Tractates on the Psalms 67.33–68.16

For to preserve and join the whole sense, after the councils of bulls and the beasts of the forests were rebuked and the nations that want war were scattered, so that arrogant and impious Israel should presume nothing further for itself, he added: “Envoys will come from Egypt; Ethiopia will be first with her hand; to God the kingdoms of the earth: sing to God, sing psalms to the Lord.” These things were fulfilled either in those who came from the east, or rather at the time when the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles in the manner of divided fire. For there they are written to have gathered even from Egypt to the knowledge of the gospel preaching; and as they reported, like envoys, the greatness of the divine gift, almost all Egypt is now faithful. Ethiopia came first, in the eunuch of Candace, by the confession of faith; and “with her hand,” when he asked for the grace of baptism for himself, saying: “Here is water; who prevents me from being baptized?”, anticipating the very mystery of baptism with such longing of impatient desire that, eager for his salvation, he demanded of a deacon the ministry of the apostolic office. And since from then on the preaching of divine knowledge shone out through almost all nations (since all kingdoms will understand the Lord Christ to be God, though late, and every tongue will confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father), he longs for the completion of this time, saying: “To God the kingdoms of the earth: sing to God, sing psalms to the Lord.” He exhorts all, that is, to sing to God and sing psalms, either because with prophetic concern he rejoices in the salvation of all, or because, when all kingdoms know God, the eternity of the heavenly kingdom follows.

And as is usual elsewhere, now too he shows to what God and Lord we must sing and sing psalms, saying: “Sing psalms to God, who ascended above the heavens of heaven toward the east; behold, he will give his voice, a voice of power.” Fittingly, honor is now asked for God who ascends above the heaven of heaven toward the east: so that, since his humility had been signified above, when he either rose above the setting or went out by the issue of death, now, where he is made known to have passed beyond not heaven but the heaven of heaven, the eternity of his divinity and magnificence might not be unknown. “Toward the east,” because he himself, according to the prophet, is the Dayspring from on high, so that he might be known to have returned as the Dayspring to where he had come down from, and that he himself might again be for men the author of rising to this ascent to the heavenly seat.

For the following words signify this very thing, when it is said: “Behold, he will give his voice, a voice of power.” In all the things he did while remaining in the body he gave a voice of power: when he says to the paralytic, “Rise and walk”; when he calls Lazarus from the tomb; when he says to Peter and the other apostles: “Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed also in heaven; and whatever you bind on earth will be bound also in heaven.” That is plainly a voice of power, to be able to grant so much to human weakness. But we know that yet another voice of power remains, of which he himself testified, saying: “Truly, truly I tell you, the hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” Can there be any greater voice of power than to gather the dust of dissolved bodies into form and the solidity of limbs, to call lives and souls back into men again, and to change the corruption of a weak nature into the incorruption of a heavenly nature? This is the true and perfect constancy of human hope; this is the complete goodness of divine magnificence. Therefore he exhorts all to honor this great power, saying: “Give honor to God,” so that we may refer the praise of the immortality we receive to the honor of him who is the parent of so great a gift to us.

Next, so that neither carnal Israel nor the whole of the impious nations should presume anything for themselves from these merits of godliness and knowledge of God, he shows by whom this honor is to be rendered to God, saying: “His magnificence is over Israel, and his power in the clouds,” showing, that is, that his magnificence will be over that Israel which would already be spiritual by comparison with the clouds, or which, according to the apostle, would deserve to be caught up to meet Christ in the clouds. And therefore his power is in the clouds, because to those who, living beyond their earthly and mortal origin, had raised themselves to a heavenly mind and to, so to speak, an airy life, and, borne up to meet him, had stood in the clouds, to them it would properly belong to rejoice in the power and magnificence of God. (He often recalls that these very clouds, as perfected in reason and knowledge, were commanded not to rain upon the impious vineyard of Israel, because those whom thorns and thistles, that is, earthly vices, had already beset had proved unworthy of the holy word.) For although the voice of power is to be used for all, for the new origin of the resurrection, yet the same glorious honor of resurrection is not prepared for all, as the Lord says: “Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice; and those who have done good will come forth to the resurrection of life, but those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” And therefore the magnificence and power of God is over that Israel which is in the clouds, because, according to the distinction between an innocent and an impious life, there is a distinct difference of resurrection, either to life or to judgment.

