Tractates on the Psalms 132.1–134.11

Through the whole order of teaching we climb by steps; for by steps we are carried up to higher things. In that the prophet began thus, "Behold, how good and how pleasant," we are taught what is good and pleasant, so that by knowing them we may remain in what is good and pleasant. The prophet knowingly kept the reasoning of joining good and pleasant, because not everything that is good is pleasant, nor is everything that is pleasant good. Luxury is pleasant, but it is not good; for in that very charm of bodily wantonness there is damage both to health and to reputation. Bearing injury is good, when we are pressed toward irreligion by the punishments of hunger, thirst, cold, sleeplessness, insults, and pains; but it is not pleasant, for there the duty of perfect virtue is hurtful. And so, through these things, the good sometimes lacks pleasantness, and pleasantness often lacks what is good.

Let us see what it is that the prophet shows to be good and pleasant: namely, "for brothers to dwell in unity." The prophet did not praise human cohabitation nor the sharing of earthly houses. For we see brothers at odds over the very sharing of roofs, and living in the same dwelling often holds enemies; and sometimes the very resentment of living together adds fuel to hatreds. But the apostle knew there is a common and religious house, saying: "That you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." So it is good and pleasant for brothers to dwell in unity. When they dwell in unity, they are gathered in the assembly of the church; when they are called brothers, they are in harmony through the love of a single will.

For at the first preaching of the apostles we read that this was the special praise of believers, as it is said: "For the heart and soul of all who believed were one": one in assent, not discordant in will, partners in faith, perfect in unanimity of love and judgment. And the teacher of the Gentiles testifies to this, saying: "That you may all be perfect in the same mind and the same judgment"; and again: "Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, of one accord, thinking one thing, doing nothing through rivalry or empty glory, but in humility each counting the others as surpassing himself, each of you looking not to his own things but to those of others." This is the apostle's joy: that we be of the same mind, held together by the same love, remain of one accord through the judgment of one mind, not be separated by rivalry nor divided by the pursuit of empty glory, and that each ought to think not of his own things but of others', so that we consider the means by which the wills of others may be kept in harmony. This he urges in another place, saying: "If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, being at peace with all." He wants it to depend on us that, if possible, there be peace with all. Let our will be devoted to friendship with all, if the nature of others too has a disposition to peace, provided that the cause of peace being broken or not kept does not arise from us. This, then, befits the people of God: to be brothers under one Father, to be one under one Spirit, to walk of one mind under one roof, to be members of one body under one head. For the eye does not hate the ear, nor the nostrils loathe the mouth, nor does the hand spurn the foot. For as these are bound to one another by mutual services, so also by love. This is pleasant and good, for brothers to dwell in unity: to be in the same, to be the same, and to become different neither in assembly nor in love.

The prophet set up a comparison for this good and pleasant thing, saying: "Like the ointment from the head, which ran down upon the beard of Aaron, which ran down upon the hem of his garment." Aaron was anointed priest with an ointment whose composition and blending consists of spices. This consecration of his first priest was pleasing to God. We know too that our Lord was anointed invisibly and incorporeally, when it is said: "God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness." This anointing is not earthly; it is incorporeal, invisible: he is anointed not with oil as a priest and prophet, not with a horn as a king, but with the oil of gladness. This is the work of spiritual joy, and the fruit of gladness is applied to the mystery of the heavenly anointing; it is not the material of a creature. Since bodily things needed bodily things, Aaron is anointed with a blended perfume; but what is bodily, imbued through the efficacy of spiritual power, imitates the form of the heavenly oil. Finally, after this anointing Aaron is called, according to the law, christ, after the blending of the anointing, through the fact that it was shown to be blended by God, is consecrated as a figure of the invisible anointing. As, then, this perfume extinguishes all foul smells and unclean breaths of hearts wherever it is poured, and this sweet fragrance pours itself into everything into which it is brought, so through this mystery of poured ointment, and through it, all the stench of our earthly and filthy vices being wiped away, we now breathe toward God what is sweet. The blessed apostle Paul knew this spirit of sweet fragrance, saying thus: "We are the good fragrance of Christ to God in every place, among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the latter a fragrance from death to death, to the former a fragrance from life to life": showing that as we are a fragrance of life to the living, so we are a fragrance of death to those who would die in their sins. But this fragrance of Christ from us is good to God. As, then, this ointment proved pleasing to God in the first priest, Aaron, with which he was anointed as a pattern of the oil of gladness, offering from himself to God a pleasing fragrance of faith and innocence, so it is good and pleasant for brothers to dwell in unity, by which unanimity of the same will is compared to the first and greatest mysteries of heavenly goods.

