Above he says: 'Do not drive me away from your commandments'; in the next he says: 'Hide not your commandments from me'; here he says: 'Cursed are those who turn aside from your commandments.' Truly cursed are those who turn aside from your commandments, who ought to have returned thanks—first, because they were not driven away; second, because they deserved that the divine commandments should not be hidden from them. Someone therefore turns aside from what he wished for. There follows: 'Take away from me reproach and contempt, for I have sought out your testimonies.' If contempt is reckoned in place of reproach, how is it written: 'God has chosen the contemptible things of this world'? But consider that he said 'the contemptible things of the world,' not 'of God'; for what is contemptible in this world, this is precious with God.
In short, humility is despised in this world, but is approved in the judgment of God, and if the publican has humbled himself, he is exalted. Hear whom God holds (not) for nothing: whoever is holy, who lives without blemish, keeps the truth, has not assailed his neighbor. The malignant is brought to nothing in his sight; all things that belong to malice are esteemed by him as nothing. In short, gentile-ness is not, but devotion remains forever. Beware, therefore, lest you be a reproach to Christ. I would not have anyone curse me and despise me as it were a sinner: how grievous, if Christ should reckon me worthy of reproach! 'Woe to you,' he says, 'Chorazin and Bethsaida'; they are condemned, because they did not do penance for their offenses.
Let us therefore act, that reproach may be taken away from us. But who is he who is not worthy of reproach? He who has sought out the testimonies of the Lord. There are indeed many who wish to bring reproach upon your servants, but they themselves are the more shameful, because to suffer reproach for your name is glorious. And therefore he says: 'For princes sat and spoke against me.' This is the voice of the martyr, who, brought to the judgment of persecutors, when he was compelled to sacrifice to idols and steadfastly resisted, while the judges, sitting on their tribunals surrounded by their retinues, indignant that he did not yield to their commands, conferred together as to what punishment they should deem worthy, stood undaunted, saying: 'Princes sat and spoke against me.'
This is also the Lord's own voice. When the eldership of the people and the chief priests and the scribes had assembled, and he was led to the council of the Jews who said, 'What further need have we of witnesses? For we have heard from his own mouth,' and he stood before the governor and was led to the cross, what more beautiful thing could he say than: 'Princes sat and spoke against me'? That is: 'While I stood, the princes sat, and because they were lofty by the support of their tribunals, they did not see the Lord. They sat therefore, elated by the height of their princedom, nor did they consider the Prince of princes. But this is little. They spoke,' he says, 'against me.'
'I had come as their redeemer, I had come to cleanse the sins of all, to recover the lost, to restore to paradise the inheritance of holy Jacob, and they spoke against me. And therefore, you my imitators, my disciples, do not blush at injury, if you stand before princes for my name, since I have stood for your salvation.' In short, Peter is delivered into custody with the other apostles, and on the next day, set before the council, steadfastly said: 'Rulers of the people and elders of Israel, if we this day are examined concerning a good deed done to an infirm man, by what means he has been made whole, be it known to you all and to all the people of Israel, that in...'
'In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, in this name does this man stand before you whole' — that is to say: 'You are the very ones who set up Christ also. We count this injury a place of glory, since we are arraigned for the healing of a sick man; this is the inheritance which the Savior of all left to his humble servants.' But they conferred among themselves, saying: What shall we do with these men? And they let them go. Peter therefore gloried, and every one of the apostles, because they were counted worthy to suffer injury for the name of Christ. Rightly therefore might each of them then say: For the princes sat, and they spoke against me. The princes sat against Isaiah, and conspired that he should be sawn asunder;
but he did not fear them, he who said: Hear, you princes of Sodom. They sat against Jeremiah, that he should be cast into the pit; they sat against Zechariah, who was slain between the temple and the altar; they sat against Susanna and gave judgment against a woman of chastity. But that it might be shown that the counsel of princes is not good, the Lord stirred up the spirit of a youth, and the very woman whom the princes had pronounced guilty of death, that same prophet acquitted as wholly innocent of every charge. There are also other princes who speak against us, of whom it is said:
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. These sit and spy out who is righteous in this age, who is a Christian that serves God earnestly, zealous of good work and deed. They speak against him, saying:
'Let us lie in wait for him, let us hinder him, let us prevent him from accomplishing what he desires, let us crush his mind, let us break his spirit by frequent and sudden adversities; and if he is approved by God on account of his righteousness, let us ask that his temptations be given over to us.' For they could not have had power over the temptations of so great a prophet — and he underwent very many — unless the Lord had granted it for the sake of testing his soldier, that He might crown him with greater glory. Who, then, stirred up King Saul against him but an evil spirit, as we read, who grieved that he was shut out, as often as David soothed the mind and spirit of the king, whether by the sound of the harp or by the strings and chords of good counsels and works?
Who stirred up the wickedness of Doeg the Syrian, that he should betray a holy man and bring a hospitable kindness into peril of the priest? Who inflamed the lust of Amnon, that he should defile a prophetic house and grieve a father's heart — by the one's incestuous lust, by the other's wrong — so that he who prophesied to others could not foresee the evils of his own house? Who armed the fury of Absalom, that he should shut his father out of his home and pursue him with a parricidal battle? Yet when the holy man was now nearly inferior in the forces of the kingdom, by this one thing he quenched the kindled darts of the devil against himself, that, though the son sought his father's death, he nevertheless commanded that his son be kept safe, out of the affection of his fatherly love.
Therefore the princes of the people, like Ahithophel, and the rest of the leaders of the warriors sat down; the princes of the people took counsel with Absalom against the prophet. And so he says: For the princes sat, and spoke against me; but thy servant meditated on thy ordinances. We perceive the weapons of the righteous man, by which he repels every assault of his adversaries. Elsewhere he says: They compassed me about and fought against me without cause. In return for my loving them, they detracted from me; but I prayed.
Here he says that his concern in youth was not to train himself in the arts of war, nor was there any cunning of heart in deceiving an adversary, that he might conquer the one he saw; rather he fought against those whom he did not see, and in him a greater piety than bodily strength did battle. And so he exercised himself in the ordinances of God, that by a counter-stroke he might wound the devil. The enemy strove to draw him away from his intent upon righteousness and his zeal for devotion by occupations of war; but he occupied himself the more with meditations on the divine work and worship. And so the Lord protected him, in whom he hoped, with whom he spoke, to whom he clung with his whole affection.
For the righteous man either speaks to God in praying, or speaks of divine things in praising, and always speaks of the works of God, lest his mouth should speak of the works of men. The righteous man speaks nothing earthly, does nothing mortal. And therefore he says: For thy testimonies are my meditation, and my counsels are thy ordinances. You note what he teaches: that these ought to be the counsels of the righteous man, that he meditate on the commandments of God and exercise himself in the praises and oracles of God, so that he may ever justify the Lord. He who does what God commands, what he believes pleases God, justifies God. This we can understand from the reading of the Gospel, when the evangelist says that the Pharisees rejected the counsel of God, not being baptized with the baptism of John. This in one book; but in another you have:
they did not justify God, who refused to be baptized. Therefore when John said to the Lord: I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? He answered: Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness. He, then, who does the commandments of God justifies God, because he does His righteousness; and it is good that the counsels of men should follow the counsel of God, because God's counsel is ever sure, but our counsels are for the most part uncertain, proved by the outcome of events. IV. THE LETTER DALETH. 'Daleth,' the fourth letter according to the Hebrews, signifies in Latin 'fear,' or, as we find elsewhere, 'birth.' But both can agree and suit the sense.
For 'birth' belongs to the things that are generated in this age, by which we understand bodily and material things that are perishable, and so it is not far from fear; for from bodily and material things fear is born. For what is earthly birth but fear? And so the verse begins from there: My soul has cleaved to the pavement; quicken me according to thy word. By 'pavement' we understand the earth, by 'earth' material things. And to the sinner it was said: Thou art earth, and to earth shalt thou go, because he did not think he should cling to the divine commandments, but turned aside to material and bodily things, upon whom the delight of this worldly life had pressed itself.
Finally, cast out of paradise — that is, from that lofty and heavenly place to which Paul was caught up, whether in the body or out of the body he knew not — from that eminent place, then, cast down to earth, Adam laments, saying: My soul has cleaved to the pavement, as elsewhere he says: My soul is humbled in the dust, and my belly has cleaved to the earth. This is the voice of one doing penance, who remembers that he knew not how to cling to God, and could not discern what even Paul did not discern, whether he was in the body or out of the body: so little did he feel the weakness and sluggishness of the body, to whom the presence of the Lord was cleaving. It is therefore the prophetic spirit, which has expressed the grief.
