Didascalicon, Book VI: how Scripture is to be read
Chapter IX. On the letter
The letter is sometimes perfect, when to signify what is said there is no need either to add or to take away anything beyond what is set down. As, All wisdom is from the Lord God (Ecclus. 1). Sometimes deficient, when something is left to be supplied, as: The ancient to the elect lady (John). Sometimes superfluous, when either for emphasis or by a long interposition the same is repeated, or something else not necessary is added, as Paul says at the end of the Epistle to the Romans: Now to him; and afterwards, many things being interposed, he adds: to whom be honor and glory (Rom. 16). Something here seems superfluous; superfluous, I mean, not necessary for making the statement. Sometimes the letter is such that unless it is resolved into another it seems to signify nothing or to be incongruous, as is that: The Lord, his seat is in heaven (Ps. 10), that is, the seat of the Lord is in heaven; and: the sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows (Ps. 56), that is, the teeth of the sons of men; and: Man, his days are as grass, that is, the days of man (Ps. 102). That is, a nominative of the noun and a genitive of the pronoun are put for one genitive of the noun, and many other things similarly. To the letter belong construction and continuity.