Commentary on the Psalms 1 part 14/42

'This their way is a stumbling-block to them.' And they fell into irrationality, having from the beginning possessed a most wicked disposition, and having turned aside to evil deeds.

For he named deeds a 'way.'

'And afterward they will take pleasure in their mouth.' They will resort to repentance after the departure hence, deriving thereafter no gain whatever from it.

'Like sheep they were laid in Hades; death shall shepherd them.' This Symmachus rendered more clearly:

'Like sheep of Hades they appointed themselves; death shall feed on them;'

for they themselves brought the punishments upon themselves, and chose death rather than life.

'And the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning;

and their help shall grow old in Hades; they were thrust out from their glory.' Those who are now wronged and despised by them shall before long obtain authority over them.

For, stripped of all their former prosperity, they shall be handed over to death.

And the parable of the Lord accords with these things, showing Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham;

but the arrogant rich man bitterly punished, and becoming a suppliant of the poor man.

Thus, having gone through their end, he offers a supplication to God.

And he who has used these words asks that he may not undergo the same end as those men:

'But God shall redeem my soul from the hand of Hades, when he receives me.' After these things, to those who live in poverty and are worn down by the arrogance of the rich, he brings a suggestion and counsel.

'Do not fear when a man becomes rich, or when the glory of his house is increased.'

'For in his dying he shall take away nothing at all, nor shall his glory descend together with him.' Do not consider the present prosperity, he says, to be any great thing;

for the wealth that all admire is not enduring.

For those who raise their eyebrows over it, and puff out their cheeks, a little while later, having left all things behind, shall be handed over to death.

'For his soul shall be blessed in his life.' While he is living, he says, some count blessed the man who prides himself in wealth;

yet once he is dead they name him thrice-wretched.

'They will praise you when you do well to him.' This Symmachus has said more clearly:

'He will praise you if you do well to them.' For this is the true praise, that one be renowned and much-spoken-of not only while living, but also when dead.

And worthy of such praises is he who has managed his wealth for his own benefit;

for the beneficence shown to others runs back to the benefactor himself.

'He shall enter to the generation of his fathers; forever he shall not see light.' Instead of 'he shall enter,' the three translated 'you shall enter.'

You shall see, he says, this one concerning whom I spoke:

'Be not afraid when a man grows rich,' who endures the same death as his fathers;

and who is deprived not only of the present light, but also of the light eternal.

'And man, being in honour, understood not; he was compared to the senseless beasts, and became like unto them.' The cause of these things is the beastly life which the greater part of men have chosen, having cast away the honour bestowed upon them by God.

For though called rational, they have loved irrationality.

'A Psalm for Asaph.' This man was the choirmaster of another company of singing psalmists, as the history of the Chronicles has taught us.

For the psalms already expounded from the forty-first onward were entrusted to be sung by the sons of Korah, who themselves also became leaders of another choir.

They have also other psalms bearing their inscription, which, if God permit, we shall interpret.

But the present psalm, ascribed to Asaph, is in harmony with the psalm set before it;

for it also foretells the coming judgment, and the manifestation of our God and Saviour.

It moreover foretells the New Covenant, showing that the worship according to the Law is not pleasing to God.

'The God of gods, the Lord, hath spoken, and called the earth, from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof.' And the psalm before this called all men unto instruction, and this one likewise calls all the ends of the inhabited world.

For the phrase, 'From the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof,' signifies this.

But the phrase 'God of gods' the three translators rendered otherwise: 'The mighty God who spoke called the earth.'

But the Seventy name as 'gods' those who have obtained rule and are entrusted with judging, which is proper to God alone.

This the eighty-first psalm teaches us, which is itself also inscribed to Asaph.

For having said, 'God stood in the congregation of gods,'

'and in the midst he will judge the gods,' he went on to add:

'How long will ye judge unrighteously, and accept the persons of sinners? Judge for the orphan and the poor;'

'do justice to the lowly and needy.' Now this is proper to the priests, and to the others, as many as have been entrusted with judging.

So too the Law decrees: 'Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor speak evil of the ruler of thy people.' Properly they may be called 'gods' who have been made according to the divine image, and have kept that image undefiled.

For the God of these gathers all the inhabited world unto the tribunal.

'Out of Zion is the beauty of his comeliness.' And this same one is he who in Zion displayed his own beauty and comeliness, who accepted the saving Passion, who was named in the psalms already expounded as 'fairer in beauty than the sons of men.'

'God shall come manifestly, our God, and shall not keep silence.' For do not suppose that his second coming shall be after the manner of his first.

