Latin original · 31 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:2028–1:2058 (2058 verses in all)
He did not say Let them perish, but Let them flee, because sinners cannot stand in the sight of God. The prophet, foreseeing this, prays that when He arises the diabolical dominions may flee, since even now it is to be believed without doubt that at the invocation of His name they cannot stand. As smoke vanishes, let them vanish: not that they should be reduced to nothing, but that they should rest from their sins. As wax melts before the face of fire. As wax is dissolved and does not lose its nature but grows soft, so let these men too not perish but lay aside their malice; and so let them be converted to repentance and be saved. So let sinners perish before the face of God, because sinners are not worthy to see God. And let the just feast:
those who abide in their righteousness, who have no vices, let them delight in the Lord, and so forth. Beginning of the exposition of Psalms 6 and 7, from the codex formerly of Aquicinctum, now Douai 228. Names are imposed upon individual things, so that from the names the things too may be known; and so the psalms too are marked beforehand with titles, so that from the titles the psalms may be understood. The fifth psalm is marked beforehand with this title: Unto the end, for her that obtaineth the inheritance. The sixth psalm is marked beforehand with this title: Unto the end, in hymns for the eighth, a psalm of David; and it too was sung under the alleluia;
but because the sixth psalm was read on another Lord's day, and we, on account of illness, were unable to interpret it, whereas now the seventh psalm has been read — and it has a title of this kind: A psalm of David, which he sang to the Lord for the words of Chusi the son of Iemini. Behold the mysteries. These things, then, were not written without cause. In the fifth it is said: for her that obtaineth the inheritance; in the sixth it is said: for the eighth; in the seventh it is said: for the words of Chusi the son of Iemini. You see, then, how great are the mysteries interwoven. For her that obtaineth the inheritance: this we discussed in expounding the fifth psalm, that the psalm was sung in the person of the Church, which has obtained the inheritance of Christ.
But the sixth properly pertains to the resurrection, which is on the eighth day. For we have both a first day and an eighth day. The eighth day is after the Sabbath, the first at the beginning. It would take long, if we now wished to speak of the number eight: how there are eight beatitudes in Matthew, how in the one hundred and eighteenth psalm each letter has eight verses, how there are fifteen psalms of degrees, how they are seven and eight, and how Ecclesiastes says: Give a portion to seven, give a portion also to eight; how the eastern gate in Ezekiel has seven steps and eight steps; it would take long to tell how David too was the eighth of the sons of Jesse, who received the kingdom. Hence it is that now something is said concerning the eighth;
for on the eighth we received the kingdoms of heaven, whence he says: O Lord, rebuke me not in Thy fury, neither chastise me in Thy anger. But since we cannot interpret two psalms at once, it suffices us to have discussed the title of the sixth psalm. Now let us come to the opening of the seventh, which begins thus: A psalm of David, which he sang to the Lord for the words of Chusi the son of Iemini. I know that many, and indeed most learned men, have interpreted this title thus: at that time, they say, when Absalom rose up against David his father — I beg of you to listen more patiently:
for we wish to interpret the Scriptures, not to declaim — at that time, then, when Absalom rose up against David, one of David's friends, by name Chusi, wished to go with David, and so forth. Exposition of Psalm 15, from the codex formerly of Aquicinctum, now Douai 220. 1. This psalm is marked beforehand by the inscription of a title; but what was the inscription of David's title, we do not find in the history. Nevertheless we recognize that the inscription of the title was made in the passion of the Lord; and it cannot be denied, according to the interpretation, that this psalm seems to have prophesied of the passion and resurrection of Christ, which is manifest in that place where he says: For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt Thou give Thy holy one to see corruption.
For David died and was buried; but the flesh of Christ alone did not see corruption, nor could His soul be held in hell. Wherefore the psalm, which was to speak both of His passion and of His resurrection and inheritance, was rightly marked with the inscription of a title. For what did the writing of the title contain, which Pilate affixed to His cross? Jesus, it says, the King of the Jews. Which name He Himself also confessed when Pilate asked Him: Art Thou the King of the Jews? For this, He says, I came, and for this I was born. 2. But is Christ the king of the carnal Jews, since it is written elsewhere also: But I am appointed king by Him over Sion, His holy mountain?
