Selected Comments on the Psalms 1463–1481

[Ps 54, continued] “Drown them, O Lord, and divide their tongues, for I saw lawlessness and contradiction in the city,” etc. To those who build a city out of wickedness and false doctrines, ignorance comes upon them and a confusion of tongues that stops them from their evil activity, as to those who built the tower in Chalanne. Drowning signifies disappearance, since everything that comes to be in the deep disappears. So the deep is sin, and destruction is the dissolution of what wickedness has put together. Therefore he says that evil is drowned by God when the tongues of those who agree in evil are divided. By the same. “Drown them, O Lord.” Whom? The enemy and the sinner? Or, as wisdom is an abyss, in which are the depths of God, it drowns the tongues and voices of the enemy by flooding them with the truth of the word and of those who champion it, and divides them, exposing their discord and their dividedness. The reason for saying this follows: for there is also the contradiction against the truth of those who fight about words, useful for nothing except the ruin of the hearers. And Christ would say what follows about the city of Jerusalem, seeing the lawlessness in it and the contradiction about him, of those who said different things about him. “And [usury and deceit] did not depart from its streets.” This would rightly be referred to the person of the traitor.

“Let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into Hades; for wickedness is in their dwellings, in their midst,” etc. Let death indeed come upon them, the death that separates the soul from wickedness. By the same. Those go down alive into Hades who have instruction in the divine teachings; for the one who has not tasted the words of life is dead, and one who lives only the common life cannot go down to Hades alive. Since, then, Judas and the people of the Jews had instruction in the law and the prophets, when the death that follows sin came upon them, they go down alive into Hades. Consequently the following verse also is said, “For wickedness is in their sojournings, in their midst.” For even if they had experience of the life-giving Scriptures, they did not dwell in them but sojourned in them. “Wickedness in their midst,” that is, in the ruling faculty; for it is said to be in the middle of the whole living being. Or “alive into Hades” means that he would die suddenly. He calls each man’s life a sojourning because of its brevity. He says, then, that their life and living is filled with all wickedness and evil, since they do not consider its brevity.

“Evening and morning and noon I will tell and proclaim, and he will hear my voice,

[Ps 54, continued] etc. Noon is in the middle between morning and evening. Jacob, rising early, wrestled with an angel; Abraham saw the angels at noon; Lot in the evening. By the same. “Evening”: at the eleventh hour, near the end of the world, when the Saviour suffered. “Morning”: when he rose. “Noon”: when, more firmly persuaded, they believed. Or he begins the narrative in the evening, it reaches its height in him in the morning, and he completes it at full day, at noon.

“God will hear and will humble them, he who exists before the ages; for they have no change, and they did not fear God,” etc. If all things came into being through him, he is rightly said to exist before the ages. And from this we learn that the ages came into being from non-being.

“Cast your care upon the Lord, and he will sustain you,” etc. As he sustained Jacob, who said, “God who has fed me from my youth.”

[Ps 55 LXX / 56] “Have mercy on me, O God, for man has trampled me; all day long fighting he has afflicted me,” etc. Christ says to the Father, “Have mercy on me.” For man trampled me, who am God. And I think it was taken from here: “who has trampled the Son of God.” By the same. The earthly demons trample us; and the subterranean ones, if they come up, cover us; therefore it is said, “You set a boundary which they will not pass, nor will they return to cover the earth.”

“I will not fear what flesh will do to me,” etc. He who took the form of a slave and came to be in the likeness of sinful flesh, who knew no sin, made himself sin for us by taking up flesh; and he alone of those who have lived in flesh having committed no sin, would say boldly, “What will flesh do to me?”

“They will sojourn and hide; they will watch my heel,” etc. They wish to learn by watching what we do; for the demons are not knowers of hearts. By the same. Like the serpent—as it is said, “And you will watch his heel”—the wicked will watch the heel of Christ or of the righteous man.

“To be well pleasing before God in the light of the living,” etc. The light of the living is the knowledge of the angels.

