On the Trinity & Psalm Commentary 1 part 37/55

Our soul is assailed by many snares, we are fought against with many weapons. Neither earth, nor seas, nor air are free from peril to our faith. The rare gems of an unknown sea ravish our eyes, the gold of the earth seizes our mind, spiritual wickednesses and the powers of this air fly about us with the enticements of our own death, lying in wait through the troubles of the present life, through the manners and wantonness of another's will, that we may be angry, that we may hate, that we may love: on every side we are watched and assailed. The Lord therefore, knowing that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the mighty ones of this world and spiritual wickednesses, says, as He completes the Gospels:

'Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the age.' For He is present; and when He is faithfully invoked, He is present through His own nature. For He is a Spirit penetrating and containing all things. For He is not corporeal as we are, so that, when He is present somewhere, He is absent elsewhere: but with a power present, and extending itself to wherever anything is, since with His Spirit filling all things He is in all things, yet He stands by him who believes in Him. For He will be present to three or two gathered together in His name, and He is round about all His people from this time and even for ever. But what does He mean by this, that He is round about His people from this time and even for ever?

Because He will not leave the rod of sinners upon the lot of the righteous, that the righteous may not stretch out their hands unto iniquity. By 'rod' it is fitting to understand power; for it is the emblem of power. Moses received a rod by which he could do all things; there was also the rod of Aaron. But there was also the rod of Pharaoh, and there was the rod of Nebuchadnezzar. Therefore the Lord guards us round about, that the rod of sinners be not left upon our lot. Tribulations indeed come, but they do not remain; persecutions come, but they do not persist. Many wish to reduce the liberty of our faith into captivity, but no one lords it over the confession which we hold in Christ. For the rod of the sinner shall not be left upon our lot.

For the Lord is round about His people for ever, lest, conquered and wearied by the rule of the rod, we stretch out our hands unto iniquity. But when the rod has fallen, it shall be taken away; and when the sinner has leaned upon it, he shall not be forsaken. Brief is whatever we shall suffer from the adversaries of God: it has both victory and reward, though it has not the labour of a long battle. The Lord is present. Even if some force compel us, let us keep our hands from iniquities, let us not stretch out our works unto sins, because, since the Lord is set round about us, the rod of the sinner shall not be left, so that it should remain. After which there comes a turning of the prophet, invoking a recompense from the Lord for him who has kept his hand from iniquity:

'Do good, O Lord, to the good and to the upright in heart' — signifying uprightness of both deed and will in each. For with many, either for the favour of men or for peril and fear, the work is good. But unless we be good out of will, even if we shall seem good to men, yet we are not good to God, because perfect goodness consists in the disposition of an upright heart. But recompense, as it is present for the good, so also is not absent for the evil. For there follows: 'But those turning aside to entanglements the Lord shall lead away with those who work iniquity.' And here too the discourse is of a twofold significance: of those turning aside to entanglements, and of those working iniquities. They who turn aside, turn aside from one thing into another.

That is, from the good works of an upright heart into entanglements. And what shall we reckon these entanglements to be? Those, namely, which the prophet admonished to be loosed, saying: 'Not such a fast have I chosen, says the Lord; but loose every bond of iniquity, dissolve the entanglements of violent contracts.' If therefore anyone, turning aside from the precepts of God, has bound himself with these entanglements, he shall be led away with those who work iniquity, being, namely, a transgressor and wicked man destined for the same penalty of the sentence. For he who works iniquity is a stranger to the law: but he who turns aside from the law transgresses the law in which he formerly abode. We must not therefore turn aside to entanglements;

nor is our liberty to be inserted into the bonds of the age and the chains of worldly affairs. Blessed Paul knew that those who are loosed ought not to be bound, when he says: 'Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not to be bound.' And he thought this not concerning the criminal bond of a necessary binding. But there are other bonds which impede and bind our faith and knit it to themselves: chiefly the toil of increasing money and the insincere gain of trafficking. For these so bind with sins, with sacraments, with commerces, that they hold us captive and possessed to themselves. From these, therefore, every mind, will, and zeal must be loosed, because those turning aside to entanglements shall be led away together with those who work iniquity.

But Israel shall be at peace, the rod of the sinner not being left upon him; but abiding in perfect faith and eternal hope, he shall hear said to him according to his portion: 'Peace be upon Israel.' For He is our peace, who made both one, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed unto the ages. Amen. A Song of Ascents. 'When the Lord turned back the captivity of Sion, we became as those who are comforted.'

