A little that a righteous man has is better than the riches of many wicked.
Read Chapter 37
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
3. "And their bows shall be broken." What is meant by, "And their bows shall be broken"? Their plots shall be frustrated. For above He haft said, "The wicked have drawn out the sword and bent their bows." By the "drawing out of the sword" he would have understood open hostility; but by the" bending of the bow," secret conspiracies. See! His sword destroys himself, and his laying of snares is frustrated. What is meant by frustrated? That it does no mischief to the righteous. How then, for instance (you ask), did it do no mischief to the man, whom it thus stripped of his goods, whom it reduced to straitened circumstances by taking away his possessions? He has still cause to sing, "A little that a righteous man hath, is better than great riches of the ungodly" (ver. 16).
Wicked. Hebrew, "of many wicked "or "of the impious great ones. "(Haydock)
What the just man hath, is preferable to the immense riches of sinners, acquired by injustice. In this sense Hesiod and Psittacus said, "half is more than all. "The wicked are never satisfied, Ecclesiastes iv. 6., and Proverbs xiii. 25. Riches are a dangerous temptation, (Calmet) and the sentence is generally true, "every rich person is either unjust or the heir of one who has been such "(Haydock) aut hæres injusti. (St. Jerome)
It is difficult for the rich to enter heaven; and the unjust are certainly excluded. Yet if we confined our views to this world, it is evident that the rich may better procure the sweets of life. (Berthier)
