Fragmenta in Psalmos

When the judge has come, he says, many nations gathered together surround him; signifying the church and declaring it, he says that the Lord will be gathered to him, and when this has happened, the judge will turn upward and to the height, handing over the kingdom. And the word shows the winepress, just as also the harvest in the Gospel, to be the gathering of fruits at the consummation, and the fruits of men are works and thoughts, according to Isaiah: "And I," he says, "am coming to gather their works and their thoughts." But you, he says, the maker of such great works, take thought for man who is altogether small, and you made remembrance of him when he had fallen away from you, and you visited him when he had been brought down into sickness; and from the beginning his making was precious to you, and he was made a little lower than the angelic glory according to the earthly body. For glory attended him as one reigning on earth over the works made by you and holding all irrational nature under himself—not only the terrestrial and easily grasped but also the aerial and the aquatic, each of which escapes the hands of man, the one because of its course on high, the other because of its concealment in the deep and its passage through waters, but is caught by wisdom and mind, and the earthly man grasps the things in heaven and in the waters; from which it appears that according to the intellectual he surpasses the irrational and unintelligent nature of animals, but is equal to the intellectual and angelic and a partaker with the irrational according to the bodily.

He speaks of the manner of the new religion, the one without blood, and he makes clear the transformation that is in the Holy Spirit, according to which we are no longer the former people, nor under the same names—no longer sons of men but sons of God. For, he says, having been heard before, I now ask to be heard as well. For, Paul says, praying with thanksgiving; for the remembrance of former things prepares the graces that follow.

He recounts the deed and the appearance of those who set themselves against him—a deed, on the one hand, of murderous plotting and flattering words for ambush; and that they are very sleek in body, fenced about with fat, and glancing sideways with their eyes like a lion rushing upon the hunt and lying in wait secretly. Such was Saul toward David, saying that he had found favor in his eyes and commanding him to stand by, and keeping him standing by, yet suspecting him and attempting to kill him from an ambush. He says that hidden punishment has been prepared for them, which will enter into their belly, according to what is said concerning Judas: Let the curse enter like water into his inward parts, and like oil into his bones.

Again he defines love toward God through the temple consecrated to him. For the one who loves God rejoices in the places consecrated to him, not enjoying his longing by the sight of these things (for it is a small thing to delight in works made by hands), but just as someone gladly looks upon a garment of the beloved and a book, as being stirred up through these to the remembrance of that one, so the

one who loves God is stirred up toward God even through a house and a vessel dedicated to God. This one thing, then, and only this I sought: to dwell in the temple of God, which Anna does, and to exult in the beauty of the building, to look toward it. A house of God, then, had not yet been built when David sang these things, but he led the word up to the tabernacle and left it to those able to hear spiritually to lead the word up to the spiritual house.

9 In such things the theology of the one God is made manifest, encompassing the Trinity. Then God is theologized as Creator, and the creation is the work of the Word and of the Spirit; and it is clear that human are the utterances where even a mouth is mentioned, from which are word and spirit, but they are understood otherwise in the case of God according to what is incomposite and wholly incorporeal, that is, the Word being with God who is, and the Spirit being, the one being the manifestation of the Father (called Word according to this), the other the participation in the Word as Spirit from the mouth.

But when he says "heavens" and "powers of the heavens," he does not divide the creation, assigning it to those in word and to these in spirit (for the things accomplished in the Trinity are indivisible), but he expresses the same thing in different ways, as in "Jacob entered into Egypt and Israel sojourned in the land of Ham": the entrance is not divided as if to one, Jacob, and the dwelling as if to another, Israel; for by parallelism he makes the same thing clear, and we would find this custom in many places. Showing himself, he says that he became poor, that he was in anguish in his flight, that he escaped this danger by the will of God, since the device of madness would not otherwise have prevailed except according to the will of God.

11 He calls "taste" the experience of things, which was present to him also at that time. What therefore came about in him according to the goodness of God—that he was not overlooked while being pursued by a foreign king, but was saved from two most grievous and more powerful enemies—this he adds as common to all, as happening not for him alone but also for others, as many as join themselves to God in hope toward God. In this the blessedness must consist, not in anything else, which David says in "Why do you love vanity and seek falsehood? And know that the Lord has shown wondrous things for his holy one." He commands us to look to the end and to take courage at the release from afflictions, not to be vexed at the very beginning, whenever it happens that we are afflicted. For thus the soul must be prepared, not as one that will not labor, but as one that will not be defeated by labors.

He shapes his account concerning God into a complete likeness of a human being, just as Isaiah also does, in order to show that what is impossible for him is possible for God—deeming it right to wage war and to arm himself with shield and spear and to block the assaults of enemies with a wall in between. And Isaiah also shows this in Christ, foreseeing him coming from the punishment of the unjust, with his garment dyed red from the slaughter of the foreigners (Who is this who comes from Edom, with garments red from Bozrah, and so on?), so that it is clear that the things referred to the Father in a divine manner belong also to the Son and are fulfilled in the Son. For those men it comes down to their becoming invisible, like dust driven by the wind, and to their being thrust out not by a human hand—since it is rather the righteous who suffer this at the hands of the unjust—but this happens through angels, as the Lord says: The holy ones will come out and will choose the unjust from the midst of the righteous and will separate them. For now things that do not agree are mixed together, but then they will be divided according to the difference of their manner, according to what was said again by the Savior: And there are many mansions with my Father. The ways, he says, of the impious are dark; they do not know how they advance. And he deems it right that this be accomplished, praying that the conduct of the unjust be held in darkness, inasmuch as it also belongs to darkness, and that they fall down after slipping, because they walk a slippery road (for nothing in injustice has any firm footing), and that they become invisible, pursued by angels—the very thing they do against the righteous. He takes refuge, he says, in his own strength, which is God.

For someone seeks God by fastings and humiliations, turning the whole soul to invocations of God through leisure from bodily pleasures, when they apply their mind against the prayer and slip into the bosom of the soul.

17 For surely both firm and unshaken are the things ordained by God—for example, what was said to Noah, that he would no longer bring a flood for the destruction of living creatures—which accords with the account of God's forbearance. For the firmness of the word has been determined through all things, being something great and manifest. And so too, whatever else has been ordained and determined according to the righteousness and goodness of God, has the firm and unshaken quality of remaining forever; such as also the words, Once I swore in my holy one, if I lie to David. To this also tends the saying, For the gifts of God are without repentance. Again he compares the height of righteousness to mountains. And this carries a threat of recompenses, because it is impossible, when righteousness oversees what comes to be, for anything to happen contrary to justice—so that even those who now escape punitive recompenses, or who do not obtain recompenses, will certainly receive them later; and this is unchangeable with God, as Paul, being confident, said that God would award to him the crown of righteousness on that day, the righteous judge. For the abundant things for life are supplied by God, without which life would be corrupted. It is illumined, he says, by the light from the heavens, by him who set the sun to be the light of day.

But these things are common to the just and the unjust alike, in which even the loving-kindness of God was admired, since the ungrateful are not excluded from the enjoyment of the things that come from God; but the exceptional and peculiar portion belongs already to God's own. He exhorts those at rest to wait for God, not troubled by present circumstances but hoping in what is to come, according to the apostolic word, "Rejoicing in hope, enduring in tribulation," and according to Jeremiah, "It is good for a man when he bears the yoke in his youth. He shall sit alone and be silent, he shall give his cheek to the one who strikes him, he shall be filled with reproaches." He commands us to look far ahead and not be dismayed by present things, and to foresee both the destruction of the wicked and the prevailing of the good; and these things, clearly, both at the end and in the other age, since the present age does not have their outcomes, but rather the things on earth are dominated by the wicked. Therefore also, he says, "The whole world lies in the evil one." He says that the wicked bring upon themselves the very things they prepare against the just, as when someone draws a sword and is slain by it, and that their plot will be vain, like a bow broken in the hand of an archer. And in the case of David this was fulfilled even bodily—that David would be struck by his own sword, which they drew against David. Such is the exhortation again from the prediction: to flee from evil and to practice the doing of good in hope of eternal rest, and the reasoning upon the matter is that the overseer is just and does not overlook his own.

He compares his great toil and suffering to a body utterly afflicted, just as also in Isaiah: From the feet to the head there is no soundness in it, but a wound and a bruise, inflamed by threat. These things, then, are signs of wrath, and the pretext of wrath is sins, so that sufferings bring sins to perception and in this way benefit souls, just as bodies also are brought from insensibility to perception. He laments the departure of friends and the uprising of enemies, which are also observed in the sufferings of the Savior, when the disciples were scattered by fear, and the wicked with all bitterness and malice used him, against whom he also fulfilled the silence foretold here. Having, he says, the right to speak against those who slander, but knowing that the word would not be for benefit, I bore the falsehoods with forbearance. And as one not hearing I kept silent, and as one having nothing to refute; for what would I say and answer? To no purpose, as also the Lord said: If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I ask, you will not answer. But since men do not hear, the word is useless for them, but useful for God who hears. Men would not say these things on their own behalf, but Christ on behalf of men to men, and suffering as a just man from unjust men, taking their sufferings upon himself, would say: at one place, Why have you forsaken me? and at another, Do not forsake me, and Do not depart from me, since this is impossible in his case. For I am not, he says, alone, since my Father is with me.

He asks for the salvation of men as his own, having indeed something proper also for the request, insofar as it pertains to the human element in union with divinity (and this was the passible element, connatural to the flesh), and having also the dignity of the nature that is exalted above, by which he also fulfilled the things of the request.

