Latin original · 37 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:1916–1:1952 (2058 verses in all)
But human righteousness is wont to come to this, that it is not merciful, and mercy so to present itself as not to be just. For mercy will not be just, if you should pitiably envy the more opulent his right when a poor man brings false accusation, if you should prefer a woman's tears to a man's insult, if you should think that a blind man's revilings are not to be censured. But on the contrary, righteousness will not hold to mercy, if you should strike the thief of a single coin as the thief of a huge treasure, though he who lost it had a treasure in that one coin, or if you should bind a young man ensnared in one and the same shameful adultery to the same penalty, in an equal death, as the contriver of many adulteries, though yet the crime of death be in both.
haecatqueistiusmodiinperfectamfaciuntetmisericordiametiustitiamhumanam; deiautemiustitiammisericordempraestatcriminosorumpoenisindultapatientia. qui, cumcontramoremhumanaeinpatientisenonfestinatpunire, miseratusest: tenensiustitiaminpoenapostmisericordiamnonpro-ficientepatientia, habensmisericordiaminpoenapostpatientiamexerendoiustitiam. nonenimdeusrapithumanorumcriminumoccasionesnequetamquaminfirmitatisnostraenaturaequenesciusipsumilludadpoenamerrorisetpeccatinostritempusinuadit:
These and things of this kind make both human mercy and human righteousness imperfect; but the mercy of God renders his righteousness merciful by the patience granted to the punishment of the guilty. He who, contrary to the manner of human impatience, does not hasten to punish, has had mercy: holding righteousness in punishment after mercy, when patience no longer avails, having mercy in punishment when, after patience, righteousness is put into action. For God does not seize upon occasions of human crimes, nor, as though ignorant of our infirmity and nature, does he invade that very time for the punishment of our error and sin:
but he dissembles and defers, and awaits, by the delaying of vengeance, the solace of repentance, presenting himself sweet to all, while by the manner of mercy and righteousness he reserves himself for the indulgence of a severity to be tempered. This is chief in God, this is to be praised in the powerful one: not that he made heaven, because he is powerful; not that he founded the earth, because he is a power; not that he tempered the year by the stars, because he is wise; not that he gave life to man, because he is life; not that he moved the sea into its approaches and retreats, because he is spirit: but that he is merciful, who is just; but that he shows pity, who is king; but that he dissembles, who is God. For to that which was said, 'they shall exult in thy righteousness,' there follows as though necessarily: 'The Lord is compassionate and merciful.'
'Patient and of great mercy. The Lord is sweet to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works.' For that he is powerful is the virtue of his own nature; but that he is merciful is the advancement of our salvation. And it is more not to use one's own, but to have bestowed on others the things that are one's own; and therefore mercy surpasses the rest of God's works, because his magnificent working of power is a matter of his own virtue, but his mercy is a use bestowed on another. On which account the prophet, standing as it were on the very summit of the divine praises on account of mercy, shows the honour due to God as of a public confession, saying: 'Let all thy works confess to thee, O Lord, and let thy saints confess to thee.'
'They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom and shall tell of thy power: to make known to the sons of men thy power and the glory of the magnificence of thy kingdom. Thy kingdom is a kingdom of all ages, and thy dominion is in every generation and lineage.' The order of the sayings is worthy of prophetic grandiloquence. The works confess God: for how magnificent he is, the magnificence of the works and of creation confesses. But the saints also confess, to whom he deigns to be king. They speak forth the glory of the kingdom, lest, being unknown, it be not desired by those who shall enjoy it. They announce also the magnificence of the glory of God's kingdom, lest what is eternal be despaired of. His dominion also is shown into generation and generation, that it may understand itself co-eternal with the dominion.
And thus the knowledge of God is in the works, the office of the saints is in teaching, the use of prophecy is in proclamation, the glory of the kingdom is in the eternity of the dominion; and it must needs be that the eternity of the dominion has those in whom that which is eternal is exercised. And to this, to be sought by faithful hopes, the exhortation of the prophet is immediately subjoined: 'The Lord is faithful in his words and holy in all his works.' The faith of words might perhaps waver, unless holiness were mingled with the works. And thus holiness in works confirms faith in words, so that you may not doubt concerning the faith of the Holy One in his promises, whose holiness you experience in things.
For if we understand God to be holy through the fact that we are born, we live, we are nourished, and abound in all the resources fitting to human nature, that holiness cannot be unfaithful in his sayings. But the prophet knows that there is also another work of God's holiness in that which follows: 'The Lord upholds all who fall, and sets upright all who are cast down.' God's holiness is present to all and does not withdraw itself from human aids. But even now the prophet keeps the plan of righteousness and mercy. For the Lord upholds not those who have collapsed, but those who are falling, whom, even though a headlong lapse of nature drag them prone into a fall, yet repentance—which is the author of ceasing—will stay in their lapse, lest they have now utterly fallen.
