Tractates on the Psalms 147.1–149.4

To this psalm too, as to the one before the preceding, the name of Haggai and Zechariah is ascribed, although it does not stand in the Hebrew: so that through this one and through those, as I showed above, the prophecy of the eternal Jerusalem might be understood.

"Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion." Jerusalem does not differ from Zion; for according to the names of places it is the same site of the same city: but the meaning of the names necessarily called for this twofold mention of the same city. For Jerusalem is the city of peace. And since the kingdom of our Lord is in the peace and unanimity of the saints ("and his place," it says, "has been made in peace"), that assembly of the blessed, which is the kingdom of God, has been called Jerusalem as the city of peace. This city, built, as the apostle says, of living stones, the company of the saints conformed to God's glory from the resurrection completes, which beheld beforehand by faith in the Lord's body what it would be, and therefore is also called Zion. The Lord's body, indeed, according to the force of the meaning, because in it we contemplate our hope by faith, is thought to be called Zion in all the Scriptures, because Zion is watchtower. But that city which is Jerusalem, which because of unanimity is the city of peace, is also called Zion because of the conforming in it of the body of God, in which it beheld itself beforehand: whose glory it has attained, it has also received its name. Both that peaceful assembly, then, and that glory of changed bodies are in the name of Jerusalem and Zion, both of which are one: this city is not empty stones nor dull buildings, but a rational living being, the living stones of foundations and gems, citizens of holiness, and God's dominion over his household; and it is called to praise from the sense of its blessedness and the proclamation of confession.

And the prophet added the cause of praise: "For he has strengthened the bars of your gates; he has blessed your sons within you; who has set peace as your borders and satisfies you with the fat of wheat." This is that inheritance of the blessed land which the Lord promised the meek in the Gospels, saying: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." In very many places the prophets proclaimed the time of this blessedness and the firmness of this eternal city: whose gates and bars have been so strengthened that it remains impenetrable, impassable, indissoluble to our adversaries and the hostile powers, lacking nothing, because firm in eternity as to the substance of body and soul, blessed in its inhabitants, peaceful in will, abundant in the substance of life.

But to this proclamation of God this too is added: "who sends out his word to the earth; his speech runs swiftly." The haste of the preaching of God's kingdom was not slow, but it ran across into all the earth with untiring and swift mobility. For where did not the course of apostolic and prophetic teaching go forth at once, when the Lord, born in a body, showed the glory of his kingdom? And through this swift crossing the building of this blessed city began, which, having heard of the abundance of its wealth, is daily built everywhere of the living stones of the faithful until it reaches the fullness of its inhabitants; whose swift word runs across to gather all from the four parts of the world, to be gathered again into the company of completed fullness to fill this city of the blessed kingdom.

But another proclamation too is joined: "who gives snow like wool, scatters mist like ashes. He sends his crystal like morsels of bread; before the face of his cold who will stand? He sends out his word, and it will melt them; his Spirit has blown, and the waters will flow." The way of life, as the Lord says in the Gospels, is narrow and hard pressed; and only through the greatest difficulties and troubles does one proceed by this way to the kingdom of heaven. This must be understood to have been said of the troubles of this world; for through present vexations one comes to eternal rest. And although we are burned by the labors of present things as by a kind of violence of a harsh winter, yet after the rigors of these present bitternesses, God dissolving them, we shall rest in calm, tranquil, and serene things. For according to the prophetic saying and the usage of allegory, we must believe that in the snow and mist and crystal, all of which by their nature burn and kill, the worldly troubles, calamities, and pains against us and the nocturnal cold of ignorance are now signified. This same prophet knows that one who shares in this blessed city will no longer be burned by this cold of worldly injury, saying: "The sun will not burn you by day, nor the moon by night." For all these, by which we are seared through present calamities, are melted again, dissolved by God's goodness. For snow, falling with the softness of wool, covering everything, holds it within itself; frost too, of descending mist, scattered like ashes, binds tight; crystal too, hardened beyond the habit of hail and solidified into morsels, has in itself both violence and rigor. And if these remained perpetually, would not everything, burned by their cold, always be dry? For who could bear eternal and unfailing calamities of the body, if the series of our evil were drawn out everlastingly?