29 And hearing, he says, and reckoning the bold and abusive words of the enemy, and seeing with how much authority he uses words when it was not fitting even to speak, I was kindled on behalf of righteousness being dishonored. Not in myself, he says, do I have anything worthy of expectation, but from you and your things, expecting, I await, enduring in present pains in hope of future goods. I bear, he says, being reproached now and not even answering back, knowing somehow that God wishes me to be exercised by reproaches. Thus David himself bore being abused by Shimei, saying that the Lord told him to curse David.

32 The expectation of the righteous from eternity he speaks of as concerning himself, and the petitions through which they will hear God accomplish the ascent from Hades and the steadfast life unto eternity and the establishment in it in gladness and brightness and hymns of God, such as was also in Psalm 29: I cried to you, and you healed me and brought my soul up from Hades, you saved me from those going down into the pit, and the rest; in which he clearly referred the things of Adam to himself. And having brought in the resurrection, at the end he says: That my glory may sing to you and I shall not be pierced with grief. For the salvation of all extends the things of Christ, which came to be neither for his own sake nor stand in him alone.

Therefore Paul says, "If the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised." For if the end for the sake of which the cause would have existed were not the resurrection of Christ, and dreadful is the mystery—the destruction of death and the ascent of souls from Hades, which is also the true hope in God—concerning which hope Paul speaks, joining faith to it and adding love toward the one who has thus granted great things and extending good things into eternity: "These three remain," he says, "faith, hope, love." In this, he says, the blessed man makes his hope in God and seeks eternal things, not to be enticed by things that appear for a short time nor to turn aside to falsehood from the truly good. For every falsehood is what men think they procure by themselves, and only the true is what comes from God, which indeed he demonstrated through the whole economy of men, refuting all human things and bringing in the perfect good from himself. Speaking of himself, he makes clear the church, and he presents us as needing mercy, so that we may remain in grace; and the request for mercy is strong, because it is said to go not to men but to himself. For thus we men obtain the things from God, because Christ in our behalf is the one who receives the good that comes to us, just as he says, "And I appoint to you a covenant, as my Father appointed to me.

For no power for salvation belongs to the church of Christ except that which comes from God, since neither weapons nor money nor encircling walls nor dominion over land nor anything of that sort is among us as it is among the Jews, so that it is a marvel and inferior to none of the other wonders that men who are unarmed and unprepared and do not defend themselves, though warred against by countless nations, both remain and increase; such was the wonder of the bush that burned and was not consumed, and this is a figure of Christ conquering through suffering. For the church that suffers and is not destroyed bears in herself all the proofs of wisdom and the manifest marks of help from above. And to these ends, he says, the church will advance—having first become poor and come through great poverty in the world, and having been enriched by the power that is from you and glorified by the help that is from you, which she asks not to be delayed. And because of her request it will not be delayed, as it is said, "He who is coming will come and will not delay." This one too is joined to the same subject. For it is the person of the Savior, and the remembrance of the passion, and the foretelling of the resurrection, and of the return into heaven. Just now, then, he was saying, "I am poor and needy," and it would be added accordingly as being said by him in a special way with reference to himself.

Even if understanding is especially a good thing for all who are poor in the world for the sake of righteousness, and understanding consists in reckoning such poor men to be rich, yet truly blessed is the one who knows and understands the one who is truly rich but became poor for our sake; for every blessedness follows upon the knowledge of God. Again, the one who suffers on behalf of men calls the sins of men his own and seeks on his own account the mercy that comes upon us for these sins—he who dissolves the contempt of those who are ignorant of him by revealing his glory, on his own account according to his own power, but on our account according to the grace of Christ. For this, he says, was their earnest aim: first among the invisible powers, then among the visible Jews, to cast out the true King from the rule that is according to nature, having reckoned that they would gain possession of an inheritance that did not belong to them from the beginning; therefore they also said, "Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours." They hasten, he says, to put the righteous one to death, not knowing that his death is a sleep that results in resurrection and is not a destruction of life but a departure leading into heaven, according to "His life was taken from the earth." The resurrection, he says, will be what dissolves the conspiracy of enemies against us and the betrayal of friends. For already a disciple has risen up—one deemed worthy of peace from me and counted among the believers and sharing in food—but he was exposed as a serpent, wishing to seize the heel. And the Lord himself mentioned this as spoken concerning him, saying, "But that the scripture might be fulfilled, he who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.

Especially in the case of Christ do we understand “guilelessness” to mean purity from every evil, which the Creator sought from men who had been made for this purpose—that they might be worthy of their Maker and remain in the good, since all the works of God are exceedingly good—but seeking it, he found it in no one of the descendants of Adam, but only in the one who was from Adam according to the flesh and did not inherit the like of that man’s transgression, but had the divine form remaining even with the clothing of the flesh, as the heavenly voice also testifies: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Indeed, the continuance and confirmation before God is eternal, the one in heaven, which was also spoken of beforehand in the fifteenth psalm after the resurrection: “You will fill me with gladness with your face.” For he has ascended into heaven to appear before the face of God on our behalf, bringing in himself that which had been separated and alienated from the beginning. From this the understanding man, whom the inscription exhorts, can understand that man has come to be outside the face of God, so that he may not plan against God the restoration to the face of God. With good reason, then, he seeks the strong one, having fallen into weakness, according to “Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am weak”; whence it was necessary to have fallen into the present weakness. For not loving to be content with his own little strength, nor being able, he seeks not to fall short of the true strength.

Of those, he says, who have completely forgotten the return to God, who consider the seeking of God to be futile and reproach those who do this, I was led into tears instead of pleasant food, being with the most unpleasant grief, according to what is said in Lamentations: "He has fed me with ashes," not withdrawing from the desire because of the separation and the reproach, but being grieved because righteousness is reproached. Necessarily, then, both the harassment of the wicked and the reproaches come, since the tears that arise from these are not harmful to the righteous. For on account of these is the blessing: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Immediately, then, also the matter of consolation. Let not, he says, the present circumstances grieve you, O soul, nor trouble you, but let the hope that is in God console you—that we shall obtain goods worthy of thanksgiving and shall have the salvation that comes at his manifestation, which according to Paul is to await the manifestation of the Lord and his kingdom. These things are understandable concerning things to come and the promises according to the law, advancing further also to what was said after these things by Paul—† prophets, for whom the better thing is to depart and be with Christ; and the things after this are a narration of what still grieves. The separation from what is desired melts the soul that desires it. And he says that he has been separated from God, until he does not yet see paradise, his own fixed dwelling from the beginning, but still inhabits the land of the Jordan and Mount Hermon, which is very small compared to that, and is, as it were, disturbed by the assaults of winds and waves—by calamities rushing upon one another in torrents.

He teaches that the good things belong to the coming age, calling that day a day on which God has promised he will establish his mercy, according to what is said in Psalm 89: "Fill us in the morning with your mercy"; but what he now speaks of is for gladness, when night and darkness are the converse with God through hymns and the stretching out through prayers. The words of supplication are spoken, then, and the things of supplication are in songs. Since supplication ought to be brought with thanksgiving, the song is set before the prayer. For no one who is ungrateful for what has gone before is strong in the petitions for what is to come. But the petition seeks a divine remembrance from God. For, he says, when I was not in remembrance with you, I would have passed my life gloomy and been oppressed by the unjust. It is clear that forgetfulness does not touch the divine nature, since it is a change of memory, because the divine is unchangeable. For this reason he also asks, "Why have you forgotten me?" For no one says "Why" concerning an involuntary affection of forgetfulness, but he presents forgetfulness as voluntary—the carelessness concerning man that makes him unworthy of God's care. This psalm is inseparable from the previous one, not even divided by a superscription, and it holds to the same power of the return to God, adding also the guidance through the light that shone forth, which says, "I have come as a light into the world, so that everyone who follows me may not remain in the darkness," and by this shining forth preparing consolation for the one who grieves, just as the one before it made consolation for sorrows by the expectation of things to come.

Since, then, the portion of the righteous is warred against both by nation and by individual, and they cannot obtain what is due to them unless they receive the heavenly judge and protector, as though the case at law against their opponents were a concern of that one who judges all things justly. Him, then, he also invokes, inasmuch as he does not judge from hearsay but brings forth the just verdict from knowledge. For this reason he asks for escape both from a nation and from an unjust man. As having nothing else for strength, he says this and obtains God, such as is also the saying, "I will love you, O Lord, my strength"; then he speaks here also concerning those who stand against him. If prevailing is from God, then reasonably he says that not being overcome is a thrusting away from God, most grievous to one who puts forward this alone as his succor; but the "Why" is not as though God were doing something without cause or in vain (for this happens for our contest) but as though the contest ought to have an end through mercy, and consolation ought to be given to those who mourn by the one who consoles those who mourn. For it is not reasonable that God should overlook the righteous; whence, seeking the things that are from God, he says the "Why," as it were, that it is fitting for you to take hold of your own and not to entrust pleasure to the opponents. Why, then, is what is yours not being accomplished, but what is from us abounds, just as it is also said, "How long, O Lord, will you forget me to the end?" and "What profit is there in my blood, in my going down to corruption?

