Selected Comments on the Psalms 1071–1089

words which can fit no one else but only the Christ of God. For “He will rule from sea to sea, and from the rivers to the ends of the inhabited world,” and words like these, could not be referred to Solomon himself, nor to Rehoboam who succeeded to his rule, nor to any other of his successors, but only to our Savior. Since, then, according to David, the birth of Christ from his seed, and what was prophesied about it, was to be accomplished through prayer — among these prophecies were the contents of the present psalm, as is said at the end: “And all the nations will be blessed in him, and all the earth will be filled with his glory” — there is fittingly joined to them, according to Aquila, “The prayers of David have been completed”; according to Symmachus, “The prayers of David have been accomplished”; and according to the fifth edition, “The prayers of David have been summed up.” They were summed up in this: in all the nations being blessed through the appearing of the Savior of all the nations, born of his seed.

Where the diapsalmata occur, Aquila in place of “diapsalma” put “song,” and the fifth edition “continually”; but according to our copies and Symmachus, the mark “diapsalma” seems to be placed where a change of some musical melody or rhythm took place. Often there is also a change of thought at the diapsalmata, and sometimes even a change of speaker.

One might think that all the psalms entitled “psalm” were rendered by striking the musical instrument called the psaltery. But since, according to Aquila, throughout the whole book, wherever the Seventy have “psalm” in the title, “melody” is rendered, and according to Symmachus “ode” or “song,” I have of necessity made this note, so that no one may think that all the psalms so entitled among us were spoken to the musical instrument. For how would it make sense that the fiftieth, for example, entitled “For the end, a psalm of David,” was spoken with the psaltery? Music in mourning is an untimely tale. For how was it possible, when it was spoken by David over a terrible offense — when no ordinary indignation of God had come upon him, and a threat through the prophet — that he took up the psaltery as in a time of good cheer and performed the tokens of luxury and gladness? What do the words contain that belongs to a psaltery? Are they not words of lamentation and weeping, which were probably spoken with some mournful melody, but not with the instrument? You might say the same of the third, which is entitled: “A psalm of David, when he fled from the face of Absalom his son.” For you will consider whether, being in such a misfortune, in which he had fallen from the kingdom and was being driven out by his son, he had leisure for music.

But it would make sense that here too, sending up his supplication to God, he uttered it with some melody suited to the occasion; that is why the other translators have put “melody” and “ode” in the superscription of these psalms as well. The rest of those similarly entitled you will examine like those already discussed.

In all the psalms entitled “in hymns,” in place of “in hymns” Aquila rendered “in psalms” and Symmachus “with the psaltery”; so that according to their translation these alone were sung to the musical instrument. And it makes sense that the fourth psalm, entitled “in hymns,” was played on an instrument. For since the third had been spoken by David when he fled from the face of Absalom his son, the fourth, which contains the victory celebration of the war against his son, is fittingly entitled both “for the end” and “in hymns.” Hence, in place of “for the end,” Symmachus rendered “a victory song,” and Aquila “to the victor.” What follows bears out the interpretation given, where he says: “When I called, the God of my righteousness heard me,” and so on. It was fitting, then, that these words should be played, as at a victory celebration, also on musical instruments. The third, however, is not entitled “for the end”; for it was not yet a victory song, but was spoken while the war had not yet come to an end. Consider also, in the case of the sixth, whether, since after the first part of the psalm he adds in the last part: “The Lord has heard the voice of my weeping, the Lord has heard my petition, the Lord has accepted my prayer,” it is fittingly entitled “a victory song” and “with the psaltery,” and among the Seventy “for the end” and “in hymns.” The fifty-third too, spoken by David before the sin against Uriah, when the Ziphites came and said to Saul: “Is not David hidden among us?” — since those who had slandered him to Saul achieved nothing — is entitled among us “in hymns,” and among the others “with the psaltery,” “in psalms,” “to the victor,” and “a victory song.” In the same way you will consider the rest that have been given a similar superscription.

Admittedly, most of the psalms after the fiftieth were spoken long before the fiftieth. And the fiftieth itself was spoken before the time of the third, which was spoken by David when he fled from the face of Absalom his son; and that time came after the confession of the fiftieth. What order, then, does the book contain? Someone might say that it has a certain …

… of the numbers each a force, considered according to arithmetical principles. For example, that the seven is honored in the divine Scripture for certain reasons: for among the seven days the Sabbath was given a privilege; and in seven weeks, Pentecost; and among months, the seventh month; and among years, the seventh year; and in the multiplication of the seven in years, the Jubilee, completed out of seven weeks of years. Conversely, the two is taken as an unclean number. It was said to Noah: “You shall bring into the ark of the clean animals seven by seven, and of the unclean two by two.” And the one, much earlier, was honored — the first one itself, and the one among the tens, and the one among the hundreds — for no ordinary reasons; as again the three, the five, the seven, and the rest of the numbers likewise. On this principle, then, the psalms have been fitted each to its own number, so that to the number fifty there corresponds David’s …

[Ps 1] From the same author’s tome on the first psalm.

1. The divine words say that the divine Scriptures are shut and sealed: by the key of David, and perhaps also by the seal concerning which it is said: “An impression of a seal, holiness to the Lord”; that is, by the power

[Ps 1, continued] of God who gave them, which is signified by the seal. About their being shut and sealed, John teaches in the Apocalypse, saying: “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: Thus says the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and shuts and no one will open: I know your works; behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one can shut.” And a little later: “And I saw at the right hand of him who sat on the throne a book written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice: Who is worthy to open the book and to loose its seals? And no one in heaven, nor on earth, nor under the earth, was able to open the book or to look at it. And I wept because no one was found worthy to open the book or to look at it. And one of the elders says to me: Do not weep; behold, the lion from the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered, so as to open the book and its seven seals.” About their being sealed only, Isaiah speaks thus: “And all these words will be to you like the words of this sealed book, which, if they give it to a man who knows letters, saying, Read these, he will say: I cannot read, for it is sealed. And this book will be given into the hands of a man who does not know letters, and he will say: I do not know letters.” For these things must be thought to be said not only of the Apocalypse of John and of Isaiah, but also of all divine Scripture, which, as is admitted even by those who can understand divine words in moderate measure, is filled with riddles and parables, dark sayings, and other various kinds of obscurity hard for human nature to grasp. Wishing to teach this, the Savior too — since the key was with the scribes and Pharisees, who made no effort to find the way to open — says: “Woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge; you yourselves did not enter, and those who were entering you did not allow to enter.”

2. These things have been said by us as a preface, since we are compelled to go down into a very great contest, which is admittedly beyond us and our capacity, by your great love of learning, and are put to shame by your kindness and moderation, holy Ambrose,

[Ps 1, continued] and that, when I held back for a long time because I knew the danger, not only of speaking about holy things but much more of writing and leaving them to those after us, you charmed me in every way, as a friend, and led me to this by an advance in godliness. Be my witness before God, together with my whole life, when I am examined about what has been dictated, as to the purpose with which this has been done: that in some places we hit the mark, and in others we either force the sense too violently or seem to say something, but have traced out what is written, not despising the well-spoken saying, “When you speak about God, you are judged by God,” and this one: “To speak even the truth about God is no small danger.” We ask, then — since nothing can be good without God, and above all the understanding of divinely inspired Scriptures — that you will ask the Father of all, God, approaching him through our Savior and high priest, the begotten God, that it may be granted us first to seek rightly; for the promise of finding is laid up for those who seek. Perhaps those who do not go about this by the right way are not even reckoned by God among seekers at all.

And after other things: 3. As we are about to begin the interpretation of the Psalms, we will set first a most charming tradition handed down to us by the Hebrew, concerning the whole divine Scripture in general. For he used to say that the whole divinely inspired Scripture, because of the obscurity in it, is like many rooms in one house that are locked; and beside each room lies a key that is not the one suited to it; and so the keys have been scattered about the rooms, each not fitting the room it lies beside; and that it is a very great task to find the keys and fit them to the rooms they can open. So, he said, the Scriptures too, being obscure, are understood by taking the starting points for their understanding from nowhere else but from one another, since they hold their interpretation scattered within them. I think that the Apostle too suggests this method of understanding the divine words when he says: “Which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.”

[Ps 1, continued] [4. If the words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried by fire, tested for the earth, purified seven]fold, and the Holy Spirit has supplied them with all exactness and scrutiny through the ministers of the word, let not the analogy escape us by which the wisdom of God has reached to all divinely inspired Scripture, down to the least letter. Perhaps that is also why the Savior said: “One iota or one stroke will not pass away from the law until all things come to pass.” For just as in the making of the world the divine art appears not only in heaven and sun and moon and stars, pervading all those bodies, but has done the same on earth in humbler matter — so that not even the bodies of the smallest animals are disdained by the Craftsman, and much more the souls that are in them, each of which has received in itself some property, a kind of saving power in a creature without reason; nor the plants of the earth, since there is craftsmanship in each of them, in the roots and leaves and the fruits they can bear and the differences of their qualities — so we suppose concerning all that has been written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: that sacred Providence, which grants to the human race a wisdom beyond the human through the written words, has sown saving oracles, so to speak, in each letter, as far as it could, traces of wisdom.

