The very superscription of the psalm demands anxious diligence in seeking understanding. For at its very opening is placed at once: 'unto the end, understanding.' For the psalm is shown to contain a matter not of its own time, since the prescription of its title is 'unto the end.' And since the understanding is in the end, there cannot be in it the understanding of any other thing more than of the end. But the end, as we have often shown, is that in which all things are concluded, for whose sake all other things exist, toward which all the works of hope, of affairs, of business hasten. The understanding of the psalm, therefore, consists in Him on account of whom all things are, apart from whom nothing is. And who this is, the very superscription — which is thought to contain history — will show. For it is thus:
'Unto the end, understanding for David himself, when Doeg the Idumaean came and announced to Saul and said to him: David has come into the house of Abimelech.' And that we may more completely grasp the reason of the superscription, the very order of the deeds done must be set down. Doeg was set over the mules of Saul; he said to Saul: 'I saw the son of Jesse coming into Nob to Abimelech, the son of Ahitob. And he inquired of him in the Lord, and gave him to eat, and gave him the sword of Goliath the foreigner.' Having heard these things, the king gave Doeg power over the priests and over the city. Thereupon the Scripture added:
'And Doeg the Idumaean went about,' it says, 'and fell upon the priests and put to death in that day eighty-five, all wearing the ephod, and Nob the city of the priests he cast down by the edge of the sword.' This, then, is the whole account of the deeds; from which only so much has been taken up for the title of the psalm as would satisfy both the sacrament of the psalm and prophetic doctrine. For this alone is in the superscription: 'when,' it says, 'Doeg came and announced to Saul and said: that David has come into the house of Abimelech.' And necessarily, after the fiftieth psalm — in which the remission of sins is contained according to the virtue of this sanctified number, as we taught at the beginning of the psalms — this psalm, earlier in time, is placed later in order:
so that what is prescribed 'unto the end, understanding' may be understood when the kinds of the sacraments are perfect and complete on every side. Abimelech, by the interpretation of the word, signifies 'my brother's rule.' For what we call 'my brother's rule,' this the Hebrews name Abimelech. When therefore it is said to Saul, 'David has come into the house of Abimelech,' it is announced to that enemy of David that he has entered the house of his brother's rule. And what the house of the brother's rule is, the apostle Peter teaches, saying: 'and you, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house unto a holy priesthood.' And below: 'but you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for a possession.'
Into this spiritual house, therefore, we are to be built up into a royal generation, if through the spiritual building of our bodies, made conformed to God, we deserve that the generation be perfected as royal. This house of Abimelech, then — that is, the house of the fraternal kingdom — that true David, holy, king, righteous, the Dayspring, entered; having become, that is, a man of our body. This house is His fraternal kingdom, because in the glory of that same body we are co-heirs of His kingdom, as He Himself says: 'Come, blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.' And that they are His brethren, whose royal house He entered, He testifies through the prophet in the psalm, saying: 'I will announce Thy name to My brethren; in the midst of the Church I will praise Thee.'
Therefore, the remission of sins having been granted according to the preceding psalm, the Word made flesh dwells in us, who are both His brethren and a spiritual house and a royal generation. But the impious and parricidal and traitorous people, who is signified in Doeg, betrays to his king — that is, to the enemy of David — that He is in the house of Abimelech. And this happens when He is handed over to Pilate, when the man is offered up to be crucified, when, having repudiated their King, they confess their king to be Caesar — betraying Him indeed to be in the house of Abimelech, but not understanding Him, though He is in the house of Abimelech.
To be in the house of the fraternal rule — that is, the body, in which the Church of the saints, which is the body of Christ, conformed to Him, shall reign together with Him — having entered, that is, into that in which He took for Himself the food He desired (for He desired with desire to eat the Passover), and from which He took up the arms of Goliath, that is, of the devil (for the strong one Himself despoiled the spoils); after which, by this same Doeg — that is, the traitorous people — the apostles were slain and the churches overthrown. Hence, therefore, the title of the psalm: 'unto the end, understanding,' because in Christ, who is David, the Dayspring, the Righteous, King and eternal and Shepherd, is understood to be the consummation of all our hope and the end of the law: who, according to both the title and the order of the psalm, was betrayed in that house of His own body,
which is signified to be for Him the house of the fraternal rule. 'Why do you glory in malice, you who are mighty in iniquity all the day long?' It is the prophet's complaint that he glories in iniquity all the day long, who is mighty in malice. And this glory indeed is convicted of iniquity. But there is a glory both to be sought and to be confessed and to be uttered with a certain feeling of exulting joy; both of which the other prophet demonstrates under the same words, saying: 'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the strong in his strength, nor the rich in his riches; but let him who glories glory in the Lord.' For, the causes of a reprehensible glory being first forbidden, he in turn shows the cause of a fitting glory.