For even if the affliction is necessary for a time, it is not forever; and even if we are justly afflicted in our own persons, yet we ought at least to obtain help by the mercy of God, so that discipline may yield a peaceful fruit, through the philanthropy of God, to those who have been trained by it. But in the case of the Lord, the "Why have you forsaken me?" is said in a wholly different sense, since even what pertains to him is not worthy of abandonment; therefore the manifestation of heavenly help is swift, on account of the body that suffers for that reason concerning us. He has shown his cheerfulness by the addition of the lyre, and his love by the address repeated twice. This is the reminder of consolation. For even if, he says, we are distressed by present things, let us give thanks for things to come, and let what is painful be set aside already by hope, as we hope in God for the salvation of the man who looks to him. You, he says, we have as king—God, who provides for the salvation of our people—and we know that this is destined for you, and we take courage in your will.

You, he says, we have as a horn to ward off all enemies, and your name that is upon us will give a trampling down of those who rise up against us and hope to prevail over us. For I do not, he says, equip myself with bow and spear. Therefore I do not trust in weapons, since these did not suffice for our fathers either, nor was success brought to completion according to their strength, but the work is beyond all human preparation. He speaks of the former teachings in relation to the later events. And we have been taught that the salvation from our adversaries has always come to us from you, and we have seen their power turned into shame. Therefore, he says, we boast once for all in you through all time and we render thanks to your name by which we are saved, just as it is also said through Ezekiel: For your sake I do not bring about victory for Israel, but for my name's sake. But these hopes, he says, are firm and immovable, from which we will not depart because of what has happened, yet the things that have happened are now contrary to them. For we have been left behind, he says, having been driven away from you, and you are not present with our armies, and the shame that then seized those engaged in wars has surrounded us, and we have become diminished before those whom we formerly prevailed over, and we have been plundered by them whom we used to plunder. For in this especially the might that existed for the Israelites has been shown to be from God, in that when they are left behind they are defeated, just as for man also being left behind has become a pretext for death, demonstrating that the resurrection is not otherwise than from God.

We have been gripped, he says, by cowardice, unable to ward off those who devour us like sheep—a cowardice which Moses also threatened would seize them for their lawless deeds, because the sound of a leaf being carried would chase them. And we have become, he says, captives and have been scattered among the nations—we who were formerly led out from the nations and obtained a holy land. This is a dissolution of honor, just as for man it was said of his formation, Earth you are and to earth you shall go; so indeed Isaiah also says concerning the people: We became as at the beginning, when you did not rule over us, nor was your mercy called upon us. They were sold for nothing, as Isaiah also says, and he says they were sold for their sins, as Paul also says concerning man: But I am fleshly, sold under sin. And the sale is the alienation and the coming under human masters instead of God, which Jeroboam also threatened, and the people with him, through Shemaiah the prophet, that they would become subject to the Egyptian king, to Shishak, as slaves, and they would know the servitude of God and the servitude of the kings of the earth. For such a thing is a parable—their being mentioned under curses, just as Jeremiah says against the false prophets: They shall take up a curse against them in the exile, O Judah, in Babylon, saying, May the Lord make you as Zedekiah and as Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in fire, because of the lawlessness which they committed in Israel. Grant these things now, and especially justly.

Being devoured like sheep when they led Christ like a sheep to the slaughter, and sold to the nations as they bought the Lord who was betrayed for silver and in some manner handed over to death, and being mocked just as they made laughter and a shaking of heads over the Lord who was crucified. This alone remains to Israel as a hope for the recall of those who are left, which the prophecy, foreseeing it, says: that they do not change over to the customs of the Greeks in the idolatry which they agreed to, nor turn aside, as from a road that was commanded, from the piety toward the one God, even though they have been humbled so and deported and placed under the authority of those who put to death—which was especially preserved for those around Ananias and Azarias and Misael, who endured fire for the sake of not accepting worship. Somehow this does not piously belong also to those of the Jews who are left at the present time; at any rate, the very fact of not frequenting idols, or even the sickness concerning Greek incantations, they do not entirely abandon, but the impiety against Christ is even so convicted as most harmful, because even while not practicing idolatry as before they have been enslaved as never before.

Having mentioned the Israelite evils before this and having left behind the grace that releases from evils—beginning from the nations but also taking in no small portion of those (for many even of the Jews had believed)—he makes a kind of preface to the mystical instruction concerning these things, promising a good word about the visit of the king, who oversees the works of the righteous, brought up as it were to his inspection and hearing by them, and who renders to them the divine fulfillment, because he has come as the fulfiller of things not truly fulfilled among men, a lawful participation in divine purity and in sanctification from him. And he indicates that he will speak many things swiftly, likening the one who declares these things to the pen of a very swift scribe. Isaiah foresees his outward form failing beside the sons of men, prophesying the ingloriousness according to the flesh, while David interprets the divine beauty, which is itself also made clear by Isaiah through the statement that the king will be seen with glory. And this is indicative of the ineffable glory and of the invisible beauty, while he foretells the manifestation of the beauty coming about through words and deeds, saying that grace has been poured out on his lips, just as it is also made clear in the Gospels that all marveled at the words of grace that came out through his mouth.

As therefore, he says, in a pure receptacle the divine myrrh has been anointed, being joined by nature and not by participation, through kinship (not given by grace as also to your partakers), and he addresses Christ as God, and he says that the one anointing him is his God, not abolishing the human constitution and the Word's relation to the flesh, according to which there is also an anointing of the Spirit, the flesh having been previously sanctified and made radiant through the Spirit that was present even from the beginning and again came. For indeed from the beginning the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and again, Jesus from Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit and power. But if it were not said that the Spirit is joined by kinship as to a natural beauty, this anointing would be spoken of as due to training. And where can one show that there is training? Or what toil of learning is there with Christ, so that sanctification might be a recompense for toils? And that by diligent learning the spirit of wisdom might come upon him, and by the struggle against pleasures the steadfast and powerful might be sealed through the Spirit? It is clear, then, that the anointing is spoken of as following by nature and not as recompensed for toil, and the Spirit was not given as a wage to a man (although this too is possible; for God gives the Spirit by grace and not as a wage), but as to God and man at once the proper thing from him and into him was shown forth, just as when men bring their proper offering to God we say, Therefore I will confess to you among the nations, O Lord. And by saying "partakers" he showed at the same time the occasion of the anointing.

For in order that the anointing by participation might proceed, for this reason that which is by participation has also come. Since, as far as pertains to the Lord, there was no need of anointing, being holy by nature and having become holy, and having implanted in the body a holiness that is innate, and thereby perfecting the human form to maturity—but since this was not in us, nor was it possible among men that which is holy by nature, but there was need of a gift and heavenly grace, for this reason the Spirit came upon Christ, so that from him it might show to us, who are led to participation in the Spirit, through kinship according to the body. The departure of the wicked nations proves the bride beautiful and desirable to the king. For this is our beauty, and with this we are adorned, and with this we are made near to God, and thus we have become so exceedingly sought after by God that we speak according to his desire, such things as one in love might say about the beauty of the beloved. The bride is near the king, and virgins are near her and her attendants, and through her they are made near to the king, and as maidens accompanying a bride they follow. To her, according to the Song of Solomon, most fittingly would belong the synagogues of the Jews, being second and following according to “The first shall be last and the last first,” and “The proselyte among you shall be

For a head, and you shall be for a tail. Because those who formerly became strangers to the law, now, in order to be made God's own, themselves begin the gathering to God, and this is clear also from what follows. For this queen is a attendant of Christ and enters with him into the holy temple, and she assigns the inheritance of the world and the kingdom promised to Abraham to those from him according to bodily descent, the king willing and the queen consenting. Therefore those whom he called young women as fathers, he now calls sons, having received the rank of sons and being deemed worthy of inheritance as sons from a mother. He says the city will be indestructible, so that God will be in it, when the present night of the circuit ceases. For it is night, until the darkness is not yet wholly abolished nor every authority and power abolished, but still warring attempts are stirred up against the righteous. Nor, he says, when you were delivered to the nations, being left by God, were you delivered in vain, but so that you might know the power of God, who gained all the nations for your reproof and instead of one land gained all land under his worship, because in the same transgression, according to the apostle, salvation came to the nations to provoke them to jealousy. The psalm before this was for Israel, but this one is for the nations who go up together to Jerusalem and are joined to those of the race of Abraham.

He therefore announces joy to the nations, and triumphal clappings, and hymnic shouts of exultation, through the manifestation of the Lord from on high, which will come to be with great fear, because he will take hold of the earth according to the vision of Daniel, handing over the kingdom to his saints, just as one of the successors of the apostles has also said: He will be seen by the King of the world in Jesus, not that he himself receives this kingdom for himself for glory, but for his own, who through the chosen bride, the queen, are established into the kingdom, as was foretold in David: You shall establish them as rulers over all the earth. Kingdoms, he says, you have shown us to be over all nations. And he has given back to us the lot that is ours from our fathers, the land of Israel, which is precious in his sight. And the prophets and apostles from Israel call the land of Israel a peculiar inheritance, and one given back to them according to descent, just as the Lord himself was not outside the succession of the fleshly race. And they say that land is beloved, not because it can differ in God's sight from others—for whom nothing is precious or beautiful, or more precious or more beautiful—but because he loved its inhabitants, who are a firstfruits of piety in the world, and he keeps his love toward them and toward the land he dwelt in, having nothing that ceases but all things eternal. Inseparably in the Son he signifies the divinity.

