Tractates on the Psalms 129.1–131.6

Among the many splendid things the apostle writes to the Romans, when he had spoken of the faith of the Gentiles and the unbelief of the Jews and had treated much about the judgments and decrees of God, he says: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and untraceable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things: to him be glory for ever and ever." It is the religious confession of human weakness to know of God only this, that he is God. But the earthly mind does not penetrate those secret and deep decrees of an impenetrable judgment. To investigate and search them out is indeed pious; but it must be confessed that they are unsearchable and untraceable: the one belongs to a religious will, the other to an impenetrable nature. For who will know the causes and natures of the heaven, both of this one and of the higher one and of the rest? Who will have grasped the offices and principles of angels and powers and dominions and thrones and principalities? Who will understand the perpetual and eternal voices of the Cherubim and Seraphim? Who will know the waters above the heaven that praise God? Who will boast that the lights of the sun, moon, and stars are known to him? Who will measure this fullness of the air, which we falsely think empty? And who will attain, with the knowledge of full understanding, the arrangement of the world, the powers of the elements, the changes of the seasons, the courses of rivers, the bounds of the sea, the tides of the ocean, the blowing of the winds, the natures of animals, the rages of beasts, the kinds of trees, the virtues of roots, the origins of souls, the growth of bodies, the deaths of infants and the lives of old men, the labors of the world, the glorious calamities of the saints and the unhappy prosperity of the irreligious, and the books of the Law, the Prophets, the Gospels, and the apostles, consecrated in heavenly secrecy?

Clinging and held fast, then, in all these things, the prophet too cries out from the inner secret of his heart, in keeping with the apostle's voice, saying: "Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord." Place him, according to the apostle, lingering in the depth of God's unsearchable and untraceable riches; set him praying from the depth of the surge of human calamities, according to that voice of the Lord in an earlier psalm: "I came into the depth of the sea, and the storm overwhelmed me"; consider him praying not with the lips but, as is commanded, in the secret of the heart: this voice of the speaker fits ignorance, or suffering, or prayer: "Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord," while he either does not know, or suffers, or prays. And since he cries out of the depths, he says with confidence: "Lord, hear my voice; let your ears be attentive to the voice of my prayer."

But we must ask whether "hear my voice" and "let your ears be attentive to the voice of my prayer" are the same thing. For he prays out of the depths, and whatever he prays is deep. And first we must understand that God is incorporeal and does not consist of certain parts and functions of members, from which a single body is made. For we read in the Gospel: "For God is spirit," that is, an invisible, boundless nature, abiding within itself and eternal. It is also written: "For a spirit does not have flesh and bones." Of these the members of a body consist, which the substance of God does not need. But God, who is everywhere and in all things, hears as a whole, sees as a whole, acts as a whole, moves as a whole. And this we are taught from the Scriptures when it is said: "I am a God who draws near, and not from afar"; and again: "For in him we live and move and are." The power of God, then, which is equal and undivided, has the names of functions and members: so that the power by which he sees is his eyes, the power by which he hears is his ears, the power by which he acts is his hands, the power by which he is present is his feet, the might of this power carrying out the diversity of functions. God, then, is everywhere, and wherever he is present he hears, sees, acts; but he must be prayed to by us, so that according to our prayer he may be present, hear, see, act. It belongs to his nature that he hears; but it belongs to our faith that we pray to be heard. He hears those who revile, he hears those who curse, he hears even those who speak within the secret of the heart; but faith carries out its own duty in asking for God's hearing, so that he who hears by his nature may deign to hear through the prayer of the one who prays.

But if anyone perhaps thinks that God is bodily, capable of shape, and differentiated in members (since the eye is not the same as the hand) on account of the saying: "Let us make man in our image and likeness," he must first remember that the constitution of man is contained in two natures, namely soul and body, of which one is spiritual and the other earthly, and that this lower matter was fitted to the efficacy and working of that superior nature. Whoever, then, wishes to believe that God is bodily because man was made in his image will be holding that God is composite, namely of a superior and an inferior nature, because man consists of such. But whatever is composite cannot have been eternal, because composition has a beginning by which it is brought about so that it may remain. But these are the ravings of unbelief, confined within these narrow limits of opinion through the fault of a degenerate mind, by ignorance of the heavenly nature.

God, however, who abiding always and in all things is everywhere the same and nowhere not wholly himself, when, the world now completed, he began his most beautiful work, namely making man in his own image, composed him of a lowly and a heavenly nature, that is, of soul and body. And first he established the soul by that divine work of his power, incomprehensible to us. For when he made man in the image of God, he did not then also make the body. Genesis teaches that long after man had been made in the image of God, dust was taken and the body formed, and then again it was made into a living soul by the breathing of God; that is, this earthly and heavenly nature was joined by a kind of covenant of inbreathing.