Then the following words point to this very thing, saying: “God is wonderful in his saints”: wonderful, that is, toward those whom he will raise eternal to the resurrection of life. He is wonderful when he confers on them the whole will of his beneficence, when he places them within the perfection of heavenly glory, as he prayed to the Father for them, saying: “Father, I will that where I am these may be with me”; or that: “that all may be one, I in them and you in me.” God, then, is wonderful in his saints, whom, when he has made them conformed to the glory of his body, he who is the mediator will take up through himself even into the unity of the Father’s majesty, since the Father is in him by nature and he in turn is in us by fellowship of the flesh: whom he will have placed to possess the kingdom prepared for them before the foundation of the world, to whom, death being swallowed up, he will have given immortal and eternal life. For no longer will change and toil be endured by the growth of bodies, the nourishment of food, and the chances of weakness in human life; but eternity will be given to all, which holds itself together by the power of its own nature, that is, which nourishes and preserves itself. And all, sure that they will be everlasting, are no longer held to life from elsewhere, that is, from outside, but from God, through whom they will have risen, and they remain immortal and eternal. And therefore the prophet concluded these mysteries of human hope with such a faith of confession: “God is wonderful in his saints; the God of Israel himself will give power and strength to his people; blessed be God.” God, then, gives power and strength to his people, which, made immortal, holds life and power within itself, and, the body having been stripped, has been clothed over with heavenly honor, so that, all corruption and weakness driven away, it may bless God with the praise of its eternity through his only-begotten and firstborn, our God and Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

This is the third psalm “for those who will be changed.” Although it contains nothing by way of historical record, as we discussed was present in the fifty-ninth, and although it does not put forward anything peculiar in its title, as the forty-fourth does, where “a song for the beloved” is prefixed, yet, since it is headed not “a psalm of David himself” but “to David himself, to the end,” the prophecy is to be understood as fitting rather that David who is the Dayspring, the Righteous One, and the end of the law. For by this the psalm is taught to have been sung not by him but about him. By “those who will be changed” we taught that the faithful of the gospel hope are signified, who, changed to the knowledge of God either from the observance of the law or from pagan impiety, would flourish, as if reborn, in the brightness of incorrupt eternity; and this will be treated at the end of the psalm. There is no doubt that the psalm contains the mystery of the Lord’s passion. For besides the apostle John, who testified that the fulfillment of the Scriptures consisted in the drinking of the vinegar, this saying too, taken up by the same in the apostles’ remembrance, “Zeal for your house has eaten me,” removes all doubt and confirms that everything said and done in it is to be referred to him. Having gone through the lot of all human sufferings, then, he speaks according to the weaknesses of ours that he took up; and he himself grieves, though placed beyond the necessity of fear and pain, yet adapting himself to the things he took up, so that he who had been born a man of our flesh might speak both with the complaints of our pains and with the prayer of weakness. So he began thus:

“Save me, O God, for the waters have come in even to my soul. I am stuck fast in the mire of the deep, and there is no standing.” Death, appointed for all, prescribes an end of living for everyone. What, then, does this prayer mean, which begs to be saved, when the law of death has been appointed for all? Next, the reason for praying for salvation now is that the waters have come in to the soul; and the waters are able to come in to the soul because he is stuck fast in the mire of the deep; and one fixed in the mire of the deep has no standing. So, since no one prays except for what he hopes, and no one hopes not to die, this prayer rightly belongs to him who, though he was going to die, was not to be held by death. The weakness he assumed, then, had the task of praying for salvation, while the consciousness of divinity held the hope of salvation to be hoped for in death. He prays, then, to be saved, he who also said: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

For as the waters came in to the soul, he was being subjected to the death of the cross, when the onrush of all sufferings broke through even to the death of the soul. There is no doubt that by waters the persecutions of the people and the movements of the nations are usually signified, when it is said: “My soul has passed through a torrent,” or: “And my soul has passed through an immense water.” There are also waters that wash under the house built on sand and drive it to its fall and ruin. These waters, then, now coming in to the soul, compelled him to the prayer of asking for salvation.

But the force and power of these sufferings that came in come from nowhere else than from the assumption of flesh. For this terror of our weaknesses could not fall upon God, nor could the sufferings show themselves except in the flesh of our body, as in an underlying material. Moreover, the heavenly nature had to be drained, so that, emptying himself, he might fall from the form of God into the form of a servant and of a man. And therefore the waters penetrate to the soul, because there is no standing (substantia) for him, fixed in the mire of the deep. Certainly it was not that substance which was held as assumed, but that which, emptying itself, it had drained. Yet he who emptied himself, making himself void, was in no way without himself; and yet that very thing did not seem to stand forth which had already yielded itself by emptying into something else. There is no standing, then, because he is fixed in the mire of the deep. For the first man was from the mire of the earth; and the second Adam, descending from heaven into the depth of this mire, fixed himself in it as one coming from on high. Emptying himself, then, since he had no standing, he descended not only to the depths of the flesh but even to the depths of death, and the whole terror of the storm raging against us fell upon him. For when, against the difference between the heavenly and earthly natures, he fixed himself in this mire by the force of his power (since things that differ in nature come together into a kind of firm connection not by the nearness of their kind but are joined, as if fastened together, by a stronger force), then he began both to suffer and to be able to die, descending through the setting of death into the underworld.

For there follows: “I came into the depth of the sea, and the storm overwhelmed me.” Jonah, the imitator of the Lord’s death and of its time, plunged into the sea and taken up by the whale, testifies that he was set not so much in the sea as in the underworld: “I cried in my distress to my God, and he heard me out of the belly of the underworld, at my cry.” And although the whale had swallowed him as an image of death in the underworld, he says: “My head went into the clefts of the rocks; I went down into the earth, whose bars are tenacious and eternal.” To holy Job also, after that most glorious war of all sufferings, when he was now worthy of divine speech and of knowledge of nature, after the gates of the sea broken within itself and its roaring terrors in its mother’s womb, the Lord revealed again what was also signified by the sea, saying: “Have you come upon the springs of the abyss, or walked in the tracks of the sea? Do the gates of death open to you in fear?”, signifying that the gates of death are in the tracks of the sea, as in its depth or height. For since the depths of the sea are lower than the earth, the seat of death must be shown to be in the depth of the sea, that is, in the lower regions. Coming, then, into this depth of the sea, he was overwhelmed by the storm, which he recalls in an earlier psalm thus: “All your heights and your waves have passed over me.” And he too, as I said, the imitator of the Lord’s death, whom that most monstrous whale of this sea vomited out from the tenacious and eternal bars of the earth, lamented in much the same way: “All your billows and your waves passed over me.” Coming, then, to the depth of death, he was overwhelmed by the storm of death itself and pressed down by the tempests of the hostile powers.

Yet he was not silent toward the Father about those who were going to offer themselves to the devil as instruments of service to sin (for he sometimes reproached them with the plans they had made for his death, often cried out standing in the temple, and frequently lifted his eyes to God, so that they might look to him at each greatest work of his divinity); and so there follows: “I have labored crying out; my throat has become hoarse; my eyes have failed while I hope in my God.” Taking up our weaknesses and bearing our sins, he spoke in the usage and custom of human weariness; for he often gave himself to sleep and fatigue, even to the necessity of thirst and hunger. So his throat was hoarse and his eyes failed. He taught that the chief cause of his crying out and of the straining of his eyes was that he hoped in God: either when he cries out, saying: “He who believes in me does not believe in me but in him who sent me,” or when, about to call Lazarus with a loud voice, with his eyes lifted up he says: “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.”

