Commentary on the Psalms 1 part 26/34

But another, who has the ability to refute the most shameful discourses, does not do so, when he knows that for the present it is of no benefit to that man to be reproved.

For I was saying that, just as foods are administered by medical art at the fitting moment, so too are the remedies of the soul.

And what sort of things are the remedies of the soul? Such as these, for instance:

Reprove, rebuke, exhort.

When you have made the sinner manifest through reproving, rebuke him.

And when you have again rebuked, having sufficiently administered the rebuke, exhort him.

Let remedies of the soul succeed remedies.

It is not for just any chance person to know these things, but for one who understands the healing of the soul.

'For upon you, O Lord, have I hoped;'

'You will hearken, O Lord my God.'

Since I have hoped in you, do you hearken to me.

I take courage that all things on my part which are able to be supplied to that man will be supplied.

For this reason, taking courage in you who are greater and who know how to reprove and whom one ought to reprove, I kept silent; I became as one deaf, having no reproofs in my mouth.

Since I have hoped in you, do you hearken to me;

For having become deaf and mute toward that man, and having no reproofs in my mouth, I cried out to you in my mind.

This is likewise seen to have happened in the Exodus, in the time of Moses, when Pharaoh pursued with all his power and his army, and the Hebrews were in a manner hemmed in, so that they could not cross over any farther.

Pharaoh's army was pursuing, and the tyrant himself; and the Hebrews, the sons of Israel, were being pursued.

And the one side were armed and carrying every kind of full armor, with military might, both cavalry and infantry.

But the others, for this very reason, were unarmed as to their hands, holding only staffs.

They were hemmed in and could no longer advance any farther;

For they could not run far off, since the sea barred them, nor turn back to the right or to the other side.

It would have meant falling once more into the hands of their enemies.

So, as though taken in some cage or caught within hunting-nets, the Hebrews writhed in agony and grew indignant with Moses, saying:

Was not this the word which we spoke to you in Egypt?

Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians; and behold, we are perishing in this wilderness.

The commander, Moses himself, spoke words of exhortation:

Take courage and stand firm and see the salvation which is from the Lord, which he will work for you today;

For in the manner in which you have seen the Egyptians, you shall never again see them any more, unto everlasting time.

Such things the commander had to say, so as not to cast the people into faintheartedness;

Nor indeed did he send up his prayer openly.

For those men would have supposed that he too had despaired of salvation.

But he spoke the things that encourage, while to God he cried the things belonging to the mind.

And that God might show that it is not by chance if help should come, he says:

Why do you cry out to me? To God he cried in the silent manner, but he spoke words of encouragement.

For it is a great evil, when some terrible thing is impending, that even the commander should writhe as in convulsions.

Lest ever my enemies rejoice over me.

For this reason I kept silent and became as one deaf and as one having no reproofs, lest, if I had ventured these things, they, becoming the stronger, should rejoice over me and mock against me.

For this reason the Apostle also says:

Do not do this thing, lest Satan rejoice over you through your guilelessness.

Therefore that one rejoices over the man who is being harmed.

I will exalt you, O Lord, for you have taken me up and have not made my enemies to rejoice over me.

For if you had not taken me up, when I was not exalting you rightly nor in the manner one ought, those men would have rejoiced over me.

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy, because I have fallen;

You rejoice over my fall, but know that I shall rise again.

So when I stand up, your joy is turned into mourning, and the mocking songs are changed into lamentations.

And when my feet were shaken, they spoke great things against me.

If there should be even a shaking of my feet, they utter great boasts against me.

Since my heart was troubled within me, and my strength forsook me, and the light of my eyes is not with me, my feet were shaken, yet indeed they did not fall.

That such things befall those who most of all repent, one may learn also from another psalm:

God is good to those who are upright in heart.

But as for me, my feet were almost shaken; my steps had well-nigh slipped, because I was envious at the lawless.

It is the character of one repenting.

The things which the repentant character says are not proclaimed from the disposition of one who merely feigns repentance;

I knew that, inasmuch as God is good, the God of Israel does what he does for those who are upright in heart.