But when the weaknesses of the body are dissolved, the time of this blessed kingdom is eternal, where there is no weeping, no grieving, no slipping through the change of bodily desire: but one is to live in those things "which," it says, "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man." Understanding, hearing, and sight fail before the good things to come; whatever blessed and eternal thing is promised to the blessed and eternal is neither subject to sight nor grasped by hearing nor perceived by the mind. All these colds of snow, frost, and crystal, then, will be dissolved as by a warm breath when, after the rigors of the night of the world, the Spirit of God will temper those times of the eternal kingdom into one unchangeable tranquility.

And so that we might know that, under the cold of snow and mist and crystal, unbearable if it remained, yet to be dissolved into melting by God's Spirit, that blessed temperateness of the eternal kingdom for an eternal people was signified, the prophet concluded the psalm with such a confession: "Before the face of his cold who will stand? He sends out his word, and it will melt them; his Spirit has blown, and the waters will flow. Declaring his word to Jacob, his righteousnesses and judgments to Israel. He has not done so for every nation, and his judgments he has not made known to them." This will of God is peculiar to Jacob and Israel: not to that Israel nor to that Jacob who embraces this bodily name as a comfort, as if of a noble stock in himself, but to that Jacob who supplanted the elder, who bought the birthright with the hope of eternity, whose surname from seeing God is Israel; who himself is Jerusalem and the city of peace; who, built upon the rock of faith, the bars of his gates strengthened, will hold gates stronger than the gates of hell; who is gathered in the word of God; who does not lack through want, will not be seared by the cold of worldly rigor, but, all things having been melted and released by God's Spirit, will enjoy the temperateness of eternal serenity. To him this word is declared; he, through spiritual understanding, awaits these righteousnesses and judgments of God. No other nation shares this good, nor does irreligious unbelief know this glory of judgment. "For he came to his own, and his own did not receive him. As many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God," our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

The three preceding psalms, in which prophecy calls us to the praise of the Lord, have followed, by the very order of their placing, the distribution of that blessed hope of ours. For the first of them was sung for the hope of eternity and the expectation of the heavenly kingdom. The second followed for the building of the holy city and the gathering of the saints, who will come together to the fullness of this holy city. The third was composed into this hymn for rejoicing over the city now built, founded in eternal peace and, after the burning and parching cold of the world, tempered by the heavenly Spirit. The order of teaching, then, is the same as the order of things. For according to prophetic and apostolic preaching the order of that blessed kingdom and eternal city has been arranged in these: in the change of the resurrection, in the gathering of the saints, in the dwelling of the Lord's citizens thronging together.

After which, all now being established in eternal blessedness, in this following psalm the choir of heavenly powers and authorities is gathered to sing the praises of God, so that, the vanity of the world having been driven away, all creation, released from the great labors of its duties and at last breathing again in the blessed kingdom of eternity, may proclaim its God, both joyful and at rest, and itself, according to the apostle, taken up into the glory of blessed eternity, when he says: "For the expectation of creation itself awaits the revelation of the sons of God. For creation was subjected to vanity not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope, because creation itself too will be freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God." Hence, then, this is a hymn of freedom granted, because the elements of creation, released from the necessity of their duties and formerly subjected to the uses of human service, now at last conformed to the glory of the sons of God, rest in eternal blessedness. By a long desire for this blessedness they had already long been held, according to the apostle Peter, when he says: "These things which have now been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, into which angels long to look." The expectation of heavenly beings, then, is earthly blessedness, and the elements of the divine creations pray for the change of our corruption, longing to look into this hope of the Gospel preaching, about to take their own glory from the conforming of our glory: which, having now attained it according to the prophecy of the psalm, they are called to harmonious praise of the blessedness received.

"Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights. Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his powers. Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all stars and light. Praise him, heavens of heavens; and let the water that is above the heavens praise the name of the Lord. For he commanded, and they were created; he spoke, and they were made; and he established them for ever and for ever and ever: he set a command, and it will not pass away." In speech plain to understanding the prophet exhorts all the heavenly powers to praise, but not without the perfect reasoning of doctrine. For first he turns away that error of human ignorance by which some have dared to suppose that this order of the world came together of itself by chance collisions and so arose from disorder into order; then that others think this world itself is God, which drives and moves itself and governs itself into the yearly temperateness by a course of measured reason; finally that each chooses for himself some of these elements, whether heaven, or sun, or water, or air, to which to offer the honor of God with empty and impious religion. He excluded every error of ignorance, then, saying: "For he commanded, and they were created; he spoke, and they were made." No chance collisions, no power of their own nature, no substance of eternity from themselves is admitted here in the things that are taught to be created.

