Proverbs 4:7
The beginning of wisdom, get wisdom, and with all thy possession purchase prudence.
Open Proverbs 4:7 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Principium sapientiæ : posside sapientiam, et in omni possessione tua acquire prudentiam.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- The Septuagint has no verse matching this one here: it lacks the verse, or carries it elsewhere in its own order.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- רֵאשִׁ֣ית חָ֭כְמָה קְנֵ֣ה חָכְמָ֑ה וּבְכָל קִ֝נְיָנְךָ֗ קְנֵ֣ה בִינָֽה
Haydock's commentary
Beginning. The first part of wisdom is to desire it. For nothing hindereth from being just, but that justice is not desired. (St. Augustine, in Psalm cxviii. 20.) (Worthington)
"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get," &c. (Protestants) (Haydock)
It is the one thing necessary. (Calmet)
The pearl, to acquire which we must part with every thing else, if required, Matthew xiii. 46. (Menochius)
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 Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Nepotian
3. Who, then, is this Shunamite, this wife and maid, so glowing as to warm the cold, yet so holy as not to arouse passion in him whom she warmed? Let Solomon, wisest of men, tell us of his father’s favorite; let the man of peace recount to us the embraces of the man of war. “Get wisdom,” he writes, “get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not and she shall preserve thee: love her and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her and she shall promote thee. She shall bring thee to honor when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee.”
St Gregory Nazianzen Oration on the Holy Lights
VIII. But since to us grace has been given to flee from superstitious error and to be joined to the truth and to serve the living and true God, and to rise above creation, passing by all that is subject to time and to first motion; let us look at and reason upon God and things divine in a manner corresponding to this Grace given us. But let us begin our discussion of them from the most fitting point. And the most fitting is, as Solomon laid down for us; us; The beginning of wisdom, he says, is to get wisdom. And what this is he tells us; the beginning of wisdom is fear. For we must not begin with contemplation and leave off with fear (for an unbridled contemplation would perhaps push us over a precipice), but we must be grounded and purified and so to say made light by fear, and thus be raised to the height. …