Homilies on Psalms 36–38 (LXX numbering; Psalms 37–39 in English Bibles)

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.6 · 2.1–3.2 · 3.3–3.9 · 3.10–4.1 · 4.2–4.7 · 5.1–5.6 · 6.1–6.4 · 6.5–7.9 · 8.1–8.10 · 9.1–9.12

1. 1.1Origen calls Psalm 36 (37) wholly moral and explains “do not emulate”: neither lead others into wickedness nor imitate the wicked; from Deut 32:21 and 1 Cor 10:22 he shows that “emulate” means to provoke jealousy.
2. 1.2The wicked wither like grass and herbs: earthly glory, even an emperor’s, passes, while the word of God remains; the soul should be a vineyard of spiritual understanding, not a garden of fleshly herbs as Ahab wanted.
3. 1.3“Hope in the Lord and do goodness” and “dwell in the land” mean cultivating the land of one’s own soul; “delight in the Lord” means enjoying the delicacies of understanding Scripture, and the Lord gives the heart what it naturally asks, understanding.
4. 1.5“Reveal your way to the Lord”: the sinner hides his way, but whoever confesses his sins to the Lord may hope for pardon and healing, and the pure reveal their way to God, not to men.
5. 1.6Righteousness done in secret, revealed to God alone, God will bring forth like light, and the judgment of the righteous like noonday.
6. 2.1To be subject to the Lord is shown by deeds, not words; Christ, whose members we are, will be “subject” to the Father when all his members are subject to God, and we should cease from sin before asking pardon for past sins.
7. 2.2The prosperity of the wicked tempts weak souls to doubt Providence, but the present age belongs to those without hope, while the righteous wait for the lasting goods of the age to come.
8. 2.3Anger is a vice that troubles even the wise and must be burned away like hay and stubble; we should cease from it gradually, and not rival others in wickedness.
9. 2.4Wickedness is willed malice, distinct from other sins, as the devil is “the evil one”; the land promised to those who wait for the Lord is the true land, of which the earth bears only the name, and the Lord himself is our patience.
10. 2.5Origen calls “a little while, and the sinner will not be” a mystery beyond him: sin and the sinner’s place, the passing world, will pass away, while those who do God’s words remain.
11. 2.6The promise to the meek in Ps 37:11 shows that Christ’s beatitude was already spoken in the old Scriptures, against the Valentinians; the meek delight in the abundance of peace, while the sinner who gnashes at the righteous awaits his day.
12. 2.8As God’s soldier has the armor of Eph 6, the devil’s soldier has contrary arms; sinners “draw the sword” when they sin shamelessly and shoot the arrows of poisonous speech at the poor, against which we should be rich in spiritual goods.
13. 3.1Only those able to sin bear arms, of God or of the devil; it is best not to have the sword of sin, or at least to sheathe it; all must pass through the fire of judgment, but only sinners will be harmed by it, as the Egyptians were drowned in the sea the Hebrews crossed.
14. 3.2The sinners’ bow is their mouth and their arrows are wicked thoughts shot in the dark, chiefly by the hostile powers; the upright are warned beforehand to keep watch over their hearts.
15. 3.3As Christ, Moses, the prophets, and the apostles are God’s arrows that wound hearts with love, so the Antichrist and all through whom the devil speaks or acts are the devil’s arrows; Origen laments that God’s arrows are few and fears being used as the devil’s arrow himself.
16. 3.4The upright in heart are “slaughtered” when believers of long standing scandalize a newcomer into sin; the blood God will require is the blood of the soul, from a brother if a believer caused the fall, from a “beast” if the hostile power worked through an unbeliever.
17. 3.5The words the wicked aim at the righteous turn back on themselves, as the apostles’ peace returns to them if refused.
18. 3.6Literally, a little gained honestly is better than wealth gained unjustly; spiritually, the simple believer’s small faith is better than worldly learning, though best of all is to be rich in the whole of Scripture and in good works. The breaking of the sinners’ arms is read in several ways.
19. 3.8Every human being is weak and prone to fall, so we must pray the Lord to uphold us by his word and wisdom.
20. 3.9The Lord “knows” only what is good; the days of the spotless are the days of truth, love, and righteousness that each makes for himself, and ultimately the eternal days lit by the sun of righteousness.
21. 3.10The righteous will not be shamed at the judgment and will be satisfied in the famine of the word of God; the honors of the wicked vanish like smoke; the sinner “borrows and does not repay” when he hears God’s word and does not do it, while heretics lend counterfeit coin.
