Wisdom 14:12
For the beginning of fornication is the devising of idols: and the invention of them is the corruption of life.
Open Wisdom 14:12 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Initium enim fornicationis est exquisitio idolorum, et adinventio illorum corruptio vitæ est :
- Septuagint (Swete)
- Ἀρχὴ γὰρ πορνείας ἐπίνοια εἰδώλων, εὑρέσεις δὲ αὐτῶν φθορὰ ζωῆς.
Haydock's commentary
Fornication. Invention of idols brought people to give way to spiritual fornication, and corruption of manners. (Worthington)
They freely practised what was sanctioned by the example of their gods. (St. Augustine, City of God ii. 7., and 3 Kings xiv. 24., and 4 Kings xxiii. 7, 3.) (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 Athanasius Against the Heathen. (Contra Gentes.), The various developments of idolatry: worship of the heavenly bodies, the elements, natural objects, fabulous creatures, personified lusts, men living and dead. The case of Antinous, and of the deified Emperors
For now the understanding of mankind leaped asunder from God; and going lower in their ideas and imaginations, they gave the honour due to God first to the heaven and the sun and moon and the stars, thinking them to be not only gods, but also the causes of the other gods lower than themselves. Then, going yet lower in their dark imaginations, they gave the name of gods to the upper æther and the air and the things in the air. Next, advancing further in evil, they came to celebrate as gods the elements and the principles of which bodies are composed, heat and cold and dryness and wetness. 2. But just as they who have fallen flat creep in the slime like land-snails, so the most impious of mankind, having fallen lower and lower from the idea of God, then set up as gods men, and the forms of men, some still living, others even after their death. …
St Athanasius Against the Heathen. (Contra Gentes.), The deeds of heathen deities, and particularly of Zeus
But of these and such like inventions of idolatrous madness, Scripture taught us beforehand long ago, when it said, “The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication, and the invention of them, the corruption of life. For neither were they from the beginning, neither shall they be for ever. For the vainglory of men they entered into the world, and therefore shall they come shortly to an end. For a father afflicted with untimely mourning when he hath made an image of his child soon taken away, now honoured him as a god which was then a dead man, and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and sacrifices. Thus in process of time an ungodly custom grown strong was kept as a law. And graven images were worshipped by the commands of kings. …