Commentary on the Psalms 1 part 25/34

But this is not a reasonable departure; rather, it is when someone who is holy comes to be, by his zeal and disposition, outside his body and his flesh, so as to say:

We are not in the flesh but in the spirit.

The mind of the flesh is enmity toward God.

And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

For all the saints, while still being in the flesh, pleased God.

There is, therefore, a flesh from which he who comes to be outside pleases God: namely, the material, passion-loving disposition.

And perhaps, if someone, having come to be in the spirit, lets go of the flesh, he is not even disturbed when wrath presses upon him.

But he who still clings to this life is disturbed, whenever something painful is expected and comes upon him.

Often the compound is signified by one of the things in the composition.

Why are you sorrowful, O my soul, and why do you trouble me?—here he makes the signification by reference to the more honorable part.

I buffet my body and bring it into subjection.

For he does not speak of it as separated from the soul, but since the body is subordinate, while the soul is the ruling part, the body—when it is subject to the soul, being ruled, and ruled indeed in accordance with reason and with the law of God—is buffeted and brought into subjection.

Since, therefore, I see wrath pressing upon me—for your arrows have already wounded me—and I have become aware of this, on this account my flesh also has been troubled.

For this reason the saints do not fear a sudden and swiftly-running death.

He has come to be in forgetfulness of wearing flesh.

But whenever he considers this very thing—that he is bound to the flesh, and taking into account that the flesh is capable of being separated from the soul—he is disturbed at the prospect of death.

All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.

To you all flesh shall come—that is, every human being.

All flesh shall see the salvation of our God.

All things that are homonymous are distinguished by certain additions from those that bear the same name.

If it is said in Scripture:

He who gives food to all flesh, we understand every living creature that has come into being.

I will pour out from my Spirit upon all flesh—I mean that which is by nature fit to receive the gift of the Spirit.

There is no peace in my bones because of the face of my sins.

Since I see my sins present before me.

But not everyone takes account of the face of them, except the one who repents and wishes to flee from them.

He who sins and is himself ignorant of this very thing—that he is sinning—does not see the face of his own sins, does not see their shamefulness.

But he who attends to what he does and sees that he is carrying them out in transgression of the divine commandments, has the face of his sins manifest before him.

By 'bones' he does not at all mean those of the body, except according to the more lowly understanding, as was also said concerning flesh.

And it was said in the preceding passages:

All my bones shall say:

Lord, who is like you? If the bones say:

Lord, who is like you?—then they have received a notion of the Lord and, so to speak, of his form, so as to know that no one is like him.

The likeness and unlikeness with respect to God makes manifest the knowledge of God and true theology:

so that he does not speak concerning the bones of the body, but concerning the strong and vigorous doctrines of the soul and its powers.

For then the perceptible bodies are held together by the bones.

For it could not have sinews and veins and the other parts, unless it had bones.

'There is no peace in my bones' — when the powers of the soul follow along together, they are at peace.

When the spirited part does not rise in rebellion against the rational part, nor the appetitive part against the mind, then there is peace.

Again, if someone holds discordant doctrines — and most people hold such things —

they lay down one position and then bring forward another which overturns the first thing they had established.

And nearly all who have a confused understanding suffer from this.

But the wise man, and especially the one wise in God, must have concord in the powers of the inner man and in the things he holds to be true.

For in this way there is peace in his bones.

'For my iniquities have risen higher than my head.'

My iniquities, which ought to be beneath my feet and to be trodden down, have come to be above me and hold mastery over my mind.

In many places the head signifies the mind.

'The eyes of the wise man are in his head' — that is, in his mind.

This very one, then, who said this,

'The eyes of the wise man,' makes it plain by speaking of other matters elsewhere,

'He will enlighten his face' — by 'face' assuredly meaning the inner man, the mind.

They have become a heavy burden and drag me downward, when I ought to bear that burden which Jesus lays upon me and the yoke which He imposes.

For there is a worthless burden, as this very saying declares:

'A heavy burden — my iniquities have weighed heavily upon me.'

