Tractates on the Psalms 145.1–146.13

To this psalm too the translators saw fit to add something. For while among the Hebrews only the confession "Alleluia" stands at the head, they chose to set Haggai and Zechariah in the title: this so that we might know the psalm to be prophetic, because through these prophets, under whom Jerusalem was built again, the building of the eternal Jerusalem is proclaimed at that very time, the Gospel too testifying, when, as the Lord was about to enter the temple and overturn the tables of the money changers and the dealings of buyers and sellers, it is written thus: "This was done that what was spoken through the prophet Zechariah might be fulfilled, saying: Say to the daughter of Zion: Behold, your king comes to you, meek, sitting on a she-ass and a young foal, the colt of a beast of burden."

And, as I think, the psalm shows rather the king of this Jerusalem and Zion; it begins thus: "Praise the Lord, O my soul; I will praise the Lord in my life; I will sing psalms to my God as long as I shall be." Knowingly and from the prophet's teaching he kept the order of the words. For first he exhorts the soul to praise, which has been established in this nature, that it remain eternal; then, since through the gift of the resurrection, the body glorified, he will remember that he is wholly coeternal with God, he says, as one confident about the future: "I will praise the Lord in my life." For the life that now is, through the weaknesses of the body, is not his own; for it began from Adam, it was not begun with Adam; and the apostle knows it to be not life but death, saying: "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?" In this his own life, then, such as it was first established in man, he will praise God. Then third, lest he be thought irreligious in this same body now, he added: "I will sing psalms to my God as long as I shall be." And in all this book of Psalms we remember that by "singing psalms" the religious workings of the body are signified, intending to please by a fitting and harmonious variety of bodily movement.

After which he refutes the foolish opinions of men and the empty religions in the names of kings, whom antiquity invented as gods for itself, saying: "Do not trust in princes, and in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. Their spirit will go forth, and they will return to their earth; in that day all their thoughts will perish." He forbade trusting in kings. And in which kings? He added: "and in the sons," he says, "of men." And which sons of men? "In whom there is no salvation." And why is there no salvation? He showed: "Their spirit will go forth, and they will return to their earth." And what will there be for those about to return to the earth? "In that day all their thoughts will perish": themselves of a corrupt origin, namely, because they persisted in being sons of men and did not want to be sons of God; and of no salvation, because, the spirit going forth and the bodies dissolved into earth, their bodily and earthly thoughts will perish with the earthly body.

But having forbidden trust in kings of this kind, he showed in whom one should hope, saying: "Blessed is he whose helper is the God of Jacob; his hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them; who keeps truth for ever, who executes judgment for those who suffer wrong." It is no perishable thought to hope in a king of this kind; and that hope does not perish which reaches toward the creator of heaven, earth, sea, and all this universe. This helper is to be hoped in, in whom there is no deceit. For since, according to the prophecy, every man is a liar, he alone keeps truth in the world, and keeping truth he executes judgment for those who suffer wrong. Blessed is he whom by helping he will make Israel out of Jacob. His hope is eternal, because he trusts in the creator of heaven, earth, and sea. And the creator of all these is both true and judge, both by keeping truth and by executing judgment.

And not only does he execute judgment, but also what follows: "He gives food to the hungry. The Lord looses the fettered; the Lord makes the blind wise; the Lord raises up the dashed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord guards the proselyte; he will receive the orphan and the widow, and he will destroy the way of sinners." It is not idle to understand these things bodily too; but the speech embraces something higher and greater. "He gives," it says, "food to the hungry." Let us see what food and to which hungry. These bodily foods are not always given by God at the moment we hunger. For their gift is yearly: and so they are given within a set time, so that within that time no one may hunger. There is, then, another hunger, and there are those who hunger otherwise, to whom, as they hunger, food is given. For it is written in the prophet Amos: "Behold, I bring a famine on the earth; not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of God." This food of preaching, then, the Lord imparts to the hungry. And when it has been taken as food, the chains of the devil are loosed. For according to the Gospels he bound a daughter of Abraham for eighteen years. Such food also looses the fetters of avarice, lust, and drunkenness. And when the fetters are loosed, he gives wisdom to the blind. If the prophet were speaking of bodily gifts, he would rather have mentioned sight granted to the blind. But since, hunger driven away by food, the fetters of the world were being loosed, the blindness of the world too is driven away by the imparting of wisdom. For after a great famine of divine knowledge we are nourished by spiritual foods, and, the fetters by which we are not allowed to run to eternal things being loosed, the blindness dispelled through granted wisdom, we behold our creator with the eyes of understanding. The long famine ceases, then, the heavy fetters, the foolish blindness, and what follows takes their place.

