Latin original · 39 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:3076–1:3114 (3306 verses in all)
and may He Himself, in whom we believe, strengthen this zeal in us, that for His faith we may willingly pour out our blood. I grieve that the noble house has been utterly overthrown, and yet what the cause of it was, I have not been able to know; for the letter-carrier said that he did not know it. Hence we can grieve for our common friends and for Christ's, who alone is powerful and is Lord, and can implore His clemency—although on our part we deserve God's offence, we who cherish the Lord's enemies. But you will do best if, leaving all things aside, you seek the East and especially the holy places; for here all things are quiet. And although they have not lost the venom of their breast, yet they dare not open the mouth of impiety, but are like deaf asps that stop their ears. I salute the holy brethren.
But our house, according to carnal wealth utterly overthrown by the persecutions of the heretics, is—Christ being favourable—full of spiritual riches. It is better to eat bread than to lose the faith. 140. TO CYPRIAN THE PRESBYTER, CONCERNING PSALM 89. Formerly, Cyprian, most zealous of presbyters, I knew you only by letters to be of the number of those concerning whom Moses hears: 'Choose presbyters, whom you yourself know to be presbyters,' and to have attained the title of that blessed man 'who meditates in the law of God day and night.'
But now, since a knowledge of the outer man also has been made between us, and after the salutation and the sweet embraces by which friendship is joined to itself, that you might prove true what I had heard, you at once ask of me to expound to you a most difficult psalm, which among the Greeks and Latins is inscribed as the eighty-ninth—not in a composed oration of words and with popular applause, which is wont to deceive and flatter the ears of the unlearned, but in simple speech and with the truth of ecclesiastical eloquence, so that our interpretation may not need another interpreter—as is wont to happen to many who are too eloquent, that the difficulty of understanding is greater in their explanations than in the things they attempt to explain.
I shall approach a most difficult work, and, supported by the aid of your holy prayers, I shall recall that little verse: 'The Lord will give the word to those who preach the gospel with great power.' And first it must be known that the title of this psalm, according to the Hebrew, is: 'A prayer of Moses, the man of God'; according to the Septuagint: 'A prayer of Moses, the man of God.' But what the difference is between 'man' (homo) and 'man' (vir), let the holy Scripture teach us. The captain of fifty speaks to Elijah: 'Man of God, the king calls you.' To whom he answered: 'If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and devour you and your fifty men.' But to Timothy the Apostle writes: 'But you, O man of God, flee these things.' Furthermore, concerning 'vir' the same Apostle instructs:
'But I would have you know that the head of every man (vir) is Christ, but the head of the woman is the man (vir), and the head of Christ is God.' This is the man (vir) who ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God, and daily praying he says: 'But we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.' And in another place: 'until we all attain to a perfect man (vir), to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.'
Whether therefore the appellation 'vir' or 'homo' befits the holy man, and him who saw God face to face and his soul was saved, from whose mouth we have learned the fashioning of the world's creature—of those things, at least, that are visible—and the making of man, and the truth of all past history; who left us not only five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, but also eleven psalms, from the eighty-ninth, whose beginning is 'Lord, thou hast become a refuge for us,' up to the ninety-ninth, which is inscribed 'a psalm in confession.' But as for the fact that in most manuscripts the ninety-eighth has the title 'a psalm of David,' this is not maintained in the Hebrew, since the holy Scripture keeps this custom:
that all the psalms which do not have titles saying whose they are, are to be reckoned to those whose names are contained in the preceding psalms. Now there are four psalms which have the title 'of a prayer': the sixteenth, which is inscribed 'a prayer of David' and begins 'Hear, O God, my justice'; and the eighty-fifth likewise, 'a prayer of David'; and the eighty-ninth, which is now in hand, 'Lord, thou hast become a refuge for us'; and the hundred and first, which has the title 'a prayer of the poor man, when he is anxious and pours out his supplication in the sight of the Lord.'
David—and the poor man who, when he was rich, became poor for our sake—is referred to Christ, who sat upon the foal of an ass, according to Zechariah, poor and meek. But Moses, through whom the Lord gave the law, from whose mouth we have heard God speaking, 'Let us make man to our image and likeness,' and immediately it is added, 'and God made man; to the image of God he made him; male and female he made them'—from the beginning of man's creation up to death and resurrection he sets forth all things: of what sort man was created, how long a time he lives, what he does in the world, what fruit of life he has, for what he labours, whither he strives to go.