'Come, therefore,' He says, 'unto Me, for I will give you rest; I take the burdens off you and the loads that lie upon you.'

'For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.'

This burden lifts up the one who bears it and carries him aloft; this burden is winged.

But the burden of wickedness weighs downward and casts one down below.

'You shall sink like lead in mighty water.'

'Like a heavy burden they have weighed heavily upon me.'

And it is not for everyone to know that wickedness is a heavy burden, but only for one who has gained a perception of its grievousness.

It is then, indeed, that one of those bearing this burden grows weary — when he perceives the weight of wickedness.

And then he comes to Jesus.

But the one who takes delight in the burden of wickedness rather removes himself far from Jesus.

For this reason it is also said in Isaiah:

'Egypt has labored, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians, and the Sabeans, men of stature, shall pass over to you and shall be your servants, and they shall bow down before you, because God is in you, and there is no God besides you.'

Egypt labored then, when it gained a perception of the evils it was involved in through practicing idolatry and being occupied with curious follies — with augury, with necromancy, and with the demons that attend upon these.

But when it has no perception of these things, it does not labor.

The merchandise, then, of the Ethiopians — or the trading-places of the Ethiopians — labors at that time.

By 'Ethiopians' he means those who have been blackened in respect of the inner man.

In this way, indeed, the devil too is called in the Epistle of Barnabas and in the Shepherd 'the black one' — not according to the body, but as one darkened in his understanding, having come to be outside the splendor of the saints.

These Ethiopians, then, have merchandise or trading-places, wherein lies their commerce.

And then they grow weary, when they gain a perception of the evils they are in;

for as long as one takes pleasure in sinning, he does not grow weary.

'My wounds have grown foul and putrefied because of the face of my folly.'

I received wounds from the arrows of chastisement, or also from the fiery darts of the evil one;

for he too is said to have fiery arrows.

Whenever, then, someone receives scratches — that is, reasonings and imaginings of evils and impious deeds — he is in wounds.

But when these have grown larger and, having acquired a discharge, give off a stench, they thereupon also undergo putrefaction.

'My wounds, then, have grown foul and putrefied.'

But whence did I get the wounds, whence came their putrefaction? — 'Because of the face of my folly.'

Though I ought to have reproved myself for my folly and departed from it.

But someone falls into folly whenever he does not acquire prudence.

The stings of the reasonings and of the desires — these produce wounds.

And these ought to be treated quickly.

Someone has looked upon a woman with desire.

Let him treat it; let him halt the impulse at the stage of pre-passion.

For in this way the desire will neither give off a stench nor bring on putrefaction.

But the understanding, if it dwells upon these things, brings on both putrefaction and a foul and unpleasant odor.

Whenever one does not have this prudence, so as to know what ought to be done and what not — the things of mixed character, the so-called 'indifferent' matters — he is in folly.

And folly nourishes and strengthens those sins which seemed to be small, so that they are compared to mere wounds, and it becomes a foul stench and putrefaction.

But take the foulness and the putrefaction in a way corresponding to the substance concerning which the discourse is.

For nothing bodily is meant here;

for many fools are healthy and have strong bodies.

'I have become wretched and bowed down utterly, to the very end.'

Distressing and painful things often bring on wretchedness.

And indeed the body itself also makes wretched the one who is burdened by it.

This is the thought which the apostolic expression suggests, which runs thus:

'...of this death?' For since I am in the body of death, I am wretched, and no ordinary one will bring me out of such wretchedness, but the Savior.

'I give thanks through Jesus Christ,' who set me free from the body.

We say, then, that wretchedness comes to be in the soul from the body of death.

We do not take it absolutely that the body is a body of death, but rather that such-and-such a body is.

Whenever someone uses this body so as to commit the sins that lead to death, he is thereupon clothed with a body of death.

But it is possible to make it not a body of death;

for whenever I separate from it the things that make it a body of death, it is no longer a body of death.