But I, who am still unstable — he next brings in the one repenting — I was well-nigh shaken and fell.

And I speak an apostolic word in harmony with this:

We know that the law is spiritual — we the perfect, the disciples of the Spirit, who have received the divine and spiritual law.

But I am carnal, sold under sin.

The one who knows that the law is spiritual is not himself carnal, sold under sin.

For he distinguished himself from those others.

'We know that the law is spiritual' — he speaks quite generally concerning the saints.

But I am carnal, sold under sin.

And indeed this very brief phrase suggests many teachings.

It is not by nature, nor by my original constitution, that I am such, but by having been sold under sin.

But one who has been sold to become the property of some master is not carnal by nature;

for it was out of the sale that this present condition of his came about.

How good is God to Israel, to those who are upright in heart!

But as for me, my feet — those of the soul, evidently — were almost shaken.

And this word 'almost' shows that he was not shaken at all completely;

'I was almost slain' shows that he was not slain.

My steps had well nigh been poured out.

I was running well, I was walking as I ought, I was taking straight steps.

But these came within a little of being poured out.

Now they are 'poured out' whenever the runner draws back and turns to what lies behind.

And consider it from the very wording itself:

Picture for me someone climbing up to a high, sandy place.

So then, having seen the shaking of my feet, and while as yet there was no fall upon me, they spoke great swelling words; they uttered speeches of arrogance.

Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy, because I have fallen;

but he who speaks here did not fall at all — only his feet were shaken;

for if the one who has fallen rises up and leaves the enemy's malicious joy behind, much more does the one who did not even fall.

It is easier to stand and steady one's feet when one is shaken than to rise up after having fallen.

If then the difficult thing does come about, much more is the easy thing quickly accomplished.

For I am ready for scourges.

Even though I have come into agitation, and my strength has forsaken me, and the light of my eyes was not with me, and my feet were shaken, yet I am ready for scourges;

for I do not decline to be scourged by You, since You chastise me as a beloved son.

Do not make light of the Lord's discipline;

for whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.

Since therefore I am a son, even if I have gathered upon myself the causes of scourges, yet I decline to be boasted over by those enemies — their boasting, as though they were overthrowing me.

But I am ready to be scourged by You.

And my pain is ever before me.

I am in pain because I have come at all to be among those who bear punishment, among those who bear scourges.

The one who grieves the godly grief — the grief that brings repentance unto salvation — has his pain ever before himself.

Just as one who has a dead body and mourns over it weeps as long as he sees it, so the one who has come among things that bring pain, as long as he beholds them, laments and weeps, and has the pain ever before himself continually.

Take, for example, someone who has fallen into an incurable disease;

from the anguish of this disease he has pain before him.

But if some physician, or the help of God, should remove the malady that is the cause of the pain, at once he casts off the pain and says:

You have turned my mourning into joy for me.

The Lord heard and had mercy on me.

They mourned to such a degree that those who had come to comfort them wept along with them.

'Lazarus, come forth' — and the mourning was cast off; they no longer grieved.

Indeed, thanksgiving banquets were even held when He had spoken, and Lazarus was one of those reclining at table.

As long as I have the causes of the pain, I have it continually before me.

If therefore You, having heard, apply the scourges profitably as a painful remedy, then, being healed, I am no longer in pain.

For I will declare my iniquity.

In declaring my iniquity I do not hide the pain;

for I am ever remembering and going over the anguish, keeping in mind that I have come to be in it.

And I will declare it not merely in such a way, but so as to be willing to find the one who will heal it.

I will indeed be anxious concerning my sin.

Not everyone who sins is anxious concerning his sin.

Cain sinned and heard the word;

if he had kept quiet, he would have been anxious concerning his sin — how he might cast it off and no longer put it into effect, by no longer being fixed in a disposition according to it.

'And I will be anxious concerning my sin.'

In parallel fashion, 'iniquity' and 'sin' can here be spoken of interchangeably.

Concerning this, John writes in his epistle, saying:

Everyone who commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.

