Selected Comments on the Psalms 1443–1461

[Ps 48, continued] and self-controlled, but rhetors and grammarians and philosophers and tribunes and counts.

“And man, being in honour, did not understand,” etc. The man who does not understand, though in honour, compared himself with the cattle and was made like them, sometimes even to those that differ from them. Each man makes himself like something through what he does. It is good to be made like God. “This way of theirs is a stumbling block to them”: clearly the way of the fool and the senseless. But Christ too is a stumbling block, being a rock of stumbling. “In their mouth they will be well pleased.” The kind word: “And after this they will be well pleased with their mouth,” etc. It is a good hope that after this they will be well pleased.

“Like sheep they were laid in Hades; death will shepherd them,” etc. Death will shepherd the fool and the senseless, or rather the man who does not understand his own honour. Clearly he who said, “You will not leave my soul in Hades,” also says, “But God will redeem my soul,” and what follows. By the same. Life shepherds angels; death and life shepherd men; death alone shepherds demons. “And the upright will have dominion over them in the morning.” For in the age to come the upright will be over five cities and ten cities. And Solomon says the same in Proverbs: “For an envious man hastens to be rich, and does not know that the merciful man will rule over him.”

“Do not fear when a man becomes rich,” etc. Woe to those who are rich in this way; for no one will take it with him when he dies. “Nor will the glory of his house go down with him.” Unbelievers seek this glory, which will not go down with them. The one who dies will not take the multiplied glory of his house; but with the virtuous man who goes up his glory will go up, namely his virtue; and with the one who goes down it will go down. And the soul of the saint will be blessed in his life, which is Christ. Whoever is holy will give thanks to God.

“And man, being in honour,” etc. One must raise the question of what nature the man is who is in honour and does not understand. If of the spiritual, how is he made like the cattle? If of the earthy, how is he in honour? If of the soulish, if this man is in honour, …

[Ps 49 LXX / 50] Psalm 49. “The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken,” etc. “The God of gods,” having spoken through Christ, called the

[Ps 49, continued] earth from the rising of the sun to its setting: from the rising, Israel; from the setting, the most lowborn.

“Out of Zion is the splendour of his beauty,” etc. If the splendour and beauty of the Lord is wisdom, it is in Zion. He at whose birth we say “Emmanuel” came openly, and is not silent but speaks through whom he wills, since he is our God. Now, he says, “he will not keep silent”; but later, “These things you did, and I kept silent.” “Fire before him”: “For I came,” he says, “to cast fire on the earth.” And in Daniel: “A river of fire flowed before him.” And fire and tempest come upon those who do not attend to his appearing and to the Word, who will come from the heavenly Zion, being equal in power to the Father. For he was heavenly God even when he came openly, that is, when he became flesh. For then, having come, he became visible; he will not keep silent but will convict the world of sin, that is, he will announce the will of the Father; for he is called “the angel of great counsel.” The fire signifies the light that comes from him; for the intelligible light that comes through faith leads to the knowledge of Christ. You will also understand it thus: being in the authority and power of the Godhead, though he had come to be in the flesh, he attacked those opposed to him, the devil and the demons, like a fire and a tempest.

“God will come openly, our God, and will not keep silent,” etc. Our God will come openly; our God is Christ; Christ will come openly. By the same. Christ has come in the flesh. “Openly,” then, signifies the flesh; for the flesh of Christ was perceptible.

“He will call the heaven above,” etc. Since in Deuteronomy, when the law was given, Moses called heaven and earth to witness, and likewise at the beginning of the song he calls them, and further they are summoned in Isaiah: therefore, when the people are judged, God will call heaven and earth. Here he says “to judge” instead of “to separate” his own, who are his people, from those foreign to him who graze along with his own, so as to give his own to heaven and the foreign ones to the earth. Or he will call the angels in heaven and those chosen on earth for apostleship, to separate his people. For the apostles brought those who obeyed to God, and left those who were not such to Satan.

“Gather to him his holy ones, who make his covenant with sacrifices. And the heavens will declare his righteousness, for God is judge,” etc. Or the heavens are those who bear the image of the heavenly.