And since he who writes these things is himself a man, under his own person he bears witness concerning the condition of the whole human race. But there are those who refer this psalm or prayer to the people of Israel: how in the wilderness they offended God and fell, and did not deserve to enter the land of promise—and in place of the fathers the sons entered—and again look for God to be appeased, which is fulfilled in the coming of Christ. 'Oratio' (prayer), according to the grammarians, is every speech of those who speak, whose etymology they express thus: 'oratio is oris ratio' (the reasoning of the mouth). But in the Holy Scriptures we rarely read 'oratio' according to this sense, but rather that which pertains to prayers and entreaties.
The Hebrews say that in the one volume of psalms five books are contained: from the first up to the fortieth, and from the forty-first up to the seventy-first, and from the seventy-second up to the eighty-eighth, and from the eighty-ninth—which is the beginning of the fourth book, and which we now discuss—up to the hundred and fifth (at the end of all of which a double 'amen' is placed, which the Septuagint render 'so be it, so be it'), and from the hundred and sixth up to the end, after the manner of the twelve prophets, who likewise, though they published their own separate little books, are contained under the name of one volume. But as for that which I nearly passed over, in asserting that among the eleven psalms of Moses the ninety-eighth also is included, in which is set:
'Exalt the Lord our God, and adore his footstool. Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among those who call upon his name'—this seems to contradict our opinion, as to how it can be Moses' who names Samuel, whom we know to have existed a long time afterward. The solution of this question is easy: that the name of Samuel was prophesied, who was of such great merit that he was set together with Moses in Jeremiah: 'If Moses and Samuel should stand'—according to that example, when the man of God speaks in Samaria: 'O altar, altar, thus says the Lord: behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah his name.' Let us also know that those err who think all the psalms are David's, and not of those by whose names they are inscribed.
Hence they also wish this psalm to have been composed by David under the name of Moses, namely because the giver of the law describes with sacred mouth the common offence and calamity of the human race, and then the expectation of salvation. 'Lord, thou hast become a dwelling-place for us in generation and generation.' The Septuagint: 'Lord, thou hast become a refuge for us in every generation and generation.' In place of 'dwelling' and 'refuge' the Hebrew has 'maon,' which sounds more like a dwelling than a refuge. But being about to relate sad things and to bewail the human race, he begins from the praises of God, so that whatever adversity afterward befell man may be seen to have happened not through the harshness of the Creator but through the fault of him who was created.
He who is caught in a tempest seeks the refuge either of a rock or of a roof; he whom an enemy pursues flees to the walls of cities; the weary traveller seeks the solace of shade both from the sun and from the dust; if a most savage beast thirst for the blood of a man, he desires, however he may be able, to avoid the present danger: so too man from the beginning of his creation uses God as his helper, and, since it is of His grace that he was created, and of His mercy that he subsists and lives, he can do no good work apart from Him who so granted free will that He would not deny His grace to each single work—lest the freedom of the will should redound to the injury of the Creator and to the contumacy of him who was for this reason created free, that he might know himself to be nothing apart from God.
But as for what he says, 'in generation and generation,' it signifies all times, both before the law and under the law and in the grace of the gospel. Whence also the Apostle says: 'By grace you are saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, but of the gift of God'; and all his epistles, in the beginning of the salutation, do not first have peace and then grace, but grace first and then peace, so that, our sins having been forgiven us, we may obtain the peace of the Lord. 'Before the mountains were born and the earth and the world were brought forth, from everlasting and to everlasting thou art.' The Septuagint: 'Before the mountains were established and the earth and the world were formed, from everlasting and to everlasting thou art, O God.'
