The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel;
Ver. 1. The Proverbs.] Or, Master sentences; maxims, axioms, speeches of special precellence and predominance; received rules a that must overrule matters, and mightily prevail in the minds of men. The principal, no doubt, they are of those three thousand mentioned in 1 Kings 4:32, and far beyond those golden sayings b of Phocylides (profanely preferred before those holy parables by that apostate Julian, ausu nefario), as having in them more sentences than words, c and being so far above all human praise for weight and worth, that, as Salust writes of Carthage, I had better speak nothing of them than too little, since too much is too little.
Of Solomon.] Who better, a deal, deserves to be styled "Master of the sentences" than Peter Lombard; and to be esteemed πανσοφος και παντα ανθρωπεια επισταμενος, as one d saith of Homer; or as another saith of Jerome, that he was a man, quem nullum scibile latuit, that knew all that was knowable by a man.
King of Israel.] King in Jerusalem, Ecc 1:1 which was now the Israel of Israel, as Athens was, in its flourish, said to be the Greece of Greece; e yea, the soul, and sun, and eye of Greece; f yea, the common school of all mankind. g For King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth both in riches and in wisdom. "And all the world sought to Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put into his heart." 1Ki 10:24 For "the more wise the preacher was, the more he taught the people knowledge, and caused them to hear, and searched forth many parables"; Ecclesiastes 12:9 , marg. even "words of delight." Proverbs 1:10 , marg. See Trapp in " Pro 1:10 "
a משׁל משׁלי, Dominari, quae vitae dominae et moderatrices esse debent.
b Eπη χρυσεα .
c De Euripide Cicero pronunciavit plures esse in eo sententias quam verba.
d Xenophon.
e Eλλας ελλαδος. - Euripid.
f φυχη και ηλιος, και οφθαλμος Eλλαδος. - Demost.
g Kοινον παιδευτηριον παντων ανθρωπων. - Thucyd. and Diodor.