City of God 17.9–17.17

Chapter 9. How like the prophecy about Christ in the eighty-eighth psalm is to what is promised through the prophet Nathan in the books of Kingdoms.

For this reason in the eighty-eighth psalm too, whose title is “Of understanding, for Ethan the Israelite”, the promises of God made to King David are recalled, and some things are said there like those set down in the book of Kingdoms, such as: “I have sworn to David my servant: I will prepare your seed for ever”; and again: “Then you spoke in a vision to your sons and said: I have laid help upon one who is mighty; I have exalted one chosen from my people. I have found David my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him. For my hand shall help him, and my arm shall strengthen him. The enemy shall not prevail against him, and the son of iniquity shall no more harm him. And I will cut down his enemies before his face, and those who hate him I will put to flight. And my truth and my mercy shall be with him, and in my name his horn shall be exalted. And I will set his hand in the sea and his right hand in the rivers. He shall call upon me: You are my Father, my God and the upholder of my salvation. And I will make him the firstborn, high above the kings of the earth. For ever I will keep my mercy for him, and my covenant shall be faithful to him. And I will set his seed for ever and ever, and his throne as the days of heaven.” All these things, when rightly understood, are understood of the Lord Jesus, under the name of David, because of the form of a servant which the same Mediator took from the Virgin, of the seed of David. Immediately something is also said about the sins of his sons, like what is set down in the book of Kingdoms and is more readily taken as said of Solomon. For there, that is, in the book of Kingdoms, it says: “And if his iniquity comes, I will rebuke him with the rod of men and with the strokes of the sons of men; but my mercy I will not take away from him”; by “strokes” signifying the blows of correction. Hence the saying: “Touch not my anointed ones.” What else does this mean but “Do not harm them”? But in the psalm, when he was speaking as if of David, so as to say something of the same sort there too, he says: “If his sons forsake my law and do not walk in my judgments; if they profane my ordinances and do not keep my commandments, I will visit their iniquities with the rod and their offences with scourges; but my mercy I will not scatter from him.” He did not say “from them,” though he was speaking of his sons, not of him; but he said “from him,” which, rightly understood, comes to the same thing. For no sins could be found in Christ himself, who is the head of the Church, that would need to be restrained by divine action through human corrections, with mercy preserved; but in his body and members, which is his people. That is why in the book of Kingdoms it is said “his iniquity,” but in the psalm “of his sons”; so that we may understand that what is said of his body is in a way said of him. For this reason he himself too, when Saul was persecuting his body, that is, his faithful, said from heaven: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Then in what follows in the psalm he says: “Nor will I do harm in my truth, nor profane my covenant, and what goes out from my lips I will not reject. Once I have sworn by my holiness, if I lie to David”; that is, I will by no means lie to David. For Scripture is accustomed to speak so. And in what he will not lie, he adds, saying: “His seed endures for ever, and his throne like the sun before me, and like the full moon for ever, and a faithful witness in heaven.”

Chapter 10. How different were the events in the kingdom of the earthly Jerusalem from what God had promised, so that the truth of the promise might be understood to pertain to the glory of another king and kingdom.

After these very strong supports of so great a promise, lest they be thought fulfilled in Solomon, as though it were hoped for and not found, he says: “But you have rejected and brought to nothing, O Lord.” This indeed happened to Solomon's kingdom in his descendants, down to the overthrow of the earthly Jerusalem itself, which was the seat of that kingdom, and above all the ruin of the temple itself, which had been built by Solomon. But lest God be thought on this account to have acted against his promises, he immediately added: “You have deferred your anointed.” He, then, is not Solomon, nor David himself either, if the Lord's anointed was deferred. For though all the kings consecrated with that mystical chrism were called his anointed, not only from King David onward, but even from that Saul who was the first anointed king for that people (for David himself calls him the Lord's anointed), yet there was one true Anointed, whose figure they bore by the prophetic anointing; who, according to the opinion of men who thought he was to be understood in David or in Solomon, was long deferred, but according to God's disposition was being prepared to come in his own time. Meanwhile, while he is deferred, what became of the kingdom of the earthly Jerusalem, where he was certainly hoped to reign, this psalm goes on to add and says: “You have overturned the covenant of your servant; you have profaned his holiness on the earth; you have broken down all his walls; you have made his strongholds a terror; all who pass by the way have plundered him; he has become a reproach to his neighbors; you have exalted the right hand of his enemies; you have made all his enemies rejoice; you have turned back the help of his sword and have not aided him in war; you have loosed him from cleansing; you have dashed his throne to the ground; you have shortened the days of his throne; you have covered him with confusion.” All these things came upon the slave woman Jerusalem, in which even some sons of the free woman reigned, holding that kingdom in a temporary stewardship, but holding the kingdom of the heavenly Jerusalem, whose sons they were, in true faith, and hoping in the true Christ. How these things came upon that kingdom, history, if it is read, is the witness of events.

