Tractates on the Psalms 143.1–143.22

For this psalm too the Seventy thought this superscription should be added: "A psalm of David against Goliath," although it is not found in the Hebrew books, and the other translators prefixed nothing other than the simple title, that is, "David." That this was not done without a spiritual reason is taught by the text of the psalm itself; and this psalm has nothing proper to it that can be referred to rejoicing over the slaying of Goliath, since much in it is rather contrary both to the events and to the time. For when it is said, "subjecting my people under me," was David king then? Or what people was subject to him then, if that of the foreigners was not his? But not even Israel itself could be subject to him while Saul still reigned. Then too: "O Lord, bow the heavens and come down; touch the mountains and they will smoke; flash lightnings and you will scatter them": what prayer will this be understood to be for the time of a human war? Or, since according to the title Goliath had been killed, what do these prayers mean: "Rescue me and deliver me from many waters and from the hand of foreign sons"? Or, since there was only one king in Israel, what is the saying, "who gives salvation to kings"? The plural number excludes the understanding of that time in which only one was held king. But since these things are not so in the Hebrew books and the other translators added none of them, we understand that these seventy elders left us a sense of spiritual knowledge, so that we might know that the war of Satan and of the Lord was prefigured in David and Goliath, since neither did the superscription stand in the books nor did the speech of the prophecy agree with the events.

The nature of Latin often brings us difficulty of understanding, since it is not accustomed to put articles before names, as happens with the name of David. For without the article it is uncertain whether the psalm arose concerning him or through him. For when "a psalm of David" is written, the mere writing of the name makes it ambiguous whether it was spoken by him or on account of him. But the Greek, when it signifies that a psalm was written by David, writes the title thus: ψαλμὸς τοῦ Δαυίδ; but when it wants a psalm to be understood as written about David, it heads it thus: ψαλμὸς τῷ Δαυίδ, distinguishing through the proper meaning of each article whether David is the author or the cause of the psalm written. So the superscription of this psalm contains τῷ Δαυίδ: for thus it has it, which means that it was written on account of him or for him rather than by him. From this too it is shown by the superscription of the psalm that this psalm was sung by the power of the Spirit through the prophet's mouth about that man whom the Lord assumed, being born in him, and whom we have taught is very often named David.

"Blessed be the Lord my God, who teaches my hands for war and my fingers for battle." If this psalm is assigned to rejoicing over the slain Goliath because it is said, "who teaches my hands for war," let them accept the example that this rather fits the person of the Lord. For in the seventeenth psalm, which stands wholly in the person of the Lord, we remember this same thing said thus: "who teaches my hands for battle and has made my arms like a bow of bronze." And that nothing in the whole psalm can be referred to that David is taught especially by these words: "He heard my voice from his holy temple, and my cry before him entered his ears. And the earth was moved and trembled, and the foundations of the mountains were shaken"; and this: "They cried out, and there was no one to save them, to the Lord, and he did not hear them. And I will crush them like dust before the face of the wind; like the mud of the streets I will destroy them. You will rescue me from the contradictions of the people; you will set me as head of the nations. A people I did not know has served me; at the hearing of the ear it has obeyed me." The inept understanding of those who contend that David said these things about himself is refuted by the facts themselves: since all things agree, by spiritual reasoning and in deed, with that man whom the Lord, born in him, assumed.

His hands, then, were taught for war when he conquers the world: "For I," he says, "have conquered the world"; when, stretched out on the cross, he is equipped with the most invincible arms of his passion itself: "and you have made," he says, "my arms like a bow of bronze"; when he triumphs over all powers and authorities in the trophy of his glorious cross: "For he led away principalities and powers with confidence, triumphing over them in himself"; when he makes peace between the heavenly and earthly things at odds with each other: "And in him," it says, "all things were reconciled to him, making peace through the blood of his cross, whether things on earth or things in heaven." For this war, then, his hands were taught, in which bows of bronze conquer in the contest, the powerful are triumphed over in disgrace, and enemies are reconciled in peace. But after the war of the hands follows also the battle of the fingers. For the whole posture and fight of the passion is shown in him. For the hands are stretched out and the fingers are nailed in the palms: blotting out, according to the apostle, the old bond and fixing it to the cross, he also recalls in the battle those parts of the hands with which all the sins of the old crimes were nailed.

