{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-4143","native_reference":{"book_number":250,"chapter_from":4,"chapter_to":4,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":13,"verse_to":13},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Jerome</b>: \"Better<br/>is a poor but wise youth, than an old and foolish king who no longer knows how<br/>to take care of himself; because from the prison-house he emerged to reign,<br/>while even in his reign he was born poor. <br/>I saw all the living that wander beneath the sun throng to the<br/>succeeding youth that steps into his place. <br/>There is no end to the entire nation, to all that was before them;<br/>similarly the ones that come later will not rejoice in him. For this too is futility and a vexation of<br/>the spirit.\" Symmachus translates this passage in this<br/>way: \"better a poor man who has wisdom, than an old and foolish king who<br/>does not know to beware of change\". <br/>For the one leaves the body to reign in heaven, and the other indeed,<br/>although he had been born a king, is restricted by poverty. I saw all men living, who grow up under the<br/>sun in propitious adolescence, which increases in them. Each and every nation that was before is<br/>unending, and those that come after do not rejoice in the previous. But this too is empty and a vexation of the<br/>spirit. My Hebrew tutor, whose teachings<br/>I often refer to, bore witness while he was reading Ecclesiastes with me, that<br/>Bar Akiba wrote these things above the present passage, and he is greatly<br/>admired by other scholars: better is the inner part of man, which arises in us<br/>after the fourteenth year of puberty, than the outer, physical man, who is born<br/>from his mother's womb, and he does not know how to abstain from vice because<br/>it comes to this that he rules over his vices from the house of chains, that is<br/>from his mother's womb. For he is made<br/>poor because of his power and by carrying out all wicked deeds. I saw those men, who lived as those former<br/>men, and were changed afterwards into that second man, in him that has been<br/>born in place of the former. And I<br/>understood that all men sinned in that prior manhood, before the second is<br/>born, when they become two men. But once<br/>these men have changed for the better, and after the learning of philosophers,<br/>they leave the left path and hurry towards the right, and they follow the<br/>second man, that is the newest man, and do not rejoice in him that is the<br/>former. The apostle agrees with these<br/>two types of men [Cfr Rom, 7, 15.]<br/>and Leviticus also mentioned them: \"Man, man\" [Cfr Lev. 17, 13; 19, 20; 21, 17. etc.]<br/>who desired this or that. That saintly<br/>man Gregorius Pontus the bishop, to whom Origen preached, understands the<br/>passage in the following way in his\"<br/>Metaphrasis of Ecclesiastes:\" \"I however prefer a youth who is poor yet<br/>is growing wise, to an old king who is foolish, to whom it never occurs that it<br/>is possible for someone from those whom he has conquered, will leave the body<br/>to reign in heaven; and then he destroys himself from his unjust power. For it happens though that those who were<br/>growing wise at the time of youth are without sadness; but that they changed<br/>before the time of becoming an old king. <br/>For those that have been born afterwards, since they do not know the<br/>wickedness that has gone before, they are not able to praise youth, which<br/>arises afterwards, and are led astray by perverse ideas and by the force of the<br/>opposing arguments.\" [Grego. Neocaesar. Metaphr. In Eccl. -PG 10, 1000 A] Laodicenus has asserted that great matters<br/>are expressed in this short passage, and he wrote here in his accustomed<br/>fashion: \"Ecclesiastes now speaks about the change of good men into<br/>wicked, expressing the foolish man as he who tries, and who not thinking of the<br/>future, enjoys the transient and failing things as if they are great and<br/>perpetual. And after the many things<br/>which usually happen (or change) to men in their life, he asserts something of<br/>a general opinion of death, since the great number perishes and little by<br/>little is consumed and pass across, with each one leaving the other in his<br/>place, and another's successor dying.\" [Apollinarius Laodic.]<br/> Origines and Victorinus [Origenes. Victorinus Poetouion]<br/>did not think very differently on this matter. <br/>After the general statement that reveals to all that the poor yet wise<br/>youth is better than an old king who is foolish, and that it often happens that<br/>the lad leaves the prison of the king because of his wisdom, and commands in<br/>place of a cruel dictator, and as a foolish king loses all his power, which he<br/>had obtained. They saw this passage in<br/>relation to Christ and the devil, because they wished to view the poor and wise<br/>boy as Christ. The poor boy is the same<br/>as that one in \"it is great for you to be called my boy\" [Is. 49, 6. According to LXX],<br/>but the poor man, since he has been made poor [cfr II Cor. 8, 9.],<br/>when once he was rich and wise, because \"he was proficient in age and<br/>wisdom and thankful to God and men.\" [Luc. 2, 52.] That man is born in the reign of an old man<br/>and therefore he says, \"if this was my rule in the world, that my servants<br/>struggle on my behalf so that I am not handed over to the Jews. But now it is not my rule.\" [Ioh. 18, 36.] So in the reign of that foolish old man who<br/>displays all the rule of the whole world and his glory, the most excellent boy<br/>comes from the house of chains, about which Jeremiah speaks in Lamentations,<br/>saying, \"so that he lowers to the feet of that man all those who have been<br/>conquered in the world.\" [Thren. 3, 34.] And that boy goes on to rule and goes away to<br/>a far off region, and as king after some time is turned against those, who do<br/>not want to rule. So with some insight<br/>Ecclesiastes saw that all men who are alive and who are able to be part of<br/>youth, say, \"I am life\" [Ioh. 14, 6.],<br/>having left behind them that old foolish king, to follow Christ. At the same time the two nations of Israel<br/>are to be understood here. The first,<br/>which was before the arrival of the Lord, and the next, which will support the<br/>Antichrist in place of Christ, for the first is not deep down despondent, since<br/>the first church was formed from Jews and the apostles; and in the end the<br/>Jews, who will support the Antichrist, will not rejoice in Christ.<br/><i>— Commentary on Ecclesiastes</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"3b44f7dfd8d8d60e9a6f073585803353c2a02137414254bcab9a68c53fd5cc02","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":4143,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"27e8519d2f52a20c3a80d68cf946fd071232cb614cb98db32af73b457bde1b31","translator":null,"work":null}