righteous man melts the wickedness of the soul. [Prov 25:14] Just as winds and clouds are most conspicuous to sailors, so that they may not be shipwrecked, so for those in the wisdom of God false knowledge is conspicuous, so that they may not perish with those who boast in it. [Prov 25:15] Just as bones are strength and security of vigour to the body, so the virtues are by nature to the soul; and the soul that is not guarded breaks these bones by sins. Some have called the angry soul "soft", which breaks its own spiritual bones toward God, which by nature say: "Lord, Lord, who is like you?" [Prov 25:19] The way of the evil one is wickedness, and the foot of the lawless is lawlessness; and it will perish on the day of judgment. By "way" the habit, and by "foot" the activity, will be understood. [Prov 25:20] Just as vinegar on a wound that is beginning to fester is harmful, though it is a food for sweetness, so is passion to one who has given himself to virtue and made a beginning. For the passion that falls upon the heart is wickedness; by its absence some are called free from passion. Grief is the corruptible deprivation of corruptible pleasure; but praiseworthy grief is grief at being deprived of the virtues and the knowledge of God. [Prov 25:21–22] Here by bread he means the solid food of the commandments for the soul, and by drink he indicates divine knowledge; by coals of fire the gifts of the all-holy Spirit, which burn and cleanse the wrinkles of human beings; for once the seraph touched Isaiah's lips with a coal of fire; and he, cleansed, "Learn righteousness,"

he cried out to all. For through this kindness and good-doing, cleansing his ruling part, you will make the fire-bearing graces of the Holy Spirit compel him not only to accept you, but you will also make him your imitator in every good work, as one who has become your patron with all who are friends of God. [Prov 25:23] He has called the devil a shameless face, who provokes the soul to wickedness and raises up evil thoughts in the soul, as the north wind raises clouds; and everywhere Solomon calls the mind the tongue. It is not good, then, to respect this face in judgment. [Prov 25:26] Here, then, a righteous mind falls before Satan when it receives an impure thought or a false doctrine; and one would stop up the spring of wisdom by turning away from its knowledge and fouling the outlet of the knowledge of God. The thoughts of the mind are called sometimes falls, sometimes risings, sometimes a seat, sometimes standing, and others walking; some of them are called stumbling blocks; others hard and soft, fragrant and foul-smelling, sweet and bitter, smooth, straight and crooked; and again some are called thorns and thistles, others light and darkness, life and death; others sickness and health; and others again are named falsehood and truth; and Scripture gives many other names to the soul and its thoughts. A few may be mentioned out of many; they are these: mind, soul, heart, man, husband, woman, slave, servant, father, son, spirit, eye, mouth, lips, tongue, throat, belly, bosom, arm, finger, nostril, sheep, kid, shepherd, and many other names of the soul, which cannot now be set out one by one. [Prov 25:28] Here he has called counsel the inclination of the heart toward the better; when someone, without calling on God's help within himself, does something good after deliberation, but begins self-willed and boastful, what he undertakes will not be accomplished but will collapse, because he has not walled himself about with God's help for counsel. [Prov 26:3] Here he calls a horse the person quick to learn wisdom and receptive of righteousness: he whips him with riddles; for the ass a goad: to prick the slow with hard words that instil fear; and for a senseless nation, to be struck with a rod: he determines that senseless servants are to be kept in subjection; for the rod is a symbol of punishment. [Prov 26:6] "From his own feet," and so on. Here he calls the servants feet. The master brings reproach on himself from them when he sends words by a foolish messenger, whether of counsel, or wisdom, or embassy, or alliance, or words of sympathy. For the fool is defeated in everything; and the Lord in the Gospels says: "Do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor throw your pearls before swine."