By which example the blessed apostle knows that he should glory in nothing save in one thing alone, when he says: 'But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.' Therefore it is not glory of this kind, but the glory of iniquity that offends — and of that iniquity which is 'all the day long.' We remember that 'day' is wont to be named for the age or time of a man, as when it is said, 'I have not desired the day of man,' or again when Abraham desired the day of the Lord, or when the apostle delivers to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved 'in the day of the Lord' — showing not this day bounded by the rising and setting of the sun, but the day of an appointed time or age.
Therefore the one mighty in malice glories in iniquity all the day long. But it is absolutely understood that the ground of this complaint does not fit the person of Doeg. For what power had a keeper of mules, allotted the right over the animals of the royal conveyance, or one merely announcing that David had entered the house of Abimelech? Did he glory in iniquity all the day long? But under his person the people is to be understood to be signified — the people whose every age was in iniquity, whose glory of iniquity itself abounded from the power of malice.
For it was mighty when, in servitude, it was visited by the Lord; when for its sake Egypt was struck with so many plagues; when in the three days' darkness it did not feel the darkness itself, the light remaining with it; when it left Egypt despoiled of silver and every ornament to its own calamity; when according to the times of day and night it used a pillar now cloudy, now fiery; when it crossed the Red Sea on foot; when it lived on the food of angels; when it beheld the majesty of God descending to the mountain; when it heard the voice of Him speaking from the fire; when it overthrew many kingdoms in grievous wars.
when it beheld the Jordan flowing back that it might be dry for it; when it had prophets; when it used priests for the cleansing of sins and the redemption of its soul; when it merited to obtain its own kingdom. But in all these things, though it was mighty, yet it was always mighty in its own malice: when it desired the onions and garlic of Egypt and its meats; when, through the habit of vices, it preferred impious servitude to pious liberty; when it worshipped the calf, cursed Moses, abominated God, vowed its sons as victims to demons, slew the prophets, and lifted up upon the cross even God Himself and its own Lord — the man born for its sake, handed over to the governor. And thus, glorying in iniquity through the whole day of its life,
when it was mighty, it nonetheless remained mighty in malice. After this complaint of prophetic grief concerning him, therefore, the discourse is now turned upon him himself: 'Your tongue has devised injustice.' It is the office of the human tongue that, driven by natural reason and by a varied yet moderated motion, it distinguishes the voice into words, and through it, out of the sound of the breath bursting forth confusedly, there arises articulate speech corresponding to the understanding of things. And although this rational motion of it exists for accomplishing that end, yet it is understood to be subject rather to reason than to be itself perceiving by a sense of reason. But what lacks a sense of understanding lacks also the instinct of reason.
But whatever lacks the instinct of reason lacks also the deliberation of counsel. And how is it rightly understood as said by the prophet that the tongue devises injustice, since thought is entered upon out of the rational sense of the living soul, while the tongue is instituted not for the nature of entering upon reason, but for the ministry of a rational nature? But the other prophet also demonstrates the authority of this perfect and prophetic saying, saying: 'In the mouth of fools is their heart' — because, handling nothing from the counsel of reason nor depending on the meditation of the heart, they utter, by the rash motion of the tongue only, ill-ordered, chance, and disordered things.
And therefore in the mouth of fools is their heart, because they will not speak what they have thought, but will think what they have spoken. And this indeed concerning the tongue of the fool. But concerning the tongue of the wise we read thus: 'The tongue of the understanding meditates wisdom'; and again: 'My tongue is the pen of a swiftly writing scribe' — because the tongue of the understanding proceeds from the meditation of wisdom, and the same again, like the pen of a writer, does nothing ill-composed, nothing uncertain, but, obeying those things which have either been thought or read, swiftly complies according to the counsel of reason. And because, from the nature of reason, the tongue rather serves what is thought than itself thinks, this tongue, which has devised injustice, is taught not to have used the offices of its own nature.