I certainly do not suppose that the kingdom was given by the Father to the Lord on this earthly mountain, which is in Judea, whose heavenly kingdom the apostle teaches, just as he also shows that the city of Jerusalem itself which is Christ's is not this one, which now is in bondage with her children, but that which is above, our free mother, the heavenly Jerusalem. So too He is not king of these Jews who are circumcised with a circumcision made by hand, but, as the apostle taught, saying: For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is in the flesh; but the circumcision of the heart, whose praise is not from men but from God;
and Jesus is not the king of these Jews, who glory before men out of their works, but of those whose glory is with God on account of the hope of His grace. For see the apostle telling whose glory is with God. For if, he says, Abraham was justified by works, having glory before men, why does he believe in Him who can justify the ungodly, and hope for the free mercy of God? He has glory, but not with God. 3. Christ, therefore, is king of the Jews whose glory is not from men but from God. Accordingly, this psalm too says pointedly: The Lord is the portion of my inheritance. The lines have fallen to me among the most mighty; for my inheritance is exceedingly great.
What, then, is the inheritance of the Lord, if not this, of which it is written: Ask of Me, and I will give thee the nations for thy inheritance? Now sinners from among the nations believe in Him who can justify the ungodly. And if their glory is not from men but from God, then Christ is king of these Jews too. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is done openly in the flesh. But what does he say? Did not very many believe out of that circumcision? It is true, for they believed; but they too were brought back to the example of the nations, so that they should first confess themselves sinners and thus obtain mercy, as Paul teaches, writing to the Galatians:
If thou, he says, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, how dost thou compel the Gentiles to Judaize? We are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles; knowing that no flesh is justified by the Law. And so, wishing to gain in Christ, he was found a sinner, because Christ came not to call the justified but sinners. And so those too who believed out of the circumcision made by hand, believed humbled to the confession of the sinful Gentiles, that all might be the inheritance of Christ: not among those who shall be justified by their own works, but among those who are justified by the free grace of God. And this is the inscription of the title, that Christ is the King of the Jews.
And so this psalm relates of which Jews Christ seems to be king, and what reason it holds by the inscription of the title; namely, not of those Jews who were outwardly seen and whose circumcision was openly in the flesh, but rather of those Jews who are Jews in secret, to whom belongs the circumcision of the heart, whose glory is not from men but from God. Let us then look at the text of the psalm, whether it pertains to these things which we have said. 4. Preserve me, he says, O Lord, for in Thee have I hoped. He who demands a debt does not hope; for if something is owed to me, I rightly demand it back. But if someone gives me something of his own will, not as an obligation, then from this habit of his I shall hope for his goodwill. And so here.
he who magnified righteousness not from works, but introduced the free grace of God, said: Preserve me, O Lord, for in Thee have I hoped. I will say to the Lord: Thou art my God. For the Lord's power lies in this, that He does for His servant what He wills, not what He is obliged to do. But if wages are owed for works, He will repay me what He is obliged to, not what He wills. For if I have labored, whether He will or not, wages are owed me, and through this the grace of God is made void, as the apostle says: For to him that worketh, the reward is reckoned by debt, not by grace; but he who wishes to be saved not out of his own works, but out of the grace of God — as we all ought to believe — this man, hoping in God, will constitute good for himself.
what God has willed, not what He was obliged to do; and by this he says pointedly: I said to the Lord: Thou art my God. For the Lord never gives thanks to a servant, if he has done what He commanded; but through all these things He wills that His goodwill and grace be looked for, as the Lord also teaches, saying: Which of you having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say to him, when he is come home: Pass, and sit down to meat? But he says: Prepare something for me to eat, and serve me, and then thou shalt eat. Does that master give thanks to that servant, because he did so? I say to you, he does not. So also you, when you shall have done all things that I have commanded you, say: We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.
Therefore, he who acknowledges that he has God for his master ought to display such humility of servitude. But this confession is not of works, but of faith. And so the good announcer of the New Testament says: I said to the Lord: Thou art my God. — And what does he say after this? 5. For Thou hast no need of my goods; to the saints who are in the earth. What was so consequent as that he should say that his goods are not necessary to the saints of the earth, nor that those goods of the Lord are for the use of the saints who dwell on the earth? Now what are the goods of Christ, what the goods of the New Testament, if not free grace, if not the remission of sins? These goods are not necessary to the saints of the earth. They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are ill.