[Prov 26:7] Take away the evil way of the fool, and put false knowledge far from him. [Prov 26:8] The one who shares knowledge with a fool is like one who fixes a worthless stone in a golden sling, or who stones someone with a precious stone from a sling. [Prov 26:10] If the frenzy of the foolish, by which they stood outside of God, is broken, they become pure again and come to God; for "all flesh will see the salvation of God." One must note here that he has called "flesh of fools" the souls made gross by wickedness; so too the Lord says: "My Spirit shall not remain in these people, because they are flesh." [Prov 26:11] The one who has cast off his wickedness and turned back to it again, he says, is like a dog eating its own vomit; such was Lot's wife, and such was the man to whom the unclean spirit returned. [Prov 26:17] This saying should be used against those who vote some unworthy persons into the priesthood or the clergy. For the righteous judgment and the freedom of the church were not established by any of us; they are not ours but Christ's, for whose sake he judged it right to give himself up to slaughter and to shed his blood for her. So too everyone who desires to have the helm of the church entrusted to him must give himself up, and take hold of the tail of the evil one, and set free those under his wickedness, and bring them to the knowledge of Christ. [Prov 26:20] As fire in wood, so in evil thoughts the temper of the mind toward the passions flourishes and burns; but where there is no double-tempered, that is, double-minded person, but one belongs either to God or to mammon, the one will be quieted by the other: either God's command will conquer, and the evil one's will melt away and make peace with wickedness; or, if he chooses both, he will fall from life and be deprived even of temporary things. [Prov 26:24–26] Here he calls the lips thoughts. The one who does not open the lips of the mind against the evil one, confessing to God the evils that the evil one sowed in him against God, but hides them, covers his heart with grief, thinking in his folly that he has no sin in these, not knowing God's compassion: that to those who thus endure and declare these things to him he gives crowns, as to those who contend each day for him. [Prov 27:7] "Mocks" means "rejoices": for a pure soul, delighting in the knowledge of the Scriptures, rejoices to be filled; but an impure soul surely thinks false knowledge true. [Prov 27:8] Or the place of the heart is virtue and knowledge; estranged from these a person falls into wickedness and ignorance and becomes a slave of sin by doing it; for, inasmuch as he is rational, his place is virtue.

[Prov 27:9] A mind free from passion delights in many things: wisdom, knowledge and hymnody; but a passionate mind is broken in ignorance and wickedness and comes to a great fall hard to heal. [Prov 27:10] Our friend, and the friend of the fathers of old and of those after us, is God; for he himself said: "They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and dug for themselves broken cisterns." Here the brother is Christ, by grace. Do not go into your brother's house unfortunately, without the commandments he has given us as authority to enter his house, that is, the kingdom of heaven; for such was the man who came into the wedding without a wedding garment; bound hand and foot, he was cast out of the wedding. Or here our brother is the choir of the angels; for by the nature of the angels, before his transgression and fall, the devil belonged to the angels and to us. And our friend is God; it is better to live near and close to our nearer and true God and friend than to yield, as to a brother, to the devil, who has made himself far from him, so as to perish with him. Better is the one who is joined to me through true knowledge than the one joined to me only through nature. The house of a person is virtue; if, then, he does not care for it earnestly, he falls away from it in the time of temptation. [Prov 27:18] The fig tree here is the righteousness of God; those who plant it in themselves and give transplants to others will eat its fruit from the hand of the Lord, who alone is righteous and awards righteousness; and ranking with himself those who have kept his righteousness, he distributes the righteousness that also makes angels righteous, in the unchangeable brightness of righteousness. The one who keeps the word of the Lord keeps the Lord in his heart, so as to be inseparable from him; and he will be honoured not only here by the angels, but also in the age to come by the Creator of the angels. [Prov 27:22] That is, you will not turn the fool from his folly by dishonouring him, but by teaching him what dishonour folly brings; for reproof to a person's face makes the sinner more shameless. [Prov 27:27] Of the words of God, some have been written for the life of sons, others for that of servants. [Prov 28:3] If there is a man brave in impieties, there is also one brave in virtues; and if the one brave in impieties slanders the poor, the one brave in virtues comforts the poor. So everyone who urges the poor to join in impieties slanders them before God, that is, accuses them in turn, so that they may perish with him. The violent rain not only destroys the fruit, but also levels the face of the earth that bears the fruit; but there is also a peaceful rain, which makes

the face of the earth glad, and feeds and gives life to the fruits in it; the violent one kills people through the loss of the fruits, but the peaceful one gives life through the fruits. [Prov 28:4] There is a lawless law and a righteous law: the lawless destroys those who obey it; but the righteous not only grants length of days but also brings the kingdom of heaven to those who submit to it, because it is God's. Everyone who loves God loves his law and does what the law requires; and everyone who does the law acquires freedom from passion and the knowledge of God. And if those who love the law set a wall about themselves, the wall here signifies freedom from passion and the knowledge of God, which alone by nature guard the rational nature. [Prov 28:8] If the wealth of the ungodly is wickedness, and wise men will destroy it, it is clear that the righteous and wise destroy wickedness by bringing the impure back to virtue through spiritual teaching. [Prov 28:9] It is not the law that abhors someone's prayer, but God who gave the law, when someone turns aside his ear and does not listen to the law; as Paul too says, "And the Scripture, foreseeing what was to come," instead of "the one who gave the Scripture foresaw what was to come." [Prov 28:13] The one who does not declare to the Lord God, or to a God-loving person, the evils sown in his heart by the evil one will not prosper in the victory over the evil one; but the one who declares them will be loved by God and his angels. And James says: "Confess your sins to one another, so that you may be healed"; and the Psalmist said: "I will declare my lawlessness against myself to the Lord, and you forgave the impiety of my heart." [Prov 28:16] The revenues of the evil king are the vices and false doctrines; for those ruled by him bring these to him as revenue. And those who obey the evil one are slandered before God, because they are subject not to God but to his enemy, the devil. Since God hates the devil for his evil works, he in turn, through his works, slanders people before God. But the one who hates to wrong his soul will live the long time of the endless age. [Prov 28:17] Here he calls the devil the man guilty of murder; and the one who stands surety for injustice stands surety for Satan, who promises him that he will repay the fruits of injustice. The lawless nation is the doctrines of the demons, which the instructed son does not obey; and he calls the mind the son. The one who restrains his mind so as not to be cast into the wickedness of the evil nation obtains for his