But while he was either bearing witness to the magnificence of the Father’s name or carrying out the work of human salvation, hatreds against him multiplied without cause. For there follows: “Those who hate me without cause are multiplied above the hairs of my head. My enemies who persecute me unjustly have grown strong; then I was made to pay back what I did not steal.” The number of those who hate him is greater than the hairs of his head: either because of the abundant multitude of the impious, or because they are unworthy of God’s care (for we know that the apostles’ hairs are numbered, so great is God’s care for them), or because the number of unbelievers exceeds the number of the faithful. For since the beauty of the head lies in its hair, and the whole adornment of the church, which is the body of Christ, lies in the beauty of the apostles, the multitude of those who hate is above this beauty of his head. They hated him without cause, that is, having no reason for hatred. And his enemies, growing strong, persecuted him unjustly. For he had committed no sin, nor had he any deceit; and therefore he was made to pay back what he had not stolen. For though he was not a debtor of death and sin, he was held as a debtor of sin and death, by those, namely, who exercised in him the law of sin that is in our members. For from sin he condemned sin in the flesh.

Since in this he was fulfilling a great plan of divine wisdom, and the death of the cross in God seemed folly to the Gentiles, and great expectation of heavenly and earthly hope was present in him, he added: “O God, you know my foolishness, and my sins are not hidden from you. Let not those who wait for you, Lord of powers, be put to shame in me; let not those who seek you, God of Israel, be confounded over me.” God is aware of his foolishness, and his sins are not hidden from him: that is, the penalties of foolishness and sins, which he had not stolen, he was made to pay. Even to the folly of the cross (that is, because it is folly to the Gentiles that he should take up our sins in this way) he is harassed without cause and unjustly as a sinner and a fool. But since he had taken up folly and sins for the sake of our wisdom and life, so as both to judge the prince of the world and to condemn sin in the flesh from sin (since in himself, that is, in the flesh of his body, in which no sin could be found, according to his saying, “Behold, the prince of the world will come and will find nothing in me,” this prince of the world, coming and finding no sin, nevertheless exercised the penalty, that is, the right of death, by which the author of human death is judged, because he contrived death against the author of life, who knew no sin); this was the expectation of the saints, that all flesh might be redeemed in Christ, that in him the firstfruits of eternal resurrection might stand forth. He asks that those who wait for the Lord may not be put to shame in him, nor those who seek the God of Israel be afraid and ashamed over him; because the time of his taking flesh was longed for, according to this: “Many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and to hear what you hear.” He prays, then, that nothing weak and infirm may remain in him, lest the weakness of body and flesh confound the hope of those who wait. For through him and in him is all our expectation toward God. Coming into the body, then, he prays that the hope of the saints may not be confounded in him.

That he took up our weaknesses for the salvation of the human race by the Father’s will, since he came to do not his own will but the will of the Father who sent him, he now also declares through what follows: “For your sake I have borne reproach; shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers and a foreigner to my mother’s sons; for zeal for your house has eaten me.” There was no natural weakness, then, in the only-begotten God, but an assumed one, because for God’s sake he took up these reproaches of sufferings. And yet not even in the nature of men is there any necessity of sin; rather the practice of sin is seized from the appetite of the will and delight in vices. And therefore the Lord shows that he had not stolen what he was made to pay; because things desired against nature are stolen, and all will pay the last penny of such debts; and for this reason, by the rule of the Lord’s Prayer, we pray that our debts be forgiven us. He bore reproach, then, for God’s sake, when he takes up a body foreign to his nature, when, according to the apostle, the Father makes him who knew no sin to be sin, when he becomes obedient even to the death of the cross, when he is reproached that, saving others, he does not save himself, when he suffers the insults of spitting and blows.

