Sermons to the People 32.6–32.27

Goliath was one of the Allophyli, that is, the foreigners, who were waging war at that time against the children of Israel. At that time holy David, whose Psalter this is (or rather, through whom the Holy Spirit ministered this Psalter), was a boy feeding his father’s sheep, of tender age, scarcely yet a youth. His brothers, already young men, were serving as soldiers in the king’s army. Sent by his parents, he brought them something from home for their use. So at the time of the fighting he was found in the army, not yet a soldier, but the soldiers’ servant and brother. Then that Goliath of whom we have spoken stood forth, of huge bodily stature, equipped with arms, trained in strength besides, puffed up with boasting, who proudly challenged the opposing people to single combat: that is, that one man chosen by them should come out against him, so that, with two fighting, the decision of the whole war would turn on them, with a pact and agreement added that whichever of the two won, the victory would be awarded to the whole side on which he had stood. The king of the people of the Jews, the children of Israel, was Saul. He was distressed, he was in turmoil, he looked through the whole army for a match for that man; but he found none, either in bodily form or in daring to answer the challenge. While he was in this turmoil, this boy David dared, presuming not on his own strength but on the name of his God, to go out against him. It was reported to the king, not as the daring of boyhood but as the confidence of piety; and the king did not refuse or decline. He understood, when he saw the boy’s daring, that there was something divine in him, and that such tender years could not presume such things without divine prompting. He gladly accepted: David went out against Goliath.

In all those, then, who were on the side from which David went out, there was no presumption except on God; but in the others, all their hope was in the strength of one man. But what is man, if not what David sang in this psalm: “Man has become like vanity; his days pass like a shadow”? So their hope was empty, placed in a passing shadow. David was armed, so that, unequal as he was in age and strength, he might be equal at least in arms: but the old armor did not help; rather it burdened his young years. And to this pertains what the apostolic reading before the singing of the psalm signified in advance, when it said, “Put off the old man, and put on the new.” David did not want the oldness of the armor: he threw it off; he said it was burdensome, because it hampered him. He wanted to go out to battle quite unencumbered; strong not in himself but in the Lord; armed not so much with iron as with faith.

Yet having thrown away the armor, he chose something with which to fight, and this not without a sacrament. For you see, as it were, two lives fighting against each other: one old, in the foreigners; the other new, in the Israelites. On that side was the body of the devil; on this, a prefiguring of the Lord Jesus Christ. He took five stones from the brook, from the stream, and put them in the shepherd’s vessel in which milk is usually drawn, and so went out armed. The five stones were the Law; for the Law is contained in the five books of Moses. And in that Law there are ten saving commandments, which all the rest serve. So the Law is prefigured both by the number five and by the number ten. And therefore David fought with five and sang with ten, saying, “On a psaltery of ten strings I will sing to you.” Nor did he cast all five stones; he took one. For in the number of the stones he showed the number of the books; in the one stone, the unity of those who fulfill the Law. For unity itself fulfills the Law, that is, love. That is why those five stones were taken from the stream. What did the stream signify at that time?