Then follows: "My mercy and my refuge, my upholder and my deliverer are you, my protector, and in him I have hoped." These have no difficulty. For all these things were done and said by him in the Gospels, so that he might proclaim the honor of the Father's majesty through the confession of our lowliness, whose garb he had assumed.

But what he says, "subjecting my people under me," must not be thought said in the person of the one Jewish people, since in another psalm he called the whole church one people, saying: "A people I did not know has served me." And that this people too, which did not know him, is his, the Gospels teach, when they say: "He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him." But lest this people, which he did not know and which served him, should be thought not to have been his because it was not known, that divine song of Moses excludes all this error of ambiguity, saying: "When the Most High divided the nations, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of his angels, and the people of Jacob became the Lord's portion, Israel the measured lot of his inheritance." This Israel had been chosen for an eternal inheritance; and therefore, since it was the Lord's portion, the others were held as if unknown, because those had been chosen by the privilege of the portion. But all are his, because they owe what they are to him as their author.

They are subjected to him when it is said, "As you have given him power over all flesh, that to all you have given him he may give eternal life," and that saying: "All things have been given to me in heaven and on earth." But they were not given to him then for the first time, since he was already in the world, through whom the world was made, he who asks again for the glory he had with the Father before the foundation of the world; but given after the assumption of the man, since it is said thus: "Who, though he was in the form of God, took the form of a servant; therefore God exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name." What, then, is given, or to whom? Certainly it is not given to him who was in the form of God, that he might be the form of God; for he was, and because he was, he no longer needed this gift. But there was a cause for giving, because he who was in the form of God took the form of a servant and, emptying himself from the form of God and assuming the form of a servant, was obedient unto death. To that obedience, then, through which the servant's garb is assumed, and to the servant's garb itself, this is given: that he should be what he was, namely in the form of God. For the emptying of the form of God knew no loss or detriment to itself, rather regaining the form of God for the assumed form of a servant. So neither did the power, though restraining itself in humility, fail from itself, since it is what it was; and the humility, restrained in itself, the power having been taken up, when it began to be what it was not, received the advance of that power which had not failed from itself. And this is the truth of the Gospel mystery and of human hope: that human nature and corruptible flesh, through the change of this glory, have been transformed into an eternal substance.

But the prophetic speech testifies in the present psalm too to the wonder at this, as it were, most difficult deed, and to the gift of the greatest and most beautiful hope, saying after what he had said, "subjecting my people under me": "O Lord, what is man that you have made yourself known to him, or the son of man that you reckon him? Man has become like vanity; his days pass like a shadow." Not differently in the eighth psalm too the Holy Spirit proclaims: "What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you visit him?" This confession is most beautiful, that man himself testifies he is unworthy of so great a gift. And when he confesses himself unworthy, he exalts the grace of him who bestows these things on him. For what merit has man, that God should make himself knowable to him, that an unknowable nature should submit itself to our knowledge? Or what dignity has the son of man, that he should be reckoned? Whatever is destined from what it is into something else is reckoned. The force of the words expresses the nature of the thing. Man, made like vanity and whose days pass like a shadow, is reckoned through the knowledge of God granted him. The world is vanity, whose fashion and form will be taken away. For to God whatever, though it exists, does not so subsist as to remain, is empty; and every shadow, even if it is, yet is not; because, when it comes to be, it is removed as that by which it was made goes away. Man, then, is not a shadow but like a shadow; nor vanity, but made like vanity through the intervention of death; but through the knowledge of God granted him he is reckoned. And into what he is reckoned the granted knowledge testifies. For if God could not become known to man except by assuming man, because our nature could not know the unknowable except through our nature, and through this knowledge man is reckoned, it is necessary that he be reckoned into that in which he himself knew God, namely that he become conformed to God, because this is the reckoning of the knowledge granted.