Or the Lord, who took upon Himself man's weakness, represents the person of Adam and assumes his affection. Let Adam, then, speak: My soul has cleaved to the pavement. He who before, most blessed, breathed the ethereal air, knew not the cares and weariness of this life, now, bent down by the anxiety of this world, by the pursuit of luxury and the greed of money, thrusts himself, like a fox, into pits and earthly hiding-places. Deservedly he cleaved to the dust who could not lift himself up, unless Christ had lifted him above His cross; deservedly he cleaved to the pavement who hid himself from Christ. He does not cleave to the pavement to whom Jesus says: Follow me. He does not cleave to the pavement who hears and follows the law that says: Thou shalt walk after the Lord thy God and shalt cleave to Him.
How, then, each one cleaves to the pavement, and how to God, hear Him who says: He who cleaves to a harlot is one body, but he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit. This earth which we bear takes us captive by certain harlot-like allurements, and as it were smears certain faces of bodily pleasures with the paints of delights, that the truth may lie hidden in them, and that with a certain superficial show they may deceive those who draw near. But when they have for a time blinded the inner eye of the mind, yet afterward, when this comeliness of such pleasures has been shaken off like a kind of dust, how empty is the grace of this world or of the body is easily detected. It is good, therefore, to cleave to the Lord and not to have a neck bent to the yoke of the world.
And therefore Wisdom says to the Church or to the brave soul: Thy neck is like the tower of David, which is built with bulwarks (Thalpioth). A thousand bucklers hang upon it, and all the darts of mighty men. For a neck raised toward God and fitted to the yoke of Christ, which is bent by no inclination toward the allurements of the earth, is, as it were, the royal tower of Christ, upon which Nebuchadnezzar cannot lay his yoke. For that tower David built, that man strong of hand, and built it high above the walls, that it might be for defense and for adornment alike: for defense, because it foresees and repels the foe; for adornment, because it stands eminent not only among lowly things but even among lofty things;
yet so for defense or for adornment, if it have in itself the teachings of the word as it were certain trapping-ornaments, and have also the darts of the mighty prophets, which against every height that exalts itself are aimed by certain arms of faith. Do not, therefore, lead down thy soul into the dust of death, to which the Lord has granted even a natural loftiness and vigor, by which it may rouse itself and rise up. Whence also concerning this conjunction of soul and body it is fitly understood to be said, that in the natural mystery of our life the soul, joined to the body, as it were crawls along the ground and cleaves to the pavement, partly on account of this earthly dwelling, partly because this body is of earth.
The very lodging-place of the region and the matter itself of our body therefore concur with this opinion. And so the apostle beautifully desires to be set free from the body of this death, because we are shut up in a kind of prison, and, set in a certain hovel of luxury, are wrapped in the darkness of sins. Let us, then, walk according to the will of God, that we may be said to cleave to God. For he who lives according to the appetite of the body is flesh; he who lives according to the precepts of God is spirit. Let not, then, our soul become flesh — that is, let us not be called flesh, as also were those who perished in the flood, of whom it was said:
that they are flesh; but rather let our flesh, obedient to the soul's governance, become soul, and deserve to be called by this name, just as the household of the patriarch Jacob and the holy posterity of his line were so called. For thus it is written: These are the sons of Bilhah, whom Laban gave to Rachel his daughter, and she bore these to Jacob: all the souls seven; and elsewhere: But all the souls that entered into Egypt, who came out of his loins, besides the women, were sixty, it says, and six. And in the beginning of Exodus we read: But all the souls of Jacob were seventy and five, who were with Jacob. Therefore those who dwelt with Joseph, and came out of Egypt, are souls also.
But those who, though they were angels of God — that is, by uprightness of life imitating the grace of angels (for they who do not take wives, and the women who do not marry, shall be as the angels in heaven) — those, then, who, though they seemed angels, were captivated by feminine beauty, these are flesh: as the Lord God said: My spirit shall not abide in these men for ever, because they are flesh. And deservedly those who are free of lust are compared to angels; they are not flesh, because they are not in the flesh but in the spirit, such as were those who followed the apostle as their teacher, to whom he says: But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit.