And properly he called those who justify themselves in their own works saints not of heaven but of the earth; for their praise is from men, not from God: such the Lord notes them to have been, justifying themselves in the sight of men, to whom, when they reproved Him for dining with publicans, He said: I came not to save the just, but sinners. Therefore free grace and the remission of sins are not necessary to the just — that is, to those who think themselves just; for the truly just man lives by faith. And so these saints do not need the goods of His Son. And so below He says: I will not gather their synagogues out of My blood. For redemption through My blood is not necessary to such as think themselves just. 6. But why does He say:
They have made their idol-willings wonderful in themselves; their infirmities have been multiplied: afterward they made haste? The apostle treats this passage most fully in his letter to the Romans, saying that the Law entered in, that sin might abound. Where sin abounded, there grace superabounded. For after, rejecting the grace of God, they were found in the works of the Law, the will of God, by which He called them to His grace, was made wonderful to the weak. Whoever, then, wishes to be saved, ought to be willing to be freed by the grace of God. And so the psalm rightly says: They have made their willings wonderful in themselves; their infirmities have been multiplied: afterward they made haste.
For when the infirmities of those who wished to be justified in works were multiplied, the wills of God were made wonderful, calling them to the faith of grace. Their synagogues, therefore, He says, I will not gather out of My blood, that is, I will not redeem those who do not seek the redemption of My grace. Nor will I be mindful, He says, of their names through My lips. For he who wishes to be saved in his own works does not confess My benefit; and he who has not confessed Me before men, neither will I confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But if He was not going to gather such as these, it remained for Him to show whom He would receive in inheritance. And so in order He subjoins: 7.
The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup: it is Thou that wilt restore my inheritance to me. For if He rejected those who are justified by works, He surely preferred to have those whom God was saving through grace. And so He says pointedly: The Lord is the portion of my inheritance. For when the Lord by His grace has saved those whom He gave into the inheritance, the Lord is truly the portion of His inheritance. But the Son kept His obedience, so that He might proclaim His inheritance as not sought by His own blood, but declare it given to Him by God through God, and so that He might confess the Lord to be the portion of His cup also, that is, of His passion.
For indeed, if the nations were redeemed from sin by the Lord's passion, yet that passion of the Lord was the will of the Father, as He testifies in the Gospel, saying — as the man whom He assumed speaks: Father, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt. Therefore, if you consider the will of the Lord, He Himself confessed, saying: If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me. Whence also the redemption of the nations is to be received not in the will of the Son, but in the will of the Father. For, not what I will, He says, but what Thou wilt. Therefore this very grace, by which the nations were redeemed through His death, the Son assigns not to Himself, but to the Father. And so He asserts the Lord to be the portion of His inheritance and of His cup. 8.
The lines, he says, have fallen to me among the most mighty; for my inheritance is exceedingly great to me. For it was an ancient custom that the boundaries of possessions too were measured with a line; and therefore here, when he spoke of the portion of his inheritance, he says: The lines have fallen to me among the most mighty. And we receive testimony of this matter from the canticle of Moses, where it is written: When God dispersed the sons of Adam and set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God, and the Lord's portion became His people, Jacob the line of His inheritance. And rightly here, He who had said that God was the portion of His inheritance, said that the lines of His possession had fallen among the most mighty.
For what are they but the most mighty, whom the Lord justifies, whom the Lord honors? Who shall accuse the elect of God? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that shall condemn? Therefore He who said that His inheritance would be among such, rightly says: The lines have fallen to me among the most mighty. But when he says have fallen, let no one so understand it as if he said that his inheritance had been made worse, because everything that falls becomes worse; rather he used a proper and necessary word. For where one is chosen not on account of merit, there a kind of lot of grace falls, as also in the assumption of the apostle who was substituted into the place of Judas, it is written that the lot fell upon Matthias.
And so, because such an inheritance fell to him by lot from no other source than the Lord's grace, he says pointedly: The lines have fallen to me among the most mighty; for my inheritance is exceedingly great to me. Here the new Adam speaks. 9. I will bless the Lord, who hath given me understanding: for the Son knows nothing except what He has seen and heard from the Father. And so He blesses Him who gave Him understanding. And truly this understanding is not from man, but from God. For which of men, when two inheritances are set before him, one of them magnificent and rich in works, the other poor and needy, would choose that one which stands in need of another's mercy?