own soul an incorruptible ornament for the neck from the hand of the Lord. [Prov 28:19] The one who cleanses himself from the passions and works the commandments of God will be filled with the soul-nourishing bread of wisdom and the knowledge of God; but the one who pursues leisure so as not to do the commandments of God will be filled with poverty. [Prov 28:22] Those who are merciful now, having received mercy from God in the age to come and having become angels, will rule over the envious and the rich ungodly. Such a dignity the Lord also promised to give his disciples, to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The throne is that on which the mind sits, full of spiritual knowledge, leading back those who have strayed from piety; and "judging" here signifies teaching, as in "Open your mouth with the word of God, and judge all things soundly," that is, teach. At the same time one must know this: that the merciful man who has prevailed over the envious will not himself become envious, but will rather make the envious man merciful. [Prov 28:28] If the ungodly put away their being ungodly, they will become righteous; for "destruction" here signifies the removal of ungodliness. So too the Lord, having "destroyed" Matthew from the tax office, gave him righteousness as a gift. For the righteous are multiplied when the ungodly abandon their ungodliness and become righteous with the righteous; and the righteous groan and are pained when they see the ungodly standing in the place of ungodliness and not repenting. [Prov 29:1] Better is the man who reproves in the instruction and admonition of the Lord than the one who with a hard heart urges and promises to share with him the enjoyment of evil; for when he is suddenly inflamed with the appetite of the passions, death, which comes upon all, coming upon them as his fellow workers, there is no healing for their soul. He did not say that when the flame has stopped there will be no healing, but that while he is burning there will be no healing, as one who clearly has the kindling of the passions, wood, grass, straw; since health naturally comes to those who are burned after the cautery. [Prov 29:2] When the righteous are praised by the Lord on the day of judgment, the peoples of their portion will rejoice; but all who are under the rulers and authorities and the world-rulers of this world will surely groan then. [Prov 29:3] Here he calls God the father. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, seeing those who are named after Christ, who follow and imitate him in deed, word and wisdom, rejoices over them. The shepherd is a good mind that has thoughts free of passion. If so, then a kid is a passionate thought, and a sheep a thought free of passion. That is why the Lord sets the kids

on the left and the sheep on the right, calling kids those who have passionate thoughts. So too he called those who have the tares "tares", and those who have the wheat "wheat", naming them from their worst or their best disposition. Such too is what is said by Paul … love. [Prov 29:4] Christ raises up the rational nature through his commandments; but the lawless Antichrist provokes the human race to destruction. [Prov 29:9] In every case judging is called teaching; for the one who judges between two or more about one matter teaches what is just and to abstain from injustice; and in the same way, with respect to virtues and everything good, judging is said to be teaching. And here by "a wise man judges nations" he means Peter, who taught the world faith and piety toward Christ, and Paul, and the other teachers after them; and by the base man, those like Theudas and Judas and the man of Samosata, and those of like mind with them. Of the base man David says: "And they will laugh at him and say: Behold the man who did not make God his helper." [Prov 29:10] The men of blood are the demons, who killed those living in Christ by shedding their blood; but the upright will seek his soul: these are those who wish to do and understand what is to be done and understood. [Prov 29:11] Truly the fool has an unrestrained temper; but this man dispenses it in part, that is, being angry at just matters. This is to be said to the simpler; but to the earnest: he is the one who consumes his temper by long-suffering, little by little. [Prov 29:18] To those who have kept the law the Lord will be an interpreter in the kingdom; but for those who have transgressed there will be no interpreter, but there will be a punisher. [Prov 29:19] That no one is hard by nature is shown by "For even if he understands, he will not obey"; for one hard by nature would never understand anything rightly. I say this because of Pharaoh, who was hardened against Israel and was instructed not by words but by scourges. [Prov 29:21] If living luxuriously causes one to sin, and everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin, then everyone who lives luxuriously is a slave of sin; and on the last day he will be pained not a little over himself. [Prov 29:23] The Lord humbles the insolent, but gives glory to the humble. He calls wickedness insolence; and wickedness brings insolence and the humiliation of destruction on those who practise it, on the day of judgment; but the humble-minded

