Wisdom 14:15
For a father being afflicted with bitter grief, made to himself the image of his son who was quickly taken away: and him who then had died as a man, he began now to worship as a god, and appointed him rites and sacrifices among his servants.
Open Wisdom 14:15 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Acerbo enim luctu dolens pater, cito sibi rapti filii fecit imaginem ; et illum qui tunc quasi homo mortuus fuerat, nunc tamquam deum colere cœpit, et constituit inter servos suos sacra et sacrificia.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ἀώρῳ γὰρ πένθει τρυχόμενος πατὴρ τοῦ ταχέως ἀφαιρεθέντος τέκνου εἰκόνα ποιήσας τὸν τότε νεκρὸν ἄνθρωπον νῦν ὡς θεὸν ἐτίμησεν, καὶ παρέδωκεν τοῖς ὑποχειρίοις μυστήρια καὶ τελετάς·
Haydock's commentary
Servants. This was at first done privately, and made the way for public idolatry. Calvin attempts to refute this assertion, maintaining that Laban's idols were more ancient, and not images. But this argument is nugatory, as theraphim may be rendered either images, (Protestants, 1552.) or idols. (Protestants, 1603.) The latter version is preferable, as Laban called them his gods, and the Greek and Latin have idols. It is also certain, that Ninus set up the image of his father, Jupiter Belus, to be honoured by the people, before Abraham's time; and the fathers agree, that the making of images in memory of the dead, was the first occasion of idolatry. (St. Chrysostom, hom. 87. in Matthew; St. Jerome in Osee ii., &c.) (Worthington)
Nimrod ordered divine honours to be paid to his deceased son. (Gul. Paris. Leg.)
Yet this fact is not certain. Diophante, the Lacedemonian, assigns the same origin to idolatry as is here given. (Grotius)
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 Augustine Reply to Faustus the Manichæan, Faustus states his objections to the morality of the law and the prophets, and Augustin seeks by the application of the type and the allegory to explain away the moral difficulties of the Old Testament
17. The only objection that a Pagan would make on the subject of sacrifice would refer to our reason for finding fault with Pagan sacrifices, when in the Old Testament God is described as requiring men to offer sacrifice to Him. If I were to reply at length on this subject, I might prove to him that sacrifice is due only to the one true God, and that this sacrifice was offered by the one true Priest, the Mediator of God and man; and that it was proper that this sacrifice should be pre-figured by animal sacrifices, in order to foreshadow the flesh and blood of the one sacrifice for the remission of sins contracted by flesh and blood, which shall not inherit the kingdom of God: for the natural body will be endowed with heavenly attributes, as the fire in the sacrifice typified the swallowing up of death in victory. …