Proverbs 16:32

OLD TESTAMENTNEW TESTAMENT

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules his spirit than he that takes a city.

Verse 31 Read Chapter 16 Verse 33

Ambrose of Milan

AD 397

If you are angry, be angry with yourselves, because you are roused, and you will not sin. For he who is angry with himself, because he has been so easily roused, ceases to be angry with another. But he who wishes to prove his anger is righteous only gets the more inflamed and quickly falls into sin. “Better is he,” as Solomon says, “that restrains his anger than he that takes a city,” for anger leads astray even brave men. .

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Augustine of Hippo

AD 430

The Scriptures offer the example of a woman of astounding fortitude and oblige me now to speak of her. This woman chose to give over to the tyrant and executioner every one of her seven sons rather than to utter a single word of sacrilege. And after fortifying them with her exhortations, at the same time suffering cruelly in their tortures, she herself had to undergo what she had called upon them to endure. Could any patience be greater than this? Yet what marvel is it that the love of God pervading her inmost soul should have withstood the tyrant and the executioner, and bodily pain, and the weakness of her sex, and her own human emotions? Had she not heard the words: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints”? Had she not heard, “The one who is patient is better than the one who is the mightiest”?… She most assuredly knew these and many other divine precepts on fortitude written in the books of the Old Testament (which were the only ones then in existence) by the ... Read More

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Cassiodorus Senator

AD 585

That anger is less offensive which does not lead to indignant actions. In the words of Scripture, “He that conquers his anger is better than he who takes a city.” So the injunction to control anger is extended, so that if we are already angry we do not sin through impulsive rashness. Because of human frailty we cannot govern our hot emotions, but with the help of God’s grace we contain them with the discipline of reason.

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George Leo Haydock

AD 1849

Valiant. Alexandrian Septuagint adds, "and a prudent man than a great farmer. "Greek: Georgiou. (Haydock) Cities. To govern the passions is more difficult. (St. Gregory, Past. iii. p. Adm. x.; St. Thomas Aquinas ii. 2. q. 128. a. 6.) Latius regnes avidum domando Spiritum, quam si Lybiam (Horace, ii. Od. 2.)

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Gregory The Dialogist

AD 604

Taking cities is a smaller victory because the places we conquer are outside of ourselves. A greater [victory] is won by patience, because a person overcomes himself and subjects himself to himself, when patience brings him low in bearing with others in humility.

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Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation - 2 Peter 1:20