Unless there were in the psalms certain prophecies of such a kind that they did not agree with the things and men of those times in which they were written, surely many would dare to reckon that nothing in the psalms was said spiritually, and would suppose that we were seeking out certain fabricated assertions and false interpretations, by which we might seem to have understood something loftier and more profound than the sense of the rest — just as though we were fitting to our own sense those things which are written, and were not rather deriving from those things which are written the sense of a diligent and careful understanding.

For the Scripture of the law abides and exists, completed in earlier times, before the Lord was present, by the prophets — published by the Jews, handled by kings, received by the nations, but understood and approved by Christians. This perhaps may be reckoned presumptuous. Plainly it is presumptuous, if we presume this glory for ourselves, if we wish so much to be permitted to our weakness, that things hidden for so long, obscure through so many ages of the human race, in the understanding of which kings laboured in vain, the very teachers and masters of the law erred — that we, foolish to the age and the refuse of the world and, to their wise ones, ravings, should boast of our understanding. But nevertheless we understand, because He is not a liar who said: 'Ask, and it shall be given you;'

'seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you'; and it is written that He who said, 'Because it behoved all things to be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the psalms concerning Me,' then opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said to them: 'Because thus it is written, that Christ should suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that penitence and remission of sins should be preached in His name unto all nations.' Therefore it is not from ourselves that we understand, but from Him who made to be understood the things which were unknowable. And so understanding is to be hoped for from Him who will both open to those who knock, and show to those who seek, and not deny to those who ask.

For how will this psalm be able to be understood, which disagrees with the history of the deeds done? For nowhere is a captivity of this people written up to the times of David: but long afterward, when Solomon his son had obtained the kingdom, Israel served, taken captive by the Assyrians, and thereafter Judah by the Babylonians. How then does David, in this same psalm, pray as though taken captive? Or how does he rejoice at the captivity being turned away from himself, saying: 'When the Lord turned back the captivity of Sion, we became as those comforted. Then was our mouth filled with joy, and our tongue with exultation. Then shall they say among the nations, The Lord has magnified to do with them'?

But although it may be a religious thing to reckon that the change of a future captivity was foretold according to the knowledge of prophecy, and that those things which were undoubtedly to be done were commemorated, through faith in things to be done, as though already done — nevertheless the force of the words and sayings does not permit us now to understand it of the gratitude for that return which was granted after the Babylonian captivity: especially since a graver captivity afterward followed that same return, and it would be unworthy of the prophet, as though through ignorance, to rejoice with every reproach of captivity removed, when captivity was renewed in succession with an unchangeable reproach.

But the whole psalm is now, as we shall show by the exposition of the several matters, the gratitude of a soul returning from the captivity of the vices into the liberty of the knowledge of God. And indeed grievous is bodily captivity, which, the right of liberty being lost, is subjected to the dominion of the conquerors. And then bodies indeed serve, but the liberty of the faithful soul is by no means captured. My witnesses are the three youths singing amid the flames, my witness is Daniel amid the hunger of the lions, sated with the prophet's dinner, my witness is Eleazar amid the laws of masters, free by the ancestral laws of his fathers, my witnesses are the seven martyrs with their aged mother, rendering thanks to God amid the strange torments of death. But how much more unhappy is the captivity of the soul!

If avarice has captured it, it robs and plunders through the body; if lust has conquered it, it shares its servitude with the body; if luxury, anger, hatred, rashness, drunkenness, envy have subdued it, with these lords ruling over it, both soul and body serve in common: and thus a captivity of the body follows the captivity of the soul. Otherwise, the noble generosity of a religious soul despises the condition of the body. The duty is indeed hard, yet not altogether wretched for a man, because it is served even by slaves: but how unhappy is the captivity of the soul! The avaricious man, about to lose his very self, fears to lose his money; busied, sad, anxious, without any rest, he is ever held fast by the fear of loss;

he is forgetful of honesty, heedless of friendships, shunning kindness; he knows not religion, and altogether hates goodness. But he to whom lust is mistress — in what mire of disgrace does he wallow! He hangs upon occasions of adulteries; anxious about the thefts of his own wantonness, he is wholly among harlots in eyes, in mind, in body. Seeing and hearing daily the human laws against adulterers, he plots adultery in the very forum; what he does, he fears; what he fears, he does not flee. But what is more unhappy than the dominion of drunkenness? To pour into the belly beyond its capacity, to grudge the body its own service, to take away reason from the sense, not to speak, not to remember, not to stand, and to impose a certain death upon a nature still unharmed?

