詩篇註釋 第 1 章 第 2/24 段

'Neither chasten me in Thine anger.'

By saying, 'Chasten me not in Thine anger,' he seems in some way to be deprecating the severity of the letter of the Law.

For anyone who has set at nought the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses;

wherefore also the inspired Paul names the Law a ministration of condemnation;

for it has justified no one, but sought out bitter penalties for those who sinned.

Therefore the discipline that is through Christ is incomparably better than that in the Law;

for the one was set for the reproof of those who had grown weak, and for the condemnation of transgressors, but the other for the justification of those who had grown weak.

That, then, which we have said: he does not entreat that he may not be reproved, but that it be not in wrath.

'Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak.'

'Relax not toward me, nor give way to me, but Heal me';

for he asks that his former wounds be done away with.

For having drawn near to God as to a physician of spirits, and having confessed the weakness of his nature, he asks for succour;

'For out of weakness I came unto suffering.'

And what is the weakness? 'My bones were unjointed, and were loosed from their mutual harmony.'

And by 'bones' he means the sober reasonings that support the soul, and the rational powers of the soul, which also hold it up unto intellectual vigour;

such as self-control, prudence, courage according to God, temperance, righteousness, and, in a word, every kind of virtue;

and when these are not in us without confusion — that is, in due order through each having its own strength — there is every necessity that the soul be troubled, the passions running riot within it.

For then, being as it were in a surge, it is fearfully imperilled by worldly pleasures;

for when virtue grows feeble in us, pleasure altogether prevails, shaking us down into baseness.

'For my soul is troubled exceedingly.'

But I think that something else also is signified by the Psalmist's saying that his bones underwent trouble.

For God created man for incorruption;

but when the forefather Adam trampled upon the commandment that had been given, and slipped away into transgression, he was straightway accursed.

'Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.' I think, then, that in this way too the bones of all were troubled, since the flesh had been dissolved into death;

for tumults and terrors rushed even into the soul itself, along with the tyranny of the passions;

the law of sin entered in, that law which is in the members of the flesh, which wars against and takes captive the mind unto every kind of thing out of place.

A healing, therefore, came to be for the nature of man: the power of the Only-begotten's Incarnation. For it put an end to corruption, and gathered together the scattered bones of all;

it declared the nature of man free from terror and every tumult and dread, and moreover from the passions and from the diabolical covetousness.

'And you, O Lord, how long?'

For 'when,' he says, 'will you come, you who through your resurrection will graciously bestow on us the healing?' And the phrase 'how long' also indicates a repentance drawn out over time.

'For in death there is no one who remembers you.'

For he who has once been caught in the snares of death would be powerless toward every virtue.

'There is not,' he says, 'in death anyone who remembers you' — that is, no one able to keep the commandments, when the help of the Spirit is not present with him.

'I have grown weary in my groaning.'

The phrase 'I have grown weary' he uses in place of 'I shall grow weary.'

And this will be clear from what follows immediately after.

For he says not 'I washed my bed,' nor yet 'I drenched my couch,' but in both cases he means 'I shall wash' and 'I shall drench.'

For he promises that he will become a most industrious man, and will not love the loose and unrestrained life.

For it is best, especially in quietness and alone, to converse (as it were) with God through constant prayer, and, for the things in which we have already been condemned, to ask pardon;

and to seek from him the things profitable to the soul, and to make him one's song and melody.

'my eye [is troubled] from wrath.'

Perhaps the Prophet reverts to a recollection of the things that befell the nature of man because the head of the race — that is, Adam — offended against God.

For before he made light of the divine commandment, he had his eye pure, full of the vision of God and of good thoughts, and he was undefiled, still illumined by the divine light.

'The Lord has heard my supplication.'

He explains in what manner the matters of his good cheer came to their fulfillment;

for he says that the voice of his weeping was heard, and that his prayer became acceptable.

