Eclesiastes 10
Didymus the Blind · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Eclesiastes 10:1
These flies bring death as well as life. For example there is a divinized fly about which Elijah has said, "Is there no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of the fly, the God of Ekron?" I would be astonished if they really did divinize a fly. Rather he hereby has described the worthlessness of their enterprise. — COMMENTARY ON ECCLESIASTES 291:3
Eclesiastes 10:4
"If the anger of the ruler rises against you"—if he seems to have power over you, it is only because you have subjected yourself to him. For as "sin reigns in the mortal bodies" of those who want to "obey their passions," and as someone is ruled over if he is ruled by mammon and has focused his thinking on the desire for money, so he [the ruler] has power over the one who subjects himself as slave. — COMMENTARY ON ECCLESIASTES 294:2
Eclesiastes 10:7
Those who have come from paganism to the gospel—those who were slaves of desire, slaves of sin, slaves of the devil and of death—have become riders on horseback. About them it is said that, in the future, they will ride on divine words like on horses. — COMMENTARY ON ECCLESIASTES 299:24
Eclesiastes 10:11
The snake is powerful, when it spreads its poison secretly. In the one who is tricked, an impression is created that he has received something good which in reality is not good. The teacher who charms should not do so in a superflous way but in a way that accomplishes something. Then he shows his [student] the error, the guile of his seducer. — COMMENTARY ON ECCLESIASTES 304:20
Eclesiastes 10:15
By "town" he does not mean a place but the deed according to the law. The fool does "not even know the way to town." But the one who says, "Even if we live on earth, our citizenship is in heaven," "knows the way to the town" in which he is a true citizen. And further: "As we have heard, so we have received in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God." — COMMENTARY ON ECCLESIASTES 308:1
Eclesiastes 10:20
Generally one is advised not to say bad things about others. A curse is nothing else but a wish for something bad.…The word cautions against slander. Do not even have the intention, he says, of slandering someone—let alone actually slandering someone. Look at how great an evil this is: "Do not love speaking ill [of anyone], lest you be cut off." Thus, he says the following: Not even in your thoughts, not even in your consciousness, should you "curse the king." But if one is not supposed to curse anyone, the king should be cursed even less. — COMMENTARY ON ECCLESIASTES 313:13