Tractates on the Psalms 53.1–53.14

Holy and blessed David, as a prophet, is not ignorant of the gospel teaching, and though living this bodily life in the time of the law, yet as far as lies in him he fulfils the precepts of the apostolic command, giving proof of God's trust in him by the testimony about him, when it was said: "I have found a man after my heart, David, the son of Jesse." For he does not pursue his enemies with war nor resist those who plot against him by fighting with arms; but after the example of the Lord, whose name and gentleness he prefigured, when betrayed he prays, when in danger he sings psalms, when suffering hatred he gives thanks; and therefore he was found after the Lord's heart. For although twelve legions of angels could have stood by the Lord at the time of his passion, yet to fulfil every duty of humility he gave himself over to suffering and weakness, only praying and saying: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." By this example this same David, prophet of his future passion through the likeness of his own sufferings, does not contradict, does not resist his enemies, not returning evil for evil according to the gospel precept, but, as an imitator of the Lord's meekness, when he is afflicted, betrayed, put to flight, he entreats the Lord, whose arms alone he uses against the ungodly.

A title from history is set before this psalm; but before the history, it is shown how far, when, and with reference to whom what is said under the history is to be understood by us. For first there is: "For the end, understanding, to that David." Then follows: "When the Ziphites came and said to Saul: Is not David hidden among us?" So this betrayal of David by the Ziphites is to be understood "for the end." By this it is shown that what was then being done to David in the present contained in itself a prefiguring of future time: when the innocent man is harassed by persecution, when the prophet is mocked with insults, when one pleasing to God is sought for death, when the king is betrayed to his enemy, as the Lord was to Herod and Pilate, by those among whom he ought to have been safe. The psalm, then, is of understanding "for the end," and of understanding in that David in whom is the end of the law. And he who has the key of David opens the entrance to understanding when he fulfils what was prophesied of him by David.

The very interpretation of the name according to the Hebrew proper sense brings us no small advance in understanding. For Ziphites signifies what we call "sprinklings of the mouth"; these the Hebrews call Ziphites. Sprinkling, according to the law, was the cleansing of sins, purifying the people through faith by the sprinkling of blood; this same blessed David mentions this sprinkling thus: "You will sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be clean," the faith of the law meanwhile, by the blood of burnt offerings, making up for the mystery of the future sprinkling from the Lord's blood. But this people, as the people of Ziphites, sprinkled with the mouth rather than by faith and receiving the cleansing of sprinkling with the lips rather than the heart, became unfaithful to its David and his betrayer, as he had said before through the prophet: "This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me"; inclined to betray David for this reason, that, faith of the heart having ceased, it had performed all the mysteries of the law through the deceitfulness of the mouth.

"God, save me in your name, and judge me in your power. God, hear my prayer, give ear to the words of my mouth." According to the meaning of the title already shown, the suffering of the prophet David is an example of the passion of our God and Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore his prayer too is tempered for the understanding of the prayer of him who, the Word, became flesh, so that he who suffered all things as man might also speak all things as man, and might entreat God out of service for those whose weaknesses he bore and whose sins he took up. The proper senses and forces of the words, even against our will and hesitation, demand the sense of this understanding, so that we do not doubt that everything in the psalm is said in his person. For he says: "God, save me in your name." In the lowliness of the body the only-begotten Son of God prays this under the words of his prophet, he who was also asking back the glory he had had before the ages. He asks to be saved in the name of God, in which he was both named and born, so that the name of God might save, in that body in which he was born, the very thing that was proper to his former nature and kind.

And since this whole prayer is in the person of the form of a servant, for which form of a servant, assumed even to the death of the cross, he entreats the salvation of that name which is God's, and being to be saved by God's name, he at once added: "and judge me in your power." For by the merit of humility, because he had emptied himself taking the form of a servant, he was now asking again for the form of God as partner in that lowliness he had assumed, the man himself, in whom God had obediently been born, being saved into the name of God. And to teach that the honour of this name, in which he prayed to be saved, was not that of a bare title only, he prays to be judged in the power of God. For first there is what he deserves from judgment: "Having become obedient," it says, "to death, even death on a cross; therefore God exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name": so that the name above every name might be given him; then that this very judgment might be in the power of judgment, because through God's power he who from God had died as man rose again, the same, from dead man into God, according to the apostle's saying, "Crucified out of weakness, he rose out of power," and again: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." For through the power of judgment bodily weakness is saved into the name and nature of God; and so, by the merit of obedience, it is advanced by the power of judgment to the salvation of God's name, so that in it there is both the name and the power of God. Otherwise, if this discourse had begun from human custom, the prophet would have asked to be judged in mercy or equity rather than in power. But power was needed for the judgment there, where, the Son of God having been born as son of man from the virgin's childbirth, both the name and the power of the Son of God were to be restored again to that very son of man through the power of judgment.

