Tractates on the Psalms 144.1–144.23

The psalm is plain, occupied only with the praises of God. And the title itself teaches that only the proclamation of God is contained in the psalm. But here too, as in the others, by the article added according to the custom of the Greek, it shows that that David is praised by this David's praising. And who this is whom this psalm praises, all the prophecies of all times cry out, as this same prophet often testified of him thus: "Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the scepter of equity is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you." And again: "And all kings will worship him, and all nations will serve him. His name will be blessed for ever; his name remains before the sun. And all the tribes of the earth will be blessed in him; all nations will magnify him." The praise of this one, then, is sung in this psalm, in whose person we remember it was said: "But I have been established king by him over Zion, his holy mountain. The Lord said to me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession. You will rule them with a rod of iron." The perpetuity of his kingdom Daniel attested thus, saying: "And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will raise up another kingdom, which will never be corrupted for ever, and its kingdom will not be left to another people; it will crush and winnow all kingdoms, and this kingdom will be for ever." And again: "And behold, with the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man coming, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented to him; and to him was given dominion and honor and kingdom; and all peoples, tribes, and tongues will serve him, and his power is an everlasting power, which will never pass away, and his kingdom will not be corrupted." This king, then, is praised by what is contained in the psalm: "I will exalt you, my God and my king," and by this: "Your saints will confess to you. They will tell the glory of your kingdom and speak of your power, to make known to the sons of men your power and the glory of the majesty of your kingdom. Your kingdom is a kingdom of all ages, and your dominion is in every generation and offspring."

And although here praise is sung to God by the prophet's confession for the glory of the eternal kingdom, in which he will reign with the saints reigning together with him, yet the reasoning and order of the praise itself has been so arranged that what is said of him is proclaimed from the sense of common understanding: so that, as far as the habit of human speech allows, it may instruct us concerning that boundless and incomprehensible nature of God, if not to the perfect truth of knowledge, yet to wonder at that enormous power which is his. For we can wonder at him exceedingly, so far as lies in us; but how great he is cannot be known by us.

But since in the whole psalm the praise of God is simple and absolute, we ought to remember that the Father is praised in the Son and the Son in the Father; and that, since from likeness of substance and property of nature each is in the other, and both are one, and he who sees the Father sees the Son too, it makes no difference which of the two is thought to be praised, since likeness of power and of works, and the divinity of undifferentiated nature, begotten from God the Father and born in God the Son, testify that they are one.

The psalm, then, began thus: "I will exalt you, my God and my king, and I will bless your name for ever and for ever and ever. Every day I will bless you, and I will praise your name for ever and for ever and ever." The reasoning and force of the prophetic grandeur of speech must be learned through attentive diligence in listening. For he says: "I will exalt you, my God and my king." Many magnify God through those things of the works of the world established by him that are laid open to our knowledge; but few are willing to believe that he will be their king, since they either deny that God cares for human deeds or, to comfort their conscience for what they have done impiously, presuming the abolition of soul and body, refuse to have it that divine judgment has been established for the good and the bad. But the prophet takes the beginning of proclaiming God from this, that he is his king. And now indeed he blesses the name of him who is his king and God because of the expectation of the kingdom, when he says, "I will bless your name for ever." But since he knows that he owes thanks to God and his king even then, when he remains in his kingdom, because, the weakness of his perishable body changed and the rule of hostile death driven out, he will stand conformed and coeternal with his king, he added: "and for ever and ever," that is, in that age in which, the fashion of this age being removed, it will be renewed as an age of ages by the succession of eternity.

And in this age anyone blessing God may not always remain in the duty of blessing, while he is either hindered by grief, or seized by fear, or held anxious by sickness, and, his mind either sluggish or ungrateful, is mute in the blessings of God; but the perfection of prophetic faith is free from such changes of weaknesses, saying: "Every day I will bless you." He has no empty time, and no day is idle for him, but he is always engaged in the confession of blessings. It often happens, however, that those of whom we can speak well we cannot praise. To abstain from evil is worthy of blessing. But merely not committing evil has no praise unless the glory of good work also follows the abstaining from evil. And we can bless one who is beneficent to us, because nature requires that we not disparage those by whose goodwill we are cherished; but if they are also stained with other vices, they are blessed indeed for our advantage, but are not praised by the judgment of truth. But the perfection of God allows nothing in him to be partial. For as he is blessed, so too he is praiseworthy, having both the confession of our blessing from the things in which we enjoy his beneficence toward us, and proclamation from wonder at the perfect virtues in him. For which reason the prophet, about to bless every day, added this too: "and I will praise your name for ever and for ever and ever." When he blesses, when he praises for ever and ever, the prophet's duty is weak in nothing, neither in blessing nor in praise nor in time.

Then follows: "Great is the Lord and exceedingly praiseworthy, and of his greatness there is no end." This is the first and chief praise of God: that he has nothing in himself moderate, nothing circumscribed, nothing measured, either of his greatness or of his praise. His power is not enclosed by opinion, not contained by places, not expressed by names, not subject to times: our sense is too narrow for it, our wit dull, our speech mute. His magnificence knows no end, and his boundless greatness does not allow any notion of measuring it. It extends everywhere, it extends always, having this praise of its infinity; but it exceeds all understanding of this infinite quality in itself.

And since this knowledge of boundless greatness, or praise of God's works, does not belong to all the nations who have had and will have life and sense from the foundation of the world, he consequently added: "Generation and generation will praise your works." Not, of course, generations and generations, which are many and diverse in times and nations, but the generation that began from Abraham, which through the sign of circumcision is assigned to the law, and the generation that is renewed in Christ, which is instructed from the prophetic teachings for the faith of Gospel justification. It is proper to these generations, then, to praise the works of God.

No other reason admonishes that the works of God be praised than that all were mightily done by him, since they have proclamation not for having done something but for having done it mightily. And therefore he added: "And they will declare your might."

But the might of the works is to be proclaimed only when it is matched to the magnificence of the worker, so that the working may be understood as mighty by the magnificence of the mighty one. For which reason there follows: "and the magnificence of your majesty."

But magnificence, if it has only for itself what is in it, has wonder but not praise; and the working of the mighty one is idle for others unless, through the holiness of the worker, it imparts some use from itself to those who will praise and wonder. From this there fittingly follows: "and they will speak of your holiness." And holiness is indeed good and does not profit only itself nor consume what is from itself within the use of its own advantage. For it commends itself by the duties of holiness even to provoke others' beneficence toward itself. But it will offer nothing worthy of wonder from itself if it is for itself alone. But this is proper and wonderful in holiness: when it grants what is in it for the use of others, for whom it is holy, itself needing nothing, except perhaps, out of goodwill, only that another should use it. To the saying, then, "and they will speak of your holiness," he rightly added: "and they will tell your wonders."

And it is indeed wonderful that holiness, profiting itself nothing, should overflow for the use of another's blessedness; but it is more wonderful that holiness should be full of terror; lest, if it offered itself indiscriminately to those who use or abound in it, being shared alike by good and bad, as if offering itself by necessity of nature, it should not have the wonder of holiness. And therefore he at once added: "and they will tell the power of your terrible deeds": so that those who speak of holiness and tell of wonders may also tell the power of terrible deeds, wonder standing between holiness and terror, since both a sweet terror and a terrible sweetness make the terror sweet and the sweetness terrible worthy of wonder.

For which reason the prophet, understanding the enormous greatness of this wonderful tempering, added: "and they will tell your greatness." For it belongs to infinite greatness in God that what is terrible is sweet and what is sweet is terrible. And greatness has no measure, lest, if it were measured, it should no longer be greatness, through not lacking measure. So that, then, the wonder of his own holiness and terror may consist in the infinity of his greatness, it will remain both always and abundant, defined neither by time nor by quantity. And therefore he joined: "They will pour forth the memory of the abundance of your sweetness": because neither is memory cut off by forgetfulness, nor is abundance diminished by want.

The prophet kept the order of reasoning, so as to temper the memory and abundance of sweetness by the condition of a greatness both moderated and preserved, saying: "and they will exult in your righteousness." The memory and abundance of sweetness are indeed infinite, since God in no way either forgets to be sweet or ceases to be; but righteousness, set between, moderates the infinity of memory and abundance. It moderates not the measure of giving but of using: since what through God's abundance and memory always lies open to all the just is not received by the wicked because of their unworthiness to use it. God's holiness provided a way for his people when the sea was divided; but the same holiness was also a terrible power, when, the impious having entered the same way, where the salvation of the religious had been, there the punishment of the impious took place. The waves, made solid, surround some with the firmness of a wall; the same waves that had stood, poured back, swallow up others. Toward the one the sea does not know its nature; the others it punishes by its nature. For the one, earth comes from the sea; for the others, what was sea remains sea. The salvation of the one is holiness; the death of the other is terror. Or when, with the three youths singing in the furnace, those standing around are burned by the flames which the youths do not feel, for them the fire is tempered into the moisture of dew, while it burns the others as it blazes. The same flames are within and without, whose nature, according to the difference of merits, both fails from itself and does not fail. For what it is, it remains: fire toward those it burns; and what it is not, it must be in those for whom it is dew. And so righteousness alone moderates the greatness of the memory and holiness of God, since through God's righteousness toward the wicked and the righteous holiness tempers terror and terror holiness.