For there follows: 'Like a sharp razor you have wrought deceit.' The razor is sharpened for the brightness of the face, that, shaving off the shaggy and bristling face, it may make it smooth. If it rather wounds, it has wrought deceit, since, prepared for adornment, it has furnished its ministry for a wound. This tongue, then, of the one mighty in malice, devising iniquity, wrought deceit — that is, that which nature had prepared for uttering the rational thoughts of a deliberating heart, itself rather devises irrational iniquities. For that people, who is to be understood as signified in Doeg, chosen for magnifying the name of God and prepared for celebrating His praises, dishonours Him, betrays Him, and, so far as in it lies, destroys Him by the death of the cross;
and this it accomplishes with the razor of its own tongue, by which it cried out: 'Crucify, crucify.' Deceit, therefore, like a sharp razor, devising iniquity, this tongue wrought; and of what kind the deceit was, the following words teach. For there follows: 'You have loved malice above kindliness, iniquity above speaking righteousness.' The guilt of this deceit becomes graver by comparison, when malice is loved and goodness neglected, when iniquity is done and the discourse of righteousness passed over. This affection of a love inclined toward malice the Lord condemns in the Gospels, saying: 'But this is the judgment, that light came into this world, and men loved darkness rather than light.'
The people, therefore, for whom, unto the redemption of sins, the Word was made flesh and God was born a man, that through the justification of faith it might be free from the curse of the law, while it prefers to serve the curse in the transgression of the law, betrayed that God of its own to punishment, taking upon itself His blood — that the governor might be innocent. And in doing these things it changes the custom of nature. For it loves malice above kindliness, and turns love away from good things toward the worst. It preferred also to love injustice above speaking righteousness. But the prophetic word retained, according to the Jewish custom, a reason in the very force of the words, when it said: 'You have loved malice above kindliness, injustice above speaking righteousness.' For where it says:
'You have loved malice above kindliness,' it condemns nothing beyond the love itself by comparison. But where it says: 'injustice above speaking righteousness,' there it convicts not now the affection of a preferred love, but that very hatred in speaking, saying: 'above speaking righteousness.' For the Jews can and are wont, although they do not love goodness, nonetheless to feign it at least in speaking. But to speak concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to the blessed apostle Paul was made for us righteousness and sanctification and redemption, they can in no way.
They cannot restrain themselves to any patience of speech, when at some time it is shown by us from prophetic authorities that the only-begotten God, who was born before the ages, both suffered and was crucified and died in man; for then they both avoid and flee every utterance concerning Him: and if there be no place to depart to anywhere, oppressed by a kind of silent grief, they stop their ears with their hands and shut out the hearing, lest it penetrate into them — not loving goodness indeed, yet at times speaking it, but neither loving righteousness (because it is Christ) nor speaking it. The interposition of the 'diapsalma,' even if it has not brought a change of person, is nonetheless understood to have effected a change of sense. For while the discourse is both of him whose it was before, and to him to whom it was before,
though it be the same discourse, yet the same discourse now signifies something other than before. And indeed the earlier things were grave with complaints, so much so that out of the prophet's grief, before they were declared, they were rebuked: when the tongue devises injustice, when like a sharp razor it works deceit, when malice is loved above goodness, and injustice is above the utterance of righteousness. On account of which a certain accusation, as it were, of the prophet was sent forward before God, arguing, when it is said: 'Why does the mighty one glory in malice, iniquity all the day long?' And lest the grief of an empty complaint should be found, the very cause of the complaint was subjoined.
But now, with the 'diapsalma' intervening, no complaint went before; but, the most grievous cause of the sin having been shown before, this sentence of condemnation was then subjoined: 'You have loved all the words of headlong ruin, a deceitful tongue: therefore God shall destroy you unto the end, He shall root you out and remove you from the tabernacle, and your root from the land of the living.' By that example by which we read it said in Genesis in these words: 'Because you have done this, cursed are you from the earth.' And again: 'Because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife.' But also by the apostle, when he had reviewed the most grievous crimes of human impiety, it is thus said: 'For this cause God delivered them up to a reprobate sense.' So also now: 'You have loved the words of headlong ruin, a deceitful tongue: therefore God shall destroy you unto the end.'
The Latin speech did not hold the force of the word. For what with us are 'words of headlong ruin' (verba praecipitationis), these are recorded by the Greeks as 'ta rhēmata katapontismou'; by which expression is signified that what with us is 'headlong ruin' is with them a drowning in the depth of the sea. But headlong ruin can be understood with us, according to the general sense, not only in the sea, but also as the fall of those tumbling down from lofty places — whether of buildings, or of crags, or of places of whatever kind. Therefore, according to the demonstrated meaning of headlong ruin, because he had loved the words of headlong ruin, Doeg was subjected to the most severe condemnation.
