Proverbs 11:17
A merciful man doth good to his own soul: but he that is cruel casteth off even his own kindred.
Open Proverbs 11:17 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Benefacit animæ suæ vir misericors ; qui autem crudelis est, etiam propinquos abjicit.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- τῇ ψυχῇ αὐτοῦ ἀγαθὸν ποιεῖ ἀνὴρ ἐλεήμων, ἐξολλύει δὲ αὐτοῦ σῶμα ὁ ἀνελεήμων.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- גֹּמֵ֣ל נַ֭פְשׁוֹ אִ֣ישׁ חָ֑סֶד וְעֹכֵ֥ר שְׁ֝אֵר֗וֹ אַכְזָרִֽי
Haydock's commentary
Kindred. Hebrew, "flesh," Genesis xxix. 14. The miser is cruel even to himself.
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.
The Fathers on this verse
St Leo the Great Sermons, On the Fast of the Tenth Month
And while all seasons are opportune for this duty, beloved, yet this present season is specially suitable and appropriate, at which our holy fathers, being Divinely inspired, sanctioned the Fast of the tenth month, that when all the ingathering of the crops was complete, we might dedicate to God our reasonable service of abstinence, and each might remember so to use his abundance as to be more abstinent in himself and more open-handed towards the poor. For forgiveness of sins is most efficaciously prayed for with almsgiving and fasting, and supplications that are winged by such aids mount swiftly to God’s ears: since as it is written, “the merciful man doeth good to his own soul,” and nothing is so much a man’s own as that which he spends on his neighbour. …