Chapter 11. On the substance of the people of God, which is in Christ through his taking of flesh, who alone had the power to rescue his soul from hell.

After these prophecies the prophet turns to prayer to God; but the prayer itself is also prophecy. “How long, O Lord, do you turn away to the end?” “Your face” is understood, as is said elsewhere, “How long do you turn away your face from me?” That is why some manuscripts here have not “do you turn away” but “will you be turned away”; though it could be understood as, “Do you turn away your mercy, which you promised David?” And what is “to the end,” but “until the end”? That end is to be understood as the last time, when even that nation will believe in Christ Jesus; before that end the things had to happen which he lamented above as full of distress. Because of them there follows here: “Your anger burns like fire: remember what my substance is.” Nothing is better understood here than Jesus himself, the substance of his people, from which is the nature of his flesh. “For not in vain,” he says, “have you established all the sons of men.” For unless there were one son of man who is the substance of Israel, through which son of man many sons of men would be set free, all the sons of men would certainly have been established in vain. As it is, the whole of human nature indeed fell from truth into vanity through the sin of the first man, which is why another psalm says, “Man has become like vanity; his days pass like a shadow”; but God has not established all the sons of men in vain, because he both frees many from vanity through the mediator Jesus, and those whom he foreknew were not to be freed he has established, certainly not in vain, in the most beautiful and most just ordering of the whole rational creation, for the benefit of those to be freed and for the contrast of the two cities with one another. Then follows: “Who is the man who shall live and not see death, who shall rescue his soul from the hand of hell?” Who is this but that substance of Israel from the seed of David, Christ Jesus? Of whom the apostle says that, rising from the dead, he dies no more, and death shall no longer have dominion over him. For he shall live and not see death in such a way that he nevertheless died, but rescued his soul from the hand of hell, into which he had descended to loose the bonds of hell for certain ones; and he rescued it by that power of which he says in the Gospel: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again.”

Chapter 12. To whose person the demand for the promises is to be understood to belong, of which it is said in the psalm: “Where are your ancient mercies, Lord?” and so on.

But as for the rest of this psalm, which runs thus: “Where are your ancient compassions, Lord, which you swore to David in your truth? Remember, Lord, the reproach of your servants, which I have held in my bosom, of many nations; with which your enemies have reproached, Lord; with which they have reproached the change of your Anointed”, it may rightly be asked whether these words are spoken in the person of those Israelites who longed for the promise made to David to be paid to them, or rather of the Christians, who are Israelites not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. For these words were spoken or written in the time of Ethan, from whose name this psalm received its title; and that was the time of David's reign; and so it would not be said, “Where are your ancient compassions, Lord, which you swore to David in your truth?”, unless the prophet transferred to himself the person of those who were to come long afterwards, for whom the time when these things were promised to King David would be ancient. It can be understood that many nations, when they were persecuting the Christians, reproached them with the passion of Christ, which Scripture calls a “change,” because by dying he was made immortal. The “change of Christ” can also be taken as reproached to the Israelites in this sense: that whereas he was hoped to be theirs, he became the nations'; and many nations which have believed in him through the new covenant now reproach them with this, while they remain in the old; so that it is said, “Remember, Lord, the reproach of your servants”, because, with the Lord not forgetting them but rather having mercy, they too will believe after this reproach. But the sense I set down first seems to me more fitting. For to the enemies of Christ, who are reproached that Christ left them and passed over to the nations, this utterance is ill suited: “Remember, Lord, the reproach of your servants”; for such Jews are not to be called servants of God. But these words fit those who, when they suffered the heavy humiliations of persecutions for the name of Christ, could remember that a lofty kingdom had been promised to the seed of David, and say out of longing for it, not despairing but asking, seeking, knocking: “Where are your ancient compassions, Lord, which you swore to David in your truth? Remember, Lord, the reproach of your servants, which I have held in my bosom, of many nations” (that is, which I have borne patiently in my inmost self), “with which your enemies have reproached, Lord; with which they have reproached the change of your Anointed”, thinking it not a change but an annihilation. And what is “Remember, Lord”, but that you should have mercy, and for my humiliation patiently borne repay the exaltation which you swore to David in your truth?

