Verse 13. — With Him is wisdom and strength; He has counsel and understanding. 11. Christ the wisdom and strength of God. — These things we not unfittingly receive concerning the Only-begotten of the most high Father, so that we may perceive Him to be the Wisdom and Strength of God. For Paul too attests to our understanding, saying: Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. i, 24); who is always with Him, because in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John i, 1). Now God has counsel and understanding: counsel, namely, because He disposes His own things; understanding, because He knows our things.
By the name of 'counsel' can also be signified the very delay of the hidden judgment, so that what sometimes strikes offenders rather tardily does so not because the guilt of the wicked is not perceived, but that the sentence of their damnation, which is deferred for the doing of penance, may seem, as it were, to issue slowly out of deliberation. What, then, an open sentence sometimes declares outwardly, this lay hidden in counsel before the ages with the almighty Lord. There follows: