Therefore, according to the Lord's mercy, being about to find the key for opening each several psalm, let us open the entrance of this very first psalm with its own proper and fitting key. THE FIRST PSALM. This is the chief understanding in the psalms: to be able to discern from whose person, or unto whom, those things which are said ought to be understood. For their composition is not uniform and undivided, so as not to have both authors and diverse kinds. For we find in them frequently that the person of God the Father is wont to be set forth, as in the eighty-eighth psalm, when it is said: 'I have exalted the chosen one out of my people; I have found David my servant, with holy oil I have anointed him. He shall call upon me: You are my Father and the sustainer of my salvation.'
'And I will make him my firstborn, higher than all the kings of the earth.' But the person of the Son is introduced in very many places, as in the seventeenth: 'A people whom I did not know served me'; and in the twenty-first: 'They divided my garments among themselves, and upon my vesture they cast lots.' But now, that this first psalm cannot be understood either from the person of the Father or from the person of the Son, the matter itself absolutely teaches: 'but his will was in the law of the Lord, and on his law he will meditate day and night.' For in that psalm in which we noted the person of the Father to be designated, things proper and fitting are recalled, when it is said: 'He shall call upon me: You are my Father, my God, and the sustainer of my salvation.'
And in that psalm in which the Son is taught to speak, He Himself, from those things which He recalls, professes Himself the author of His own sayings, saying: 'A people whom I did not know served me.' For since the Father says: 'He shall call upon me,' and the Son says: 'A people served me,' they show themselves to be the very ones who speak concerning themselves. But now, when it is said: 'but his will was in the law of the Lord,' no person of the Lord speaking concerning Himself is shown, but rather of another—namely, of one proclaiming the blessedness of that man whose will is in the law of the Lord. And so the person of the prophet, by whose mouth the Holy Spirit speaks, must now be recognized, instructing us by the office of his mouth unto the knowledge of the spiritual sacrament.
And since he speaks these things, it must be asked concerning what man we ought to understand him to be speaking. For he says: 'Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of pestilence; but his will was in the law of the Lord, and on his law he will meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree which is planted beside the courses of waters, which will give its fruit in its season; and its leaf shall not fall off, and all things whatsoever he shall do shall be well directed.' Many, either by present discourse or from the letters and writings of them, I have found to have thought thus concerning this psalm: that it ought to be understood that our Lord Jesus Christ is signified in it, whose blessedness is proclaimed in the things which are subjoined.
But this they taught neither with method nor with reason; out of an affection of good opinion, indeed, because all prophecy of the psalms is to be referred to Him: but where and when the very discourse of the prophecy refers itself to Him must be discerned by the truth of a reasonable knowledge. But those things which are placed in the opening of the psalm by no means befit His person and dignity; and those very things which are contained in the psalm refute this rash facility of thus proclaiming. For when it is said: 'and his will was in the law of the Lord,' since the law was given through the Son of God, how shall blessedness be referred to Him on this account, because his will was in the law of the Lord, when the Lord Himself is the Lord of the law?
But that the law is His, He Himself testifies in the seventy-seventh psalm, in which He says: 'Attend, my people, to my law; incline your ear to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable.' And that these things were spoken by Him, the evangelist Matthew confirms, saying: 'Therefore He spoke in parables, that it might be fulfilled which was said: I will open my mouth in parables.' The Lord, therefore, fulfilled His prophecy by deeds. For in those things in which He had promised that He would speak, He spoke in parables.
But that which he says: 'and he shall be like a tree which is planted beside the courses of waters'—in which, by way of comparison, the progress of blessedness is set forth—how will it be able to be fitted to His person, so that a tree planted should be more blessed than the Son of God, for which reason it is blessed, because at some time it attains the likeness of Him in the progress of blessedness? Furthermore, since according to Wisdom and the apostle He is both before the ages and before the eternal times, and is the firstborn of all creation, and in Him and through Him all things were created, how, when He shall be made like to these things, is He blessed—things which were established by Him?
—since neither does the power of the Creator need comparison with the creature for the perfection of His own blessedness, nor does the antiquity of the firstborn admit a time of preposterous comparison in that 'he shall be like a tree.' For that which shall be through a time yet to be awaited cannot be seen either to have been, or already to be, in the nature of things. But whatever already is has no need of the delay of time, that it may be begun toward that which it shall be, because by the antiquity of its own origin it already abides in being.
