Another passage of Scripture exhorting us to love of wisdom says it should be sought after like money. Must we therefore think holy Scripture praises avarice? It is well known to what great efforts and pains lovers of money will patiently subject themselves, from what great pleasures they abstain, in their desire to increase their wealth or in their fear of diminishing it. With what great shrewdness they pursue gain, and how prudently they avoid losses; how they are usually afraid to take the property of others, and sometimes despise loss to themselves lest they lose more in its quest and litigation. Because these traits are well known, it is right for us to be exhorted so to love wisdom that we most eagerly seek it as our treasure, acquire more and more of it, suffer many trials, restrain desires, ponder the future, so that we may preserve innocence and beneficence. Whenever we act in this way we are in possession of true virtues, because our objective is true, that is, is in harmony with our nature in reference to salvation and true happiness.
It’s unfitting, it’s insulting, that wisdom should be compared with money, but love is being compared to love. What I see here, after all, is that you all love money in such a way that when love of money gives the order, you undertake hard labor, you put up with starving, you cross the sea, you commit yourselves to wind and wave. I have something to pick on in the matter of what you love, but I have nothing to add to the love with which you love. “Love like that, and I don’t want to be loved any more than that,” says God. “I’m talking to the riffraff, I’m speaking to the greedy: You love money; love me just as much. Of course, I’m comparably better; but I don’t want more ample love from you; love me just as much as you love money.”
If you seek it like silver, etc. If with so much care you seek wisdom as the covetous seek silver, or certainly if you seek that same wisdom as anxiously as if you were to acquire through it infinite and ineffable riches, you will receive the rewards which are subsequently explained. He who digs for treasures casts out earth, makes a deep pit, diligently persists in laboring until he reaches the treasures he seeks. And he who desires to find the treasures of wisdom should cleanse himself of any earthly matters he finds in himself, cut off carnal enticements, make a pit of humility in himself, and not cease from acting until he knows himself to have found the way of truth.
[AD 430] Augustine of Hippo on Proverbs 2:4