The blessed apostle Paul knows that he is at odds with himself through the inner and the outer man. Through the inner man he delights in the law, but through the outer he does what he does not want: while the inner man desires the works of the spirit, the outer craves the pleasures of the body. The inner man, then, was made in the image of God: rational, mobile, moving, swift, incorporeal, subtle, eternal. So far as lies in it, it imitates the form of the principal nature, as it runs across, as it flies around, and quicker than a word is now beyond the ocean, now flies up to the heavens, now is in the abysses, now traverses east and west, as it is never destroyed so as not to exist (the nature of God, indeed, is in all these places), nor departs from one place in order to be present elsewhere. But the human soul in this mobility of its perception was made in the image of God its maker, since the perpetual mobility of the soul imitates the nature of God, having in itself nothing bodily, nothing earthly, nothing heavy, nothing perishable. And let us hear Paul further teaching thus: "Stripping off the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of the creator." Do we put on anything bodily when we are renewed in knowledge? Nothing, I think. But we put on the knowledge of God, faith in eternity, the sincerity of innocence, the habits of goodness. For these are garments of the soul rather than of the body, and all of them are proper to God. These we put on for the knowledge of the new man, so that in every service of our soul we may be, according to the image of the creator, perfect in the knowledge of goodness, holiness, and love. These matters have been treated briefly on account of the ears of God, lest he be thought bodily.

And although these things are as has been said, yet we remember that there are many spiritual powers that bear the name of angels, or that preside over the churches. For according to John there are angels of the churches of Asia. There are also, as Moses testifies, the boundaries of the nations set for the sons of Adam according to the number of the angels. There are also, as the Lord teaches, the angels of the little ones who daily see God. There are, according to Raphael speaking to Tobias, angels who stand before the glory of God and carry the prayers of those who pray to the Lord. We have mentioned this so that, if perhaps we should wish to understand these as the eyes or ears or hands or feet of God, we may have the authority of a not improbable understanding, especially since it is written: "For they are working spirits, sent for service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation." Their intercession, then, is needed not by the nature of God but by our weakness. For they are sent for the sake of those who will inherit salvation: God is ignorant of nothing we do, but our weakness needs the service of spiritual intercession for asking and obtaining.

Then follows: "If you will observe iniquities, O Lord, who will endure?" The reasoning of this saying must not be treated carelessly. For he does not say "if you will observe sins," but "if you will observe iniquities." For iniquity differs from sin. Will God not observe sins, and will there be no remembrance of crimes? Certainly there will: indeed, each one will render account even for an idle word, and everyone sent into prison will pay the last farthing. We are taught that iniquity and sin differ when it is said: "Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered"; and again: "I have acknowledged my iniquity and I have not hidden my sin." For iniquity is every transgression of God's law, and it is graver than sin. The apostle distinguished this very thing most completely, saying: "For those who have sinned without law will perish without law; but those who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law." The sin of iniquity, then, perishes at once, but the sin under the law will be judged. And the sin of iniquity is whatever offense is committed outside the law, as are the crimes of the Gentiles, which are condemned together with their very ignorance of the law. But sins within the law do not perish but are to be judged; because, although they are sins, they are sins within the law. If, then, God were to remember iniquities, who would endure thefts, false witness, murders, acts of sexual immorality, perjuries? For these are the crimes that are committed lawlessly, that is, outside the law of God, and that are washed away by the mystery of the new birth.

But these God plainly no longer remembers; and why he does not remember, the prophet shows in the following verse, saying: "For with you is propitiation." For it is the only-begotten Son of God, God the Word, our redemption, our peace, in whose blood we have been reconciled to God. He it is who came to take away the sins of the world, who, nailing the bond of the law to his cross, blotted out the decree of the old condemnation. Whether, then, the prophet's prayer is thought to be addressed to the Father or to the Son (for both are one, and he who has seen the Son has seen the Father also, because the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father; from the likeness of glory each is glorious in the other: the Son glorious because he is worthy of fellowship with the Father, the Father glorious because the Son is worthy of fellowship with him), the prophet will rightly be believed to have said to whichever you will: "For with you is propitiation": because the Son is in the Father according to the likeness of glory, and the Son himself is propitiation, redemption, and intercession for our sins, not remembering our iniquities because he himself is their propitiation.

