And again, The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Knowing that their thoughts are vain, God rebukes their wisdom in order to prove that they are foolish, showing that what they thought was false is true and vice versa. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
And again, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are but vain. Psalm 94:11. By all these quotations and reasons S. Paul impresses on the Corinthians that the worldly wisdom and eloquence of which they boasted themselves, and through which they put Apollos before himself, were but vain. He declares that the true wisdom is the faith and teaching of Christ, which he had preached them—on simple words, indeed, but yet with burning and efficacious zeal.
S. Jerome, moralising on Ps. xciv, says: "Do you wish to know how it is that the thoughts of men are vain? A father and mother bring up a child, they promise themselves happiness in him, they send him to be educated; he comes to manhood, they enter him as a soldier, and when through thirty years they have thought of everything for him, a slight attack of fever comes and carries away the fruit of all their thought. O anxiety of man! how vain is it in human affairs! One thought alone brings happiness—the thought of God."
For the Lord, says he, knows the reasonings of men Psalm 94:11. (ἀνθρώπων Septuagint) that they are vain. Now when the Wisdom which is boundless pronounces this edict concerning them, and declares them to be such, what other proof do you seek of their extreme folly? For men's judgments, it is true, in many instances fail; but the decree of God is unexceptionable and uncorrupt in every case.
4. Thus having set up so splendid a trophy of the judgment from on high, he employs in what follows a certain vehemence of style, turning it against those who were under his ministry, (ἀρχομένους)
