Tractates on the Psalms 68.17–69.5

Finally, he teaches by what follows that he does and suffers nothing for his own sake, saying: “For you know my reproach and my confusion and my shame; all who trouble me are in your sight. My heart has awaited reproach and misery.” The earlier profession is not unlike, when he says: “O God, you know my foolishness, and my sins are not hidden from you.” For, against the error of human opinion, it was known to God alone that this weakness was assumed by him rather than natural. And since he had to endure these things because of his enemies, through which he was providing for human salvation and eternity, he testifies to his affection for this time of good pleasure, saying: “My heart has awaited reproach and misery,” signifying that the sufferings of this time were desired by him, according to that mystery of divine communion: “With desire I have desired to eat this”; because the effect of the time of good pleasure lay in these desires of his passion.

But while he awaited suffering for the advancement of our salvation, he was also held by the desire of another expectation. For there follows: “And I waited for one who would grieve with me, and there was none; and for comforters, and I found none.” He seeks not the solace of one who grieves with him and comforts him, but faith: that someone coming from the law, and understanding the prophecy of all these sufferings, might stand by him as at the fulfillment of the law itself; as afterward Paul, filling up the sufferings of Jesus Christ and buried with him in baptism, knows that Christ is the end of the law. For to the fulfillment of human sufferings and prophetic sayings, he who was to be the end of the deeds is also the end of the complaints. For there follows: “And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” These things were fulfilled just as they are read written. For the Gospels testify both that gall was brought to him and that he was given vinegar to drink. According to Matthew, he refused the gall that was offered; but according to John, he thirsted so as to drink the vinegar. The passage is told in these words: “After this Jesus, knowing that all things were completed, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said: I thirst. And a vessel full of vinegar was set there. So they put a sponge full of vinegar on hyssop and brought it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said: It is finished.” He had come to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and, waiting for one to comfort him and grieve with him, he found none: not that he needed comfort, since he was willing to suffer and die, but one who would grieve with him over the impiety of the whole people and who would comfort him by the very salvation of the one grieving with him; so that, when all had gone through so great a crime, he might receive solace at least in those who would be saved, according to this: “And he will be comforted in his servants”; because, when Israel did not believe, the nations would believe in him. Yet it is not written that he thirsted; rather he said that he thirsted so that all things might be fulfilled, because all our weaknesses that were in him are not natural but assumed. Then, so that he might be known to have satisfied the prophetic Scripture, after drinking the vinegar he testified that all things were completed, so that he who was completing the law and the prophets might stand forth as the fullness of the law and the prophets.

Now, since the prophecy of the whole passion was also to be fulfilled within the fulfillment of the gall offered and the vinegar to be drunk, the speech turned to what afterward followed the impiety of so great a crime, saying: “Let their table become before them a snare, and a trap, and a recompense, and a stumbling block. Let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see, and bend their back always.” That there is a table of sacrifices (to say nothing of the law, which contained in itself the image of what was to come), the apostle is witness, saying: “You cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons.” But that there is also a table of knowledge is known in several places, and that it ought to be so understood in these very words the same blessed apostle, writing to the Romans, is the interpreter, when he testifies that they were blinded so as to understand nothing. This table, then, from which the food of spiritual life is received, became before them a snare, a trap, a recompense, and a stumbling block: when the precepts of the law or the voices of the prophets are treated by the men of the church to reveal the divine plan; when, for faith in his taking flesh, the only-begotten God is shown in the form of a man both worshiped by Abraham and wrestling with Jacob; when the prince coming from Judah is announced as the expectation of the nations; when in Abraham’s seed all the families of the nations are to be blessed; when the Lord of the eternal kingdom is proclaimed from David’s womb; when, according to Isaiah, the Lord, led like a sheep to the slaughter, turned away neither his cheeks from the blows nor his face from the spitting; when, according to Jeremiah, “this is our God,” who, having given all instruction to Israel his beloved, was afterward seen on earth and lived among men; when, finally, the sayings of all the prophets agree about his coming. This table of teaching, then, or this word of life-giving food, is a snare, a trap, a recompense, and a stumbling block, when we show that he whom they crucified is the God of Jacob. For this is the recompense of so great an impiety, that what is for us the power of God is a stumbling block to them. For though they are snared and trapped by the Scriptures, they lack the sense of understanding; and therefore their eyes are darkened so that they do not see, that is, so that they do not behold the light of understanding, because, according to the Gospel, “to everyone who has, it will be given; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away”: unworthy, that is, to receive the sense and light of understanding; and therefore, not having attained the knowledge of gospel freedom, they are still pressed down for ever by the burden of the law, so that they bear what they cannot sustain. This is what he signifies by the bending of the back, through the image of bodily works.