For then he veiled his own majesty with lowliness and poverty;

but now he will show forth to all his lordship and his kingdom manifestly, no longer using long-suffering, but judging righteously.

For this is what he said: 'He shall not keep silence.'

For, he says, 'a river of fire drew on before him;'

'He shall call the heaven above, and the earth, that he may judge his people.' And when he had given the legislation, he commanded the blessed Moses to gather the people and to call heaven and earth to witness;

which very thing he made the prelude of the song;

'Give ear, O heaven, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.' He calls these to witness, not as though they were living beings, but as embracing the other created things, for the fear of those who hear.

So the blessed Abraham set up the seven ewe-lambs for a witness, and says that 'the well is mine.' So Jacob and Laban called the heap a heap of witness.

'Gather unto him his holy ones, who make his covenant upon sacrifices;'

and through these words, and those that follow, he teaches the imperfection of the worship according to the Law, and that among the victims offered to God there is nothing pleasing.

By 'holy ones' he means Moses, Aaron, Eleazar, Phinehas, and all those after them who exercised the priesthood according to the Law.

He commands them to be gathered, not that he may exact penalties from them, as though they had held contrary thoughts;

for the Law was his, and each of the aforesaid, obeying it, offered the sacrifices;

but that through the present things he might show his own purpose, and, having brought to an end the instruction fitting for infants, might offer the perfect sufferings.

And when these things come to pass, he says, the heavens shall marvel at the justice of the sentence.

'Hear, O my people, and I will speak to thee.' And showing to what sort of people he speaks, he added:

'O Israel, and I will testify unto thee.' Then he shows his own lordship:

'God, thy God am I.' I who freed thee from the Egyptian bondage, who bestowed the way through the sea, who nourished thee in the wilderness, who gave thee that Law.

Do not then, seeing the difference of the laws, suppose me to be another lawgiver.

'I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices;'

'and thy burnt offerings are continually before me.' I do not, he says, charge thee with neglect of sacrifices;

for thou offerest these continually;

but I exhort thee not to bound thy righteousness by these.

'I will not accept calves out of thy house, nor he-goats out of thy flocks.'

'For mine are all the wild beasts of the field, the cattle upon the mountains, and the oxen.'

'I know all the fowls of heaven, and the beauty of the field is with me.' I am, he says, both maker and lord of all, both of the land animals and of the birds that fly the air.

Do not then think that thou art supplying my need;

for I have given being to these also, and I command the fruits to spring up from the earth.

For by 'the beauty of the field' he means the manifold fruits of the earth.

For since from the land animals were offered oxen, and he-goats, and sheep;

and from the birds, doves and turtledoves;

and from the fruits, fine flour, and wine, and oil, and the sweet-smelling spices of the incense;

he necessarily made mention of them all, that he might bring to an end all such worship.

'If I be hungry, I will not tell thee;'

'for mine is the inhabited world, and the fulness thereof.' If, he says, I should require food, I do not need thy provision.

For I am at once maker and lord of all creation together.

Then he teaches the impassibility of his own nature.

'Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?' Thus having shown their folly, and having taught that it was because of their infantile understanding that he anciently legislated to offer them those sacrifices, he opens up beforehand the New Covenant, and legislates the sacrifice that is pleasing to him.

'Offer unto God a sacrifice of praise, and pay thy vows unto the Most High.'

'And call upon me in the day of thy affliction, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.' In due time he also revealed the honourable number of the Holy Trinity, and joined it to the New Covenant;

for together with this we also received the knowledge of the Holy Trinity.

that he might prophetically teach the number to those who should come after.

'Offer unto God a sacrifice of praise, and pay thy vows unto the Most High;'

'and call upon me in the day of thy affliction.' From these we were taught three Persons.

Not as though he were only God, nor only Most High, nor as one who, receiving the sacrifice of praise, grants the requests.

For each distinct Person is both God, and Most High, and the giver of good things.

By 'sacrifice of praise' he means the hymns that befit the righteous.

For so he says in the twenty-first psalm: 'I will pay my vows before those who fear him.' But since he had said, 'I will not reprove you for your sacrifices,' he now goes on to teach the things for which they were reproved.

'But to the sinner God said:'

'Why do you declare my statutes, and take up my covenant in your mouth? But you have hated instruction, and cast my words behind you.' For since there are some who find fault with others for their transgressions and remind them of the divine laws, yet themselves transgress the very things they teach, it is fittingly against such persons that he directs his words, saying:

Why is it that, while you boast in my statutes and discourse endlessly, up and down, about the Law, you have not received the benefit that comes from it, but have disposed yourselves contemptuously toward my words? And he goes on to recount also the kinds of things they dared to do.