The prophet knows that it is a matter of enormous danger to sin lawlessly, that is, without law, since sin without law brings perdition, while sin under the law brings judgment. And therefore he says: "Because of your law I have waited for you, O Lord." The law is holy and spiritual, and in it are the words of life, and Christ is the end of the law; and this is shown in the following verse, for he says: "My soul has waited on your word." The prophet carries out the bodily duties of the law, namely of sacrifices, burnt offerings, new moons, and sabbaths, all of which are a shadow of things to come; but his soul has waited on the Word of God. Because of the law he waits, that is, as I said, he performs the duties of the law bodily; but his soul waits on the Word of God: that is, he awaits with spiritual faith the coming of the Son of God, who is both the Word of God and God the Word. How he awaits it he shows, saying: "My soul has hoped in the Lord from the morning watch until night." Let us recall the tenor of the Gospel comparison and remember that certain workers in the vineyard spent the whole day in labor. The prophet hopes from the morning watch until night: he has no idle time; he is an untiring worker of the whole day.

But what, then, will there be for hope? Not everyone's life spends its whole day in hope of the Lord; for there are workers of the third hour, of the sixth, of the ninth, and of the eleventh. And the prophet, who hoped from the morning watch until night, seems to cut off from us the hope of the Gospel reward. He plainly does not cut it off. For he says: "Let Israel hope in the Lord." The exhortation to hope is without a fixed limit of time. He indeed, as a perfect worker, hoped from the morning watch until night; but all time is open for hope, and the workers of the eleventh hour will obtain a reward not of their work but of mercy. For thus he says: "Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is mercy, and with him abundant redemption; and he will redeem Israel from all their iniquities." He is good in whom we hope; and we must hope in him, because there is mercy, because with him is abundant redemption, because he will redeem all from their iniquities. It is the eleventh hour; the times of the day are closing; let us all run, let us hurry, lest night come, lest the hour pass. We are old; the night of death presses on: shall we not at least come forward at the eleventh hour of our life? Blessed indeed is he who, laboring from morning until night, claims the agreed denarius as due; but, because the Lord is good, because he is merciful, let us hope in him, so that, though workers of the eleventh hour, we may obtain the denarius of the day's labor through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

The psalm is short and is to be explained by distinguishing its parts rather than by a treatise; it teaches us humility and meekness. And since we have treated something of humility in very many other places, it would be idle to repeat the same things. Certainly we ought to remember that humility is the greatest work of our faith, since the prophet mentions it as his consciousness of the best work, saying: "Lord, my heart has not been lifted up." For the best sacrifice to God is a contrite heart. The heart, then, must not be carried away by prosperity, but held in by humility, through the fear of God, within the bounds of meekness.

"Nor have my eyes been lifted up." The Greek has expressed this with a different shade of meaning, saying οὐδὲ ἐμετεωρίσθησαν οἱ ὀφθαλμοί μου, that is, they have not been lifted up from one thing to another. Yet the eyes are to be lifted up, according to the sayings of the prophet: "Lift up your eyes and see who has shown all these things." And the Lord says in the Gospel: "Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are white for harvest." The eyes, then, are to be lifted up; but not lifted again toward something else, so that they may persevere in that to which they have once been lifted.

Then follows: "Nor have I walked in great things, nor in wonderful things above me." It is a matter of great danger if we walk in small things and do not dwell in wonderful things. The words of God are great; he himself is wonderful on high: how, then, does the prophet put forward as a good work of his own that he does not walk in great and wonderful things? But when he added "above me," he does not walk in those things that are believed great and wonderful among men. For David, both prophet and king, was formerly lowly and cast aside, not worthy even of his father's feast; but he pleased God, was anointed king, was inspired as prophet. He does not grow insolent in his kingship; he is not moved by hatreds: he loves those who persecute him, honors the deaths of his enemies, spares his incestuous and parricidal sons. As emperor he is despised, as father he is wronged, as prophet he is harassed: he does not pray for vengeance as a prophet, does not take revenge as a father, does not punish an insult as an emperor. In these things, then, which are great and wonderful above him, he does not walk.

But let us see what follows: "If I did not think humbly, but exalted my soul." What is this contrast in the prophet? He does not exalt his heart; he exalts his soul. He does not walk in great and wonderful things above him; but he does not think humbly. He is lofty in soul and lowly in heart. He is humble in his own affairs, but not humble in thought. For his thought is toward heaven, his soul is on high. But the heart, out of which, according to the Gospel, come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, acts of sexual immorality, thefts, false witness, blasphemies, is humble and subject to that sweet yoke of meekness. The measure of humility and loftiness must be kept, then: that we be humble in heart, but lofty in thought and soul.