And your Holiness ought to know this too, for the sake of the other rules as well, so that you may listen to the reader teachably. The things that are set down allegorically in the Scriptures do not always signify the same thing. A mountain does not always signify the Lord, a stone does not always signify the Lord, a lion does not always signify the Lord; they do not always signify something good, nor always something evil; but it depends on the places in the Scriptures and on what the rest of the context of the reading refers to. Just as letters are repeated in so many thousands of words and speeches, and are not increased: words are infinite, yet the letters are finite; no one can count the words; anyone can count the letters, from which the multitude of words comes. When one letter is placed in various positions, it has its value according to its position; it does not stand for one thing. What things are as different as God and the devil? Yet at the beginning there is the letter D, both when we say Deus and when we say Diabolus. Just as a letter, then, has value according to its place, and he errs, and is very foolish, and has a childish heart, who, having read, for example, the letter D in the name of God, is afraid to put it in the name of the devil, as though he were doing God an injury: so too one who listens to the divine Scriptures without skill. To keep to this very example: he hears “river” set down allegorically, in the place where it is said, “The rushing of the river makes glad the city of God” (this was said of the flood of the Holy Spirit, of which the prophet says in another place, “They will be made drunk with the abundance of your house, and from the torrent of your pleasure you will give them drink”). Having taken “river” in a good sense in this way, he has praised it and been delighted; and when he is told, according to another place, that a river signifies people flowing away and given over to temporal things, passing away with the love of passing things, he is alarmed; because elsewhere he had taken the river to signify something good, he is disturbed. So he becomes dumb in the Scriptures, as a person becomes dumb in letters if he will not carry the letters over to other words, but keeps them only in the words in which he first learned them.

If your Holiness has grasped this, you have been told something very useful, as we think, and something that will help you much, not only in listening to our sermons but also in understanding the Scriptures themselves, on which we preach to you. The river, then, from which David took five stones did not signify anything good at that time. I know, of course, that it may occur to some that this river signifies something good: for instance, if someone wished to understand it as baptism, so that the stones lifted from baptism, that is, the baptized, are very strong against the devil, who was signified by Goliath. Yet because of the number five our reasoning holds, since we said that the Law is signified by the number five, because of the five books of Moses. What does it signify that they were taken from the river and put in the shepherd’s vessel? We have already said that at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that the devil might truly be conquered, the Law passed over to grace. What so signifies grace as an abundance of milk? Those stones were taken from the river. The river signified a people flowing away, given to temporal things, loving passing things, and running down with the rush of desire into the sea of this world: such was the old people of the Jews. It had received the Law, but it trampled on the Law and passed over the Law, and was carried into the sea, as the river passed over those stones. For those stones had not made a boundary for the river, so as to stop it. If they had, they would signify the restraint of the Law, and those who, when they begin to flow with their pleasures and desires, come to the commandments of the Law and stop, and rein in the rush of their lusts. But those stones were not like that: they were in the river, and the water passed over them, as the transgressing people passed over the Law. From there, then, the Lord took the Law to grace: that is, he took it from the river and put it in the shepherd’s vessel.

Whoever wants to fulfill the Law, then, let him think of grace. That is why those ten commandments of the ten-stringed psaltery are the very same ones that were in that old people; but the ten commandments weighed that people down with fear. For love, which comes through grace, was not in them; there was fear. The Lord’s commandments were penal for that people, because they could not be fulfilled by love. They tried, but they were overcome by desire. When anyone has made the passage to grace, then, he does not fulfill other commandments; but the very ones that could not be fulfilled in that way are fulfilled in this way. Yet it is not the power of the commandments, but the power of the grace of God. For if this belonged to the commandments of the Law, they would have fulfilled them then as well. Whoever passes over to Christ passes from fear to love, and begins to be able by love to do what he could not do by fear; and he who trembled in fear does not tremble in love. That is why David, who signifies a man passing over to grace, says, “On a psaltery of ten strings I will sing to you”: to sing now in the commandments, that is, to fulfill the commandments cheerfully.

And so that you may know, brothers, that it is grace that fulfills this, no one ought to presume on his own strength; for the right presumption is to presume on the grace of God. For God calls you and commands you to act; but he himself gives the strength, so that what he commands can be fulfilled. Yet you must bring a capacious faith, so that in the flood of grace you may humble yourself, make supplication to God, presume nothing of yourself: strip yourself of Goliath, put on David. To this pertains what is said in the same psalm, which we had already begun to recall: “What is man?” For this warns man not to presume on himself. See how it sings against Goliath, who presumed on himself, and commends David, who was weak among men but most strong in God. “What is man?” And it says what man is: “That you have made yourself known to him.” This is the whole of man, if God makes himself known to him; but if God does not make himself known to him, man is nothing. What is man, to whom God has not made himself known? “Man has become like vanity; his days pass like a shadow.” So: “What is man, that you have made yourself known to him; or the son of man, that you take account of him?” What does “you take account of him” mean? It pleased you to choose him and set him in some higher and more eminent place: it is then of your mercy, not of his merits.