How unseemly, moreover, is the agitation of raging men, the onrush of rashness, the goad of hatreds, the anguish of envy! How great, therefore, is the disturbance of those, how great the calamity, who are enslaved to the evils mentioned above! But if, having come to know the teaching of wisdom, the proclamation of God, the remission of all sins, the resurrection of bodies, the fellowship of eternity, and the heavenly kingdom, we pass over, by the higher powers, from avarice to generosity, migrate from lusts to continence, turn back from drunkenness to fasting, and fly from fury, rashness, hatred, and envy to gentleness, reason, mercy, and kindness — learning all these things from the Law, the Prophets, the Gospels, and the Apostles, and singing from the Law:

'The Lord who shatters wars, the Lord is His name'; knowing from the Prophet: 'I am He who made heaven and earth out of nothing'; believing from the Gospel: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God'; declaring from the Apostle: 'Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature, for in Him all things were established in the heavens and on earth' — then, when the nations shall marvel at our conversion from vices to virtues, from ignorance of God to the confession of Him, then shall we testify that the prophecy of the psalm can be understood by us, saying: 'When the Lord turned back the captivity of Sion, we became like those who are comforted. Then was our mouth filled with joy and our tongue with exultation.'

Then shall they say among the nations: 'The Lord has done great things with them.' For God has turned back our captivity through the remission of sins. For He has freed the soul from the dominion of vices, not reckoning our former offenses, renewing us into a new life and transforming us into a new man, establishing us in the body of His flesh. For He Himself is the Church, containing the whole of her within Himself through the sacrament of His body. Sion did not exist before she was freed; but Sion is she who has been freed. The name accords with liberty. For this name is not of one who abides in captivity, but of a captivity turned away. But as to what it says: 'We became as those comforted,' Paul too remembers, meanwhile saying that he is as one comforted:

'Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death?' And he who now knows in part and prophesies in part, and who knows that a Jerusalem is laid up for us in heaven, and when he says: 'To be dissolved is better for me, and to remain with Christ.' We are indeed now comforted, because the Lord says: 'He will send you another Comforter also.' When He says 'another,' He teaches that He Himself remains. For He remains; for the whole creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God. That revelation, once accomplished, is the consolation. But for now it is as it were a consolation; meanwhile not lacking that very consolation, though the perfection of its consummation remains still to come for us. Our mouth too is filled with joy and our tongue with exultation;

for the offices of our tongues and mouth are not sufficient to render praises to God. We have changed crimes into innocence, vices into virtues, ignorance into knowledge, destruction into immortality: and this by God's doing, who grants the grace of things to be repented of and bestows the beginnings of new goods. For what time is more desirable for us? That in which we committed adultery, or that in which we would have preferred to have been virgins? That in which we were drunk, or that in which we rejoice in fastings? That in which we were slaves to money, or that in which our money is used for kindness? That in which we adored demons, or that in which we command demons? That in which we longed to please the world, or that in which we conquer the world? That in which we knew not God, or that in which we are prepared as heirs to God?

The nations, beholding this faith of our hope, say: 'The Lord has done great things with them.' Contemplating this transformation of vices into virtues, they marvel at God's magnificence toward us. This very thing we too, having attained it from the very sense of this beatitude, confess with joy of mouth and exultation of tongue: 'The Lord has done great things with us: we have become joyful.' For we rejoice that we have been washed from the deep and wretched mire, and have been established as new men out of all the vices of our former life. And because the prophet was speaking of the joys of future hope — though, according to the custom of Scripture, he gave thanks as though of things past — nevertheless, by the prayer that follows, he declares that these are not matters of his own time, saying: 'Turn back,'