Covered with this shame for God’s sake, then, he becomes a stranger to his brothers and is made a foreigner to his mother’s sons: a stranger, that is, to the vices of those who were held to be his kin according to the flesh, when, entering the temple, he overturned the tables of the money-changers, forbade the market of sheep and oxen, and reproached those who sold doves for having made his Father’s house a house of trade. For he did these things seized by zeal for God’s house. This is the indignation of devoted love, that we are moved by insults to those we love as by a boiling zeal. For by this zeal for the polluted house, as the Gospel testifies (as I showed above), he entered the temple and drove out the whole crowd of buyers and sellers. And it is praiseworthy that zeal for God was pleasing even to the severity and end of death.

Through this indignation at the greed he reproached in them, then, the abuse of all curses was heaped upon him. Whatever reproaches are usually directed at the impious were brought against him, when he is called a blasphemer, a Samaritan, Beelzebub, one who has a demon. For this is what follows: “And the reproaches of those who reproached you fell upon me.” The reproach of blasphemy is rather thrust upon one who casts insult upon God, just as the infamy of a demon belongs more properly to one who is estranged from God. Since all these were cast at him because of zeal for God’s house, the reproaches of those who reproach God are heaped on him. And the apostle, writing to the Romans, recalls this saying with this sense of meaning.

Even the self-denial of fasting turned into reproach, when he is tempted by the devil, when he is set on the pinnacle of the temple, when he is carried up on a mountain, when finally he is tempted to worship Satan by the ambition of ruling the whole world. At times he weeps, groans, and is sad, and this very thing is attributed to him as an example of weakness. Finally, he becomes both the object of disparagement and a song to every kind of men. For even those who sit at the gates begging for their living abuse and disparage him, and drunkards sing psalms about him. He laments that all these things were done to him, either according to the truth of events or after the manner of human custom: “And I covered my soul with fasting, and it became a reproach to me. I made sackcloth my garment, and I became a byword to them. Those who sat in the gate spoke against me, and those who drank wine sang psalms about me.” Fasting, then, was a reproach to him, because through the reproach of hunger he was tempted even to the insult of worshiping Satan. A garment of sackcloth is the dress of mourning, and every feeling of mourning lies in weeping. And when, about to raise Lazarus, he sheds tears, he was mourning the unbelief of the human race; for in the dress of mourning the feeling of weeping is signified. That he did not weep for Lazarus, at whose death he even rejoices and whom he was about to raise from the dead, the whole account of the Gospel declares. But since he wept that there would be no faith in the resurrection even in the very work of resurrection, his weeping became a byword, so that both then he was said to have given proof of his love for Lazarus by weeping, and by many today he is charged with being weak because he wept. In the drunkards who sing psalms and those who sit in the gate and disparage him, the insults against him even of all the weak are taught through this custom of the common people. So clear is it that no kind of men was silent about him that Cleopas is written to have answered him, when, as if ignorant of the matter, he asked the reason for their conversation: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who has not known the things that have happened there in these days?” For there is astonishment at one man’s ignorance amid everyone’s knowledge.

But amid these disparagements and insults of all against him, he was carrying out the mysteries of human salvation; and he prays to God for salvation for the man he had taken up. For there follows: “But I, with my prayer to you, O Lord: a time of good pleasure, O God! In the greatness of your mercy hear me, in the truth of my salvation. Rescue me from the mud, that I may not stick fast, and free me from those who hate me and from the depth of waters. Let not the storm of water sink me, nor the deep swallow me up, nor the pit shut its mouth over me.” While the others are intent on insults and reproaches against him, he himself is wholly turned to God in his prayer: having in himself the weaknesses of ours that he took up, but in the things by which he is afflicted carrying out the gift of heavenly mercy toward us; and, not taking these things on unwillingly, he shows that in the greatness of mercy it is a time of good pleasure to God. In this time of good pleasure, then, he prays, because he is not ignorant of this prophecy of the Father about himself, recognized also by the apostle Paul: “In an acceptable time I have heard you.”