And by 'voice' he means not at all that which is uttered through the lips, but rather that which is sent up to God (as it were) from one's deeds.

For just as there is a voice of sin — according to what was said to Cain, 'The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me' — so also there is a voice of repentance, which God hears.

And surely no one would say that he asks for a loud voice, for we have not been commanded to pray in that way.

And again by 'crying' he here means the entreaty that comes out of toil, which the saints are wont to use.

'Let them be put to shame and troubled.'

And the demons, those inventors and teachers of wickedness, turn away and fall back, enduring an unbearable rout;

first, because of the resistance offered by God who saves; and then, because we too are willing to rise up from our ancient sicknesses, and to pass over with youthful vigor to the mastering of all love of the flesh, and to make no account of the turmoil in this present life, but to look only to the things pleasing to God, and to run toward them without turning back.

For to those who thus play the man, Christ will be present, who is for us both the giver and dispenser of all good things.

'To the Lord, concerning the words of Cush the son of Jemini.'

But do you observe for me that, having exercised you in so many victories, the word again dismisses you to other contests, and again anoints you for the onset of temptations.

For the same enemy, that Absalom, as though begotten anew out of us, equips the war against us;

and him, as he thirsts for our blood, our own good counsel concerning the matter overturns;

or rather, it is the alliance that comes from God.

Indeed, the resolve that saves us becomes a noose for the adversary;

and this is it: to reckon it an equal wickedness both to begin injustice and to take vengeance on the one who began it.

'If there is injustice in my hands.'

For I did him no wrong, nor those with him, so as even to furnish them a fair pretext for the persecution against me.

Then he also puts forward his freedom from remembering wrongs, calling forth God through it to mercy.

'If I have repaid with evil those who repaid me' — 'then may I fall away from my enemies empty.'

That is, may I slip away from all honor and glory, and may I become as dust under the feet of my enemies.

'Arise, O Lord, in your anger.'

As, then, I have said, the word has passed over to Christ, and it exhorts him too to arise — not against Absalom (for how could that be, seeing that he interceded for him, saying,

'Spare for me the young man Absalom'?), but rather it exhorts God to arise on behalf of all humanity, as though from the stillness of his former longsuffering, in wrath and in movement against the ends of the earth of his enemies.

Now the enemies of humanity are very many — that is, the wicked and abominable demons;

and by their 'ends' would be understood those that surpass and are set above the rest — such as Satan and those near him, that is, the world-rulers of the darkness.

Against these Christ rose up.

'And awake, O Lord my God, according to the ordinance which you commanded.'

Here he plainly proclaims the good news concerning the theophany of the Savior.

For from of old, through the patriarchs, he promised us this salvation;

and indeed the divine Scripture has been filled with the utterances of the Savior, who through the holy prophets promised beforehand that he would come in due seasons, and would deliver all that is under heaven, and would not make the display of the gentleness that is in him in Judea alone, but would also visit all the nations;

and so indeed he has been named the hope of the nations.

For being God and Lord, he shone forth upon all the world, and the true Light, through whom we also came to know the Father himself, the ancient mist of wandering having been scattered — I mean, the mist that lay in going astray — and the morning star having shone up for us in the mind, and the day dawning bright, and the Sun of righteousness — that is, Christ — having risen.

'Awake, therefore,' he says, 'according to the ordinance which you commanded' — that is, which you promised to do;

for that is what 'to command' here signifies.

'And for the sake of this, return on high.'

Perhaps the phrase 'return on high' either hints at the precious Cross, upon which he bore up our sins;

or the ascent of Christ into the heavens;

for he went to appear before the face of the Father on our behalf.

How on our behalf? By dedicating for us a new and living way, so that from now on heaven might again be accessible, and we might enter into that which is within the veil, since he too — namely Christ, who in all things holds the first place — has made the beginning.

And here the word 'he shall judge' is used in place of 'he shall render judgment.'

