Commentary on the Psalms 20 part 3/3

or rather, it does not even remain, but is demolished together with the house, having profited nothing to him who dwelt in it;

'For his soul shall be blessed in his life.'

Having spoken concerning his wealth and his glory, he passes over to the discourse concerning the praises men give.

For since this too is especially coveted by the rich—the flatteries in the marketplace, the fawning attentions from the populace, the public acclamations, the eulogies full of hypocrisy—and since it seems a great thing to be applauded even in theaters, even at banquets, even in courts of law, to be proclaimed by all, to be reckoned enviable, mark how he pulls this down again by an appeal to time.

'For in his life,' he says—that is, these fawning attentions, and his being well spoken of, last only as long as the present life;

But together with the rest this too is dissolved, as being temporary and perishable.

But even when it comes about through the flattery of those who praise, after death it turns into its opposite, once the mask of fear has been stripped away.

He will give You thanks, when You do good to him.

See how he also exposes their very acts of kindness.

For you flatter and pay court, feigning a service that is temporary and full of hypocrisy;

but that other man, even if he should confess himself grateful to you,

buying from you the doing of what pleases him, and buying it at a great price, then, he says, he will give you thanks.

For the phrase 'He will give thanks' means this: when You do good to him.

He did not say, 'When You do something useful, when You confer a benefit,' but, 'When You render him the things pleasing to him, and in accordance with his wish, and serve him after his own mind';

showing that the harm comes from both sides: both from the counterfeit flattery, and from the injurious service.

He shall go in even to the generation of his fathers; for ever he shall not see light.

And man, being in honour, did not understand;

he was compared to the senseless beasts, and became like unto them.

'He shall go in'—that is, he shall imitate the zeal of his fathers, and being sprung from wicked men, he shall inherit their wickedness;

or else it means: If he has done nothing good, he shall be found to gain no benefit whatever from his wealth;

but he shall be laid to rest with those who lie before him in the dust until the judgement, unable even to behold the light according to the law of nature.

Then again he takes up once more what was said before, saying:

And man, being in honour, did not understand;

he was compared to the senseless beasts, and became like unto them.

Such a man, he says—the one who has died in this way, who did not manage his possessions as he ought—will differ in nothing from a brute beast, inasmuch as he did not recognize the honour he had received from God, having been made like unto the beasts, whose sole end of life is death;

from which fate may we be delivered, both we who learn these things and those who teach them, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the might, unto the ages of ages.