Tractates on the Psalms 54.1–54.19

The heading of the psalm has no history; it is only: "For the end, among the hymns, understanding." Some of our translators have called the hymns "songs"; but most have put "hymns," from the very usage of the Greek. The name makes no difference, provided it is understood that the thing signified, whether by "hymns" or by "songs," is one. This, then, is to be held about the psalm: what is contained in its hymn or song is to be understood "for the end," all our understanding being referred to our Lord Jesus Christ, whom the apostle taught to be the end of the law.

We have often warned that in knowing the psalms the reasoning of our sense must be so tempered that we remember that he of whom and through whom all prophecy is was born son of man from the Son of God: the nature of God, abiding before all ages, was begotten into the nature of man by the virgin's childbirth, in such a way that the addition of the later nature brought no failing of the former nature, nor did he who also began to be man cease to be what he remained before man, namely God. This one, then, taking the frailty of our flesh and remaining both his own and ours, acts, prays, professes, and awaits all those things that are ours in such a way as to mix in them also those that are his own. And he speaks sometimes in the person of man, because as man he was born, suffered, and died; but sometimes all his discourse is according to God, because from God he had come forth man and from the Son of God son of man: not forgetting in his words the confidence of his nature, which he did not lack even in the assumption of man. And so, speaking from us and from our weakness with the custom and usage of human speech, he spoke from himself and from his own power what is proper and worthy to God; as can be recognized in the present psalm, which begins thus.

"Give ear, God, to my prayer, and do not despise my supplication; attend to me and hear me. I was saddened in my exercise and troubled by the voice of the enemy and by the affliction of the sinner; for they turned iniquity upon me and in anger were troublesome to me. My heart was troubled within me, and the dread of death fell upon me. Fear and trembling came into me, and darkness covered me. And I said: Who will give me wings like a dove? And I will fly and be at rest. Behold, I have gone far off in flight and remained in the solitude." At the opening of the psalm, although he used the voice of humility when he said, "Give ear, God, to my prayer," yet he is understood to have said this not without some confidence proper to a loftier conscience. For it does not belong to every kind of innocence to ask that God give ear to one's prayer. For God's ears are always ready for the prayer of men, because he who imparted the nature of hearing to the human race cannot himself be outside the nature of hearing, and he who everywhere works this sense of hearing in us cannot fail to have everywhere in himself what he provides. God, then, hears everywhere and always; but it is not the merit of all that he should give ear to what he hears: the voice of the one praying reaches his hearing, but only the innocence of the prayer merits the favour of his giving ear, by which they are heard.

A threefold reason of prayer is set out at the opening. The first is that the prayer be given ear; the next, that the supplication not be despised; the third, that he attend to him and hear him. And the nature of each kind must be distinct, so that giving ear is not the same as not despising, and attending and hearing differ again from both. Since we have shown what can be understood about giving ear to prayer, we must treat what "do not despise my supplication" means. Prayers are despised that are light, divided, useless, anxious with the cares of the world, entangled in desires for bodily things, barren of the fruits of good works. These, then, are despicable prayers, not worthy of God's favour, of which he says through the prophet Isaiah: "And when you stretch out your hands to me, I will turn my eyes from you." And he at once added the reason for despising the prayer: "Your hands are full of blood." Where, then, the work of iniquity appears, there the prayer of the suppliant is despised. But he attends to the one who hopes when the faith of silent hope is held in by the devotion of a godly conscience. And we have a most complete example of each property. The Lord gave ear to the words of the Canaanite woman crying out often; he despised the prayer of that young man who asked the giver of eternity for a division of his inheritance; but he attended to that woman who in the silence of faith sought health for herself even from the fringe of his garment.

Having distinguished these kinds of his whole prayer, he now set out the very reason for praying: that in his exercise he was troubled by the voice of the enemy and by the affliction of the sinner. Exercise is never undertaken except for useful and saving things; and because the ungodly cannot bear these even in a holy man, they strive to afflict him with every injury and wear him out even to the dread of death. But in the Lord Jesus Christ this exercise is the working of our salvation, which the exercise of various healings, and then of the passion itself, carried forward. Exercising himself also in this world in sharing our weakness (an exercise which Isaac prefigured by going out into the field, when he went to meet Rebecca riding on a camel, as Christ, exercising himself in this world, went to meet the bride from the Gentiles), he is also troubled by the voice of the enemy, when he is called a Samaritan, when he is said to have a demon, when it is denied that he is salvation to others because he does not rescue himself from the cross. Turning upon him the iniquity of false testimonies and the sentence of death, they are also troublesome to him in anger, while they rage with scourges, with fists, and with blows.

