Chapter 15
He confesses to God that His wisdom governs all things.
15:1 But You, our God, are kind and true, long-suffering and governing all things in mercy. 15:2 For even if we sin, we are yours, knowing your power; but we shall not sin, knowing that we have been accounted to you. 15:3 For to know you is complete righteousness, and to know your power is the root of immortality.
RABANUS. Our God is gentle, for His love is indescribable. He is true, because He deceives no one and is deceived by no one. Patient and in mercy arranging all things; for because of His goodness He patiently endures us, waiting for us to turn for the better. Not wishing anyone to perish, but that all may be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. 2:4) As He says through the prophet: I do not desire the death of the sinner, but that he should turn and live (Ezek. 33:11). If we have sinned, we cannot escape His hand, because we are His creation. But if we cease to sin and persist in good works, we will receive a sure reward from Him, with whom the full number of all good deeds is kept. For He knows all, and no secret is hidden from Him. What His knowledge brings us is made clear by the following statement. For to know you is perfect justice, and to know your justice and virtue is the root of immortality . Whoever truly desires to know God strives to abstain from all sin, as the apostle John confirms, saying: Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure (1 Jn. 3:3). And again: Everyone who abides in him does not sin; everyone who sins has not seen him nor known him (1 Jn. 3:6). But to know God is perfect justice, that is, the highest perfection of blessedness; and to know his justice and virtue is the root of immortality. But what is the justice and virtue of God except him of whom the Apostle says: I mean Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, who has become for us from God wisdom and justice, sanctification and redemption. For to know God and his justice and virtue is the root of immortality (1 Cor. 1:30), that is, the perception of incorruption and the contemplation of truth in eternal life, as Truth itself says to the Father in the Gospel: This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent; whom now we know in part by faith, but then we shall know in truth, just as we are known, for we shall see him as he is; for now we see through a mirror and in a riddle, but then face to face (Jn. 17). [Rabanus Maurus, Commentary on Wisdom, PL 109] 780-856AD
VIGILIUS. On common truth. True Father, true Son, true Holy Spirit. Of the Father in Solomon: For our God, are kind and true : For to know you is complete righteousness (Wis. 15:1, 3). Of the Son in John: That we may be in his true Son Jesus Christ; this is the true God, and eternal life (1 Jn. 5:20). Of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel: When that Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, shall come, he will teach you all truth (Jn. 16:13). [Vigilius of Thapsus, Against Marivadus the Arian, PL 62] 5 th century
AUGUSTINE. [Verse 2] Do we not see how the Israelites got to their own hurt what their guilty lusting craved? For while it was raining manna on them from heaven, they desired to have flesh to eat. (Num. 11:32) They disdained what they had, and shamelessly sought what they had not: as if it were not better for them to have asked not to have their unbecoming desires gratified with the food that was wanting, but to have their own dislike removed, and be made themselves to receive aright the food that was provided. For when evil becomes our delight, and what is good the reverse, we ought to be entreating God rather to win us back to the love of the good, than to grant us the evil. Not that it is wrong to eat flesh, for the apostle, speaking of this very thing, says, Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused which is received with thanksgiving; (1 Tim. 4:4) but because, as he also says, It is evil for that man who eats with offense; (Rom. 14:20) and if so, with offense to man, how much more so if to God. [Augustine of Hippo, Tractate on the Gospel of John, 73.1] 354-430AD
On the various errors of idols, how they have been introduced into the human race; and that the worship of idols has always been a deceiver of human life.
15:4 For neither did the evil trick of men mislead us, nor the barren labor of a shadow-caster, an image stained with varied colors, 15:5 the sight of which brings disgrace to the foolish, and which longs for the lifeless form of a dead image without breath.
RABANUS. He speaks from the perspective of the faithful, who, fortified by the grace of God, in no way wish to involve themselves in the wickedness of the pagans, nor do they deem it worthy to imitate the errors they have in idolatry and various crimes, because such labor is without the fruit of righteousness; indeed, it deserves eternal death. [Rabanus Maurus, Commentary on Wisdom, PL 109] 780-856AD
15:6 Lovers of evil and worthy of such hopes, both those who do them and those who desire them and those who honor them.
RABANUS. Not only therefore are those who make idols guilty, but also those who love and worship them, placing their hope in them, are guilty and transgressors, because not only those who do evil, but also those who consent to those who do evil are worthy of death. The kind of people who place their hope in their idols is shown by the Psalmist, saying: The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak, they have eyes but do not see. They have ears but do not hear, they have noses but do not smell. They have hands but do not feel, they have feet but do not walk, they do not make a sound in their throats; for there is no breath in their mouths. May those who make them become like them, and all who trust in them (Ps. 115:4-8). For a mortal fashions a dead thing with wicked hands and the fool worships the most foolish thing. In an allegorical sense, the inventors and builders of perverse doctrines are heresiarchs; their lovers and worshipers are their followers and disciples, all of whom are guilty and liable to destruction: For all will tremble and stand, and together be confounded (Isa. 44:11). For the Lord will destroy the man who has done this, both the master and his disciple (Mal. 2:12). Woe to their souls, for evil has been repaid to them (Isa. 3:11). [Rabanus Maurus, Commentary on Wisdom, PL 109] 780-856AD
15:7 For a potter, kneading soft earth with toil, fashions each vessel for our service; but from the same clay he molded both vessels fit for pure works and those that are opposed, all alike; but as to which use of each belongs to each, the potter is judge. 15:8 And with weary labor he fashions from the same clay a vain god, who, having been born a little while ago from earth, after a little while goes away to that from which he was taken, when the debt of the soul is demanded. 15:9 But he is concerned not that he is about to labor, but that he has a brief life; and yet he struggles with goldsmiths and silversmiths, imitates bronze-workers, and considers it glory that he makes counterfeit things. 15:10 His heart is ashes, and his hope more worthless than earth, and his life more disgraceful than clay, 15:11 because he did not know the one who formed him and who breathed into him an active soul and breathed into him the breath of life; 15:12 but they thought our life a game, and our existence a profitable festival; for he says that one must somehow, even from evil, make a gain.