[Ps 56 LXX / 57] Psalm 56. “And in the shadow of your wings I will hope, until lawlessness passes by,” etc. He says this to the Holy Spirit; for the Spirit appeared in the form of a dove. By the same. Until lawlessness passes by, the righteous man hopes in the shadow of God’s wings; but when it passes by and comes to be nonexistent, he will no longer hope in a shadow, but in him. These words can also be divided thus: “I will hope in the shadow of your wings”; and, “Until lawlessness passes by, I will cry to God Most High.”

“He sent from heaven and saved me,” etc. From heaven he sent either the Saviour or an angel to save.

“God sent forth his mercy and his truth,” etc. Perhaps he who said, “I am the truth,” is also mercy itself, so that we may seek nothing other than the same mercy.

“I slept troubled,” etc. For having said, “My soul is troubled,” not long after he slept.

“Sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword,” etc. The teeth of the demons are the evil thoughts by which they devour our soul. By the same. The tongue of slanderers is a sharp sword, and that of those who teach the things of knowledge falsely so called.

“Be exalted above the heavens, O God,” etc. “If I am lifted up,” says the Saviour, “I will draw all to myself.”

“Awake, my glory; awake, harp and lyre,” etc. He calls the gift of the mind glory. The mind itself is a harp, and what surrounds the mind, which is the soul, a lyre.

“I will give thanks to you among the peoples, O Lord; I will sing to you among the nations,” etc. This can be an exhortation to confess sins in church.

“For your mercy has been magnified to the heavens, and your truth to the clouds,” etc. Since the one shown mercy ascends to the kingdom of heaven, the mercy of God has been magnified to the heavens.

“Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and your glory over all the earth,” etc. These two verses are said twice in this psalm.

[Ps 57 LXX / 58] Psalm 57. “If truly then you speak righteousness,” etc.

[Ps 57, continued] Let us see what it is to speak righteousness truly, and in how many ways this can happen. In one way one speaks righteousness when, holding sound doctrines about righteousness, one discusses them; in a second way that man speaks righteousness who says everything out of the righteousness present in his soul. One who puts both together would find the man who truly speaks righteousness. For those who outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness, even if they speak righteousness, do not speak it truly. And I think that no one can speak righteousness who does not share in Christ, “who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” Speaking righteousness truly is followed by judging uprightly, so that there is nothing crooked in the judgments and reasonings of the one who truly speaks righteousness.

“For in your heart you work lawlessness,” etc. So that the word may show that the ruling part of the base man, filled with lawless deeds, is the spring and beginning of every sin, like a stream from the earth, and that action, of which the hands are a symbol, is the practice brought forth from the ruling part, he first named what concerns the heart, and second what concerns the hands. In sin the beginning is from the heart, and the end in actions; but for those turning to God the beginning is abstaining from evil actions, and the end is purity of heart. Therefore here, when the blameworthy are convicted, the lawless deeds of the heart are named first, and then the injustices woven together by the hands. Instead of “weave together,” Theodotion and the fifth edition have “weigh out,” and Aquila has “is weighed out.” Not at random, he says, do they weave injustice together; but because of these wickednesses, when an army came against it, lawlessness and contradiction overtook it, even on its walls, and the holy angels who guarded it; for these too abandoned it, having seen it acting lawlessly and contradicting. Because “lawlessness and toil,” the opposite of praiseworthy pleasure, “came to be in its midst” with injustice, so that “usury and deceit did not depart from its streets,” those who dwell in it practising deceit by their evil thinking, and toiling in lifting upon themselves the burden of wickedness, which is compared to lead. And its streets must be considered those who broaden themselves through love of pleasure, by walking the broad and spacious way, that is, the pleasure-loving and passionate life; for the toil over evils and the deceit over frauds, always remaining in them, fulfil “usury and deceit did not depart from its streets.” For those ready for injustice, weighing out each of their wrongs into the web of wickedness, work without intermission what they choose, while the deeds of their injustice are recorded on an indelible pillar.

[Ps 57, continued] “… they went astray from the belly, they spoke lies,” etc. They are estranged from the womb and go astray from the belly who from childhood travel not toward virtue but toward wickedness.