And righteousness is indeed right and useful; but yet this same sometimes becomes too harsh, so that it is not allowed to use kindness, as, in deciding what is just according to the diversity of judgment, it becomes severe. But the righteousness of God does not follow human righteousness. For it is not subject to the law of nature, through which the law of nature was established: so that it is under no necessity of not being good because it is just. God's righteousness has the will to show mercy; yet through the will to show mercy it will not be so changed from itself as not to be righteousness. But human righteousness often comes to the point of not being merciful, and mercy so offers itself as not to be just. For mercy will not be such if, when a needy man brings a pitiable false charge, you begrudge the richer man his right; if you prefer a woman's tears to a man's injury; if you think the insults of a blind man are not to be rebuked. But on the contrary, righteousness will not keep mercy if you punish the thief of one coin like the thief of a huge treasure, though he who lost it had his treasure in the one coin; or if you bind a young man caught in one and the same infamous adultery to an equal death under examination by torture, like the contriver of many adulteries, though there is a crime worthy of death in both. These and such things make human mercy and righteousness imperfect; but patience granted toward the punishments of the guilty makes God's righteousness merciful. When, contrary to the habit of human impatience, he does not hasten to punish, he has shown mercy: keeping righteousness in punishment after patience has availed nothing, having mercy in punishment by exercising righteousness after patience. For God does not seize upon occasions of human crimes, nor, as though ignorant of our weakness and nature, does he rush upon the very moment of our error and sin to punish it; but he overlooks and defers, and awaits the comfort of repentance by delaying vengeance, showing himself sweet to all, while through the measure of mercy and righteousness he reserves himself for the indulgence of a severity to be tempered.

This is chief in God, this is to be praised in the mighty one: not that he made heaven, because he is mighty; not that he founded the earth, because he is power; not that he tempered the year by the stars, because he is wise; not that he gave life to man, because he is life; not that he moved the sea to ebb and flow, because he is spirit: but that he who is just is merciful; that he who is king is compassionate; that he who is God overlooks. For to the saying, "they will exult in your righteousness," there follows as if necessarily: "The Lord is compassionate and merciful, patient and of great mercy. The Lord is sweet to all, and his compassions are over all his works." For that he is mighty is the power of his nature; but that he is merciful is the advancement of our salvation. And it is more not to use one's own but to have given to others what is one's own; and therefore mercy surpasses God's other works, because his magnificent working is a matter of his own power, but his mercy is for the use of others.

For which reason the prophet, standing as it were at the very summit of divine praises because of mercy, shows the honor due to God as by a public confession, saying: "Let all your works confess to you, O Lord, and let your saints confess to you. They will tell the glory of your kingdom and speak of your power, to make known to the sons of men your power and the glory of the majesty of your kingdom. Your kingdom is a kingdom of all ages, and your dominion is in every generation and offspring." The order of the words is worthy of prophetic grandeur. The works confess God: for the magnificence of the works and of creation confesses how magnificent he is. But the saints too confess, whose king he deigns to be. They speak the glory of the kingdom, lest, unknown, it not be desired by those who will enjoy it. They also announce the magnificence of the glory of God's kingdom, lest the eternal be despaired of. The dominion too is shown in generation and generation, so that one may understand himself to be coeternal with the dominion. And so the knowledge of God is in the works, the duty of the saints is in teaching, the use of prophecy is in proclamation, the glory of the kingdom is in the eternity of dominion; and the eternity of dominion must have those over whom the Eternal exercises it.