For he rendered judgment both for us and against Satan;

and the latter, as one who had usurped that which is under heaven, he thrust away from his tyranny over all;

but those who had endured the unbearable covetousness he took pity on, as God, and justified by faith.

'O Lord, according to my righteousness.'

Having said in another way that 'the Lord shall judge peoples,' the prophet now introduces also the person of those being judged, who confess their own weakness, and beseech to be judged in such a way as would befit the measures of humanity;

for one kind of righteousness, as we have said, is that of angels, altogether befitting their nature;

and another is that of men, small (that is) and proportionate to the weakness of their nature.

Let the wickedness of sinners be brought to an end.

Let the wickedness of sinners, then, be brought to an end — that is, let the tyranny of the devil, and of the wicked powers that are with him, be abolished;

so that from now on everyone who is a worker of righteousness may travel by a straight and altogether smooth path toward the commendable manner of life.

For when no one is inciting him toward the opposite course, the righteous man will surely make his way straight.

Or perhaps the Prophet is praying that the wickedness among sinners be brought to an end — that is, that it cease as they turn themselves toward virtue.

He therefore asks for a cessation of sin in each of those who have slipped through weakness, so that from now on the righteous man may be set straight.

For it is not possible — indeed not possible — for anyone to be declared an accomplisher of virtuous deeds before he ceases to be wicked.

This word will fit both Jews and Greeks;

for since to transgress knowingly is, by common consent, contempt,

yet to do this in ignorance affords a good ground for the plea of pardon (and both Jews and Greeks had gone astray — the former carried off toward compliance by the perversity of their leaders, and remaining ignorant of the Redeemer;

and the latter not yet having received the divine light into their mind, nor having come to know who is by nature and in truth God).

For to those who have gone astray, conversion is owed; to those who are darkened, illumination; to those who have grown weak, being strengthened by Him.

'My help is just, from God. God is a righteous judge, and strong, and longsuffering,' and so forth.

This admonition, then, is beneficial for those who live a loose and dissolute life: that the God of all is a righteous judge.

And besides this He is also strong.

For if He shuts against a man, who shall open? And, 'The uplifted hand, who shall turn it back?' Yes indeed, and longsuffering too, not bringing wrath upon sinners on the heels of their evil nor together with it.

But even if He is forbearing of evil, we ought not on that account to grow slothful.

Again the words must be transferred both to Israel and to those from among the nations;

for one might cry out to them, that unless they quickly abstain from their own pursuits — the one group ceasing to serve the creation, the other receiving faith in Christ — they will fall into the hands of a judge who is righteous and strong, and longsuffering indeed, yet who, unless they strip off their charges, also punishes;

for this He teaches through the verses that follow.

For lest, hearing that He is longsuffering, they become more slothful, he added that 'He will whet His sword, He has bent His bow.'

'He will whet' — in the sense of, 'He will bare the blade against you.'

This proclamation is loving toward mankind, and put forth out of the gentleness of God to those who are in weaknesses;

for He did not threaten the sword against them simply because they had become workers of wicked things;

but if they should be unwilling to turn quickly, He gives them to understand that they will in every way and altogether fall into dreadful things.

And He has bent the bow as well, having it ready and full of the instruments of death — that is, of the arrows — which He says He has also wrought for those who are burning, the sons of Gehenna,

sons who in due seasons will hear the Judge saying:

'Depart from Me, you cursed,' and what follows.

By 'sword' and 'bow' and 'arrows' and 'instruments of death,' we say that either the varieties of punishments are indicated, or else certain powers which bring the penalties in proportion to each one's transgressions.

It is sometimes our custom to represent under figures those things which are done not manifestly, but as it were in secret and in the realm of thought.

'His arrows He has wrought for those who are burning.'

Let both Jews and Greeks hear these things, that they will fall into inescapable penalties unless they choose to turn — the one group abstaining from their ancient error, the other by repentance scouring away the charges of having slain the Lord.