The ointment runs down from the head onto the beard. The beard is the adornment of manly age. For we ought not to be little ones in Christ except only in the sense of the saying, "Little ones in malice, not in understanding." The same apostle rebukes all the unfaithful as little ones because, remaining weak for solid food, they still need milk, saying: "I gave you milk to drink, not food; for you were not able, and even now you are not able." But of himself thus: "When I became a man, I put away the things of a little child." He hastens to attain to the perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fullness of the body of Christ. This ointment, then, ran down from the head onto Aaron's beard, that is, onto the man of perfected faith. The head of the man, according to the apostle, is Christ. Moses composed and blended this ointment; but God taught how it was to be composed and blended, and God was the mediator in the law. From the head, then, that is, from Christ, it ran down onto the beard; and it ran down from him to whom it is said: "Your name is ointment poured out." It ran down onto one who, through the firmness of age, would remain in the firmness of unchangeable faith. It ran down also onto the hem of the garment. The hems of the garment are what flow down to the feet, by which this fragrance of ointment runs down to the whole body from the head to the beard and then to the hem of the garment. In those women who, anointing the Lord, bore in the Gospel a figure of the church, we are taught thus: that one anointed his head, another his feet; by which each of them is signified to have anointed, in one part of the body, the whole body. So the middle parts of the body are passed over; for when the hem of the garment and the beard are mentioned, the whole body is shown in them.

The likeness of another comparison is also added, when it is said: "Like the dew of Hermon, which comes down upon Mount Zion." Dew will not come down from Hermon onto Zion; for these mountains are separated from each other by a great distance. Nor indeed does nature allow dew to be seen to come down from place to place. But Zion, according to heavenly teaching, is the church, either the one that now is or the one of the saints that will be, which through the resurrection is thronged by the company of the glorified and of rejoicing angels. Hermon, however, is a mountain in Phoenicia, whose meaning is "anathema"; for what we call anathema is in Hebrew called Hermon. It is reported, about which a book of someone or other also exists, that the angels, desiring the daughters of men, when they came down from heaven, gathered on this exceedingly high mountain. But let us pass over these things. For what is not contained in the book of the Law we ought not even to know; they have been mentioned only because the prophet's statement about this mountain of God moved us. Certainly today the Gentiles venerate this mountain with a profane religion, and by that very seat of impious superstition testify to the meaning of its name, which is "anathema."

Dew comes from heaven, and we remember that it is desired among the gifts of blessing, when Isaac says to Jacob: "And may God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth abundance." Since, then, the gifts and blessings of God, with which he first blessed all things when they were created and made, afterward through Adam's sin came to stand under the anathema, it is pleasing to God that they should return again and come down to the seat of sanctification. For man was blessed; but after the blessing, as soon as he sinned, he was at once impious. But he who prefers the repentance of the sinner to his death wills that the dew of his blessing should come down from Hermon onto Zion, that is, pass over from the seat of impiety to the place of sanctification. For by dew all things grow green, are nourished, increase: so by that primal blessing of God man is begotten, breathes, grows. It is good and pleasant, then, that man, coming down from Gentile error, that is, from the profane veneration of Hermon, should pass over to Zion, that is, to the house of eternal blessedness, and delight him who rejoices in the salvation of all, "because there the Lord has commanded blessing and life for ever": in Zion, that is, or also in the unanimity of brothers dwelling together. For the church alone bestows blessings; unanimity earns eternal life. For he who, opening the way of eternal life, said, "Love one another as I have loved you," is no liar. For he himself is the truth, the way, the life, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

The songs of ascents come to their end, but an end worthy of their ascents. For since by them one climbs to knowledge of the heavenly mystery, it follows that blessing is afterward owed to him to whom the climb has been made. The prophet therefore calls everyone to bless the Lord, and, as if all things were completed, gathers all to bear witness to the honor due, saying: "Behold now, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord." In saying "behold now" he signifies that the work of the laborious ascent is complete, so that they may now bless, because by making progress they have ascended. He is to be blessed because he has carried us on high, because he has raised us by the steps of faith to the height of his house. But the mouth of a sinner is unworthy of blessing God; and therefore he says: "all his servants." Not everyone's blessing is acceptable to God, nor should just anyone think he can please him. This belongs only to the servant of God, not to the servant of sin nor the servant of the world. "For everyone," it says, "who commits sin is the servant of sin." It belongs to the servant of God, then, to bless his Lord with a religious mouth.