22. 3.12Those who bless the righteous will inherit the good land, while those who slander God’s servants slander Christ himself and will be destroyed.
23. 4.1From Moses “going aside” to see the burning bush, Origen teaches that one must pass beyond worldly things and each vice to see the “great sight” of God; the Lord directs our steps on the middle way, Christ, so that we turn neither to the left with literalist heretics nor to the right with those who abandon the apostolic rule of truth.
24. 4.2The righteous may fall but are not laid prostrate, for they repent, like Peter and David, while those who despair after sin are; Origen urges sinners to rise and do penance, and compares Christians to athletes, some crowned even as boys, like Daniel, Jeremiah, Jacob, and the Holy Innocents.
25. 4.3Since the righteous often suffer hunger and want, “young” and “old” refer to the ages of the inner man, “forsaken” to spiritual abandonment, and the righteous man’s “seed” to his disciples, begotten by the word of God; the “seed of the ungodly” is their false teaching.
26. 4.4The righteous man “lends all day long” the Lord’s money, the word drawn from God’s wisdom, as opposed to the ill-gotten coin of heretical teaching; Origen asks prayers that his own teaching be of the Lord’s mint.
27. 4.5The righteous man is the exact opposite of the sinner: he does not borrow but lends and shows mercy all his life.
28. 4.6Whoever turns from evil and does good, looking to what is unseen, will have an eternal dwelling.
29. 4.7The Lord does nothing without judgment; he will preserve his saints for ever, and for a few decades of labor they receive the land as an inheritance for ever and ever.
30. 5.1The mouth of the righteous should speak only wisdom, which is Christ; even the unlearned share in wisdom by faith and prayer and must not despise those who study, and the future tense points to the age to come, when all will be disciples of wisdom.
31. 5.2The tongue of the righteous speaks judgment by speaking with right judgment or about the coming judgment, and will fully speak God’s judgments when we see face to face; the law must be rooted in the heart, not only on the lips.
32. 5.4The sinner watches the righteous to kill them, as was done to Christ and the martyrs and as the devil does daily, but the Lord will not abandon them; those who wait for him will be exalted to inherit the land above, the “earth” of the higher heaven.
33. 5.5The righteous will see sinners perish; the exalted ungodly vanish for one who “passes by” in mind from the visible and temporal to the eternal, and the heretics who set another God above the Creator vanish when the letter of the law is passed over for its spiritual sense.
34. 5.6Innocence harms no one; the “remains” of the peaceable man are his body raised incorruptible; the salvation of the righteous is with the Lord, who protects them in tribulation and delivers them from the demons that meet the soul at death; one must hope in God alone.
35. 6.1As God gave medicines for the body, he gave Scripture as medicine for the soul, with Christ as chief physician and the Church’s ministers as physicians; Psalm 37 (38) teaches the sinner to accept rebuke from teachers, angels, and the law rather than God’s own anger, to let the arrows of God’s word pierce him to repentance, and to let the mind of the flesh be put to death.
36. 6.3Unlike those who forget their sins, the penitent keeps his sins before him, and, recognizing the “face” of each, has no peace in his bones until he repents.
37. 6.4Only the penitent, who has come to loathe his sins, feels them as a burden over his head and smells their stench, like one who has ceased to be a swine wallowing in dung.
38. 6.5The penitent is bowed down by his sins like the tax collector and mourns them; sins of the flesh are the devil’s strength “in the loins”; the one who falls from the Church after enlightenment is like a rich man exiled to a barren island, groaning before God.
39. 7.1The penitent who confesses his sins openly is abandoned and mocked by friends who think themselves clean, but he should not fear them; it is better to accuse oneself before God, who sees all, and to repay with good those who seek one’s harm.
40. 7.2The righteous man is one who accuses himself by confession rather than waiting for the devil to accuse him, and who, when slandered, turns a deaf ear rather than seeking revenge.
41. 7.3The righteous man, cursed or slandered, acts deaf and mute, leaving vengeance to God; if we heard God as we should, he would hear us as he heard Elijah and Samuel, and we would be “gods” and sons of God.
42. 7.4Not repaying evil keeps one from falling and from the mockery of enemies, who pounce at the least trembling; best is to stand firm on the rock, Christ, or at least to be only “almost moved.”
43. 7.5The penitent sinner asks to be scourged in this life by sickness, loss, or bereavement rather than be reserved for eternal punishment, for God scourges every son he receives.
