Tractates on the Psalms 142.1–142.14

According to the Hebrews the psalm seems to have no superscription; this is handed down by those learned in both languages. And the other translators wrote nothing at all about the events, that is, about Absalom's pursuit of his father David. But those seventy elders, who had a knowledge of the law and the prophets beyond what is written and the ambiguity of the letter, judged that this should be added to the psalm. The reason for this judgment we taught at the beginning of the Psalms, by which we know that nothing but the prophetic is to be treated in the psalms. For since the speech does not fit the events nor the order the times, it remains that we be taught that all the events in David were also understood by them as an example and knowledge of what is to be done. A superscription has been placed on the psalm now, then, which does not stand in the book, so that, where it does stand (that is, as in the third psalm, in which he is written to have fled from the face of him who is now written to pursue), we might be called to the knowledge of prophetic understanding.

David, then, now prophesies the Lord's sufferings by his own sufferings: not complaining of Absalom, but of those who inflamed Absalom to the crime of impiety. For according to the apostle the darts of the devil are fiery, which threw themselves into the heart of Judas so that the Lord might be betrayed, and now work in the sons of disobedience. For this reason the Lord, having assumed the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin in the flesh because of sin. We shall treat the psalm, then, in the person of a prophet who understands that he is placed in a body of sin and is wearied by many and grave temptations of the devil through a man. For as the Lord was not unaware that the prince of the world had done these things to him through the Jews and Judas, when he says to the apostles, "Behold, one of you is a devil" (for he is shown to be wholly this, because he was animated by him), so David too understands, in Absalom, those through whom Absalom is such. And since the discussion of this was broader in the third psalm, let us now treat the words of the psalm itself, remembering that everything said under the name of the prophet is also to be referred to the person of the Lord, who, emptying himself from the form of God and taking the form of a servant, professed himself a man of our nature, most weak, even to the point of not knowing his own day and hour.

"O God, hear my prayer; give ear to my supplication; in your truth hear me, in your righteousness." First he asks that his prayer be heard, because it belongs to human humility to long for God's hearing of what it prays. Then, according to prophetic knowledge, he demands to be heard in God's truth. For this faithful man God is not from the elements of the world, not from the names of kings, not from the error of the world in stones and metals and wood, but is to him the true God, eternal, almighty, and maker of the universe. The third request too is that he be heard in God's righteousness. God is not of a tyrannical will, not an arbiter of harsh and unjust obstinacy, but one who takes account of human weakness and does not measure these most ready slips of our changeable nature by the unbending constancy of his unchangeable substance, but, just and moderate, expects from man only as much as he remembers is possible for human nature.

And therefore he added to his prayer to be heard in God's righteousness: "And do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no living one will be justified in your sight." For what hope is there if God wishes to judge us according to himself, if he demands the innocence of our life by comparison with himself? And who of the living can be justified in God's sight, in whom anger, pain, desire, ignorance, forgetfulness, chance, necessity are always mixed, whether through the nature of the body or through the motion of an ever-wavering soul, and over whom daily the gravest enemy looms, namely the devil, lying in wait for the soul of the faithful man and pursuing it to destruction? For he teaches that this is the reason why no living one can be justified in God's sight: "For the enemy has pursued my soul; he has humbled my life to the earth; he has placed me in dark places like the dead of the world." Darkness is poured out through the vices of the body, and when through the snares of the devil we fall into the desires of the flesh, driven from the light of knowledge we are placed in darkness, sunk in the darkness of the Gentiles and held in the night of worldly works.

But however much the enemy, pursuing the soul and humbling it in the body, places it in darkness as one dead to the world, yet the anxiety of a spiritual man is not held by these darknesses of the body, and his heart is troubled over this very weakness of his nature, and, fighting against vices, he turns his man to the memory of his first constitution and to meditation on the works of God. For the enemy has placed him in darkness not as dead to the world, but as if dead to the world: by which the freedom of the spirit, always anxious in itself, is preserved.

For there follows: "And my spirit was anxious within me; within me my heart was troubled. I remembered the days of old; I meditated on all your works; I meditated on the works of your hands." He knows that Adam was captured by the devil, and therefore he remembers the days of old. He knows that through transgression of the established law he fell from the promises of God and from dwelling in paradise, and therefore he remembers the works of God. He knows that innocence in the past is not enough, but that blessed is he who has remained innocent to the end, and therefore he meditates on the works of God's hands. Man himself is the work of God's hands; who, after he sinned, became a servant of sin. He meditates, then, on being such as was the one made by God before sin. And since through this he has been placed in darkness not as dead to the world but as if dead to the world, he will always meditate; and he will always meditate because, remembering the days of old, he knows that through the transgression of the law the death of sin entered.

But in that he both remembered the days of old and meditated and will meditate on the works of God, although he began this by his own faith, yet, lest he be thought insolent, he shows that it is not his own but granted him by the help of God, to whom he prayed, saying: "I stretched out my hands to you; my soul is like earth without water." Earth without water is dry and barren and always waits to be watered by the shower of heavenly rain: so the soul of the saint, conscious of its nature, desires to be moistened by the gift of the divine word, of which Moses says: "Let my saying be awaited like rain, and let my words come down like dew, like rain upon the grass and like snow upon the hay." The dry and thirsty soul, then, is drenched with such a shower of prophetic teaching that, dead and starved by the dryness of nature, it grows green again into rich fruits through the knowledge of God's commandments.

