詩篇註釋 第 1 章 第 3/3 段

For you know, you know clearly, that wealth is a servant of wickedness to those who do not give heed;

but poverty is the mother of true wisdom;

and the facts of daily life show this every single day.

How many of the poor are both more prudent and more given to true wisdom than the rich, and healthier in body, since poverty sets right for them both flesh and soul? 'In peace I will both lay me down together, and sleep.'

'For Thou, Lord, alone hast made me to dwell in hope.'

Behold here another kind of providence, and no small one: that those devoted to God enjoy peace.

'For great peace have they that love Thy law, and there is no stumbling-block to them.'

For nothing is so wont to produce peace as the knowledge of God and the possession of virtue, which drives out from within the war of the passions, and does not permit a man to be at strife within himself against himself.

So that if a man does not enjoy this peace, even were he in the deepest outward peace, and even were no enemy assailing him, he is more wretched than all those warred upon by the whole world.

For not so do Scythians, nor Thracians, nor Sauromatians, and Indians, and Moors, and however many savage nations are wont to make war, as does a most absurd reasoning lurking in the soul, and unbridled desire, and the love of money, and the longing for power, and the attachment to the affairs of this life.

For that war is from without, but this battle is within.

That the evils bred from within are more grievous than those which assail from without, and are wont to bring greater ruin, this one may observe in all things.

For a worm bred within destroys the substance of wood more than anything else does; and diseases sprouting from within do the strength and health of the body far greater harm than ills arising from without.

And it is not so much foreign enemies as civil strife that overthrows cities;

so too the soul is by nature ravaged not so much by the engines assailing it from without as by the diseases bred within.

But if a man, possessing the fear of God, shall with all diligence bring this war to an end, and lull the passions to sleep, and, having strangled those manifold beasts of disordered thoughts, contrive that they no longer lurk within, he shall enjoy a peace most pure and profound.

This peace Christ came and bestowed;

this also Paul wished upon the faithful, saying in every epistle:

'Grace to you and peace from God our Father.'

For he who possesses this peace fears not the barbarian nor the enemy, nay, not even the devil himself;

rather he laughs to scorn the whole phalanx of the demons, and is of a more cheerful spirit than all men, neither pressed down by poverty, nor weighed upon by sickness and infirmity, nor troubled by any other of the human ills that fall upon us unforeseen, because he keeps his soul strong and healthy, the soul that is able to arrange these things with all exactness and every ease.

And that you may learn that this is true—

let there be some envious man, and let no one make war upon him;

what is the profit? For he makes war upon himself, whetting against himself thoughts sharper than any sword, stumbling at all he sees, wounding himself at each of the men he meets, taking pleasure in no one, but regarding all men as common enemies.

What profit, then, is there for such a man in outward peace, when he himself, raging and mad, and being the common foe of his kind, goes about bearing within so great a war,

and ten thousand bows and arrows—nay rather, praying for ten thousand deaths sooner than see any of his own kind in good repute and enjoying prosperity? Again, another, held fast by the lust for riches, gathers into his own soul ten thousand wars and battles and factions, and being in tumult and turmoil, cannot draw breath even a little.

But he who is freed from these passions is not so disposed; rather he sits in a tranquil harbour, delighting himself in the love of wisdom, and enduring no such vexation.

Wherefore also the Prophet, enjoying this providence, said:

'In peace I will both lie down and sleep;'

showing that to him who has not this peace not even the common harbour is fully open, but this too is choked up—the harbour of sleep and of night.

For these passions destroy even the immunity granted by nature, thrusting utterly aside the tyranny of sleep by another and more grievous tyranny.

For the envious, and the malicious, and the covetous, and the rapacious, carrying this war about everywhere, and having their enemies seated within them, wherever they go, cannot flee the battle;

but even if they remain at home, even if they lie upon their bed, they endure clouds of arrows, and tumults of waves more violent, and slaughters, and cries, and wailings, and other things far more grievous than what befalls men in war.

But not so the righteous man;

rather, both awake he luxuriates, and in the season of night he receives sleep with much delight.