'O Lord, our captivity.' If he was as one comforted when the captivity was turned away, how does he now pray that it be turned away from him? But in the foregoing it was the speech of prophetic knowledge announcing the joys of things to come as though of the past; now, however, the prayer is a common one concerning things to be turned away, into which the prophet mingles himself as though he too were a captive, as though he recognized himself to be still among the same. For it is written: 'The just man is his own accuser in the beginning of his speech,' and again: 'Confess first your sins, that you may be justified,' and: 'Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.' The prophet indeed knows himself to be free;

but as a captive he is subject to God — whether through the discipline of his own confession, because where there is confession of sin, there also is justification from God (which the Lord attested in the publican and the pharisee, when the pharisee boasted himself to be just, but the publican had prayed for his sins; for He said: 'Amen I say to you, the publican was more justified than the pharisee') — whether, then, on this account the prophet prays that the common captivity be turned back, or because he knew all the people to be captive from sins; and just as with the Apostle the whole body suffers together with one member, so too the prophet is made captive together with the captive people from sins. But nevertheless he shows that to pray for his captivity is good for him, saying:

'He who sows in tears shall reap in joy. Going they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming they shall come in exultation, carrying their sheaves.' What speech here is directed to the Jews, that their captivity should seem to be prophesied in this psalm? What reasoning is there suited to the common practice of the human race? For who ever wept while sowing? Or is there any use of this lamentable sowing among the Jews from the Law? By no means, therefore, has this ever been written or done anywhere; rather, it is a prophecy connected with the foregoing statements.

But that there are two kinds of sowing, the holy apostle Paul taught — of the flesh and of the spirit — having demonstrated and enumerated the seeds of each sowing: since the flesh sows adulteries, sorceries, revellings, drunkenness, avarice, idolatry, and other things like these; but the spirit sows peace, joy, continence, charity, sobriety, meekness, and the things that follow from these — and each shall reap his own crop.

Since, therefore, the best sacrifice to God is a contrite heart, and blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted, and each one shall reap what he has sown, being about to bring the fruits of his works into judgment as a sheaf — we must sow with confession of sins, with grief over bodily infirmity, with lamentation and pain of our conscience, because we can in no way worthily fulfill the precepts of God according to the purpose of our will. Then what we have sown in tears we shall reap in joy: and going forth weeping, we shall come in exultation, filled with our fruits and sheaves, laden with the harvest wrought by us, comforted through Christ, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen. The Song of Ascents of Solomon.

'Unless the Lord build the house for Himself, in vain have they labored who build it.' The reasoning both of the times and of the prophecy demands that attentive diligence of understanding be applied to the present psalm, lest perchance some absolute appearance of the words and that very order of bodily deeds should draw us toward an empty understanding.

especially since many, being ignorant of the deeper causes of the prophetic teaching, suppose with a Jewish sense that a prophecy of past times is contained in these Songs of Ascents — namely, that captivity of Jerusalem was foretold which befell in the days of Jeremiah, and that the thanksgiving for that same captivity, once driven away, is prophesied, and that the psalms concern the sorrow of servitude or the gladness of return of those times. We do not disapprove of this sense, nor do we refute their understanding.

For it is fitting that the spirit of the prophet should foretell, according to the knowledge of providence, the pitiable downfall of the people, the punishment due to their impiety, and, after a long servitude, a satisfaction sufficient for their grievous sins, and God's merciful will toward them in granting their return. But since a graver and irremissible captivity followed upon the return from that captivity, and the pitiable devastation of the rebuilding of the recovered city remains not to be changed, and since they should know both that the glory of a spiritual return is reserved for the remnant of Israel, and that the building of the heavenly and holy Jerusalem is being prepared up to the times of the blessed and dominical kingdom, and especially since the hope of those days and the substance of all these psalms attest their virtues and kinds:

I do not understand why they should wish the sorrow of the prophecy to be only about fleeting and changeable evils and not also about eternal ones, and why they should understand a gladness to be shown of temporal joys rather — and of those which afterwards were to be changed into the gravest calamities — rather than of unchangeable and eternal joys, since it is more worthy of prophetic magnificence to have proclaimed things blessed and eternal and heavenly. Although, therefore, the foregoing psalms have been shown to contain within themselves a captivity not only bodily and earthly, and likewise a liberty not fleeting, not present, not secular, nevertheless this psalm too is understood to have embraced within itself nothing earthly, nothing lowly, nothing suited to past times.

but rather, according to prophetic and evangelical and apostolic authority, they foretell all those hopes toward which the desire of the patriarchs, the expectation of the saints, the faith of the apostles, the confession of the martyrs, and the course of all believers extends — that is, toward the holy times, toward the dwelling and assembly of the eternal city, toward the beatitude of the dominical kingdom, toward the new glory of spiritual liberty, toward the fellowship of divine eternity and the kingdom. And that this may be understood more fully, let us treat those very virtues and properties of the words. 'Unless the Lord build the house for Himself, in vain have they labored who build it. Unless the Lord guard the city, in vain have they watched who guard it.'

