It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.
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George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Dyed Hebrew cethem ophir, (Haydock) "the shut up "(gold, though the Vulgate, Septuagint, very in the interpretation) "of Ophir. "This country was famous for its gold. (Calmet)
Its situation is not clearly ascertained. St. Jerome seems to have placed it in India, with Josephus, "in the golden country "now Malacca.
Stone. Protestants, onyx. Hebrew shoham (Haydock) means, probably, the emerald, Genesis ii. 12. (Calmet)
But these names are very indeterminate. Theodotion, from whom great part of this chapter is inserted in the Septuagint has "the gold of Ophir, and the precious onyx and sapphire. "(Haydock)
74. For what is meant by India, which furnishes a black people, saving this world, wherein the life of man is engendered dark in respect of sin? Now ‘the dyed colours of India’ are the wise ones of this world, who though in respect of infidelity, and oftentimes in respect of behaviour, they be foul, yet before the eyes of men are stained with the hue of overlaid honourableness. But the coeternal Wisdom of God is not ‘compared to the dyed colours of India,’ in that he, who really takes It in, discovers how widely it differs from those human beings whom the world has worshipped for wise ones. And the very words of His precepts differ from the wise ones of this world, in that while they strain after eloquence, their sayings appear as if fair in shew and in the staining of the dye, and while they lack the power of realities, feign themselves to be something else than what they are by combination of words as by overcoated colours. But on the other hand the instruction of Wisdom is at o...