For to fall, not to have fallen, can be established as such, that one may not have fallen. But also those who are dashed down are set upright. But it is different to be crushed by an external force and to have fallen by one's own collapse. For he is dashed down whom a hot-blooded age, through the devil's instigation, has cast headlong into a fall, whom ignorance has compelled into error, whom the infirmity of nature, using fraudulent blandishments, has driven into crime. This one is rather dashed down than that one, who has remained by his own will, whom this habitual practice of vices delights, who does not repent of what he has committed. For he who has repented of his deeds has the solace of pardon with God, nor is it unworthy of a tempering of severity that, through grief for what has been committed, he thus professes himself unwilling. And why he upholds the falling and sets upright the dashed-down, he teaches by what follows, saying:
'The eyes of all hope in thee, and thou givest their food in due season. Thou openest thy hand and fillest every soul with blessing.' And so those who are dashed down and those who fall look toward God with all their eyes; nor let anyone so trust in himself as not to fear always to fall, always to be dashed down. From him it must be hoped that we be not imperilled by a fall, that we be not dashed down by the infirmity of nature. But all the supports of our life are from him, since we live by the food granted from the opportuneness of the fruits, since, by opening his hand, he fills our souls with spiritual gifts: for indeed from the fount of his virtue the abundance of those things which are well-pleasing to himself overflows into us. Both of which, in the things that follow, he thus distinguishes:
'The Lord is righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works.' He is righteous in his ways, when he leads our infirmity into his eternal kingdom by the established communion of spiritual gifts; but holy in his works, when he supplies to all their fruits in the opportuneness of the seasons: teaching his holiness in the nourishment of all, but preserving his righteousness in filling souls according to his good pleasure. After which follows: 'The Lord is near to those who call upon him.' He is not far off, who through the virtue of his own nature is himself everywhere always, and is wholly always and everywhere, according to that saying of the Apostle: 'for in him we are and in him we live and move.' He is near therefore to those who call upon him, since there is nothing that is without him.
But to which callers he is near, he teaches by what is subjoined: 'to all who call upon him in truth.' Not to those calling out of idleness, nor out of the uncertainty of unfaithful ambiguity, but to those calling upon the true God with faithful truth. And since he is near, he demonstrates what he bestows on those who call upon him in truth, saying: 'He will do the will of those who fear him.' God will not do the wills of the base nor the desires of the vicious, but of those who fear him—by fear innocent, by faith honourable, by reverence modest; and wills not idle, nor disdaining to hope for anything from him through a certain contempt of silence, but such as prayer utters, such as supplications attest. And therefore he added: 'and he will hear their prayer.'
The will therefore is done by God which is heard through the voice of prayer. But what will shall be done for those who pray? 'And he will save them,' he says. This is what those who fear God will: this is what they pray to be heard, that eternal death may not have dominion over them, that they be not reckoned unto the destruction of the perpetual judgement, but be safe under the guardianship of God. For there follows: 'God keeps those who love him.' He will therefore save them by keeping, that is, by reserving them as partakers of the eternal kingdom; but those who both will fear and will pray and will love. Then follows: 'and all sinners he will destroy,' who neither feared as men, nor prayed as subjects, nor loved as those endowed with life and the world. And the prophet concluded the confession of the honour due, saying:
'My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord.' Praise does not suffice him, unless he also does not cease to praise. For he will praise still further, even while he already praises. But while he praises, he also exhorts the whole human race to the blessing of God: 'and let all flesh bless his holy name.' Through the constancy of his office and his faith he will indeed always praise; but it is the care of the prophet that all should bless God, which he desires. For he does not say, 'they shall bless,' as though he were certain concerning the future, but out of the affection of a wish he says, 'let them bless,' and that rather that it might be understood that he desires it, than that he was confident it would so be. Then he demands that the blessing be not temporary, but eternal, 'for ever and for ever and ever.'