In this saying this too is taught, which Genesis distinguished, the Gospels testified, and the apostle preached: that all things were made by God's command, not that they came to be of themselves, as though matter itself existed by such a force of obedience when commanded to be and to subsist; but that all things were created by command, and that it was said by him who spoke, that they should be made. For thus Genesis spoke: "And God said ... and God made." And now the prophet says: "He spoke, and they were made." For he did not command himself that they should be made, but they were made when he spoke. And they were made through him of whom the evangelist testified: "All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made"; and the apostle says: "who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, because in him all things were founded in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible; whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were founded through him and in him." And Wisdom spoke thus of herself: "I was with him, setting things in order; he rejoiced in me, when he was glad at the world completed." So the ambiguity of understanding ceases, convicted by the authority of both the New and the Old Testament: the Son, abiding before the ages, stood by the Father at the beginning of creating the world.

The prophet added another cause of praise too: "For he commanded, and they were created; he spoke, and they were made; and he established them for ever and for ever and ever." For things established out of nothing remain and owe thanks to their creator for the fact that they exist, perceiving with the sense of their life the goodness and power of him through whom they began to perceive that they live. And they live so that they remain for ever and ever and, according to the apostle, await the revelation of the sons of God, to be freed from the slavery of corruption into a glory conformed to theirs. But we must observe that among these creatures established for ever and ever neither this heaven, which is called the firmament, nor the earth, which was called the dry land, was counted, since it is said in the prophets, "Behold, I make a new heaven and a new earth," and the Lord said in the Gospel, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away"; of which this is not the place to speak. This much only had to be mentioned by us as a reminder: that it is not dissoluble creations that have now been counted for the praise of God, but those that have been established in the substance of eternity. And lest perhaps it be believed that their remaining for ever was natural to them from the blessedness of their substance, he added: "He set a command, and it will not pass away," so that this, that they are, that is, that they remain for ever, might be understood not to be of their nature but of the command of him who is able to bring the nature of eternity to things established out of nothing. For the command, he says, will not pass away, that is, there will be no end of his mandate: because those remain for ever to whom the power of eternity has granted eternity.

After which the other earthly things in turn are called to praise, which, although not all are sharers in these heavenly and blessed goods, partly through irrational sense, partly through the lifelessness of their nature, partly through the offense of impiety, yet proclaim God, by the fact that they were so established, through the very providence of the institution held in them. For he says thus: "Praise the Lord from the earth, dragons and all deeps; fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy wind, which do his word; mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle, serpents and winged birds; kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth; young men and maidens, old men with the young, let them praise the name of the Lord." All things join in the praise of God, although some lack the sense of praise; but through the order of their institution and the quality of their begetting they show the proclamation of the Creator. The dragons are held in the earth and many of them sunk in the deeps, so that, while they themselves, bound within the abyss and the earth, are prepared for the punishments of our impiety, they might hold us within fear and religion. The nature of fire, the whiteness of snow, the frozenness of ice, the wind of the storm, the height of mountains, the distinction of hills, the fruits of trees, the variety of beasts, the usefulness of cattle, the striving of serpents, the flight of birds, the power of kings, the service of peoples, the dignity of princes, the equity of judges, the habits, pursuits, and virtues of all ages and sexes: all these, then, formed, distinguished, given life, completed for diverse and ineffable uses, praise the providence of the Creator. And what kind of praise belongs to those that are either lifeless or irrational, he shows, saying: "which do his word": so that by the very fact that they have been set in this order of their duties they bear witness to the praise of him by whom they were so established.