And since this whole prayer is in the person of that man whom the Lord assumed, he knows with what great dignity God frees him from the laws of death and snatches him from the hands of the wicked through the glory of the resurrection, saying: "O Lord, bow your heaven and come down; touch the mountains and they will smoke; flash lightnings and you will scatter them; send out your arrows and you will confound them. Send out your hand from on high." Something similar to these words is contained in the psalm we mentioned above: "And he bowed heaven and came down, and coals were kindled by him, and fire will blaze from his face, and smoke went up in his anger. He sent arrows and scattered them, and multiplied lightnings and confounded them. He sent from on high and took me and drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from my strongest enemies." In saying "strongest," we can understand whom he meant: surely those of whom the apostle says: "For our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against the world-rulers, against spiritual wickednesses in the heavenly places": Satan himself putting it into the heart of Judas to betray the Lord. But in this psalm too we must observe: "Flash lightnings and you will scatter them; send out your arrows and you will confound them." He showed none above of whom he might speak thus: so this must be referred to these mountains, which will smoke at the mere touch of God. And lest we think it said of these earthly mountains, we are admonished by another psalm, when it is said: "Why do you look with suspicion, you curdled mountains?" And so far as it is granted to understand, we judge that mountains sometimes signify even diabolical powers, as now in this place: which, having transgressed the ordinances of the divine law, have soured, as it were, from the purity of milk by the vicious corruption of curdling. And the earlier psalm said these are his most powerful enemies.

The Lord, then, came down, his heaven bowed, not by bodily motion, as though heaven bent as he descended; but through bodily signification a spiritual sense is instructed, as when sleep, waking, memory, forgetfulness, departure, and approach are ascribed to God, because according to the difference of our merits he is to each of us either sleeping or waking, forgetful or remembering, absent or present. And so heaven was bowed as he came down, because heavenly service stood by him as he came down to assume man: when Mary receives the good news, when the shepherds see and hear the heavenly company and its sound, when after the devil's temptation the angels minister, when he himself, though wholly in the form of a servant, conducted himself in the power of the Father's majesty. So heaven is bowed, when the power and honor of heavenly beings are brought down to earth.

But in that the mountains, touched, smoke rather than burn, though smoking indicates that something is burning; then that, when the lightnings flash, they are scattered rather than lit up; and that, when the arrows are sent out, they are confounded rather than pierced: it is said so not without the greatest reason of spiritual understanding. And indeed another psalm too signifies things like these, when it says: "preparing the mountains in your power, girded with might." For at the Lord's coming the devil's power was broken and crushed, when it was subjected to the faith of holy men: not that it does not still have the greatest forces of its power, but in that it is in some way subjected, it is prepared, by the condition of present subjection, for vengeance and lawful punishment, so that now, through this same subjection, touched by God's power, it smokes, though it is not yet wholly burned: but by the fact that it has been able meanwhile to smoke, it is to be known that it can also be burned. Not he alone is burned, but all his too. For this fire has not been prepared for one only, as the Lord says: "Depart into the eternal fire which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels." These mountains, then, touched by the Lord, will smoke.

They will also be scattered by the flashing of lightning, not bearing the light, namely, of those of whom it is said, "You are the light of the world." For the Lord's coming will be understood as lightning appearing from the east to the west. But meanwhile there are many flashes of lightning, that is, the apostolic preachings and the splendor of God's teaching, which scatter that dense and conspiring power of the demons with the light of its flashing.

The arrows too, sent out, will confound them. The same prophecy recalls these arrows in another place too: "The arrows of little ones," it says, "have become their wounds": of little ones, as the apostle says, in malice, not in understanding. Their words, then, that is, of the faithful reborn to innocence, sent out like arrows, will confound those smoking mountains, when the blessedness and eternity of the heavenly kingdom are proclaimed, when the honor of the world is despised and the glory of Christ hoped for, when luxury and drunkenness are left behind and the body is purified by fasts, when avarice is conquered and generosity practiced, when virgins hate their own body, when widows wish they had remained virgins, when confessors loathe their own life, when to die is desirable for martyrs. And all this these arrows, that is, the words of teaching and exhortation, will have achieved, which, sent out, confound those who opposed them, when, their kingdom ceasing, the expectation of Christ's kingdom is proclaimed.

