Tractates on the Psalms 2.2–2.24

In the middle of the times of the law, before the only-begotten Son of God, God the Word abiding before the ages, was born as man, the seventy elders, at the request of King Ptolemy, translated the books of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek letters. It had already been established by Moses that there should be seventy teachers in every synagogue. For Moses, although he had set down the words of the Testament in writing, had also separately made known certain more secret mysteries from the hidden things of the law to seventy elders, who were to remain teachers thereafter. The Lord too mentions this teaching in the Gospels, saying: "The scribes and Pharisees have sat on the chair of Moses; therefore do and keep whatever they tell you, but do not do according to their deeds." Their teaching, then, remained for later times, received from the writer of the law himself and preserved in this number and office of elders. So these elders, translating these books and having acquired, according to the tradition of Moses, the spiritual knowledge of hidden understandings, translated the ambiguous sayings of the Hebrew language, and certain words that declare various things of themselves, with definite and proper meanings of words according to the powers of the things, governing that manifold understanding of the language by the knowledge of the teaching. From this it comes about that those who translated afterwards, interpreting in different ways, brought great error to the nations, since, ignorant of that hidden tradition which came from Moses, they issued by their own uncertain judgments what had been said ambiguously in the Hebrew language. We shall give one example of the ambiguity of the Hebrew language, from which the rest of this kind may be understood to be, and understood as they are. Bresith is a Hebrew word. It has three meanings in it: "in the beginning," "in the head," and "in the Son." But the seventy translators rendered it "in the beginning," while the others translated differently; and according to this ambiguity this confusion has been made by them in every translation.

But the authority of these seventy interpreters remains complete. First, because they translated before the Lord's bodily coming, and no flattery of the times can be charged against their interpretation, since it is so much older. Then, because these very leaders and teachers of the synagogue, perfected besides in the knowledge of the law by the more secret teaching through Moses, could not be unworthy judges of interpretation, being the most certain and weighty authorities for teaching. They, then, translating the psalms among the other books, brought them into number, placed them in order, and divided them with diapsalmata, all of which among the Hebrews both were and are kept in confusion. Their translations were then not necessary for those who used only their own language. Yet they were kept by them with careful and devout guarding; and when the Lord afterwards had fulfilled the whole law with the mystery of his taking a body, his passion, and his resurrection, and these books, which the same translators had issued for the king, were compared and found faithfully in agreement, the teaching was established as indissoluble by privilege, and so was the authority of its antiquity.

The blessed apostle Paul, then, a Hebrew of Hebrews by his own profession, called this psalm the first also according to Hebrew knowledge and belief, not using the translators' division. His greatest concern in preaching to the leaders of the synagogue was to show from the teaching of the law that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born, suffered, rose again, and reigns for ever. So he kept this method, that in preaching to Hebrews he used the custom of the Hebrews. But we must use the authority of the translators, who translated the law not by the ambiguity of the letter but by the knowledge of the teaching.

Apostolic authority now gives a most complete understanding of the person, the time, and the cause. For what the apostles thought of this same psalm in the book of their Acts we shall say in their own words. For it is written, they themselves saying: "Lord, you are he who made heaven and earth and the sea and all things that are in them, who by the mouth of our father David, your holy servant, said: Why did the nations rage, and the peoples meditate vain things? The kings of the earth stood by, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. For truly in this city there gathered together against your holy Son Jesus, whom you anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and counsel had predetermined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness." There is no doubt, then, what the psalm showed by prophecy so long before. For the raging nations and the peoples meditating vain things, mingled together at that time in Herod and Pilate, stood together with their own kings and rulers. For by the joint judgment of the governor and the tetrarch the passion of condemnation was confirmed against the Lord.

And indeed, according to prophetic knowledge, the propriety of each word has been carefully fitted to each kind and name: so that the nations "raged," moved with an ignorant and disordered motion, as they saw and heard the Son of God in the body. They raged so far that they pierced him with a crown of thorns, clothed him in a royal robe and mocked him with the greeting and honour of a king, beat his head with a reed, gave him vinegar and gall to drink, and pierced his side with a spear. For the cohort of soldiers under Pilate did these things from the rage of unrestrained anger.

The peoples "meditated vain things," that is, they were occupied in vain meditation on the teachings of God, since by meditating on the law they did not understand him who was proclaimed in the law. For already at that time the people of the synagogue abounded not only from Abraham's generation according to the flesh but from many peoples; under the one name of the people of Israel the diversity of many peoples was contained. This is written thus in the book of Acts: "There were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven." So these peoples, gathered from many peoples into one people, meditated vain things.

The kings also stood by, namely Pilate and Herod, in whom the kings of the earth are understood; and each of them, as the laws over which they presided required, gave the service of his presence. But those who in ungodly and irreligious counsel plotted against the Lord in many meetings, these rulers "gathered together," that is, all the chief priests frequently assembled in the house of Caiaphas. So Herod the tetrarch and Pilate the governor were called kings of the earth, because they stood by in right of earthly rule. But the others, who gathered together, are neither rulers of the earth nor chief priests, since, being subject to the Roman governor and the tetrarch, they did not hold the right of their own kingdom, nor did they any longer deserve to be called chief priests, because they had shown themselves ungodly toward God, the Lord of that very priesthood.

And since there is no doubt, according to apostolic authority, that the psalm began in the person of God the Father (for they said, "who by the mouth of our father David, your holy servant, said"), therefore the translators inserted a diapsalma to show the change of person, although it was not contained in the Hebrew books. The person that now changes is to be understood as that of the apostles, saying: "Let us break their bonds and cast away their yoke from us." They must detest what they rebuke. So they break the bonds and throw off the yoke of those who both raged and meditated vain things. And there is no doubt that throwing off a yoke differs from breaking bonds; and each suits one of the two kinds and names mentioned above: they break the bonds of the nations and throw off the yoke of the peoples. For the nations are bound by the bonds of their sins, from which they cannot free themselves through unbelief, according to the saying, "The sinner is bound fast by the cords of his sins"; but the Jews are burdened with the yoke of the law, which the apostles throw off from themselves, as blessed Peter says: "Now therefore why do you tempt the Lord by putting on the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?" They throw off this yoke of the peoples from themselves, then, because they were subject to it; but the bonds they break not for themselves but for the nations. And so the reasoning of both expressions is preserved: where bonds are broken they add no sign of their own person, but where they throw off the yoke, by saying "let us cast away from us," they are understood to speak of none but themselves; so that, having thrown off that heavy and intolerable yoke, they might subject themselves to the sweet and light yoke of gospel sanctification to which they were invited, and might break the bonds of the nations through the freedom of preaching, according to what they said in their recollection of this same psalm: "And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness." For these apostolic teachings break the snares of all unbelief and sins.

And since a double person was kept above when it said, "against the Lord and against his Christ," there follows now also a twofold expression of one who laughs and one who mocks. For insult to the one is not distinguished from insult to the other, nor is the honour of worship divided between them. For those who are one in the glory of divinity through the genuine and lawful nature of Father and Son as they are in themselves are one also in the injury of contempt and in the honour of reverence, and each is honoured or scorned in the other. The Lord himself testified to this, saying: "As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father. He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him." Honour is not divided, insult is not distinguished; equal worship is expected toward both, and injury to one is contempt of both. So, since both are scorned in one, those who are both one in divinity through glory are also both one in worship through honour; so that those who gathered against the Lord gathered also against his Christ, and those whom he who dwells in heaven laughs at, the Lord also mocks.

Not that the Lord too was not always in heaven, since he testified of himself: "No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven." He is not absent from heaven, then, because, though he had descended from heaven and was remaining and speaking as the Son of Man, yet while he was saying these things he was in heaven. The Son of Man had indeed descended, but by the power of his nature the Son of God was not absent from where he had descended; nor, when he was born as man, had he lost what he was before; nor, having become Son of Man, had he ceased to be Son of God. Rather, the Son of Man is so truly Son of God that the Son of God, descending from heaven, was through the substance of his power the same Son of Man in heaven.