For every unbelieving soul, shipwrecked as it were in the deep of this world's sea, is carried this way and that with uncertain and wandering motion, and floats about, unsteady, upon the surging tide of divers desires, mocked by the power of the devil who inhabits this age; and it stands firm with no solidity of subjected steadfastness to resist and struggle against him. Hence it is easy for it, hanging and drifting, to be tossed by the goadings of the desires that whirl it about. But that the movement of this world and its floods have been compared to the surges of the billowing sea, and that this is the dwelling-place of the reigning devil, the hundred-and-third Psalm shows, according to the prophetic and allegorical understanding, yet under the bodily signification of created things:
This sea is great and wide; there are creeping things without number, living things small and great; there the ships pass over, and that dragon which thou hast formed to mock at it. And again in the sixty-eighth Psalm: I am come into the depth of the sea, and the tempest hath overwhelmed me. Therefore the only-begotten Son of God, the Word of God and God the Word, descended to draw us up from the deep shipwreck of this world by the net of his teaching, to which the kingdom of heaven is likened, being about to draw forth all these kinds of fishes. He is betrayed and dishonoured by an impious people; and that people, conforming itself to mock along with the dragon, plunges itself down as his companion and casts itself headlong into this deep, into fellowship of his dwelling.
Thus also the people of the Egyptians, unbelieving of Moses, deserved to be cast down and drowned, and the waves of the sea, poured back upon itself, swallowed up that impious nation, which cherished the words of its own downfall then, when it withstood God. Since therefore the people of the Jews, unbelieving and betraying their own King, loved the words of downfall, saying: I have no king but Caesar—God their king being rejected and a man confessed as king—it plunged itself into this deep of the world; therefore it is destroyed unto the end—for even unto the consummation of the age it has lost the kingdom of its destroyed city—and it has been plucked out of the tabernacle and made to migrate: now wandering over all the earth and everywhere a stranger, having filled up all its sins in the Lord's Passion.
Because it loved the words of downfall, it lacks that tabernacle in which the prophet was ever full of the Spirit of God, in which stood the awe-inspiring contemplations of the holy powers and saving visions, in which were the offerings profitable for the redemption of the soul, in which was the Paschal lamb, guardian of the faithful in the plague of Egypt and a mighty sign in the blood upon the doorposts, in which were the temporal festivals that rivalled eternal seasons. Plucked out therefore from this tabernacle, they lack these honours of spiritual gifts. And they have been plucked out not only from this earthly tabernacle, but also from that of which it is said: I will raise up the tabernacle of David, which is fallen:
that is to say, that holy and venerable body and temple of God born of the Virgin, in which whoever shall have believed will dwell as a sharer of the Lord's flesh. But every unbeliever shall be plucked away and made to emigrate from this kinship of that body which he has not believed—that is, from God's tabernacle—being unworthy of the dwelling-place of this spiritual tabernacle: which the Lord is understood to signify when he says: I am the true vine, you are the branches, my Father is the husbandman. Every branch not abiding in me nor bearing fruit shall be rooted up. And every branch abiding in me my Father shall cleanse, that it may bear more abundant fruit.
If therefore any, incorporated through faith into the embodied God, shall deserve to abide in the nature of the body assumed in God, these are cleansed unto eternal fruits to be brought forth from themselves: for it is necessary that the branch, abiding within the vine, should hold the nature of the true vine. But he who shall have been unbelieving of God born in the body, or even if believing he abide yet lack the fruits of his faith, shall be rooted up either for his unbelief or for the uselessness of the fruits denied. For the Son of God, born of the Virgin, not then first becoming Son of God when he became Son of Man, but in the Son of God being also Son of Man, so that the Son of Man might also be Son of God, assumed into himself the nature of all flesh, whereby, made the true vine, he holds in himself the whole kind of the branches.