But the hand of the Lord is also sent out from on high. That our Lord Jesus Christ is signified in the Spirit by the hand of God is no obscure teaching. For through him all things were made. And we read it written: "My hand," he says, "will help him": because through the Son of God the man assumed is snatched from the snares of death and the judgment of an unjust condemnation by the glory of the resurrection.

For there follows: "Rescue me from many waters." That peoples are called waters is common knowledge, as we are taught also by Isaiah, who says: "Because of this, behold, the Lord will bring upon you the water of the river, strong and abundant, and the king of the Assyrians": peoples whose strength and life slip away to their abolishing end after the example of flowing water, as this same prophet says: "They have perished like water flowing by," because their nature is removed, the increase of the sea into which they flow ceasing. "And from the unjust hand of foreign sons." For they have ceased to be God's, those of whom it is said, "Foreign sons have grown old," and to whom it is said, "You are of your father the devil."

But they are foreign sons not only by not receiving their Lord, but also by what follows: "whose mouth has spoken vanity." That was the vanity of mouth and confession when it was said, "We have no king but Caesar." For the people chosen for an eternal kingdom chose the king of the world, that is, of vanity. "And their right hand is a right hand of iniquity." The right hand is unjust when it strikes with palms, when it tears with rods, when it beats with a reed, when it fits the crown of thorns, when it fixes hands and feet with nails, when it mixes gall with vinegar, when it completes all the works of iniquity.

After these things, done and accomplished mightily by the Lord, we shall have to sing a new song of glorious victory. For he says: "O God, I will sing a new song to you; on a ten-stringed psaltery I will sing psalms to you." And what this new song is must be considered. Many psalms are found singing a new song. For the ninety-fifth psalm begins thus: "Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth"; and again: "Announce his glory among the nations, his wonders among all peoples"; and again: "Let all the earth be moved before his face; say among the nations: The Lord will reign." This is the new song, which all the earth sings: that knowledge of him who created all things is now celebrated no longer within the books and borders of Judea; that the glory of the invisible God is now announced among the nations; that all the families of the nations confess the praise of due honor; that God is shown to be about to reign among the nations. This song is new amid so many errors of the world, and this hymn is unexpected for the nations who before were straying, a hymn by which God is sung as invisible, incorporeal, eternal, judge of just judgment and king of blessed eternity.

The ninety-seventh psalm too sings a new song: "Sing to the Lord a new song, for the Lord has done wonders." But I do not know whether a new song is to be sung because God has done the wonders he has done. Long since the heaven has remained most beautiful and wonderful, long since the stars in it persevere in the untiring courses of their duties, long since the seasons are tempered by an alternating and unchangeable return, long since the earth is rich with yearly fruits, long since man, the most wonderful work of God, is born: and if God added nothing wonderful afterward, when he created these, I ask what new song is to be sung for wonders done? And the psalm does not let us err long. For it shows for which wonders it would sing a new song, saying: "His right hand and his holy arm have delivered him. The Lord has made known his salvation in the sight of the nations." This is the new song, this the wonder of God: that his right hand delivered him, that his own power gave salvation to himself. "For I have power," he says, "to lay down my soul and I have power to take up my soul again." The only-begotten Son of God did not need outside help to save the man in whom he willed to be born, and, remaining in the glory of the Father's majesty, he used his own power in himself: through which by the glory of the resurrection he made his salvation known to the nations, when they recognize that in him the flesh of their own nature has been transformed into the substance of eternal salvation.

The one hundred and forty-ninth psalm too sings a new song. And why this song is new the prophet at once added, saying: "He will exalt the meek unto salvation. The saints will exult in glory and rejoice on their couches. And the exultations of God are in their throat, and two-edged swords in their hands, to execute vengeance on the nations, rebukes on the peoples, to bind their kings in shackles and fetters and their nobles in iron chains, that they may execute on them the judgment written: this glory is for all his saints." This is the new song: that God's saints take the power of eternal judgment. For according to the apostle the saints will judge the world. This, then, is sung new by us: vengeance on the nations, reproof of the peoples, shackles and fetters of kings and iron chains of nobles, and the sentence of judgment written against them.