But amid these, having the power to summon twelve legions of heavenly beings, he is not moved to anger nor provoked to vengeance. For there follows: "My heart was troubled within me." He resolved to suffer everything within himself, provided he accomplished the mysteries of human salvation. It is most difficult for human weakness to hold in disturbances and agitations of mind within itself, so that some sign of anxiety or indignation does not break out, though with a silent movement, even to a change of the face. But in the only-begotten God, although our weakness was taken up, the nature of his divinity was not abolished, so that he did not go through all these weak things with the dignity of his majesty intact, while he bore all things belonging to our death and fear in such a way that they fell upon him rather than were in him, since the weakness is ours rather than natural in God. Indeed, the following words joined this very thing, when he said: "And the dread of death fell upon me. Fear and trembling came upon me, and darkness covered me." All these things, which belong to our necessity, rushed upon him; but they were taken up by him by the power of his nature, since, able not to die, he did not refuse our death even when the fear of death was rushing upon him.

And although these same things had fallen upon him as on a man, to dominate his weakness, yet to teach that he was not subject to what rushed upon him, he added: "And I said: Who will give me wings like a dove? And I will fly and be at rest." He is not weak who does not need to take wings from elsewhere to fly away from the darkness covering him and the fear of death. For when he says, "Who will give me?", it is not one asking from someone, but one who hopes from nowhere else. He hastens to fly away like a dove, that is, to return to spiritual nature. For the Spirit too, in the form of a dove, came flying and rested upon him, having found a dwelling at one time in that man who was then coming up from the waters of the Jordan. And this is the reason for the prayer: that, weighed down by the weakness of the body, he had taken up what is mortal in us, so that, having become flesh, he might fly away into spirit. He mentions these wings of his in another psalm thus: "If I take my wings before the dawn and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me." He will take his own, then, so that it may be understood that, having emptied himself of them, he takes them up again.

But having taken wings so as to rest by flying, he shows where he will rest, saying: "Behold, I have gone far off in flight and remained in the desert." Darkness fell upon the light, but the darkness did not overcome it. For he went far off in flight, who could not be seized even by those who covered him. He fled, then, even those who persecuted him, and having gone far from them he dwells in the desert. And what this desert or solitude is (for the Greek expresses both by the same word) another prophet declares thus: "Rejoice, thirsty desert; let the desert exult and blossom like a lily; and let the deserts of the Jordan blossom and exult. Be strong, you weak hands and feeble knees; be comforted, you of little courage; be strong in mind and do not fear. Behold, God will render judgment; he himself will come and save us. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will hear; the tongue of the dumb will be taught. Then the lame will leap like a deer." He had come to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; but driven away by them he gladdens these deserts. For he remains in them, and remains after he has rested by flying. For it is the rest of God that is denied to the ungodly, when it is said, "If they shall enter into my rest"; the only-begotten God, having taken up again his spiritual glory, rests in these bodies, which were formerly desert, as in a temple worthy of him; for now the children of the desolate are more than those of her who has a husband.

I am not unaware that many, looking only at the sound of the words and the letter, think that almost nothing in all the psalms is suited to the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, and suppose that the whole is a rebuke by the prophet's complaints. But we raise no dispute. For we do not destroy, but build up, adding understanding of obscure things rather than taking away from simple things; because whatever David either suffered or lamented was fulfilled also in the sufferings of him who became flesh for all of us. And, as I think, what follows will prove the course of our understanding.

The intervening diapsalma changed the sense too. For the whole discourse is again against those of whom the complaint is made, yet with honour first given to him to whom he is accustomed to refer everything. For there follows: "I was waiting for him who saves me from faintness of spirit and from the storm." This waiting of his is not new; for in that psalm too, which is undoubtedly in his person, he prayed thus: "Save me, God, for the waters have come in even to my soul. I am stuck in the mire of the deep, and there is no foothold. I came into the depth of the sea, and the storm sank me." From this storm, then, and from this faintness of spirit (for he had been humbled even to the death of the cross) he waits to be saved by him to whom he prayed, saying: "Father, glorify me with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was."