Then follows: "As one weaned upon his mother, so will you repay my soul." We have learned that when Isaac was weaned Abraham made a feast, because, being weaned and now near boyhood, he went beyond the food of infancy. The apostle gives milk to drink to all who are untrained in the faith and still infantile in knowledge of the things of God. It is the greatest progress, then, no longer to need milk. For Abraham testified even by the joy of a feast that his son had passed to stronger food, and the apostle denies bread to those who are carnal and little ones in Christ. The prophet therefore prays, because he has not exalted his heart, because he has not walked in his own great and wonderful things, because he has not thought lowly things but has exalted his soul, that his soul may be repaid as one weaned upon his mother: namely, that he may be worthy of the reward of the perfect, heavenly, and living bread, because through the works he mentioned above he has now gone beyond the food of milk.

But he does not pray for this living bread from heaven only for himself; he exhorts all to the hope of it, saying: "Let Israel hope in the Lord from this time forth and for ever and ever." He closes our hope with no end of time; he stretches the faith of our expectation into the boundless. We must hope for ever and ever, attaining through the hope of the present age the hope of the age to come, in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

All the earlier psalms of ascents raise us toward progress in a loftier hope and carry us upward by their steps through the teaching of faith, hope, confession, humility, and prayer. But this psalm above all instructs us in the knowledge of the Son of God and trains us in the mystery of the flesh he assumed. For it begins thus: "Remember, O Lord, David and all his meekness." The Jews, denying the coming of our Lord, in which by a body he restored salvation to the human race, dare to refer this psalm to David, as impious in the Lord's passion as they are unskilled in the knowledge of prophecy: reading and not understanding, possessing and not knowing, venerating and not obeying. For with what pretense of religion they venerate the books of the prophets is known to many. When reading them they do not dare to touch them with the hand; they lay a linen cloth beneath them; they call them as witnesses to the faith of an oath; and the result of this is that, with the greater crime of irreligion, they either despise or ignore or do not know the sayings of those to whom so great an honor is due. This is said because, although they have written in the prophets, long after David had departed from the body, in Jeremiah thus: "In that day, says the Lord, I will break the yoke from their neck and burst their bonds, and they shall no longer serve others; they shall serve the Lord their God, and I will raise up David their king for them"; and again: "I will raise up for them David the king, a rising, a righteous one, and the king shall reign and understand and do justice and judgment on the earth; in his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell confidently"; likewise in Isaiah: "And I will raise up over them one shepherd on high; my servant David shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd, and I will be their God, and David prince in their midst; I the Lord have spoken, and I will make with David a covenant of peace": they will not believe what they are taught, nor do they put faith in those to whom they confess veneration is due. And how will they be religious who deny authority to religion?

David was resting with his fathers; he himself had known the covenant of the law given through Moses; so long afterward God spoke through the prophets of a David to be raised up, shepherd, king, rising, righteous, in whose days would be the salvation of Israel, with whom God would make a covenant of peace. This David, then, is not the son of Jesse, the writer of part of the psalms, but David: shepherd because of the guarding of his flock, for the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep; king because of the glory of an eternal kingdom, he to whom it was said, "Rabbi, you are the king of Israel"; righteous because of judgment, for the Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son; rising because of the light of the world, for he is the true light that enlightens every man coming into this world; heir of the covenant of peace because of the dignity of the Son, for "all things have been given to me in heaven and on earth," and "My peace I leave you." The Jews, then, must confess that these things were proclaimed long after the times of David. And this is the David who received the name of his ancestor according to the origin of the flesh, taking the name of him from whose line he was also taking a body. But everything contained in the psalm differs from the deeds of the prophet David, from the nature of human weakness, and from the times of his life. And since neither the events, nor the condition, nor the time fit him, while they agree with that David whom God afterward promised through the prophets, there is no doubt that this outstanding and great prophet too spoke, by the Spirit of God and in the office of a prophet, of that David who came afterward.

For he says: "Remember, O Lord, David and all his meekness." He does not say "remember me," but "remember, O Lord, David," to show that another was speaking. We must judge that this whole prayer belongs to the only-begotten Son of God speaking through the prophet, asking God the Father's remembrance toward the man whom he was to assume. For Jesus is now, according to the apostle, in the glory of God the Father, and every knee of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth bends to him. So the firstborn Son of God, God the Word, now calls himself David through the prophet's prayer, taking for himself the name of that man of his who, according to the privilege of his divinity, was to be placed together with him in the Father's glory. "Remember, O Lord, David and all his meekness": for he himself says, "For I am meek and humble of heart." And the Father's testimony of him is: "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased; I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will announce judgment to the nations. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets." He prays, then, that the Father may remember all this meekness, through whose modest meekness he vowed to God the Father the service of his humility.