And something similar is sung in the new song of this psalm: "O God, I will sing a new song to you; on a ten-stringed psaltery I will sing psalms to you, who give salvation to kings." On a ten-stringed psaltery, then: that is, either because that psaltery has ten strings, or because this new song is sung by the instrument and deeds of the ten words, or because man himself, stretched out on certain ten strings, his hands and feet, made perfect, sings psalms with the gesture and movement of his spiritual works in such a way that he sings this new song. "Who give salvation to kings": to the kings to whom it is said, "Come, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world"; who will bind the nobles, who will bind kings with shackles and fetters, who will judge, reprove, avenge.

And how salvation is given to kings he shows: "who," he says, "deliver David your servant": that David, surely, of whom this same book prophesies in another psalm in the person of God the Father: "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 will help him. He has called upon me: You are my Father, my God, the upholder of my salvation. And I will make him the firstborn, high above the kings of the earth. And his throne is like the sun in my sight and like the full moon for ever, and a faithful witness in heaven." And again in the same psalm in his person to the Father: "As you swore to David in your truth, remember, O Lord, the reproach of your servant, which I have held in my bosom, of many nations, with which your enemies have reproached, O Lord, with which they have reproached the change of your Christ." This one David received into his bosom the reproaches of many nations. For he himself took up our sins and bore our weaknesses: by his bruise we have been healed. So while this David is delivered and released from the law of death, salvation too is given to kings. For he is the firstborn from the dead. And as in Adam we all die, so in Christ we shall all rise again. His deliverance, then, is the salvation of kings. For they will reign conformed to his glory, all to remain again in communion with his nature through the union of our nature assumed by him.

This David, then, is rescued from the evil sword. For Jesus laid down his spirit when he willed; nor did he wait for an inflicted wound to send forth his soul. The irreligious hand had no right over his soul. For he says: "Rescue me from the evil sword." For although the soldier pierced the side of the body already lifeless, he used the service of cruelty; but the power of sending forth the spirit left no cause for violence to be done to the soul in him. [23] Then he completes the new song with a hymn of new confession, condemning earthly judgments and the false joys of worldly goods, when he says: "whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity; whose sons are like a new plantation established from their youth; their daughters adorned, decked out like the likeness of a temple; their storehouses full, overflowing from this to that; their sheep fruitful, abounding in their goings out; their oxen fat; there is no collapse of wall nor breach nor outcry in their streets. They called the people blessed who have these things: blessed is the people whose Lord is their God." And these, so far as I judge, are the goods of this world, blessed by the common judgment of all: to speak and do the affairs of the world, to seize or buy honors, to grow rich by force, by bribery, by fraud, to glory in children of grown age, whose flourishing years trust in the firmness of youthful exultation, to wish for daughters of beautiful body and to adorn them like a temple at useless expense of huge sums, to burst barns with multiplied fruits, which belch out heaped riches into other storehouses too narrow for what is stored in them, to wish also to double the sheep by their young, which no encounter with a wild beast diminishes when they go out, to delight in the fattening of one's oxen, to make the enclosures of houses firm so that no one has power to pass through; not to weep, not to mourn, not to groan, but to be hindered by no trouble of adverse calamity in the prosperous course of one's happiness. They called this people blessed who had these things; but the prophet knows that the opinion of this blessedness is false. For what will these so many and great goods of the world gain for a life that is to be cut off by death? And therefore he showed which people would be blessed, saying: "Blessed is the people whose Lord is their God": that God the Lord who, while he has given these higher and earthly things, will yet impart eternity to those who use them rightly; who chose us as fellow heirs of his Son in him before the foundation of the world; who will be God all in all: to him be glory, praise, honor, power, dominion, to the Father in the Son, to the Son in the Father, and in the Holy Spirit, now and always and for all ages of ages. Amen.