And this will not belong even to a servant who professes himself a servant by name only, who even now, hesitant and wavering, is carried about by the uncertain wind of faith, whose thought and will wander off into the remembrance of sins and the cares of pleasures. And therefore, when he had said, "Behold now, bless the Lord, all his servants," he added: "you who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of the Lord." He who stands is not moved from his place. He has already run, has already ascended, already remains immovable, already drinks eagerly that blessed voice of the prophet: "He set my feet upon a rock"; and again: "On a rock you have exalted me"; and he will hear, as if said to himself as to Moses: "But you, stand here with me." But of sinners we read thus: "They loved to move their feet." One must stand, then, in the house of the Lord, because the blessing of those who stand is pleasing, of those standing in that holy and heavenly house, Jerusalem, thronged with angels, to which one climbs through this house of the church and our assembly.

And since there are many dwellings with the Father, those bless the Lord who stand not only in the house but also in its courts. Not every house is a court. Whatever is outside the court is also the house; but the court is the more inward and intimate seat. Those, then, who are in the court will stand further within, because, although it is a dignity to stand in the house, yet he who has stood in the court goes beyond. That those in the house and those in the court are different, the prophet shows elsewhere, saying: "Planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God." To have flowered is the greater fruit. And although planting has its dignity, yet the honor of those who blossom surpasses it, because, as the beginning is in the planting, so the joy of good work is in the flower.

I have found some in doubt about this, saying that "in the courts of the house of the Lord" was added by the first translators because it is contained under the same verses in the following psalm, they themselves supposing that it had been omitted in the Hebrew books by a scribal fault. But let the new interpreters treat these matters as they will: we must defer to the authority and antiquity of the translations.

The prophet urges us to this hope of standing in the house and in the courts of the Lord, saying: "In the nights lift up your hands to the holy places, and bless the Lord." For, according to the apostle, we live under the rulers of this darkness, and the night of the world holds us, which through the preaching of the Gospel is already advancing toward light. "For the night is far spent; walk decently as in the day." In this night, then, of ignorance, snares, weaknesses, desires, and vices, the hands are to be lifted up to the holy places, not only for praying and entreating but also for working. For bare prayers do not avail; our works are to be lifted up to the holy things of God, that is, in clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, comforting the afflicted, helping the oppressed, loving all. For these sanctify us in this weakness of our body; these are pleasing and holy to God. And the prophet is not unaware of this, saying: "The lifting up of my hands is an evening sacrifice." For now, at the consummation of the age, which is the evening, the offering to God is not in bulls and goats but in good works. Moses taught us by example: when he stood with hands raised, he was winning, but when they were lowered to the ground he gave the people over to be defeated by the enemy, showing by this figure that if our works are earthly, our enemy wins, but if they are lofty, he is to be defeated. Our hands, then, are to be lifted up in the nights, that we may be planted in the house and flourish in the courts. And the Lord is to be blessed, that is, we must always work with God's blessing: lest, when you give bread to the needy, you be sad for fear of hunger; lest, when you offer means to one in want, you think it a loss; lest, when you clothe the naked, you think you are being stripped. "For God loves a cheerful giver."

And what the joyful and blessing works of lifted hands deserve, he shows, saying: "May the Lord bless you out of Zion": the Lord, that is, of the church and of the holy Jerusalem and of the city built of the living stones of gems. And so that we might know that all our hope is placed in the true and eternal God, he added: "who made heaven and earth," showing that the God of the churches is he who made heaven and earth: through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

