Expositio in Proverbia Unit 1 opening

Exposition on Proverbs. From Origen’s explanations of the Proverbs of Solomon.

17.161 A proverb is a hidden saying whose meaning is shown through another saying that is clear. For this reason Solomon reigned in Israel: to know wisdom and training. Wisdom is spiritual knowledge. It holds the discourses about God, about beings without bodies, about judgment, and about providence; or it is what unveils contemplation of ethics, of the natural order, and of theology. Or again, wisdom is knowledge of bodies and of beings without bodies, and of the judgment and providence contemplated in that field. Training is a moderated handling of the passions, seen in the passionate or irrational part of the soul. And anyone who practices theology with intensity has come to know wisdom.

That means the criterion must be upright and undistorted. Someone who does not know righteousness cannot settle disputes rightly. Solomon himself would not have judged the two prostitutes rightly if he had not kept the exact accounts of what is just. We judge uprightly and without distortion when we obey virtue and condemn vice. There are three criteria in us: sense, reason, and mind. Sense deals with what can be sensed; reason with words and thoughts; the mind with contemplation of what is intelligible. Just as the mind reaches sensible things through the senses, so through the virtues it contemplates intelligible things. That is why wise Solomon teaches us that the mind also holds the place of sense.

Those who take vice to themselves despise wisdom by being evil. Lacking the fear that begins sense, they become senseless and despise wisdom—how? By neither practicing it nor pursuing it. Everyone who does base things hates the light. Wisdom is not dishonored by its own nature, but by their ignorance. The pious choose training so that, once the soul is purified, they may receive the wisdom that will not enter a soul skilled in evil. Those without the fear of God—which makes the beginning of sense—are senseless toward wisdom and training and despise both, like those who refuse the Old Testament and accuse the Creator of harshness.

Just as “head” and “neck” here point to the mind, so “crown” and “collar” here signify knowledge. For this is the Holy Spirit’s habit: under many names he has named God and his angels, and also the mind, virtue, knowledge, ignorance, vice, the devil, and the devil’s angels. He does not set the names down simply, as some think. They mark different operations—God working toward us through angels, we working in him, and demons working toward us. Those who share the same vice become co-heirs with the opposing powers. What is “common” is what does not belong to the one God. See the wicked agreement, and the ruin that follows.

A “net” is eternal chastisement and a many-branched punishment that the just Judge brings upon unclean souls for the destruction of wings that grew badly. The winged ones are we human beings, who have the power to fly upward if we will. “Going out” here names the soul that has left vice and ignorance. Such was Israel’s going out after their birth from God’s judgment and teaching. He also calls that same soul “broad”: “Widen your mouth,” he says, “and I will fill it”; and Paul writes to the Corinthians, “be enlarged also yourselves.” By a soul that goes out in this way, wisdom is praised; and in a land broadened through the virtues, wisdom speaks with boldness. The tops of her walls mean extreme freedom from passion, if those who love the law liken a wall to themselves. For that wall David also prays when he says, “Let the walls of Jerusalem be built”—that is, the fallen walls of such a soul, clearly on account of the Uriah affair. How then, earlier—