So then I will be anxious concerning my iniquity, which is sin.

I will indeed proclaim it; I do not hide it; I do not wait for what may convict me from outside; I do not wait for another to say to me:

'The righteous man is his own accuser in his opening statement,' it says;

as it is when the adversary sets upon one, he is convicted.

Speak your sins first, that you may be justified.

Do not wait for the accuser.

One must accuse oneself in one's opening statement;

for if this comes about, that other one is thereafter put to shame, since you were anxious concerning your sin — how you might no longer put it into effect.

But my enemies live and have grown mighty over me.

For this reason I call upon You as helper; for this reason I have made myself ready to be scourged by You.

Since therefore it is out of my sinning and having iniquity that they live and have grown mighty over me — for they are nourished by my wickedness — for this reason, do for me the things which I ask:

For I am anxious concerning my sin.

Scourge me, then; apply the painful remedies, that I may be healed.

For then at last those enemies become weaker than I, and are crushed beneath my feet.

For Jesus alone is able to crush Satan beneath the feet of the saints.

And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.

So long, then, as neither he himself nor those who belong to him has yet been crushed, they live on.

And those who hate me unjustly have multiplied.

Yet it is great praise, that he was hated not justly.

For instance, if someone should hate another as proud when he is not proud, but rather is altogether free of vanity, he hates him unjustly.

The elders who conspired against Susanna hated her because they could not overcome her.

This hatred is unjust.

The Egyptian woman hated Joseph.

This hatred is unjust.

They slandered me, because I was pursuing righteousness.

For no one who justly pursues what is just and follows hard after righteousness—here the word 'pursued' does not mean to pursue with hatred, but signifies to follow after in quest of it.

Seek peace and pursue it.

And they cast me, the beloved, away as a loathsome corpse.

I wrought good things toward them, and I ought to have received good in return for good from them.

But they rendered me evil in place of good, insensible of the evils they are in; and consider with what disposition I am toward them—such a one as does not rejoice with them in their evils, but loves them and desires to set them free from their evils.

The beloved—me, who ought to have been loved—they cast off as a loathsome corpse; they fled from me as from a stinking dead body.

And it is well said 'the beloved,' not 'the one being loved.'

O my God, depart not from me.

Even if they themselves have forsaken me because I was pursuing righteousness, yet do not you forsake me, be not far from me.

Now God forsakes a person when he is worthy to suffer painful things.

But I do not mean this—that God in this way puts him to the test of painful things.

He is not forsaken; rather, it is when, while enduring painful things, he is overcome and cast down.

Then you do not forsake me, when you do not depart from me.

I have cleaved to you; I have become one spirit with you.

When I so abide, I have you present with me.

If anyone cleaves to the Lord, the Lord also cleaves to him.

My soul has cleaved close behind you.

Attend to my help, O Lord of my salvation.

You depart from me if I sin, not if I am hated unjustly, nor if certain persons speak arrogantly against me.

And you are both Lord and God of my salvation.

But salvation does not touch the flesh, nor is it found among outward things, but concerns the soul itself.

This is what is called eternal salvation.

For he—Christ, that is—became eternal salvation to all who obey him.

The salvation of the flesh is not eternal—that which physicians provide, that by which a pilot preserves those who sail with him.

For after a little while these too will die again.

But the salvation of God is eternal; he himself is their salvation.

I will guard my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.

In Ezra and in the Book of Remains, mention is made of each name of those who lead the singing.

And so this one too is one of them, and either he himself composed the psalm for David, or, taking one that came from David, he delivered it.

It is the task of the sacred psalmists to recite the psalms, both those they themselves composed and those that others put together.

This, then, is a song of victory.

Very often the sinner has things that trouble him, but after he has conquered and trodden it down and brought it under his hand, he sends up the song.

For no one, while still fighting and being fought against, sings a victory song, but only when he has already conquered.

So, for instance, Moses and all the Jewish multitude spoke the song of victory not when they were still contending against Pharaoh, but when they saw him sunk beneath the waves.

Let us sing to the Lord, for he has been gloriously glorified.