But what is the meaning of 'together in the same'? Gathered unto myself, he says, drawn together, not rent into ten thousand cares, nor anxious over this man's affairs and that man's, nor cut apart by cares over the whole inhabited world;

but reasoning upon what is my own, and what concerns me, and what most of all is fitting for a man.

'For thou, Lord, hast made me to dwell alone in hope.'

And what he says is of this kind:

'By the hope of things to come and by the expectation that is set upon thee, I have laid to rest all my passions.'

'For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.'

For there is no burdensome thing which is not made most easy by the hope of the good repute that is according to God.

And the word 'alone' too holds no small virtue of instruction.

And what is the meaning of 'alone'? Apart from the wicked.

'For I have established this peace, he says, toward thee, and I dwell alone, fleeing from the corrupt.'

For just as bodies often perish from the pestilence of corrupted air,

so too the soul has often received harm from the company of the wicked;

and as a healthy eye, when it beholds one that is diseased, is smitten, and he who is full of the itch communicates it even to those who are sound;

so indeed it often comes to pass also in the company of wicked men.

For this reason Christ also exhorted us not only to flee such men, but even to cut them off, speaking thus:

'And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee.'

For surely he is not speaking about the bodily eye;

for what harm could an eye do to a sound mind? Rather, it is concerning friends who are necessary to us and who stand, as it were, in the rank of these very members of ours, yet who do us injury, that he laid down these commands, bidding us to dishonor even the friendship of such persons, so as to render our own salvation the more secure.

Wherefore he himself again, going on further, says:

"I have not sat with the council of vanity, and with transgressors I will not go in."

And Jeremiah too pronounces blessed the man who sits alone and bears the yoke from his youth.

And the Proverbs make much discourse concerning this, exhorting all and saying that we should not merely

turn aside, but even leap away from those who give evil counsel, and not so much as linger in their company.

For if even our natural traits are often changed in us by evil association,

how much more the things that belong to our free choice? For our complexion belongs to us by nature, and so does health;

yet there are times when these are corrupted by another, contrary disposition;

and so too the appetite for food;

and this too we have often lost through the maladies of vice;

and many other such things one may see coming to pass.

But if the things of nature are moved and altered, much more the things of free choice, inasmuch as it also admits the more easily of a change to the opposite.

Let us not then think it a small thing, this fellowship with the wicked, as regards the harm it does; but before all else let us flee such persons, be they women, be they friends, be they whosoever.

Since this it was that destroyed even those great men, I mean Solomon and Samson;

and the whole Jewish nation likewise was corrupted in this way.

For not so wont are wild beasts to strike, as is the wickedness of men.

For those creatures carry their venom openly;

but these men, imperceptibly and noiselessly, day by day instill their corruption, little by little sapping away the vigor of virtue.

For this reason too God walls off the unchaste gaze, saying:

"Whosoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart;"

because of how easy and how besetting is such ruin. And you, if you are about to dwell in a city, busy yourself much about its climate, whether it be not unwholesome, whether not of ill temperature, whether not parched;

yet when you are about to give account for your soul, you make no careful inquiry into the company of those who are to associate with it;

but simply and at random you entrust it to all? And what pardon, tell me, will you obtain, thus despising it? For whence do you suppose that those who have taken to the deserts become wondrous and illustrious men? Is it not because they flee tumults and marketplaces, and have pitched their tents far from the smoke of the affairs that are in the midst of the world? These men do you also emulate, pursuing solitude in the midst of the city.

And how shall this come to pass? If you flee the wicked, if you pursue the good.

For thus you shall reap a greater security than those in the deserts, not in the flight from those who harm alone, but also in the fellowship of those who profit you.

For if you flee the wicked but pursue the good, on both sides your virtue will be increased, and the things of vice will depart.

That this then may come to pass, let us do these things, obeying the psalmist who says:

"For you, O Lord, have made me to dwell alone in hope."

And here I will bring the discourse to a close, having, I think, sufficiently rendered the solution of the questions raised, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the might, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.