Wisdom 8:20
And whereas I was more good, I came to a body undefiled.
Open Wisdom 8:20 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Et cum essem magis bonus, veni ad corpus incoinquinatum.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- μᾶλλον δὲ ἀγαθὸς ὢν ἦλθον εἰς σῶμα ἀμίαντον.
Haydock's commentary
More good. The pre-existence of souls seems to be insinuated, though this is not clear, and the opinion is now rejected. Some are born with a better disposition for learning than others. (St. Augustine, contra Jul. iv. 3.)
Yet none possess any seeds of virtue by nature, or are more infected than others, with original sin, as some heretics would assert. (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 Augustine Letter CCXVIII
2. You require wisdom, my son, for stedfastness in this race, as it was under the influence of wisdom that you entered on it at first. Let this then be “a part of your wisdom, to know whose gift it is.” “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass: and He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.” “He will make straight thy path, and guide thy steps in peace.” As you despised your prospects of greatness in this world, lest you should glory in the abundance of riches which you had begun to covet after the manner of the children of this world, so now, in taking up the yoke of the Lord and His burden, let not your confidence be in your own strength; so shall “His yoke be easy, and His burden light.” For in the book of Psalms those are alike censured “who trust in their strength,” and “who boast themselves in the mul …
St Augustine A Treatise on the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants, What ‘Lighteth’ Means
But why, after saying, “which lighteth every man,” should he add, “that cometh into the world,”, the clause which has suggested the opinion that He enlightens the minds of newly-born babes while the birth of their bodies from their mother’s womb is still a recent thing? The words, no doubt, are so placed in the Greek, that they may be understood to express that the light itself “cometh into the world.” If, nevertheless, the clause must be taken as expressing the man who cometh into this world, I suppose that it is either a simple phrase, like many others one finds in the Scriptures, which may be removed without impairing the general sense; or else, if it is to be regarded as a distinctive addition, it was perhaps inserted in order to distinguish spiritual illumination from that bodily one which enlightens the eyes of the flesh either by means of the luminaries of the sky, or by the light …