To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their riddles.
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Cassiodorus Senator
AD 585
“And he made darkness his covert, his pavilion round about him: dark waters in the clouds of the air.” … Take “darkness” in the good sense, as in the following passage from Solomon’s Proverbs: “He understands also a parable and dark sayings.” All the divine things of which we are unaware are dark to us, in other words, deep and obscure, even though they enjoy undying light. His covert is the hidden seat of his majesty, which he reveals to the just when they are allowed to gaze face to face on the glory of his divinity. [By] “his pavilion round about him” here is expounded the splendid dignity of the blessed, whereby those who faithfully continue in his church dwell close to him. “Round about him” signifies proximity, for he goes round and enters all things and is not encompassed by anything, for he cannot be confined in any place.
It is universally admitted that the name of “proverb,” in its scriptural use, is not applied with regard to the evident sense but is used with a view to some hidden meaning, as the Gospel thus gives the name of “proverbs” to dark and obscure sayings. So the “proverb,” if one were to set forth the interpretation of the name by a definition, is a form of speech which, by means of one set of ideas immediately presented, points to something else which is hidden. Or [it is] a form of speech which does not point out the aim of the thought directly but gives its instruction by an indirect signification.