But to the kings and all the others, as sharers of reason, this cause of praising has been set forth: "for his name alone is exalted; his confession is above heaven and earth." And by this ordering of kings and peoples and princes and judges and all ages, God is indeed praiseworthy, because he holds the course of human life together by such a tempering of different duties; yet, because all the preceding praise shows the time of that blessed kingdom, he added this cause of praise: "for his name alone is exalted." For then the one God is both understood and seen even by the unwilling, when the devil has been bound and his angels assigned with him to the punishment of eternal fire and all power of the spiritual wickednesses taken away, when there is no longer sin, no longer death, no longer this earthly world. For he says: "His confession is above earth and heaven: he will exalt the horn of his people," that is, in that age of that blessed city, where the Lord exalts the horn of his people and will impart to it, through the honor of immortality, the incorruption signified in the horn. For then there is a new heaven and a new earth, when, these present ones dissolved, those new and eternal ones succeed. Therefore his confession is above heaven and earth, because the seat of that blessed kingdom has been established not in this age nor in this air, but in higher places.

And since that is the kingdom of the saints, through which, the Lord reigning, they will come to the blessed kingdom of God the Father, the prophet concluded the psalm thus: "A hymn for all his saints, for the sons of Israel, a people drawing near to him." This whole hymn belongs to the saints, who praise the Lord not, as the other kings or princes or judges, out of wonder at his power and confession, but out of the joy of blessedness completed in them and the rejoicing of those who sing: the saints, namely, who are the sons of Israel, drawing near to God; certainly not those of whom it is said, "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me," but those who will deserve to hear: "The Lord is near to all who call upon him." The hymn is proper, then, to those who will draw near to God, who, through this blessed kingdom of the holy Jerusalem, nearest to the eternal kingdom, will pass after the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ into the kingdom of God the Father, the Lord reigning with them, as the apostle teaches: "when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has abolished every principality and every power and might. For he must reign until he puts all enemies under his feet. For when all things have been subjected under his feet, the last enemy, death, is abolished. When he says, All things have been subjected, except him who subjected all things to him, then he himself will be subject to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all." This, then, is the people drawing near to the kingdom of God the Father, nearest through the kingdom of the Son of God. So the Lord reigns, about to hand over the kingdom to God the Father, not to lose the power of the kingdom, but to hand us, who are his kingdom, over to God the Father into the kingdom. The handing over of the kingdom is our advancement, so that we who will be in the kingdom of the Son may also be in the kingdom of the Father, worthy of the Father's kingdom through this, that we shall be worthy of the Son's kingdom too, nearest then to the Father's kingdom when we shall be in the kingdom of the Son, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

The preceding psalm exhorted every diversity of creatures to the praise of God the Creator; and the order, begun from heavenly things, ran through all the living things of earth and sea and air, the whole range of ages, sexes, and powers too being admonished to the honor of due confession, so that pious speech of thanksgiving might celebrate the glory of him who had given them life, made them firm, and adorned them. After the prophet, as was fitting, had fulfilled the proper gift of his duty at the end of that psalm, while all were exhorted to divine praise, he yet showed that the hymn belongs to his saints: namely, to the sons of Israel, the people that would become nearest to God, so that, while the whole universe praised God from the sense and rejoicing of its life, Israel alone, drawing near to him, might sing the hymn from the familiarity of knowledge and divine condescension. After which we are now urged to sing a new song to God. And perhaps the earlier psalm might be thought to have left nothing further of newness and wonder, since whatever there is in our rejoicing and sense, that very thing has been prescribed to be in praise. For our mind is not able to lift itself beyond the heavenly seat; but the things that are above the heavens are admonished to praise God. Again, the notion of our understanding cannot stretch itself beyond the immensity of the abyss; but the things in them are called to the duty of praise. Now the very nature of the air in hail, snow, ice, and the wind of the storm is commanded to sing together the glory of so great a praise. Then further the whole human race, in kings, princes, judges, in every bloom of youth or ripeness of old age, has been commanded to sing God's praise; because all these hold together in an undisturbed and moderated course, and all things flow so commanded by the law of their nature that they may not depart from the order in which they were created.