For this is surely the one who ascends, this is the one who reigns, this is the one who sits on the heavenly throne, and who also sat upon the earth before his ascension, gathering around himself both the rulers of the nations and all the most excellent among men, and exalting them to heavenly glory. This, he says, is your righteousness, which shows no partiality; and Peter, perceiving the calling of the nations, says, "In truth I understand that God is no respecter of persons." And the wise Israel, seeing the nations brought near and understanding the mercy, will not envy but will rejoice at God's judgment, just as Peter and the apostles did then.

Of a wise word, he says, I will take hold, hidden, mingling the riddle with song. How is it that he spoke of opening the mouth for a parable rather than inclining the ear? Or is it that he wishes to show himself rather as a hearer of the Spirit speaking than as an interpreter himself, or that the things spoken are spoken through his mouth? For indeed, "I will hear what God will speak in me" is said in a psalm of the Old Testament. But he says that death, willingly, as far as this present age is concerned, he will undergo, dying to the world, being taken up from the earth of his life, but living to God. And the suffering of death, he says, was not joined to man when he was made, but came upon him from dishonor, because, though honored with growth toward immortality, he did not perceive it, having the good that comes from honor as something greater than his nature; whence, falling away from the likeness of God that consists in immortality, he is made like the beasts in death. For as this one's death is, so is that one's death, says Ecclesiastes, and there is one spirit in all things; and what does man have more than the beast? Nothing, for all is vanity.

All things return to one place; all things came from the dust, and all things return to the dust. But when the age to come, he says, has arrived—which is the morning of the coming day—the kingdom of the good things will be, all human power having ceased, and the power from God prevailing, when the race of the good will be glorious and royal, and the race of the not-good subject and servile, since the strength that comes from wealth has passed away, but the strength that comes from virtue remains, and all the remnant of men on earth will be subject to the good who reign according to God. Let not wealth and glory, then, reckon themselves anything great; for the things that do not go down with the one who acquired them—as righteousness goes down with him—also bring back those who have been brought down.

And the heavenly races that are perfect, he says, will sing praises with the righteousness of God, acclaiming with perfect words those things that hold what is most just and most discerning, because God takes delight not in sacrifices but in judgment, and this is the covenant that endures forever. For God, he says, is not in need of foods and drinks, so as to pay attention to meats as foods and to blood as a drink. Then, substituting the true honor of God for the name of sacrifice, he adds what follows. Consider this, he says, to be the sacrifice: the perception of benefits, the confession from the heart, and the fulfillment of vows—a debt owed to God by men. And doing these things, he says, be of good hope that you will obtain God as your helper in afflictions, so that you may also glorify him as you are benefited, ceaselessly rendering thanksgivings.

These things are a paralysis of the law: on the one hand, "You shall not steal" means not to run along with a thief; on the other, "You shall not commit adultery" means not to be ranked with adulterers; and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" and "You shall not go about with deceit in your nation" means not to speak treacherous and deceitful things, nor to accuse, nor to contrive stumbling blocks for one's neighbor. But the judgment will display the knowledge, that I will make even you yourself to be seen by yourself. For each one will see himself such as he was formed from his heart, when hearts are uncovered. And the phrase "I will add, I will heap up," which Theodotion interpreted, indicated the sudden gathering of deeds, coming to be under the eyes of the one who did them. This was the meaning of "The righteous man is his own accuser." For I do not wait, he says, for the reproof that comes from another, even if the prophet did reprove. That one, at any rate, saw once for all, but I see my transgression continually—yet I do not despair of healing, because of the mercy. The asking of pardon is because sin is innate in us from the first birth, transmitted to us from our mothers who conceived us. Because through one

The sin of man entered into the world, and evil has taken root in the first woman, and from her, through childbirth, it passes over to those who are born. This is said more appropriately of the mother, although sin also comes down from the father, because we are conceived from the father in the manner of seed, but from mothers we are brought forth fully formed and come into the light through childbirth. We, he says, have been rooted in lawlessness and are born in sins, but the truly beautiful and in no way perverted is pleasing to you. How then is it possible for humans before such a judge to be glorified and not instead to carry away shame when they are condemned? From the grace that pre-existed toward him, he asks that the present sparing also come to be. For God brings the subsequent things upon the beginnings that are from himself, for the sake of his own purpose and firmness, even if the things from us are not entirely worthy, just as also for the sake of the covenant with Abraham he has compassion on the race from him when it is afflicted, bringing the subsequent things upon the beginning and keeping the firmness of the promise above the equality of authority. Since, therefore, he knows that he has obtained wisdom from God and has been honored by it so as to understand even the hidden things concerning which he prays, "Open my eyes, and I will consider your wondrous things out of your law," for this reason he acknowledges thanks for the gift of wisdom, and he asks that the filth that has come upon him be removed, adding this also to the grace.

The Savior said that Abraham, expecting his day, rejoiced beforehand, and when it came he saw it and was glad, saying, "Your father Abraham rejoiced that he might see my day, and he saw it and was glad." But David, instead of sight, speaks of hearing, saying that in Hades he would hear the cause of great gladness—the cause of the presence signified to him by the Spirit—and that he would be glad in Hades in spirit, and that the bones within the tombs, humbled by sin and death, would rejoice together with him, since the body that is the cause of the resurrection was buried together with them.

Weak is sin and the cause of weakness, but strong is righteousness and God, its champion; such also is the expectation of God, and especially the continual one; and just as from the first birth it is understood that it would not exist without God, but when set against the opposition of grievous things it is exercised all the more. Since in the fresh season of youth I took your help, not the strength of the body, to be my strength, for this reason let this strength remain with me even as youth passes away, and when human strength has wholly passed, let what is powerful with you be present, as it was for David himself in his old age. For in his youth a son rose up against him, but in his old age, none; but already chilled by old age and lying idle on his bed, he ruled Israel and gave orders to the nation. [... he ruled Israel and appointed Solomon as his successor, casting out Adonijah, who had attempted to reign against his will.] These things would fit the time of Absalom's rebellion, to which those other words also refer through the third psalm.

Many say to my soul, "There is no salvation for him in his God." But in fellowship with the righteous, the Lord also suffered such an uprising of enemies, who said, "Let him be rescued, because he desires him," and who thought that the one suffering according to the Father's will had been abandoned. Let the wicked, then, he says, be disappointed of their purpose, and let the matter appear according to my hope, not according to their supposition. For do not be far from me, but hasten your help and turn their boasting into shame, so that the things of my hope and the things of your hymns may increase for me the more. But Symmachus says, "I do not know how to recount." For since he promised to declare the righteousness of God and the salvation that had come to him, but the promise was greater than is human, he added these things. From that very point he begins the hymn from which he has promised, immediately doing what he announced, loudly proclaiming the height of God's wonders—that men who had been led through many afflictions obtain good things in eternal life, having risen from the dead; which is indeed the chief point of divine hymns and especially indicative of God, inasmuch as none of those said to be gods could rival it. For God is the one who gives life to all things, in whom Christ is known, being the Son of God, who says that he himself is resurrection and life and demonstrates this by deed, so that, even if these things are said by Christ as a man to the Father, it is fitting that they be said also to him by men as to the Son and image of God.

For he is the firstborn from the dead, having descended in the manner of a man, but having ascended by the power of God, being himself the author of his ascent, as he says to the Jews, in which the preeminence of his divinity is shown. If indeed you established your great power as manifest, delivering human nature over to death, yet to him who was despaired of among men you restored new and blessed life.

The glory of Christ is hymned after his passion. And Solomon is a type, both the peace of his kingdom and the protection of the righteous and the glorious nature of wisdom and the honor from all men; but beyond the type is that the days of the king remain until the consummation, and that his peace and his fruit become most radiant. For these things in no way suited Solomon, who passed a short time, and who also had those who opposed him, and who left no fruit from himself but one child, and this one did not preserve the kingdom delivered to him; but of Christ the continuous and unshaken power, and the most manifest fruit are those who believed; and the remaining things that came to pass typically in Solomon are more perfect in him, which the account, going through each one, will explain. O God, give your judgment to the king and your righteousness to the son of the king, to judge your people in righteousness and your poor in judgment.

And the Lord Christ is both a king and a son of a king, of David, according to the flesh, and for this reason he arose from the royal lineage, so that he might set right the kingdom of his fathers according to the prophecy of Isaiah and make it divine instead of human, and, what was not in a human kingdom, might apply the exactness of righteousness to his subjects and grant to those who are wronged that they not be wronged. For not even in the case of David himself was this preserved; although he was especially righteous and pleasing to God beyond others, yet he too became a doer of unrighteousness in the matter of Uriah. For the deed of Solomon was even greater unrighteousness, which tended to impiety—the construction of idols. But such is the righteous king foretold both through Isaiah and through Jeremiah, sitting on a throne with mercy set right, judging and seeking judgment and hastening righteousness, as Isaiah says, and understanding and doing judgment and righteousness, as Jeremiah says. But Symmachus rendered it: And they shall fear him as long as the sun—in agreement with what was said by Gabriel to the holy virgin: And the Lord will give him the throne of David his father, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And to Jerusalem Isaiah also says: For the wealth of the sea and of nations and peoples shall be turned over to you; and herds of camels shall come, and camels shall cover Midian, and elephants from Sheba shall come bearing gold, and they shall bring frankincense and shall proclaim the salvation of God.