But the prophet, wishing to signify by a distinction of person the Father, who, while his Son was on earth even as Son of Man, remained in that eternal and blessed seat of his and rested without any dispensation of descending, says: "He who dwells in the heavens will laugh at them, and the Lord will mock them"; so that by him who laughed, dwelling in heaven, the Lord also might be understood, who mocked from heaven. There is no difference between mocking and laughing at, for both are done by the service of the mouth according to the disposition of the will. For divine matters are set forth to our understanding through bodily images, so that mocking and laughter are named in the derision of those who had gathered against the Lord and against his Christ; not that either the opening or the drawing of a mouth happens to the bodiless God, but that from the custom of our nature we might know with what judgment of the divine will the ungodly were derided. They were mocked, then, and laughed at. For those who had put together false witnesses, who had bought the betrayal, who had taken his blood upon themselves and their children, who had cried "Crucify," who had said "Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God," who had sealed the tomb, who had bought from the soldiers silence about the resurrection and the rumour of the stolen body, lost all the labour of their ungodliness. He whom they had fastened to the cross is God; he whose tomb they had sealed is eternal. Ungodliness is laughed at when it strives after what is unlawful, when it seeks what is not granted, when it loses what it hopes to have obtained, when it recognizes as God the one it condemns as a man.

Therefore this follows fittingly: "Then he will speak to them in his anger, and in his indignation he will trouble them." For after the rashness of fruitless ungodliness was laughed at, when God rose from the dead, God on whom death had fallen through the form of the body he assumed, God speaks to those whom he had mocked and troubles them in indignation. But before we show what this speech is and what this disturbance of indignation is, readers and hearers must be warned not to believe that any changes of passions or disturbances of emotions fall upon God. For nothing new befalls that eternal and perfect nature; nor can he who is such that he is always what he is, lest he ever not be the same, be made anything other than he always is. It belongs to earthly and imperfect kinds of things to become changeable by a conversion of nature, when grief disturbs joy, anger gentleness, offence goodwill, envy calmness, anxiety security; and through these we are at times something other than we were, when, creeping in through our inconstancy and weakness, the movement of another desire disquiets the present disposition of the mind, and a sudden conversion changes us from what we were into what we are. But God, blessed and perfect, needs no advance, since he lacks nothing; he is not made new by change, since he has no origin. He is the one who is not from elsewhere what he is: he is in himself, with himself, from himself, his own to himself, and himself all things to himself, without any change of novelty, since, being whole and entire to himself, he has left nothing else that could befall him.

From his excellent and kindly blessedness, then, all the creations of heavenly and invisible things and the formations of spiritual and bodily things proceeded through our Lord Jesus Christ, not so that he might gain some advance for himself from those to whom he gave their origin. For no one needs what he gives from himself, or advances by what he is the author of being what it is. Things that bring advance are external, since what remedies want is foreign. God, then, from whom all things are, needs none of those to which he has granted to be what they are; but he created all things for the advance of the things that were to be brought forth. And since the discourse will be long if we begin with heavenly and invisible things, let us treat of ourselves, to whom the prophecy of the psalm is addressed.

He established man not because he needed his service in anything, but because he is good he made him a sharer in his blessedness, and he perfected a rational living being with life and sense for the enjoyment of his eternity, which he would bestow. This is plainly understood from his own words, for he says: "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you, but to fear the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his ordinances, which I command you, that it may be well with you?" God asks of us no service except that of innocence, religion, and faith. He requires to be loved by us, certainly not receiving any fruit for his own sake from our love for him, but the love itself benefiting rather us who shall love him. For he expects to be loved and obeyed, that it may be well with us, so that we may be judged worthy of the gift of his blessedness and goodness through the merit of our love and obedience. The use of goodness, like the brightness of the sun, the light of fire, the scent of a perfume, benefits not the giver but the user. What we are, then, is our advance rather than his who established us in what we are; for God, not begrudging the goods that are eternal in him, takes us up into the sense and enjoyment of his blessed goodness.

But he who is perfect and good has used his goodness and blessedness toward us not without reason and measure. For he allowed each of us freedom of life and sense, not fixing necessity on either side, so that a law of nature would compel each to be good or evil; but having created us out of kindness to enjoy his blessedness, he appointed our advance toward it through the merit of an innocent and honourable life. For what honour and reward would a necessity of goodness deserve, if some force joined to us did not allow us to be evil? Goodness, then, was left to the will, so that the will might gain for itself the reward of goodness, and so that our advance in and enjoyment of this eternal blessedness might come from merit, not from undiscriminating necessity by law. And although he drew us to will goodness, that is, to live well and honourably, through the hope of deserving and enjoying his goodness, he also added a punishment for goodness avoided and scorned; so that, since he had left us freedom of will to deserve goodness (because necessity of nature would have no merit), the terror of punishment set daily before us on the other side might restrain that very freedom. And so through equitable and just reasoning freedom was granted for the merit of reward, and through God's goodness the right of freedom was bounded by fear of his ordinance, so that the hope of merit might counsel us to will the good, and the punishment of the vengeance set before us might persuade us not to will evil.

So, for those who by freedom of will preferred wickedness, the vengeance appointed is believed to be the anger of God, not because that unchangeable and tranquil nature of God grows hot with a turbulent impulse, but because he who by the appointment of punishment remains in punishment feels that the author of this appointment is angry with him. For the punishment of the sufferer is believed to be the anger of the one who decrees it. And so God is angry when those punished feel through the pain of punishment that the anger of the decree is upon them; this anger is anger to those to be punished not through a change of nature moved from gentleness to anger, but from the appointment of punishment. That this appointment of punishment is called anger and is so, John shows in the Gospel, saying: "Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the anger to come?" For although it was due that they be punished for their ungodliness by the appointment of punishment, yet they were fleeing this coming anger by the confession of repentance. The apostle too mentions this anger, saying: "For if, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, much more, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved by him from anger," showing that anger is the punishment of an abiding appointment.

God, then, is not moved to change, nor carried from one thing to another; since he is of a certain and constant nature, he remains as he is, for he said: "I am who I am, and I do not change." That blessed and perfect goodness of eternal power does not suffer conversion, nor is it changed from one thing to another by the movement of an accidental impulse. The same prophet, speaking thus by the Holy Spirit, testifies to this here, saying: "God is a just judge, strong and patient; will he be angry every day? Unless you turn, he has brandished his sword, he has bent his bow and made it ready; and on it he has prepared the instruments of death, he has made his arrows for those who will burn." The patient one, then, is not changed to anger, but the powerful judge has decreed punishment for guilt. For against those who do not turn he has brandished his sword, bent his bow, prepared on it the instruments of death, and made his arrows for those who will burn. He has made them, not for a movement of sudden anger suddenly kindled by desire for vengeance, but he has made them for those who will burn, who by their unrepentant will appoint themselves to be burned. And the sword has been brandished at those who would not turn, not to be drawn against each one by a change into anger (for he who is patient is not angry every day), but because he has decreed judgment, his sword is already drawn by the appointment of punishment. The spiritual instruments of punitive judgment are named in the sword, the bow, and the arrows; and because they are held prepared for those who will burn, they are not prepared from a movement of temporary anger, but God has governed them, by the appointment of his decree, most temperately with the evenness of his goodness: by not leaving the severity of this appointment hidden and unknown, by warning beforehand of its terror through his announcements, and by holding back that punishment, though appointed, with a long delay for repentance of sin.

And so, after the nations raged and the kings stood by, after the peoples meditating vain things gathered together against the Lord and his Christ, and after they were laughed at and mocked, there was added: "Then he will speak to them in his anger, and in his indignation he will trouble them." How the Lord has always been accustomed to speak in his anger, we shall show by the weightiest and greatest example of prophetic teaching, where Isaiah says: "Hear the word of the Lord, rulers of Sodom; attend to the word of God, people of Gomorrah. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord. I am full. I do not want burnt offerings of rams, the fat of lambs, and the blood of bulls and goats; nor if you come to appear in my sight (for who required these things from your hands?) shall you continue to trample my court. If you bring fine flour, it is vain; incense is an abomination to me. Your new moons and sabbaths and the great day I cannot bear; my soul hates your fasting and holidays and new moons and festivals. You have become a surfeit to me; I can no longer bear your sins. When you stretch out your hands, I will turn my eyes away from you; and if you multiply prayer, I will not hear you; for your hands are full of blood." These things are terrible and full of anger: that the noble family of Abraham is called rulers of Sodom, that Israel, chosen as an inheritance, is called the people of Gomorrah, that the sacrifices are rejected, the solemnities abominable, the fasts loathed, the eyes turned away from the sight of those who approach, the ears closed against hearing those who pray, because their hands are full of blood. What is heavier than this threat? What more severe than these menaces? But let us see how God speaks in his anger.