But indeed the psalmody must be worked out yet further.

It may therefore reasonably be said also concerning every sin, that the one who sins 'has conceived toil and brought forth lawlessness';

for wicked reasonings always in some way rise up first before the outcomes that are in evils.

The saying would also fit the teachers of the Jews, who, having conceived — that is, having in birth-pangs received beforehand — the seeds of impiety against Christ, which the malignity of the devil had sown in them, brought forth lawlessness, namely that against Him.

Satan himself also travailed with injustice and brought forth lawlessness;

for as a tempter he approached in the wilderness;

then he departed for a season, and brought to its completion the aim he had set from the beginning.

For in that time he sharpened the hearts of the Jews and the soul of the betrayer, who, in accordance with the very father of his own impiety — I mean Satan — conceived injustice against Christ, for the sake of shameful gains, wishing to betray Him to those thirsting for His blood.

For having taken thirty pieces of silver, he handed Him over, making the token of love — that is, the kiss — into a signal for murder, and thereby wronging virtue itself.

Then the prophet takes up, as by way of an example, the digging of a pit and the excavating of it;

and he makes plain the meaning of what appears, by adding straightway: 'His toil shall return upon his own head.'

By 'toil' I think he means either the vain labor of digging the pit, or the envy which melts down the heart of those who harbor it;

and by 'injustice,' covetousness — that is, the plot which one might contrive against his neighbor.

The writer of Proverbs is found saying something of this kind:

'He who digs a pit for his neighbor shall fall into it'; and this too belongs to the loving-kindness of God, that He has so allotted to plotting a nature such that it turns back upon those who plot.

Hence too the resourcefulness of God shines forth especially, and there is much correction for the wicked, and pleasure for those who escape.

'I will give thanks to the Lord according to His righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High.'

This is also the voice of those saved in Christ, since Satan has been abolished and death slain and sin done away, and the true Son of God has now been recognized.

And 'I will give thanks,' he says, means, 'I will render thanksgiving with a song according to the righteousness that is in Him (in me),'

that is, according to the greatness of the righteous judgment which He executed when He saved the humanity that was being snatched away by Satan and by the wicked powers with him.

Great, then, is the righteousness of God;

therefore they promise to sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High;

for Him whom they knew not of old, they now name Lord and Most High.

'To the end, concerning the winepresses.'

By the ode set before us, then, the calling of the nations is proclaimed beforehand;

'To the end, concerning the winepresses.'

And the phrase 'To the end' signifies the sojourn — that is, the incarnation — of the Only-begotten which took place at the consummation of the ages;

and the phrase 'concerning the winepresses' has this meaning:

either they say that the 'winepresses' are the altars, because in them the offerings from all people are gathered together.

'O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is Your name in all the earth!'

For of old the glory of God was all but confined to Judea alone;

for in her God was known, and in Israel His name was great;

but since God being Lord appeared to us, His name has been marveled at among those throughout all the earth.

The prophet, therefore, is astonished at the knowledge of God's name which has been poured out upon mankind;

for God is no longer known only to those in Judah.

'For Your magnificence has been exalted.'

And perhaps the magnificence that has been exalted is none other than that of His dispensation.

For what is there in it that does not have amid great things that which is fitting? A birth from a Virgin, a walking upon the sea, incorruption in death, and all such things as resemble these.

This majesty, then, was exalted when He had sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, after He had made purification for sins.

In this way too we must understand that He became higher than the heavens after the resurrection.

'Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings,' and so forth.

He says that the new and fresh congregation is composed of infant souls, on account of the regeneration in Christ which, after His ascension, everywhere establishes the household of the whole inhabited world.

'Hosanna in the highest,' He says to the indignant Jews.

'Did you never read?' and what follows.

'That Thou mightest destroy the enemy and the avenger.'

That is to say, the devil; for after he has compelled men to fulfil sin, he also punishes those who sin, setting before their eyes the magnitude of their transgression.