'If you saw a thief, you ran along with him, and with the adulterer you cast in your portion.'

'Your mouth abounded in malice, and your tongue wove together deceits.'

'Sitting, you spoke against your brother, and against your mother's son you laid a stumbling block.' Many, he says, and of every kind, are the lawless deeds you have dared to commit.

For to speak in the apostolic manner: you who say a man must not commit adultery, you commit adultery, and you become a fellow worker and partaker with those who dare such things. And having laid bare your mouth for truth, you filled it instead with falsehood and wickedness.

Having thus made his account of the transgression, he teaches both the forbearance he has shown and the retribution he will bring, foretelling it.

'These things you did, and I kept silence.'

'You supposed lawlessly that I would be like you.' Seeing these things dared by you, using forbearance, I await your repentance.

But you took even my forbearance as an occasion for impiety, imagining that I, taking pleasure in your lawlessness, would bring no retribution.

For which very reason I will reprove you and set your sins before your face. For since you were not healed by the gentle medicines of forbearance, I will devise sharper remedies for you and apply the cauterizing iron of reproofs.

And these words are in concert with those apostolic sayings:

'Not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance,'

'but according to your hardness and impenitent heart you treasure up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation and righteous judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works.' Having thus threatened the retribution, again the lover of mankind offers exhortation.

'Understand these things, you who forget God,'

'lest he snatch you away, and there be none to deliver.' Diligently, he says, consider each of the things that have been said.

And you who are sick with forgetfulness of God—for forgetfulness of God is the procurer of sin—heal your wounds with the medicines of repentance, before death snatches you away.

For death comes upon men after the manner of a lion, and none is able to restrain its most violent onrush.

Then he takes up the new legislation, and with it he adorns the conclusion of the psalm.

'A sacrifice of praise will glorify me, and there is the way by which I will show him my salvation.' This Symmachus rendered more clearly:

'He who sacrifices for the sake of praise will glorify me, and to him who walks in good order I will show the salvation of God.'

For it is fitting not only to hymn God and to offer him the sacrifices of praise, but also to walk in good order and to set one's own life in due arrangement,

so as to obtain the salvation of God.

But according to the Seventy it says: 'In the sacrifice of praise I take delight;'

'and this I count a fitting glory;'

'and through this I will show my way to the one who offers it, the end of which is the salvation that comes from God.'

And it is fitting to note that here too he has made mention of two persons.

'For a sacrifice,' he says, 'will glorify me.' And having by these words shown his own person, he added:

'And there is the way by which I will show him the salvation of God.'

For it was necessary that to the New Covenant, which instructs in perfect things, there should be joined also the perfect teaching of the knowledge of God.

'When Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba the wife of Uriah.'

Clearly the superscription of the psalm has taught us the subject;

and the very words of the psalm are sufficient to teach the depth of its meaning.

One should, however, know that the psalm also contains a prediction of things to come.

For this it is possible to learn also from the other psalms, in which he made his confession.

For indeed in the sixth psalm he foretold concerning the coming judgment.

'For there is not,' he says, 'in death one who remembers you; and in Hades who will confess to you?' And in the thirty-first psalm he calls blessed those who have received the remission of their sins without toil—which the grace of baptism alone is wont to bestow.

And indeed also in the present psalm he taught us expressly that he had not been deprived of the grace of the Spirit.

'For,' he says, 'do not take away your good Spirit from me.' For he did not ask that the grace of the Spirit be granted to him, but implored that it not be taken from him.

Being therefore illumined by this ray, and foreseeing with prophetic eyes that the people over whom he reigned would also fall into transgressions, and for what things on account of these they would be enslaved and taken into penalty, and become sojourners in Babylon, he composed the present psalm, both healing his own wounds and preparing a fitting remedy for the people, and indeed for all of us as well, as many as, being made wounded, stand in need of healing.

For great wounds require remedies of equal measure, and one who has fallen into a grievous illness needs more attentive care, and one who has committed great offenses stands in need of great loving-kindness.

For otherwise it was not possible for the traces of sin to be blotted out.

And fittingly he calls the offense 'iniquity';

for it involves a twofold transgression of the Law.

'Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.' For already, he says, you have granted the remission through Nathan the prophet;

and you have brought upon me calamities of every kind, like certain cauterizings and incisions;

but I still have need of scourings, having taken in the great foulness of sin.

[For according to the prophet, the Lord will wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Zion by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning.] 5.

and by night I dream of it, and by day I am haunted by its image.