For after it was said, "Your hands are full of blood," there follows: "Wash yourselves, be clean, remove the wickedness from your souls before my eyes. Learn to do good, seek judgment, rescue the one who suffers wrong, judge for the orphan and justify the widow; and come, let us reason together, says the Lord. Even if your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow; and if they are like crimson, I will make them like white wool. And if you are willing and listen to me, you shall eat the good things of the land; but if you are unwilling and do not listen to me, the sword shall devour you; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things." Kindness follows terror. And to those to whom vengeance for crime is already due, there still remains the blessed confession of a repentant conscience. For God does not at once destroy in his anger, but speaks, and, with punishment still held back, only troubles them in indignation. Those who were like scarlet and crimson, discoloured with blood overflowing on their hands, will grow white as snow and will be made white with the garment of blessed wool. These things have been drawn from the authority of the Old Testament; let us see whether in the New too the anger of God is understood to be such that it saves.

For John thus urges toward salvation those whom he reproaches as a brood of vipers because of the wickedness of their fathers' ungodliness: "Bear fruit worthy of repentance." And again the Lord himself: "Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you." And to those who raged against him not only in the passion but even after the passion, not, I say, gathering together, but breathing out persecution of the church, flight of the apostles, slaughter of martyrs, God, angry, speaks thus: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" And he said: "Who are you, Lord?" And the Lord: "I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you persecute." And he, trembling and afraid at what had happened to him, said: "Lord, what do you want me to do?" So he speaks in anger, so he troubles in indignation, when fear and terror are brought, by warning to desist, to the very ones for whom punishment has been decreed for the merit of their ungodliness.

But the prophet did not pass over even the chief and greatest proclamation of speaking in anger and troubling in indignation. For after saying, "Then he will speak to them in his anger, and in his fury he will trouble them," to show what that speech of anger was and what disturbance arose from it, he added: "But I have been established as king by him over Sion, his holy mountain, proclaiming his decree. 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; you will break them like a potter's vessel." Speaking in anger and troubling in indignation, he tempers both the manner of being angry and of speaking. For he neither hides his anger, since his power is displayed, nor departs from his goodness, since terror is sent ahead, so that fear of him whose power had been shown might call us back to godliness. So those who rage and meditate vain things are troubled when they know he is king, when they hear he is the Son of God, when they learn he is the possessor of the ends of the earth and the heir of the nations, when they recognize that the right of ruling with a rod of iron is his, when they understand that peoples are to be shattered in the manner and with the ease of a potter's vessel. So he speaks in anger, so he troubles in indignation, not punishing the ungodliness committed, but troubling the unrepentant toward the confession of repentance by recalling the terror of his power.

Through the spirit of prophecy, which records things to be done as done (since God is accustomed, through unerring foreknowledge of what is to be done, to signify future things as past), it can be fully understood that all these things were said in the person of the only-begotten Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and it would be the greatest unbelief to bring to them a hesitant sense of doubtful opinion. Yet it must also be shown from the teachings of the Gospels and the apostles that the prophet prophesied beforehand nothing but what was to be done and proclaimed; especially since no small error arises for the ignorant and simple from the words, "Today I have begotten you." For since the only-begotten Son of God abides before times, it is not understood to be fitting and consistent that he was begotten on a day, since all days are in time. For times, according to the knowledge handed down to us by Moses, have been measured out in this their movement and course from the origin and foundation of the world, being divided by moments, hours, months, and the year in a succession that revolves on itself; and time is made from time, since the mutual replacement of times both begets and ends all times. And therefore a day is in time, through which the whole of time, once begun, ends, and in ending begins. But the only-begotten Son of God, as he is the Word of God, so is God the Word; he is not with times but before times; he is not in anything but before all things. For he was when times were made, since he made them. He was, therefore, always. For he is not defined in time, not subjected to number; but he through whom is the origin of all things that are and can be said to be, himself continues to be by the birth of his infinite eternity, as begotten from eternity. So that the meaning of the prophetic saying, "Today I have begotten you," may be understood, we must bring in gospel and apostolic authority, so as to understand the prophet from the apostle or the apostle from the prophet. And the same order of gospel sayings must be kept as that of the psalm.

For this comes first: "But I have been established as king by him over Sion, his holy mountain." And I do not know for whom it would be safe to doubt that Christ is king, when the thief himself confessed it in the suffering of the cross: "Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom." But the confession of the thief who professed him king is not enough. The magi too, coming to worship, testify when they ask: "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?" Pilate too testifies when he asks: "Are you the king of the Jews?" And the Lord professes it, answering: "You have said so." When asked, he does not deny; about to be humbled to death, he does not boast. Since the confession came only from an answer, he neither put himself forward as the author of the profession nor begrudged the questioner the truth of knowledge.