It is rather to be desired by us that we should bless the Eternal one eternally: because he who blesses eternally must needs remain co-eternal with that Eternal one, namely with our Lord, the only-begotten and firstborn Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen. PSALM 145. A Psalm of David. Alleluia. Of Haggai and Zechariah. 'Praise the Lord, O my soul; I will praise the Lord in my life: I will sing to my God as long as I shall be.' To this psalm also the translators thought fit to add something. For whereas among the Hebrews only the confession Alleluia is prefixed, it pleased them to set Haggai and Zechariah before it in the title:
this in order that we might know the psalm to be prophetic, because through these prophets, under whom Jerusalem was again built, at that very time the building of the eternal Jerusalem is foretold, the Gospel also testifying, when, as the Lord was about to enter the temple and to overturn the tables of the money-changers and the dealings of those buying and selling, it was thus written: 'Now this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Zechariah the prophet, saying: Say to the daughter of Zion: behold, thy king comes to thee meek, sitting upon an ass and a young colt, the foal of one under the yoke.' And, as I judge, the psalm shows rather the king of this Jerusalem and Zion, which thus began: 'Praise the Lord, O my soul; I will praise the Lord in my life: I will sing to my God as long as I shall be.'
Knowingly, and according to the prophet's teaching, he kept the order of his words. For first he exhorts the soul to praise, which was constituted in this nature, that it might remain eternal; then next, because through the gift of resurrection, the body being glorified, he remembers his whole self to be co-eternal with him, as though confident concerning the future he says: 'I will praise the Lord in my life.' For that life which now is through the infirmities of the body is not his own; for it began from Adam, it was not inaugurated together with Adam—a thing which the Apostle knows to be not life but death, saying: 'Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' In this life therefore of his own he will praise God, such as was first established in man. Then thirdly,
Lest in this very body he should now be thought irreligious, he added: 'I will sing praise to my God as long as I shall live.' Now throughout this whole book of the Psalms we have borne in mind that by 'singing psalms' are signified the religious workings of the body, which will find favour through a fitting and harmonious variety of bodily movement. After this he refutes the foolish opinions of men and their empty religious cults centred on the names of kings, whom antiquity fashioned for itself as gods, saying: 'Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. Their spirit shall go forth, and they shall return into their earth: in that day all their thoughts shall perish.' He forbade trust in kings. And what kings? He added: 'and in the sons,' he says, 'of men.' And which sons of men? Those in whom there is no salvation.
And why is there no salvation? He shows it: 'Their spirit shall go forth, and they shall return into their earth.' And for those who are to return into the earth, what shall come to pass? 'In that day all their thoughts shall perish' — corrupted, that is, in their very origin, because they persisted in being sons of men and would not become sons of God; and possessing no salvation, because when the spirit goes forth and the bodies are dissolved into the earth, their thoughts, being bodily and earthly, shall perish together with the earthly body. But having forbidden confidence in such kings, he shows in whom hope must be placed, saying: 'Blessed is he whose helper is the God of Jacob: his hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them.'
'who keepeth truth for ever, who executeth judgment for them that suffer wrong.' It is no perishable thought to hope in such a King; and that hope does not perish which is extended toward the Creator of heaven, earth, sea, and this whole universe. This is the helper in whom hope is to be placed, in whom there is no deceit. For since, according to the prophecy, every man is a liar, He alone keeps truth in the world, and keeping truth He executes judgment on behalf of those who suffer wrong. Blessed is that man whom, by His help, out of Jacob He shall make Israel. His hope is eternal, because he trusts in the Creator of heaven, earth, and sea. And the Creator of all these is here both the true One and the Judge, both by keeping truth and by executing judgment.
Nor does He execute judgment only, but also that which follows: 'He giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners: the Lord giveth wisdom to the blind, the Lord raiseth up them that are cast down, the Lord loveth the just. The Lord preserveth the stranger; He will support the orphan and the widow, and He will destroy the way of sinners.' These things it is indeed not idle to understand also in a bodily sense; but the discourse embraces something deeper and greater, I know not what. 'He giveth,' he says, 'food to the hungry.' Let us see what food and to which hungry. And these bodily foods are not always furnished by God at the very time when we hunger. For their bestowal is a yearly gift:
and therefore they are provided within a set season, so that within that season no one may hunger. There is, then, another hunger, and there are those who hunger in another way, and it is to these hungry ones that food is provided. For it is written in the prophet Amos: 'Behold, I will bring a famine upon the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but a famine that the word of God may be heard.' This food, then — the food of preaching — the Lord imparts to the hungry. And when this has been taken as nourishment, the chains of the devil are loosed. For according to the Gospels He had bound the daughter of Abraham for eighteen years. Such food also unbinds the fetters of avarice, of lust, of drunkenness. And when the fetters are unbound, He bestows wisdom on the blind.
