so that now we are admonished to confess to God for this reason, because He covereth the heaven with clouds, because He prepareth rain for the earth, because He bringeth forth grass on the mountains, giveth their food to the cattle [and grass for the service of men] and to the young ravens that call upon Him. For in all these things both the providence and the goodness of God are signified: that, the heaven being spread beneath with clouds, He pours rains upon the earth, that He clothes the crowns of the hills with grass and provides fodder for the cattle and furnishes food for the birds, because all things that He created look to Him for their nourishment. But all these things, more diligently examined, have within themselves the force of another signification. For we know that there are clouds which God commands not to rain upon the vineyard, as was said through Isaiah:
'and I will command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it; for the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth is the house of Israel.' We know clouds which pass before the brightness of Him in the sight of the Lord: 'before His brightness,' he says, 'the clouds passed in His sight.' We know clouds which God set as His ascent: 'and He set a cloud as His ascent.' We know clouds unto which the truth of God reaches: 'and thy truth even unto the clouds.' And it has been fully established by reasoning that these clouds in several places signify the doctrine of the saints, which, being forbidden to rain upon the unbelieving, does not water the parched hearts of the impious. And these clouds, when the Lord is present, shall cease to be: just as, when the sun has risen, the light of the stars is dimmed, so also the clouds of doctrine pass away when the Lord Himself now shines through Himself.
Through these clouds, moreover, ascent is made to the Lord, while the divine preaching shows us the way of the kingdom of heaven: and therefore these clouds have been set for us as an ascent. The truth of God, too, reaches even unto those same clouds, because within itself this prophetic doctrine contains the true knowledge of God. These kinds of creatures, then, were chosen for the commemoration of the praises of God — creatures which, while they showed forth the proclamation of the Creator within themselves, nevertheless, as thus commemorated, furnished us with a parabolic, or, as the apostle says, an allegorical teaching. The heaven, therefore, is covered over with clouds, that is, the prophetic doctrine is set beneath the divine realities.
The rain is poured upon the earth — that is, the words of these clouds spread beneath are poured out — through which we ourselves, unfruitful and parched, are moistened by the gift of the divine shower to draw forth fruits from ourselves. And that these divine words are to be understood as rain, Moses attested, saying: 'Let my speech be looked for as rain, and let my words descend as dew, as rain upon the grass.' This rain, therefore, is prepared for the earth, after which grass is brought forth on the mountains and provided to the cattle for their proper food. I think that the valleys are more fertile than the mountains, since they grow rich with the moisture that flows into them by the sloping hollow of the surrounding hills; and what reason is there that grass should be praised as brought forth on the mountains for the food of cattle?
And although many mountains are fertile in their crowns and grassy, nevertheless the spiritual doctrine has been interwoven with the names of bodily things. The mountains, therefore, bring forth grass for the cattle as their food; but the mountains which leaped like rams, upon which the prophet frequently raised his eyes, saying: 'I have lifted up mine eyes unto the mountains.' These mountains, then — the heights of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs — bring forth grass for the flocks. And for which flocks, pray? Let us hear Isaiah: 'The ox,' he says, 'knew his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel hath not known me.' And because, through the irreligious ignorance of a dull nature, they are called cattle, their food too is signified in the grass.
This grass, therefore, is provided to these cattle also on the mountains. Now in very many manuscripts we find this verse inserted: 'and grass for the service of men,' so that the things said above might be understood as said of man, through the very naming of man. But we have no need of this sense. For although the addition is no hindrance, we do not embrace it as though we could not use others for the confirmation of this understanding. For this is the order of the words: 'who covereth the heaven with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth, who bringeth forth grass on the mountains, giveth their food to the cattle and grass for the service of men and to the young ravens that call upon Him.'
Whether, therefore, through the rain of the clouds, when grass has been brought forth for the cattle on the mountains — so that the allegorical teaching might be understood — this grass is provided for the service of men, who, having laid aside their brutish ignorance, have at last rationally come to know God; or whether, as can be understood more plainly, in the 'grass' the fruits furnished for human food are taught, because all fruits are confirmed unto harvest through the grass: either way it is to God's praise, that He has furnished to our infirmity either bodily foods among the fruits, or spiritual nourishments of life among the prophets. But that which follows, how ought it to be understood: 'and to the young ravens that call upon Him'?