Now in what follows is the confession of human faith and conscience, the impatience of the prophet's desire being shown through the interposition of the diapsalma. "Hear me quickly, O Lord; my spirit has failed." The prophet does not bear the delays of his body, and, according to that saying of the apostle, "To be dissolved and to be with Christ is better," and that one, "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?" and that one, "For in this old tabernacle we groan, longing to be clothed over," he too suffers weariness in this body of death; but he desires the speed of the help which he asks because of the failing of his spirit to be fulfilled with the grace of the divine gift in him. For what will it profit him to have been heard quickly unless he departs from the body as one faithful and pleasing to God and about to rest in blessed places?

And therefore he says: "Do not turn your face away from me, and I shall be like those who go down into the pit." Scripture mentions the pit as the penal place of the underworld, as it says in these psalms: "You, O Lord, have drawn my soul from the underworld; you have saved me from those who go down into the pit." Unless, then, the face of God, which is surely Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, is present to each saint, he will be like those who, assigned to the punishments of hell, have departed this life without hope of rest.

But the prophet does not doubt about his hope, nor is he outside the confidence of Gospel security: earlier indeed in time, but in spirit a sharer in the joy of the apostles, who, beholding the resurrection of the Lord, believed in the eternity of perishable bodies. For he says next: "Make me hear your mercy in the morning, for in you I have hoped, O Lord." The joy of this morning mercy is shown in very many places, as when it says: "Weeping will linger at evening, and joy in the morning." For this is the time of the resurrection, in which through God's mercy the power of death has been broken; and this mercy, because the prophet hoped in it, he desires to hear.

Then follows: "Make known to me the way in which I should walk, for to you I have lifted up my soul." The apostle sees through a mirror and in a riddle, and knows in part and prophesies in part. The prophet too, as one ignorant through the nature of human frailty, prays that the ways in which he should walk be made known to him. For these ways of the world are not useful: he desires to know those spiritual and heavenly ones. For he says: "For to you I have lifted up my soul." His soul is not in lowly things but on high, and therefore he asks for knowledge of lofty ways. For he knows that there are enemies to him who call him away into other ways, who lead him into another will. Of these spiritual enemies the apostle spoke much and often. From these, then, he prays to be rescued, and asks to know the narrow way that leads to heaven, to be taught concerning the Lord's will, and to be led by his Spirit into right land: that is, that he may be established as a man not perverted by vices. For how will he be thought to have desired to be directed into right land in terms of the nature of this element, unless it is that, according to the nature of the first man, to whom it was said after sin, "You are earth and to earth you will go," he desires to be established as an upright and unbent man? For this is contained under these words: "Make known to me the way in which I should walk, for to you I have lifted up my soul. Rescue me from my enemies, O Lord; I have fled to you. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Your good Spirit will lead me into right land for your name's sake, O Lord."

The apostle's confession agrees with his saying, "Teach me to do your will": what was said through him: "And he who thinks he knows does not yet know as he ought to know." But if we do not yet even know how to pray and do not know how to speak our desires, the Spirit rather interceding for us with unutterable groanings and making up for our ignorance by the disposition of hidden knowledge, according to this saying of the apostle, "For we do not know what we should pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with unutterable groanings," the prophet is not believed to pray in a disordered way when he prays to be taught to fulfil God's will. And that is a fitting profession of human modesty: that he should not claim as his own merit that he is to be led by the Spirit of God into right land, nor ask it for himself on account of the satisfaction of his own service, but should await all this for the glorifying of God's name in him, so that he may be established in right land for the honor of God's name.

And since he knows that this right land cannot be granted to him in the body of this death, because the stain of human flesh, through the habit of vices mixed into it, cannot be wholly abolished except with a change of nature, he asks to be given life, as though he did not yet live, saying: "You will give me life in your equity. You will bring my soul out of tribulation, and in your mercy you will destroy my enemies, and you will destroy all who afflict my soul, for I am your servant." The justice of modesty indeed held this, as we said: that whatever blessedness he hopes for, he should ask it rather for the sake of God's magnificence (because it is worthy of God to grant blessed, eternal, and good things) than for his own merit. But nevertheless, while putting first the honor and mercy of God, he did not exclude the duty of deserving it too by himself. For when he is to be given life, he is to be given life in equity, because it is equitable that life be repaid to the service of holiness. And when, through God's mercy, as he is brought out of tribulation, his enemies are to be destroyed, it is no longer a mercy of indiscriminate and confused judgment, when the same mercy that brings him out of tribulation destroys his enemies: because the judgment of mercy is tempered according to the difference of merits, either toward punishment or toward salvation.

The prophet shows that his enemies are not mild, but such as pursue even the soul: not that it can be killed with the body, but that it is so wearied by diabolical assaults and driven by the incitements of vices subject to them that it deserves to be killed by the Lord. But that his enemies too should perish, although God's name and mercy are chiefly for this, yet there is also this reason: that he whose soul they pursue is God's servant. Both generosity and merit are mingled, and to the Lord's mercy are joined the faith and name of the servant too: so that the mercy of God, although ready for all, may be understood to stand by those who are his servants, through him and in him who says: "I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the age," our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed now and always and for all ages of ages. Amen.