If the prophet were speaking of bodily gifts, he would rather have mentioned that light was granted to the blind. But because, when hunger was driven away through the food, the fetters of the world were loosed, the blindness of the world is likewise dispelled by the imparting of wisdom. For after the great famine of the knowledge of God we are nourished with spiritual foods; and when the fetters, by which we are not permitted to run toward things eternal, are unbound, and the blindness is scattered through the wisdom granted us, we behold our Creator with the eyes of understanding. Therefore the long famine ceases, the heavy fetters, the foolish blindness; and that which follows takes their place. Those who are cast down are raised up, the just are loved, the strangers or proselytes are preserved, the orphan and the widow are received, and the way of sinners is destroyed.
Whoever he be that belongs to God, though his gift be not uniform, yet he has one proper to himself: so that, though cast down, if he does not hunger, if he be not fettered and foolish, he may nevertheless be raised up, lest he lie prostrate for ever; so that the just man may be loved for his righteousness; so that the stranger, though not loved as though just, may yet be reserved on this account, because he has come as a stranger; so that the orphan, because he had forsworn the devil as his father, may not, after the example of the apostles, be left orphaned; so that the widow may be received as a bride, after this world has been crucified to her together with her. For the apostle called 'widow' all the faith of believers, for whom, through the fulfilment of the times, the Law, as a first husband, has died. But not only is the widow received; the way of sinners is also destroyed.
When these have been plunged into destruction, Jerusalem, the city of that holy King, shall be inhabited — not, to be sure, that Jerusalem which, laid desolate and overthrown, pays the penalty of impious parricide. For he thus concluded: 'The Lord shall reign for ever: thy God, O Sion, unto generation and generation.' Where is that Sion in which the Lord shall reign? Unless perhaps in that one which slays the prophets and stones those who are sent to her? This one, at any rate, is today no more; and how shall the Lord reign for ever when the seat of His kingdom is overthrown?
But He shall reign in that city which is the heavenly mother, which, built of living stones and full of holy citizens, shall be frequented through the generation of the Law and through the generation of faith by the household of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen. PSALM 146. Alleluia. 'Praise the Lord, for a psalm is good: let praise be pleasant to our God,' and the rest. That after the first overthrow of Jerusalem, when the captive people had been carried off into Babylonia, that same city was again built up, both the history of Kings and the books of Ezra relate. But that today it is nothing, the evidence of facts teaches.
And we have said this beforehand for this reason: lest, because it seemed good to the translators to prefix to this and to the preceding psalm the title 'of Haggai and Zechariah,' we should suppose that the foreknowledge of this prophecy belonged to the men of that time. For the prophet, not ignorant of the heavenly mystery — since he had said, in the matter of building the city of God, that human building was vain, since a city could not be eternal with God unless built by Him — would not now be exhorting us to rejoice over a Jerusalem built again by God, which he had earlier foretold was built in vain by men. But if perhaps someone shall think that what is said in another psalm thus: 'Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it;'
'unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it' — that this was said on this account, because the prophet foreknew the overthrow of that city in which the temple was to be built: he who understands these things thus ought to remember that this same prophet could not have been ignorant that the building which was renewed a second time by Zerubbabel was destined to be both vain and perishable; nor that he called the building begun by Solomon 'not established by God' for this reason, that it was to be destroyed by the king of Babylon, since after seventy years thereafter that same building was again restored; but that the building which was carried out by Zerubbabel was proclaimed to be the building of God, since from that time it has been demolished and dissolved without any restoration;
and that, though a renewal followed upon the demolished building, he nevertheless proclaimed it vain and human; but this one, which came to pass with no hope of restoration, is renewed by the perpetuity of the divine work! All these kinds of interpretation are foolish and ridiculous. But the prophet praises the Lord as building that Jerusalem which, according to the Gospels, is the city of the holy King, in which the saints rising through the Lord are shown forth — the city which joyfully received the Lord borne upon the foal of an ass, the Lord of the saints. Bodily, indeed, at that time the Lord entered by such a conveyance into that city which slays the prophets and stones the apostles; but that joy belonged to another city. For the building of that city, therefore, the prophet calls us, saying:
'Praise the Lord, for a psalm is good: let praise be pleasant to our Lord.' No slight is the praise of rejoicing, when a psalm is good. And a psalm, as we have often said, is wont to signify the duty not so much of the voice as of bodily working. For we praise the Lord not so much by speech as by the deed and acts of obedience: just as sea and earth and heaven praise God not so much by voice as by the interchange and observance of their offices. Therefore the prophet calls us to the praise of God, because the psalm is good, and he desires that of this good psalm there may be pleasant praise to our God — namely, that our works may be pleasing to God, whereby He is praised by us through the compliance of our deeds.