To call upon God is the proper office of man, who alone of all living creatures has been made a partaker of reason. But how do the young of ravens call upon God? And why the young of ravens rather than the ravens, whose nature is dull, wicked, improvident, endowed with no knowledge of God? Or what food is provided? Surely not as grass to the cattle and grass to men? Will God impart to the young ravens praying to Him the foul filth of corrupt carcasses, and the deaths of beasts, for the food of the present life? To understand these things thus is a mark, I will not say of error, but of the utmost irreligion. What ought therefore to be understood, we shall speak, insofar as we ourselves have attained it by the gift of heavenly grace. That the raven was set forth as a figure of the sinner at that time, when, sent out from the ark,
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having been sent out it did not return — this we have borne in mind. For since there was nowhere any place to alight, the waters being spread over the whole world, it — unlike the dove, which afterward, finding no rest, returned — did not come back. For since the ark there held the figure of the Church, he who forsakes the Church, when he could nowhere else find a place to stand, was set forth in it as an example of the sinner, who, though he has no rest in the world save that of the Church, nevertheless prefers to tarry among the empty things of the world. This bird, too, we read was appointed for the feeding of Elijah, being wont always to bring him food, and this at the very time when the whole people was living most impiously and most irreligiously. Into the service, therefore, of so great a prophet this bird, which had been set forth as a figure of the sinner, was chosen.
For when the earlier people was found reprobate, then the divine preaching — which is the food and the hunger of the prophets — is fulfilled through the offices of those who were sinners. For we ourselves, or the rest before us, begotten and born of the shameless and insolent and unclean and bloodthirsty, call upon God, like the young of ravens, by acknowledgment, confession, and service: so that from being cattle and beasts we have been made men through the knowledge of God — partakers, that is, of reason from being ignorant of reason — to whom daily, from God who brings forth the preaching of doctrine among the prophets as grass on the mountains, the nourishment of heavenly food is provided.
But that all these things which have been commemorated allegorically might be understood as being done for the advancement of human salvation, he confirms with the conclusion of the psalm. For thus he says: 'He hath not His will in the strength of the horse, nor is His good pleasure in the tents of a man. The Lord's good pleasure is upon them that fear Him, and upon all that hope in His mercy.' These things are contrary to one another, if they be understood bodily. For how does God bring forth grass on the mountains for the cattle, He whose good pleasure is not in horses? For to provide nourishment to those not pleasing to Him is the service of necessity, not the kindness of providence. But because all the mercy of God has care for human salvation, he consummates the things said above allegorically by the resolution of the conclusion:
that neither the beauty and strength of beasts, nor the ornaments of costly houses, pleased God — which is the greatest ambition of human opinion, to have noble horses, beautiful houses — but that only he pleases who fears, who hopes, and who by hope and fear bears witness both to the power and to the mercy of God. For merciful and powerful is He who said: 'He that believeth in me shall not be judged, but shall pass from death to life'; and powerful to change death into life, and merciful to remove the terror of judgment, is our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen. PSALM 147. Alleluia. 'Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Sion,' and the rest.
And to this psalm, as to the one that came before the preceding, the name 'of Haggai and Zechariah' is ascribed, although it does not stand so in the Hebrew: so that both through this psalm and through those, as I have shown above, the prophecy of the eternal Jerusalem might be understood. 'Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Sion.' Jerusalem does not differ from Sion; for according to the names of the places, the site of the city itself is the same: but the interpretation of the names necessarily required this twofold commemoration of the same city. For Jerusalem is 'the city of peace.' And because the kingdom of our Lord is in the peace and concord of the saints — 'and His place is made in peace,' he says — that assembly of the blessed, which is the kingdom of God, is called Jerusalem, as it were the city of peace.
But this city, built of living stones (as the apostle says), the assembly of the saints, conformed to the glory of God through resurrection, brings to completion — the assembly which, through faith, has beforehand contemplated in the body of the Lord what it was to be, and therefore is also named Sion. For the body of the Lord, according to the force of the interpretation, because in it by faith we contemplate our hope, is thought to be named Sion in all the Scriptures, because Sion means 'contemplation.' But that city which is Jerusalem, which on account of concord is the city of peace, is also named Sion on account of the conformation within itself of the body of God, in which it beforehand contemplated itself: having attained His glory, it received also His name.
Therefore both that peaceful assembly and that glory of transformed bodies is under the name of Jerusalem and Sion, which two are one; not empty stones nor dull buildings, but the rational living creature — the stones of the foundations and of living gems and the citizens of holiness, and the dominion of God over His own household: this is that city, which out of the sense of its own blessedness and from the proclamation of its confession is called to praise. And the prophet added the cause of the praise: 'For He hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; He hath blessed thy sons within thee. Who hath made thy borders peace, and filleth thee with the fat of wheat.' This is that inheritance of the blessed land, which the Lord promised in the Gospels to the meek, saying:
'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.' In very many places the prophets proclaimed the time of this blessedness and the firmness of this eternal city: whose gates and bars are so strengthened that it may persevere impenetrable, impassable, and indissoluble against our adversaries and the hostile powers — lacking nothing, because it is firm in eternity as to the substance of body and soul, blessed in its inhabitants, peaceful in will, abundant in the substance of life. But to this proclamation of God this too is joined: 'Who sendeth forth His word to the earth; His speech runneth swiftly.' The proclamation of the kingdom of God was no slow advance, but with unwearied movement and swift course it ran through all the earth.
For where did not the course of apostolic and prophetic doctrine at once go forth, when the Lord, born in the body, showed the glory of His kingdom? And through this swift course the building of this blessed city was begun, which — its riches of abundance being heard of — is daily everywhere built up with the living stones of the faithful, and is prepared up to the fullness of its habitation; whose swift word runs to gather all from the four quarters of the world, again to be gathered into the assembly of consummate fullness to throng this city of the blessed kingdom. But another proclamation too is joined: 'Who giveth snow like wool, scattereth the mist like ashes.'
'He sendeth forth His crystal like morsels of bread; before the face of His cold who shall stand? He shall send forth His word, and shall melt them; His spirit shall blow, and the waters shall flow.' The way of life, as the Lord says in the Gospels, is narrow and afflicted; nor is this way to the kingdom of heaven traversed save through the greatest difficulties and troubles. This indeed ought to be understood as said of the troubles of this world; for through present vexations one arrives at eternal rest. And although we are scorched by the labours of present things as by a certain violence of the harshest winter, yet after the rigours of these present bitternesses, God dissolving them, we shall repose in things placid and tranquil and serene.
For according to the prophetic saying and the custom of allegory, it must be believed that now in the snow and the mist and the crystal — all of which by their nature scorch and mortify — are signified the worldly troubles and calamities and sorrows against us, and the nocturnal cold of ignorance. This same prophet knows that the partaker of this blessed city shall in no wise henceforth be scorched by that cold of worldly injury, saying: 'By day the sun shall not burn thee, neither the moon by night.' For all these things by which we are scorched through present calamities are again, by the goodness of God, dissolved and made to flow away. For the snow, flowing down with the softness of wool, covers all things and holds them within itself; the hoarfrost too, scattered after the manner of the descending mist like ashes, binds them fast;
Crystal too, hardened beyond the wont of hail and solidified into a mass, has within itself both force and rigidity. And if these things were to remain forever, would not all things, scorched by their cold, be forever parched? For who could endure everlasting torments of the body and calamities without end, if the succession of our evils were dragged on eternally? But once the infirmities of the body are dissolved, the time of this blessed kingdom is eternal, where there is no weeping, no grieving, no falling away through the change of bodily desire; but life is to be lived amid those things which, He says, 'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man.' In the good things to come, understanding, hearing, and sight cease;
neither is it subjected to sight, nor grasped by hearing, nor perceived by the mind—whatever that blessedness is which is promised, blessed and eternal, to those who are blessed and eternal. Therefore all these frosts of snow, of hoarfrost, and of crystal shall be melted away, as by a warm breath, when, after the rigors of the world's night, the Spirit of God shall temper the seasons of that eternal kingdom into one unchangeable tranquility. And that we might know—since under the cold of snow and mist and crystal, intolerable if it should remain, yet by the Spirit of God dissolved into melting, it signifies that blessed mildness of the eternal kingdom for the eternal people—the prophet concluded the psalm with this confession: 'Before the face of His cold who shall stand? He shall send forth His word, and shall melt them; His Spirit hath blown,
and the waters shall flow.' 'He declareth His word unto Jacob, His statutes and His judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation, and His judgments He hath not made manifest unto them.' This is God's special will toward Jacob and Israel: not toward that Israel, nor toward that Jacob, who embraces this name of the body as a comfort, as of a noble stock in himself,
but that Jacob who supplanted his elder, who bought the birthright in the hope of eternity; to whom the name Israel belongs by seeing God; who is himself Jerusalem and the city of peace; who, built upon the rock of faith, with the bars of his gates made firm, shall hold gates stronger than the gates of hell; who is gathered together in the word of God; who suffers no want of poverty, nor is scorched by the cold of worldly rigor, but, all things being melted and set free by the Spirit of God, shall enjoy the mildness of eternal serenity. To him is this word declared; he, through spiritual understanding, awaits these statutes and judgments of God. No other nation is a partaker of this good, nor does irreligious unbelief acknowledge this glory of the judgment.
'For He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God'—our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed forever and ever. Amen. PSALM 148. 'Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights,' and the rest. The three preceding psalms, in which prophecy summons us to the praise of the Lord, have followed the distribution of that blessed hope of ours by the very order of their arrangement. For the first of them was sung on account of the hope of eternity and the expectation of the heavenly kingdom. The second followed on account of the building of the holy city and the gathering of the saints, who shall come together to the fullness of this holy city.
That third one now was composed into this hymn on account of rejoicing over the city fully built, founded in eternal peace, and, after the burning and parching cold of the world, tempered by the heavenly Spirit. The order of teaching, therefore, is the same as the order of the realities. For according to prophetic and apostolic proclamation, the order of that blessed kingdom and eternal city is disposed in these: in the transformation of the resurrection, in the gathering of the saints, in the dwelling of the citizens of the Lord who throng together.
After these things, when all are now established in eternal blessedness, the choir of heavenly virtues and powers is drawn together in this following psalm to sing the praises of God, so that, the vanity of the world having been driven away, every creature—released from the great labors of its offices and at last breathing again in the blessed kingdom of eternity—may proclaim its God both joyfully and peacefully, itself also, according to the Apostle, taken up into the glory of blessed eternity, when he says: 'For the earnest expectation of the creature itself waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected it in hope; because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God.'
Hence, then, this is a hymn of liberty granted, in that, released from the necessity of their offices, and formerly subjected to the uses of human servitude, the elements of the creation now, conformed at last to the glory of the sons of God, rest in eternal blessedness. For this blessedness they were long held in desire, according to the Apostle Peter, when he says: 'These things, which have now been announced unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven; into which things the angels desire to look.'
The blessedness of earth, then, is the expectation of the heavenly ones, and the elements of the divine creations pray for the transformation of our corruption, longing with desire to look upon this hope of the evangelical proclamation, being about to take their own glory from the conforming of our glory: which glory, having now attained according to the prophecy of the psalm, they are summoned to a harmonious praise of the blessedness received. 'Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights. Praise Him, all His angels; praise Him, all His hosts. Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all ye stars and light. Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens; and let the water that is above the heavens praise the name of the Lord. For He commanded, and they were created; He spoke, and they were made;'
'and He hath established them forever and ever; He hath made a decree, and it shall not pass away.' In a discourse indeed complete for understanding, the prophet exhorts all the heavenly virtues to praise, yet not without a fully rounded reasoning of doctrine. For first he removes this error of human ignorance, by which certain men have dared to suppose that this fabric of the world came together in itself by chance collisions, and thus stood established in order out of disorder; then that which others imagine—that this very world is God, which moves and drives itself and governs itself into the yearly seasons by the course of a measured reason;
and lastly that each one chose for himself out of these very elements—either the heaven, or the sun, or the water, or the air—to which they rendered the honor of God with an empty and impious religion. Therefore he shut out all the error of ignorance, saying: 'For He commanded, and they were created; He spoke, and they were made.' Here no chance concurrence, no power proper to nature, no self-existent substance drawn from eternity is admitted in these things which are taught to have been created. And in this saying this also is taught—which Genesis has distinguished, and the Gospels have attested, and the Apostle has proclaimed—that all things were made by the command of God, and did not exist of themselves, as though that very matter existed by some power of obedience, when it was bidden to be and to subsist;
but that all things were created by His command, and were spoken forth by Him who spoke that they should come to be. For thus Genesis has spoken: 'And God said... and God made.' And now the prophet says: 'He spoke, and they were made.' For He did not command Himself that they should come to be, but they were made when He spoke. And they were made through Him of whom the Evangelist testified: 'All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made;' and the Apostle says: 'Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature; for in Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and in Him.' And Wisdom has thus spoken concerning herself:
'I was with Him, forming all things; I was His delight, when He rejoiced in the world made perfect.' And so all ambiguity of understanding ceases, convicted by the authority of both the New and the Old Testament, that the Son, abiding before the ages, stood present with the Father at the beginning of the creating of the world. The prophet added yet another cause of praise: 'For He commanded, and they were created; He spoke, and they were made; and He established them forever and ever.' For they abide, having been set up out of nothing, and they owe grace to their Creator for that which they are, perceiving, with the sense of their own life, His goodness and power, through whom they began to perceive that they live.
And they live to such a degree that they both abide forever and ever and, according to the Apostle, await the revelation of the sons of God, to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into a glory conformed to theirs. But it must be observed that among these creatures which are established forever and ever, neither this heaven, which is called the firmament, nor the earth, which is called dry land, has been numbered; because it is said in the prophets: 'Behold, I make a new heaven and a new earth,' and the Lord said in the Gospel: 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.' Of these there is no discourse in this place. Only this much was to be recalled by us for admonition: that it is not dissoluble creations that are now numbered for the praise of God,
but those which are constituted in the substance of eternity. And lest perchance, because they abide forever, it should be believed that this is natural to them by reason of the blessedness of their own substance, he added: 'He made a decree, and it shall not pass away,' so that this—namely, that they abide forever—might be understood to be not of their own nature, but of His decree, who is able to confer the nature of eternity upon things set up out of nothing. For, he says, 'the decree shall not pass away,' that is, there shall be no end of His command: that those things may abide forever to which the power of eternity has granted eternity. After these things, in turn the rest of earthly things are summoned to praise, which, even though they are not all partakers of these heavenly and blessed goods,
partly through irrational sense, partly through the inanimateness of their nature, partly through the offense of impiety—yet through the very fact that they are constituted such, by the very providence of their own establishment, they proclaim God. For he says thus: 'Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all deeps; fire, hail, snow, crystal, stormy wind, which fulfill His word; mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle, creeping things and feathered fowls; kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth; young men and maidens, old men with the younger, let them praise the name of the Lord.' All things sing together the praise of God, although some lack the sense of praising:
yet through the order of their establishment and the manner of their generation they display the heralding of the Creator. The dragons detained in the earth, and many of them plunged into the deeps, so that they might restrain us within fear and reverence, while they themselves, bound within the abyss and the earth, are being prepared as punishments for our impiety. The nature of fire, the whiteness of snow, the ice of crystal, the spirit of the storm, the loftiness of the mountains, the distinctness of the hills, the fruit of the trees, the variety of the beasts, the usefulness of the cattle, the striving of the serpents, the flight of the birds, the power of kings, the service of peoples, the dignity of princes, the equity of judges, the customs, pursuits, and virtues of all ages and sexes.
All these things, therefore, formed, distinguished, animated, and perfected for diverse and unspeakable uses, praise the providence of the Creator. And of those things which are either inanimate or irrational, he showed what manner of praise it might be, saying: 'which fulfill His word': so that from the very fact that they are constituted in this order of their offices, they may bear witness to the heralding of Him by whom they were so established. But to kings and to all the rest, as partakers of reason, this cause of praising is set forth: 'because His name alone is exalted; His confession is above heaven and earth.'
And indeed by this ordering of kings and peoples and princes and judges and of all ages, God is worthy of praise, in that He holds the course of human life in such a tempering of diverse offices; yet, because all the higher praise displays the time of that blessed kingdom, he added this cause of praise: 'because His name alone is exalted.' For then the one God is understood and seen even by the unwilling, the devil and his angels being bound, condemned with him to the punishment of eternal fire, and every power of the spiritual wickednesses being taken away, when now there shall be no sin, no death, no earthly world of this kind. For he says: 'His confession is above earth and heaven:'