Testimonia — Early Christian Bible Commentary

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Proverbs 2

1My son, if you will receive my words, and store up my commandments within you,

2so as to turn your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding;

3yes, if you call out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding;

4if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures;

5then you will understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.

6For the LORD gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.

7He lays up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity,

8that he may guard the paths of justice, and preserve the way of his saints.

9Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path.

10For wisdom will enter into your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

11Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will keep you,

12to deliver you from the way of evil, from the men who speak perverse things,

13who forsake the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness,

14who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the perverseness of evil,

15who are crooked in their ways, and wayward in their paths,

16to deliver you from the strange woman, even from the foreigner who flatters with her words,

17who forsakes the friend of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God;

18for her house leads down to death, her paths to the departed spirits.

19None who go to her return again, neither do they attain to the paths of life.

20Therefore walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous.

21For the upright will dwell in the land. The perfect will remain in it.

22But the wicked will be cut off from the land. The treacherous will be rooted out of it.

Early Christian commentary

Late 1st century AD (traditionally c. 95–100) | Clement of Rome

It is right and holy therefore, men and brethren, rather to obey God than to follow those who, through pride and sedition, have become the leaders of a detestable emulation. For we shall incur no slight injury, but rather great danger, if we rashly yield ourselves to the inclinations of men who aim at exciting strife and tumults, so as to draw us away from what is good. Let us be kind one to another after the pattern of the tender mercy and benignity of our Creator. For it is written, “The kind-hearted shall inhabit the land, and the guiltless shall be left upon it, but transgressors shall be destroyed from off the face of it.” And again [the Scripture] saith, “I saw the ungodly highly exalted, and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon: I passed by, and, behold, he was not; and I diligently sought his place, and could not find it. Preserve innocence, and look on equity: for there shall be a remnant to the peaceable man.”

Commentary · First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter XIV · Original source · The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers (T. & T. Clark, 1870), edited and translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson; independent electronic transcription: David King and the Online Proofreading Team, Project Gutenberg ebook 77576. · Licence · Source revision · Whitespace normalized; source pagination and footnote reference markers removed. English wording unchanged.

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