And through Haggai it is said: "Yet once more I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all the nations; and the chosen things of all the nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord Almighty." For the whole inhabited world luxuriates and flourishes with the fruit of Christ, and a countless multitude of the children of Christ appearing in each city, as it were grass from the earth. Here, then, the prayers of David are fulfilled, which he made concerning the everlasting continuance of his throne, saying: "Lord, the word which you spoke concerning the house of your servant and concerning your servant, let it be made sure forever, and do as you have spoken, and let your name be exalted forever," while they say, "The Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, and the house of David your servant is set upright." Irrationally, then, it was written in the following psalm: "The hymns of David the son of Jesse have failed"; for this is its end, and a part of the thanksgiving for the fulfillment of David's prayers. The second book of the Psalms also ended with a blessing that pronounces the Amen, just as the first shows "Let it be" — "as he has spoken." For the end of that one was the M, spoken concerning Christ, and the end of this one is the OA just mentioned; and the third ends — so that I may now also speak beforehand concerning that one — at the PH psalm, so that all the psalms are 17, of which 11 are of Asaph, then 4 of the sons of Korah, and 1 of David, and Heman the Israelite is last.

Instead of "They passed through into the disposition of the heart," Aquila translated it as "They passed by the watchtowers of the heart," meaning that they are unwilling to fulfill any of the natural thoughts, nor do they practice the good things they understand, but they stand aloof from these. And virtue is a laughingstock to them, slander against their inferiors is easy; blasphemy against God is ready, their tongue is prompt against men. And this is "And their tongue passed through upon the earth." 108 * ...the wicked and unjust in the coming state, such as Jeremiah also says: "If you return, I will restore you before my face." And there he says: "And all who devised evil shall repent, those who chose evil." For when the good things have been made manifest in the race of the righteous, they will say: "Is there, then, a providence of God? And how does he know the things that are done?" And the voice is of those who have destroyed their natural reason by the good things that came to them inexpediently, unto injustices. For prospering contrary to reason presents thoughts as though the world were administered contrary to reason and not... ...he will know our... but when providence presides over the whole, yet nevertheless, he says, these impious men who even in their cheerfulness are unbearable in their pride and in their words against God, and in the good favors of the righteous not yet persuaded of the... * * and the strong man of hands, his endurance is vain when he is mocked and spoken ill of for choosing righteousness. This is the difficult thing of human reasoning—to repent of one's zeal for virtue as though it were not good nor profitable. And such thoughts often enter into many, which indeed he will proceed to heal by his word.

For the removal of the impious thought he confirms the more pious one through the person of God; for what is said truly needs God as guarantor—that the pious are more blessed in the future state, though they fare badly now, while the impious who persist to the end prosper. Such is the saying in Jeremiah: "If you turn, I will restore you before my face." And the words "And they said, How does God know?" belong to those who have destroyed the natural thought through harmful luxury; for since providence exists, they would not have themselves prospering while the good fare ill. 109 From *** 110 But Symmachus said later, "Honor succeeded." And in another sense: I ceased, being conscious of keeping silence and trusting you as one who governs our affairs well, and thus to be with you continually; therefore you took hold of me; you implanted a good glory, you brought me to blessed glory.

111 Necessarily the mention of the places is due to the lawlessness of the people. Because there was no pretext for indignation against the places, and as it were out of sparing for the place he prepares for kindness to be shown to the people. But this is not as though some place could be beloved of God; for God is not of places but of righteousness. [But Symmachus says thus: "You dried up ancient rivers." For that springs gush forth and rivers pour out from them, but elsewhere the streams of ancient rivers are dried up—this shows the power that works wonders. This he also says in another psalm: "He turned rivers into a desert, and outlets of waters into thirst." For it is easy for him to divert the flow of waters as he wishes. However, through this the account also indicates something else:

As for the Jews, because of their transgression he will not bring to them the streams of the prophetic rivers, but the nations, formerly desolate, he will water with the fountains from the rock; and the rock, says the divine apostle, is Christ, and all that has been said from "He wrought salvation in the midst of the earth" contains the type of our benefits. And these things are so. But Isidore of Pelusium says in a letter that Etham was a place so called, not far distant from Jerusalem, well-watered and thickly shaded and leafy; it is said to have been dried up by the wrath of God in the Roman war, as also Josephus says in the Antiquities. Remember your covenant and lead back again those who have been led away into dark places for a dwelling into your enlightened city, accepting the supplication of those humbled by evils and put to shame, and granting them to sing with gladness. The one who now speaks these things to the prophet is Christ, the cause of incorruption and the creator, who saves as God and offers thanks for the salvation as man to the Father. To you, then, he says, we shall bring up the confessions and thanksgivings for salvation, and we shall recount your wonderful works, Father. When the church gathered from all men, he says, is able to hear the things concerning you, and all men are brought near to serve you. And mine, he says, is also the discernment over all things, saving the worthy from among the perishing, while those who have minded earthly things are dissolved together with the earth, and those who have minded heavenly things remain as it were pillars for the founding of the new creation.

One must not be presumptuous against God, nor grow bold or exalted through conceit of wisdom, speaking dreadful and unjust things against God—as though he neither provided for nor justly judged each person, but let matters go to the risings and settings of the stars, and as though the stars arranged human affairs well or badly, and now not only the stars but also the demons worshipped at the boundaries in the heights. For these things are not so, nor near it; but by the judgment of God all things are encompassed in justice, both concerning the humbling and the exalting of men—some being brought down, others raised up. [Didymus says the same.] At such an end, he says—an end in which the wicked, perishing together with their wickedness, I will make the narration of God's wonders—I will also destroy the strongholds of the impious, cutting them off like horns; but the horns of the righteous will be exalted, since they have obtained from God a power that cannot be cast down. Then they will be exalted when they reign together with their own king. A good end and a victory of the righteous according to God is prophesied as coming, the prophecy declared in the preceding passage having been brought forth more clearly and more brightly. He calls the mountains of the hunt the sanctified

That is, mountains of food. For in Psalm 131 he called food "prey," saying, "Blessing I will bless her prey," which Symmachus there called "sustenance." And in Psalm 110, in "He has given food to those who fear him," Aquila and Symmachus said "prey." So the mountains of the land flowing with milk and honey he calls mountains of prey and of food, from which he says God will be seen manifest and beyond measure. And then the proud will suffer the things set before them, finding their hands not even able to do anything, as it were carried down by drowsiness. For you have struck them with amazement, shielding the places consecrated to you and your people, so that there fits the verse "A false horse for salvation," and "These trust in chariots and horses, but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God; they were entangled and fell, but we rose up and were set upright." The same thing as entanglement and fall is indicated here by the casting down and stupefaction. But Symmachus interpreted it thus: "For the wrath of man will give thanks to you, the remnant of wrath being girded about." Since the wrathful man, who does everything angrily and in anger, not according to justice, is subject to confession and repentance for the things he sins in. For wrath is prone to sin, daring even to murder itself, so that the reasoning that remains after it in the soul brings on strong repentances, encompassing the whole soul for the things done and said wrongly through wrath. From the present passage up to Psalm 82 the discourse sets out the harsh and painful things concerning the people, and thus in what follows recounts brighter things.

And he says in the present psalm that there is a long time in which the nation has been overlooked, sufficient to remove even the hope of help from God, unless someone, remembering former things, should be strengthened unto the hope of good things to come. Thus indeed, even in the 72nd psalm, having first spoken piously in auspicious terms, he so introduces the weak reasonings that come upon men in longer afflictions. For now, in the first place, he gives thanks to the God who received his supplications, recounting his persistent prayer and the stretching out of his hands through whole nights. "By your power," he says, "when it appeared, the whole was moved, and the waters travailed in fear, and a tumultuous struggle held the abysses." And waters were sent down from above out of the clouds, and clouds ran through the ether with great noise, and the arrows from heaven were borne down; and sounds of thunder came about the ethereal circle as the clouds ran through, and lightnings illumined the inhabited world, and an earthquake shook the earth. And these things are indicative of the fearful wonders that appeared both in Egypt and in the wilderness and in Judea. Since indeed Egypt was struck with hail borne down with fire, and the waters of the Red Sea gave way as if contracted by some fear. And thunders burst in the ether and hails were brought down also against the Canaanites in the war against the Jews. And it is evident that lightnings also flashed forth together. But as for saying that the thunder sounded in a wheel, another says it was when he bound the axles of the chariots and brought them down into the sea with their drivers. He sets before us the ethereal circle, in which the stars are whirled around like a threshing floor when oxen go round it.

