Jerome, on Isa 13:12

“A man shall be more precious than gold, yea a man than the finest of gold.”

“(Verse 12) The man will be more precious than gold, and the human being will shine like the world. The obvious reason why God visits the earth, that is, the evils of Babylon: so that the inhabited land will be turned into a desert. However, everything that is rare is called precious; just as above, according to the story, we read about seven women taking hold of one man due to the scarcity of men, saying: We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name and take away our reproach (Isaiah 4:1). And in the book of Samuel it is written: The word of the Lord was precious in those days (1 Samuel 3:1), that is, rare. Note that in Hebrew, instead of general gold, it is written Phaz (), and instead of fine gold, it is written Ophir ().”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.