And so, since these things are understood to be foreign to the divinity of the only-begotten Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, that man is to be supposed here proclaimed blessed by the prophet, who shall have rendered himself conformable to that body which the Lord assumed—in which He was born as man—by the zeal of equity and by the perfection of all righteousness. And that this indeed ought so to be understood, a fuller exposition of the psalm will show. But the Holy Spirit took this most beautiful and most worthy exordium for beginning the psalms, that He might exhort human weakness through the hope of blessedness unto the innocent zeal of religion, that He might teach the sacrament of God incarnate, that He might promise the communion of glory—
—the communion of heavenly glory, that He might announce the penalty of judgment, that He might show the difference of the resurrection, that He might display the providence of God in retribution. With a perfect and consummated reasoning, indeed, He began the order of so great a prophecy, that the hope of the blessed man might allure the feebleness of men unto the zeal of faith; that the blessedness of the tree, compared to the blessedness of hope, might pledge it; that the announced severity toward the ungodly might restrain insolent impiety within fear; that the order of condition might distinguish the difference of merit in the counsels of the saints; that the equity established might show the magnificence of God in the paths of the righteous to be known. But let us treat the matters themselves and their words.
'Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of pestilence; but his will was in the law of the Lord, and on his law he will meditate day and night.' The prophet records that the observance of five kinds underlies the blessed man: the first, of not going in the counsel of the ungodly; the second, of not standing in the way of sinners; the third, of not sitting in the seat of pestilence; then next, of placing one's will in the law of the Lord; lastly, of meditating on it day and night. Therefore it is necessary to distinguish the ungodly from the sinner, the sinner from the pestilent; especially since to the ungodly belongs 'counsel,' to the sinner 'the way,' to the pestilent 'the seat.'
Next, since in the counsel of the ungodly one rather goes than stands, but in the way of the sinner one rather stands than goes. That we may be able to understand the causes of these things, it must be discerned how greatly the sinner differs from the ungodly, so that through this it may be understood why 'the way' is assigned to the sinner and 'the counsel' to the ungodly; and next, why one must both stand in the way and go in the counsel, whereas human custom decrees that one must stand in counsel and go on the way. Not everyone who is a sinner is also ungodly; but the ungodly cannot but be a sinner. And let us take an example from the use of common conscience. Sons are able to love their fathers, even though they be drunkards and wanton and prodigal; and amid these vices they lack not crime, yet they lack impiety.
The impious, however, even though they may excel in the chief virtues of continence and frugality, yet in every other offense whatsoever, apart from impiety itself, fall short only as one who insults a parent. Therefore, according to this proposed example, it is not doubtful that the impious man is to be distinguished from the sinner. And that these are impious the very nature of common judgment shows: those who disdain to seek the knowledge of God, who by an irreligious opinion presume that there is no creator of the world, who declare that the world took its present shape and adornment from chance movements, and who, so as to leave their creator no judgment over a life rightly or wickedly lived, would have it that they are born by a necessity of nature and again by that same necessity are dissolved.
Of these men, therefore, every deliberation is fluctuating, uncertain and wandering, and in the same things and by the same means it is tossed about without any point of rest; for it holds to no measure of any definition. Their disputation has not dared to teach who is the creator of the world. For when you ask, why the world, and when, and to what extent? and whether the world is for man, or man for the world? and why death, or how far, or of what sort? about these things the deliberations of their impiety are ever driven and go to and fro, since no place of standing is found in these deliberations. There are also other deliberations of the impious, namely of those who, having slipped into heresy, are restrained by the laws neither of the New nor of the Old Testament.
Their speech, ever bent into a ring and circle of error, holding to nothing and standing firm in nothing, is tossed to and fro in the running and re-running course of an undefined opinion. Their impiety lies in this: to measure God not by God's own declaration but by the will of their own choosing, not knowing that it is no lesser impiety to invent a God than to deny one. When you demand of them to what end of their hope and faith they hold such views, they are confounded, thrown into confusion, dissemble, wander about, and evade the very end of the very disputation about which the question is asked. Blessed therefore is the man who has not walked in this counsel of the impious, that is, who has not admitted that very will of walking in this counsel: for whatever things are impious, even to have thought them is already a crime.