Look for what is man’s own: you will find sin. Look for what is man’s own: you will find a lie. Take away sin, and whatever you consider in man is God’s. Let man not love, then, what is his own. To this also can pertain what the apostle says: “Let no one seek his own.” For sometimes people hear this from the readers and are moved by it to take away other people’s property. It matters who says to you, “Do not seek your own.” For sometimes it is said by an evil persuader, sometimes by a good teacher. God is a good teacher. When you hear from God, then, “Do not seek your own,” do not take it the way it is commonly said. It is something good that God is warning you of. As we were saying: look for what is yours, you will find sin. Do not seek sin, then, and you are not seeking your own; do not seek a lie, and you are not seeking your own. For truth is from God, a lie from you.

And if the devil sometimes suggests something, he holds one who consents; he does not force one who is unwilling. For he does not seduce or draw anyone unless he finds him already in some respect like himself. He finds him desiring something, and desire opens the door to the devil’s suggestion as it enters. He finds him fearing something: he urges him to flee what he finds him fearing; he urges him to obtain what he finds him desiring; and through these two doors, desire and fear, he enters. Close them, and you fulfill the apostle’s word in today’s reading: “Do not give place to the devil.” For there the apostle wished to show that, although the devil enters and takes possession, it was man who gave him place so that he could enter.

So, since man is nothing to whom God has not made himself known and of whom God takes no account, he gives him his grace, finding in him something to condemn and forgiving everything to the one who confesses, so as to crown the one who believes. For what did the Lord find in men when he came, if not something to condemn? Altogether, brothers, think and see: whether in the people of the Israelites or among the Gentiles, he found nothing but what he could condemn. And therefore he chose to come to sinners in humility, not as judge, sparing them, so that first he might bestow mercy by forgiving sins, and afterward render severity by punishing sins. Let us not abuse, that is, misuse, his mercy, and we shall not feel his severity. So this is the whole of man: that God makes himself known to him, that he gives him his grace, on which David relied. But Goliath, relying on himself and on his own strength, proud, lifted up, puffed up, first placed the whole strength of his entire side in himself alone. And because all pride has a brazen forehead, he was thrown down when the stone struck that very forehead. The forehead that had the brazenness of its pride was emptied; and the forehead that had the humility of Christ’s cross conquered.

That is why we too carry that very sign of the cross on our forehead, whoever understands it. I say this, brothers, because many make it and do not want to understand it. God seeks someone who does his signs, not someone who paints them. If you carry on your forehead the sign of Christ’s humility, carry in your heart the imitation of Christ’s humility. Now we said, brothers, that he gives place to the devil who opens to him the doors of desire or fear: but desire for what, or fear of what? For we too desire the kingdom of heaven and fear hell. But just as those doors, the desire for temporal things and the fear of temporal punishments, often draw a man to wickedness and give place to the devil, so the desire for eternal things and the fear of eternal punishments make place in the heart for the word of God.

Briefly, then, brothers: if we want to live well, let us love what God promises more than what this world promises, and fear what God threatens more than what this world threatens. Is what we have said anything great or long? A temptation to some fraud comes to you; you want to commit fraud to get money. God promises the everlasting kingdom of heaven to those who do not commit fraud; desire for money conquers you. For who is there who does not want the kingdom of heaven? But to want earthly things more, this is to sin: to want more what is present, and not believe what is to come; to want more what a man sees, and not desire what God promises. Yet what a man sees can be taken away from his eyes, and what he possesses can be lost; whereas what God promises cannot meanwhile be seen with the eye of the flesh, and when anyone has reached God’s promises, he does not fear to lose them, because no one is more powerful than he who gave them. So, brothers, cling with love to the promises of God, and the desires of the world will not overcome you.