And God himself, through Isaiah, commands sinners to do this.

'For I am he,' he says, 'who blots out your iniquities, and I will by no means remember your unrighteousnesses.'

'But you, remember, and let us plead together.'

'I said, I will confess my iniquity against myself to the Lord, and you took away the impiety of my heart.' 6.

'Against you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.' Having enjoyed, he says, many and great gifts from you, I repaid the gifts with their opposites;

daring to do the things forbidden by the Law.

For he does not say this—that 'I did not wrong Uriah';

for indeed he did wrong both to him and to his wife;

but the greatest transgression was dared against God himself—who had chosen him, who had made him king instead of a shepherd, who had shown him mightier than his enemies, and had flooded him with good things of every kind.

'And I have done what is evil in your sight.' For the history makes mention of this.

'For the thing that was done,' he says, 'appeared evil in the sight of the Lord.'

But when this is spoken from the standpoint of the captive people, it must be understood thus:

'Against you only have I sinned'—Concerning your gifts, he says, I became ungrateful, and I transgressed the laws laid down for me;

and having enjoyed good things of every kind, I became thankless concerning them;

but the Babylonians, whom I had not even wronged, greatly wronged me.

'That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.' To myself, he says, I became the procurer of evils;

but your righteousness shines forth.

And thus, when judgment takes place, and the things done to me by you are brought into the midst, and the things dared by me are set in comparison with those, you indeed will be declared both righteous and loving toward mankind, while I shall be seen to be a transgressor and ungrateful.

For He has exercised His providence over both this man and those others, and indeed over all mankind.

'For behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me.' From above, he says, and from the very beginning of our nature, sin has held sway.

For the transgression of the commandment preceded the conception of Eve.

For after the transgression, and the divine sentence, and the loss of paradise, Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain.

This, then, is what he wishes to say: that sin, having gained mastery over our forefathers, wrought a kind of road and beaten path through the whole race.

This too the blessed Paul declares.

Yet the will nevertheless prevails, having toils as its fellow-workers.

He is not, therefore, as some have supposed, condemning marriage, nor does he call marital union a lawlessness—as certain persons foolishly imagined, thus interpreting the words, 'In iniquities was I conceived, and in sins did my mother bear me.' Rather, he brings forward into view the lawlessness once dared by our human forefathers, and says that this became the source of these streams.

For if those forefathers, he says, had not sinned, they would not have received death as the penalty of sin.

And not being mortal, they would have been superior to corruption.

And with incorruptibility, impassibility would altogether have been joined.

And while impassibility governed their life, sin found no place.

But since they sinned, they were handed over to corruption.

And upon such beings there follow desires and fears, pleasures and griefs, anger and envy.

Against these, and the things that spring from them, reason contends.

And when victorious, it is proclaimed and crowned with the garlands of victory.

But when defeated, it both incurs shame and is subjected to punishment.

Instead of 'conceived' (ekissēsen), Symmachus has placed 'was pregnant with' (ekyēsen).

'For behold, Thou hast loved truth.' He speaks thus: Thou judgest, and punishest some, and crownest others, because Thou lovest truth.

But loving truth, and knowing the weakness of our nature, grant pardon to those who ask for the remedies.

'The hidden and secret things of Thy wisdom hast Thou made manifest to me.' Yet I count myself worthy of no pardon, having become ungrateful after so many gifts.

For Thou hast not only established me upon the royal thrones, but hast also deemed me worthy of prophetic grace, and hast foreshown to me things that would come to pass after a long time, and hast made plain to me things hidden from others—so that I might teach the rest concerning the incarnation of Thine only-begotten Son, and the saving Passion, and the Resurrection, and the salvation of the world, and the bountiful remission of sins, the magnificent and divine gifts of holy Baptism. Having been taught all these things beforehand by Thine all-holy Spirit, I entreat to partake of that grace which, foretelling it to others, I proclaim aloud.

'Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed.'

'Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.' For the gift of Baptism alone is able to effect this cleansing.

And this cleansing the Lord of all promised to give through Isaiah the prophet as well.

'Wash yourselves, become clean, remove the wickednesses from your hearts'; and a little after He said:

'For when the Heavenly One scattereth kings, they shall be made snow-white in Selmon.' This, then, is what he says here also, that: I have need of the grace that shall be given to all men.

For that grace alone can thoroughly wash me clean and give me the whiteness of snow.

That the hyssop wrought no remission of sins whatsoever is easy to learn from the writings of Moses.

For the murderer and the robber who defiled another's marriage the Law did not cleanse with sprinklings, but subjected them to the extreme penalties.