But in waiting to be saved, he now waits for more than the hope of salvation. For there follows: "Cast them down, Lord, and divide their tongues." Latin, as in many cases, has not expressed the proper sense of the word, whether Hebrew or Greek. For what is said "cast down" is expressed by them as katapontison, by which word it is prayed not that they be cast down but that they be sunk into the depth. He asks, then, that they be sunk and their tongues divided. We know that the one was done under Noah and the other after the building of the tower: the depth consumed the former, drowned by the flood, while the division of tongues separated the latter, to be a cause of perpetual contention among themselves, so that, not knowing and fearing one another, they might not hold together the conspiracy they had begun against God. No different punishment, then, is now asked for these: that, swallowed up by the right of the nations, which we recall are signified by the waters, and divided among all the languages with which they now live and which they speak, they might lose the dignity of their life and kingdom.

So that we might know that these things would follow because of the vices of the city and its contradiction of his precepts, he added: "For I have seen iniquity and contradiction in the city; day and night it will surround it upon its walls; and iniquity and toil are in its midst; and usury and deceit have not departed from its streets." For these vices and crimes, then, the punishment of future captivity and dispersion is asked; but the chief crimes are iniquity and contradiction. For they rejected with ungodly contradiction the one whom the law and the prophets had announced. This contradiction, surrounding the walls of the city itself night and day, went over them, because on the very night of his passion, when he professed that he would be seen seated at the right hand of power, they tore their garment and contradicted him, with the odium of blasphemy besides. By walls, we recall, the protection of salvation is signified; as when the building and fortifying of the new Jerusalem, that is, the construction and guarding of the heavenly church, is desired, it is written thus: "Deal kindly, Lord, in your good will with Sion, and let the walls of Jerusalem be built." There was then in that people a spiritual guard, and it was fortified by the administration of the law ordained through angels. But when, the very mediator of the law having been rejected, iniquity surrounded and went over these walls and this guard, then sin began to be greater than the fortification itself, so that iniquity overcame the will of the guard, as usury, deceit, and other things forbidden in the law overflowed.

And showing his indignation at so great an iniquity he added: "For if my enemy had reproached me, I would surely have borne it; and if one who hated me had spoken great things against me, I would surely have hidden from him. But you, a man of one mind with me, my leader and my acquaintance, who took sweet food together with me; we entered the house of God in harmony." The complaint is not about the passion but about the apostle who betrayed him. For since by taking up the death of the cross he gave salvation to the human race, he cannot be thought to reproach this mystery of great godliness. For indeed, if it were an enemy, there would be no cause for complaint, since what he himself had willed to suffer for our salvation was being accomplished in him; just as, if one who hated him had spoken great things against him, he would have been hidden from him, because God in man was not known to him, and so there would be less crime for one who did not know (for the Gentiles had not learned from a law foretelling it that the Word would become flesh, which was adapted for those under the law even by events themselves as a likeness of the future truth, since Abraham worshipped a man and Jacob saw God in a man); he would surely have borne these reproaches from the Gentiles, that, being man, he made himself God, that, having a demon, he led the people astray, since they did not know that all these things were contained in the law given to Israel. But since one of one mind, a leader, and an acquaintance does these things (of one mind, when he was chosen as an apostle; a leader, when, while the Lord stayed behind, he was sent ahead to the villages to proclaim his coming and was appointed by him a leader and prince of the future kingdom; an acquaintance, since he had learned all his comings and goings and had known in the son of man the Son of God, and had shared in changing water into wine and in making the barley sweet as food for the people, and had used the same table and always entered the house of God with him), he, taken into this fellowship of divine ministry, gave cause for a greater complaint against himself.

But although these things were said particularly of his ungodliness, the decree of punishment refers to many: "Let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into the underworld, for wickedness is in their dwellings, in their midst"; death coming upon them in such a way that they go down alive into the underworld to feel punishment, since works of wickedness surround them in their dwellings and in their midst, that is, wholly, within and without.

But while they were doing and plotting these things, he showed to whom his hope and prayer were directed, saying: "I cried to the Lord, and the Lord heard me. Evening and morning and noon I will tell, I will declare, and he will hear my voice. He has freed my soul in peace from those who draw near to me, for among many they were with me. And God will hear me; and he who is before the ages has humbled them." The Lord soon heard the faithful cry, and he will tell this very thanksgiving for his cry being heard evening and morning and noon, showing the whole day in these parts of the day by which the day is contained. Such an order of times was arranged only from prophetic knowledge, that he announces evening and morning and noon, because according to the law and the observance of the law, the day begun from evening is reckoned up to noon, since the beginning of the day is accomplished not by light returning in the morning but by night falling in the evening. He tells and declares, then, what is contained in the psalm: that he will hear his voice and free his soul in peace (for he has made peace for all things in heaven and on earth), and free it from those who draw near to him. For the earlier complaint was about those close to him, when one of one mind, a leader, and an acquaintance did these things together with the other apostles, himself chosen as an apostle. God, then, who is before the ages, that is, through whom all things are, because he is before all things, will hear him and has humbled them, since they have been made unworthy of the glory of the eternal resurrection.

For with a diapsalma interposed he cuts off from them all hope because of their unrepentant profession of ungodliness, saying: "For there is no change for them, and they have not feared." According to the apostle all will rise, but not all will be changed, because they did not fear God. For it would have been right for them, though they did not recognize God in the man, at least to believe God rising from the dead, since repentance and pardon were open to them even after the crime of the passion. For not only did they not fear God, but when he had stretched out his hand to repay them, that is, had offered help, they defiled his covenant, when they rejected him who was foretold for salvation by the covenant of the law. For there follows: "He stretched out his hand in repaying. They defiled his covenant; they were divided by the anger of his face." And therefore no change has been left them, because he who died once for sin and rose again granted change only to those who through faith both died with him and will rise with him. But these, when the city was overthrown, he divided by the anger of his face, and setting their portion with the unbelievers he either scattered them into all lands or divided them from the saints.

Then from the general complaint the discourse returned to signify him who had been leader, of one mind, and acquaintance: "And his heart drew near. His words were softer than oil, and they are darts." Mingled with the apostles and having the care of the poor, that is, caring for the greatest work of ministry, he drew his heart near (for he gave thanks that his soul was freed from those who drew near), not drawing near to the ministry of faith, but to the anger of God and the defiling of his covenant. Moreover, he was smooth-tongued, deceiving with speech softened beyond oil that he cared for the poor, even when he complained about the alabaster of precious ointment poured out, as if it ought rather to have been sold for the expenses of the needy. But he was seeking an occasion for theft from the collecting of money. And the prophet avoids the oil of such a smooth-tongued thief in another psalm, when he says: "Let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head," because under the appearance of a good work it moves the weapons of wickedness. There are darts in words too, as teeth are a shield and arrows, and the tongue a sharp sword. He detests, then, these darts of speech, which are the more harmful under flattery and adulation.

But amid these darts of the enemy he remains undaunted and shows us a safe and trustworthy harbour of security. For there follows: "Cast your thought upon God, and he will nourish you; he will not give the righteous to be tossed for ever." The Lord in the Gospels too took from us the necessity of anxiety, saying: "Do not be anxious about tomorrow; sufficient for the day is its own evil. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all things will be given to you": that is, all care is to be placed in deserving God's kingdom and righteousness. Care, then, is to be cast upon him, for he will nourish, according to that saying: "He has nourished me by the water of refreshment." And nourishing he will not leave us in the waves of this world, as Jacob, nourished, escaped every storm both of hatred and of hard slavery, saying: "God, who has nourished me from my youth." For he is the author of life, he the giver of food, not only earthly but also spiritual.

But while he is brought up by the water of refreshment and freed from the waves of the storm, a worthy punishment follows the ungodly, when he says: "But you, God, will lead them down into the pit of destruction. Men of blood and deceit will not live out half their days; but I will hope in you, Lord." There is indeed a well of living water; but there is also a pit of destruction, according to that saying: "Let not the storm of water sink me, nor the deep swallow me up, nor the pit close its mouth over me." While the righteous one is not left to be tossed, then, they will be led into the pit of destruction, whose mouth could not be closed upon the only-begotten God when he rose from the underworld. Moreover, after the Lord's passion, the victory of war at once consumed them with the destruction of the city: every age without distinction was slain to satisfy the conquerors, and youth was laid low before half the days of life were lived. But full days are reserved for the saints and faithful, according to that saying: "And full days will be found in them"; in those whose hope is always in the Lord, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.