44. 7.6Confession relieves the soul as vomiting relieves the stomach; one should choose a wise and merciful “physician” to confess to, who will judge whether public confession before the Church is needed; and no one should approach the Eucharist carelessly while conscious of sin.
45. 7.7Even when enemies prosper, the one who wishes to be saved keeps his attention on his own sin, and so has hope in God.
46. 7.8No one in this life escapes hatred, since even God and Christ are hated; what matters is to be hated unjustly, like the prophets and Christ, and not for one’s own sins.
47. 7.9Enemies hold the penitent’s past against him, but he prays that God, who departs from some and remains with others, will not forsake him but help him in the fight against invisible enemies.
48. 8.1As the people advanced, God added to the law further ordinances for the priests and Levites, recorded in 1 Chronicles; these earthly orders are a copy and shadow of the heavenly priesthood to come.
49. 8.2The title “for Jeduthun” refers to one of the Levites appointed to sing God’s hymns; David composed the psalm and gave it to him to sing, and “to the end” corresponds to “for the victor” in other Greek versions.
50. 8.3The righteous man guards his ways by guarding his tongue, since we must give account even for idle words; weighing each word before speaking shuts out anger and makes speech gracious and healing.
51. 8.4Three degrees of response to insult: the small repay in kind, the advancing keep silent “even from good things,” and the perfect bless those who curse them, as Paul did.
52. 8.5Like athletes, the perfect feel no pain at insults, imitating the impassible God, while those still advancing feel the old wound reopened, yet hold their tongue.
53. 8.6The one still advancing feels his heart grow hot at insults but cools it by silence.
54. 8.7The word of God should kindle a fire in the meditation of the one who studies it, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus, Jeremiah, and the apostles at Pentecost, burning away sin through repentance and then becoming a light.
55. 8.8The prophet asks to know his “end,” the goal of human life (completed with God in heaven), and the number of his days, which are not years of this life but the days of a soul’s journey and the days made in the heart by Christ, the sun of righteousness.
56. 8.9The Latin “old” renders the Greek palaistas, “handbreadths”: God measures each life, as Isaiah says he measures water, heaven, and earth, for nothing is without measure with God.
57. 8.10Human substance, created from nothing, is nothing before God, though not in comparison with other creatures; “every man living” is vanity in this present life, even for Moses and the prophets, who know only in part, so we should hasten in mind toward the true life of heaven.
58. 9.1Since Scripture does not say whose image man walks in, each must examine whether he bears the image of the heavenly, by mercy and perfection like the Father’s, or the image of the earthly, which God will bring to nothing in his city.
59. 9.2This life is lived in an “image” of virtue, knowledge, and righteousness, not yet in the truth seen face to face; the law was a shadow, Christ in the flesh an image, and heaven the truth; every act paints a heavenly or an earthly image in the soul, and the devil’s images, the vices, must be scraped away.
60. 9.3Christ is our expectation and patience, as he is our wisdom and righteousness, and whatever substance of spiritual riches we have comes from God, who breathed life into man.
61. 9.4God forgives in the measure of one’s conversion and penance: complete penance washes away every sin, partial penance obtains partial absolution; the prophet asks boldly to be delivered from all his iniquities.
62. 9.5The devil, the “foolish” accuser, will reproach those whose sins are still written in them with his pen, reminding them that they renounced him in baptism; so we must turn from all iniquity, since Christ has blotted out the record against us.
63. 9.6God himself arranges the contests of insult as exercises in patience; one should keep silent, or better still, as Paul taught, bless those who curse.
64. 9.7God’s scourges are outward afflictions and the inward scourges of conscience, which are a sign that conversion is near; yet even these must have measure, lest the sinner be overwhelmed by sorrow.
65. 9.8Sin makes the soul coarse and fleshly, virtue makes it fine; God’s rebukes thin it “like a spider,” and those who will not be amended by the rod of correction in this life will be refined in the fire, like the flesh in Ezekiel’s cauldron.
66. 9.9Whatever the sinner weaves, such as wealth, offices, and honors, is as vain as a spider’s web.
67. 9.10Prayer should be offered with tears at the remembrance of sins, asking God not to be silent but to answer, “Here I am.”
68. 9.11Every human being, even the righteous patriarchs, is a sojourner and stranger before God, because God alone is eternal and they had a beginning.
69. 9.12The soul truly “is” only while it clings to God, who truly is; departing from him, it becomes as one who is not, though its substance is not destroyed.