To the simplicity of hearers the psalm seems plain. For it contains, for the most part, what is written in the book of Exodus: the plagues of Egypt, Pharaoh's punishment, the deaths of kings, and the inheritance gained of a hostile land. But if, according to the apostle, what is in the law is a shadow of things to come, and what was done in it are things spoken allegorically, they must not be heard carelessly, since under the faithfulness of bodily events they have been set as an example of spiritual works. It is a matter of great care to weigh the force of the words placed and to know what is proper to each thing under the meaning of what has been said. For not everyone knows the kinds and virtues of herbs. If someone unskilled and ignorant comes into a field rich in these healthful herbs, he will pass them all by, thinking them useless and grown at random; but if one skilled and learned enters this most precious field of plants, he will gather everything others passed by and will admire what the ignorant neglected, knowing when is the useful time for gathering them, for what kinds of healing they are to be used, and how much of them, or how far, is to be measured out. So too we must understand it to be in the divine Scriptures: if unskilled ears and a rustic mind hear them, they neglect them as idle and unnecessary; but if a hearer and reader stands by who is eager for the knowledge of God, and to whom frequent reading and the gift of spiritual grace have given the skill to judge and understand each thing, he will admire everything and use it according to its natural virtues and efficacies, not ignorant of when something is to be taken and for what cure it is to be chosen, when healing is to be given from it to the body and when medicine to the soul, so that nothing be premature, nothing ill-timed or late, but, comparing virtues, times, and things, he may use skillfully what he has learned. This is understood to be so especially in this psalm. For in an incredible way the words have been fitted to the events, so that, while faithfully stating what was done, they nevertheless, so placed, offer a greater advance in inner and spiritual understanding. Nor was this reasoning kept only so that the things done bodily might be recalled to show God's magnificence, but also so that, through the circumstances of the deeds and the force of the names, they might offer in what was done an example of what we are to do. It is necessary, then, to distinguish each of these by persons, times, and virtues, so that what incurious ears may perhaps have lost as unnecessary may be applied to the healing and cure of human unbelief. And this we shall be taught by the very contents of the psalm, which begins thus:

"Praise the name of the Lord; praise the Lord, you servants, who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the Lord our God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is kind; sing psalms to his name, for it is sweet." And we must observe at the beginning of the psalm that it calls us to the praise of God, whereas in the previous psalm it urged us only to blessing. There is no doubt that blessing goes before praise: for the first honor is placed in blessing, but it is completed in praise. And praise is not to be begun confusedly, but confessed in order and measure. For this is first: "Praise the name of the Lord." We are admonished first, then, to praise the name of the Lord: that he is God of heaven, God of the earth, God of the world, and, what is proper to our faith and hope, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In these, first, is praise to God.

The next command is: "Praise the Lord, you servants." Through knowledge of God's name we advance to knowledge of him. For now we praise not the name of the Lord but the Lord, knowing why he is God of heaven, why God of the earth, why God of the world, why God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For having passed beyond these first rudiments of childish teaching, we praise God no longer through the obedience of subjects but through the magnificence of his boundless power; and we praise him as his servants: and not only as his servants called by the bare name of our profession, but as standing in his house, no longer wandering or straying but established with the firmness of those who stand; and not only standing, but in the court of the Lord our God, received into the more inward and central seat of the house. In this order, then, praise is begun by servants and by those who stand in the house and in the court.

God is to be praised because he is kind. For that he is almighty is the power of his nature; but that he is kind is necessary for us, whom the weakness of the body and the condition of our origin hold in sins. And what hope is there for human offenses if kindness is absent from God? But the reasoning of the words must be considered: for he who is to be praised because he is kind, to his name we must sing psalms because it is sweet. "Sing psalms to his name, for it is sweet." Where "sing psalms" is said, it refers to the works of the body, so that through the manifold works of our instrument, that is, the body, a harmonious and fitting praise may be made to God. We are commanded, then, to sing psalms to his name, because it is sweet. For it is sweet to God that our bodies should serve him with pleasing and approved service: or rather that very name of the Lord is sweet.

And what sweetness either his name or singing psalms to him has in itself, he at once added, saying: "For the Lord has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel for his possession." The beginning of the origin of the Jews, according to the sanctification of the race, is Abraham, for to him first came the word of God; why, then, did the Lord choose Jacob rather than Abraham? Then, since Israel is the same as Jacob according to the address of naming, why is it added again: "Israel for his possession"? Order required that Abraham, the head of the election, be mentioned, not Jacob, who is already third in the election. Reason also urged that the meaning of Israel be understood in Jacob. Moreover, there is this too: that he who is Jacob is chosen, he who is Israel is possessed.