For one cannot find in the divine oracles a spherical heaven according to the Greek account, so that we should conceive of a wheel-shaped revolution both above the earth and beneath the earth. For the divine Scriptures present water beneath the earth, not heaven, and waters even above the heaven, placed as it were at its boundary. For he says, "Stretching out the heaven like a skin, who covers his upper chambers in waters." And it is said that the sun runs from one end to the other, from east to west, and not that it runs back from the west for even the smallest part of its day. And he says, "Who set the heaven" (not "who leads it around in a circle") "and stretched it out like a tent to dwell in" (not "to be rolled around like a circle"). And Isaiah says that those coming from the earth from far away come "from the end of the foundation of heaven," so that the heaven is founded and stands firm and does not run around in a circle. But these things are said for the sake of a brief reminder, so that we are not carried away toward the Greek fictions while neglecting the divine Scriptures. He says that the divine way has no visible trace, as the human way does; therefore he also called it a path "in the sea and in waters," since Solomon says that not even the tracks of a ship crossing the sea are recognized, so that what is said is by way of parable. And there is no longer any transitional journey for God; for the Hebrews were not walking through the sea, so that he might lead them through it too, but the crossing of the Red Sea was brief for them, while the way through the land was long and of much time. "You led your people like sheep by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Yet although your journey was unseen, this became known and evident to humans—that you led the people on the journey from Egypt like sheep driven by Moses and Aaron. Thus indeed the psalm's command... in calamities... * 125 [But others explained these things in this way:] The aforementioned psalm came to an end in silence, neither seeking out nor setting forth the reasons for which the people were so greatly overlooked by God their guardian; but this one from the outset points out the cause of God's turning away, which God also afterward made clear through Isaiah, saying: Is the hand of the Lord not strong to save? Or has he made his ear heavy so as not to hear? But your sins separate between you and your God, and because of your sins he has turned his face away from you so as not to show mercy, and the rest. So then, in the psalm there is a remembrance of Israel's disbelief and rebellion in the wilderness, to the extent of showing that those who depart from God become themselves the causes of their own evils, while David clearly narrates God's dealings. And he begins in a royal manner at once, commanding his own people to attend to his own law, or to his own instructions, as Symmachus translates; for, he says, I offer the exhortation set before us as a kind of law. And if, he says, the love for humanity and mercy of God and his great propitiation had not preserved their succession, but he had pursued them with his whole wrath, they would have perished and been left nameless—God not accepting their purpose but pitying their weakness, as with flesh that is corrupted and a spirit that departs.

Those who have interpreted this psalm have set forth its subject in various ways. For one says that the prophet simply laments the captivity and the things that happened to Jerusalem because of it, without specifying which captivity; another says that the one by the Romans is indicated, which occurred after the betrayal of our Savior Jesus Christ; and others, the one under Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanes. Therefore, leaving this aside, let us examine one of the utterances. Against the nations is the petition, because, having acted impiously and being unclean, they defiled the holy land and polluted the sacred temple; and for Jerusalem is the appeal, because the city that was called holy to God has become a mound and a heap of stones—which Theodotion renders "into a stone-heap." And these things can be a remembrance of the election that took place concerning Jerusalem. Furthermore, concerning its inhabitants he speaks of the pitiable state, that even after death they were left unburied and exposed as food for birds, showing the great and cruel savagery of the enemies toward those who had been captured, and calling those who suffered these things servants of God—which can mean both kinship with God and a consolation toward the

Master. For even if the charges against the servants are just, still there is also a sparing of what is one's own when it is being savagely ravaged by a stranger. He says also that the bodies of the holy ones became food for beasts and their blood was poured out without sparing like water before Jerusalem, perhaps indeed calling the fallen "holy" because of their election from the beginning, just as again the apostle calls the branches broken off because of ungodliness "holy" (since they were of a holy root), and perhaps he indicates that holy ones perished together with the unjust, which happens in the capture and consummation of a city and a nation and is shown by Ezekiel to happen; for he says: The Lord says, Behold, I am against you and I will draw my sword from its sheath and I will destroy from you, Aquila: the just and the impious, O: and I will cut off from you the just and the impious. Which indeed was also foretold more allegorically thus: Behold, I kindle in you fire, and it shall devour in you every tree, Aquila: moist, O: and every tree dry; the moist tree being allegorically the just man, and the dry the impious, which the Lord also showed himself to be, the true just tree, saying, If they do these things in the moist tree, what happens in the dry? But if the Lord shared in the things brought upon the world insofar as he shared in the flesh, but in no sin, it is nothing wonderful that just men also, who are in some way at least partakers of sin, become partakers also of the calamities that come upon sins, suffering equally with the unjust when they are slain, just as he himself was reckoned among the lawless, but distinguished before God.

Such was the case of Jeremiah, taken captive among the ungodly, yet having also some distinction among men after his captivity, in the honor shown him by the one who had taken him captive. But the righteous man who will share even unto death with sinners—for him the good things that come after death are already laid up, for distinction from the wicked, just as for King Josiah; for he too, being most righteous, died in war when the Egyptian prevailed, since the Israelite impiety had been great beforehand and did not admit of forgiveness. So then for the righteous themselves, if they suffer together with sinners, there are laid up better things from God after the suffering; and indeed for the brothers and kindred who suffer because of sin, there is great assistance through them, so that for the sake of their destruction some turning of God toward the race should come about, which the prophet now also deems worthy. These things depend on a defense acceptable to God. For even if we are worthy, he says, of what we have suffered, still your name is associated with it, just as God himself also says through Isaiah: Because of you my name is blasphemed continually among the nations. Because, he says, like wild beasts they ravaged the God-fearing nation and laid waste the holy land. Having named him who sits upon the cherubim, he makes clear the heavenly authority, through which all things are subject to him and nothing is able to resist, if only he should appear; and he calls upon the power to be roused because he has kept silent and been quiet and looked on while the people suffered; what they have suffered from the Assyrians he deems it right for him to come to them for a time, though not present, because of the abandonment. But how should he come, except by his working?

For this reason he says, "Come to save us," as if he had said, "Come in the manner of saving." And the words "Turn us back and make your face shine" are because the one who has turned away from God is not able to attain the manifestation unless he first turns back to him; for he says, "Turn back to me, and I will turn back to you." He asks this, then, from God's guidance and cooperation, such as is also the verse "Incline my heart to your testimonies." For the pious ascribe everything to God. And if, he says, your face should shine forth, we shall also be saved; for the manifestation of God is salvation. With its shadow the aforementioned vine covered the mountains, because it surpassed every height and every power upon the earth, and by the extensions of its branches it reached the cedars of God, because it was supported by the divine powers and extended as far as the sea and the river. For the boundaries of the land of Judea are also thus named by God: "From the wilderness to the Euphrates, and from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines." The vine, then, which you yourself, he says, brought out of Egypt and transplanted, which you made so manifest and extended to such a degree—why did you overlook it thus stripped of its security and gathered by those who pass by? Trumpets begin the winepresses according to the law. On the new moon of the seventh month he commanded a blowing of trumpets, and on the fifteenth the feast of tabernacles. And this was the ingathering of fruits at the departure of the year in the gathering of the works of the field, as has been shown in Exodus.

And for one who contemplates the law spiritually, the trumpet-blast would be a revelation of the trumpets coming from heaven, and the fast appointed for atonement on the tenth of the same month is a declaration of that which is spoken by the Lord: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." For the law made the fast a preparation for the rest of the tabernacles and the gladness in it, and by first introducing the humiliation in it, it introduced the trumpets, which declare the fear of the judge's coming from heaven. As these announce beforehand the coming judgment, the humiliation for atonement follows, and thus the feast for rest comes about. And let the psalm sung at the winepresses be also distinguished in the time of the feast according to the custom of the law, and for this reason let it make mention of trumpets at the beginning as a prelude of the tabernacle-festival. And let it signify: the end, concerning which its superscription also declares that it is sung; when God gathers all the fruits, and gives his own eternal tabernacles. For at that end the good things are restored to those who are saved, and the salvation from the present evils, concerning which the previously mentioned psalms made their supplications to God. [And the following things follow in sequence with the one before it.] 134 "Bearings," that is, of the liftings; for those who serve the labors of brickmaking, casting out the clay in a basket, carry it on their back. Their back, then, he says, he removed from the bearings, that is, he freed them from the burdens.

135 Others said that God's purpose and the mysteries are hidden. 136 It should be known that some have understood the psalm as spoken in the person of those in Babylon who longed for Jerusalem and to behold the temple in it and the altar. 137 But the rest have understood it according to the history, in a sensory way, as referring to the temple in Jerusalem. 138 He brings in the goodwill of God and the continual hearing of prayers that will always be, concerning which it is said in the prophecy of Isaiah, "While they are still speaking, I will say, Behold, I am present," when we shall enjoy the honor that comes through Christ, the Father looking upon us as upon the face of the Son, because Christ will be in us.

139 Mercy and truth met together, whenever the mercy through which the nations were called comes together with the truth through which Israel will be brought back; for the nations were called on account of mercy, as the apostle says, but Israel on account of the truth of God, so that the promises to the fathers might be confirmed. Now, then, their rejection

He says it is the reconciliation of the world, and afterward the taking up, life from the dead, when the complete goodwill of God has appeared to men, whenever he fulfills the promises made to the fathers, bringing in the race that comes from them not because of their worth but because of his own truth. For in the meantime those called through truth spoke against it and did not obey the call, but those called through mercy came first; then both will run together, both mercy and truth, and then injustice will fall completely and the unjust will be driven out from their power against the righteous, so that the righteous may enjoy peace and, as it were, by a kiss righteousness and peace may be united to one another. When truth springs up from the earth, righteousness will shine forth from heaven, and all good things will come from God, and all good things will exist from the earth. For the Lord brought upon himself the righteousness of God on behalf of men, since the heavenly judgment was not going to judge and order the affairs of men well in any other way unless Christ had been born among men for the setting right of things and had taken up into himself the whole matter of human nature. Another, saying that the psalm was spoken in the person of the Son, says:

For he asks from the Father on his own behalf that exceptional and divine virtue come to us, saying these things which he wishes to be accomplished for us, so that God may be the one leading us, according to what is spoken by Paul: "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God," and so that we may walk in the truth of God, rendering the true and genuine worship, the worship of the Spirit, and keeping our heart fixed on the divine fear alone, undivided toward any other care, whole in the pursuit of the true good. Then the Lord himself also offers up to God the hymn and thanksgiving for the resurrection, since he descended into the lowest parts of the earth, as it is written, and from there ascended by the will of the Father and by the authority of his divinity, and we likewise by the grace that comes from him find the way up.

