Blessed are you, O land, when your king is the son of nobles, and your princes feast at the proper time, for strength, and not for drunkenness!
All Commentaries on Ecclesiastes 10:17 Go To Ecclesiastes 10
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
The passage from this book which I gladly quote is one touching the two cities and their kings, the devil and Christ: “Woe to you, O land, when your king is a youth, and when the princes eat in the morning. Blessed is the land whose king is the son of freeborn parents and whose princes eat in due season, in strength and not in confusion.” Here, the devil is spoken of as a “youth” because of the foolishness, pride, rashness, unruliness, and other faults usually rampant at that age; and Christ is spoken of as the “son of freeborn parents” because he descended in the flesh from those holy patriarchs who were citizens of the free city. The princes of the devil’s city “eat in the morning,” that is, before the proper time—in the sense that, being overeager to attain perfect happiness at once in the society of this present world, they are unwilling to await the only true happiness which will come in due time in the world to come. But the princes of the city of Christ await in patience the time of a blessedness which is sure to be theirs. The conclusion, “in strength and not in confusion,” means that their hope will not cheat them.