The dashed down are raised up, the righteous loved, strangers or proselytes guarded, the orphan and the widow received, and the way of sinners destroyed. Whoever belongs to God in any way has, if not a uniform, yet a proper gift: so that one dashed down, if he does not hunger, if he is not fettered and foolish, may yet be raised so as not to lie for ever; so that the righteous may be loved for his righteousness; so that the stranger, though not loved as righteous, may yet be preserved at least because he has come; so that the orphan, because he had renounced the devil as his father, may not be left an orphan, after the example of the apostles; so that the widow may be received as a bride, after this world has been crucified to her in Christ. For the apostle called the whole faith of believers, for whom, through the fulfilment of times, the law, like a first husband, has died, a widow. But not only is the widow received, but also the way of sinners is destroyed. When they have been plunged into destruction, the Jerusalem, the city of that holy king, will be inhabited: certainly not this one, which, desolate and overthrown, has paid the penalties of profane murder.

For he concluded thus: "The Lord will reign for ever: your God, O Zion, to generation and generation." Where is that Zion in which the Lord is to reign? Unless perhaps in the one that kills the prophets and stones those sent to it? That one certainly no longer exists today; and how will the Lord reign for ever, the seat of his kingdom overthrown? But he will reign in her who is the heavenly mother, who, built of living stones and full of holy citizens, will be thronged through the generation of the law and the generation of faith by the household of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

That after the first overthrow of Jerusalem and the carrying of the captive people into Babylonia this same city was built again, both the history of the Kingdoms and the books of Ezra say. But the evidence of facts teaches that today it does not exist. And we have said this beforehand so that, because the translators saw fit to prefix a title naming Haggai and Zechariah to this and the preceding psalm, we may not think that the foreknowledge of this prophecy fits the men of that time. For the prophet, not ignorant of the heavenly mystery, since he had said that in the building of God's city human building is vain, since a city could not be eternal for God unless built by him, would not now urge us to rejoice over a Jerusalem rebuilt by God, which he had earlier foretold was built by men in vain. But if anyone perhaps thinks that what was said in another psalm thus, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain; unless the Lord guards the city, he who guards it keeps watch in vain," was said because the prophet foreknew the overthrow of the city in which the temple was to be built, he who understands it so ought to remember that this same prophet could not have been ignorant that the building renewed a second time by Zerubbabel would also be vain and perishable; nor would he have said that the one begun by Solomon was not established by God because it was to be destroyed by the king of Babylon, since after seventy years it was restored again; and that this one carried out by Zerubbabel was proclaimed a building of God, though thereafter it was torn down and dissolved without any restoration; and that he proclaimed that one, though renewal followed its destruction, vain and human, but this one, which fell without hope of restoration, renewed by the perpetuity of divine work! All these kinds of understanding are foolish and ridiculous.

The prophet praises the Lord building that Jerusalem which, according to the Gospels, is the city of the holy king, in which the saints rising through the Lord are shown, which joyfully received the Lord of the saints riding on the colt of an ass. Bodily, indeed, the Lord then entered with such a mount that city which kills the prophets and stones the apostles; but that joy belonged to another city. For the building of that city, then, the prophet calls us, saying: "Praise the Lord, for a psalm is good; let praise be pleasing to our God." It is the praise of no light rejoicing when a psalm is good. And a psalm, as we have often said, is usually signified as the duty not so much of the voice as of bodily working. For we praise the Lord not so much by speech as by deed and acts of obedience: as the sea and the earth and heaven praise God not so much by voice as by the alternation and observance of their duties. The prophet calls us, then, to the praise of God, because a psalm is good, and wishes that the praise of this good psalm may be pleasing to our God, namely, that our works may be pleasing to God, by which he is praised by us through the obedience of our deeds.

"The Lord builds Jerusalem and gathers the dispersions of Israel; who heals the contrite of heart and binds up their bruises; numbering the multitude of the stars and calling them all by names." Power to return was given by edict under King Darius to the Jews who were to return from Babylonia to Jerusalem. Nor were they then held anywhere other than within the borders of the kingdom of Babylonia: from what dispersion, then, is Israel gathered? Surely from that of which the Lord says: "He will send his angels with a trumpet and a great voice and will gather the elect from the four corners of the winds": whose gathering will make the assembly of the holy city, which today is being built in us through the work of hope and faith. And therefore the building comes before the gathering, because God's mercy builds us, through the grace of justification, for the gathering of the future city; but if he were speaking of an earthly building, the gathering would have had to be proclaimed first, because Israel could not build the overthrown Jerusalem unless it had been gathered.