The horse and its rider he cast into the sea.

When the horse and its rider were cast into the sea, and God cast Pharaoh's chariots and his host into the Red Sea, then fittingly was the song of victory sent up.

And David likewise in the seventeenth psalm.

On the day when he delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul, then he said:

I will love you, O Lord my strength, and the rest that the song contains.

A prayer before the battle and during the battle, but a victory hymn and song after the war is ended, after the enemies have been taken captive.

I will guard my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.

The beginning of nearly every sin of action comes from a word.

Toward the youth who was ensnared, the harlot who is personified in the Proverbs—whether she is a woman, or false glory, or some deceit—was able, beginning from words, to catch him.

She led him astray with much talk, or with wheedling flattery.

And with the snares of her lips she drove him upon the rocks.

And observe indeed that the beginning of the sin was a word.

And the elders too, who raged against Susanna, set a word in motion toward her.

So when someone does not sin with the tongue, he well accomplishes his ways.

For I said that the beginning of these ways is a word.

And conversely again, the beginning of all good works is a word.

But it is not concerning those ways that he speaks for the present.

That I sin not with my tongue.

But to sin with the tongue and to speak are not the same thing.

My tongue shall meditate on your righteousness.

The beginning of your words is truth.

The reason for my speaking your words is that it is your truth.

This I will make manifest, if I come to know it.

Therefore, of the good ways too, the truth is the beginning, the cause.

But in the case of the forbidden ways, from which one must guard oneself and from which it is fitting to turn aside, the word is the beginning, as has already been said.

I set a guard upon my mouth.

He calls to mind how he said that he would not sin with his tongue:

I set a guard within my mouth.

For since by one's words a man is justified and by his words he is condemned, one must set a guard about the mouth, so that thus I may say some things and not others—that we may speak what is beneficial and keep silent about what is harmful.

For no one can at the same time utter words that justify and words that condemn.

Something of this sort is said enigmatically in the Proverbs:

Death and life are in the hand of the tongue.

Now the hand of the tongue is the word, the activity of the tongue.

He who speaks what is beneficial and what leads into the kingdom has life in his tongue.

But he who speaks the opposite and the forbidden things has death in his word, which is named a tongue.

And in another Scripture it says:

For your words make a balance and a weight.

One must speak with measure; one must have a balance and cast one's words upon each pan of the scale.

And if the upright words weigh down the scale, it is fitting to choose those and proclaim them, but to turn away from the base ones.

The lips of the wise are bound by discernment.

Whenever someone speaks with discernment, his lips are bound; he does not open them to every word, but only to what is beneficial.

I will open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.

He whose lips are bound by discernment, having perceived that what he is about to say is beneficial, opened them.

But whenever what is uttered is harmful, he closes and binds his lips by discernment; he binds the word.

When the sinner stood over against me, I was made dumb and was humbled and kept silence from good things.

Often the sinner, appearing, provokes and calls one out toward the things dear to himself.

Whenever, then, he stands over against us, his standing over against us comes about because of us.

For if we do not give him place, he cannot stand over against us.

And to stand over against us means thus to make war at close quarters.

For it was on this account that the serpent, standing over against Eve, provoked her word and did her harm.

But he ought to have kept silence, and, taking perception of his own weakness or of a preceding sin, to have said nothing to him, but to have kept silence from good things.

And 'to keep silence from good things' does not mean not to speak good things, but to have a silence that is derived from good things and thoughtfully conceived.

For example, having taken up the virtue of a chaste man, I knew that I ought not to answer out of what is good—that is, out of temperance.

I kept silence toward that which appeared at close quarters and provoked to sin.

If, therefore, that young man had made no reply out of right understanding to the harlot, he would not have been led astray by much conversation, nor caught in the snares of his own lips.

I kept silence, therefore, when there came upon me the good things that persuaded me not to answer that one.

I kept silence—not that I might not speak good things, but that I might not speak the things that provoke.

And this silence came to me from the understanding of the good things that hinder such conversation.

There is one who by keeping silence is found wise.

He who keeps silence in this way is found wise.