It follows, moreover, that he who has not walked in the counsel of the impious should also not stand in the way of sinners. For there are many who, though by the confession of God they are set apart from impiety, are nonetheless not thereby free from sin, remaining indeed within the Church, but not keeping the Church's discipline: such as the greedy, the drunken, the turbulent, the insolent, the proud, the dissemblers, the liars, the rapacious. And to these vices indeed the instinct of our nature drives us; but it is profitable that we depart from this way to which we are carried, and not stand still there, applying an unhesitating return from it as we withdraw. And therefore blessed is the man who has not stood in the way of sinners, nature indeed carrying him into this way, but the religion of faith carrying him back out of it.
This too is the third order for obtaining blessedness: not to sit in the seat of pestilence. In the seat of Moses sat the Pharisees, teaching; Pilate too sat in the tribunal: the sitting in which seat, then, shall we reckon pestilent? Surely not that of Moses. For the Lord, rather than disapproving of sitting in the seat, disapproves those who sit, when He says: Upon the seat of Moses, He says, have sat the scribes and Pharisees; whatever they shall say, do; but what they do, do not do. The sitting in this seat is not pestilent, whose obedience is enjoined by the Lord's own authority. That, therefore, will be pestilent whose contagion Pilate avoids by washing his hands. For the ambition of worldly honors corrupts many even who are set in the fear of God:
and they wish, though subject to the laws of the Church, to judge by the laws of the forum. But although they bring with them a religious will to these very offices which they perform, showing themselves benevolent and self-restrained, yet it is inevitable that they be defiled by a certain pestilent contagion of the affairs in which they are engaged. For the order of public causes does not permit those who wish it to remain even within the sanctity of the ecclesiastical law. And however tenacious they may be of a religious purpose, yet through the necessity of the seat they have obtained they are compelled, with a reluctant will though it be, now to insult, now to injury, now to punishment; and their necessity makes them partakers of that very necessity, since they are imbued with it as with a diseased plague.
And therefore the prophet names this seat of theirs the seat of pestilence, because by its contagion it infects even the will of a religious mind. But the prophet does not yet consummate the blessedness of the man in his not having gone into the counsel of the impious, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of pestilence. For these things can be found even in a worldly man: that he should hold there to be one God the creator of the world, that he should hold himself back from sins by a zeal for modest innocence, that he should prefer the leisure of a private and tranquil life to the dignities of honors.
But now, molding a man perfect unto God, and one whom he sets among the great examples of eternal blessedness, the prophet teaches that he must not use common virtues for this end, but must be perfected by these things, so that he may be blessed, which follow: But in the law of the Lord was his will. Abstention from the higher evils is useless, unless an intent be applied in what follows: namely, that his will be in the law of the Lord. The prophet does not wait for fear to be present. For fear restrains many within the law, but will establishes few in the law: because it belongs to fear not to dare to neglect things to be feared; but it belongs to perfect religion to be willing to obey what is prescribed. And therefore blessed is he in whose heart there is, toward the law of God, not fear, but will.
But sometimes something is lacking even to the will; and merely to will does not obtain perfect blessedness, unless action follows the will. For it follows: And on his law will he meditate day and night. Continual meditation on the law, unwearied, consummates this blessed man. But perhaps the nature of human weakness does not permit this, by which we must rest, sleep, and take time for food; on account of which we would fall away from the hope of attaining blessedness even by the necessity of natural things, since at some time we must cease from meditation both by day and by night through the intervention of bodily business. Similar to this saying is that saying of the Apostle: Pray without ceasing.
As though the necessity of our nature, occupied with its own affairs, could not always pray without any interruption of time! Meditation on the law, therefore, consists not only in the words of reading, but in the religion of works; nor is it that we should merely go over books and Scriptures, but that we should meditate in our deeds and actions upon those things which are contained in the Scriptures and books, and that our works, by day and by night, should always exercise the law; as is that saying of the Apostle: Whatever things you do, do all to the glory of God, whether you eat, or whether you drink, or whether you do anything else. For by this it is brought about that we pray without ceasing, since through works pleasing to God and always exercised unto His glory, the whole life of every holy man is prayer;
and thus, living night and day according to the law, life itself will be a nocturnal and diurnal meditation on the law. But now that the blessedness of this man has been consummated—who, abstaining from the counsels of the impious and the ways of sinners and the seat of pestilence, willingly meditates on the law of God day and night—it must be taught how great will be for him the fruit of this blessedness he has acquired. For to will to be blessed proceeds from the expectation of that very blessedness. For it follows: And he shall be like a tree that is planted beside the running of the waters, which will give its fruit in its season. And its leaf shall not fall. Perhaps this will be believed a ridiculous and inept example of the blessedness being compared:
in which the planting of the tree, the running of the waters, the giving of fruits, its season, and the leaf that does not fall are proclaimed. These things indeed will perhaps be esteemed as nothing according to the men of this world. But let us see, according to the prophetic teaching, how great a glory of the blessedness that is compared is placed in these very things and words. In the book of Genesis, where the lawgiver shows the paradise planted by God, he also showed that every tree fair in appearance and good for food was brought forth; he set forth too that there was in the midst of paradise the tree of life and the tree of knowing good and evil; and that paradise was then watered by a river, which afterward was divided into four heads.