Then he keeps a fitting order, saying: "who heals the contrite of heart and binds up their bruises." For when Israel has been gathered and collected into the one city that is being built, all human weaknesses and bodily stains will be taken away. For corruption having been swallowed up and all the vices of human nature devoured, eternal incorruption will follow, not to be crushed by any deaths of anxieties. For the Lord came, according to the Gospels, to heal the contrite of heart, to preach release to captives and sight to the blind, to send the broken into rest, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of recompense. And these things have indeed already begun in part, because, according to the apostle, we dwell through a mirror and in a riddle and in the image of things to come. But yet the fruit of that time is not yet ours, in which, according to the prophet, having attained the completion of hope, we can say: "Return, my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has done well to me, for he has rescued my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from falling. I will please the Lord in the land of the living." For when all contrition of heart has been healed and bound up, lest it come upon us again perpetually, freed from all these weaknesses of human sufferings we shall please God in the land of the living, our soul returning to its rest, from which it was cast out through the transgression of its first parent Adam.

But after the proclamation of the healed heart this too was added to the praise of divine goodness: "numbering the multitude of the stars and calling them all by names." If praise is offered to God for a bodily rebuilt Jerusalem, why are the number and names of stars here put forward as if for a special praise of divine work? Or is it more praiseworthy for God to have numbered and named the stars than to have created them, since creation both made the number and imposed the names and distinguished names and number by words? But the stars numbered here are those Abraham beheld in heaven, Isaac received in his seed, Paul distinguishes in glory. And that they are called by their names, let us hear him who will call them. He says in the Gospel: "Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth." They are called, then, and will come forth. And they are so numbered by God that even the hairs, which in each of us are thought innumerable, are in his number, the same Lord saying: "Are not even the hairs of your head numbered?" This is more worthy of the Lord, this to be preferred in his mercy: that those whom he has healed of contrite heart, whose bruises he has bound up, he calls by names, numbers individually, and makes bright with heavenly light.

For which wonders he proclaimed: "Great is our Lord, and great his power, and of his wisdom there is no number. For the Lord receives the meek, but humbles sinners even to the earth." For this is proper to the meek, since according to the Gospels the meek will possess the earth: that they are worthy before God of naming, number, and brightness. The Lord is great when he gathers the dispersions; his power is great when he makes the contrite bright; his wisdom is innumerable when he distinguishes all things both by names and by number. But he receives the meek and humbles sinners even to the earth. After the merit of holiness the punishment of impiety is added, when, the meek being received into the brightness of the stars, sinners, humbled even to the earth, are destined by the judgment of the infernal law.

For which reasons the prophet urges us, as if hesitant and wavering, to praise, saying: "Begin to the Lord in confession; sing psalms to our God on the harp, who covers heaven with clouds and prepares rain for the earth, who brings forth grass on the mountains, gives to the beasts their food and to the young ravens that call upon him." The prophetic word often admonishes us to believe that he is Lord of this universe whom the whole law has called God, who willed to be named the God of Israel: as now in this same psalm, when he had said, "building Jerusalem and gathering the dispersions of Israel," and urging us to his praise added, "who covers heaven with clouds, who prepares rain for the earth," so that one God of the law given and another of this creation could not be understood. The reasoning of this teaching has been so tempered that both the names and kinds of the creation enumerated are recalled, which, while they show that the giver of the law is God the creator, yet contain in themselves the meaning of a typical instruction: as now we are admonished to confess to God because he covers heaven with clouds, because he prepares rain for the earth, because he brings forth grass on the mountains, gives to the beasts their food and to the young ravens that call upon him. For in all these are signified both God's providence and his goodness, that, heaven being veiled with clouds, he pours rains on the lands, clothes the tops of hills with grass, provides fodder for the beasts and food for the birds, because all that he has created expect nourishment from him. But all these, looked at more carefully, have in themselves the force of another meaning.

For we know there are clouds which God commands not to rain upon the vineyard, as was said through Isaiah: "And I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it; for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel." We know clouds that pass before the Lord at his brightness: "At his brightness," it says, "the clouds passed before him." We know clouds which God set as his ascent: "And he set the cloud as his ascent." We know clouds to which God's truth reaches: "And your truth reaches to the clouds." And that in several places these clouds signify the teaching of the saints is plain reasoning: forbidden to rain on unbelievers, their sayings do not water the dry hearts of the impious. When the Lord is present, they will cease to be: as when the sun rises the light of the stars is dimmed, so too the teachings of the clouds pass away when the Lord himself now shines by himself. Through them too one climbs to the Lord, while divine preaching shows us the way of the heavenly kingdom: and therefore these clouds have been set for us as an ascent. God's truth too reaches to these same clouds, because this prophetic teaching contains in itself true knowledge of God.

