Proverbs 20:5
Counsel in the heart of a man is like deep water: but a wise man will draw it out.
Open Proverbs 20:5 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Sicut aqua profunda, sic consilium in corde viri ; sed homo sapiens exhauriet illud.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ὕδωρ βαθὺ βουλὴ ἐν καρδίᾳ ἀνδρός, ἀνὴρ δὲ φρόνιμος ἐξαντλήσει αὐτήν.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- מַ֣יִם עֲ֭מֻקִּים עֵצָ֣ה בְלֶב אִ֑ישׁ וְאִ֖ישׁ תְּבוּנָ֣ה יִדְלֶֽנָּה
Haydock's commentary
Out. So David discovered the meaning of the Thecuite, 2 Kings xiv. 18. A wise politician carefully examines everything in a foreign court.
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 Ambrose On the Duties of the Clergy, Chapter I. We are taught by David and Solomon how to take counsel with our own heart. Scipio is not to be accounted prime author of the saying which is ascribed to him. The writer proves what glorious things the holy prophets accomplished in their time of quiet, and shows, by examples of their and others' leisure moments, that a just man is never alone in trouble
1. The prophet David taught us that we should go about in our heart as though in a large house; that we should hold converse with it as with some trusty companion. He spoke to himself, and conversed with himself, as these words show: “I said, I will take heed to my ways.” Solomon his son also said: “Drink water out of thine own vessels, and out of the springs of thy wells; ” that is: use thine own counsel. For: “Counsel in the heart of a man is as deep waters.” “Let no stranger,” it says, “share it with thee. Let the fountain of thy water be thine own, and rejoice with thy wife who is thine from thy youth. Let the loving hind and pleasant doe converse with thee.”