It has been said beforehand by us that Aiman is a descendant of Kore, and Kore is a grandson of Kaath, the most honored of the children of Levi, and a leader of the order of the Levites; he sings a most excellent song. For he dances to Christ, just as the song is also inscribed "For the dance"; and he sings the world-saving sufferings of the Savior, bringing forward the very person of the Lord in the discourse, as becomes clear from what has been said. And he describes a heavenly citizenship for the salvation of men and teaches that, whenever evils surround us, we should consider God our only refuge, just as we were also taught from the Gospels, when the passion was already drawing near, that he made continual supplications and prayers.

Continuing with the words of the likeness, he says: I have become like those who are slain and lie in a tomb—those who suffer this because they have been separated from your life-giving power. For it is clear that this was not the case with him; for the body of Christ was full of the power of God even after death. For this reason also blood and water poured out from him, whereas nothing of the kind comes forth from dead bodies. [Another, explaining "You have made me an abomination to them," says:] just as the disciples were put to shame at his sufferings, no longer hoping in a savior or redeemer—they who indeed also said: The rulers handed him over to a judgment of death; but we hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And it is clear that he was also seized, delivered into the hands of enemies—willingly, yet nonetheless held fast. Where indeed he also came into affliction on our behalf; for all things that are burdensome and afflictive to the body, these he endured. For in place of "My eyes grew weak from poverty," Symmachus gave "My eye flowed away from affliction." Save, therefore, the race made by you, by your own knowledge, and lead back to life those men who have fallen into death in either way—those who ought to be spectators of your wonders and expounders of your power; and let them not remain overlooked in forgetfulness, but having been remembered again by you, let them be led back to life. These things the champion of men, interceding on behalf of the common race of all and working out the life of the world by the will of the Father.

The ambassador and priest presents him on our behalf, and by his continual presentation from dawn and through the night he propitiates the wrath of God against us, which he himself took upon himself in his sufferings. He calls "exaltation" that which is in wonders and signs, of which the Father says to him, "I have glorified," while the Son says, "Glorify your Son." This, he says, has been changed into lowliness, when he came to suffer, suffering on behalf of men and being forsaken by them for whom he suffered.

Mount Tabor lies in the region of the Galileans, and Hermon in the wilderness toward Sinai. God must be hymned, he says, not only by his works around Tabor but also by the manifestation that took place around Hermon. Your power, he says, prevails. Let your might appear, and let it become manifest and glorious among men. But all these things, spoken as of one God, have been included: we know his power, one and only, being also his arm and perfect hand; through it all things both have come to be and do come to be, so that it, being also perfect in itself, is reckoned together with God according to the one number of the Godhead, and in no way falls among the things said about the many sons, none of whom, the Word has said beforehand, is likened to the one who truly is. For the one and true power is not so, but is a true image and token of God alone, God accomplishing all things through it. Therefore the divine things were fitted to its visitation among men, and the judgment of God is judged by Christ.

Existing indeed as by the power of God, but given to him as a man, just as he himself said, and he divided mercy and judgment by the times. Judgment he foretells from that time onward, when the king comes and sits upon the throne of his glory. For that throne has, as it were, righteousness for its base, just as Aquila also foretold in the 9th psalm: He set his throne in judgment. But before that manifestation, mercy was abundant upon the earth, as it were a forerunner of the judgmental coming, by mercy preparing men beforehand for salvation, while the fearful judge who was to be manifested was yet to come; and with mercy was truth also, because it is not possible for anything untrue or unrighteous to come to be in God's kindly long-suffering, even if it appears to those who do not know the future that the wicked are not rightly permitted to prosper, nor that the good are reasonably overlooked when they are brought low. He now expressly sets forth the promise that was made through Nathan the prophet, indicating in the plural the prophets from one, whom he also calls sons of God, or as the others interpret, holy ones of God. He says, indeed, that God had said that he imparted power to David and advanced him to glory, having chosen him according to the words I took you from the fold, from following the flocks, to be a leader over my people Israel, and having found him pleasing, he anointed him with holy oil for the kingdom, and he was present with him working all things together with him and making the uprisings of enemies of no effect, and cutting down their armies and putting them to flight, according to the words I was with you in all that you went through, and I destroyed all your enemies from before your face,

These things were spoken through the prophet Nathan. But by the mercy that is his own and by the zeal fitting concerning the righteous man, he says that he is exalted, just as he also wondrously won victories in wars and was invincible. God swears by himself, since he has nothing greater by which to swear, just as Paul says. For he says, I have sworn in my holy one, or, as the E edition has, By my sanctification, instead of By my holiness. [These things Theodoret set forth in like manner to Apollinaris.] 154 He appears to seek something greater and beyond man, despising the life we live as being nothing, saying that men proceed into something vain, though not that they were made for vanity—which is what he, in saying it, deems worthy that they not be added to corruption, since then also the kingdom will evidently be restored, when both corruption is loosed and the living into the ages is given. But from where would escape from death come to us? And from where, if not from you? For this would not come to a man from himself; there is no one who will live and not die, nor will he be able to rescue himself from death. But these things plainly seek the heavenly king, the redeemer from vanity, the same one who is mightier than death and a savior for men from death, and who changes the vanity of the present life into truth and establishes the kingdom eternal upon eternal life. He did not despair of mercy, but seeks the promise and calls upon the righteousness of God against the impious nations that reproach the righteous man for having fared badly concerning the offspring from him and for having fallen; whom he says are enemies of God, and who reproach the footprint of the righteous king as having been wiped away.

Having thus exhorted them, he blesses them. But the blessing belongs to one who hopes. And what does he hope for, if not that his prayers will bring the promise to fulfillment and that it will not fall away, just as from the beginning he appears to have believed, as Paul also says: It is not possible that the word of God has fallen away?

156 But if he has spoken thus concerning a thousand years, it is clear that the span of a man's life will be the merest fraction and, as it were, indivisible. So then, he says, the whole of human life is circumscribed within roughly seventy years. And he says this from the majority case. Nor is even this granted in ease, but almost entirely in misery; for either we are disciplined as infants, or we labor as young men, or we are afflicted as old men. Well then did he say, And the greater part of them is toil and trouble. For since the order of life according to age is such, the time stealthily stolen away for gladness is found to be very brief. Night—reasonably he called all this time night, in which man, being put to death, sleeps; and morning, the time that follows, in which we shall live when the Lord appears and mercy descends from heaven. And he asks that the sun come and that day shine forth and that unceasing gladness be given to the righteous in return for the days in which we were afflicted, falling into countless evils. And these were the times of refreshing which Peter also foretells, into which he says the Lord Jesus, who was foreordained, will be sent.

Next he says that a thousand shall fall from the left, and ten thousand from the right, before they even draw near and inflict any harm, so that he will look without fear on those who fall and perish, by the recompense that comes from God—as happened to Jehoshaphat according to the promise, so that without waging war, but singing psalms and praising God to one another, he saw the enemies perishing. For, he says, they came to the watchtower of the wilderness and looked out and saw the multitude, and behold, all were fallen dead on the ground, and there was no one being saved. Something similar to this happened also in the case of other kings who hoped in God, the promise of God being fulfilled which says, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. But one must not by all means always think that victories come to the righteous without battle, since they often also engaged in battle and conquered; rather, he speaks of the most conspicuous help in these matters, in which God is especially seen as the helper. He has introduced the person of the one who hopes, saying on his own behalf to God that he made him his hope. And again he declares to such a one that, Since you chose the Most High as a house of safety, you will be seized by no evil, nor will your house be struck with plagues sent by God. For it is clear that, if a righteous man suffers anything, this too is a contest brought by unjust men rising up, and not a punishment from God. And it is clear that evils will not overcome the one who suffers in a disciplinary way, but he will rise up as from sleep, just as was said in the third psalm; and even if he falls seven times, according to the proverb, he will rise again.

It is possible, then, that both "to be clothed in glory" and "to be girded with power" are said with reference to human understanding, but more properly with reference to the dishonor of Christ that occurred at his former coming and to human weakness. He himself also leads the inhabited world, established in sure goods, forward in himself, which can no longer be moved in any way.

He says: It is not possible for unjust kingdoms to share in your power, which bring toil upon those who keep the law, by which the righteous man is hunted for capture and the one who does no wrong is killed. In general he indicates in these words the dissolution of injustice, while the righteousness of God stands firm. Therefore, he says, you will not give power to the wicked, but you will place safety around the righteous, standing as a bulwark for him and strengthening his hopes in you; and the things which the base thought would advance for them against the righteous, these will turn backward and upon themselves; and as they devised evil to make the righteous disappear, so they will go away into disappearance; this is the end of the vengeance that comes from you.