But those who are taken by the bodily lust of women are flesh — and would that they were flesh only, and not also horses neighing, since they neighed, it says, each after his neighbor's wife. He therefore prays — he who feels the casting-down of his soul, bent even to the pavement — that he may be quickened according to the word of God, which draws souls to itself, desiring out of mercy to lift up whomever it leads away from the earth. And the soul is quickened that walks the ways of Christ, dead to sin, living to God, so that the death of sin can no longer have dominion over it after it has been buried together with Christ and justified from sin. But he who desires to be justified, let him first declare his own ways. And therefore in the second verse he says: I have declared my ways, and thou hast heard me;
teach me thy ordinances. By a beautiful order he thinks one must come to the ordinances of God: that first he confess his own sins. For so we are taught elsewhere also: Tell thy iniquities, that thou mayest be justified. And so we ought to know what it is for a man to walk his own ways and the ways of God. He who does the wills of the flesh and lives according to the lust of this world walks his own ways, in which he delights and rejoices; but he who comes to do the will of his Father who is in heaven, whose food is to fulfill the commandment of God, who seeks not what is his own pleasure but what may please God — he treads the way of the Lord, that way which says: I am the way and the truth and the life. You see, then,
that he lives according to the word of God who walks the way of Christ. The Lord God Himself also in Deuteronomy teaches how you may walk in His ways, saying: And now, Israel, what does the Lord thy God require of thee, but that thou fear the Lord thy God and walk in His ways and love Him and serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and keep His commandments and His ordinances? It is clear, therefore, that the ways of the flesh are one thing, the ways of God another; and if anyone wishes to walk the ways of God, the ways of the flesh and of the body and of worldly wisdom must first be forsaken by him. And so, forsaking them, David declares and is not silent before God: he confesses his errors, he does not deny his falls. Like to this he said:
I will declare my iniquity against myself to the Lord. For if the righteous man accuses himself, he has shut out the voice of the accuser standing ready, who is wont to heap up sins and to exaggerate each one's disgraces. He therefore stops the mouth of him who has himself first confessed concerning himself, and by the modesty of confessing he secures pardon beforehand. His own shame excuses the guilty and accuses the author; for he who did not keep silent about his own faults seems to have grieved within himself for what he did, and to have betrayed in the devil what he persuaded. And therefore the Scripture says: The righteous man is the accuser of himself at the beginning of his speech. He who accuses himself, even if he be a sinner, begins to be righteous, because he neither spares himself and confesses the righteous judgments of God, whom he thinks nothing can escape. Would that Adam had been willing to accuse himself rather than to conceal himself!
But it is not enough that we confess our error; rather, if we wish to be corrected, we must also ask of the Lord that He teach us His ordinances, lest afterward we should be able to err. He asks, therefore, to be taught by the Lord, because there is one Master of ours, as Christ says; nor does he ask this idly: for not blessed is he whom a man teaches, but whom Thou shalt instruct, O Lord. Everywhere he is mindful of himself, and does not think it enough that the Lord our God should teach him His ordinances, but he added: Make known to me the way of thy ordinances, and I will be exercised in thy wondrous works. See the order. First it is that we learn the ordinances of the Lord, then that we may know certain steps and the order of the ordinances, what ought to be first, what to follow.
For to know what you should do and not to know the order of doing it is not perfect knowledge; things done in the wrong order generally give offense. Finally, he is righteous who accuses himself at the beginning of his speech, but he is unrighteous who confesses what he had first denied; the one finds the grace of modesty, the other incurs the mark of shamelessness. Thus ignorance of order disturbs the nature of affairs and the form of merits. But he who has learned first the mysteries of God, then the order of the mysteries, is exercised in the wondrous works of God. The Greek put adoleschesō, which the Latin renders 'I will muse' (halucinabor).
In which there seems to be some offense of speech according to common usage, because adoleschēsai is commonly reckoned either 'to muse idly' or to speak something more than is fitting and to seem superfluous, which is wearisome to the hearer; and it seems to be out of order, since order in things seems to bring weariness, as if you should wish to relate some cause and keep its order, while the hearer hastens to the end of the matter and is wearied by the earlier parts. But no one can be fully instructed except he who has come to know all things in their order; thence not only the deed is grasped, but also the weight of the deed and the disposition of the doer.
And therefore David, as a good judge and arbiter of himself, wishes to be taught almost to the point of weariness, and would rather linger even a superfluous time than pass over the necessary order. For adoleschia, or 'musing,' seems to be a kind of long meditation or a lingering intentness of mind: from which the exercise of either soul or body is not far removed. For just as he who exercises his limbs in the wrestling-school exercises them longer, that he may strengthen them, so he who exercises his mind in the divine Scriptures or in counsels ought to exercise it longer. Isaac went out into the field — the Greek said adoleschēsai, the Latin 'to take a walk' or 'to exercise.' Rebecca was coming — a type by which the Church was prefigured in her — the nuptials were being prepared, in which there would be a great sacrament.