But what this tree of life was, the prophet Solomon taught, saying concerning the exhortation of wisdom: It is a tree of life to all who embrace it and who lean upon it. This tree, therefore, is a living one; and not only living, but also rational; and rational to such a degree that it gives fruit, and gives it not in confusion, not out of season, but in its own season. And this tree is planted beside the running of the waters: namely, in the possession of the kingdom of God, that is, in paradise, and whence a river going out is divided into four heads. For it does not say: after the running of the waters, but: beside the running of the waters, whence the divisions receive their lot at the first running of the waters.
For there this tree is planted, into which the Lord, who is wisdom, brings that thief who confessed Him as Lord, saying: Amen I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise. And since we have taught by prophetic authority that wisdom, which is Christ, is called the tree of life, from the mystery of His future incarnation and passion, the property of this understanding must also be established from the Gospels. For the Lord Himself compared Himself to a tree, when the Jews had said that He cast out demons by Beelzebul: Either make, He says, the tree good and its fruits good, or make the tree bad and its fruits bad; for by its fruit the tree is known.
For since the fruit of casting out demons was most excellent, they said that He, whose fruits are worst, was Beelzebul. He did not disdain to teach in Himself also the virtue of this blessed tree, when, going to the cross, He said: For if they do these things in the green wood, what shall be done in the dry? signifying by the example of the green wood that there was in Himself nothing liable to the dryness of death. To this tree, therefore, that blessed man will become like, when, after the manner of the thief transferred into paradise, he too is planted beside the running of the waters; and there will be that blessed and not-to-be-uprooted new planting, which the Lord signifies in the Gospels, when He complains of an alien planting, saying: Every planting which my Father has not planted shall be uprooted.
This tree, therefore, will give its fruits. But wherever the divine word signifies anything concerning the fruits of trees, it speaks of them rather as making fruit than as giving it, when it says: A good tree cannot make bad fruits; and when, according to Isaiah, there is the complaint about the vineyard: I waited, He says, that it should make grapes, but it made thorns. But this tree will give its fruits, ordered by the choice of giving and by reason. For in its season it will give them. And at what season, then? Surely at that of which the blessed Apostle says: That He might make known to you the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him, in the dispensation of the fullness of the times.
This, therefore, is the time of the dispensation, in which the opportunity both of receiving and of giving is regulated, when its own time shall come, that those to whom He will give may receive. But the delay of time depends on the fullness of the times. For the dispensation of giving fruit is reserved to the fullness of the times. And what, then, will this fruit be that is to be dispensed? Surely that of which the same Apostle makes mention, saying: And He shall transform, he says, the body of our lowliness conformed to the body of His glory. These, therefore, are the fruits He will give us, which He has already perfected in that man whom He took to Himself and who is signified in the tree, whom He poured over into the nature of His own immortality when mortality was swallowed up.
That blessed man, therefore, will be like this tree, when at some time he himself shall stand conformed to his Lord in the glory of God. And the leaf of this tree shall not fall away. And no wonder if its leaves do not fall away, whose fruits are given rather than fall down—not driven off by ripeness, not struck off by outward force, but measured out by the dispensation of a rational office. And what the leaves signify has been made clear from the comparison of bodily things. For we observe this to be the nature of leaves: that they burst forth thrown around the fruits themselves for the safeguarding of the fruits, so that with a kind of rampart they may protect the tender beginnings of the fruit. The teaching of the words of God, therefore, which clothes for us the promised fruits, is signified in the leaves.
