The Saying «Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out» (Proverbs of Solomon 20, 5) in the Context of Wisdom Literature and the Tradition of the Church

Abstract

The article deals with an aphorism from the Book of the Proverbs of Solomon (chapter 20, verse 5). This aphorism is unique in that it has no direct parallels either in the Book of Proverbs or in the Holy Scripture as a whole. Besides, neither the Masoretic text nor the Septuagint point clearly to what is to be done with the «counsel» in question — should it be gotten rid of or should it be implemented? The saying also lacks any clear indication as to the content of the «counsel» — is it good or evil? An inquiry into these questions constitutes the subject of the present article. In order to answer the questions posed, the authors make use of text-critical analysis, of internal scriptural parallels as well as of ecclesiastical exegesis. The comparison of the «counsel» with deep water made by the author of the book is quite rare in the old Testament; there is only one aphoristic parallel to the text under scrutiny— this is the saying in Proverbs 18, 4. The research conducted by the authors shows that, according to the ecclesiastical exegesis (origen, St Ambrose of Milan, the Sayings of the Fathers of the Desert), the analogy drawn by the biblical author of a man’s heart to deep water points to his spiritual maturity and to his experience in the knowledge of God, while the drawing out of the water is symbolically understood by the tradition of the Church as repentance. The authors of the article hypothesize that the spiritual science of differentiating the thoughts was born in the didactic Wisdom literature of the ancient Israel many centuries before the emergence of the Christian asceticism.