And it is indeed a wise thing to know to whom one ought to speak and to whom not, and when to bring forth words and when not.

There is, then, one who by keeping silence is found wise; and there is another who keeps silence because he has no answer.

And even this latter has some measure of quiet prudence.

For, knowing that he has no answer, he keeps quiet.

And there is one who keeps silence because he knows the right time.

And my pain was renewed.

Then is the pain renewed, when the sinner stands over against one.

He came to be in recollection of the things he had done, over which he must feel pain.

And, as it were, the pain took on a renewal.

Now inauguration is to dwell in a house for the first time.

Renewal, then, is to bring what has already withered and lies dormant back into bloom.

My pain, therefore, was renewed.

My pain, then, was renewed.

And it is a blessed thing for the one who has sinned to come to be in a renewal of pain, and not of pleasure.

For he who rejoices over what he has done, and again brings it forth into the open, renews it.

But he who feels pain, having perceived that he must guard his ways and must not sin with the tongue, renews his pain by weeping and grieving with the godly grief that works repentance.

In the very act of coming to a change of mind, he feels pain that he came to be in such things at all.

My heart grew warm within me.

My heart, as it were, took on a warmth, even from the renewal of the pain.

But he can also say this:

Since I laid hold of myself vehemently and lament and bewail my pain, my heart grew warm, it became fiery.

Indeed, in my very meditation a fire was kindled, consuming and burning me up.

For there were grass and wood and the rest.

Not only in being brought to perfection do I have this fire that consumes the things like grass, but also in the very meditating upon my pain.

In some people the heart is warmed to such a degree that the warmth passes over even to outward things.

Those, at any rate, who marry and burn do not have the heart warmed within, but, having passed over to outward things, it has its conflagration there.

I was troubled and did not speak.

He who has some disturbance in his mind or in his reasonings, and does nothing in accordance with the disturbance of the reasonings, nor says anything, has been troubled and yet has not spoken.

Such a one has his heart warmed within.

And in my meditation a fire shall be kindled.

And thus in each one of us two men are constituted, of whom the one is outward and the other inward.

When, therefore, a disturbance arises in the soul, and one does not transfer that disturbance to the outer man, but keeps it within so as to condemn it and weep it away, one holds the heart warmed within—not that he may act upon it, but that he may not act.

'In my meditation a fire is kindled.'

In the speech, action, and thought of others there is kindled a fire that touches them and sets them ablaze.

'Their heart was kindled like an oven of fire.'

Here the meditation blazed up like a fire, having beneath it combustible material as fuel.

But the meditation and the fervent, fiery warmth of the holy man is that which is produced by the seething Spirit.

The fire is therefore kindled that it may accomplish something, not that it may harm and consume.

'Was not our heart burning within us on the way, while he opened the Scriptures to us?' This burning is praiseworthy.

Consider also the case of things wrought by craft:

some things are heated in order to be reshaped and passed into a vessel—gold, silver.

But if wood or something else is set on fire, the heat is destructive.

Even though I did not let it come outside, but keeping it within me it wrought in me a burning from my meditation, yet at length I spoke with my tongue:

'Make me to know, O Lord, my end.'

From my own tongue I said this:

for a tongue that is according to the nature of him who possesses it is this:

for example, the chaste man, speaking the things of chastity, speaks with his own tongue—the tongue of the chaste—not with the tongue of the man in general.

And the man who seeks to learn his own end and brings the inquiry to God does so with my tongue—not with that of the deceitful man, but with mine, the tongue of me who desires to know my end; with such a tongue I spoke.

This word of mine is not feigned.

When some hypocrite speaks about chastity while not being chaste, he does not speak with his own tongue.

But the chaste man, when he sets forth discourses concerning chastity, speaks with the tongue of the chaste.

No hypocrite, then, speaks with the tongue that is according to nature, but with the counterfeit one.

The wolf, when clothed in a sheep's skin he approaches the flock of Christ, speaks not with his own tongue, but imitates the voice of the sheep, that meeting like with like, as it were, he may do harm.