But if we assign these words to the Jews, such servants of God as could say such things were those who, when the earthly Jerusalem had been stormed, were led into captivity before Jesus Christ was born as man; understanding the change of Christ, namely that through him not an earthly and carnal happiness, such as appeared in the few years of King Solomon, but a heavenly and spiritual one was to be faithfully awaited; which the unbelief of the nations, not knowing it then, when it exulted over and insulted the people of God for being captive, what else did it reproach but the change of Christ, though it did not know it and they did? And so what follows, where this psalm ends, “The blessing of the Lord for ever: so be it, so be it”, fits well enough the whole people of God belonging to the heavenly Jerusalem, whether in those who lay hidden in the old covenant before the new was revealed, or in those who, now that the new covenant has been revealed, are plainly seen to belong to Christ. For the blessing of the Lord in the seed of David is to be hoped for not for some time, such as appeared in the days of Solomon, but for ever; and in this most certain hope it is said, “So be it, so be it.” For the repetition of this word is the confirmation of that hope. Understanding this, then, David says in the second book of Kingdoms, from which we digressed to this psalm: “And you have spoken of your servant's house for a long time to come.” And a little later he says, “Now begin and bless the house of your servant for ever”, and so on, because he was then about to beget the son from whom his progeny was to be led to Christ, through whom his house was to be eternal and at the same time the house of God. For it is the house of David because of David's race; but the same is the house of God because of the temple of God made of men, not of stones, where the people will dwell for ever with God and in their God, and God with his people and in his people; so that God may fill his people and the people be full of their God, when God will be all in all, himself the reward in peace who is the strength in war. That is why, although in the words of Nathan it was said, “And the Lord will tell you that you shall build a house for him”, afterwards it is said in the words of David: “For you, Lord Almighty, God of Israel, have opened the ear of your servant, saying: I will build you a house.” For this house we too build by living well, and God builds it by helping us to live well; for “unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” When the final dedication of this house comes, then will come to pass what God spoke here through Nathan, saying: “And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, and they shall dwell apart and shall be troubled no more; and the son of iniquity shall no more humble them, as from the beginning, from the days when I appointed judges over my people Israel.”

Chapter 13. Whether the truth of the promised peace can be ascribed to the times that passed under Solomon.

Whoever hopes for so great a good in this world and on this earth has foolish wisdom. Will anyone think that it was fulfilled in the peace of Solomon's reign? Scripture indeed commends that peace with excellent praise as a shadow of the future. But this supposition has been watchfully met, since after it was said, “And the son of iniquity shall no more humble them”, there was immediately added: “as from the beginning, from the days when I appointed judges over my people Israel.” For judges had been appointed over that people before there began to be kings there, from the time it received the land of promise. And certainly the son of iniquity, that is, the foreign enemy, humbled it at intervals of time, in which we read that periods of peace alternated with wars; and periods of peace are found there longer than Solomon had, who reigned forty years; for under the judge called Ehud there were eighty years of peace. Far be it, then, that the times of Solomon should be believed to have been foretold in this promise; much less, then, those of any other king. For none of them reigned in such peace as he did; nor did that nation ever hold its kingdom in such a way as not to be anxious lest it be subdued by enemies; for in such changeableness of human affairs no people has ever been granted such security as not to fear hostile inroads upon this life. This place, then, of so peaceful and secure a habitation that is promised is eternal, and is due to the eternal ones in the free mother Jerusalem, where the people of Israel will truly be; for this name means “seeing God”; and for the desire of this reward a godly life must be led by faith in this toilsome pilgrimage.

Chapter 14. On David's care in the arrangement and mystery of the psalms.

