Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither turn away from the words of my mouth.
All Commentaries on Proverbs 4:5 Go To Proverbs 4
Jerome
AD 420
Almost all bodily excellences alter with age, and while wisdom alone increases all other functions decay. Fasting, sleeping on the ground, moving from place to place, hospitality to travelers, pleading for the poor, perseverance in standing at prayer, the visitation of the sick, manual labor to supply money for almsgiving—all acts, in short, of which the body is the medium decrease with its decay.Now there are young men and men of riper age who, by toil and ardent study, as well as by holiness of life and constant prayer to God, have obtained knowledge. I do not speak of these, or say that in them the love of wisdom is cold, for this withers in many of the old by reason of age. What I mean is that youth, as such, has to cope with the assaults of passion, and amid the allurements of vice and the tinglings of the flesh is stifled like a fire fed with wood too green and cannot develop its proper brightness. But when men have employed their youth in commendable pursuits and have meditated on the law of the Lord day and night, they learn with the lapse of time, fresh experience and wisdom come as the years go by, and so from the pursuits of the past their old age—their old age, I repeat—reaps a harvest of delight. Hence that wise man of Greece, perceiving, after the expiration of one hundred and seven years, that he was on the verge of the grave, is reported to have said that he regretted extremely having to leave life just when he was beginning to grow wise.