For by these words our hopes are overshadowed, and by their protection they are covered amid these tempests of the world. These leaves, therefore, that is, the words of God, will not fall away; because it was said by the Lord: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. For nothing of those things which have been spoken by God shall slip away or fall down. But that these leaves of this tree are not useless, but salutary to the nations, holy John in the Apocalypse testifies, saying:
And he showed me a river of the water of life, bright as crystal, going out from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of its street; and on either side of the river the tree of life, which makes fruit twelve times, rendering its fruit in each several month; and the leaves of that tree are for the healing of the nations. The heavenly mystery is thus set forth through bodily forms, so that the bodily things themselves, although they cannot fulfill the spiritual meaning, are yet, in relation to the reasoning of bodies, defective. For it would have been fitting to have said that on either side of the river demonstrated there were trees, not a tree.
But because the tree of life is everywhere one in the mystery of baptism, supplying the fruit of apostolic preaching to those coming to it from every side, therefore on either side of the river one tree of life stands. For one is the Lamb seen on the throne of God, and one river, and one tree of life: all of which comprise in themselves the mysteries of the incarnation, of baptism, of the passion; whose leaves, that is, the words of preaching, impart salvation to the nations through the teaching of the never-falling utterance. And all things, he says, whatsoever he shall do, shall prosper.
Now no longer, as in Adam, will His gift and ordinances be disturbed—because that man lost the blessedness of the immortality established for him by the sin of transgressing the law—but through the redemption of the tree of life, that is, through the Lord's passion, when we shall be like to the tree of life itself, then whatever shall be done in us is eternal, and eternal moreover with the perception of blessedness. For all those things which shall be done shall prosper: not by an uncertain change, not in a weak nature, since incorruption shall have swallowed up corruption, and eternity weakness, and the form of God the form of earthly flesh. To this planted tree, therefore, giving in its season these its fruits, that blessed man will be like, himself also planted in paradise, that the planting of God may remain not to be uprooted;
in whom all things made by God shall be prosperously directed, with no change thereafter that would uproot him, either through our weakness or through time. But now that the perfect blessedness of this man has been demonstrated, it was consequent to show what punishment awaits the impious. For it follows: Not so the impious, not so, but like the dust which the wind casts from the face of the earth. There is no hope of this comparative blessedness left to the impious, but a wandering, ground-down, wind-tossed, scattered, and restless state remains for them, so that, struck down from the firmness of bodily solidity, they may be dispersed unto punishment in the mockery of dust: not dissolved into nothing, so that there may be in them a material for punishment, but ground into what is empty and light and dry, so that they may be tossed about with the ludicrous mobility of punishment.
Of which punishment the same prophet makes mention also in another place, saying: I will grind them small as the dust before the face of the wind, I will blot them out like the mire of the streets. Just as the blessedness, so also the punishment is set forth by comparison. For as it is no labor for the wind to scatter dust, and as those entering the streets do not perceive that they have trodden the mire close by, so it is easy for that infernal punishment to destroy and scatter the impious, whom the reckoning of their sins has both dissolved into mire and ground into dust, leaving no substance of firmness, since they are dust and mire, and by that very fact that they are dust and mire, they are reserved only unto the nature of a penal substance.
And because through this change of firmness ground into dust they will not be partakers of that good which shall be given to the blessed man in its season from the fruit of the tree, therefore he consequently added: Therefore the impious shall not rise again in the judgment. It is not abolition that is announced to these, who indeed will be dust, through the fact that they shall not rise again, but resurrection unto judgment is denied to them. For it is not through the fact that they will not be that they will lack the perception of punishment: because it would make of punishment a gain, that they should not subsist unto punishment. But they will subsist, because they will be dust. But to be made dust, whether by dryness or by attrition, is not to have lost the nature of subsisting, but to have subsisted into another nature.
But through the fact that they shall not rise again unto judgment, it is made clear that they have not been deprived of the nature of rising again, but have lost the order of rising unto judgment. And what the order of resurrection and judgment is to be understood to be, the Lord shows in the Gospels, saying: He who believes in me is not judged; but he who does not believe is already judged. And this is the judgment, that light came into this world, and men loved darkness rather than light. The Lord's saying disturbs the negligent ease of hearers and the incurious ease of readers. For when He says: He who believes in me shall not be judged, He exempted the faithful from judgment; and when He subjoined: But he who does not believe is already judged, He did not admit the unfaithful to judgment.