"As he swore to the Lord," it says, "he vowed a vow to the God of Jacob." Mention of an oath is used to declare the will. And I do not know whether the Only-begotten swore. Certainly he so acted and spoke in everything that he seemed to satisfy the religious obligation of an oath. For when he had spoken to his disciples about his passion, and Peter had rejected this as unworthy of the Son of God, he answered with such a rebuke Peter, to whom he had earlier given the keys of the kingdom of heaven, on whom he was to build the church against which the gates of hell would not prevail, whose loosing or binding on earth would remain loosed or bound in heaven: him, then, rejecting this mystery of the passion, he answered: "Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me." So great was his religious obligation to suffer for the salvation of the human race that he called Peter, the first confessor of the Son of God, the foundation of the church, the doorkeeper of the heavenly kingdom, and in earthly judgment the judge of heaven, by the reproach of "Satan." Moreover, in that tumult in which he had offered himself to be handed over to the passion, when the same Peter had cut off the ear of the priest's servant with a sword, he said: "Put your sword back into its sheath: the cup the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?" teaching that it would be impious and profane if he did not fulfil all that he had vowed to the Father for human salvation. He showed absolutely the vowed obligation of his passion when he was about to give up his spirit after the cup of vinegar; for, all things being completed, he said: "It is finished," and bowing his head he gave up his spirit. For he had run through all the duties of his oath; and where there is rejoicing in completion, there is gladness in the perfecting of the work undertaken. Since, then, according to this devotion in his deeds, everything was so done that it seems to have been accomplished zealously for the religious obligation under which it was sworn, it follows that we should see what it is that this David both swore and vowed.

"If I enter the tent of my house, and if I go up to the bed of my couch, if I give sleep to my eyes and slumber to my eyelids and rest to my temples, until I find a place for the Lord, a tent for the God of Jacob." These cannot be the vows of human nature, and the condition of the oath exceeds the weakness of earthly necessity. The tent of his house is not to be entered, the couch of his bed is to be refrained from; sleep to the eyes, slumber to the eyelids, and rest to the temples are not to be given until a place is found for the Lord and a tent for the God of Jacob. He will have to stand, then, night and day under the sky, and his body will never lie down to rest; his eyes will toil, always wakeful, and not even the closing of the eyelids in slumber will be allowed. And the temples, which more than anything in the whole head and body are exposed to the harms of watching and standing, will have no rest. A man is not permitted to swear this about himself; even if he utterly does not want to, he will still break the condition of this vow through the very necessity of his nature. Let the mind keep watch and hold the body at its post, yet, since the nature of weakness prevails, it must fall, sleep, and rest against its will. Then, what place will a man find for God, and in what kind of tent will he contain an incomprehensible and infinite nature? For God himself spoke through the prophet about himself, saying: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet: what house will you build for me, or what is the place of my rest? For my hand made all these things, and all these things are mine." The prophet is not unaware of this divine utterance and knows that a house of human and earthly workmanship cannot belong to God, testifying to this very thing in the previous psalm when he says: "Unless the Lord build the house, they have labored in vain who build it." If, then, neither does man's nature admit the condition of this vow, nor does human workmanship find a place and tent for God, we must learn through the authority of the heavenly Scriptures what this vow is, by whose fulfilment a place has been found for the Lord and a tent for the God of Jacob.

For our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, who fulfilled all the mysteries of human salvation as one under oath, and whom we have shown to be signified by the prophets as David, this was the greatest work: to make man, instructed in divine knowledge, worthy to be a dwelling of God. And that man is the seat and dwelling of God we are taught thus, God himself speaking through the prophet: "For I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people"; and again: "... they will exult, and I will dwell in them." And the Lord himself says in the Gospel: "If anyone loves me, he will also keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come and make our abode with him." The apostle too says: "You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you." God dwells in the minds of the religious not by a bodily presence nor by the entry of a heavier nature, so as to be absent elsewhere and to remain only where he has entered, but by spiritual power he lets himself into hearts emptied of earthly stains, and pours himself, like light, into minds whose doors stand open to innocence, to enlighten them. Having assumed a body, therefore, the only-begotten God swears that he will not enter the tent of his house with his man, that is, return to his heavenly dwelling, before he finds for the Lord these places of the religious heart.