Homilies and Sermons 12.5–12.14

[5] He sends the profane and the rabble away from the divine teachings, saying: “The fearless will be lodged in courts”; and: “You will seek wisdom among the wicked and not find it”; and again: “The wicked will seek me and not find me,” because they have not been cleansed by divine fear. So let one who is about to come to the taking up of wisdom come only after cleansing away the disgraces of vice by saving fear. Another good, then, has appeared to us from the teaching of Proverbs: the taking up of fear, brought in for us through wisdom. Second among the promises was “to know instruction.” Instruction is a discipline beneficial to the soul, often cleansing it laboriously from the stains of vice; which “for the present does not seem to be a matter of joy but of grief, but later yields the peaceful fruit” to those trained by it, unto salvation. To know this instruction, then, is not for any ordinary mind; for many, … through ignorance, do not wait [for the end] of what happens, but, chafing at the severity of the treatment, remain in the sicknesses of ignorance. That is why the words of the righteous deserve admiration, who say: “Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.” For they do not refuse discipline, but anger. Close to this is: “Discipline us, Lord, but in judgment and not in anger”; and: “The discipline of the Lord opens my ears.” For just as small children who neglect their lessons become more attentive after the whippings that teachers or attendants give them, and receive what is taught, and the same lesson that was not heard before the blows is, after the pains of the whip, both received by the hearing and kept in the memory, as if their ears had just been opened, so it happens also with those who disregard the divine teaching and are disposed contemptuously toward the commandments. For when discipline is brought on them by God, then above all the commands of God that were always spoken and always ignored are received, as if they had fallen on their ears for the first time. That is why it says, “The discipline of the Lord opens my ears.” Since, then, discipline admonishes the disorderly, as Paul did when he handed people over to Satan, as to an executioner who racks and scourges, “that they may be disciplined not to blaspheme”; and brings back the one who has bolted, as was said of one that “after his captivity he repented”; it is necessary to know the power of discipline, and for how many things it is profitable. Solomon, knowing the benefit that comes from it, advises: “Do not refrain from disciplining a child, for if you strike him with a rod he will not die. You will strike him with the rod, but you will rescue his soul from death.” “For what son is there whom a father does not discipline?” This discipline is more precious than much money to those who reason rightly. That is why Solomon says: “Receive instruction, and not silver”; so that in a time of troubles, when the body is ailing or when things at home have gone badly, you may never conceive an evil thought about God, but receive his blows with great patience, being disciplined for the sins you have committed, and may say yourself, because you know discipline: “I will bear the wrath of the Lord, because I have sinned against him”; and: “It is good for me that you humbled me.” Such was Paul, who said: “As disciplined and not put to death”; and: “When we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned along with the world.”

[6] Since the taking up of learning is also called instruction, as it is written of Moses that “he was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” it is no small help toward salvation not to throw oneself into whatever learning comes along, but to know the most useful instruction. For some, devoting themselves to geometry, which the Egyptians discovered, or to astrology, honored among the Chaldeans, or occupying themselves altogether with figures and shadows in the study of the heavens, have disregarded the instruction that comes from the divine oracles. Poetry too, and rhetoric, and the invention of sophisms have kept many busy, whose material is falsehood. For poetry cannot exist without myth, nor rhetoric without the art of [contriving] speech, nor sophistry without fallacies. Since, then, many through zeal for these things neglected the knowledge of God, growing old in the search for vain things, knowledge of instruction is necessary, both for choosing useful instruction and for avoiding what is profitless and harmful. One who attends to the Proverbs, and does not receive their benefit idly, can also “perceive words of prudence.” Prudence, we know, is one of the generic virtues, by which we human beings become knowledgeable about things good, evil, and neither. And the prudent man is evidently named after prudence by derivation. How then has the serpent been attested to have been the most prudent of all the beasts? … prudence. For it is to perceive what is advantageous. “Be infants in evil,” it says, “but in your minds be mature.” Prudence, then, … [“Be prudent as] serpents.” And the steward of injustice [is called] prudent. Or is it clear that the name of prudence is twofold? One kind is a guarding of one's own advantage combined with plotting against one's neighbor, such as the serpent's, which protects its own head. This seems to be a kind of knavish cunning of character, quick [to secure] its own profit, such as that of the steward of injustice. But true prudence is the discernment of what is to be done and what is not to be done; whoever follows it will never depart from the works of virtue, and will never be impaled on the ruin of vice. The one who perceives words of prudence, then, knows which words are sophistical and deceptive and which suggest to us the best course regarding the actions of life; and like an approved money-changer he will hold fast what is genuine and keep away from every form of evil. This prudence grants to the one who builds his own house to lay its foundation on the rock, that is, to rest on faith in Christ, so as to remain unshaken in rains and winds and the onsets of rivers. For by such words of the parable the Lord showed us steadfastness in temptations, both human ones and those brought on us from above. It also teaches us not to neglect what is necessary, but to prepare the provisions of life before the time and to await the bridegroom's coming with the heart ready. For the prudent virgins, it says, because they had oil in their lamps, went in with the bridegroom, while the foolish, because of their unreadiness, were shut out from the joy of the bridal chamber.

