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Job_28:18 No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom [is] above rubies.
Ver. 18. No mention shall be made of coral] No talk of coral or carbuncle, of pearl, or any other the rarest and richest jewels in all the world. We read of Cleopatra, that vying with Antony in luxury, she drunk up a pearl of incredible price dissolved in vinegar; and of Charles, duke of Burgundy, that in the fight at Nansey, he lost a diamond of that worth, ut eo tota aliqua regio emi posset, that therewith a man might have bought a whole country (Macrob. Sat. lib. 5, cap. 17; Alsted. Chronol.). It was afterwards set in the pope’s triple crown; but no way worthy to be mentioned in the same day with wisdom.
For the price of wisdom is above rubies] Which are so called from their lovely redness. See Lam_4:7. Pearls some render it; of which Pliny saith, Principium culmenque rerum ommum pretii margaritae tenent, Pearls are the principal of all precious things. They were so of old; but they are not so today. What huge sums were once given for saints’ relics (as they called them) and popes’ pardons! but now the world is grown wiser. England is no more a babe; there is no man here, but now he knows that they do foolishly that give gold for lead, more weight of that than they receive of this. This and much more to the same purpose speaketh Henry VIII (in his protestation against the pope), who yet, as a faint chapman, went not to the price of this true wisdom; as appeareth by that public speech of his in parliament, There are many that are too busy with their new sumpsimus, and others that dote too much upon their old mumpsimus. The new religion, though true, he envied; the old, though his own, he despised; being as a speckled bird, or a cake half baked, &c.