For the very same one both drives men down into offence and becomes the accuser of those who have sinned.

As an enemy, then, he compels men to sin; but as an avenger, he chastises those who have been handed over.

Hymenaeus, at any rate, and Alexander, whom he had made blasphemers, he in turn chastised for their blasphemies against God.

'What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?'

Even though heaven and earth and all that is in them are Thy wondrous works, which Thou hast established to stand throughout the whole age, yet these are not great things for Thee to bring into being, but correspond to fingers of but a small power.

For thus he called the small powers of God.

But rather it is the things concerning man that I am amazed to behold: how Thou both art mindful of him and takest thought for him;

which could not have been, if he had happened to be some small and worthless creature in Thy sight.

Other teachers of the Jews, indeed, have gone astray, not understanding the mystery;

but I, he says, gazing with the eyes of the understanding upon the creation, behold all things as Thy handiwork.

Thou didst frame the sun and the moon, and hast set upon them a perpetual law;

for this, I think, is what is signified by 'Thou hast founded them.' And a little later:

Therefore, even though Thou didst become as we are, he says, and having by Thy dispensation submitted to the measure of manhood wast not recognized by some, yet I know Thy glory;

I know the dignity of Thy supremacy over all things; I confess Thee to be, even having come in the flesh, the Creator of all; I know Thee as Lord, who hast brought forth to Thyself the sun and the moon.

'Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.'

The powers on high, then, are rational, spending a long and unending life.

In like manner man too upon earth is rational, though not in equal measure with those on high, but he has descended a little below the dignity of the angels because of his conjunction with the earthy body;

and he is lesser inasmuch as he is under the sentence of death and corruption, and this after the transgression;

for this it was that brought in corruption and death.

Christ, then, is said to have been made lower than the angels on account of the suffering of death;

for He endured to suffer in His own flesh, although He remained impassible in the nature of His Godhead.

so that we might be enriched in Him above nature.

For He raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ. For since He is enthroned together with Him, the boast will run out over the whole nature of man.

For thus we have been enriched by His poverty, for whose sake He was crowned with glory and honour, although as God He is the Lord of glory.

For having become dishonoured in the transgression of Adam, we have been glorified in the obedience of Christ on our behalf. 'O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is Thy name in all the earth!'

He redoubles the wonder, and again sets the same proem as the concluding refrain, being astonished at the knowledge of God that has come to men.

Both before the demonstration and after the demonstration he speaks the same words, and, as it were from the very abundance of wonder, he comes to doxology;

and seeing the glory of the Saviour being directed straight over all that is under the sun, he all but leaps for joy, and taking up his own discourse he says:

'O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is Thy name in all the earth!' PSALM 9

'For the end, concerning the secret things of the Son.'

These, indeed, were the secret things of the Son, that is, the mystery of Christ, which was foreknown to the holy prophets, the Holy Spirit revealing it to them, but came to its fulfilment in its own due seasons.

The secret things of the Son, then, are the things secretly wrought by the Saviour;

and these were many: the birth according to the flesh from the Virgin through the Holy Spirit, the miracles, the death itself, the descent into Hades, the return from the dead, and in short the whole manner of the incarnation, and the things thence set right in human life.

For all these things were wrought by Him secretly;

for He hid them even from the rulers of this world;

for 'a mystery,' he says, 'which had been hidden from the ages and from the generations.' And again:

'We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which none of the rulers of this age has known.' And the death of Christ, and the victory over death, were hidden even from the disciples.

For 'this,' he says, 'was hidden from their eyes.'

Fittingly, therefore, did the Seventy call the death of the Son a secret thing.

The psalm contains the calling of the nations and a thanksgiving on their behalf, or rather from them;

and it is full of the dispensation of Christ, and it has distinctions of persons, and moreover transitions of contemplations from one subject to another, yet not such as to carry the mind away beyond what is fitting.