[7] After this, let us see what it is “to receive the turnings of words.” The true word, coming forth from a sound mind, is simple and of one manner, always saying the same things about the same things; but the intricate and artful word, full of entanglement and contrivance, changes into countless shapes to please those who meet it. For holding out strongly against the onset of artful words, then, the Proverbs grant great benefit. For one who attends to them and does not receive their exhortations idly [takes up] the turnings of words, and is neither turned aside … of the truth. For when things are one way by nature but words about them persuade otherwise, there is a turning, or rather a perversion, of the truth effected by the word. And one who appears one thing but is another in truth uses turnings of words, deceiving those with him, as hares and foxes deceive dogs, showing one way and turning another. Or the “turnings of words” are the antitheses of knowledge falsely so called. For, not accepting the simplicity of spiritual teaching, those sharpened for contradiction by dialectic often overturn the force of truth by the plausibility of sophisms. One fortified by the Proverbs, then, receives these turnings of words. And even if he ever meets problems whose arguments on either side are evenly matched, in which it is hard to discern which is the more persuasive, still, because of the mind implanted in him, even if the disputants seem ever so much to exchange equal blows of argument with each other …

[8] Proverbs also grants “to perceive true righteousness.” Righteousness is a disposition that assigns to each according to worth; and this is hard to track down, since some, through a deficiency of prudence, cannot find how to distribute what is equal to each, while others, preoccupied by human passions, obscure what is just, when they despise the poor and do not convict the powerful who do wrong. So the book of Proverbs promises to give its disciples knowledge of true righteousness. And since many, hunting the praise of the multitude, in deed prefer injustice and greed as profitable while in outward show and speech they extol equality and righteousness, the one trained in the Proverbs will not be ignorant of these either, but will know which righteousness is counterfeit and bastard, and which is true and without guile. Since, moreover, the outside wise men have also laid down many words about righteousness, and plausibly mislead those who cannot follow the true reasoning on this question, the book promises to make known the true righteousness, so that we may escape the harm of the sophisms. Indeed, the customs of the nations too, which differ greatly from one another, produce confusion in the minds of those who have not grasped the exact account of righteousness. For some nations hold parricide just, while other nations turn away from all killing as unholy. And some honor chastity highly, while others rage with passion for mothers and daughters and sisters. And in general many, held fast by ancient custom, do not discern the abomination of what is done. This book, teaching the things of true righteousness, rescues people from the passions that come from irrationality. There is a righteousness … For even if we do not attain it with exactness, yet acting with the most just judgment we do not fall from the mark. But there is another, brought from heaven by the just Judge, both corrective and retributive, which is very hard to discern because of the height of the doctrines stored in it. This, I think, is what the psalmist means: “Your righteousness is like the mountains of God.” It promises, then, to make plain this truly true and divine righteousness to those trained in proverbial teaching.