But this ignorance of their blinded heart is followed by another penalty of due vengeance: “Pour out your anger upon them, and let the wrath of your anger seize them. Let their dwelling be deserted, and let there be none to dwell in their tents.” We have often discussed that by the anger of God is meant the establishment of a penalty, not a movement of mind blazing up with the will for vengeance: a penalty that he did not suddenly aim at in order to punish, but one into which a person worthy of punishment would fall. This condemnation, announced by all the prophets against this impious nation, stood fast. For soon the city was overturned and destroyed, and they were wiped out, that most glorious worship of the temple being abolished and its adornment stripped away. And therefore, their dwelling being deserted, no one will dwell in their tents.

But the prophecy of punishment and vengeance is extended further according to the growth of impiety: “For they have persecuted him whom you struck, and added to the pain of my wounds. Add iniquity upon their iniquity, and let them not enter into your righteousness. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous”: showing that the cause of adding iniquity upon their iniquity, of driving them back so that they should not enter into righteousness, and of their being blotted out of the book of the living and not written with the righteous, is this: that they persecuted him whom God had struck, and added to the pain of his wounds what would pain him.

And perhaps they might seem not unjustly to have persecuted him whom God had struck; so we must first discuss what is to be thought about those who have been struck by God, so that it may be understood how far this striking is salutary and that persecution of the one struck impious. The Lord struck Sodom and Gomorrah, polluted and abominable with the worst crimes; and I find that their being struck served them toward reconciliation with mercy, since it will be more tolerable for them on the day of judgment than for those cities in which the dust was shaken off the apostles’ feet. It is known too that the synagogue of Dathan and Abiram was struck with a most deserved plague; yet the works by which they had chiefly sinned were sanctified in their souls. And not to run through each case, which are many: since the apostle too hands one over to the destruction of the flesh for the salvation of the spirit, the Lord himself shows what he achieves by striking, saying: “See, see that I am, and there is no God besides me. I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal”: to show that the cause of striking proceeds from the cause of healing.

The Lord too, then, was struck, taking up our sins and grieving for us, so that in him, struck even to the weakness of the cross and death, health might be restored to us through the resurrection from the dead. He himself testified that he was struck, reminding the disciples of this saying: “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” The apostle too confirms the meaning of this saying in much the same way, saying: “who did not spare his beloved Son.” He did not spare his beloved Son, then, whom he also sent to the tenants of the vineyard, not unaware that they would kill him. Nor had he spared that first Adam from the mire of the earth, whom he cast out of paradise after his fault, lest, touching the tree of life, he should remain in an eternity of punishment; so that the second Adam from heaven, taking the nature of his body and struck by a like death, might call it back again into eternal life, now without an eternity of punishment. This one, then, so struck by God, they persecuted, adding to the pain of his wounds the pain of this persecution. For, according to the prophet, he grieves for us, and therefore he was reckoned to be in sorrows. For it is known how afterward they took up hatred of his name, how they bought the silence about the resurrection with money, and with what terrors and injuries they harassed the apostles. And since they added these things to the pain of his wounds, iniquity will be added to iniquity.

The penalty of the added iniquity is that they should not enter into the righteousness of God, that is, that they should not become of the same body and partakers with Christ, who, according to the apostle, was made by God our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. And those shut out from entering righteousness must be blotted out of the book of the living. For they had been written in the blessings of Abraham, whose seed would abound like the stars of heaven and like the sand of the sea on the shore. When Moses feared that the whole people would be blotted out of that book, he prayed that he himself be blotted out first, wishing, as I think, according to the apostle, to be accursed for his brothers. And since, adding the pain of persecution to the pain of his wounds, they lost the way back of repentance, blotted out of the book of the living, they did not deserve to be written afterward even with the righteous: so that it can be understood that the book of the living is one and the book of the righteous another. And there is no doubt that those are in the book of the living who formerly, without any knowledge of Christ, lived devoutly in the law and fulfilled all its precepts, of whom the apostle taught according to the law thus: “for whoever does them will live in them.” But those are written in the book of the righteous for whom Christ has been made righteousness; for the righteous lives by faith. Of this book the Lord speaks to the apostles, saying: “Rejoice and exult, because your names are written in heaven.” And therefore the meaning of being blotted out of the book of the living and of not being written in the book of the righteous was twofold, because after the book of the living the book of the righteous remained. And here the apostles are given a cause of great rejoicing, because it is more to be written in the book of the righteous than not to be blotted out of the book of the living.