“Their rage is like that of the serpent, like a deaf asp that stops its ears,” etc. Every soul that has not listened to the words that save it is an asp that stops its ears. By the same. Because of the serpent-like rage of sinners it is said to them, “Serpents, brood of vipers,” since they have taken up likeness not to God but to the serpent. The saint stops his ears so as not to hear a judgment of blood, and like a deaf man does not hear the worse things; but the sinner does not hear the good, like a deaf asp that stops its ears so as not to hear the voice of the charmers. And these, of whom the word speaks, stop their ears—not those of sense but those of understanding—so as not to hear those who offer the wise charms of the prophets and apostles. For each of these is a wise man preparing a remedy, that is, a rational medicine that wards off the onset of the asp.

“God will break their teeth,” etc. “He crushed” stands for “he will crush,” by an exchange of tense. God does this to them as a benefit, so that they may not, devouring the men deceived by them, become liable to an excessive punishment. And he crushed their molars, so that they might not bite or devour. Note that according to Scripture molars differ from teeth: the teeth cut and divide the food, but the molars chew and grind it. And as water passing through some channel, not remaining but scattered, comes to nothing, so these too will be brought to nothing, having nothing firm or lasting. Hence he adds, “He will bend his bow.” He has portrayed the punishment of God as a bow continually sending arrows and slaying all. For he uses the shooting of arrows so far, he says, until, shooting all down, he makes them weak.

“Like melted wax they will be taken away; fire fell upon them, and they did not see the sun,” etc. As wax comes along with honey, so wickedness comes along with a rational soul. By the same. Him whom they did not see as sun they will experience as fire.

“The righteous will rejoice when he sees vengeance,” etc. The punishment of the sinner makes the righteous man safer and purer.

[Ps 57, continued] By the same. The righteous man, seeing the wisdom of the divine judgment in punishing the unjust, will rejoice.

[Ps 58 LXX / 59] “Deliver me from my enemies, my God,” etc. Because of “Without lawlessness I ran and directed my course,” and because of “I will keep my strength for you,” the Saviour speaks the psalm; and because of “Attend to visit all the nations.”

“For behold, they hunted my soul,” etc. The mighty hunted my soul and attacked me. Not in passing, he says, do they engage in battle against me, but they press upon me, not giving up even for a short time, but fighting us in every way. He called them mighty, so as to show, from the strength they possess, that the plot against him is the greater.

“Without lawlessness I ran and directed my course,” etc. The one who says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith,” will say, “Without lawlessness I ran and directed my course”; or rather the Saviour will say this. By the same. One cannot direct one’s course on the way that said, “I am the way,” unless one runs without lawlessness.

“Rise up to meet me, and see,” etc. Who then is able to say to God, “Rise up to meet me, and see”? By the same. God rises up to meet the one who ascends to God through a sound life. And in the Gospel the father meets the son who returns to him.

“And a sword is on their lips,” etc. A sword is on the lips of the heterodox who teach blasphemous and impious things.

“Do not kill them, lest they forget your law,” etc. The Lord kills those whom he allows to sin for a long time; for from this comes forgetfulness of God: “For in Hades who will confess to you?”

“And for cursing and lying consummations will be proclaimed, in the wrath of consummation, and they will not exist,” etc. Cursing and lying are the cause of the consummation; so that, if these did not exist, there would be neither wrath nor consummation.

[Ps 59 LXX / 60] “O God, you cast us off,” etc. As in the person of the Jews, he shows their rejection by saying, “O God, you cast us off and pulled us

[Ps 59, continued] down,” or, according to Symmachus, “you cast us away and cut us off,” which shows their being cut off. Then he adds, “You were angry and had pity on us”; but according to Aquila, “Being enraged you turned us around.” The outcome of events supports this latter rendering; at any rate after the coming of the Saviour they suffered these things. For when the wrath came upon them, they were cast off for good, pulled down and cast away, cut off and carried about, scattered among all the nations.