[Ps 49, continued] Or this is clearly the separation of the Lord’s people both by rational powers and by those who minister the saving proclamation as priests, who also gather his holy ones to Christ (“those whom he foreknew,” he says, “he also predestined; and those whom he called, he also justified”), who fulfil the covenant not through blood but with spiritual sacrifices. By the same. Here he plainly calls Christ God; for “the Father has given all judgment to the Son.”

“Not for your sacrifices will I rebuke you,” etc. These words would fit as a prophecy about the sacrifices set aside among the Jews after the coming of Christ. Or, he says, do not offer with an evil disposition, for which I convicted Cain.

“For all the beasts of the field are mine,” etc. He says that all things are under the providence of God. “For are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall without my Father in heaven.”

“Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” etc. He abolishes perceptible sacrifices; for “a sacrifice to God is a broken spirit.”

“But to the sinner God said, Why do you recount my ordinances?” etc. God said this, I think, not only to the sinner understood more simply, but also to the people of the concision. The sinner takes up the covenant of God with his mouth only; at any rate, sinning, he hates discipline and what follows. Or since “this people,” he says, “honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” Those of the circumcision hated discipline at the coming of Christ, and cast behind them the words of God spoken through Jesus Christ; they ran with Judas, the thief and traitor, and set their portion with those who commit adultery with wood and stones; and to others they slander their brother people from the nations; and even against those of their own mother, the believers from the circumcision, they set stumbling blocks, wishing to pervert them. For these reasons God was silent toward them. They ought to have been before his eyes, but he casts them behind. By the same. No one who sins should sit in the place of a teacher.

“But you hated discipline,” etc. Discipline is moderation of the passions.

“And you set your portion with adulterers,” etc. Our portion is the knowledge of God. We set it with adulterers when we take up theirs. Here he calls the sexually immoral man, and every kind of licentious man, an adulterer.

[Ps 49, continued] “You supposed lawlessness, that I would be like you,” etc. Likeness is imitation through good actions. Therefore the Lord makes himself like not those who sin but those who do right.

“Lest he snatch, and there be none to rescue,” etc. A soul that has utterly fallen away from God is snatched.

“A sacrifice of praise will glorify me,” etc. In the sacrifice of praise, he says, is the way of salvation with God. A sacrifice of praise will glorify our God, because those who see our good works will glorify our Father in heaven. And when we are in these things, that is the way in which God will show us his salvation.

[Ps 50 LXX / 51] From the exegetical work on the fiftieth psalm. Having allegorized, in part, the beginning of the story of Uriah, he adds: If it seems forced to anyone to allegorize the story in part without making the whole of it consistent, clearly these things will have been said in vain, and something else must be sought for the passage; unless perhaps someone, examining the details of the passage further, should find how to restore all of it: both what concerns the man who was killed and his apparent goodness, when he would not go into his house and rest while the people were in camp and in the struggle. I do not know how those who flee allegory in these things, and think the letter was recorded for its own sake, will present the intention of the Holy Spirit, who deemed worthy of record things in which not only licentiousness but also cruelty and inhumanity are charged against David, who dared against Uriah a deed foreign even to an ordinary character moderately improved. But I would say that, as the judgments of God are great and hard to explain, and seem to be causes of the straying of uninstructed souls, so also his Scriptures are great and full of thoughts unspeakable and mystical and hard to contemplate; and they are very hard to explain, and seem to be causes of the straying of the uninstructed souls of the heterodox, who without circumspection and rashly accuse God from Scriptures they do not understand, and therefore fall into inventing another God. It is safe, then, to wait for the interpretation of the Word who makes things clear, and of “the wisdom hidden in a mystery, which none of the rulers of this age has known,” “according to the revelation of the mystery kept silent for eternal ages,” made manifest to the apostles and those like them, through the prophetic Scriptures and the appearing that came to them of our Saviour, the Word who was “in the beginning with God.”