He, however, who has once accepted that these Scriptures are from the one who created the world must be persuaded that whatever meets those who seek the reason of creation will also meet them concerning the Scriptures. In creation too there are things hard or even impossible for human nature to find out; and the Maker of all is not to be accused on that account. For example, when we do not find the reason for the creation of basilisks and the other venomous beasts; for here it is a holy thing for one who perceives the weakness of our race, and that it is impossible for us to grasp the principles of God’s art, contemplated with all exactness, to refer the knowledge of these things to God, who will afterward reveal to us, if we are judged worthy, the things about which we have now reverently paused. So too in the divine Scriptures one must see that many things are stored up in them that are hard for us to explain. Let those, at any rate, who profess, after departing from the Creator of the world, to run to one whom they have fashioned as God, solve the difficulties we put to them; or at least let them persuade their own conscience that after so great an act of impious daring they have found rest, consistently with their own hypotheses about the questions asked and the problems put to them. For if there too the difficulties remain no less after they have departed from the Godhead, how much holier it would have been to remain in the conception of God that is contemplated from the creatures of the Author of becoming, and to declare nothing godless and unholy about so great a God!

[Ps 1, continued] From the same author’s tome on the first psalm.

Since, in the topic of numbers, each number has a certain force in the things that exist, which the Creator of all used for the constitution sometimes of the whole universe, sometimes of the form of particular things, we must attend to and trace out from the Scriptures what concerns them and each one of them. We must not be unaware, then, that the number of the covenanted books being twenty-two, as the Hebrews hand down — as many as the letters of their alphabet — is not without reason. For as the twenty-two letters seem to be an introduction to wisdom and to the divine teachings imprinted on human beings in these characters, so the twenty-two inspired books are an elementary instruction in the wisdom of God and an introduction to the knowledge of the things that are. The twenty-two books according to the Hebrews are these: the one entitled among us Genesis, but among the Hebrews, from the beginning of the book, Bresith, which is “In the beginning”; Exodus, Ouelesmoth, which is “These are the names”; Leviticus, Ouikra, “And he called”; Numbers, Ammesphekodeim; Deuteronomy, Elle addebarim, “These are the words”; Jesus son of Nave, Iosoue ben Noun; Judges and Ruth, among them in one book, Sophetim; the first and second of Kingdoms, among them one, Samuel, “the one called by God”; the third and fourth of Kingdoms in one, Ouammelech David, which is “the kingdom of David”; the first and second of Chronicles in one, Dibre aiamim, which is “Words of days”; Ezra, first and second, in one, Ezra, which is “Helper”; the book of Psalms, Sepher thillim; the Proverbs of Solomon, Misloth; Ecclesiastes, Koeleth; the Song of Songs, Sir assirim; Isaiah, Iesaia; Jeremiah, with Lamentations and the Letter, in one, Ieremia; Daniel, Daniel; Ezekiel, Iezekiel; Job, Iob; Esther, Esther. Outside these are the books of Maccabees, which are entitled Sarbeth Sarbane …

[Ps 1] “Blessed is the man who did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly,” and so on. What should the beginning of the Psalms have been, if not one that contains the blessing of the man who is the Savior’s, and his praises, in abstaining from what is worse, in studying and practicing what is better, and in being made like the Only-begotten? He, being wisdom, is called a tree of life by Solomon in Proverbs, and here a tree planted “by the channels of the waters,” which are discursive words, or words divisible by the law of dialectic; the fruits of this tree are the principal doctrines, and its leaves the expressions and sayings.

Of the same. The counsel of the ungodly is a passionate thought that binds the mind to things of sense. He did not say “human being” but “man,” because he calls to contests and wrestlings and battles on behalf of virtue; and he wishes women too to be manly and courageous. Blessedness is the soul’s freedom from passion together with true knowledge of the things that are. The seat of the pestilent is the worst habit of a rational soul, by which it also teaches others; and the lawyers, who might also be called ungodly and pestilent and sinners.

“And did not stand in the way of sinners, and did not sit in the seat of the pestilent,” and so on. In general there are three cases. Either a person does not profess truth at all, but at random, having given himself over to the vain and wholly unexamined reasonings of his heart, is carried along like a beast without reason, not standing, not leaning on anything, and therefore not sitting: such a one is said to walk in the counsel of the ungodly. In what the ungodly deliberate on, they do not proceed with even an appearance of inquiry, but hunt after whatever the uneducated think good. Or a person, seeming to stand in the truth but not living according to the true teaching, is a sinner with sinners, seeking out the worse of those thought to be in the truth, and for this reason stands in their way. Or, according to the third of the terms in the present passage of Scripture, one who, among certain false doctrines, supposes these to be the truth says that he has come to rest and no longer needs walking or standing — a posture that belongs to one never fully assured about the Scriptures. And such a one, resting, sits on the seat of those who corrupt.