The psalm holds in itself that manner of confession which must be in us by faith, so that both the nature of man and the nature of God are known in him. For coming in the form of a servant, he emptied himself from the form of God. For how could one remaining in the form of God exist in the form of a man? Yet the form of God could not be abolished so that there should be only the form of a servant. For it is the same one who both empties himself from the form of God and takes the form of man; because neither is that emptying from the form of God the destruction of the heavenly nature, nor is the taking of the servile form a nature of his own origin and condition, since what was taken is not an inner property but an outward addition. He teaches this very thing by what follows, saying: “I am poor and sorrowful; and the salvation of your countenance, O God, has taken me up.” He is poor who, according to the apostle, though he was rich in all things, made himself poor so that we might become rich; he is sorrowful who, according to the prophet, grieves for us. But this poor and sorrowful one the salvation that is the countenance of God took up. Form, countenance, face, and image do not differ; common sense holds that the same thing is meant by any of them. This poor one, then, the countenance of God, which is the form of God, took up into salvation; that is, the only-begotten God, who is the image of the invisible God, placed the man taken up by him in the life of his eternity, which is understood to be salvation in God. For every tongue will confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father, that is, that the man taken up has been received into the nature of divinity.

That in him there is the end of the law and the sacrifice of praise is the confession of the gospel, so that, with the blood and offering of victims ceasing, the sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise is preferred. For when this poor and sorrowful one has been taken up into the salvation of God’s countenance and form, there continues and follows: “I will praise your name with a song; I will magnify it with praise. And it will please God more than a young calf putting forth horns and hoofs.” This praise of God’s name, then, and this magnifying of his praise, will please more than a young calf. For such a calf was formerly offered in the law for sin, whose age he indicates by the tender growth of hoofs and horns. The honor of praise, then, will please more than the calf for sin, according to this: “The sacrifice of praise will honor me, and there is the way by which I will show him the salvation of God.” The way of showing the salvation of God, then, lies in the sacrifice of praise.

And the psalm shows this very thing by what follows. For after the magnificence of praise that will please more than a young calf, he added: “Let the poor see and rejoice. Seek the Lord, and your soul will live; for the Lord has heard the poor and has not despised his prisoners.” Let them rejoice, that is, seeing this time whose sacrifice is in praise, because there the salvation of God will be shown. And therefore God will be sought by them for the life of the soul. For he forbade us to fear the judge of the flesh and body, because God alone is able to send the soul into Gehenna. The reason for seeking God for the life of the soul is that God heard the poor one, namely him who made himself poor that we might become rich, whom he took up into the salvation of his countenance, in whom he forgave us our sins, not despising his prisoners: either those who are prisoners of Christ, as Paul glories in his chains, or those whom Satan, as the armed and very powerful one, held bound by sins, according to this: “You have broken my bonds; to you I will offer a sacrifice of praise.” The poor, then, rejoice in what they see, because it is written: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

And since, when those who are poor in spirit have been established in the kingdom of heaven, the whole creation, groaning and in pain, is to be freed into the glory of the sons of God, having been subjected to vanity not by its own will, now too, on account of the rejoicing poor, those who seek life, the poor one who was heard, and the prisoners who were not despised, that very creation which awaits the revealing of the glory of the poor is called to the praise of God: “Let heaven and earth praise him, the sea and all things that creep in it,” signifying, under the mention of these elements, the sense and mind of all creatures to be freed; so that, when heaven, earth, and sea are mentioned, things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth may be understood to bend the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. For by the things that creep in the sea (although in water creatures swimming is natural rather than creeping) those that live in the underworld are meant, since we understand the depth of the sea to be the seat of the underworld.