[9] Again, since among sins some are involuntary and others are committed from an evil will, the standard of justice is not the same for these. Let us suppose that the matter under judgment is sexual immorality, and two prostitutes. One, sold to a brothel-keeper, is in the evil by necessity, providing the earnings of her body to a wicked master; the other has given herself to sin willingly for pleasure. Involuntary things, then, obtain pardon in one way, and things done from a depraved choice are condemned in another. Again, one has sinned having been brought up wickedly from the beginning; for he was brought into life by unjust parents and raised among lawless words and deeds. Another had many things calling him to virtue: a most dignified upbringing, admonitions of a godlier kind, a restrained way of life, the other things by which a soul is trained in virtue; and then he too slipped into the same sin. How will such a one not justly be counted worthy of a heavier punishment? For the first will be charged only with respect to the saving starting-points sown in our thoughts, as not having used them soundly; but the second, besides this, also as having betrayed all the help given him and as having been dragged down into the wicked life through heedlessness. To perceive true righteousness, then, belongs to a truly great understanding and a most perfect mind. And perhaps it also contains a promise, that one trained in the proverbial teachings will afterward be able to apply himself to the exactness of theology. For the true righteousness is Christ, “who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”

… by knowing true righteousness “to direct judgment.” For it is impossible for one not first trained about justice to decide disputes rightly. Not even Solomon himself, had he not possessed exact principles of justice within himself, could have delivered that celebrated judgment so rightly and so to the point, which he gave the prostitutes about the child. For since what each said was without witnesses, he went to nature, and through it found what was unknown: the one who was not the mother accepted the killing of the child without feeling, while the true mother, through natural affection, could not bear even to hear of the suffering. The one who knows true righteousness, then, and has been taught through it to assign to each his own, can direct judgment. For as the archer directs the arrow to the mark, not letting the shot stray by overshooting, falling short, or veering to either side, so the judge of what is just (for “to respect a person in judgment is not good”), not acting by favor, but delivering straight and undistorted judgments. And when two are being judged before him, the one who has more than his share and the one who has less, the judge stands making them equal to each other, taking from the one who exceeds as much as he finds the wronged party diminished. But one who does not have true righteousness laid up beforehand in his soul, but is either corrupted by money, or gratifying friendship, or avenging enmity, or abashed before power, cannot direct judgment. To him the psalm will say: “If indeed you truly speak righteousness, judge uprightly, you sons of men.” For the proof of a just disposition is rightness in judging. Hence he himself, going on, forbids it, saying: “A large and a small weight are an abomination to the Lord,” … inequality in judgment. This is useful not only for those who judge cases, but also for the choices we make about each of the things of life. Since we have within ourselves a natural criterion by which we distinguish good things from evil, we must, in choosing what to do, discern things rightly; and, like a judge who decides between opponents with an equal and most just mind, obey virtue and condemn vice. For example, sexual immorality and chastity are on trial before you, and your mind, entrusted with the court, presides on high; pleasure pleads for sexual immorality, while the fear of God stands with chastity. If, then, you condemn the sin and let chastity win, you have made the judgment of the case straight; but if, giving the scale to pleasure, you declare sin preferable, you have made the judgment crooked, becoming liable to the curse of the one who said: “Woe to those who say … … who put light for darkness and darkness for light.

[10] Since, then, according to Solomon himself, “the thoughts of the righteous are judgments,” we must strive within, in the hidden court of our thoughts, to make our judgments about each matter unswerving, and to keep the mind like a balance, weighing each thing to be done without tilting. When each commandment is contending within you against the vice opposed to it, give God's law the victory over sin. Are greed and equality on trial? Declare against the desire for what belongs to others; give the better vote to virtue. Are abuse and long-suffering set against each other? … Enmity and love? Make the one dishonored and banish it as far as possible; but honor love and make it your own. Hypocrisy and simplicity, courage and cowardice, prudence and folly, righteousness and injustice, self-control and licentiousness, in a word, is every virtue contending against every vice? Then show the uprightness of your judgments in the secret court of your soul; making the commandment your assessor, as it were, show your hatred of evil, turning away from sins and honoring the virtues highly. For if in each action you make the better things win within you, you will be blessed “on that day,” according to our Gospel, and “among the thoughts accusing or else excusing” you will not go away condemned for leaning toward base things, but you will be honored with the crowns of righteousness with which you crowned virtue throughout your life. Of what great goods will the book of Proverbs be the procurer for you, teaching you both true righteousness and how to direct judgment!

