Proverbs 22:20
Behold I have described it to thee three manner of ways, in thoughts and knowledge:
Open Proverbs 22:20 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Ecce descripsi eam tibi tripliciter, in cogitationibus et scientia :
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ σὺ δὲ ἀπόγραψαι αὐτὰ σεαυτῷ τρισσῶς εἰς βουλὴν καὶ γνῶσιν ἐπὶ τὸ πλάτος τῆς ψυχῆς σου.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- הֲלֹ֤א כָתַ֣בְתִּי לְ֭ךָ שלשום בְּמ֖וֹעֵצֹ֣ת וָדָֽעַת
Haydock's commentary
Ways. Repeatedly. (Bossuet; Tirinus) (2 Corinthians xii. 8., and Amos i. 11.) (Calmet)
Protestants, "have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge?" "Shalishim," perfect, (Pagnin) or "three things," (Montanus) means also (Haydock) such as might suit princes and great officers. (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 Gregory Nazianzen In Defence of His Flight to Pontus, and His Return, After His Ordination to the Priesthood, with an Exposition of the Character of the Priestly Office
96. Who is the man, whose heart has never been made to burn, as the Scriptures have been opened to him, with the pure words of God which have been tried in a furnace; who has not, by a triple inscription of them upon the breadth of his heart, attained the mind of Christ; nor been admitted to the treasures which to most men remain hidden, secret, and dark, to gaze upon the riches therein? and become able to enrich others, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
St John Cassian The Conferences of John Cassian. Part II. Containing Conferences XI-XVII, Chapter VIII. Of spiritual knowledge
But to return to the explanation of the knowledge from which our discourse took its rise. Thus, as we said above, practical knowledge is distributed among many subjects and interests, but theoretical is divided into two parts, i.e., the historical interpretation and the spiritual sense. Whence also Solomon when he had summed up the manifold grace of the Church, added: “for all who are with her are clothed with double garments.” But of spiritual knowledge there are three kinds, tropological, allegorical, anagogical, of which we read as follows in Proverbs: “But do you describe these things to yourself in three ways according to the largeness of your heart.” And so the history embraces the knowledge of things past and visible, as it is repeated in this way by the Apostle: “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondwoman, the other by a free: but he who was of the bondwo …