Then follows: "God, hear my prayer; give ear to the words of my mouth." It would have been easy for the prophet to say, "God, hear me." But because he speaks in the person of him who alone knew how to pray, therefore a confident request that the prayer be heard is shown. Blessed Paul teaches that no man knows how one ought to pray, saying: "For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought." It does not belong to human weakness, then, to ask that one's prayer be heard, since the teacher of the Gentiles, even after the form of prayer had been established by the Lord, does not know what and how far to pray. But this confidence belongs to him who alone sees the Father, who alone knows the Father, who alone can pray all night (for according to the Gospel the Lord spent the night in prayer), who, through the mirror of words, showed under common words the very form of the most hidden mystery, for when we pray. And he who asked that his prayer be heard, to teach that this belonged peculiarly to his confidence, added: "Give ear to the words of my mouth." And will anyone think it belongs to human confidence to wish the words of his mouth to be heard? Those words by which we utter the movements and impulses of our mind, when we burn with anger, when we disparage out of hatred, when we complain out of grief, when we flatter out of adulation, when we lie either for hope of gain or from shame at the truth, or curse out of offence at an insult? And who was ever of so amended a life and so patient in everything as not to be liable to these vices of human changeableness? He alone could wish this with confidence who did no sin, in whose mouth there was no deceit, who gave his back to the scourges, did not turn his cheeks away from blows, did not reproach the insult of spitting, and in nothing offended the will of him whose will he willingly obeyed in all these things.

Then he added the reason why he prays that his words be heard: "For strangers have risen up against me, and the strong have sought my soul; they have not set God before their sight." The only-begotten Son of God, the Word of God and God the Word (though he could certainly do all that the Father could, as he says, "For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise," and in the undivided name of deity and nature the power too was undivided), in order to give us a most complete example of human humility, both prayed and suffered all that belongs to men. And out of our common weakness he entreated salvation for himself from the Father, so that he might be understood to have entered our birth with the very duties of our weakness. Hence it is that he hungered, thirsted, slept, was weary, fled the gatherings of the ungodly, was sorrowful and wept, suffered and died. And so that he might be understood to have been subject to all these not by nature but by assumption, having gone through them all he rose again. All his complaint in the psalms, then, comes from the feeling of our nature. Nor is it surprising if we understand the sayings of the psalms so, since the Lord himself, according to the gospel faith, testified that the mysteries of his passion were written in the psalms.

Strangers, then, rose up against him. For they are no longer children of Abraham, nor children of God, but a brood of vipers, slaves of sin, the seed of Canaan with an Amorite father and a Hittite mother, and children of a devilish will from the devil as father. The strong also seek his soul: when Herod asks the chief priests where the Christ was to be born, when the whole synagogue conspires against him as false witness. But thinking this soul to be of human nature and weakness, they did not set God before their sight; because God, from being God, while remaining so, had humbled himself even to the origin of birth as man, that is, so that he who was before Son of God should be son of man. For the Son of God is no other than the son of man; and son of man not in part, but born, for the form of God emptied itself from what it was to what it was not, that is, so as to be able to be born into its own soul and body; and therefore both Son of God and son of man, therefore both God and man, that is, the Son of God was born in the condition of human origin, even to the nature of being born as man; he who is wholly formable from soul and flesh, the substance of God humbling itself. For this reason, when strangers rise against him, when the powerful seek his soul, which in the Gospels is often sad and sorrowful, they did not set God before their sight, because God the Son of God, abiding before the ages, had been born of the virgin's childbirth as man in the condition of human nature, that is, of our body and soul; not understanding through the magnificence of his works that the son of man whose soul they sought had come forth, as to what he had begun to be as man, from the Son of God, which he had always remained.

By the intervention of the diapsalma, the person changed is not the speaker's but the one addressed. For now the discourse of prophecy is general. For after the prayer addressed to God, so that the confidence of the one praying might be understood as obtaining what he had asked in the very time of his entreaty, he at once added: "For behold, God helps me, and the Lord is the upholder of my soul. He has turned back evils on my enemies." He gave proper effects to proper requests, teaching that God is not careless of our prayer and that the granting of his mercy is not to be thought irrational, since he heard us according to what we prayed. For to the words "for strangers have risen up against me" belongs "God helps me"; to "and the strong have sought my soul" belongs the particular effect of the prayer heard, "and the Lord is the upholder of my soul"; and to "and they have not set God before their sight" he fittingly added: "He has turned back evils on my enemies." God, then, both helps against those who rise up and takes up the soul of his holy one sought by the strong, and, not set before their eyes nor thought of by the ungodly, turns the very evils back upon the enemies; so that, while they do not think of God in seeking the soul of the righteous and rising against him, when he has been helped and taken up, they may feel as avenger of their wickedness, through the recompense of that wickedness, him of whom they did not think amid the works of iniquity.