This passage some subvert by a wrong punctuation, especially those who wish souls to have existed before man was formed in the number of the sixth day. For thus they read and punctuate: 'Lord, thou hast become a refuge for us in generation and generation, before the mountains were established and the earth and the world were formed,' so that afterward there follows: 'from everlasting to everlasting thou art, O God.' For thus they argue: if the Lord, before the mountains were established and the earth and the round world were formed, was a refuge of men, then souls existed in the heavens before the bodies of men were formed. But we, as we have proposed, ought to punctuate the reading thus:
'Before the mountains were established and the earth and the round world were formed, from everlasting to everlasting thou art, O God,' so that He was not our refuge before the foundation of the world, when we did not yet exist, but rather that God from eternity to eternity is always God. For in place of what the Latin translator put, 'from everlasting to everlasting,' and what is said in Hebrew 'olam,' we shall more rightly interpret 'from the everlasting to the everlasting.' Something similar is also read in Proverbs from the person of Wisdom, who is Christ:
'The Lord created me, the beginning of his ways, for his works; before the age he founded me, in the beginning, before he made the earth and the depths, before the fountains of waters proceeded, before the mountains were established, before all the hills he begets me.' But no word of 'creation' ought to trouble anyone, since in the Hebrew it is not 'creation,' which is called 'bara,' but 'possession.' For thus it is written: 'adonay canani bresith dercho,' which in our tongue is expressed: 'the Lord possessed me, the beginning of his ways.' Now between possession and creation there is much difference: possession signifies that the Son was always in the Father and the Father in the Son, but creation signifies the beginning of the fashioning of him who did not exist before.
According to the laws of tropology, this which is said—'before the mountains were established and the earth and the round world were formed'—can signify that, before the sublime doctrines were established in our soul, and the earth of our body was formed or made stable by God, and the round world (which in Hebrew is called 'thebel,' and in Greek more significantly 'oikoumenē,' which we may translate 'the inhabited') was established or made stable, God was always our refuge. But the soul is inhabited, not deserted, which deserves God as a guest, the Saviour saying: 'I and my Father will come and make our abode with him.' But that which both the Hebrew has and all the other interpreters:
'before the mountains were born and the earth was brought forth,' manifestly draws us to tropology. For neither the mountains nor the rest admit of a nativity and a bringing-forth, but of a founding. From which it is plainly shown that the saints too and the exalted powers are ever brought forth by the mercy of God. 'Thou wilt turn man unto contrition, and thou sayest: return, sons of Adam.' The Septuagint: 'Turn not man away into humiliation, and thou hast said: be converted, sons of men.' According to the Hebrew, which is said, this is the meaning: O God, who didst create man and from his beginning art his refuge and dwelling, thou wilt turn him unto contrition; thou didst make and mould him, that he might be crushed in death and thy vessel be broken at the last time of his life;
upon whom, since this condition presses, that being born he should perish and, though he live a long time, yet at the last end be dissolved, daily thou speakest to him through the prophets: return, sons of Adam, who by your fault offended God and from being immortal were made mortal. For you were unwilling to heed the command of Him who bade: 'Of every tree that is in paradise you shall eat; but of the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat; for on whatever day you taste of it, you shall die the death.' Further, according to what the Septuagint translated—'Turn not man away into humiliation, and thou hast said: be converted, sons of men'—it has this sense:
I beseech thee, that man, whom thou didst create to thy image and likeness and didst deem worthy of so great an honour that from a servant thou shouldst name him a son, thou wouldst not humble with perpetual sin, nor let the ancient sentence prevail over him: 'earth thou art, and unto earth thou shalt go.' For thou hast permitted us repentance, saying: 'I will not the death of the sinner, but only that he return and live'; thou hast said by the utterance of all thy saints: 'be converted'—or 'return'—'sons of men,' to the most merciful Father, who runs to meet those who come and offers the token which by their own fault they lost, and bestows the ancient robe of incorruption. 'For a thousand years in thy eyes are as yesterday, which has passed, and as a watch in the night.'
O thou who through the prophets ever callest us to repentance, saying: 'return, sons of men,' we beg—as I said before—that thou wouldst not cause man to be held in everlasting humiliation. Nor let us think that long which thou promisest, and that salvation is to be granted to us after many ages. Compared with eternity, the length of all times is brief. For in thy sight a thousand years are reckoned as one day. And at once he reproves himself: I said ill when I said 'one day,' and that in the span of one day is compared to thee the length of a thousand years, since I should rather have said that the span of one watch has the likeness of the length of a thousand years. The night is divided into four watches, each of which is reckoned by the span of three hours.
Hence too the Lord came to the apostles as they sailed at the fourth watch. Just as, therefore, one watch of the night passes swiftly by — especially for those wearied by the labour of the watches — so also the span of a thousand years is reckoned before you, who ever are and shall be and have been, as a very brief time. And what follows, 'as yesterday, which is past,' let us understand according to that saying of the Apostle which he writes to the Hebrews: 'Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, the same forever.'