Since, then, beyond these decrees of divine and heavenly things no knowledge, and no praise from knowledge, seems to have been granted to man, let us see to what new song we are now called, when it is said: "Sing to the Lord a new song." It is plainly a new song. The rejoicing of this new song we have already shown in the preceding psalms in which a new song is sung: when the Lord is shown to be going to reign among the nations, when his right hand will save him for the glory of the kingdom, when, taking up his soul from the underworld, he took us up with him as kings. This new song, then, is proper to his saints. For there follows: "His praise is in the church of the saints. Let Israel rejoice in him who made him, and let the sons of Zion exult over their king; let them praise his name in the dance, let them sing psalms to him with timbrel and psaltery": that is, in him who, according to the new song of the ninety-fifth psalm, will reign among the nations, and whom, in the following new song, his right hand will save as Lord in his wonderful deeds. Over this king, then, Israel and the sons of Zion rejoice: of that Zion, namely, who is the mother in heaven, which is the city of the enrolled firstborn and of thronging angels, and that Israel which is in spirit, not in letter, and upon which is the apostle's peace. These sons, then, who, receiving and confessing the king, have become sons of God, and these, who recognized God in the body with the eyes of the mind, will rejoice in the dance, singing psalms with timbrel and psaltery. And this music of joy is in the tents of the righteous, and in the song of the symphony the song at the return of the penitent son is heard.

And what now, properly, after the praise of creatures and the earlier new songs, was the cause of this new song, he shows, saying: "For the Lord is well pleased in his people; he will exalt the meek unto salvation. The saints will exult in glory." All things indeed pleased God when they were created, as Genesis testifies, when it says, "And God saw that they were good"; but we learn that his good pleasure is in his people. The creation of man is indeed good, since it received the beginning of creation according to the origin and likeness of God; but, the judgment of the unchangeable God tempering itself according to the change of human will and choice, then, because they had sinned and were doing what was to be repented of, he testified that he repented that he had made man. But when they themselves were reformed from sin into life, the complaint of repentance was driven away and the disposition of good pleasure toward them is now shown. For we have been reconciled to God from enemies into sons through the body and blood of Christ, since the prophet had promised us the propitiation of an eternal priest by an oath without repentance, saying: "The Lord has sworn and will not repent: You are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek." It is well-pleasing, then, because it was sworn to be without repentance to him, in whose reign, according to the order of Melchizedek, that is, king and priest of the Gentiles, there is first salvation for the meek, then splendor for the saints exulting over their king.

But after the glory of the saints we must understand what follows for the fullness of the new song: "They will rejoice on their couches. The exultations of God are in their throat, and two-edged swords in their hands." No longer will the bed be watered with tears, nor will the couch be washed each night because of the necessity and grief of sin of those living in this body of death. For on their couches the saints will now rejoice in glory, and therefore the exultations of God will always be in their throat. Through the meaning of the throat he declares the disposition of the inner conscience. But not only is the exultation of God in their throat; their hands too will be armed with two-edged swords. This the knowledge of the king has granted to the sons of Zion, for whom, singing psalms in dances and timbrels, salvation and glory and joy and exultation and power have been arranged. For that power is signified by the sword we are admonished both in very many places and in what follows. For why there would be two-edged swords in their hands the prophet soon taught, saying: "to execute vengeance on the nations, rebukes among the peoples; to bind their kings in fetters and their nobles in iron shackles, that they may execute on them the written judgment: this glory is for all his saints." This, then, is the new song: when the lowly of the earth and the contrite of heart are made kings over kings, when those thought the refuse of the world and as it were born out of due time become the light of the world and the avengers of the nations. For two-edged swords are in their hands, because from the mouth of that holy one in the Apocalypse comes a two-edged sword, exercising judgment of power on every side. For the Lord came to send a sword on the earth, and the saints, according to the apostle, will judge the world, and by them the world will be judged. For it is said: "Or do you not know that you will judge angels?" Vengeance on the nations, then, is done through them; for God in us is the God of vengeance. Rebuke then is brought out against the peoples; for faithful is he who says: "I will rebuke you and set these things before your face." But the outcome of this rebuke is this: that the kings of the nations and their nobles are bound with shackles and fetters. For, bound hand and foot, according to the Gospels, they are consigned to the outer darkness. And since there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth there, the written judgment will be done, which the law, namely, had prescribed, which the prophets had announced, which every divine word had testified. This is the merit that faith, piety, continence, and confession have; this the contempt of the world receives as its reward: to be made king over kings whose hatreds have been endured for Christ's name; that nobles be bound whose chains and prisons enclosed us; the written judgment is held against those whose swords and power raged. So all the glory of the saints is from God, when after these sufferings of life and bodies they exercise power. So the hymn of the new song is fulfilled, when, after the reproach of the nations and the tortures of kings, they decree the written judgment against nations and kings, for whom the Lord Jesus Christ is both only-begotten God and Lord and king, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.