'It is in vain for you to rise before dawn.' Many wish that Solomon, being zealous for the building of the city and the temple, prophesied at that very time of his construction the overthrow of the city and temple which he was founding, because the title prefixed also shows him to be the author of this psalm. For with great might and all the resources of his kingdom he was attempting to effect something magnificent and worthy of God; for, as it is written, up to a hundred and fifty thousand men were occupied in various uses and services of the building.

And although, by the custom he had instituted, once all was completed, the greatest care of guarding the city and temple ought to have been applied, nevertheless, since he was not unaware that the labor of so great a work would be in vain — that same city being about to be destroyed by the Babylonians on account of the people's sins — he said these things: 'Unless the Lord build the house for Himself, in vain have they labored who build it.' But some think that this prophecy was consummated in those times in which, after the captivity of the people, when King Darius granted their return, the city was again built through Zerubbabel and Josedech. Whose meager understanding that very consummation of the building might refute. For through the prophet Haggai the Lord spoke thus to these same restorers of Jerusalem:

'Yet once more, I will move heaven and earth and sea and dry land; and I will overthrow the thrones of kings.' The force of the psalm, therefore, is to be understood as pertaining not only to the times of Solomon, but also to those of Haggai. For the labor of each building is vain. For the city built through Zerubbabel today presents of itself only the ash of its conflagration and the foulness of deformed ruins. And these thrones of kings, which the builders thought they were restoring unto the glory of the eternal kingdom, a repeated devastation has overthrown, that seat being yet to be overthrown along with the remaining kingdoms. But the prophet has well prophesied the works of the human race to be empty. He knows that the watches of human guards are useless.

He knows that the morning cares of those who rise up are in vain. The city both instituted by itself and restored by others is now nothing: neither the first building nor the subsequent one profited. And rightly is he himself the prophet of the city's overthrow who had been the author of its building. By God, therefore, is a house to be built which may abide, because unless it be one built by the Lord, it will not abide. By God the city is to be guarded, lest it perish, because unless the city be guarded by God, it will be destroyed. And first, let us understand what the house of God may be, that through this it may be known in what manner it is to be built by Him so as to abide. A house is the dwelling of one who dwells.

For divine speech tempers itself, according to the custom and nature of our understanding, by common terms of things fitted to the signification of its teaching and instruction. For it speaks to us, not to itself, and therefore uses our terms in speaking. Indeed the assemblies of the churches, or of the temple at that time, which the enclosures of buildings shut in for the secret religion of the sacraments — our custom is wont to call either the house of God or the temple. Scripture too, whether prophetic or apostolic, has used these names for the designation of places. But we are taught from His own words that it is not this — which is so named by us and among us — that is the house of God. For He says: 'Heaven is My seat, and the earth is the footstool of My feet:

what house will you build for Me, or what place shall be of My rest? Has not My hand made all these things?' The infinite God, therefore, is not shut up in houses of buildings, nor is His immense power, which has wrought all things, contained in any place — the Apostle attesting the same: 'God, who made the world and all things in it, He, being the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.' Is there, then, no rest of God, no dwelling? And perhaps He who is nowhere is thought by no means to exist. Let us hear, therefore, Him testifying of His own rest and dwelling; for He says: 'This is My rest unto the age of the age: here will I dwell, for I have chosen it.' But He chose Sion; yet was it that Sion concerning which the present complaint of this prophecy is made:

'unless the Lord build the house, in vain have they labored who build it'? Sion, in which the temple had been, is overthrown: and where is the eternal seat of the Lord? Where the everlasting rest? What temple is habitable for Him? Surely that one of which it was said: 'You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.' This is the house and this the temple of God, full of the teachings and virtues of God, and capable of holding by the sanctity of the heart the dwelling of the Divine — concerning which this same prophet has testified thus: 'Holy is Your temple, wonderful in righteousness.' Sanctity, sanctity, human continence is a temple to God. The house, therefore, is to be built by God.