Again, the temptation of fear comes: someone says to you, “Give false testimony for me.” First he makes promises; but when he has not deceived you, if perhaps you put God’s promises before the pledges of men, and desire does not conquer, he tempts you by threats and begins to threaten horrible things. He is perhaps powerful in the city, powerful in the world; he seems able to do what he threatens. Fear of present evil conquers you. Yet God could certainly turn that away from you, if it seemed to him good for you; and if he chose not to turn it away, you ought to understand that he would not let it happen to you unless he knew that this too was good for you. The same God turned the fire away from the three young men. Did God change because he did not turn the sword away from the martyrs? The same God was God of the three young men and God of the Maccabees. The former escaped from the fire; the latter were tortured with fires; yet both conquered in the eternal God. For neither were the former delighted by this temporal life, nor were the latter broken by temporal threats.

So do not fear a man who threatens you. For what is man? “He has become like vanity; his days pass like a shadow.” Either he will not harm you, and that shadow will pass before his sting can reach you, for God is powerful; or, if he is permitted to harm you, he will harm for a time your shadow, that is, what is transitory in you, your temporal life, your old life. For until the last moment of death we carry something of the old man. He can harm your temporal life; no one can take eternal life from you. He will take away the hindrances by which you are held here, and you will cling to God, to whom you had already bound yourself by love, having sent your hope ahead.

That is why in the Psalms it is said most elegantly of the evil man, “Like a sharp razor you have worked deceit.” So the Spirit of God mocks him. What does he notice in a razor? Not that men can be killed with a razor, but what a razor is made for. It is made for shaving hair. What is as superfluous in the body as hair? With how much urgency, how much zeal, how much care, how much attention is it sharpened, to shave off a hair! So too the evil man goes off by himself, thinks, rethinks, thinks out, piles fraud on fraud, seeks a scheme, gets accomplices ready, procures false witnesses, sharpens the razor. What will he do to the just man, except shave off what is superfluous?

And so, brothers, if you want to be ready to follow the will of God (what we say to you we say first to ourselves; or rather, he says it to all who speaks without fear), if we want to be ready to follow the will of God, let us not love these things that pass away, and let us not think that what is called happiness in this world is happiness. For those foreigners thought so: they placed all happiness in temporal things, all sweetness in the shadow, not in the light itself, not in the truth itself. Therefore in this psalm, which is “Against Goliath,” pay attention to the latter part of the psalm. It is in the clearest words and in very plain speech, which needs no interpreter or expositor; by God’s mercy they are set out in such a way that no one can say, “Look, this man said it the way he wanted, he interpreted it according to his own cleverness, he understood it as he wished.” They are set out in such a way that no one can excuse himself. They are set out by David speaking, that is, by the new life, the life of Christ, the life given us through Christ; mocking the old life, the old happiness of men, and those who place their hope in it, and those who obtain it and rejoice in it.

For the just seem to toil in this world, and the unjust to live happily in this world; and as though God were asleep, neglecting human affairs, the latter are often lifted up by impunity, while the former are often broken by weakness, and they think that it does them no good to live well, because they do not have the things in which sinners, criminals, and ungodly men seem to abound. And as long as they ask God for such things, to be granted them as something great, so long are they in error; and they must beware lest they be handed over to the power of their own desire. For it is said, “God gave them up to the desires of their heart.” And God is more favorable when he does not hear one who asks for superfluous and trifling things so as to give them, but hears him so as to heal him by not giving. For why do people seek these things? Who does not see it? It is to spend them on their luxuries, their trifles, and the most insane shows that people seek to have these things from God.

Give me a man of the world: let him ask God for riches; let them be given, and see the countless snares of death that follow for him. With them he oppresses the poor; a mortal man is proud over a man who is his equal; he seeks vain honors from men; and to obtain them he puts on for them the shows of wickedness, the shows of evil desire: he buys games and bears, he gives his property to the beast-fighters, while Christ is hungry in the poor. What need is there to say more, brothers? Think for yourselves of what we pass over in silence: how many evils people do with superfluous things when the income from them comes to them. When a man is such that he would use an abundance of present things in this way, is it not better that God should take it from him than give it to him? Is that not mercy? And he will say: “I have done well; I have taken nothing belonging to another, and you have not heard me. I give to the needy from what I have; I take from no one; I am asking you; you give.” As if he would give you an estate without someone else losing an estate! If it is said to you, “Sell your estate,” you shudder as at a curse, you think an injury has been done to you; you keep hatred in your heart because you heard from a man that you should sell your estate: as if you could buy unless someone else sells. So if it is evil to sell, then in what you so greatly desire to buy, and wish to buy, you are seeking evil for someone else. It is good to find a purse of gold coins on the road; when you have found it, you say, “God gave it to me”; as if you could find it unless someone else lost it. Why then do you not wish for the goods of those treasures which all can possess with you without being cramped? You desire gold: desire righteousness. You cannot have gold unless someone else loses it; righteousness you can both embrace, and you are both enlarged.

Let us return, then, to the psalm, so that your Charity may understand that those are foreigners who think there is no happiness except the present one. If you judge yourself worthy that God should give you these things too, seek how you are to use them. If he has not given them, know that it is good for you that a good father does not give. For when your son cries for you to give him a pretty little knife with a gilded handle, let him cry as much as he likes; you do not give him something with which to hurt himself. “Lord, deliver me from the hand of the sons of strangers, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity.” And he explains what he calls vanity and what right hand. For he calls the happiness of this world the right hand of iniquity: not because it is not found among the good, but the good, when they have it, have it in the left hand, not the right. They have everlasting happiness in the right hand; temporal happiness they have in the left. But the desire for eternal things and eternal happiness ought not to be mixed with the desire for temporal things, that is, for present and temporal happiness. And this is: “Let your left hand not know what your right hand is doing.” So: “Their right hand is a right hand of iniquity.”

Hear now how they have spoken vanity, and how they have a right hand of iniquity. Let us all listen; it is good for you. Listen, so that you may not say that you did not hear; because it was said to the servant, “You should have given, and I would have exacted it.” And we said yesterday that we are servants who give; there is another who exacts. Our sisters, by not wanting to listen, are as it were unwilling to face the one who exacts. Without reason, my brothers; let no one flatter himself on this account. It is one thing not to have received, another to have refused to receive. Whoever refuses God’s gift is held guilty of that very refusal. For as it was said to the servant appointed to dispense, “Why did you not give?”, so it will be said to the servant to whom he was appointed to dispense, “Why did you not receive?” If there was no one to give, you will excuse yourself; but if the readers sound forth even when the preachers are silent, and the word of God is preached everywhere, and it is truly said, “Their sound has gone out into all the earth,” and the heat of God’s word is spread everywhere, “and there is no one who hides from its heat,” there will be nothing to say at God’s judgment. Brothers, let us listen and act; if we want to have hope, let us not excuse ourselves. Often a beggar asking for one coin sings God’s commandments to you at the door.

Let us listen, then: “Whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity.” See the happiness of the world, where those placed their hope who spoke vanity and whose right hand is of iniquity. For he begins to speak in this way: “Whose sons are like young plants firmly set.” This is lawful happiness. He did not speak here of frauds, perjuries, robberies, crimes: he spoke of the happiness, as it were, of the innocent. And if this is to be despised, how much are those to be lamented who even commit robberies, thefts, crimes, murders, adulteries, and the rest, which even worldly happiness itself condemns?

Whoever sets great store by the happiness of the world is a foreigner. See what kind of man he wants the man of the new life to be, the man who belongs to the shepherd’s vessels, to the grace of God, and to the milk by which we are nourished. Attend now: “Whose sons are like young plants firmly set; their daughters adorned like the likeness of a temple.” Perhaps that is why the sisters did not want to listen. Let them listen, then, willing or not, and learn to come to the Lord’s house not in the pride of Goliath but in the humility of David. Do these things need explaining? Are they obscure? People speak vanity, and they are called foreigners: they do not belong to the inheritance of Christ, to the kingdom of him to whom we say, “Our Father”; they are counted foreigners. And what do they call happiness? “Their sons like young plants firmly set”: shoot upon shoot. He has many sons, many grandsons; he feels secure against the chances of death. As if one disaster did not often carry off thousands of people! “Their sons like young plants firmly set.” Suppose the sons are like young plants firmly set: does not a forest fire sometimes consume even young plants near the woods? “Their daughters adorned like the likeness of a temple.” Let us pass on quickly from here: we must spare the modesty of the women. Let them rather recognize, by having it, what they have, which we blush to mention. “Their daughters adorned like the likeness of a temple. Their storehouses full, overflowing from this into that.” As we say of the wealthy: “He has nowhere to put it; he does not know what he has.” One storehouse is filled, and the produce overflows; possessions overflow; the storehouses overflow from this into that. “Their sheep fruitful, multiplying in their goings out.” A few go in; they give birth, and many go out: “multiplying in their goings out.” Last year there were so many; this year there are so many. There is rejoicing and exulting; Goliath swells, so that, proud in this happiness, he challenges to combat: “Who can match me? Who dares against me?” See whether people who abound in these things do not say this, whether each does not feel it in himself every day. He has something more than his neighbor; does he not say, “Who can match me?” or, “If this neighbor does me an injury, will I not show him?” See whether this is not Goliath challenging to combat. But David comes out, bare of the weapons of war, armed with a few stones, and will lay low all pride: that is, the just man; as the martyrs did, who laid low the unjust. And at the very time when the unjust seemed to be victors, they themselves were being conquered, when the devil, their leader, was overcome in the martyrs. But attend to that happiness: “Their sheep multiplying in their goings out; their oxen fat. There is no breach in the hedge.” For a hedge is usually a wall. “There is no breach in the hedge, nor going out”: everything intact, everything perfect, everything full. “Nor outcry in their streets”: no lawsuits, no riots. See what kind of happiness he describes, the happiness, as it were, of the innocent, so that no one may say to himself, “But he said this of those who seize other people’s goods.” Nothing of that is said here; such people are mentioned elsewhere. For it is plain that criminals must be punished. And from this they ought to understand what punishment awaits them, when even an innocent man who uses these things proudly and immoderately is rejected by God and counted among the sons of foreigners. For that rich man too was not seeking other people’s produce, whose land prospered in its produce; and when he was in turmoil, having nowhere to gather his worldly produce, and did not see the poor in whom he might store up treasure for himself in heaven, he said, “I will pull down my barns and build new and larger ones, and I will fill them.” With what, if not his own produce? “And I will say to my soul: You have many goods; eat your fill.” But God said to him, “Fool, this night your soul will be required of you; the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” As in the Gospel, then, brothers, a man rejoicing in temporal happiness was mocked, although his happiness came from his own field and not from robbing others, so in this psalm too temporal happiness is mocked, so that the soul renewed and regenerated by the grace of the milk may learn to desire perpetual and everlasting blessedness. See, then, how he connects it: “Whose sons are like young plants firmly set; their daughters adorned like the likeness of a temple; their storehouses full, overflowing from this into that; their sheep fruitful, multiplying in their goings out; their oxen fat. There is no breach in the hedge, nor going out, nor outcry in their streets. They have called happy the people to whom these things belong.” But who said it? Those “whose mouth has spoken vanity.” For they were described above.