He shows the reason why heaven, earth, and sea should still praise God, saying: “For the Lord has saved Zion, and the cities of Judah will be built; and they will dwell there and inherit the land; and the seed of his servants will possess it; and those who love his name will dwell in it.” All praise proceeds from the wonder of things. For a thing seems worthy of praise when the work itself is so magnificent and splendid that it contains both the foresight and power of the doer and the beauty and usefulness of what is done. So whatever surpasses the sense and opinion of common understanding earns praise through the wonder it causes. Heaven, then, adorned with such splendor, filled, and keeping such great motions and courses with incredible constancy and variety, so that it governs and completes the year between winter and heat with the tempered seasons of autumn and spring; the earth, which, shaded by the natures above, holds, nourishes, and makes fruitful the seeds either enclosed in itself or received into its bosom, and strengthens them to ripeness for use according to the nature of each kind; the sea, which, in the manner of our life, is animated and endures, now drawing in breath and now pouring it back, governs itself in its great variety of motion by the reckoning of the moon’s waxing and waning, and by the barrier of its infinite depths exceeds the mind of human opinion, so that we cannot grasp by following sense either what is beyond it or what is within it: amid such great and wonderful powers of things and natures, will heaven, earth, and seas praise God for this, that Zion is saved and the cities of Judea are to be built? Human works, surely, and perishable, to be dissolved by time itself and age! And if it were worthy of praise that they were built, would it not serve praise more that they were preserved from being destroyed?

So these greatest and most excellent natures of all things, or rather those by which all things are held together and nourished, the natures of sea, earth, and heaven, are not called to praise almost empty and trivial works: that is, because Zion was saved and the cities of Judea were built, which, after the victories of the Babylonians and of Antiochus, the war of the Roman king also destroyed. Further, the common knowledge and reason of the matter condemn this poor and impious opinion. For the prophetic speech declares that the cities of Judea are built so that they may dwell in Zion, which has been saved. What room is there here for understanding according to human buildings and the construction of cities, since there is no praise in building cities that are later to be destroyed, and reason and nature do not allow cities to be built so that they may dwell in a city?

But praise plainly worthy of God, to be given by the confession of heaven, earth, and sea, is this: that that daughter of Zion, who was carried into Jerusalem with so great a company going before and following, has been saved by God; she into whom the angels long to look, toward whom all creation, groaning and in pain, looks forward, in whom we contemplate the glory and praise of our eternity, in whom the cities of the built churches will remain. For Zion, though it is a hill joined to the temple that was in Jerusalem, is nevertheless, according to its interpretation from Hebrew into Latin and Greek, called “watchtower” (speculatio). In this body of the Lord, then, in which he rose from the dead, in which he sat down at the right hand of power, in which he is in the glory of God the Father, we contemplate our hope and life. And since all creation awaits the revelation of our glory in him and is itself to be freed into the same, it praises the salvation of this Zion under the figure of heaven, earth, and sea; because all things in heaven and on earth have been made peace with and reconciled to God through it, because sin, death, and corruption have been swallowed up and exhausted by life and immortality in the glory of the resurrection, whose hope we contemplate in him rising from the dead. For if there is great joy of the angels in heaven over the repentance of one sinner, how much more joy will there be at the reconciliation of the whole world?

And since the psalm is “to the end, for those who will be changed,” the cities of Judea are praised as about to be built so that they may dwell in Zion. And who would doubt that cities are themselves gatherings of men? It is known that the church is made from the gathering of the peoples. In this Zion, then, which embraces in itself that city of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, our dwelling is completed, who remain the seed of Judah as we are the seed of Abraham. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but he who is a Jew inwardly and in the spirit. Therefore in these gatherings of ours we too are the cities of Judea.

And lest impious Israel should claim for itself glory in the cities of Judea on the ground that it is, according to the flesh, the seed of God’s servants, he shows that the inheritance and dwelling in Zion belong to those who love the name of the Lord: so that the choice is rather of godliness than of race, because the love of God which is in Christ surpasses all things, and our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is blessed for ever and ever, asks Peter nothing else than whether he loved him. Amen.

This is another psalm “for remembrance”; for the thirty-seventh has the same title. From the meaning of the word itself and from common usage we are taught what is to be understood by the heading “for remembrance.” For a prayer for remembrance befits one who fears that he will fall into the forgetfulness of him from whom he expects either help or pardon, and who desires that remembrance be made either of himself for salvation or of those who are always hostile to him for punishment. In the earlier psalm with the same title, pardon and salvation were treated; it consists entirely of the person of the Lord grieving for us and bearing our sins. In this one, however, no need of asking pardon remains, since the preceding psalm, next to this one, concluded with the praise of Zion saved and the cities of Judea built. But in it there is remembrance of vengeance on the impious and of reward for the saints. And since the psalm is “to the end,” not to David himself but toward that David, it will be treated, according to the account given earlier from the proper meaning of the name, as in the person of the Lord, as will be known from the very end of the psalm.