He begins the psalm assuming the person of the nations, that is, of humanity.

'I will be glad and rejoice in Thee.'

Great, then, and worthy to be heard are all the things wrought through Christ, at least for those who behold them and have come to know them.

He Himself, the accomplisher of these things, becomes a gladness, and an occasion of good cheer, and a starting-point of festal celebration, so that each one says:

This is a proof of a God-loving soul;

for to rejoice in God and to be glad clearly shows that the mind of those who rejoice in God has come to be outside of any wish to take pleasure in the affairs of this present life, which one might call vanity and false madness.

And the mind rejoices in God when it is a lover of virtue, and a lover of the glory that comes from Him, and has become a beholder of His marvellous and wondrous works.

'When mine enemy is turned back.'

This utterance belongs to those who have come to know the truth.

'They shall be weakened and perish at Thy presence.'

According to the anagogical sense, the face of God the Father is the Son, who is His unchanging image;

and from Him were weakened all the enemies of His glory, that is, Satan and the powers together with him.

For before the coming of the Saviour, he was hard to withstand and behaved insolently against all that is under heaven, saying:

'I will seize the whole inhabited world with my hand as a nest, and I will take it up as eggs that have been abandoned.' But when the Only-begotten, having submitted to likeness with us, became man, the enemy was weakened;

the dread and unbearable powers have fallen, and have come to be under the feet of the saints.

'Thou hast sat upon a throne, Thou that judgest righteousness.'

He works out zealously what he had said, and teaches clearly whatever the words 'Thou hast executed my judgement' might mean to signify. For he says that He sat upon a throne, speaking in a more human manner, and, as it were from the likeness of our own affairs, giving shape to spiritual realities.

For when kings hear that either cities or lands are being afflicted by a barbarian incursion or by tyrannical madness, they spring up upon the thrones of their kingdom, as it were to sit in judgement upon those who have dared such things, and they bring forth a verdict against the wrongdoers, and they command the wicked to perish wickedly, but they save those who have been wronged;

so too the Saviour sat upon a throne; and the word 'He sat' does not indicate any settling down in these matters, but rather, as it were, a display of authority and the glory of judicial splendour;

so that 'Thou hast sat' stands in place of 'Thou hast judged, Thou hast proceeded against, Thou hast avenged.'

It seems, moreover, that in these words the Psalmist by 'Thou hast sat' means to signify the oversight of God unto judging;

By 'the nations' one may understand, in the anagogical sense, the troops of the wicked demons, which divided among themselves the region under heaven, carrying it off into manifold and multiform error and sin.

And by 'the ungodly one who is perishing' is meant either every such one universally, or even the devil himself.

But that you may learn the strength of God, hear what follows:

'Thou hast blotted out their name for ever and ever.'

Not only, he says, were the adversaries made weak and did they perish when they were rebuked, but their very name was blotted out.

By 'name' here he means not simply the appellation—for that has not happened, since we still remember to this day both Satan and the unclean demons that are with him—

'The swords of the enemy have failed unto the end.'

The swords of the devil also have failed 'unto the end,' that is, utterly and completely.

These would be either the opposing powers, through which he was strong;

or the passions that tyrannized over us, through which he subdued those on the earth, and, rendering them wounded, laid them beneath his own yokes;

or the devices of the perversity inherent in him, and the manifold contrivances which he wrought for the destruction of human souls.

For every kind of shameful pleasure and of the other sins we call diabolical daggers, or arrows of the unclean spirits, by which they pierce the heart and deaden it unto sin; but the swords have failed;

for we too have put on the whole armour of God, by which we have blunted them.

'He hath prepared his throne in judgment.'

Therefore Christ, who is ever King as God, has reigned also over the nations, subjecting them to the ordinances of the Gospel.

For this is the meaning of 'to prepare his throne in judgment,' namely, to judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in uprightness.

'And he shall judge the world in righteousness; he shall judge the peoples in uprightness.'