[11] What more besides these? “That he may give,” it says, “shrewdness to the innocent, and to a young child perception and understanding.” We understand innocence in two ways. Either it is the estrangement from sin achieved by reasoning, when through long attention to and practice of good things we have cut out, as it were, a root of vice and receive [innocence]; or innocence is not yet having experience of evil, often through youth or some way of life, when people are inexperienced with respect to certain vices. For example, a child does not know arrogance, does not know deceit and knavery. Again, there are some who live in the countryside who do not know the frauds of commerce or the intrigues of the law courts. Such people we call innocent, not as having separated themselves from vice by choice, but as not yet having come to experience of the wicked habit. But the innocent in the proper sense is such as David was, who says, “But I walked in my innocence”: the one who has removed all wickedness from his own soul through the discipline of virtue, who is also counted worthy of the inheritance of good things. For “the Lord will not deprive of good things those who walk in innocence.” Such a one will say with confidence: “Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in my innocence”; and again: “Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to my innocence within me.” The innocent man is characterized by the simplicity of his character, its nobility, its lack of contrivance. Such was Jacob: “an unaffected man,” it says, “dwelling in a house”; that is, keeping the simplicity of his nature, putting on no assumed form contrived by art, like a mask, to deceive those he met. … it says, needs also praiseworthy [shrewdness], so that besides his natural guilelessness he may also acquire the understanding that comes from experience and, fenced as with a weapon by good shrewdness, may be hard to capture by the plots of his opponents. For the perfect man, I think, must be wise toward the good but guileless toward evil. From here, as from a spring, let the innocent draw the shrewdness that saves. “For a shrewd man is a throne of perception”; and … Shrewdness, then, is the activity of every kind of thing according to an artful practice, just as villainy is the working of evil alone. Since, then, every working … [is not] base, the name of the shrewd man signifies two things. The one who uses the invention of works to harm others is wicked; but the praiseworthy shrewd man is the one who quickly and intelligently finds out his own good and [escapes] the harm devised against him craftily and treacherously by others … precisely by the name of shrewdness; and know that it is a middle disposition, by which the one who uses it from a sound purpose for the benefit of himself and his neighbors is acceptable, while the one who uses the practice for the harm of … to destruction [is not].

[12] History is full of the use [of shrewdness] in both directions … … [the Hebrews] outwitting the Egyptians, receiving the wages of their labor on the cities, and providing themselves with materials for the tabernacle. … [the midwives saving] the male children of the Hebrews. Good was the shrewdness of Rebekah, who procured the great blessing for her son … [of Rahab and] Rachel: the one saved the spies, the other outwitted her father and [rid him] of idolatry … the Gibeonites [outwitted] the Israelites. Wicked was the shrewdness of Absalom, who under a show of fairness won over the subjects and gathered a multitude of rebels for a plot against his father. Some are also accused of having “laid crafty plans against the people” of God. Here, however, the word approves the shrewdness taken up for benefit, as a weapon, so to speak, for the affairs of life, which fortifies by itself the souls of the simpler. For if Eve had had this shrewdness, she would not have been easily captured by the deceits of the serpent. The innocent man, then, who because he believes every word is easily corrupted in his thoughts, is fortified by the teaching before us, which provides him with the benefit of shrewdness as an ally for the affairs of life.