“Have mercy on me, O God,” etc. He has mercy on our nature

[Ps 50, continued] he who formed it, sick in many ways with weakness; for the inventor of sin shakes the mind, having as his helper the law that rages in the members of the flesh. So one must go to God, for all strength is from him. And perhaps, foreknowing that in due time Christ would shine on those on earth, wiping out all the sin of the world, he fittingly calls so splendid a grace “great mercy”; for it is written that “all sin will stop its mouth.” For according to the Apostle, “It is God who justifies; who is to condemn?”

“Wash me thoroughly,” etc. The lawless deed of one who no longer acts lawlessly is wiped out; and the one washed thoroughly is cleansed from his sin. So one action is conceived in different ways: the one term signifies sin without law, the other transgression of law. He asks the one who is able to cleanse from the worse disposition to wash it out. And see again the mystery of Christ: the power of baptism, surpassing the cleansing in the law, works the cleansing of this soul too.

“Against you only have I sinned,” etc. This “so that” is not causal; for they did not sin so that God might be justified in his words. But God was rightly justified by their ingratitude while they received benefits. Since God made much speech about repentance, saying that he does not want the death of the sinner so much as that he turn and live, he wisely recalled the present words, arguing: If you pardon me when I repent, and are propitious to me when I turn, you will be justified in your words, shown to be true in your promises; and at the time of recompense, bringing me forward, who received mercy through repentance, you will justly judge those who did not repent. By the same. When we sin in act, we sin against both men and God; but when we offend in thought, we sin against God alone. Or it stands for “To you alone the sin is known.”

“Restore to me the joy,” etc. What is owed is restored. So the joy of God’s salvation is restored to the rational nature; and the one established by the leading spirit will not be a slave to sin. As “unless the Lord builds a house, those who build it labour in vain,” so, unless God creates a pure heart in someone, human choice and power are not sufficient for this. First a pure heart is created, then upon it a right spirit is renewed within, and this while the Holy Spirit is not taken away. Then, after two spirits, one is established by God with the leading spirit, so that one may be steadfast and unshaken …

[Ps 51 LXX / 52] “Why do you vaunt yourself in wickedness, you who are mighty in lawlessness?” etc. “Let him who boasts,” says the Apostle, “boast in the Lord.” By the same. He did not use a neutral word, but one indicating what is base. For he did not say, “Why do you boast?” but “Why do you vaunt yourself?” “Vaunting” is never said of something good; but if someone sins, he vaunts himself. The word can also be addressed to Saul. By the same. If one is mighty in lawlessness, one is also powerless in lawlessness. The one mighty in lawlessness is powerless in righteousness; and the one powerless in lawlessness is mighty in righteousness. By the same. “Vaunting” is base, but “boasting” is neutral. The man who is powerless, slack, and small in wickedness, since the better way abounds in him, being weaker in wickedness, would hide his face when he sins and, stung by his conscience, would repent; but the one mighty in wickedness is puffed up over it and vaunts himself, priding himself as on a great achievement. And someone taught the divine word every day, if he sins, also devises it all day long. Or “day” signifies manifestness, or the whole time in which he acts lawlessly.

“All day long your tongue devised injustice; like a sharpened razor you worked deceit,” etc. It is the reasoning faculty, the ruling part and the heart, not the tongue of Doeg, that devised injustice. “Devised” means unjust thoughts; since “the heart of fools is in their mouth,” therefore the tongue of Doeg uttered it; for it is not the tongue that reasons, but the tongue serves the reasonings.

“You loved evil more than good,” etc. There are those who, as it were, love opposites, in that they are never wholly given to virtue nor willing to attend wholly to wickedness; of these the baser love wickedness more than virtue, and the others the reverse.

“You loved all words of drowning,” etc. Doeg loved words of drowning in slandering David.

“Therefore God will destroy you for ever, will pluck you out and remove you from your tent, and your root from the land of the living,” etc. God, who pulls down wretched buildings, pulls down Doeg: either by not leaving even the wall of his building, since the whole of it was built badly from every part; or, since the worst are dealt with last, and Doeg is the worst, he will be pulled down at the end, near the time when death, the last enemy, is abolished. And if the root of Doeg the Idumaean is plucked out of the land of the living, it had been planted there.

[Ps 51, continued] “Behold the man who did not make God his helper, but hoped in the abundance of his wealth,” etc. Perhaps he grew rich from the mules, a bastard animal, over which he had been appointed by Saul.

