Fragments on Proverbs 211–227

… 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