If therefore any branch is unbelieving or unfruitful, it offers itself to be rooted up; abiding indeed through nature, but plucked away through unbelief or uselessness. From this tabernacle then, as from the true vine, this impious Doeg is both plucked out and made to emigrate, abiding through nature both in the tabernacle and in the vine, yet through unbelief worthy to be torn away. But having been torn from the tabernacle he shall be rooted up also from the land of the living. For he who shall not abide in Christ shall not be a dweller in the kingdom of Christ; and he shall not be so, not because the dwelling was not open to him—for it lies open to all, that they may be sharers of the body of God and of the kingdom;
since the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, assuming namely into himself the nature of the whole human race—but each one, according to his desert, offers himself to be both plucked out of the tabernacle and rooted out of the land of the living, having never been forbidden to be within. For through the assumption of nature he had been received as a dweller; but he is rooted up for the crime of unbelief, proving unworthy of the fellowship of that nature. He is rooted out therefore from the land of the living, which is prepared in the blessed region for the saints who reign together with the Lord; of which the Lord himself makes mention in the Gospel, saying: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth; and this same prophet:
And I will please the Lord in the land of the living—from which the traitorous people deserved to be rooted out, after it was destroyed unto the end from the tabernacle and made to emigrate and torn away. But it is the land of the living for this reason, that every faithful one in the Lord, though he be dead, yet lives unto God, as it is said: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob: he is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And again through Jacob: Let Reuben live and not die; and that: Let this Ishmael live in thy sight. But also that saying of the Apostle—if so it shall seem to the reader, since it has a twofold signification of meaning—: And we who are alive, who shall remain, shall be caught up with the clouds to meet Christ in the air: and so we shall ever be with the Lord.
The cutting-off of bodies indeed brings a temporary setting of death; but the appointed law of dying does not take away the law of rising again: because the law brings no necessity upon him who decrees the law, nor has God taken from himself the right of giving life by decreeing for us the law of dying. But death is lawful only over those against whom it is decreed. Yet all live unto God, by whose law they are dead. Nor can death—which has prevailed only through the law of him who decrees—prevail of itself unto this, that through him who decrees the law of life to be renewed it should be changeable by the law of living; since the power of him who decrees has, by the law of dying, altered the life appointed from the beginning in Adam under the condition of the decree. Thus the saints and all the faithful live unto God.
For when he says that he is the God of those who had died, that is of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and straightway testifies that he is not the God of the dead but of the living, he teaches by this that those who by the judgement of human opinion are reckoned dead are, to himself who decrees the law, not dead but living. The interposition of the diapsalm, though it did not renew the person, yet renewed the sense. For after the foretold condemnation of Doeg, to whom the discourse was addressed as though to one present, the prophet now turned himself to the signification of another exposition: The just shall see and fear, and shall laugh over him and say: Behold the man who made not God his helper, but hoped in the multitude of his riches and prevailed in his vanity.
Doeg being destroyed unto the end and plucked out of the tabernacle and made to emigrate and rooted out of the land of the living, it is necessary that all the saints fear: since they see that a people, aided and enriched by so many and so great helps of the divine mercy, has, after that immense and more-than-human dignity of a glorious kingdom, offered concerning itself the greatest and last example of human calamity. For who would recount in memory the ancient glories of that people and its innumerable blessednesses, which above we have in part recalled—when after the funerals of Egypt the divided sea gave way to their journey, when the pillar of cloud shaded the heat of the day, when the pillar of fire scattered the darkness of night, when heaven furnished food through angels, when the rock poured forth a fountain,
when the Jordan flowed back, when the great city fell to the ground at the circuit of the ark of the testament, when the sun, held back from its course, delayed the day, and the order of the divine law halted, from that unwearied and undisturbed motion of the elements, unto the delay of the battle: after that intimacy then of both the sight and the hearing of the divine majesty, they were consumed in wars, dead of famine and fed beforehand unto the death of hunger upon the corpses of the dead, and the remnant thereafter reduced to servitude, exiles everywhere, everywhere degenerate, nowhere recognized, ever new and, by the change of dwelling, ever ignoble, ever strangers? Now if anyone should lift up spiritual eyes, of which the Lord says:
Lift up your eyes and see the regions, for they are white unto the harvest—then let him know that they have been torn from the fellowship of the body of God, from that kingdom of blessedness, from that honour of resurrection, and are without the Spirit of God, without the understanding of prophecy, and appointed as fodder for Gehenna. These the immortal worm shall gnaw and the unquenchable fire shall burn—they whose legislation he knows, whose covenants, whose fathers, from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all. With how great fear, therefore, will all the saints behold both the present and eternal calamities of these their transformations, since the contemplation of the punished is terrible as an example!
The just therefore shall see and fear, understanding that in so great a calamity of these nothing is not to be feared for themselves. But because they are just, although they fear because of the example, yet they shall rejoice over the fruit of their own righteousness. For they shall laugh over him: laughing therefore and fearing—because they are subject to God—at the terrible severity toward the punished. Laughter therefore tempers fear, since both the fear is from the example and the laughter is from desert. But again fear moderates the laughter, since they shall so rejoice in good things that the terror of the example be not lacking: because it belongs to an impious conscience, and one distrustful of itself, to fear without joy, and to an insolent nature to rejoice without fear. But they who fearing shall laugh will add this also to this laughter moderated by fear, so that they say: