Tractates on the Psalms 51.7–51.24

After this complaint of the prophet's grief about him, the discourse now turns to address him: "Your tongue has devised injustice." The function of the human tongue is, driven by natural reason, with a varied yet regulated motion, to divide the voice into words, so that through it speech may stand out from the confused sound of breath bursting forth and be distinct for the understanding of things. And although its motion for doing this is rational, yet it is understood to be subject to reason rather than itself understanding by the sense of reason. But what lacks the sense of understanding lacks also the impulse of reason; and whatever lacks the impulse of reason lacks also the deliberation of counsel. How, then, is it understood to be rightly said by the prophet that the tongue devises injustice, since thinking begins from the rational sense of a living soul, whereas the tongue was established not for the nature of beginning reason but for the service of a rational nature? But another prophet too shows the authority of this perfect and prophetic saying, when he says: "The heart of fools is in their mouth"; because, handling nothing by the counsel of reason and not depending on the meditation of the heart, they utter disordered, random, and disordered things by the rash motion of the tongue alone. And so the heart of fools is in their mouth, because they will not speak what they have thought, but will think what they have said. So much for the tongue of the fool. But of the tongue of the wise we read thus: "The tongue of the understanding meditates wisdom"; and again: "My tongue is the pen of a scribe writing swiftly"; because the tongue of the one who understands proceeds from the meditation of wisdom, and again, like the pen of a writer, does nothing disordered, nothing uncertain, but, obeying what has been thought or read, quickly complies by the reasoning of counsel.

And since, by the reason of nature, the tongue serves thoughts rather than thinks, this tongue that devised injustice is shown not to have used the functions of its nature. For there follows: "Like a sharp razor you have worked deceit." A razor is sharpened for the neatness of the face, so that by shaving off the rough and bristly face it may make it smooth. If instead it wounds, it has worked deceit, since, prepared for adornment, it has given its service to a wound. This tongue, then, of the one mighty in wickedness, devising iniquity, has worked deceit: that is, the tongue which nature had prepared for uttering the rational thoughts of a deliberating heart itself thinks irrational iniquities. For that people, which is to be understood as signified in Doeg, chosen to magnify the name of God and prepared to celebrate his praises, dishonours him, betrays him, and, as far as it can, destroys him by the death of the cross; and it accomplishes this with the razor of its tongue, with which it cried, "Crucify, crucify." So this tongue, devising iniquity, worked deceit like a sharp razor; and what kind of deceit, what follows teaches.

For there follows: "You have loved wickedness more than kindness, iniquity more than speaking righteousness." The crime of this deceit becomes heavier by comparison, when wickedness is loved and goodness neglected, when iniquity is done and the word of righteousness passed over. The Lord condemns this disposition of love inclined to wickedness in the Gospels, saying: "And this is the judgment, that the light has come into this world, and men loved darkness rather than light." So the people for whose redemption from sins the Word became flesh and God was born man, so that through the justification of faith they might be free of the curse of the law, preferring to serve the curse in transgressing the law, handed over to punishment that very God of theirs, taking his blood upon themselves so that the governor might be innocent. And doing this they change the custom of nature: for they love wickedness more than kindness and turn love from good things to the worst. They preferred also to love injustice more than to speak righteousness.

The prophetic word, according to Jewish custom, kept a reasoning in the very force of the words when it said: "You have loved wickedness more than kindness, injustice more than speaking righteousness." For where it says, "You have loved wickedness more than kindness," it condemns nothing beyond the love itself, by comparison. But where it says, "injustice more than speaking righteousness," there it rebukes not the disposition of a preferred love but hatred itself in speaking, saying "more than speaking righteousness." For the Jews can and often do, though they do not love goodness, at least feign it in speaking. But they cannot in any way speak of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to the blessed apostle Paul became for us righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. They are not held to any patience of speech when we show from prophetic authorities that the only-begotten God, born before the ages, suffered, was crucified, and died in the man; then they avoid and flee every word about him; and if there is no place to go away to, overcome by a kind of force of silent grief, they stop their ears with their hands and shut out hearing so that it may not penetrate to them. They do not love goodness, but sometimes speak of it; righteousness, however, since it is Christ, they neither love nor speak.

The insertion of the diapsalma, though it brought no change of person, is understood to have made a change of sense. For although the discourse is both of the same person as before and to the same person as before, yet the same discourse now signifies something other than before. The earlier things were heavy with complaints, so much so that, through the prophet's grief, they were rebuked before they were stated: when the tongue devises injustice, when like a sharp razor it works deceit, when wickedness is loved more than goodness and injustice more than speaking righteousness. For these reasons a kind of accusation of the prophet as accuser before God was set first, when it is said: "Why does the mighty one boast in wickedness, of iniquity all day long?" And so that the grief of the complaint should not be found empty, the very cause of the complaint was added.

Now, however, with the diapsalma intervening, complaint does not go first; rather, the most grievous cause of sin having been shown before, this sentence of condemnation is then added: "You have loved all words of casting down, a deceitful tongue; therefore God will destroy you to the end, he will pluck you out and remove you from the tabernacle, and your root from the land of the living." It follows the example we read in Genesis in these words: "Because you have done this, cursed are you from the earth"; and again: "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife"; and also from the apostle, who, after listing the most grievous crimes of human ungodliness, said thus: "Therefore God handed them over to a reprobate mind." So now too: "You have loved words of casting down, a deceitful tongue; therefore God will destroy you to the end." The Latin language has not kept the force of the word. For what we have as "words of casting down" the Greeks have rendered ta rhēmata katapontismou: by which is signified that what is for us a casting down is for them a sinking into the depth of the sea. With us, according to the general sense, "casting down" can be understood not only in the sea but as the fall of those who drop from high places, whether buildings or cliffs or places of any kind. So, according to the meaning of casting down that has been shown, because Doeg loved words of casting down, he is subjected to most severe condemnation.

For every unbelieving soul, shipwrecked in the depth of this world as in a sea, is carried about with uncertain and wandering motion and tosses unsteadily on the swell of different desires, mocked by the power of the devil, who inhabits the world; and it stands on no firm solid ground beneath it from which to resist and push back against him. From this it is easily tossed about, hanging and wandering, by the incitements of the desires that drive it around. That the motion and waves of this world are compared to the swell of the surging sea, which is the dwelling of the ruling devil, the hundred and third psalm shows according to prophetic and allegorical understanding, yet under the bodily signification of creatures: "This great and wide sea, there are serpents without number, small and great creatures; there ships will pass; that dragon which you formed to mock him." And again in the sixty-eighth psalm: "I came into the depth of the sea, and the storm sank me." So the only-begotten Son of God, the Word of God and God the Word, came down to rescue us from shipwreck in the depth of this world, to draw out all these kinds of fish with the net of his teaching, to which the kingdom of heaven is like. He is betrayed and dishonoured by the ungodly people; and that people, conforming itself to the dragon as companion in mocking, sinks itself and casts itself down into this depth to share his dwelling. So too the people of the Egyptians, unbelieving toward Moses, deserved to be cast down and drowned, and the waves of the sea pouring back upon itself swallowed the ungodly nation, which loved words of casting down when it opposed God.

Because, then, the people of the Jews, unbelieving and betraying its king, loved words of casting down, saying, "I have no king but Caesar," neglecting God as king and confessing a man as king, it sank itself into this depth of the world. Therefore it is destroyed to the end (for it has lost the kingdom of its destroyed city until the consummation of the age), and it has been plucked from the tabernacle and removed: now wandering in the whole world and everywhere a stranger, all its sins having been completed in the Lord's passion.

Because it loved words of casting down, it lacks that tabernacle in which the prophet was always full of the Spirit of God, in which arose awesome contemplations of holy powers and saving visions, in which were the useful offerings of sacrifices for the redemption of the soul, in which was the Passover lamb, guardian of the faithful in the slaughter of Egypt and a mighty sign in the blood on the doorposts, in which were temporary festivals imitating eternal times. Plucked from this tabernacle, then, they lack these honours of spiritual gifts.

They have been plucked not only from this earthly tabernacle but also from that of which it is said, "I will raise up the tabernacle of David that has fallen": that holy and venerable body and temple of God born of the virgin, in which whoever believes will dwell as a sharer in the Lord's flesh. But every unbeliever will be plucked away and removed from this kinship with the body he did not believe in, that is, from the tabernacle of God, being unworthy to dwell in this spiritual tabernacle. The Lord is understood to signify this when he says: "I am the true vine, you are the branches, my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch that does not abide in me and bear fruit will be uprooted. And every branch that abides in me my Father will cleanse, that it may bear more fruit." If, then, any through faith in God made flesh deserve to remain in the nature of the body assumed by God, they are cleansed to bring forth eternal fruits from themselves, because a branch remaining in the vine must hold the nature of the true vine. But whoever is unbelieving toward God born in the body, or, even if believing, still lacks the fruits of his faith, will be uprooted either for unbelief or for the uselessness of fruits withheld. For the Son of God born of the virgin, not first Son of God when he became son of man, but also son of man in the Son of God, so that the son of man might be Son of God, assumed in himself the nature of all flesh, through which, made the true vine, he holds in himself the kind of every branch. If, then, any branch is unbelieving or fruitless, it offers itself to be uprooted; remaining by nature, yet torn away by unbelief or uselessness. From this tabernacle, then, as from the true vine, this ungodly Doeg is both plucked and removed, remaining by nature both in the tabernacle and in the vine, but deserving by unbelief to be torn away.

Torn from the tabernacle, he will also be uprooted from the land of the living. For whoever does not remain in Christ will not be an inhabitant of Christ's kingdom; and he will not be, not because the dwelling was not open to him (for it is open to all, that they may share in the body and kingdom of God, since the Word became flesh and dwelt in us, assuming in himself the nature of the whole human race), but each, according to his merit, offers himself to be torn from the tabernacle and uprooted from the land of the living, never forbidden to be in it, since through the assumption of nature he was received as an inhabitant; but he is uprooted for the crime of unbelief, showing himself unworthy of sharing that nature. He is uprooted, then, from the land of the living, which is being prepared in the blessed region for the saints who reign with the Lord; which he himself mentions in the Gospel, saying, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"; and this same prophet: "And I will please the Lord in the land of the living," from which the treacherous people deserved to be uprooted after it was destroyed to the end and removed and torn from the tabernacle.

It is the land of the living because every believer in the Lord, though he has died, lives to God, as it is said: "I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob; he is not the God of the dead but of the living." And again through Jacob: "Let Reuben live and not die"; and that saying: "Let Ishmael live in your sight." And also the apostle's saying (if it seems so to the reader, since it has a double meaning): "And we who are alive, who shall remain, shall be caught up with the clouds to meet Christ in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord." The cutting off of bodies brings a temporary setting of death; but the law appointed for dying does not take away the law of rising, because a law brings no necessity on him who decrees the law, nor did God take from himself the right of giving life by decreeing for us the law of dying. Death is lawful only over those against whom it is decreed. But all live to God, by whose law they died. Nor can death, which prevailed only through the law of the one who decrees, prevail of itself so as not to be changeable by the law of living through the one who decrees the law of renewing life, since the power of the one who decrees changed, by the law of dying, the life established from the beginning in Adam under the condition of a decree. So all saints and faithful live to God. For when he says he is the God of those who had died, that is, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and at once testifies that he is the God not of the dead but of the living, he teaches by this that those who are thought dead in the judgment of human opinion are not dead to him who decrees the law, but living.

The insertion of the diapsalma renewed, if not the person, at least the sense. For after the condemnation of Doeg had been announced, to whom the discourse was addressed as if present, the prophet now turned to the meaning of another exposition: "The righteous will see and fear, and they will laugh at him and say: Behold the man who did not make God his helper, but hoped in the abundance of his riches and prevailed in his vanity." When Doeg has been destroyed to the end, plucked from the tabernacle, removed, and uprooted from the land of the living, all the saints must fear, when they see that a people helped and supported by so many and such great aids of divine mercy, after that immense dignity of a glorious kingdom beyond human resources, has given of itself the greatest and last example of human calamity. For who could recall its ancient glories and countless blessings, which we partly mentioned above: when, after the deaths of Egypt, the sea parted and gave way to their journey; when the pillar of cloud shaded the heat of the day; when the pillar of fire scattered the darkness of night; when heaven gave food through angels; when the rock flowed with a spring; when the Jordan flowed back; when a great city fell at the mere circling of the ark of the testament; when the sun, held back from its course, prolonged the day, and the order of divine law, departing from that tireless and undisturbed motion of the elements, stood still to delay the battle; and then, after that familiarity with seeing and hearing the divine majesty, could see them consumed by wars, dead of famine, and before that fed to the death of famine on the corpses of the dead, the rest then reduced to slavery, exiles everywhere, everywhere degenerate, nowhere known, always new and always obscure by change of dwelling, always foreigners? And if anyone raises his spiritual eyes, of which the Lord says, "Lift up your eyes and see the fields, for they are white for harvest," then let him know that they have been torn from fellowship in the body of God, from that kingdom of blessedness, from that honour of the resurrection, and are without the Spirit of God, without the understanding of prophecy, and appointed as fodder for Gehenna, to be eaten by the undying worm and burned by the unquenchable fire; though he knows that theirs was the giving of the law, theirs the covenants, theirs the fathers, from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all. With how much fear, then, will all the saints look upon these changes and present and eternal calamities of theirs, since the sight of the punished is terrifying by its example? The righteous will see, then, and fear, understanding that there is nothing they need not fear in so great a calamity. But because they are righteous, though they fear the example, they will rejoice in the fruit of their own righteousness. For they will laugh at him: laughing, then, and fearing, because they are subject to God, whose severity toward the punished is terrible. Laughter tempers fear, since fear comes from the example and laughter from merit. Fear in turn moderates laughter, since they will rejoice in good things in such a way that the terror of the example is not lacking; for to fear without joy belongs to an ungodly conscience distrustful of itself, and to rejoice without fear belongs to an insolent nature.

But those who laugh while fearing will add this too to their laughter tempered by fear, saying: "Behold the man who did not make God his helper." It is the folly of extreme ungodliness not to understand that one lives under God and from God, but to wish rather to trust in one's own power in what one does and hopes for, when that power, if there is any in oneself, comes from God. So let all our hope be toward God and all our confession be in God, after the example of the prophet who says, "Lord, my helper and my redeemer"; and again: "I lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from where my help will come. My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth." Let us always fear, then, lest that eternal fire burn us and the undying worm consume us, when we hear what the righteous, fearing and laughing, say: "Behold the man who did not make God his helper, but hoped in the abundance of his riches."

Wealth makes some rich men insolent, and empty confidence in riches above all turns away the fear of God: fools, who do not understand that they ought to be the more devout because they are rich, since it befits them to return thanks to the giver of the goods they desire, and the guilt of avarice is the more inexcusable because wealth does not excuse the necessity of avarice. How unhappy is confidence in an empty thing: to despise God by having gold, as if gold were not one of God's creatures, or as if anyone, in the judgment of a sound mind, could gain advancement toward a blessed life because gold lies buried for him, and thereby become a man not of the common soul and body, and be other than he was born; or as if, when he leaves life, he would use his gold in death! He will indeed use it, if he uses it rightly in life: if he feeds the hungry with his bread, covers the naked with his clothing, relieves the sick at his own expense, or redeems the captive to freedom. These indeed are the influential embassies of human treasure before God; this is the power of begging off crimes, these are true votes in our favour. Thus we shall be changed by gold, so that from earthly we become heavenly and from mortal eternal. That unbelieving people, not considering these things and despising God's commandments, thinking itself rich through the law, which is the shadow of good things to come, having made bad use of the riches it obtained, was uprooted, removed, and torn from the land of the living and from the tabernacle: believing itself all-powerful in vanities, namely in the glory of its kingdom, in the gold of the temple, in the commandments of men, as the prophet says: "In vain do they worship me, teaching the doctrines and precepts of men," the law of God having been changed by the insulting observance of human custom.

But the prophet, who must be understood to be righteous, speaks otherwise of himself with confidence in his hope: "But I, like a fruitful olive tree in the house of God, have hoped in the mercy of God for ever and for age upon age." The ages of men differ in time, but the spirit of prophecy is the same. The prophet says he remains in the house of God like a fruitful olive, a tree always green and bearing the best fruit. The apostle proclaims that into this olive, after its branches were broken off for unbelief, the believing Gentiles were grafted from the base wild olive, so that contrary to the nature of their kind they might receive the nature of the root. But the prophet, though remaining in the law, is yet a gospel prophet, and continues with his fruit in the house of God both in the law and in the Gospels: not to be broken in his branches, not to be left a trunk, not to be offered, now useless, to have the wild olive grafted onto him, nor to pour the power of his root into a foreign tree; but wholly intact, as he is a preacher of the apostolic faith; not one to be grafted from the Gentiles onto the root of the law for gospel faith, but, even in the gospel faith of the Gentiles, himself wholly fruitful by the power of his own root and branches from the rich conscience of the law. The house of God, according to the apostle Peter, is the church and all followers of the gospel faith, as he says: "Be built up as a spiritual house, a priestly kingdom." And Paul: "That you may know how one ought to behave in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." In this house of God, then, the righteous and holy prophet, standing like a fruitful olive, using his own fruitful and rich root, hoped in the mercy of God; not for a time, not only in the short age of this bodily life, but for age upon age. For he stretches his hopes to the infinite age of perpetuity and is not shut in by the setting of death, since he knows that he is to live in Abraham's bosom after the example of poor Lazarus, and knows too that by the change of the glorious resurrection he will remain co-eternal and conformed to God; and he will remain because of what follows: "I will confess to you, Lord, for ever, because you have done it; and I will wait for your name, for it is good in the sight of your saints."

Hope in the mercy of God is for ever and for age upon age. For the very works of righteousness will not suffice for the merit of perfect blessedness unless the mercy of God, even in this will for righteousness, does not reckon the faults of human changes and impulses. Hence the prophet's saying: "Your mercy is better than life"; because, although the life of the righteous is approved through the working of righteousness, it will obtain greater merit through the mercy of God. For from this life it will advance into eternal life; and the mercy of God rewards the working of righteousness so far that, pitying the will for righteousness, he grants each righteous man to be a sharer even in his own eternity. Therefore the hope of mercy is for ever and for age upon age; but confession is only for ever, not also for age upon age. For confession of sins exists only in the time of this age, while each is left to his own will and, through the freedom of life, has the choice of confession. For when we depart from life we depart also from the right of will. Then the law, already established by the merit of past will, takes up the will of those who leave the body, either for rest or for punishment. The prophet shows that the will at that time is no longer free but necessary, when he says: "I have no will in those days." For when freedom of will ceases, the effect of will too, if there is any, will cease. For the rich man, wishing to cross over to Abraham, is not allowed by the chasm between, though through freedom of will he could have been in Abraham's bosom. Freedom of will is shut off, then, because there is no confession among the dead, according to what is said: "But in the underworld who will confess to you?" So the prophet, hoping for mercy for ever and for age upon age, confesses only in this age, carrying out the temporary duties of confession in the time of the age, but stretching his hope eternally to the eternity of the ages. He added the cause of confession, saying "because you have done it," confessing that the Lord is the author of this universe and teaching that confession is to be made to none other than him who made the fruitful olive of hope in mercy for age upon age.

And who this is who made these things he shows by saying: "And I will wait for your name, for it is good in the sight of your saints." He will wait, then, for the name of God, to whom he confesses, through whom all things were made: for there is one God the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. It is his name he waits for, namely to see Jesus, that is, to know his Saviour, as the angel says: "And you shall call his name Jesus; for he will save his people from their sins." He waits to behold Christ, so that by profession of the noble family he may be a Christian. This name is good, which archangels and angels worship, at which demons tremble and which they cannot bear, which men take up for salvation; for it is written: "And everyone who calls on his name will be saved." And he waits, not secretly, not fearfully, not alone, but in the sight of his saints: that is, with free faith, not refusing the testimony of his waiting even under the knowledge of the heavenly saints, or, by the example of prophecy, offering in himself an example of waiting to all the saints who are on earth.