'The Lord buildeth up Jerusalem, and gathereth together the dispersions of Israel. Who healeth the broken of heart, and bindeth up their bruises. Who telleth the multitude of the stars, and calleth them all by their names.' To the Jews who were to return from Babylonia to Jerusalem under King Darius, power to return was granted by edict. Nor were they at that time held anywhere else than within the borders of the kingdom of Babylonia: from what dispersion, then, is Israel gathered together? Surely that of which the Lord says: 'He shall send His angels with a trumpet and a great voice, and shall gather together the elect from the four corners of the winds': whose gathering shall form the assembly of the holy city, which today is built up in us through the work of hope and faith.
And on this account the building comes before the gathering, because God's mercy, through the grace of justification, builds us up unto the gathering of the future city. Otherwise, if he were speaking of an earthly building, the gathering would have had to be proclaimed first, because Israel could not build up the overthrown Jerusalem unless first gathered together. He then keeps a fitting order, saying: 'Who healeth the broken of heart, and bindeth up their bruises.' For when Israel has been gathered and collected into the one city that is being built, all human infirmities and bodily blemishes shall be taken away. For corruption being swallowed up and all the vices of human nature devoured, an eternal incorruption shall succeed, one to be ground down by none of the deaths that come of anxieties.
For the Lord came, according to the Gospels, to heal the broken of heart, to preach remission to the captives and sight to the blind, to send the bruised away into rest, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of recompense. And these things indeed have already in part begun, because, according to the apostle, we tarry through a mirror and in an enigma and in the image of things to come. Yet nevertheless the fruit of that time is not yet ours, in which, according to the prophet, having attained the consummation of hope, we may say: 'Return, O my soul, unto thy rest: for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with me. For He hath delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, my feet from falling. I will please the Lord in the land of the living.'
For when every contrition of heart has been healed, and — lest it should perpetually recur again — when we have been bound up and freed from all these infirmities of human passions, we shall please God in the land of the living, our soul returning to its rest, from which through the transgression of its first parent Adam it had been cast out. But after the proclamation of the healed heart, this too is added to the praise of the divine goodness: 'Who telleth the multitude of the stars, and calleth them all by their names.' If praise is offered to God on account of a bodily-built Jerusalem, why are this number of the stars and their names put forward here as though for the chief praise of the divine work?
Or is it perhaps more praiseworthy to God to have numbered and named the stars than to have created them, since the creation both made their number and imposed their names, and distinguished names and number by the appellations? But the stars numbered here are those which Abraham beheld in heaven, which Isaac received in his seed, which Paul distinguishes in glory. And that they are called by their own names, let us hear Him who is to call them. He says in the Gospel: 'Marvel not at this; for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.' They are called, therefore, and shall come forth. And they are so numbered by God that even the hairs, which in each of us are thought to be innumerable, are within His number, the same Lord saying:
'Are not even the hairs of your head all numbered?' This rather is worthy of the Lord, this rather is to be set forth in His mercy: that those whom He has healed as broken of heart, whose bruises He has bound up, He should call by their names, number by their peculiar identity, and glorify with heavenly light. On account of which marvels of His the prophet proclaimed: 'Great is our Lord, and great is His power: and of His wisdom there is no number. The Lord lifteth up the meek, but He bringeth the sinners down even to the ground.' For this is proper to the meek, because, according to the Gospels, the meek shall possess the earth, so that they may be worthy before God of appellation, number, and radiance. Great is the Lord when He gathers the dispersions. Great is His power when He glorifies the broken.
His wisdom is innumerable, since He distinguishes all things both by names and by number. But He who lifts up the meek brings the sinners down even to the ground. After the merit of holiness, the penalty of impiety is subjoined, since, while the meek are received into the radiance of the stars, the sinners, brought down even to the ground, are consigned to the judgment of the law below. On account of which the prophet exhorts us, as though hesitating and wavering, to praise, saying: 'Begin unto the Lord with confession, sing psalms to our God on the harp, who covereth the heaven with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth, who bringeth forth grass on the mountains, giveth their food to the cattle, and to the young ravens that call upon Him.'
The prophetic discourse frequently admonishes us to believe that He is Lord of this whole universe, whom all the Law has spoken of as God, who willed to be named the God of Israel: as now in this same psalm, when he had said, 'building up Jerusalem and gathering together the dispersions of Israel,' and had exhorted to His praise, he added: 'who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth,' so that the God of the given Law and the God of this creation might not be understood as one and another. And the reasoning of this teaching is so tempered that the names and kinds of the enumerated creation were mentioned, which, while they showed the God of the given Law to be the Creator, yet contained within themselves the signification of a typical instruction: