Homilies 21.1–21.6

Homily 21. On the seventh psalm. “O Lord my God, in you I have hoped; save me.” As someone looking at the emperor's image does not overlook the faces or the inscriptions, but takes in both the picture and the inscription with his gaze, so one who reads the title of a psalm ought to look for the title, the writer, and the one written about. And why the inscription? Because it is the eye of the interpretation, or the proof of the history. What, then, is the title of the present psalm? “A psalm of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Chousi son of Jemeni.” Do you see, brother, the title as a monument, the writing as an encomium, David as the writer, and the champion Chousi as the general written about? And why does the word mention him? He was blessed David's chief companion. Hear what and how much friendship can do in time of need. Chousi's friendship for David broke up a tyranny; friendship overthrew a tyrant; friendship avenged the friend who was oppressed; friendship proved stronger than kingship. What his kingship did not do for David, Chousi's friendship did. He was called chief companion in one of two senses: either because he led David's company of generals as commander-in-chief, or because he had been his companion and friend from long ago and from the beginning. David knew that nothing is more precious than a faithful friend; and that as two eyes are more necessary than one for seeing what lies before us, so two souls of the same faith, called two but appearing one, become a staff to each other in counsel. That is why he did not trust himself alone in deliberating, but allowed his friends to counsel him. He did not taste friendship and then spit it out, nor turn away from a guileless soul as if it were deceitful; nor, like a buyer without money who puts on a garment in the market, did he put on a friend and at once take him off again; nor did he cast off an old friend like an old tunic. For a garment, as it grows old, [is thrown away]; but an old friend, the older he grows, should be the more proven. As old wine does not quickly change or turn, while new wine is a doubtful neighbour, so an old friend, like very old wine, gladdens the one who has him: “and if it grows old, you will drink it with gladness.” And as a man with fever and frenzy turns away from old wine as from an enemy, while the healthy and strong man is gladdened in heart (“for wine gladdens the heart of man”), so the one who is sick in mind and fevered with wickedness flees from an old friend as from an enemy, while the one healthy in conscience counts his friends as second parents and brothers. Therefore he had Chousi as friend and chief companion from long ago and from the beginning, saying this: If the great Moses, man of God and god to Pharaoh, had Jethro as counsellor, a stranger and yet his own (a stranger by religion, his own by kinship), and was not arrogant, nor said, “I do not need his opinion; God has spoken to me; I was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; how shall I [take] him as my adviser?”, but said none of these things and was persuaded by the one who counselled him well, knowing that “a wise man listens to counsel”… And as in the market, when garments are set out, the man who has no gold only tries the clothes and wears them out, putting them on and taking them off, wearing them all and keeping none for himself, so the so-called friend who has not the proven gold of a good conscience puts on and takes off everyone in life as in a market, changes them all, and wears none. But Chousi and David were not friends of that kind. They did not drink to one another the bitter cup of deceit, nor whet the sword of envy against each other; they mingled themselves with each other, showed their two souls to be one in disposition, and became partners in misfortune as in prosperity. For crossing the one sea of life and sailing in the same vessel of conscience, they endured fair sailing and storm alike.

“A psalm of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Chousi son of Jemeni.” Let us see briefly why David sent up a song to the Lord for Chousi. His son Absalom, nodding to each man against his father, drew his father's friends away from their friendship, carrying deceit as birdlime, the kiss as a hook, flattery as bait, and embraces as nets of error. When Absalom had thus stripped David of all his friends one by one, he armed them against his father, stitching together slanders and accusations against him; and each believed him when he slandered, as David's son and as one who knew his affairs better. When, then, … with all … counsels, carrying on his tongue the whole armour and engines of war, the blessed man armed his chief companion Chousi with words and sent him against Ahithophel, like an eagle against a partridge. For the tyrant is a partridge, since he snatches what belongs to others and then is left deserted again; Jeremiah is witness, saying, “The partridge cried out; it gathered what it did not hatch.” He sent the counsellor against the plotter, as a lion against a wild ass (“wild asses in the desert are the hunting of the lion”), saying to him: “There is no need of armour, no need of battle and war: scatter for me the counsel of Ahithophel, and the plot is over. Ahithophel is the bow and Absalom the arrow; [break] the bow, and the arrow lies idle. Go to Absalom as though fleeing from me; having fled to him, revile me before him, and cool the fever of his soul with your revilings against me. When he trusts you as a friend, then [persuade] him not to obey Ahithophel. Scatter him for me; separate the wretched pupil from the evil teacher; and, as you know how, reteach him, or rather teach him what God teaches. … Let the priests be … both, as though insulted, and let them draw the secrets for me with their ears as with pitchers. Let us do everything, wonderful Chousi, so that Absalom may not perish, so that I may not lose my son, so that he may not be fatherless nor I childless; so that you may in wisdom [catch] my nestling, whom vainglory has given wings, whom youth has taught to leap against me.” When David had said these things to his friend Chousi, Chousi, like another self, served his word; he went to Absalom as a fugitive and put to flight his disorderly impulses against his father. And since Chousi conquered the unreasoning Absalom with words, David gives thanks to God for the words of Chousi: “A psalm of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Chousi son of Jemeni”; that is, a word about a deed of David's, which he dedicated to God as a victory song. And why is the same Chousi called son of Jemeni and son of Arachi? [Son of Jemeni from the tribe] from which Saul and Shimei came, and the one who brought the news of Saul's death; son of Arachi, from his father. Or else, since Jemeni is interpreted “right hand”, and he became a right hand to David in his need: a son of the right hand; just as Benjamin, from what happened, was called son of sorrow. You have learned the inscription of the psalm's picture; now [learn] the writing of the psalm too. “O Lord my God, in you I have hoped; save me.” For even if Chousi became the go-between in the drama, even if he bound the tyrant with the armour of words, yet it was you who gave him a word when he opened his mouth, you who clothed him with courage, you who scattered the counsels of Ahithophel, you who bound Absalom with his friend's words, you who made the tree his judge and executioner. Since, then, I have entrusted my salvation not to man but to you (“for cursed is the man who sets his hope on man”), “O Lord my God, in you I have hoped.” For when an archer sends an arrow and strikes down an enemy, no one praises the arrow, but they praise the archer who guided the arrow; so David gives thanks not to Chousi, the go-between of the drama, but to God.

So too one who has sailed safely through dangerous seas and reached the city he longed for without harm does not worship the winds, but gives thanks to God, “who brings out the winds from his storehouses.” Since, then, while Chousi was conversing with Absalom David was praying these words to God, and what he sang before the victory he dedicated after the victory as a song of triumph to the giver of victory, therefore: “A psalm of David, which he sang to the Lord.” If it is a psalm, how [is it] “which he sang”? If it was a song, then “which he sang” would fit. But there is nothing doubtful or contradictory in the divine Scripture. For the definitions are the Father's, the laws are God the Word's, and the words are the Holy Spirit's. When David sent Chousi to Absalom, he prayed about his words, singing a psalm and saying: “O Lord my God, in you I have hoped; save me.” When he sang it, and by singing conquered Absalom in turn, as he once conquered the demon, then, remembering the power of the psalm, he sent up that same psalm after the victory as a song of triumph. Since, then, he sang it to the harp before the war and sang it as a song after the war, it is “a psalm which he sang.” “And I praise not the instrument, but you the craftsman; I do not admire the lyre, but the skilled musician. Even if Chousi conquered with words and phrases as his weapons, I know that it is the Lord who gives words to those who proclaim good news with great power.” “O Lord my God, in you I have hoped; save me.” “In you our fathers hoped, and they were saved.” Hoping in you, our forefather Abraham was saved from barbarian kings: four of the Chaldeans, the fifth Pharaoh of Egypt, and the sixth … God snatched him away like a dove from hawks. Hoping in you, Isaac, offered as a sacrifice in obedience, was not slain by the blow. Hoping in you, Jacob was not murdered by his brother Esau, nor did he find his brother another Cain; but he overcame the one who came against him with four hundred men, as though he had been put to flight by them. Hoping in you, Joseph, sold as the slave of a slave, did not become a slave of sin and did not serve sin; and so he became lord of all Egypt. Hoping in you, Moses scourged the army of Egypt with water, and overcame with the waves the one who pursued in chariots; for he said to our fathers who hoped in God, “Stand firm and see the salvation from the Lord which he will work for you today.” They hoped in you, and were saved; I too have hoped in you, O Lord my God; save me. There it was Pharaoh, here …

… Saul; there Amalek, here Absalom; there the Egyptians, here the Philistines; there Moses and the people in the desert, and here I and the people in the desert: “… how many ways my flesh [longs] for you in a desert land.” And: “O Lord my God, in you I have hoped; save me.” And from whom do you long to be saved? From whom? “From all who persecute me; and deliver me.” And was he delivered from all his enemies? Yes, he was. Who is witness of this? The title of the seventeenth psalm: “For the end, for the servant of the Lord, David, … on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies.” “Save me from all who persecute me, and deliver me.” Save me, now that I am being persecuted; deliver me, so that I am no longer warred upon by them. And you, my dearest, say always to God when you pray: “O Lord my God, in you I have hoped; save me,” so that he may deliver you from all who persecute you. “O Lord my God, in you I have hoped; save me.” And who are the persecutors? Visibly, heretics and all wicked and envious people; spiritually, fornication and adultery, sin and impiety persecute us. If adultery did not persecute, and God did not deliver the one persecuted from it, the writer of Proverbs would not have said: “Say that wisdom is your sister, so that she may deliver you from the strange and wicked woman”; for one delivers someone who is being pursued. If injustice did not persecute, the Prophet would not have said: “Deliver me from the unjust man.” If murder did not persecute, he would not have said: “Deliver me from bloodguilt, O God, God of my salvation.” “Save me from all who persecute me, and deliver me.” If sin did not persecute, Scripture would not have admonished us like a mother: “Child, flee from sin as from the face of a serpent.” If our lawless deeds did not pursue and overtake the one who runs slowly toward the virtues, David would not have said: “My lawless deeds have overtaken me, and I could not see.” Do you want to flee well and not be overtaken by evils? Scripture says to you: “Do no evil, and evil will not overtake you.” For there is a spirit of fornication and a spirit of adultery: the spirit of fornication, of which Hosea says, “They went astray by a spirit of fornication”; the spirit of adultery: “And she committed adultery with stone and wood,” because of the spirits dancing in them; and a spirit of love of money, which says, “All these I will give you, if you fall down and worship me.” Each of the wicked spirits always watches each person's road; and to whatever road of sin you incline, that spirit of sin pursues you and runs along with the sinner. Judas travelled the road of love of money, and the devil, through love of money, put the betrayal “into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot, to betray him.” As, if you busy yourself with philosophy, the philosopher works with you, and if with poetry, the poet, and if with carpentry, the carpenter, so if you incline toward fornication, the spirit of fornication runs along with you; if toward jealousy, the spirit of jealousy inflames you: “If,” it says, “a woman is jealous, and a spirit of jealousy comes upon her husband.” But if you look up toward the philosophy of heaven, the spirit of wisdom rests upon you; if toward understanding, the spirit of understanding … and of might, the spirit of knowledge and of godliness. “… lest he snatch my soul like a lion.” Notice that he has passed from many persons to one. For having said, “Deliver me from all who persecute me,” he did not say, “lest they snatch my soul like lions,” but “like a lion” …

And why did he turn the wickedness of many persons into one person? As in wars a multitude of barbarians is armed, but all follow the nod of one, the king or the tyrant, and without him the multitude knows no battle line, so, since soldiers and Absalom were making war on David visibly, and the demons and the devil spiritually, and since the multitude of enemies is nothing without its leader, he calls him a lion, saying: “Lest he snatch my soul like a lion.” That he called Absalom and the devil a lion he shows in the ninth psalm, saying: “He lies in wait in secret, like a lion in his den”: the devil hiding among the men who are subject to him, and Absalom thinking to escape notice among those who had revolted with him; “He lies in wait to snatch the poor, to snatch the poor when he draws him in.” If he were speaking of the beast, the lion, when could a lion tell the poor and needy apart? Does it not spring on the one and the other alike? So he showed the devil to be the lion, saying: “Lest he snatch my soul like a lion.” And why is the devil a lion? Not for his royalty, but for his tyranny; a lion not for his strength, but for his rapacity. The lion has a stinking mouth … and stinking with the worship of many gods. The lion sleeps with its eyes open; and the demons … keep their eyes open for evil, as it is written: “For they will not sleep until they have done evil.” To show, then, that he was speaking not of a visible lion but of a spiritual one, he did not say, “lest the lion snatch my soul,” but “lest he snatch my soul like a lion.” The beast, the lion, does not know how to snatch a soul. And that bodies, not souls, are the food of lions, Daniel is witness, saying of the seven lions: “And there were seven lions in the den, and every day two bodies and two sheep were given to them.” … souls. “Lest he snatch my soul like a lion.” And how does the lion snatch? “When there is none to redeem and none to save.” For if, when David was shepherding, and a lion or a bear came and took a sheep from the flock, [he went out like] a general against tyrants, struck the beast, and, snatching the sheep away like a captive, saved it, how much more, when God redeems and saves, can the lion, the devil, not snatch? “Lest he snatch my soul like a lion.” Guard me like a shepherd, and the teeth … When he had said these things, and prayed to be delivered from the lion Absalom, and had been heard when he prayed, he goes on and turns to a defence: “O Lord my God, if I have done this.” For since Absalom pursued his father like a lion in the forest, like a lion he was caught by his hair and hung, and the foliage of the tree held the lion fast by his hair, and the lion hung like a kid in a meat-market … and Solomon his brother sang a fitting epitaph over him, saying: “An eye that mocks a father … may the ravens of the valleys pick it out, and the young eagles devour it.” Since, then, the young eagles were eager to devour David's young one, but the general Joab got there first and, like a fowler with his reed, caught the young man with his spear, and, struck, he fluttered in the air and could not escape death, and gasping he kicked at the air, since he had kicked at his father; since many [blamed] David for Absalom's death, and accused him, saying, “Where is David's meekness? Where is the prophet's reverence? He mercilessly ordered [the death] of his own child”; since falsehood and … David called upon God: “Everyone says, Master, that I [killed] Absalom: O Lord my God, if I have done this; if I have stained my right hand with the slaughter of my son; if there is injustice in my hands; if I murdered him by letters, as I did Uriah; if with my fingers I sketched out the death against him.” Or else it is meant thus: since the father was praying to be delivered from the son, the farmer fled the plant as if it were a thorn and the shepherd ran from the lamb as from a lion, and, looking up to heaven, he said: “My son makes war on me, his father. O Lord my God, if I have done this; if I grieved the one who begot me; if I did not serve him as a slave serves his master; if I thought his death my freedom. O Lord my God, if I have done this,” what I suffer, if I have done it. “If there is injustice in my hands.”

If I shook my hands at him, reproaching my father with the poverty I grew up in; if I did not bring him the revenues of my labours; if I did not bring my contribution to my father as a second offering. “If there is injustice in my hands” … if I raised my hands against my enemies. “If I repaid those who repaid me with evil.” When I had Saul in my power in the cave, with the sword in my hands, I trampled my anger underfoot. Blessed Joseph too said, when he was accused of adultery and saw the adulteress acting as orator and accuser: “O Lord my God, if I have done this; if I have defiled another man's bed.” Accusing me to her husband she said, “The Hebrew servant came in to me … and he fled and went outside.” “O Lord God, if I have done this.” She says that I seized her with my hands and drew her to the deed. “If there is injustice in my hands”; if I did what she accused me of; if I touched her hand with my hands, counting the touch a comfort for passion; if I did not flee her sight like the smoke of the chief cook. Then, since when he had become lord of Egypt he did not enslave his brothers, nor lead into slavery those who had sold him into slavery, he says: “If I repaid those who repaid me with evil.” Hence, when his brothers said, “Perhaps Joseph will bear a grudge against us for all the evil we did him,” he said to them: “Do not be afraid, for I belong to God. You planned evil against me, but God planned it for good.” This also the blessed Susanna said, who wore the chastity of Joseph, [when the elders] …; for grey hairs were armed against youth, and wolves belched out death against the lamb, saying: “As we were walking alone in the garden, she came in with two maids, shut the doors of the garden, and [sent away] the maids. And a young man who had been hidden came to her and lay with her. We ran at them; and when we saw them together we could not hold him, because he opened the doors and leapt out … who the young man was, and she would not tell us. These things we testify.” At once Susanna: “O Lord my God, if I have done this”; if grey hair is telling the truth and youth is in the wrong. And that her word was true, hear: “[And she cried out with a loud voice and] said: O eternal God, who know what is secret, who know all things before they come to be, you know that they have borne false witness against me; and behold, I die, though I have done none of these things.” “O Lord my God, if I have done this.” Since, then, false accusation has put on the robe of tyranny and often sets the ears of the many fluttering, if you are falsely accused, since you alone cannot persuade everyone, leave them all, and run to the One alone; call on him as witness of your innocence, and you will find him helping you, as he helped Susanna and Joseph. To him be glory, honour and worship to the ages of ages. Amen.