And to make the faithful seek this with hope, the prophet's exhortation is at once added: "The Lord is faithful in his words and holy in all his works." Faith in words might perhaps waver unless holiness were mixed with works. And so holiness in works confirms faith in words, so that you may not doubt the faithfulness in promises of the Holy One whose holiness you enjoy in deeds. For if we understand that God is holy through the fact that we are born, live, are nourished, and abound in all the resources fitting human nature, this holiness cannot be unfaithful in its sayings.

But the prophet knows there is another work of God's holiness too, in what follows: "The Lord upholds all who are falling, and sets upright all who are dashed down." God's holiness is present to all and does not withdraw itself from helping men. But even now the prophet keeps the reasoning of righteousness and mercy. For the Lord upholds not those who have collapsed but those who are falling, whom, even if the downward slope of nature drags them toward a fall, repentance, which is the author of ceasing, will yet stop in their slipping, so that they may not already have fallen completely. For one who is falling, not one who has fallen, can be strengthened so as not to fall.

But those dashed down are also raised up. To be dashed down by an outside force differs from having fallen by one's own fall. For he is dashed down whom heated youth, at the devil's prompting, has thrown headlong into a fall, whom ignorance has driven into error, whom the weakness of nature, using deceitful flatteries, has driven into crime. Such a one is dashed down, rather than he who has remained so by will, whom the habit of vices delights, who does not repent of what he has done. For to have repented of one's deeds has the comfort of pardon with God, nor is it unworthy of a tempering of severity, what thus declares, by grief over what was committed, the disposition of one unwilling.

And why he upholds the falling and sets upright the dashed down, he teaches in what follows, saying: "The eyes of all hope in you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand and fill every soul with blessing." So the dashed down and the falling look to God with their whole eyes; and let no one so trust in himself as not always to fear falling, always to fear being dashed down. From him must we hope that we be not endangered by a fall, that we be not dashed down by the weakness of nature. All the supports of life are from him, when we live by food granted in the season of fruits, when by opening his hand he fills our souls with spiritual gifts: for from the spring of his power the abundance of what pleases him overflows to us. Both of these he distinguishes in what follows, thus: "The Lord is just in all his ways and holy in all his works." He is just in his ways when he leads our weakness, strengthened by the fellowship of spiritual gifts, into his eternal kingdom; and holy in his works when he supplies fruits to all in the season of times: showing his holiness in the nourishment of all, but keeping his righteousness in filling souls with good pleasure.

After which follows: "The Lord is near to those who call upon him." He is not far away who, by the power of his nature, is himself always everywhere, and is always whole and everywhere, according to that saying of the apostle: "For in him we are, and in him we live and move." He is near, then, to those who call upon him, since there is nothing that is without him. But to whom he is near when they call, he teaches in what is added: "to all who call upon him in truth": not to those who call from idleness nor from the uncertainty of unbelieving doubt, but to those who call upon the true God with faithful truth.

And since he is near, he shows what he grants to those who call on him in truth, saying: "He will do the will of those who fear him." God will not do the wills of the base nor the desires of the vicious, but of those who fear him: wills innocent through fear, honorable through faith, modest through reverence; and wills that are not idle, nor that disdain, by a kind of contemptuous silence, to hope for anything from him, but such as prayer expresses and entreaties attest. And therefore he added: "and he will hear their prayer." The will done by God, then, is that which is heard through the voice of prayer. But what will of those who pray will be done? "And he will save them," it says. This is what those who fear God want; this they pray to be heard for: that eternal death may not rule over them, that they may not be assigned to destruction by everlasting judgment, but may be safe under God's guard. For there follows: "God guards those who love him." He will save them, then, by guarding them, that is, by keeping them as sharers of the eternal kingdom; but those who will both fear and pray and love. Then follows: "and he will destroy all sinners," who neither feared as men, nor prayed as subjects, nor loved as those given life and the world.

The prophet concluded the confession of due honor, saying: "My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord." Praise is not enough for him unless he also does not cease to praise. For he will praise still, though he praises already. But while he praises, he also urges the whole human race to bless God: "And let all flesh bless his holy name." Through the constancy of his duty and faith he indeed will always praise; but the prophet's care desires that all should bless God. For he does not say "they will bless," as though certain of the future, but from the feeling of a wish he says "let them bless," so that he might be understood rather to wish than to trust it would be so. Then he asks that the blessing be not temporary but eternal, "for ever and for ever and ever." Rather must we wish that we may bless the Eternal for ever: because one who blesses the Eternal for ever must remain coeternal with him, our Lord, namely, the only-begotten and firstborn Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.