RABANUS. Previously, he had spoken about those who had made idols from wood or stones or certain metals; now he also speaks about those who, following the same vanity in the craft of the potter, are shown to be equally guilty through a similar error. For the pagans themselves have fallen into such foolishness that not only did they make idols from gold or silver, or even from precious stones, but they also fashioned images in the same way from cheap clay, calling a god that which was formed from the clay of the earth by the work of a potter. Therefore, it was justly repaid to them that, since they were made from the earth and did not wish to follow the better part of themselves, that is, the rational soul which is created in the image of God, to worship the living God, by imitating the baser part of themselves, that is, the earthly body, they worshipped a clay god. Therefore, afterwards, without the fruit of good works, they themselves, senseless and useless, were rendered to the insensible earth from which they were taken. Mystically, all heretics and schismatics who hold the truth of God in unrighteousness and worship a lie instead of the truth in the images of their doctrines, even if they sometimes possess attractive speech or seem to have reasonable virtues, will nevertheless be proven to be altogether fragile, as if made of clay, because they invent useless things. Therefore, their heart is ashes, that is, their thought is foul, and their life is more sleazy than any mud, because they are ignorant of Him who formed them and gave them an intelligent mind. Instead, they vanish in their own thoughts, despising the understanding of the holy Fathers, which those Fathers had in the divine Scriptures through the gift of the Holy Spirit. They shamelessly establish new errors, as if vain amusements, for human favor and earthly gain, wandering themselves and leading into error whomever they can, so that they may be inexcusable on the day of judgment, when the Judge of all shall come to judge the secrets of hearts and render to each according to his works. [Rabanus Maurus, Commentary on Wisdom, PL 109] 780-856AD
15:13 For he knows better than all that he sins, making brittle vessels and carved images from earthy material.
RABANUS. Heretics have no excuse, for they sin knowingly, when they refuse to follow the holy and catholic teachers in right faith and sound doctrine, but according to their own perverse inventions, they choose rather an earthly and fragile understanding than to strive for a spiritual and heavenly one in their dogmas. For all fools are excessively proud in their souls . [Rabanus Maurus, Commentary on Wisdom, PL 109] 780-856AD
That all wicked things were invented by the pagans because of idolatry, and that on account of it many have suffered torments.
15:14 And all the enemies of your people, who oppressed them, are most foolish and miserable beyond the soul of a child, 15:15 because they also considered all the idols of the nations to be gods, to whom there is neither the use of eyes for seeing, nor nostrils for drawing in air, nor ears for hearing, nor fingers of hands for feeling, and their feet are useless for walking. 15:16 For a human being made them, and one who borrowed breath molded them; for no human being like himself is able to fashion a god.
RABANUS. Indeed, the proud enemies of the people of God and all enemies of justice, although they may seem to rule on earth for a time, yet because they are foolish, they consider the senseless idols of the nations to be gods, which have neither sight, nor hearing, nor touch, nor any sense of life; they are most unhappy, awaiting the destruction of their souls in Gehenna, where there will be perpetual punishment of torment; for their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched, because they did not give honor to the living and true God, and served carved images which they themselves wickedly made (Mark 9:44-48). [Rabanus Maurus, Commentary on Wisdom, PL 109] 780-856AD
15:17 But though mortal, he makes dead things with lawless hands; for he is better than the objects of his reverence, since he himself lived, but they never did.
RABANUS. For man is better than idols according to the reason of his creation, because he himself lives and understands, but they never do. Yet, because he has followed the vanity of error more than the knowledge of truth, it is fulfilled in him what is said by the Psalmist: Man, being in honor, did not understand; he was compared to the senseless beasts, and became like them (Psalm 49:20). [Rabanus Maurus, Commentary on Wisdom, PL 109] 780-856AD
15:18 And they even worship the most hateful animals; for, compared in folly, they are worse than the others; 15:19 nor, as things that happen in the sight of animals, are they even worth desiring as beautiful, but they have escaped both the praise of God and his blessing.
RABANUS. Miserable paganism not only worshipped the human form shaped in insensible things as a deity, but also perversely adored the forms of other animals, nor did it have a just discernment in any matter. For according to the consideration of truth, living things are set before the dead, and sensible things before insensible, and rational animals before other animals; but it was fitting that those who ignored their Creator also did not know how to make proper distinctions among His creatures; for whoever neglects to have the praise and blessing of God within himself will prove himself to err in the observation and discernment of animals. [Rabanus Maurus, Commentary on Wisdom, PL 109] 780-856AD