All things that have been done must indeed be understood to please God on account of the magnificence of his works; and when it is written in Genesis, “And God saw that they were good,” no fault is left in created things, even though some things have been corrupted by the wickedness of human ingenuity: as poisons from remedies, a sword from iron, a conflagration from fire, indigestion from food, drunkenness from wine, and finally the very parts and members of bodies, formed for natural and useful purposes, have offered themselves as the servants of vices and crimes. And though all things are pleasing to God, yet this is the time of good pleasure in which the only-begotten God, in the blood of our body, was to reconcile to God all things in heaven and on earth, as things hostile and at variance: when that manifold wisdom of God, hidden in other times and known to no princes and magistrates of the age, was to be revealed to the praise of God’s glory; when the nations were to become fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers with Christ; when in him all the powers hostile to God were to be put to shame; when death, after it had raged against God, was to cease; when the law of sin that is in our flesh was to be removed; when all creation, groaning together, was to hope for the revealing of the sons of God; when in the passion of the only-begotten God the effect of all causes and origins from before the foundation of the world was to be fulfilled: by judging the prince of the age, by redeeming man from the law of sin, by freeing creatures from the vanity of corruption which they serve, by condemning the spiritual wickednesses through the Lord’s death, and by praising God in all things and through all by the gift of eternity and the glory of our immortality. All these things the power of the resurrection fulfilled, because, death being driven away from the human race through the firstfruits from the dead, the penalty of eternal death was decreed against the authors of death. For in himself he triumphed confidently over the principalities and powers, putting them to shame.

And therefore, after the mention of the time of good pleasure, the whole prayer is for the granting of true salvation, so that the very truth of salvation might be understood as that which is hoped for from the resurrection. Next, he who was fixed in the mire of the deep asks that he may not stick fast in the mud, according to this: “For you will not leave my soul in the underworld, nor give your holy one to see corruption.” For he who is earth, and will return to the earth from which he was taken, will stick fast in the mud and mire in which he is fixed, dissolved into the origin of his nature, that is, of the body. He also prays to be freed from those who hate him and from the depth of the waters, because they had broken through even to his soul, that is, the sufferings inflicted by his persecutors. And having come into the depth of the sea and been overwhelmed by the storm, he now prays that he may not be sunk: so that above there was the profession of our weakness that he took up, when he professes that he was sunk, but now there is the confidence of salvation of which he is conscious in himself, when he prays that the storm of water may not sink him. For it does not belong to the same nature both to have been sunk already and to pray not to be sunk, but to that nature which, though sunk through the body, was not to be held through the spirit. And therefore he now prays that he may not be swallowed by the deep and that the pit may not close its mouth over him. For that the seat of death in the underworld is signified by a pit, another psalm also testifies, when it is said: “But you, O Lord, will bring them down into the pit of destruction,” showing that this sunken depth of pits signifies the lower regions of the earth. He asks, then, that the pit may not close its mouth over him; for it is impossible for the God of life to be held by the gates of the underworld.

And lest, in having taken the death of our weakness, he should grieve at all from the bitterness of death according to human necessity, he added: “Hear me, O Lord, for your mercy is sweet to me; according to the greatness of your mercy look upon me.” For this is the time of good pleasure in the greatness of mercy, when God, having mercy on the life of all men in himself, was, as the merciful God, to bestow life from the dead. But he who testified that this mercy of God was sweet to him does not relax the anxiety of our weakness that he took up, saying: “Do not turn your face from your servant; for I am in trouble, hear me quickly. Attend to my soul and free it; because of my enemies rescue me.” He suffers and speaks all things as a man. For from his taking of flesh he is also a servant (puer), according to this: “Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased”; and he prays for quick help in his trouble and asks that God attend to his soul, so that, through God’s attending to it, it may be worthy to be freed. These things he prays as our man, obedient even to the death of the cross. But when he asks to be rescued because of his enemies, he goes beyond the custom of human hope and behavior. For no one wishes to be saved for any other reason more than for the sake of his own salvation; and anyone will wish to be rescued from evils so that he may not be afflicted by evils. But now he asks to be rescued from the things that afflict him, not for his own sake but because of his enemies, because these enemies were soon to be put to shame in him as he suffered and triumphed over with confidence in him as he rose from the dead.