As the city of God ran its course through the times, then, first in the shadow of the future, namely in the earthly Jerusalem, David reigned. David was a man skilled in songs, who loved musical harmony not with vulgar pleasure but with faithful will, and served his God, who is the true God, with it by a mystical figuring of a great reality. For the rational and measured concord of different sounds, in harmonious variety, suggests the compact unity of a well-ordered city. In fact, almost all his prophecy is in the psalms, a hundred and fifty of which are contained in the book we call the Psalms. Among these some wish only those to have been made by David which are inscribed with his name. There are also those who think that only those were made by him which are headed “Of David himself”, but that those which have in their titles “To David himself” were made by others and fitted to his person. This opinion is refuted by the voice of the Savior himself in the Gospel, where he says that David himself in the Spirit said that Christ was his Lord; since the hundred and ninth psalm begins thus: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” And certainly that same psalm does not have in its title “Of David himself”, but “To David himself”, like very many. But to me those seem to judge more credibly who attribute all those hundred and fifty psalms to his work, and think that he headed some even with the names of others, who figure something pertaining to the matter, and chose to have no man's name in the titles of the rest; as the Lord inspired in him the arrangement of this variety, obscure, yet not empty. Nor should it move anyone to disbelieve this that the names of some prophets who lived long after the times of King David are read inscribed on certain psalms in that book, and that what is said there seems to be said as if by them. For the prophetic Spirit could well have revealed to King David, as he prophesied, even these names of future prophets, so that something befitting their persons might be sung prophetically; just as King Josiah, who was to arise and reign more than three hundred years later, was revealed by name to a certain prophet who also foretold his future deeds.

Chapter 15. Whether all the prophecies in the psalms about Christ and the Church are to be brought into the framework of this work.

Now I see that I am expected at this point in this book to disclose what David prophesied in the psalms about the Lord Jesus Christ or his Church. But I am hindered by abundance rather than by want from doing this in the way the expectation itself seems to demand (although I have already done it in one case); for I am prevented from setting out everything, to avoid prolixity. And I fear that if I choose some, I may seem to many who know them to have passed over more necessary ones; then too, because a testimony that is brought forward ought to have the support of the context of the whole psalm, or at least there should be nothing opposing it, if not everything supports it, lest we seem, in the manner of patchwork poems, to pluck verses as it were for the matter we want from a great poem which is found to have been written not about that matter but about another, far different. But for this to be shown in any psalm, the whole must be expounded; and how great a task this is, both others' volumes and our own, in which we have done it, sufficiently show. Let whoever wishes and is able read those, then; he will find how many and how great things King David, who was also a prophet, prophesied about Christ and his Church, that is, about the king and the city which he founded.

Chapter 16. On the things in the forty-fourth psalm pertaining to Christ and the Church, said either openly or figuratively.

However literal and clear prophetic sayings may be on any subject, figurative ones must be mixed with them; and these, chiefly for the sake of the slower, impose on teachers a laborious business of discussion and exposition. Some, however, show Christ and the Church at first sight, as soon as they are spoken, even if what is less understood in them remains to be expounded at leisure; such as this in the same book of Psalms: “My heart has uttered a good word; I speak my works to the king. My tongue is the pen of a swiftly writing scribe. You are beautiful in form above the sons of men; grace is poured on your lips; therefore God has blessed you for ever. Gird your sword upon your thigh, O most mighty, in your comeliness and your beauty; and set forth and proceed prosperously and reign, because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and your right hand shall lead you wonderfully. Your arrows are sharp, most mighty (peoples shall fall under you), in the hearts of the king's enemies. Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows. Myrrh and stacte and cassia are from your garments, from the ivory houses, from which the daughters of kings have delighted you in your honor.” Who, however slow, would not recognize here the Christ whom we preach and in whom we believe, when he hears of God, whose throne is for ever and ever, and anointed by God, as God anoints, that is, not with a visible but with a spiritual and intelligible chrism? For who is so unskilled in this religion, or so deaf to its fame spread far and wide, as not to know that Christ is named from chrism, that is, from anointing? Once Christ the king is recognized, let one who is now subject to him who reigns because of truth and meekness and righteousness inquire at leisure into the rest that is said here figuratively: how he is beautiful in form above the sons of men, with a beauty the more to be loved and admired the less it is bodily; what his sword is, what his arrows, and the other things set down in this way not literally but figuratively.