“O Lord God, attend to my help.” This is the voice of devout confession, to hope for help from the Lord and God; but here the speech now signifies more than usually in prayers for hoped-for help. For it can be seen that he who has been set as help over the mighty now prays that attention be given to the help in which he has been set. And who this is is not in doubt from the psalm in which it is written: “I have laid help upon one who is mighty; I have exalted one chosen from my people; I have found David my servant.” And lest anything should be referred to that David son of Jesse, he added: “And I will make him firstborn, high above the kings of the earth.” And lest the fact that he is firstborn should be drawn to the firstfruits of the kingdom granted him by God, he showed what was proper to the Lord Jesus Christ alone, saying: “And his throne is like the sun in my sight, and like the full moon it remains for ever, a faithful witness in heaven.”

Now, then, he who has been set as helper against the mighty, and who prays that attention be given to his help, demands punishment on those who oppose him, saying: “Let those who seek my soul be put to shame and confounded; let those who plot evil against me be turned back and blush. Let those who say to me, Aha, aha, be turned away at once, blushing.” The divine speech is to be weighed from the words of our speech and talk. Shame and confusion come from disgrace; turning away comes from repulse; and a return is to no other places than those from which one set out. Those, then, who seek the soul of this holy one, who prays that attention be given to his help, will first be put to shame, afterward be turned away, and then be turned not elsewhere but back. And the order of the words is the same as that of the events. For they will be put to shame by seeking the soul of him whom, when they have killed him, they will know to be alive; because he is the God of life and the Lord of resurrection. Then afterward they will be turned away, so that they do not go to meet Christ with the saints caught up in the clouds. Finally, the turning is to nowhere else than back. For rising from the dead, they will return again to the judgment of punishment and vengeance in the lowest parts of the earth, from which they had come up. For all flesh will rise, but not all will be changed; and it has been appointed that each receive in the flesh, whether good or evil, according to what he has done. Those, then, who seek his soul, plot evil, and say “Aha, aha,” will be put to shame, turned away, and turned back: confounded by the resurrection, repelled from the meeting, called back to the underworld. “Aha, aha” is the voice of mockers, namely of those who said: “He saved others; he cannot save himself.”

But after this prayer about the impious, since the psalm was one of remembrance, prayer also had to be made for the hopes of the saints. For there follows: “Let all who seek you exult and be glad in you, and let those who love your salvation always say: Let God be magnified.” As shame and confusion come to those who seek the soul of the righteous one, so exultation and joy come to those who seek God; because, according to the prophet, some will rise to shame and others to joy. And as those who plot evil and say “Aha, aha” are turned back blushing, so those who love the salvation of God advance to the confession, “Let God be magnified,” so that from the grace of the exultation granted them by God the confession of praise may grow. For God, who is the same and eternal, needs nothing, nor is there anything in the natures of things or the opinions of minds that he awaits. For what can be changed by increase is often changed by loss. But God, who is himself origin and cause to things that come to be, sufficient to himself for the nature of eternal blessedness, leaves nothing outside lacking to him, so that he would await it from elsewhere. But he is magnified with us through the increase of his benefits, when his magnificence is heaped up by our sense and enjoyment of our blessings and by the praise of giving thanks. So whenever we say “Let him be magnified,” it is either a prayer for a gift to be desired by us from God, or a confession of a gift received and taken, his magnificence arising in our praise through the increase of our blessings.

The psalm of remembrance “to the end” had to be concluded with a fitting end of the remembrance itself. For there follows: “But I am needy and poor; the Lord helps me. You are my helper and my deliverer, O Lord; do not delay.” The profession of poverty and need fits neither the dignity of a king nor the wealth of a kingdom, but him who made himself poor so that we might become rich, who had not even for the Passover supper any house but one sought out and belonging to another. So he asks to be helped; for in the form of a servant he became obedient even to the death of the cross. He prays also for quick help to be delivered, so that there may be no delay in the remembrance, he who, not bearing even the delays of his passion, said to the betrayer: “What you are doing, do quickly,” as our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever, hastens to free the weakness of the flesh he took up in himself by the power of a speedy resurrection. Amen.