I think that from this passage, and from the epistle which is written under the name of the apostle Peter, a thousand years are wont to be called as one day; namely, that because the world was fashioned in six days, it is believed to subsist for only six thousand years, and that afterward there comes the number seven and the number eight, in which the true sabbath-rest is kept and the purity of circumcision is restored. Hence too the rewards of good works are promised in the eight beatitudes. Now Peter writes in this manner: 'Let not this one thing escape you, most beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord does not delay in his promise, as some reckon delay.' 'When you strike them, they shall be as a dream; in the morning they shall pass away like grass.'
'In the morning it flourishes and passes; toward evening it is cut down and withers.' The Septuagint: 'their years shall be counted as nothing; in the morning let it pass like grass; in the morning let it flourish and pass; in the evening let it fall, let it grow hard and dry.' According to the Hebrew this is the sense: much has it contributed to our conversion and salvation, that all the life of mortals, like a dream, is drawn together into so swift a death, which in the likeness of flowers and hay is dried up and perishes in almost the same span of time. 'When you strike,' he says, 'them' — that is, men; and when that word is fulfilled: 'Fool, this night they shall demand your soul from you; and the things you have prepared, whose shall they be?' — the whole human condition shall be compared to a dream.
For just as in the morning the green herb, budding with its flowers, delights the eyes of those who behold it, and little by little, withering, it loses its beauty and is turned into hay which must be trodden down, so too the whole appearance of men buds in little children, flowers in the young, is vigorous in men of full age, and suddenly, while one is unaware, the head grows grey, the face is wrinkled, the skin, once stretched taut, is drawn together, and at the very end — which is here called 'evening,' that is, old age — one can scarcely be moved, so that it cannot be recognized who a man was before, but he is almost changed into another.
Why do we speak of the seasons of infancy right up to extreme and decrepit old age, when both sickness may bring this about, and lack of food, and grief, so that the countenance of women, once most beautiful, passes into such ugliness that love is turned into hatred? Concerning this condition of mortals Isaiah too speaks: 'All flesh is grass, and all its glory as the flower of grass; the grass is withered, the flower has fallen.' According to the Septuagint too it must likewise be explained: everything which in this world seems long is brief before you, O God. For the days and years by which human life is contracted, if they be compared to eternity, shall be reckoned as nothing.
For just as the herb in the morning grows, flowers and is dried up, and toward evening grows hard and perishes, so shall be all the beauty of men. 'For we are consumed in your wrath, and in your indignation we are troubled.' The Septuagint: 'because we have failed in your anger, and in your wrath we are troubled.' For what we have rendered 'we are troubled,' Symmachus and Aquila translated 'we have hastened'; and it signifies the brevity of human life. And what he added, 'in your wrath and in your indignation,' shows the perseverance of God's decree, to which all men lie subject — namely to that one: 'You are earth, and into earth you shall go.'
But it is fittingly said, not as the Septuagint contains, 'we are troubled,' but according to the Hebrew 'we have hastened,' so that, although the age of men may seem long, yet in comparison with eternity it is brief. This the illustrious poet also attests, saying: 'But meanwhile it flees, it flees irrecoverable time'; and again: 'Rhaebus, we have lived long — if anything long there be for mortals.' 'You have set our iniquities before you, our negligences in the light of your countenance.' The Septuagint: 'you have set our iniquities in your sight, our age in the illumination of your countenance.' Where we, following the Hebrew and Symmachus, have put 'our negligences,' for which the Septuagint translated 'age,' in the Hebrew it is written:
'alumenu,' which the fifth edition interprets as 'youth,' Aquila as παραοράσεις, and we too may turn into our own tongue as 'errors' or 'ignorances.' Hence he says also in another place: 'The sins of my youth and my ignorances remember not'; and again: 'Who understands his faults? From my hidden faults cleanse me, O Lord, and from those of others spare your servant.' For alien to us are the vices which we often commit by will, sometimes by ignorance and error; and yet, though there be no will in the crime, there is error in the fault.
But I wonder why the Septuagint chose to say 'age' instead of 'youth, negligences and errors or ignorances,' unless perhaps because it is in this world and in the time of this life that vices are committed. And what he added, 'in the illumination' or 'in the light of your countenance,' has this sense: nothing of our sins was hidden from you; your eye inspected even our secret things, according to that which is written: 'The darkness shall not be hidden from you'; and: 'God searching hearts and reins'; and again: 'as its darkness, so also its light'; for man sees in the face, God in the heart. 'For all our days have passed away; in your wrath we have consumed our years like one speaking a word.' The Septuagint:
'For our days have failed; in your anger we have failed; our years are pondered like a spider.' The brevity of human life, which up to this point has been subject to God's decree, and which in the previous verse he compares to a dream, saying, 'when you strike them, they shall be a dream,' he now compares to the speech of those who talk, so that just as a word which is turned about in the mouth is, while it is being uttered, cut off and ceases to be, so too our whole life passes by and ceases — and this in the anger and wrath of God, to which we deservedly lie subject, since, as we said above, God's sentence lives within us. But what the anger and wrath of God is we have said more than once: not that God takes vengeance in anger, but that to those suffering punishments he seems to be angry.