“Heal its breaches,” etc. For the land spoken of, moved and shaken from its own abode and standing, acquired breaches and wounds; therefore next it is said, “You showed your people hard things.”

“You showed your people hard things,” etc. Hard things are shown to someone when he falls into toils; whoever receives them for a change of mind about former sins drinks the wine of compunction, taking occasion to be pierced to repentance. In many places in Scripture adversities share a name with unmixed wine, as in “A cup of unmixed wine in the hand of the Lord.” And the hard things share a name with the hard ways mentioned in the sixteenth psalm thus: “Because of the words of your lips I kept hard ways.” For there the virtues are called hard ways because they are achieved with much sweat and toil; but here the people saw hard things, having experienced ill-treatment.

“You gave those who fear you a sign,” etc. We, he says, have been punished for the impiety we committed; but those who fear you have received a sign (clearly the one with which we were sealed), so that they may be outside every punishing penalty. A type of this sign was the blood of the sheep smeared on the doorposts in Egypt.

[Ps 60 LXX / 61] Psalm 60. “From the ends of the earth I cried to you,” etc. The one who perceives in how many things he falls short of perfection, by understanding who the perfect man is, and bringing this up in his prayers, says concerning it, “Hear, O God, my supplication,” and will be heard. But when the imperfect man is insensible of what he lacks, his supplication is silent; whereas the one who perceives and offers himself to God to be perfected cries aloud.

“When my heart was listless,” etc. Truly every God-loving soul, while it spends its time in mortal life, is listless and in anguish; and it is listless and anguished also out of love for men, seeing the multitude of those who perish. It mourns also many who sinned before and did not repent of the sin and lawlessness and impiety that they committed, as David also did; therefore he himself fled

[Ps 60, continued] the middle of the land, and having come to its extremities he cried to God; but over the destruction of the many, and of Saul himself, he wept, grieving in his soul.

“You lifted me up on a rock,” etc. We will take the rock to signify the spiritual rock that pours out drink, I mean Christ. The one who has come to be on this rock, by sharing in it (for it is “wisdom and righteousness and sanctification”), is raised aloft in mind, lifted up by God. And those who have resolved to follow the Saviour, according to his exhortations when he says, “Come after me,” using him as guide, share in the same exaltation, not hoping to find any other leader of the way that leads to the cause of all. Having obtained this gift, David too says to the Lord with a hymn, “You guided me, because you became my hope.” And not only a guide, but you became to me also a tower from the face of the enemy; for having you as strength and a tower of strength, I remained unharmed, although the enemy was facing me and wished to make war. “From the face of the enemy” can also be referred to “you guided me,” in this connection: You guided me from the face of the enemy, having become my hope; but you have also become to me a tower of strength in guiding me from the face of the enemy. The true and unfailing hope of the saints is the Saviour, of whom Paul says, “and of Jesus Christ our hope”; and the prophecy, “In him the nations will hope.” For he is the one foretold to be the expectation of the nations.

One who has been perfected in holiness sojourns for ever in that tent which “Who will dwell on your holy mountain?” signifies. For this is eternal, being the same as the tent that the Lord pitched, and not man. Yet even if such a tent has such perfection as to be the Holy of Holies, still there is after it a condition that surpasses the rational beings, in which they will be in the Father and the Son, or rather in the Trinity. Therefore it is said “sojourn for ever,” but not “dwell,” in the tent. The one who has come to be in this house will be sheltered in the shelter of God’s wings.

“You gave an inheritance to those who fear,” etc. Being rich, he says, you also give great gifts; or rather, granting perfect men to become your sons, you have given them an inheritance. For even if it is expected to be given after the resurrection in the age to come, yet by being already made ready it has been given to those who will enjoy it at the proper time. And further, God gave the inheritance to those who fear his name. If there is some difference between those who fear God and those who fear his name, those who believe in him and those who believe in his name—since it has often been said that those made his own by the title of God are lower than those united to God himself—note that the inheritance has been given also to those who fear God; for if this grace belongs to the lower, much more to those who have risen above.