'Make me to know, O Lord, my end, and the number of my days, what it is.'

Observe that it is the person of one repenting who says these things.

When the sinner stood over against me and provoked me, I received good things in my mind that persuaded me not to speak to him.

Since I saw myself falling short in many things—for I had scarcely begun to make progress—: 'Make me to know, O Lord, my end,' that I may know how much time of life is left me, whether it is sufficient for me to be perfected and fulfilled.

So indeed another also said:

'Declare to me the fewness of my days;'

'Take me not away in the midst of my days.'

In a certain manner I am in the half of the days that come from the holy light.

'Fulfil, therefore, my days.'

God fulfils the days of certain people not by granting them an increase:

'With length of days will I fill him'—said of the righteous—we do not mean by this that He makes him long-lived.

There are also ungodly men who have lived many years.

'And the number of my days.'

He is also able to say of the number of my days that:

'You have enlightened me much; I have come to be in days;'

for each enlightenment is a day.

'Make known to me, therefore, the number of my enlightenments, that I may know what I lack.'

It is as if someone, having conceived a longing for an art or a science, but not yet having attained perfect knowledge of the discipline, should say:

'Reveal to me what are the luminous parts of the science, that I may know which I possess and which I lack.'

It is a blessed thing to have countable matters and works and thoughts—things worthy of being counted.

Indeed, at any rate, concerning the harlot it is said:

'Innumerable are those whom you have slain.'

It does not by any means mean this, that they are infinite, but that they are not worthy of being counted.

They are reckoned in no account or number.

If I learn the number of my days and my end—until when it draws near—I come to know in what things I am deficient, what are the things I have not yet learned.

Those, therefore, who instil a longing for knowledge, more comprehensively, at the very outset tell them the theorems that have been grasped, so that they may both know how much they lack and conceive a longing to succeed and to take it up.

'Behold, you have made my days as spans.'

The former reading, the more common one, is this:

'You have made my days old.'

'I am not young or newly formed, not now beginning to live, but you have made my days old.'

Always what is coming on makes old what has gone before.

So indeed laws too are made old.

The old days which I had, when I lived according to the old man, have been made old, they have passed away.

The superficial reader, however, will say that:

'Make known to me the end, when I shall die.'

'Behold, you have made my days as spans (palaistas).'

Since the word 'palaistes' is a homonym—for it signifies both one contending in wrestling (a wrestler) and also indicates a certain measure—it is possible to take it in both senses.

'You have set my days to be in wrestling and to contend:'

for we always have those who war against us.

And at one time human temptation takes hold, and the human passions make war and wrestle; at another, evil powers.

For our wrestling is not against blood and flesh—ours is not, though for others it is—but against principalities, against the powers.

That this may be so: 'You have set my days to be contests.'

But it can also be said with reference to a measure:

as compared with the age of the age, the days which I live occupy the reckoning of a hand's-breadth.

And just as He calls all the nations, which are many, a drop from a bucket—for compared with the bucket of rational beings all the nations are a drop—and the turning of a scale—it tips the weight until it sways, yet not so as to pull the balance-pan down—so, compared with the greatness of the ages and the length of the days, which the one who is able to live well endures:

'He who loves,' it says, 'his father and his mother shall be long-lived.'

And this is not found to be so according to the literal sense.

'And my substance is as nothing before you.'

The word 'hypostasis' signifies many things.

For the present purpose, however, two of its significations are needed.

Sometimes essence (ousia) is called hypostasis; as it is written:

'the express image of the hypostasis of God' — that is, of the essence and existence of God.

And 'hypostasis' is also used of that perfect endurance by which a man stands firm under painful trials.

'The essence of my soul is as nothing before you' — that is, in comparison with you, who are some great essence.

And though it ought to have been perfect according to you the Father, I have diminished it.

And that this is so, he says concerning certain ones:

'The precious sons of Zion, who were held in esteem for gold and silver, how have they become as earthen vessels? Behold, their essence has been diminished.'

This must be understood spiritually.

They have become earthen vessels.

When gold is reviled it is diminished and falls far short of its own worth.