Let innocent devotion, then, have this confidence: that amid human persecutions and dangers to the soul it does not doubt that God is its helper, and if at some time the force of an unjust death is brought upon it, it knows that the soul leaving the dwelling of the body rests in God's keeping; let it also have the most certain security of vengeance, since all evils return upon those who inflict them. God cannot be charged with iniquity, nor is the impulse and movement of a malicious will mixed with perfect goodness. For he does not stir up evils out of malice, but twists them back as avenger; nor does he bring them from his own malice, but turns them upon our merits. For these evils have been appointed against all for the ministries of vengeance together with the law of living, the stern equity of just judgment governing it. But these are turned away from the righteous by the law of righteousness and are turned upon the wicked by the equity of judgment. Both are just: that they are ready for the righteous as a cause of fear but not mixed with them, because they are righteous; and that they are to be turned upon the unrighteous for punishment, because they have deserved it: not mixed with the righteous, though ready, nor absent from the unrighteous, because they are ready.

Then the address turns again to the person of God, to whom the entreaty was first begun: "In your truth destroy them." Truth refutes the lie, and falsehood is destroyed by truth. We have taught that all the preceding prayer belongs to the man in whom the Son of God was born, who now also entreats this from God the Father, that he destroy his enemies in truth. And what the truth is is not in doubt: surely he himself who said, "I am the life, the way, the truth." The enemies are destroyed in truth, then, when, having procured Christ's condemnation by false witnesses, they hear that he has risen from the dead and know that he has resumed his glory in the truth of God; for afterwards, as punishment from God, they were driven onto crosses, consumed and destroyed by famine and war, having condemned the author of life to death and not considered the truth of God in him through the magnificence of his works. These, then, the truth of God destroys, when, rising to resume the majesty of the Father's glory, he proved in himself the truth of complete divinity.

As for our frequent, indeed constant, proclamation that the only-begotten Son of God was driven to the cross and condemned to death, he who is eternal by the birth that is natural to him from the eternal Father: he is to be understood to have been subjected to suffering not from necessity of nature but from the mystery of human salvation, and to have willed to be subjected to suffering rather than to have been compelled. And although that suffering was not of his condition and kind, since no force of injurious disturbance could harm the unchangeable nature of God, yet it was undertaken voluntarily, to satisfy indeed the penal office, yet not to wound the sufferer with the sense of punishment: not that it lacked the nature of wounding according to the very quality of the suffering, but that the nature of divinity does not feel pain. God suffered, then, because he subjected himself voluntarily to suffering; but taking upon himself the natural forces of the sufferings rushing upon him, by which pain must be inflicted on those who suffer, he himself did not fall from the power of his nature so as to feel pain.

For there follows: "I will sacrifice to you voluntarily." The sacrifices of the law, consisting of burnt offerings and the offerings of goats and bulls, do not have in themselves a profession of will, since the sentence of the curse had been decreed against those who violated the law. For whoever ceased from sacrifice made himself liable to the curse. It was necessary, then, that what was done should be done, since the addition of the curse did not allow neglect of sacrifice. From this curse our Lord Jesus Christ redeemed us, as the apostle says: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, becoming a curse for us himself, because it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree." He offered himself, then, to the death of the cursed, to dissolve the curse of the law by offering himself voluntarily as a sacrifice to God the Father, so that through a voluntary sacrifice the curse, which had been added because of the guilt of a necessary sacrifice left undone, might be dissolved. He mentions this sacrifice in another place in the psalms: "Sacrifice and offering you did not want, but you perfect a body for me," offering to God the Father, who rejected the sacrifices of the law, the pleasing sacrifice of the body he had taken. The blessed apostle mentions this offering thus: "For this he did once, offering himself as a sacrifice to God," to redeem the whole salvation of the human race by the offering of this holy and perfect sacrifice.

For all these things so done he renders praise to God the Father: "I will confess to your name, Lord, for it is good, for you have rescued me from every tribulation." He gave to each proposition its proper resolution. For at the beginning he had said, "God, save me in your name"; and after the satisfaction of his prayers there had to be a fitting profession of thanksgiving, so that he might confess to the name of him in whose name he had prayed to be saved; and since he had asked for help against the strangers rising against him, he records with exultant joy, by professing it, that he had obtained it: "for you have rescued me from every tribulation." And as to the fact that, when the strong sought his soul, they did not set God before their sight, he excellently taught the eternity of his unchangeable divinity in the words: "And my eye has looked down upon my enemies." For the only-begotten Son of God was not cut off by death. To fulfil the nature of man he subjected himself even to death, that is, to the separation, as it were, of soul and body, and went down to the infernal abodes, which seems to be what is due to man; but rising he remains and looks down on his enemies with an immortal eye, glorified into God and reborn through the glory of the resurrection from son of man into the Son of God, from whom he had also begun to be son of man. He looks down on his enemies, to whom he had said: "Destroy this temple, and after three days I will build it." Having built this temple of his body, then, he sees from on high those who had sought his soul, and, lifted beyond the law of human death, looks down on the authors of his death, suffering death but not knowing how to die, God and man, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.