Then let him look at his Church, joined to so great a husband in spiritual marriage and divine love, of whom it is said in what follows: “The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing, arrayed in many colors. Hear, daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father's house; for the king has desired your beauty, for he is your God. And the daughters of Tyre shall worship him with gifts; the rich among the people shall entreat your face. All the glory of the king's daughter is within, arrayed in many colors with golden fringes. Virgins shall be brought to the king after her; her companions shall be brought to you. They shall be brought with gladness and rejoicing; they shall be led into the king's temple. In place of your fathers sons are born to you; you will make them princes over all the earth. They will remember your name in every generation and generation. Therefore peoples shall confess you for ever, and for ever and ever.” I do not think anyone is so foolish as to believe that some little woman is being proclaimed and described here, namely the wife of him to whom it was said, “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows”; that is, Christ above Christians. For these are his fellows, from whose unity and concord in all nations this queen is formed, as it is said of her in another psalm: “The city of the great king.” She is Zion spiritually; which name, translated into Latin, is “watching”; for she watches for the great good of the age to come, since her aim is directed there. She is also Jerusalem in the same spiritual way, of which we have already said much. Her enemy is the city of the devil, Babylon, which means “confusion”; yet from this Babylon this queen is set free in all nations by regeneration, and passes from the worst king to the best, that is, from the devil to Christ. That is why it is said to her: “Forget your people and your father's house.” Of this ungodly city the Israelites who are Israelites only by the flesh, not by faith, are also a part; they too are enemies of this great king and his queen. For Christ, having come to them and been killed by them, became rather the possession of others, whom he did not see in the flesh. Hence our king himself says through the prophecy of a certain psalm: “You will rescue me from the contradictions of the people; you will make me the head of the nations. A people whom I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear it obeyed me.” This people of the nations, then, whom Christ did not know by bodily presence, but who believed in the Christ proclaimed to it, so that it was rightly said of it, “At the hearing of the ear it obeyed me”, because faith comes from hearing: this people, I say, added to the Israelites who were true both by flesh and by faith, is the city of God, which also gave birth to Christ himself according to the flesh, when it was only in those Israelites. For from there was the Virgin Mary, in whom Christ took flesh so as to be man. Of this city another psalm says: “Mother Zion, a man shall say, and a man was made in her, and the Most High himself founded her.” Who is this Most High but God? And so Christ, God, before he was made man in that city through Mary, himself founded it in the patriarchs and prophets. Since, then, it was said so long before by prophecy to this queen, the city of God, what we now see fulfilled, “In place of your fathers sons are born to you; you will make them princes over all the earth” (for from her sons throughout the whole earth are her leaders and fathers, while the peoples confess her, running together to that confession of eternal praise for ever and ever), without doubt whatever is said here somewhat obscurely in figurative expressions, however it may be understood, must agree with these most evident facts.

Chapter 17. On what pertains to Christ's priesthood in the hundred and ninth psalm, and what in the twenty-first psalm looks to his passion.

So too in that psalm where Christ is most plainly proclaimed a priest, as here a king: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” That Christ sits at the Father's right hand is believed, not seen; that his enemies too are being put under his feet does not yet appear; it is being done, and will appear at the end; this too is now believed, and will be seen afterwards. But what follows, “The Lord will send forth the rod of your power from Zion, and rule in the midst of your enemies”, is so clear that it can be denied not only faithlessly and unhappily but also shamelessly. For even the enemies themselves admit that the law of Christ, which we call the Gospel, was sent forth from Zion, and we recognize it as the rod of his power. And that he rules in the midst of his enemies, those very people among whom he rules bear witness, gnashing their teeth and wasting away and able to do nothing against him. Then, when he says a little later, “The Lord has sworn and will not repent”, by which words he signifies that what he adds will be unchangeable, “You are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek”, since there is now nowhere a priesthood and sacrifice according to the order of Aaron, and everywhere there is offered, under Christ the priest, what Melchizedek brought out when he blessed Abraham, who is permitted to doubt of whom these things are said? To these manifest things, then, are referred those that are set down a little more obscurely in the same psalm, when they are rightly understood; which we have already done in our sermons to the people. So too in that psalm where Christ speaks through prophecy of the humility of his passion, saying, “They have dug my hands and feet; they have counted all my bones; but they looked and stared at me” (by which words he certainly signified his body stretched out on the cross, with hands and feet fastened and pierced through by the nails, and that in this way he offered himself as a spectacle to those who looked and stared), adding also, “They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots” (how this prophecy was fulfilled is told in the Gospel history), then certainly the other things too that are said there less openly are rightly understood when they agree with these, which have shone out with such clarity; especially since those things too, which we do not believe as past but see as present, as they are read in the same psalm foretold so long before, are now seen displayed throughout the whole world. For a little later it is said there: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight; for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he shall rule over the nations.”