But at the beginning of our discussion we pointed out that things from bodily events are recalled in the psalm in which the form of the future shines as in a mirror, and that the words are fitted to the events in such a way that, while stating what was done, they nevertheless bring us a fuller understanding of what was spiritually prefigured in the events. The name of God is sweet, not to one nation only, and that an irreligious one, but now to all nations and tongues. For he chose for himself Jacob, who supplanted the elder, bought the birthright for food and from the despair of the one who sold it, carried off the blessing, did not regret his servitude, then after the wrestling saw God and was named Israel. For first he is Jacob, and then Israel. Let us look around at the body of the church, which, through the difference of faith, holds itself to be both Jacob and Israel. This company too supplants the people of the law by faith, receives its birthright, and carries off its blessing, according to the saying of the Lord: "From the days of John the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent carry it off." It is Jacob, then, that is chosen, as the Lord says: "I chose you, not you me." It is Israel that is possessed: known in the birthrights and blessings that passed it by, faithful in a servitude of long time, strong in the mystery of the wrestling, persistent in winning blessings again, and Israel in the knowledge and sight of God.

The Spirit of prophecy knows this all-powerful sweetness of God's name in gathering the nations and possessing the faithful, saying: "For I have known how great the Lord is." The prophet speaks with the service of his own mouth, but not with his own knowledge. This voice is his who says: "No one knows the Father except the Son and him to whom the Son wills to reveal him"; and the Son indeed will reveal the Father to whom he wills, but no one knows his greatness, as the prophet says: "Of whose greatness there is no end." Knowledge of this infinity, then, will belong to him alone who, according to the perfect fullness of his origin, is himself the image of the Infinite.

"For I have known how great the Lord is, and our God is above all gods." He is not above all those gods of whom he says below: "The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the works of men's hands: they have a mouth and will not speak"; for there is nothing great if he is preferred when compared with metals, stones, and wood. And since these are not gods, we must ask whom he called gods. For the church does not acknowledge a multitude of gods. This is the error of the Gentiles, to invent or believe in the intercourse, conceptions, procreations, and successions of gods. But for us, according to the apostle, there is one God, from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord, our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. One from one, God from God. The Unbegotten does not admit another, so that there should be two; nor does the fact that the Only-begotten is one exclude his being God. There are not two unbegotten, there are not two only-begotten: in what each is, each is one; since neither does the Only-begotten have an equal of his kind, nor does the Unbegotten admit one, nor does the only-begotten God subsist from any other than the unbegotten God.

We must see, however, above which gods our God is. I find gods spoken of through the prophet thus: "God stood in the assembly of gods, and in the midst he judges between gods." And this seems ambiguous and does not state clearly enough which gods it means. But the Lord in the Gospels freed us from error about this naming, saying: "I said, you are gods, and all sons of the Most High"; and he added: "If, then, he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be broken." God's word cannot be broken: men are called gods. I find Moses too called a god, when it is said to him: "I have made you a god to Pharaoh." But the apostle too taught that others are called gods, when he says: "For even if there are those called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things." For us, indeed, there is one God and one Lord; but there are many gods who are called so in heaven and on earth. And indeed, if this name of gods belongs to men according to the sentence of God, much more is it worthy of angels, archangels, thrones and dominions, powers, principalities, whom the apostle shows are called gods in heaven.

These, then, are those who are so called; but our God is above all: not by comparison, since he excels beyond comparison, but he is above the rest in power; and how he is above the rest he shows at once, saying: "All that he willed he has done in heaven and on earth, in the sea and in the depths." It belongs to God alone to do all that he wills. For only perfect power is in nothing hindered from doing what it wills; and to him from whom all things are, no difficulty arises. It belongs to a nature inferior to him not to accomplish all that it wills. For whoever owes what he is to another lacks the power of omnipotence, because for the very thing that he subsists he has another author. And he who does not owe himself to himself cannot do all things, since he subsists from a greater. But let us see what it is that the omnipotence of God did according to his will in heaven and on earth, in the sea and in the depths.

It is indeed a great thing if we behold the unchanging firmness of heaven; the sun, regulated in its yearly and untiring courses and tempering the changes of the year within fixed limits; the perpetual changes of the moon too, and the undisturbed risings, settings, and turnings of the constellations; and then the riches of the earth and its fertile fruits for the life of men, cattle, birds, and beasts; then the seas full of their inhabitants and the life of fish breathing within the waves; and further, since the Greek has spoken of seas in the plural, the incalculable tides of the ocean and the impenetrable nature of the capacious abyss, by which the surge poured out upon the land is sucked back. But although these things, according to human opinion, are full of wonders, and it might rightly be said of them, "All that he willed he has done in heaven and on earth, in the sea and in the depths," let us see what all those things are that he willed and did.