“But I am like a fruitful olive tree in the house of God,” etc. “The fruit of the Spirit is joy, peace, love, long-suffering,” etc. Having this fruit in himself, the saint said, “But I am like a fruitful olive tree.” He likens himself to a fruitful olive since mercy prevailed in him, and the other virtues followed in consequence. So we call Job courageous, Joseph self-controlled, and the others, naming them from the virtue that prevails.

“I will wait for your name, for it is good before your holy ones,” etc. As what is good by nature appears such as it is to a healthy nature, so too the name of God to the holy.

[Ps 52 LXX / 53] Psalm 52. “The fool said in his heart,” etc. The fool thinks that there is no God; therefore he said it in his heart, but does not confess it with his mouth, for fear of men. Or the fool is the people that denies that Christ is God; as with the former interpretation of the fool, it is said not with the mouth but in the heart that there is no God.

“There is none who does good,” etc. The Saviour too, admonishing the one who said, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” says, “Why do you call me good?” For he knew that there is none who does good. Perhaps, since the law has a shadow of the good things to come, there is none in this life who does good, but only a shadow of good. And since there is none who does good, the man who spoke is rebuked with “Why do you call me good?”

“Those who devour my people as they eat bread did not call on God,” etc. If anyone eats someone of the people of God, even if he says he calls on God, he is convicted of not calling on him. “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

“For God scattered the bones of men-pleasers,” etc. Not everyone who pleases men is a men-pleaser; but if, intending

[Ps 52 LXX / 53, continued] at times to please men, he will do it fittingly and will not be a men-pleaser. Paul at any rate says, “Give no offence to Jews or to the church of God, just as I too please all in all things, not seeking my own advantage, but that of the many, that they may be saved.” But if someone intends nothing else than to please men, or to please men more than God, or men and God equally—when it should be only so that pleasing men too happens for God’s sake, whenever reason chooses to do this—that man will be a men-pleaser. And in some cases, having considered that it is not possible, by doing or saying a given thing, to please both God and men, one must despise pleasing men and choose to please God.

“Who will give the salvation of Israel out of Zion?” etc. “The deliverer will come from Zion and will turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” But he will also give salvation and return to the ten tribes already taken captive. But who will grant to see Christ, the salvation of the intelligible Israel?

[Ps 53 LXX / 54] “O God, save me in your name,” etc. He prays as far as “before them.” Then, perceiving that help is present to him, he as it were points to it in “Behold, God helps me,” and in the next verse and the one after it. Then he prays to intercede concerning certain persons, promising a voluntary sacrifice for this. Then he gives thanks, answering point by point what was said in the prayer and intercession; and to “In your truth destroy them” he answers, “My eye looked upon my enemies.”

“For behold, God helps me,” etc. He perceives that he has been heard, and says these words in between the words addressed to God: “If the mighty thus sought my soul and did not set God before them, destroy them in your truth.” He confesses that he has the Father, perhaps, as helper, and the Lord as the one who upholds his soul, so as to mean the Son, who will turn back the evils on my enemies. For the harms they wished to bring on me he will turn back on them, God so judging. With this agrees the saying, “Do to her as you did to the rich man.” And when these things have happened, he says, coming to thanksgiving of my own free choice, I will sacrifice to you voluntarily.

“I will give thanks to your name, O Lord,” etc. He gives thanks, answering “Save me in your name” with “I will give thanks to your name”; and “Strangers rose up against me” with “From every affliction you rescued me, and my eye looked upon my enemies.” It is good that our enemies, hitherto unseen, if they still escape our notice, should at last be seen for what they are, enemies. And of what eye is this the work, but of

[Ps 53, continued] the clear-sighted eye, able to see what is friendly? The eye that is not clear-sighted, deceived and overlooking, will see the hostile as friendly and the friendly as hostile.