But the Son, taught by the Father, prefers to have His inheritance among those who hope in God rather than among those who are justified by their own works. And so He says beautifully: I will bless the Lord, who hath given me understanding; and moreover, even in the night my reins have instructed me. In what did His reins instruct Him? Namely, he says, they made Him understand that it is better to hope in the Lord than to be justified in one's own work. For did not His own reins, as it were in the night, instruct the Lord Himself to hope in God? For His soul too was sorrowful even unto death. He learned to hope in God; and this is what he means, that He was instructed unto this understanding by His reins, as it were in the night. For the following words too show that He speaks of His passion, when He subjoins: 10.
'I foresaw the Lord in my sight always, for he is at my right hand, that I be not moved. Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh also shall rest in hope: for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption.' The text and the sequence here are indeed plain; but as to why he named the reins, and said, 'as in the night they instructed me,' let us inquire, lest the more obscure things seem so. God is called the searcher of the reins and of the heart, in which as in two places the secrets of a man are kept. But in the heart is the secret of the soul, while in the reins is the secret of the flesh; and these differences between the inner and the outer man the Apostle likewise teaches, when he says:
'I consent to the law according to the inner man; but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind.' And in another place: 'Therefore I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.' Our Lord Jesus too reports that he felt some such dissension, when he says: 'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.' For according to the inner man he consented to the law of the Father, that he should suffer; but according to the outer man, as he himself testifies, in the flesh he trembled. And so, because the reins contain the secrets of the flesh, which was made weak at the time of the Passion, he says he was instructed by his reins, that he himself, though he was the Son, might understand that he was to hope in God.
The Epistle written to the Hebrews holds a like view concerning him. 'For although,' it says, 'he was the Son of God, he learned obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became to all who obey him the cause of eternal salvation.' For so his reins instructed him, that he should foresee God always at his right hand, that he be not moved. That is, in the will he is willing as the spirit, but the flesh is weak. And he said properly that he was thus instructed by his reins 'as in the night'; he did not say 'in the night,' but 'as in the night.' For his senses were not utterly darkened by the fear of death, he who said: 'Yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.' Yet still he was not without a certain disturbance, he who confessed weakness and sorrow.
For if elsewhere David says: 'The fear of death fell upon me, dread and trembling seized me, and darkness covered me,' rightly is this darkness, coming from the fear of death (which it is fitting to have been very slight in the Son of God), called not night but as it were night. And so it is said with meaning: 'Moreover as in the night my reins instructed me.' And what did they instruct? Namely what follows below, that he should foresee God in his sight always, because he is at his right hand, that he be not moved. 11. 'For this,' he says, 'my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh also shall rest in hope: for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life:'
'thou shalt fill me with joy with thy countenance: delights at thy right hand.' Therefore there are also joys at the right hand of God, with which the Son was wholly filled. For he had God at his right hand. 'I foresaw the Lord,' he says, 'in my sight always, because he is at my right hand.' And ascending into heaven, he himself was set at the right hand of the Father. 'At his right hand': let us inquire what this right and left may be. The Apostle knows in a certain place the weapons of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, glory indeed and dishonor. The right I take to be the form of righteousness, the left dishonor and infamy. Yet both are weapons of righteousness. But that we may come to the right-hand weapons of righteousness, we must first do our warfare among the left-hand ones.
Indeed in this world dishonor, infamy, weakness, foolishness, and other things like these must be taken up, that we may come to nobility, to glory, to virtue, to wisdom: all of which we shall receive when we have arrived there, where Christ is, sitting at the right side of God. For we are sown in dishonor, that we may rise in glory; we are sown in mortality, that we may rise in eternity. And so our Lord, suffering at the time of the Passion the mockeries of scourges and of spittings, when he was accused as a blasphemer, when he was reckoned among thieves, set in such great dishonor and infamy, what was he doing but warring for righteousness among the left-hand weapons?
And so then, set at the left hand of God, he foresaw him at his right hand, that he be not moved. But after he rose and ascended into heaven, coming to the right hand, to the palm of righteousness, to glory, to nobility, he is filled with joy with the countenance of God and has delights at his right hand. To these the Apostle exhorts us in hope, saying: 'Because the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with those good things to come, which shall be opened in us.' Wherefore let us also more gladly glory in our infirmities, that the power of God may protect us. And now indeed let the Father himself be to us at the right hand, that we be not moved, being about afterward to translate us to his right hand—into the riches of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is glory.