These kinds of creatures, then, were chosen for recalling the praises of God, which, while showing in themselves the proclamation of the Creator, yet, so recalled, offer us a teaching in parable, or, as the apostle says, spoken allegorically. Heaven, then, is veiled with clouds, that is, prophetic teaching has been placed beneath divine things. Rain is poured on the lands, namely, the sayings of these veiling clouds are poured out, by which we, fruitless and dry ourselves, are moistened by the gift of divine rain to bring forth fruits from us. And that these divine sayings are to be understood as rain Moses testified, saying: "Let my saying be awaited like rain, and let my words come down like dew, like rain upon the grass." This rain, then, is prepared for the earth, after which grass is brought forth on the mountains and given to the beasts as their proper food. I think valleys are more fertile than mountains, which grow rich with moisture in themselves from the hollow slope of the surrounding hills; and what reason is there for praising the bringing forth of grass on mountains for the food of beasts? And although many mountains have fertile and grassy summits, yet spiritual teaching has been woven with the names of bodily things. The mountains, then, bring forth grass for the beasts as their food; but the mountains that skipped like rams, to which the prophet often raised his eyes, saying: "I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains." These mountains, then, the heights of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, bring forth grass for the cattle. And for which cattle, pray? Let us hear Isaiah: "The ox knew its owner," he says, "and the ass its master's manger; but Israel has not known me." And since they were called cattle through the irreligious ignorance of a dull nature, their food too is signified in the grass. This grass, then, is given also to these beasts on the mountains.

In many manuscripts we have found this verse inserted: "and grass for the service of men," so that what was said above might be understood to be said of man through the naming of man himself. But we do not need this sense. For although, added, it does not hinder, yet we do not embrace it, as though we could not use other things to confirm this understanding. For this is the order of the words: "who covers heaven with clouds and prepares rain for the earth, who brings forth grass on the mountains, gives to the beasts their food, and grass for the service of men, and to the young ravens that call upon him." Whether, then, the grass having been brought forth for the beasts on the mountains through the rain of the clouds, so that an allegorical teaching might be understood, this grass is given for the service of men, who, having laid aside cattle-like ignorance, had at last come to know God rationally; or, what can be understood more plainly, the fruits given for human food are taught in the grass, because all fruits are made firm through the grass for harvest: both are to God's praise, that he provided for our weakness either bodily foods in fruits or spiritual pastures of life in the prophets.

But how will what follows have to be understood: "and to the young ravens that call upon him"? To call upon God is the proper duty of man, who alone of all living things was made a sharer of reason. But how do the young of ravens call upon God? And why the young of ravens rather than ravens, whose nature is dull, wicked, improvident, endowed with no knowledge of God? Or what food is given? Like grass to beasts and like herbage to men? Will God grant the stinking filth of corrupted corpses and the deaths of cattle as food for the present life to the young ravens praying to him? To understand these things so is, I will not say error, but the extreme of irreligion. What, then, ought to be understood we shall say, as we ourselves have received it by the gift of heavenly grace.

We remember that the raven was set as a figure of the sinner when, sent out from the ark, it did not return. For although there was nowhere to settle, the waters being spread over everything, it did not return, while the dove afterward, finding no rest, came back. For since the ark there had the form of the church, in him who leaves the church, though he could never settle elsewhere, the example of the sinner was set, who, though he has no rest in the world except the church, yet prefers to linger in the empty things of the world. We read too that this bird, assigned to feed Elijah, always used to bring him food, and this at a time when the whole people was living most impiously and irreligiously. This bird, then, which had been set as a figure of the sinner, was chosen for the service of so great a prophet. For when the former people was found reprobate, then the preaching of God, which is the food and hunger of the prophets, is fulfilled through the services of those who were sinners. For we, or others before us, begotten and born of the shameless and wanton and unclean and bloody, call upon God like young ravens by acknowledgment, confession, and service: so that from beasts and cattle we have become men through acknowledgment of God, sharers of reason from those ignorant of reason, to whom daily, God bringing it forth in the prophets, the preaching of teaching is given as the nourishment of heavenly food, like grass on the mountains.

And so that all these things, recalled allegorically, might be understood to be done for the advancement of human salvation, he confirms the psalm with its conclusion. For he says thus: "He does not have 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 those who fear him and upon all who hope in his mercy." These are contrary to each other if understood bodily. For how does God bring forth grass on the mountains for beasts if he takes no pleasure in horses? For to provide nourishment to those not pleasing is a service of necessity, not the kindness of providence. But since all God's mercy has care for human salvation, he completes what was said allegorically above with the plainness of the conclusion: that neither the beauty and strength of beasts nor the ornaments of precious houses have pleased God (this is the greatest ambition of human opinion, to have noble horses and beautiful houses), but that only he pleases who fears and hopes and bears witness by hope and fear to both the power and the mercy of God. For he is merciful and powerful who said: "He who believes in me will not be judged, but will pass from death to life"; both powerful to change death into life and merciful to remove the terror of judgment, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.