the glory with which they glorified God in hymns and in keeping his commandments will glorify; for the glory of God is to do his commandments, as the Lord himself says: "Those who glorify me I will glorify"; but wickedness brings insolence on the rational soul. [Prov 29:24] By the thief he means none other than the devil; and the one who shares with him, that is, who keeps part of God's commands and does part of the evil one's, hates his own soul; for the devil, having stolen him little by little and then completely, will sacrifice him to himself. "For the thief," he says, "comes only to steal and sacrifice and destroy." He has called the law an oath: for just as an oath sets God in the soul, so the law brings God into the soul; and just as perjury takes God out of the soul, so lawlessness casts God out of it. If, then, he says, when the law has been set before them and they have heard it, they do not declare their sins, because they fear and are ashamed before people, they will be tripped up to destruction. So David too says: "I said, I will declare my lawlessness against myself to the Lord, and you forgave the impiety of my heart"; and: "Tell your sins first, so that you may be justified"; and again Solomon says: "He who covers his impiety will not prosper; but he who declares and reproves will be loved." [Prov 29:26] As many of us as keep the commandments serve the angels; for they are our leaders, who took us from the beginning, when the Most High divided the nations and set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of his angels. And by serving the angels who lead us, in the will of the Lord, there will be justice for us from the Lord at the judgment on that day when he will judge the world in righteousness, since the Father has given all judgment to the Son. [Prov 31:10] Courage is the best habit of the rational soul, by which it has prevailed over the opposing enemies. [Prov 31:11] Having conquered the opposing power, we strip it of its spoils by learning the teachings about it, so that, having made its evils plain, not only the simpler may remain unsnared, but also those who were carried off may easily escape from it. [Prov 31:13] The soul spins wool and flax when it exercises itself in the teachings about animate and inanimate things; or examines the teachings about practical and natural things; or draws to itself the contemplation of bodies and incorporeal things by the habit of the practical life. [Prov 31:15] Or else the Sun of righteousness, the bridegroom, finds the soul that rises by night awake, and surely praying not to fall into temptation, saying: "I kept watch and became like a sparrow alone on a housetop." The food of the soul is meditation on the divine words; the works are the virtues;

and the maidservants are the senses. These, then, the soul more precious than costly stones provides to its bodily house. He says that the soul of the earnest has, as the church does, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life: of knowledge as law, and of life as word. For this is she who came forth from the side of Christ and was found to be his bride, the self-controlled and courageous woman, who kept faith with him and awaits him again as bridegroom from heaven. [Prov 31:19] The spindle is a pure mind, weaving virtue upon virtue and doctrine upon doctrine; or else the spoken word, drawing spiritual contemplation from the mind. [Prov 31:21] The mind would not go forth, nor come into the contemplation of incorporeal things, unless it has set in order the things within; for disturbance in its own house usually turns it back to the things from which it went out. But having acquired freedom from passion, it will linger in contemplation and not worry about those at home; for all who belong to her are clothed: the temper with meekness and humility, and desire with self-control and continence. [Prov 31:27] Slothful food, which makes the simpler and more artless sluggish in attaining the kingdom, the well-disposed and God-loving soul does not eat, nor even taste, even if perhaps it should happen to desire it; for he calls the vices slothful food. [Prov 31:30] "Deceitful charms and vain beauty." The most foolish soul not only conceives and imagines what pleases it, but also sets about fulfilling the image in deed. And if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the soul that has obtained wisdom rightly praises the fear of the Lord, which brought it such knowledge. [Prov 1:13] For they know that he has acquired knowledge about what is to be done, the choice of virtue and the flight from wickedness, and that his possession is those he teaches; so they say: "Having seized him, we shall master these too." Otherwise, the possession of the righteous is wisdom and prudence, understanding and virtue; and the ungodly seize this possession by persuading the righteous man to do something forbidden by God, so that his mind, blinded by sin, may fall away from these holy possessions. [Prov 8:9] To the understanding and righteous man even difficult things become easy; but to one otherwise disposed even easy things that offer some refreshment become difficult. For they have a word of learned speculations, but nothing lofty.