The Motif Searcher: one word across the Douay, the Latin, the Greek and the Hebrew.

Ecclesiasticus 42:14

For better is the iniquity of a man, than a woman doing a good turn, and a woman bringing shame and reproach.

Challoner: Better is the iniquityThat is, there is, commonly speaking, less danger to be apprehended to the soul from the churlishness, or injuries we receive from men, than from the flattering favours and familiarity of women.

Open Ecclesiasticus 42:14 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →

The verse in its languages

Vulgate (Clementine): Melior est enim iniquitas viri quam mulier benefaciens, et mulier confundens in opprobrium.
Septuagint (Swete): Verse numbering differs here, so nothing is shown rather than the wrong verse.

Haydock's commentary

Better, &c. That is, there is, commonly speaking, less danger to be apprehended to the soul from the churlishness, or injuries we receive from men, than from the flattering favours and familiarity of women. (Challoner)

Josephus (contra Apion ii.) attributes this sentence to Moses, and prefers the worst man to the best woman, as Euripides does in Clement. (Strom. iv.) (Calmet)

But this is ridiculous.

Reproach. This explains what sort of good the woman aforesaid has done; she had fostered the passions of men, and brought them to shame, which all the malevolence of an enemy could not have done. (Haydock)

The company of women is therefore more dangerous, chap. ix. (Worthington)

From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.