Proverbs 12:28
In the path of justice is life: but the by-way leadeth to death.
Open Proverbs 12:28 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- In semita justitiæ vita ; iter autem devium ducit ad mortem.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ἐν ὁδοῖς δικαιοσύνης ζωή, ὁδοὶ δὲ μνησικάκων εἰς θάνατον.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- בְּאֹֽרַח צְדָקָ֥ה חַיִּ֑ים וְדֶ֖רֶךְ נְתִיבָ֣ה אַל מָֽוֶת
Haydock's commentary
Bye-way. Of vice. Hebrew, "and a way which leadeth to death," or "its paths conduct to death." (Calmet)
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 John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Matthew XXV. 1-30
Hear even under the Old Testament, how great regard there was for this, “The ways of revengeful men are unto death. One man keepeth anger against another, and doth he seek healing of God?”“And yet He allowed, ‘eye for eye,’ and ‘tooth for tooth,’ how then doth He find fault?” Because He allowed even those things, not that we should do them one to another, but that through the fear of suffering, we might abstain from the commission of crime. And besides, those acts are the fruits of a short-lived anger, but to remember injuries is the part of a soul that practises itself in evil.
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hebrews 11.28-31
For do not tell me, that thou hast gone wrong in some small matter [only], since the thing has the same nature. For as a man is equally called a homicide whether he has killed a child or a man, so also is he called overreaching whether he be overreaching in much or in little. Yea and to remember injuries too, is no small matter, but even a great sin. For it is said, “the ways of those who remember injuries [tend] to death.” ( Prov. xii. 28 , LXX.) And “He that is angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger of hell,” and he that “calleth his brother a fool” ( Matt. v. 22 ), and senseless, and numberless such things.
St John Cassian The Twelve Books on the Institutes of the Cœnobia, and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults, Chapter XV. How the Old Law would root out anger not only from the actions but from the thoughts
But why should we spend any more time over evangelic and apostolic precepts, when even the old law, which is thought to be some what slack, guards against the same thing, when it says, “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart;” and again, “Be not mindful of the injury of thy citizens;” and again, “The ways of those who preserve the recollection of wrongs are towards death”? You see there too that wickedness is restrained not only in action, but also in the secret thoughts, since it is commanded that hatred be utterly rooted out from the heart, and not merely retaliation for, but the very recollection of, a wrong done.