[Ps 1, continued] Against those to whom the name “pestilent” applies, the word “scoffer” too is used, not without purpose, by the other translators. For those who are wise in themselves and knowing in their own sight scoff at the rest, especially at those who have believed according to sound reason.

“But his will is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he will meditate day and night,” and so on. The one who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night is not the one who takes up the words of the law to memorize them without the works that correspond to them, but the one who also comes to the fitting works, having practiced them, until through continual practice of the works of the law he becomes ready, rendering everything that belongs to one who lives perfectly according to the law. For thus it will be possible to meditate on the law of God through the whole day and night. For whether he eats or drinks or does anything at all, as the divine Apostle says, such a one does all things to the glory of God; so that even in the time of sleep, when it comes as it ought, his attentiveness reaches to it too, and to the images in it. By this the difficulty in the Apostle is also solved, when he says: “Pray without ceasing.” For how will someone pray while sleeping, or while doing some duty toward people, or caring for his own body? But here too we say that the perfect man cries to God and asks him for the best things, calling on him to grant them, by doing everything according to reason, so that his every action is a prayer. And just as, in meditating on the law, particular meditation must not be neglected, so particular prayer must not be neglected either, since to meditate and to pray is to do anything at all according to the law of the Lord. One may consider whether, by the laws of the higher sense, our condition free from troubles can be called day, and our troubled condition night, because of its gloom. We must try to be in the law not only when outward things do not oppose us, but also when we fall into what are called temptations.

“And he will be like the tree planted by the channels of the waters, which will give its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall off; and all that he does will prosper,” and so on. After this let us take up what Aquila says: “transplanted.” For from where has the tree of which the word speaks been transplanted to the divisions of the waters? Either, having been rooted in the Father, he has been transplanted for the benefit of many, so that others too may share in his image, which is taken in the sense of being transplanted — not that he is not in the Father (for he is), but that he has come to be with others as well; or, by another approach, it is the soul of the Savior which he took, transplanted from here to paradise, where the Gospel too says he was, after

[Ps 1, continued] the passion, since it narrates that he said to the repentant robber: “Today you will be with me in the paradise of God.” He has been transplanted there so that those worthy to be with Christ may be enlightened by him with the light of knowledge, advancing in the contemplation of the things that are, according to the wisdom of God. We have taken these things in this way because “to bear fruit” is said properly of trees, while “to give” suits living beings rather, and rational ones at that. We must inquire whether there is a season for the fruit of the tree of life; for to say that wisdom is ever without fruit is not holy. That is why it is not said, “which will bear its fruit in its season,” but “which will give its fruit in its season.” Its season for giving is the fitness of the one who receives. For as far as it lies with the tree, it is always ready to give its fruit. For if the Word wishes the stewards to be faithful and wise, not simply giving the ration to their fellow servants but giving it in season, how much more will wisdom dispense her own fruits faithfully and wisely together? The season for giving is the same as the season for the receiver to receive.

What the leaf of life — that is, of wisdom — that does not fall off may be, is worth considering; and one cannot learn it from anywhere except by having spent some time, in moderate measure, on the study of nature. It is clear that the Creator commanded the fruit-bearing trees to sprout for the sake of their fruits, and for their sake made, as a consequence, the things they need; and the fruits need the shelter of the leaves for protection. These things can be seen also in the wisdom that concerns the universe, in which the Creator of all made all things. For some things come to be primarily, others as a consequence, for the sake of the primary: primarily the rational living being, and for its need the cattle and what grows from the earth. Perhaps, then, the principles of the things made primarily are the fruits of the tree of life, and those of the things created for their sake are the leaves, none of which is vain or deserves to be wholly despised as cheap, so as to fall and drop off unguarded. And still more what follows: “And all that he does will prosper.” For it is possible to make use, for certain purposes, even of all that came to be as a consequence. The fruit of Christ would be primarily the teaching, the food of the more honorable; and the leaf the food of those with less reason, just as human beings use fruits, and cattle leaves. One can also call certain things in Scripture fruits, which those of more reason take up, and leaves, on which the simpler are fed. Of the one who is called blessed and likened to the tree of life, the fruit would be his primary works, such as doing good and occupation with wisdom; and the leaves his movements in the ordinary business of life; these too are not to be despised, nor do they fall off for one who does everything with attention and to the glory of God. For thus whatever he does prospers.

“Not so the ungodly, but rather like the chaff which