The patriarch, seeing these mysteries, went out into the field, pouring out the keenness of his mind and walking in the innocence of his heart. With various thoughts he exercised his soul and delighted in the wondrous mysteries. That he might come forth as an imitator of him, the holy prophet longed to be taught the ordinances of God and to know the way of the heavenly righteous acts, that his soul might not sleep with the sleep of this age, nor, captured by the allurements of worldly vanity, melt away from the pursuit of truth. By what reasoning, therefore, he would wish to be taught, he subjoined, saying: My soul has dripped through weariness; confirm me in thy words. Some codices have 'has slumbered,' because enystaxen and estaxen differ in two letters.
The translator or the copyist could have erred here: enystaxen is 'to sleep,' estaxen is 'to drip.' The more perfect man does not slumber, who directs his mind to the divine mysteries — finally he himself says elsewhere: If I shall give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids — but always watches, and, if the flesh sleeps, the heart watches. He was not sleeping, then, who was thinking to build a temple to the Lord by the construction of heavenly words, not of stones. For the word of God is a repeller of weariness, by which the sleep of the soul, the drowsiness of the mind, is shut out; for from the sadness and anxiety of worldly things sleep creeps in.
But he who cleaves to God, fleeing cares, takes the pleasure of eternal knowledge, fearing there no change of things, such as in worldly affairs. Those, therefore, who use the easier shortcuts of labors take 'has slumbered'; but Origen, who sifted the interpretations of many with diligent investigation, followed 'has dripped,' because the soul of the perfect man, as it were well composed and confirmed, does not drip, like the tops of roofs that are well covered and fortified, whereas the ill-composed quickly drip. Hence it was borrowed: The droppings cast a man out of his house on a wintry day, in which we are tried by the harshness of cold and the frequent change of weather. Finally, we are taught to take heed lest our flight be in winter or on the sabbath;
for the day, whether of judgment or of death, ought to find us already proven, lest the issue of death find us bereft of the greenness of prosperity and stripped of every flower of successful undertakings. Let us beware, then, lest each one of us be cast out from the state of his own mind and from a certain natural dwelling, if he have holes in his dwelling, from which the flowing droppings, as it were from the foundations, may undermine the man founded on no solidity of wisdom. And therefore the prophet says: Son, do not flow away. Our soul, then, must be confirmed, lest it drip, and must be made solid by an indivisible framework of virtues, that it may be able to keep the mystery of the eternal King.
Otherwise, whoever is loose in words, as though full of chinks, flowing out this way and that, empties his inner parts and is flooded by outward passions, knowing not how to cover himself nor to hold the word he has received, like holy Mary, who kept all the words in her heart, lest anything should flow out of her heart. With such a dowry of virtues fortified, the Church speaks, that she may seem worthy in whose lodging the invited Bridegroom should enter; hence first she presumes that she will be pleasing, if Christ should behold her well covered and keeping faithful silence: Behold, she says, thou art fair, my kinsman, and indeed comely; our reclining is shady, the beams of our houses are of cedar, our paneled ceilings are of cypress.
The Church praises the comeliness of the Bridegroom, whom each one praises the more with silent affection, and the faithful interpreter of the mysteries proclaims the more by keeping silent; for he who divulges secret things diminishes the comeliness of Christ. Therefore let no one cast his pearls before swine, lest he cause precious ornaments to be trampled. Not, then, in the tabernacle of the talkative and garrulous — since in much speaking sin is committed — but in that of the grave man, who is sparing of speech and not intemperate in talk, and who, by sobriety of words, avoids the drunkenness of loquacity, Christ inclines His head. And rightly does she signify the reclining as shady, because the power of the Most High overshadows those set in the Church. By this shadow David besought to be protected, that the sun might not burn him by day, nor the moon by night;
this shadow the spiritual grace ministers to those fleeing the scorching and the summer-heat of this age and world. The reclining of Christ and of the Church is therefore shady, upon whom that eternal rest of God the Father breathes. In this shadow, then, let us rest, wearied by the heats of our sins. If lust has scorched any, let the cross of the Lord refresh them, on which He reclined Himself to take up our offenses; if guilt has wearied any, let Jesus receive them in His bosom and cherish them in a gentle embrace. Whence I dare to say that the flesh of Christ is the reclining-place of the Church. The beams of our houses are of cedar. By the figure of the cedar is declared the glory of the elders who were righteous: the righteous shall flourish like the palm, and like the cedar that is in Lebanon shall he be multiplied.