Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom.
Ver. 5. Trust ye not in a friend] Friends (said Socrates), there is no friend: and a friend is a changeable creature, saith another (ζωον ευμεταβλητον); all in changeable colours as the peacock, as often changed as moved. Besides, many friends are not more fickle than false, like deep ponds, clear at the top, and all muddy at the bottom. Fide ergo: sed cui vide. Try before you trust; and when you have tried your utmost, trust not overly far, lest you cry out at length, as Queen Elizabeth did, In trust I have found treason; or as Julius Caesar, when stabbed by Brutus among others, What thou, my son Brutus? He was slain in the senate house, with 23 wounds, given, in the most part, by those whose lives he had preserved.
Put ye not confidence in a guide] Potenti et pollenti consilio et auxilio. Be he never so potent or politic, beyond thousand others, as the word importeth: and as the people said to David, "But now thou art worth ten thousand of us," 2 Samuel 18:3, thou art the light of Israel, thou art the breath of our nostrils; so that if thou miscarry, we shall all breathe out our last. All which notwithstanding, princes are not to be trusted, Psalms 62:7; Psalms 118:8,9; Psalms 146:3, for either they may die, or their affections may die; all their golden thoughts may perish. Great men's words, saith one, are like dead men's shoes; he may go barefoot that waiteth for them.
Keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom] From thy wife, thine ακοιτις, called the wife of thy bosom, because she should be as dear unto thee as the heart in thy bosom. Be not too open hearted to her, lest she tell all, as Samson's wife; or as Fulvia, in Sallust, who declared all the secrets of Cneius, a noble Roman, her foolish lover. A fool telleth all, saith Solomon, Proverbs 29:11, he is as little able to keep as to give counsel. He is full of chinks, and leaks every way; the doors of his mouth are seldom kept shut; you may know him by his gaping: fools are called by Aristophanes and Lucian, κεχηνοτες; gapers. "But a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards," Proverbs 29:11; Tacitus he holds to be the best historian; and keeps his mouth with a bridle, as David did, Psalms 39:1, and as the poets feign of Pegasus, that he had a golden bridle put upon him by Minerva, their goddess of wisdom. God and nature have taught us by the site of the tongue in a man's mouth, to take heed to it, and to keep the doors of it; and when all is done, to pray God to keep that door, Psalms 141:3. The tongue is ever in udo, in a moisture; but yet tied by the roots, that it may not stir out of place; it is also guarded with a percullis of teeth and a two-leaved gate of lips, which we must carefully keep, and hold that for an oracle,
“ Si sapis, arcano vina reconde cado. ”
“If you have sense, hide your personal wine in a jar”