For what descends upon us from perturbation is in him from the truth of judgment. In place of 'the speech of one speaking,' the Septuagint translated 'the meditation of a spider.' For just as the word of one speaking flies past, so too the work of a spider is woven in vain. Concerning this it is written in Isaiah, under the person of the heretics: 'They weave the web of a spider,' which is able to catch small and light creatures — such as flies, gnats and other things of this kind — but is broken by the stronger; after the likeness of the light and simple in the Church, who are deceived by their errors, since they cannot prevail over men robust in the truth of the faith. 'The days of our years in themselves are seventy years; but if in strength, eighty years; and what is more than this is toil and sorrow.'
The Septuagint: 'The days of our years in themselves are seventy years; but if among the mighty, eighty years; and more than these is their toil and sorrow.' For what we have put 'in themselves,' and in the Hebrew it has 'bahem,' Symmachus translated more expressively ὁλόκληροι, which we can render more according to the sense than to the word as 'the whole' or 'entire.' Whatever, therefore, we live, and in which the life of mortals is delightful, is comprised within the span of seventy years. But if it be much — and, as Symmachus interpreted, contrary to expectation — there are eighty years;
whatever is beyond this is passed in diseases and infirmity, which is the companion of old age: the eyes growing dim, the once very hard teeth aching or falling out — which the divine word describes more fully in Ecclesiastes: 'when the days of evil come, and those in which we say, We have no pleasure; when the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain;'
'in the day when the keepers of the house shall be moved and the men of strength shall be overthrown, and those who grind shall cease because they are few, and those who look through the openings shall be darkened, and the doors in the street shall be shut in the weakness of the voice of her that grinds, and one shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of song shall be brought low, and they shall look up on high, and there shall be terror in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the locust shall grow fat, and the caper-bush shall be broken. For man has departed into the house of his eternity, and those who mourn shall go about in the street, until the silver cord be broken and the ornament of gold be ground down and the pitcher be shattered at the fountain and the wheel be hindered at the cistern, and the dust return into the earth as it was, and the spirit return to God who gave it.'
'Vanity of vanities,' said Ecclesiastes, 'all is vanity.' All these things comprise the miseries of human life, and especially of old age; and what sense they have, we have discussed in its own place. There are those who, interpreting this passage allegorically, refer it to the mystery of the sabbath and of circumcision: that first we rest in the law, and afterward the sacraments of true circumcision in the Gospel hold us fast; and they call to mind also that saying: 'Give a portion to seven, and give a portion to eight,' and the seventy thousand and eighty thousand multitudes of men by whom the temple was constructed under Solomon.
But what has this to do with the present passage, for which a simple and pure explanation suffices — an explanation which ought to seek, not the glory of learning in a multiplication of words, but the understanding of the reader? 'Because we have passed away swiftly, and have flown away.' The Septuagint: 'because meekness has come upon us, and we shall be chastised.' In place of this the Greek has written παιδευθησόμεθα, which word is ambiguous and signifies both chastisement and instruction and teaching. 'For whom the Lord loves, he chastises' — or instructs — 'and scourges every son whom he receives.' This passage Symmachus translated thus: 'For we are cut down suddenly and fly away.' The fifth edition in this manner: 'because we have passed away swiftly and are dissolved.' And the sense is:
After seventy years — or at most eighty — in which the life of men is passed, when the soul has been separated from the body, we fly away like the wind; or, because above he compares man to the green herb and the beauty of flowers and to the dryness at evening, now, in place of the aridity of evening, he sets the cutting-down of the flowers. And when all that we live has passed by, he says, we are dissolved by a sudden death. But what the Septuagint said, 'because meekness has come upon us and we shall be chastised,' has this sense: after seventy years and eighty, when the Lord's meekness has come and the day of death has fallen upon us, we shall not be judged according to merit but according to clemency; and what is thought to be chastisement is instruction and teaching.