And just as this sensible body has both an underlying matter and a form of the body, and it is possible to separate this body from the coarse body,

When it takes on only the three dimensions apart from matter, this body is not a substance.

In these ready-to-hand examples, then, whenever it is said, as it were:

'colour in a body' — and therefore in some particular body — by saying 'colour in a body' he showed that this 'body' signifies the visible thing, the thing we touch.

But when he says that body is one species of quantity, he does not mean this.

For how can a substance be the species of a genus that is substance? Hence 'body' is used equivocally.

For the one is conceived according to the three dimensions apart from matter,

and this is the quantitative body;

for in the case of that which is joined to matter, we do not take the dimensions alone, apart from the underlying substance, but together with it.

This latter is another kind of body.

The body, then, belongs to death whenever its operations and movements come to pass in a sinful manner.

It is therefore possible to separate this from the body.

When I take an eye that does not look harmfully, that does not look adulterously, I have removed the eye of death from the substance.

And if this comes about in every member and in every sense, the body of death is cast off.

We do not cast off the body, but that which belongs to death.

And if we see a base man changed into an earnest one, we say that the base man has perished — not the man.

Wickedness bears downward; it bends down the one who possesses it;

for great burdens, ever pressing upon a man, drag down and bend down the one who carries them.

So then, straightway, of that woman who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years, he says that:

she was bent together and could not lift herself up at all.

She never raised herself upward.

So the one who sins is bent together and looks downward.

'They have set their eyes to bow down to the earth.'

And again in Jeremiah it is said:

'Let those who depart be written upon the earth.'

Those who have departed from the divine fountain are written down, are enrolled as citizens of the earth, as having their commonwealth below and bearing the image of the man of dust.

But the names of the disciples are written in the heavens.

He does not mean these appellations composed of syllables, but their own proper qualities that signify their soul and mind; for the definition of a name is rendered thus:

a name is a summary appellation representative of the quality of the thing named.

This, on the other hand, is the common (generic) naming: 'man,' 'heaven.'

'They are written down,' then, means: they were enrolled/set in order.

'All the day long I went about with a downcast countenance.'

Even if I have been bowed down utterly by the misery that besets me, yet I am not without feeling of it.

So then I go about downcast, working the godly grief, the repentance unto salvation not to be repented of.

And thus, downcast, I go about all the day long.

He does not remain flung down on his face, but goes forward.

He did not sink his seat deep into the earth, nor lay his back upon the ground, but goes forward.

'Downcast, then, I went about.'

I was working those things that were transferring me out of my misery.

And I am then transferred out of the misery, if I put away the causes of the misery.

'For my soul has been filled with mockeries.'

My soul has been filled with transgressions.

And the 'mockeries' are the transgressions.

In some copies it stands: 'my loins.'

It is said that the seeds are formed in the region of these.

So whenever anyone is dragged down into licentiousness and is more eager to be a lover of pleasure than a lover of God, he has his loins filled with mockeries.

'And there is no healing in my flesh.'

In so far as I am filled with these mockeries, not only is my flesh not sound, but, having fallen sick and being in such a condition, it does not receive healing.

Just as it is impossible for one who is perceptibly sick, while still in the state of sickness, to recover health, so the one filled with mockeries cannot make his flesh peaceable — that is, chaste, or not at strife with itself.

'I was afflicted and humbled exceedingly.'

He is able to speak of a voluntary affliction and humbling.

Since I became aware of the swelling of wickedness, of the harm, and of the conceit, I of my own choice led myself round to humility, that I might be exalted;

for everyone who humbles himself shall be exalted.

One must understand the affliction and the humbling as parallel.

And it comes about voluntarily then, when, as I said, that which was exalted humbles itself, so that it may be exalted by God.

By reason of the toils that beset me and the heavy burdens, I was humbled, I was afflicted exceedingly.

I had my affliction intensified.

'I roared from the groaning of my heart.'

Not feignedly bewailing the evils that beset me, but from the groaning of my heart;

understanding wherefore I ought to groan, I groaned.

'And all my desire is before you.'

The righteous man ever has longing and yearning for the virtues and for the things praiseworthily done.

So it is said concerning the righteous man:

'Every desire of the righteous is good.'

And good things have the boldness to be in the presence of God.

'Before you,' then — that is, 'in your presence' — is all my desire.

Here, then, one must take my desire as the praiseworthy kind — the sort it is, and concerning which this same one says:

'Bless the Lord, O my soul, who fills your desire with good things.'

All such desires of the righteous, then, being full of holy boldness, are before God.

But it is also possible to take the expression according to the other sense of 'desire.'

For this reason I was humbled and bowed down exceedingly, for this reason I lament and my groaning comes from soul and heart: since I knew that every base desire I had is manifest to you, and no desire is outside your presence.

But what lies before is rather more comely.

'And my groaning was not hidden from Thee.'

Having a good desire and yearning to dwell among things good and in virtue, insofar as I see myself falling short, I groan.

And this groaning arises from a desire for beauty, from the expectation of what is better.

Even if I often escape the notice of the many when I groan—so that I may not seem to be putting on airs or, forsooth, to be making a show of repentance—yet my groaning is before Thee, it was not hidden from Thee.

The Egyptians, at any rate, oppressed the Hebrews.

When the sons of Israel took pleasure in the works of the Egyptians, their groaning was hidden from the face of God.

But when they began to groan over those works, when they perceived that the works of Pharaoh were dragging them down and were earthly and were rather setting them outside of God, then they groaned, and their groaning was not hidden from God;

for straightway He set them free.

But while they were taking pleasure, they were held fast there and did not obtain freedom.

This groaning corresponds to the grief that works repentance unto salvation.

But other than this is the grief of the world, which works death.

If, then, you see a man groaning because he does not obtain what he desires—even should those things be base—this groaning is destructive.

'My heart was troubled, my strength failed me.'

When the heart is troubled—that is, the mind—then strength departs far off.

And strength is that which corresponds to peace and to the steadfastness of the heart.

He is meek and lowly in heart; He does not have a troubled heart;

and he who imitates Jesus is outside all disturbance.

And as long as he does not have this disturbance, strength abides with him, so that he can say:

'I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me,' and:

'I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength.'

'And the light of mine eyes, even it is not with me.'

The light of mine eyes has become far from me.

And the light of the true eyes, of those that see keenly, is the knowledge of the truth;

'Enlighten for yourselves the light of knowledge.'

That the discourse is not about these eyes nor about sensible light, hear him who says:

'The commandment of the Lord is radiant, enlightening the eyes.'

Assuredly the keeping of the radiant commandment enlightens the eyes of the inner man;

for there are many who see keenly and yet are transgressors of the commandment of the Lord, while others keep it, and though beset by it are dim in their sight.

It is by no means, then, concerning the bodily eyes that it is said:

'And the light of mine eyes is not with me.'

It forsook me, since I myself turned away from it, since I did not keep it abiding with me.

'My heart was troubled, my strength failed me.'

Whenever the reasoning faculty undergoes disturbance, strength becomes far off;

for when the understanding is robust and the mind exact, strength is present to him who is thus disposed, so that he can say:

'I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me.'

'I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength.'

But one is forsaken by this strength if he undergoes disturbance in the heart, if he entertains troublesome thoughts.

Wherefore one must take heed not to give place to the devil who insinuates disturbances, that our strength may abide and we may be able to say:

'The Lord is my strength and my song, and He is become my salvation.'

'And the light of mine eyes is not with me.'

Whenever the heart is troubled, the strength that corresponds to the heart also forsakes it, and the light itself is not with him who has suffered these things;

for one must sow unto righteousness and reap unto the fruit of life, so as to enlighten for ourselves the light of knowledge.

Whenever, therefore, the heart is troubled, both the strength that empowers the inner man becomes far off, and the very light of the eyes that enlightens the inner man forsakes him who has surrendered himself to darkness and ignorance.

'My friends and my neighbours drew near over against me and stood.'

Such things come to pass in times of adversity.

Job too, at any rate, when he was in adversity, spoke such things:

'My friends have become unmerciful; they knew strangers rather than me.'

And in the books of Wisdom it is written that friends are present only then, and display and demand the offices of friends, when he whom they profess to love is in prosperity.

But whenever his affairs, his outward circumstances, come into some reversal, then those friends become far off.

For there are three kinds of friendship.

There is the friendship according to the thing itself, when nothing else is pursued than beauty or virtue.

But if it be for the sake of something—say, wealth—

this friendship, when those things are absent, will also cease, friendship and all.

And this is said to be friendship of the second kind.

It comes about for the sake of the useful.

And there is a third kind of friendship, that of the pleasant.

Many have delighted to be friends of monks, not that they might be monks, but that they might say:

'The solitaries love me.'

And others are friends of the rich, expecting nothing from them, but sometimes even bestowing gifts upon them.

By parallelism one may call the neighbour a friend, or the friend a neighbour.

And so 'they that are near' are those according to kinship by marriage, and 'my brethren' those according to blood-relationship.

And is this to be taken of bodily matters?—But if you should take it spiritually—for there are also friends and kinsmen according to the spirit—consider:

whenever someone diminishes himself and is no longer such as he was, those whom he had before as friends become estranged from him, because he has become less than himself, not to say that he has become base;

for what follows is no longer told as concerning a base man or by a base man.

He who has wholly troubled his heart is not utterly cast out;

'they that have destroyed their heart.'

And the heart is destroyed whenever the intellection comes to be outside its proper condition.

And it is troubled if it has any confusion.

It comes about that I am troubled from taking in reasonings and thoughts that are not fitting.

They drew near from the opposite side and took their stand.

Not as comrades, not as friends, not that they might be united with me, but from the opposite side, that being present they might set themselves against me.

I have found the like observation both in Zechariah and in the hundred and eighth psalm.

Concerning Judas it is said:

Let an adversary stand at his right hand.

But concerning Joshua the great priest, the son of Jozadak:

The adversary was standing at his right hand to oppose him.

And observe that at the right hand both of Judas and of Joshua the great priest — most pure and holy — the adversary was standing.

But in the case of Joshua it is said:

He stood so as to be an adversary to his right-hand deeds, to war against him — because Joshua accomplishes what is to be done rightly and has such a disposition.

In the case of Judas, the adversary has already seized his right-hand things beforehand.

In these things he has given the devil a standing-place against him.

And here too they stood from the opposite side.

For this reason they drew near, that they might plunder and throw into confusion.

And those nearest to me stood afar off.

There are two kinds of friends; there are two dispositions of neighbours.

When those who were formerly enemies become pretended friends and speak in riddles, they do this in order that they may set themselves in opposition.

And that I may take an illustration from the catechetical Shepherd's teaching, I say:

There are two angels with a man, and the one suggests evil things, but the other good things; and the one belongs to righteousness, but the other to unrighteousness.

If, then, the angel of unrighteousness, who suggests evil things, comes near, the good angel withdraws; and again, when that one draws near, this wicked one is set at variance —

for opposites cannot coexist, the good and the evil.

For the evil is active whenever the good is far off.

But if it were the person of the Saviour that speaks these things, He can say:

Far off have become those who once were my friends, my sons, whom I begot and exalted.

Having set me aside, they have become far off.

But those from among the nations who have believed, having become friends, are henceforth near, and stand opposite me — in the sense of face to face with me.

For we no longer take 'opposite' as 'adversary', but as 'facing', 'before the face'.

And those who sought my soul used force, and those who sought evils for me spoke vanities.

No one of those who love my soul does violence to it, but rather draws near to it, or becomes one with it.

But the others use force, and, seeking evils against the one whom they compel, they speak vanity — nothing profitable, nothing that contributes to the knowledge of the truth, but rather about vain things.

For all wicked and base things are vain, and so are the temporal things, which are things seen and contemptible and most easily circumscribed and perishing.

One must seek the soul profitably.

But from the fact that they cleave to those who seek my soul and force evils upon it, it is plain that they are base.

He who welcomes the sinning soul unto repentance, and leads back to it the soul that has strayed from the truth, seeks the soul in a praiseworthy and profitable way.

The Saviour, indeed, has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

He, in seeking the soul, seeks it that He may lead it unto salvation, that He may restore it according to its former condition.

As, then, the Saviour does this through instruction and through bringing it to perfection in the good, so also the disciples of the Saviour, and indeed angels and men, do this.

And none of these, in seeking the soul, speaks vanity; none seeks evils for it, but rather good and profitable things.

And deceits they meditated all the day long.

Their whole life they meditated crooked things:

for how should they not? They had crooked reasonings that separate from God, and their heart had become crooked and twisted, which the holy man prays not to possess, saying:

A twisted heart did not cleave to me.

He meditates crooked things all the day long — works and thoughts in accord with his crooked reasonings.

These crooked reasonings, then, are put into the soul by the devil.

Assuredly, then, it is said also in other places:

All the crooked things shall be made straight.

The crooked things receive straightness whenever they cast off their crookedness.

But he who meditates this crookedness all the day long has both crooked works and a crooked purpose and a perverted disposition.

But I, like a deaf man, did not hear, and like a mute man who does not open his mouth.

He sets forth his own praise.

Let the penitent, if the devil suggests to him wicked or crooked reasonings, not hear them, like one who is deaf; let him not attend to them, let him not lend to them the hearing of the inner man, but let him be as one mute, as one deaf who does not open his mouth.

By 'deaf' here he means not the one who has lost his hearing, but the one who does not speak.

For often, and especially in Scripture, this meaning is applied to the one who cannot speak:

When the demon had been cast out, he says, the mute man spoke.

Yet I do not say that this word does not also signify one deprived of hearing.

Again, God said to Moses, who had said:

I am feeble of voice and slow of tongue; and He said:

Who gave a mouth to man to speak, and who made the hard of hearing or the deaf, the seeing and the blind? Here 'deaf' can apply both to one who cannot speak and to one who has been deprived of hearing.

'When the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke' — here 'mute' signifies the one who has no organs of speech, the one who has no functioning tongue.

I became like a man who does not hear, and who has no reproofs in his mouth.

I did not become a man who does not hear, but as a man who does not hear.

I did not receive the words and the reports of those who dealt deceitfully, even though I was able to refute them.

Knowing that reproofs are not brought forward opportunely against such a person, I kept silent, as though unable to refute him.

The word shows that both rebukes and refutations ought to be made at the fitting time.

And we grasp the fitting moment from the opponent and the one conversing with us.

Just as nourishment given at the right time is beneficial and effective, but offered at the wrong time harms rather than helps.

Do not rebuke the wicked, lest they hate you.

The word does not teach the avoidance of being hated by the base, but says this:

he who administers reproof at an inopportune time — for there is a reproof that is not seasonable — does not benefit that one who is reproved, but rather makes him even more base, so that he even hates the one reproving him.

Rebuke, then, a wise man, and he will love you.

If the wise man, when reproved, loves the one who offers him reproofs, it is plain that the one who hates reproof is a base fellow.

It has, at any rate, been said in another place as well:

An uninstructed man will not love those who reprove him, and he will not consort with the wise.

The uninstructed man does not love those who reprove him at all, whereas the wise man desires this.

Nothing of what the wise man says belongs to the evil man who hates those who reprove him.

'And having no reproofs in his mouth' — the word 'to reprove' is said in two senses.

Often a man is unable to reprove.

He does not have such boldness, nor such power of speech, as to reprove, and he pretends not to hear.

For instance, some heretic is present.

He utters godless doctrines, heretical opinions.

If we are unable to refute the things said by him, we are reckoned as men who do not hear.

For to hear such discourses disturbs a man more than it profits him.

Evil communications corrupt good manners.

If someone possessing a good character knows this very thing about himself, that he cannot stand firm against evil communications, he ought not to lend an ear, but to become as one deaf.