The hyssop, therefore, is a riddle of other realities.

For with hyssop, in Egypt, having sprinkled the blood of the lamb upon the doorposts, they escaped the hands of the destroyer.

And those things were a type of the saving sufferings.

For here too there is blood, and saving wood, and salvation supplied to those who approach in faith.

'Thou shalt make me to hear gladness and joy.'

'The bones that have been humbled shall rejoice.' Fill my ears, he says, with this joy, promising me the perfect cleansing, that the gladness may spread to all the members of my body.

And the bones that now have been humbled by affliction may flourish again, and recover their proper strength.

'Turn away Thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.' Look not, he says, upon the iniquities I have dared, but upon me who lament them.

'Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within my inward parts.' Since I have received the old age of sin, renew me by Thy loving-kindness.

That is: having instructed and taught you by this long discipline what kind of fruits sin brings forth, I will dispose you to choose virtue.

'...of Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.' Clearly from these words we have learned that he was not stripped of the grace of the all-holy Spirit.

For he does not entreat to recover it as one who had been stripped of it, but implores not to be deprived of it, nor to be set far from the divine care.

For by 'presence' he here called the divine care.

'Restore unto me the gladness of Thy salvation, and establish me with a governing spirit.' What he had not lost, he implored to keep—that is, the grace of the Spirit.

But what he had cast away, he entreats to recover.

And this was the gladness in God.

But now, stripped of this, I am also deprived of good cheer.

For the bondage to pleasure stripped me of my boldness.

For here again he called the self-ruling reason a 'governing spirit.'

And I shall be a herald of Thy goodness, and shall urge impious and lawless men to hasten to Thy supplication.

'Deliver me from bloods, O God, the God of my salvation.' Continually in his memory he turns over the murder of Uriah.

This too he had disclosed in the introduction, that 'my sin is ever before me.'—'My tongue shall rejoice in Thy righteousness.' This Symmachus interpreted thus:

For I will not keep silent when I have enjoyed the remission, but I shall continue hymning Thee and recounting Thy graces.

'Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall declare Thy praise.' For sin is wont to bind the tongue, to stop up the mouth, to throttle it, to compel it to silence.

The prophet therefore implores, through the remission, to partake again of his former boldness, and to move his tongue to hymnody.

'For if Thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would have given it.'

'Whole burnt offerings Thou wilt not be pleased with.' These words too accord with those spoken in the preceding psalm.

For there we heard the God of all saying:

'For if I had desired sacrifice, I would have given it.'

'Whole burnt offerings Thou wilt not be pleased with.' For Thou, he says, hast declared that the sacrifices of irrational beasts are not agreeable to Thee.

For which reason I shall offer the sacrificial service that is pleasing to Thee.

'A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit.'

'A broken and humbled heart God will not despise.' A victim, he says, pleasing and acceptable to Thee, our God, is moderation of mind.

These same words the blessed youths in the furnace also employed.

For 'with a broken heart,' they said, 'and a spirit of humility may we be received before Thee, as with whole burnt offerings of rams and fat bulls.' So that it is plain from this too, that the psalm contains a prophecy of the things that befell in Babylon, and teaching suited to those men.

'Do good, O Lord, in Thy good pleasure unto Zion, and let the walls of Jerusalem be built up.'

'Then shalt Thou be pleased with a sacrifice of righteousness, oblation, and whole burnt offerings.'

'Then shall they offer bullocks upon Thine altar.' From these words we have been taught more clearly that the psalm is full of prophecy.

For to those who were compelled to dwell in Babylon, and who longed for release from bondage, and lamented the desolation of the city, the words are fitting.

...that the city might be deemed worthy of some compassion, and might recover its former prosperity, with the encircling walls being raised up again, and with the worship performed according to the Law being fulfilled.

For now, he says, dwelling as we do in a foreign land, it is not possible to offer to Thee the sacrifices appointed for us, since the Law prescribes that we sacrifice in that one city alone.

But if we should obtain a return, and rebuild the Temple, then we shall offer to Thee the sacrifices prescribed by the Law.

And these words befit them exceedingly well: 'And Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall declare Thy praise.' For this is their utterance.

'How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?' The close of this psalm also contains another prophecy.

Him he names Abimelech both here and in the thirty-third psalm.

It also contains a foretelling, concerning the same matter, of the madness of Rabshakeh, who, being sprung from the Hebrews and then becoming a captive of war, learned the impiety of the Assyrians who had enslaved him, and used blasphemous words against God, and attempted by deceitful sayings to beguile the multitude of the Jews.