[Ps 54 LXX / 55] Psalm 54. “Give ear, O God, to my prayer,” etc. None of those who sin, especially at the moment of sin, would want a venerable man to attend to him, much less God. If you understand “Give ear, all who inhabit the world,” you have left the desert places of the reasoning of wickedness and have come to the inhabited world; and having come, say, “Give ear, O God, to my prayer,” and he will give ear, and will not overlook you when you make supplication. Take courage, as one who will not be overlooked, to say, “And do not overlook my supplication.” But also, if you attend to God, trusting in him, say, “Attend to me”; and further, if you have heard him, he will hear you. And if, like the Apostle grieving out of love for men, you weep with those who weep and groan in the tent, being burdened, say, “I was grieved,” and what follows.

“I was grieved in my musing,” etc. Here “musing” signifies prayer, as in the case of Hannah: “Out of the abundance of my musing I have wasted away.” And whatever we do or say contrary to right reason is idle talk, as is all that we say at random. So he condemned himself for having been troubled and having lost the calm of his soul “at the voice of the enemy and from the affliction of the sinner.” So the prophet confesses, teaching us to confess, having taken on our person.

“And I was troubled at the voice of the enemy and at the affliction of the sinner; for they turned lawlessness upon me, and in anger they bore a grudge against me,” etc. When Christ was drawing men away from the opposing activities, the voice of the sinner, the devil, urging the powers under him against the Saviour, was the cause of their turning lawlessness upon him and bearing a grudge against him in anger, so that the heart of Jesus was troubled within him, and the fear of death fell upon him, fear and trembling coming upon him, and darkness covering him.

“My heart was troubled within me,” etc. “My heart was troubled within me” has something like “My soul was troubled within me.” But also, when death is expected, fear arises from some evil activity, which, wishing to act on the one who speaks the psalm, fell upon him, but by no means did what it wished. You will say the like also of the fear and trembling that came upon him,

[Ps 54, continued] which, since they found him watchful, did not act. “And darkness covered me,” he said, because the body darkens the soul, when the sinner and the enemy turn lawless doing upon me. For sin provokes sin; but a righteous man in company with a righteous man becomes more righteous. “And in anger they bore a grudge against me.” This too belongs to sinners, who work enmity not simply but in darkness as well. “To bear a grudge” is to have anger stored up. Every earnest man knows that sinning in thoughts (which is tolerable) is one thing, and sinning in act and words (which is dangerous and grave) another. Therefore, if at any time agitation and harm should arise in his thoughts, he keeps them within himself, and does not bring them out in speech, as a hidden sin, nor carry them out in deed, knowing that the thought is curable. But sin in act and words is hard to cure, sometimes even incurable. Therefore he says, “My heart was troubled within me.” For I did not express the trouble, nor did I do anything in accordance with it; but even when the fear of death, which follows sin, fell upon me, I held it within myself. For it happens that fear shows itself from outward things, and that the one in whom it is shown becomes a stumbling block to others. And “Fear and trembling came upon me, and darkness covered me” belongs to human nature, which has the passible, the irascible, and the desiring part. Even if one progresses in virtue, since the passible part is not abolished, it happens that something arises in what is called … Certainly the present speaker, pushed by the voices of enemies and the affliction of the sinner, had the passible part in him fanned up, so as to fear and fall into trembling from the darkness of perplexity; for he called dizziness darkness.

“And I said, Who will give me wings like a dove?” etc. The wings of the holy dove are the contemplation of bodies and of bodiless things, through which the mind, lifted up, comes to rest in the knowledge of the holy Trinity.

“Behold, I went far off, putting to flight, and lodged in the desert,” etc. The word “put to flight” signifies pursuing and turning to flight those who are driven out. So the one who speaks the psalm says, “Behold, I went far off,” that is, putting to flight for a long way the enemy and the sinner, so that, once they were driven out, I lodged in the desert, that is, rested in a peaceful condition. But if “put to flight” here properly means “flee,” the righteous man, fleeing those of the circumcision and going far off because of their arrogance toward him, will say, “I lodged in the desert,” that is, in the church, which was a desert without the law and the prophets. It fits also Christ in his dispensation.

“I waited for the one who saves me from faintheartedness and tempest,” etc. The tempest is the great temptation blowing hard against the soul, so that a soul that does not attend to itself may even be shipwrecked.