[13] Next we must consider how he gives “to a young child perception and understanding.” Since man is twofold, as the Apostle says, one being outer and the other inner, the one that is seen and the one perceived in secret, we must take the matters of age likewise in both. Now to say that a newborn child receives bodily perception is not far from ridiculous. For which of the senses can the book bestow, when sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are born with us at once and do not come by teaching, nature completing the living being through them? So the child is not to be understood bodily, nor perception as one of those listed; the ages must be transferred to the inner man. For we have been taught in many places of Scripture that there is a childlike state of the soul, another in its prime, and another already that of an old man. For example, as we have learned from Paul, those in Corinth were infants; that is why they still needed milk, the introductory and simpler teaching of the Gospel, not yet able to master the solid food that lies in doctrines. A young man in soul is one fitted in all the parts of virtue toward perfection, fervent in spirit, vigorous for the deeds of piety, in his prime for every vigor of good works; whom the Gospel also calls violent, able to seize the kingdom of heaven; whom the Holy Spirit also takes up into the hymns as suitable: “Young men,” it says, “and virgins, let them praise the name of the Lord.” And in Joel the young men have the promise of visions. … in prudence; such as Daniel was, who in a youthful body displayed the dignity that comes from understanding, more venerable than any grey hair. That is why those men “full of evil days” said to him: “Come, sit among us and tell us, for God has given you the eldership.” So here too he calls a young child the one born again through the washing of regeneration, nourished, and become as a little child, and through such a state fit for the kingdom of heaven. To such a newborn infant, who longs for the rational and pure milk, the book of Proverbs gives, as he is trained by it, perception and understanding: perception of present things, understanding of things to come. For it trains in human matters and makes people perceptive of affairs, so as neither to be slaves to unseemly pleasures nor to be excited about the vain opinions of this world. It also produces understanding of the age to come, and through what it says teaches besides … faith in what has been promised.

[14] Since we have transferred the differences of age to the inner man, it follows that we transfer the names of the senses too to the powers of the soul. So when it says, “Incline your ear to my words,” we must know that it seeks the soul's readiness to hear, as the Lord says: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”; and: “A wise word to an ear that hears well.” Through these and such sayings, then, it gives the young child a healthy sense of hearing. When it says, “Do not attend to a worthless woman”; and again, “Do not fix your eye upon her”; and, “Let your eyes look straight,” it is clearly granting the child the sight, as it were, of the soul. And when it advises, “Eat honey, son, that your throat may be sweetened” (calling the divine teaching honey figuratively; for “How sweet,” it says, “are your oracles to my throat, more than honey to my mouth”), by this exhortation it equips the spiritual taste of the soul, of which it is said … There is also a touch of the soul, by which wisdom touches it, embracing, as it were, her own virtue. For “Love her,” it says, “that she may embrace you”; and again Ecclesiastes: “A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.” Bodies are defiled by impure embraces; but the soul, united wholly to wisdom in her embrace, is filled with sanctification and purity. So, then, it bestows perception on a young child. How does it produce understanding? When it says, “Possessions will not profit in an evil day.” For it puts into your heart a thought about that day on which the abundance of your money will not suffice you, nor rescue you from eternal punishment. Or when it says, “The innocent will inherit the earth,” that earth of which the meek too are heirs, according to the psalmist who says, “But the meek shall inherit the earth,” and according to the Lord's beatitude: “Blessed,” he says, “are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”; and again: “The wise will inherit glory.” It rouses the soul to desire for the good things in the promises. This is the understanding it gives the young child: fear of what is threatened to sinners, desire for what is prepared for the righteous. “For hearing these things a wise man will be wiser.” The word bears witness to a great power in the Proverbs: that it surpasses the wisdom of the wise and the learning stored in them; what is handed down from this book is greater. So the unlearned are the disciples of other teachers, but the hearers of this book are the wise. And since the name “wise” is ambiguous (for the wise of this world are also so called, and so are those who have received the true wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith in him), the word promises that those outside our doctrine, when they come to the sound teaching of the Proverbs, will be wiser, disdaining the knowledge of vain things and transferring their admiration to the truth. Or, since “wise” is said in many senses (for the one who desires wisdom, the one already making progress in the contemplations of wisdom, and the one perfected in the disposition are all alike so called), the wise man hearing these things, whether the lover of wisdom or the one already advanced in it, will become wiser, being taught much about the divine doctrines and instructed much about human matters too, since the book in various ways uproots vice and in many ways again plants virtue in its place. It bridles an unjust tongue, disciplines an eye that looks at wicked things, does not allow unjust hands to rule; it drives out idleness, chastises unseemly desires, teaches prudence, teaches courage, dignifies self-control. The one trained in these things, then, having both a strong aversion to worse things within himself and the desire for the good, acquired with greater impulse as if by a kind of prompting, being wise through his own impulse, has become wiser through the perfecting that comes from the teaching.