[Ps 60, continued] By the same. Perhaps the Lord gave to those who fear him the inheritance corresponding to that of Israel, and to those who love him the one corresponding to that of the Levites.

“So I will sing to your name,” etc. Since I have obtained what I asked of you, having thus become thankful, “I will sing to your name,” hymning through works, thoughts and good words your name that has been allotted to me. And besides this, day by day I will pay what I vowed; as Jacob says, “If God gives me bread to eat,” and what follows, “of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.” For before these words it is recorded, “Jacob vowed, saying, If the Lord is with me,” up to “I will give you a tenth.” It is well said, too, that the vows are paid day by day, and that one sings to the name of God for ever and ever: since singing to the name of the one hymned extends into the age to come, while paying the vows is fulfilled as long as there is still the time made up of days; and this is the time measured out to each one’s life. So while we are in this life let us pay our vows, so that we may also be able to sing to the name of God for ever and ever.

[Ps 61 LXX / 62] Psalm 61. “For the end, for Idithun, a psalm of David,” etc. Idithun means “of the judge who comes”; David, “strong of hand.” The psalm is about the Son of God, the eternal judge who comes, who is strong of hand.

“Will not my soul be subject to God?” etc. Everyone who is subject to someone thinks the same as he. And if, according to Paul, we shall all be subject to Christ, let us all think the same as Christ. By the same. “Will be subject,” since the Saviour says it, refers to “then the Son will be subject to him who subjected all things to him.” That he means the Father is clear from “But they plotted to thrust away my honour; I ran in thirst.” At the same time we learn that what will be subject is a soul; that the salvation of the soul, salvation itself, is from God, and that he is therefore the Saviour of the one who says these things; and that it is not possible to receive salvation by being subject to anyone but God. Therefore let us be subject to God, who upholds those subject to him alone and saves them, so that through their subjection to God they stand more firmly, shaken by nothing. “My upholder; I shall not be shaken any more.” He says this because he was shaken from the time he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave; as shaken a little because of the short time in the body, that is, having become very sorrowful in soul. He began only to be grieved and to be troubled a little; and he says, “I shall not be shaken any more.”

[Ps 61, continued] For he committed no sin, as do those who are shaken further.

“How long will you attack a man?” etc. This is like “Now you seek to kill me, a man.” Those who attack a man also seek to kill a man.

“But they plotted to thrust away my honour,” etc. The honour of the rational soul is virtue and knowledge.

“But be subject to God, my soul,” etc. Upon the first subjection follows salvation, upon the second endurance from God. For many, he says, are the evils brought upon me by these men; but I look to God himself, having him as expectation and hope; therefore I also endure what happens. For since he is accustomed to help me, he will help me now too, and will not allow these men to accomplish their purpose, so as to overcome us, and to rouse us and drive us from our own and put us to flight.

“Hope in him, all the assembly of the people,” etc. As if he were saying: not only the remnant according to the election of grace; which will be when all Israel will be saved. “Pour out your hearts before him.” The one who has put away every base reasoning, and repented utterly, so as not even to remember the worse things, has poured out his heart before him. “For you will render to each according to his works.” God will render to each according to his works, good or evil, many or few, according to the quality or quantity of whatever measures he renders.

“But the sons of men are vain; the sons of men are false in the scales, to do wrong; they are of vanity together,” etc. Vain are those who sit by the vain and perishable things of this age. All human things are vain and undergo swift change. By the same. I do not lie about righteousness; for it is the scale of the virtues. False are the sons born of their father the devil. For they neglect equality, he says, and hold the scales of the mind unequally; they despise justice but rejoice in injustice. By the same. So it reads according to the Seventy; but according to Theodotion, “The sons of men are vapour; the sons of a man are false, like the tipping of a scale.” Nothing human, he says, is lasting, but it is like vapour sent up and at once scattered, and like the tipping of a scale, now sinking and now rising. It is asked whether the saints are not vain. The saints are not sons of men; for their birth according to man has been abolished.

“God spoke once; these two things I heard,” etc. God spoke the word once,