Let it be known that the God whom we worship is the one who has the heaven and the glory that is above the heavens, to whom beauty is present, to whom power and majesty belong in ineffable manner—that is, according to the incorporeal and divine preeminence—since at any rate the bodily magnitudes of temples and their beauties have been contrived by artistic refinements and lavish expenditures of wealth, and among the nations they are concerned with demons. But in Israel, even if these things were present, they had come to be from the beginning as a type of the invisible things and were spoken through Moses, and they yield to the invisible things—especially now at the present proclamation of good news, when the spiritual majesty is sought and contemplated; yet indeed also of old among the understanding, as also with Solomon, who said he was building a temple as greatest and most lavish, as for the greatest God, but who also said that not even the heaven can contain the glory of God. The phrase "The Lord has reigned" must be heard now in one way and now in another; for from the former coming he reigned, as it were in summary, having condemned sin in his holy flesh and abolished death, and in the second he will reign through each of his partakers, having loosed evil and corruption—when indeed men will also arrive to behold the steward of eternal life, being already able to be filled with the life that comes from him and to contemplate the glory of his kingdom, while it is made manifest in them as in a royal house, and makes the adversaries invisible as fire melts wax. And so again the earth is to rejoice

Saying also that the many islands rejoice—that is, the nations—and then next that the earth is in travail and the mountains melt away: in one place he means the saints, in another the adversaries, whose loftiness too, because of pride, he likens to mountains, and the destruction of their pride he compares to the melting of mountains. And to the strangers he shows cloud and thick darkness meeting before the Lord's appearance, signifying fear and constriction, while to those receptive of light he speaks of his lightnings that appear and of glory beheld, and further that the fire of judgment will consume the impious, when the Lord's righteousness is revealed from heaven, as the apostle says. But the psalmist says that what is revealed from heaven is announced by the heavens, calling the manifestation a message, and saying that heaven itself is established by righteousness and judgment, as it were upon some foundation. He makes it clear that the throne is not bodily, but that the kingdom is called a throne. For those who through great insensibility and folly worship the images that they themselves carved, he prays that they be put to shame, having received perception. For such a thing will be to their good. For they will depart, ashamed of this foolish supposition which they held as though of gods. Evil is opposite and hostile to God, not being so by opposition of nature. For the evil that is contrary to nature is not set in division against the good nature, nor is it possible to suppose that there is some nature shown forth which he calls evil.

For we do not have any such thing in our knowledge, so that knowing it we might hate it, but we know every evil deed that is according to vice, and the hatred of it, if indeed we are well-minded, we pursue, considering this equal to that saying, "Cease from your wickednesses." He says that "his footstool" is to worship the worldwide authority that will then appear, which rules not only the consecrated race but also all things, allegorically called the footstool of God, occupying the whole inhabited earth, which is itself homonymously called a footstool, just as Israel too has been called an authority. He who is above authority would be allegorized as a throne—the familiarity of God toward the consecrated things, especially toward the heavenly things, but already also toward the things on earth. And homonymously with this, according to Isaiah, heaven is allegorized as a throne, and Jerusalem is also a throne because of the saints in it in the manner of heaven; which is indeed a proof that heaven is not called a throne bodily, nor the earth a footstool bodily, since Jerusalem, a small part of the earth, is a throne, and we say the authority that comes upon those who are given authority is a footstool. Just as the familiarity that comes upon the heavenly things as holy is also said to be the throne of God in heaven, with heaven itself being homonymously called the throne of God, so too the Lord calls those who have received the good seed of the kingdom a good seed homonymously, so that he commands us to worship not the earth that is subject but the authority that is over it, for those who perceive it in its works. And adding "Holy is he," he attacks the falsely named gods of those who are not holy.

And it is shown that he reasonably removes the impure from the kingdom, so that it may become receptive of holiness. He enjoins not only to worship the sovereign power of God but also, more intimately now, the sanctifying power, giving as a symbol of this the worship on the sanctified mountain.

169 "The morning" signifies the earnest man, as God, indicating that he sends the prophets with earnestness, says "rising early and sending." And the removal of the wicked is lawful: "Remove the wicked from among yourselves." And this has not ceased even in our own times, even if it happens by way of punishment. For the base are separated, and if not by death, then until repentance.

170 What is said is equivalent in force to Solomon's prayer, when he intercedes beforehand concerning the future affliction of the people, so that they might be heard when they supplicate in it—except that the speaking person says on his own behalf the things that belong to all, and [mentions] not being overlooked by God, which Israel risked suffering because of its own wickedness, and further also the affliction over a long time. The supplication of God's servants and God's mercy make the time—not some other cause such as is fabricated among the Greeks concerning fated times. And this is the time about which he himself says through Isaiah: "In an acceptable time I heard you." And Paul writes that this time has been fulfilled when the Savior came, saying: "Behold, now is the acceptable time." For properly also the descent of the Savior has come to pass, when he shone forth at the consummation of the ages. For since the Savior came to take away the sin of the world, it was not fitting that one so great should come and suffer for a few sinners.

When the time had passed in which it was said, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and when there was no longer on earth a righteous man who understands and seeks after God, he came who, by the grace of God, tasted death for every one of them. These things too might be said: when the human race had turned to wickedness, it was necessary that God, who provides for their salvation, should hinder wickedness. And indeed this came to pass through many devices: patriarchs were sent who by their own conduct could benefit the life of men; and when the law given through Moses also renounced wickedness, they themselves despised God who had given it; and when the appearances of prophets and angels were sent to them, God did not cease to provide for their salvation. And yet nothing more came of it; rather, they were worn down to an increase of wickedness. Since, then, every remedy and aid brought to them through those of their own kind had proved weak against their incurable diseases, after all those things the Savior reasonably came, healing every disease and every sickness, so as even to destroy their deadness and death. For this truth's sake, then, the Savior shone forth in the times of Augustus, when the season was fulfilled, inasmuch as the things of the salvation of men came to pass in a fitting manner. Concerning this the present passage also says: For it is time to have mercy on Zion, O Master, and you, having risen up through yourself, will have mercy on her.

Thanksgiving had to follow the preceding prophecy. And it has been composed through this song: both the mercy of God and the judging righteousness are glorified, because through mercy he will rescue the people from those who do wrong, and the removal of corruption, and the grace kept safe for successors, and the heavenly kingdom that will pass over all things.

The heaven is not spread around the whole in the manner of a sphere and does not run round it, but it covers the earth, stretched out around it, being roofed from above by waters in a steadfast and firm position. It is clear that "Stretching out" and "Roofing" and "Making" are used in place of "having stretched out" and "having roofed" and "having made." The same holds also for "Forming the spirit of man in him": since the forming by God has taken place once for all, the earth and the results from it come to be continually, inasmuch as it is also said, "My Father works until now, and I work." To this would also contribute "I am the one who is," since the works are not but are coming to be—those whose nature is created, and for this reason their substance is understood in the coming-to-be and does not truly exist as does the one who makes. And this extends through the holy Trinity, which is creative. The wonderful

He says that it is a proof of God's established power that the earth, being the heaviest element, has been made solid above the waters and remains unmoved through the age, since surely the underlying abyss is not able to support it nor does it hold it fast, but covers it like a garment, so that the foundation is ineffable and belongs to God's power, not to the nature of the elements. The earth gives forth springs of water gushing from the beginning, and these too by God's power; and he says that when they are often dried up by the fear of God they pass into invisibility, which is stated more clearly in the seventy-third psalm: You broke open springs and torrents, you dried up other rivers. He marvels also at the position of the mountains, raised unmoved above the plains and not swept down by the pressure appointed to cover the things below, according to the saying, They shall say to the mountains, Cover us. He calls the air the upper chambers of God, as though the whole world were a single house. And he says that the rain is the work of the Son, from which the earth enjoys fullness. And he would call the drawing up of waters from the sea a work. And concerning the heron it is said through Jeremiah: Even the heron in the sky knew its seasons. And God is said to mock him, that is, to count his cunning as nothing. For God laughs at everyone who opposes him, and because of its futility he treats it as a joke, because it is easily caught, as he says concerning the Egyptians: How much I have mocked the Egyptians. [But others have interpreted the preceding words as concerning the food supplied to living creatures.

For when this is present, it flourishes and rejoices, but when it is absent, it is pressed by want and confounded by the lack of necessities. This is the work of Christ, who also says that he is the resurrection and the life, and has promised to raise all, and, when he was present, gave life to whom he willed, so that the things spoken are the Father's in the way of origin, the Son's in the way of working out, and the Spirit's in the way of participation—the Spirit himself being participated and, as it were, being brought in through the Son into the life of all, according to the words, He will give life to your mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in you. The Spirit is therefore life-giving through the life which he works, and deifying through the participation which he bestows; and the human spirit is homonymous with him according to the formation wrought by him. Eternal is the glory of him who guards his works forever; and since the glory is eternal, the things which glorify are eternal. The greatness of the glory is made clear by the fear of creation, and fear indicates subjection. Thus the psalm says that the sea was subjected by being made afraid. For what fears is subjected; and the subjection of the earth is the trembling of God's visitation, and the smoking of the mountains is as of things burning, which was also seen physically happening on Mount Sinai. This is the gain of life, for this even to live is worthy, for this death is dreadful, which silences the singer; and death is destruction because In death there is none who remembers you, and life is the only existence because, he says, The living will praise you. For in union with the One who is, we have being, and separation is corruption. Let my meditation be sweet to him, and I will rejoice in the Lord.

And it is worthy of prayer that God may be gladdened by our hymns, and that gladness may certainly be ours through hymns. And even if this be so throughout, so that all our actions are a hymn to God, God will be gladdened by us, even as he was gladdened from the beginning.

It must not be overlooked, he says, that he himself is the Lord our God, whose providence governs the whole world by divine judgments, so that nothing happens without judgment or without his providence. There were anointed ones who received the anointing through the Spirit, invisible, or who became so as chosen ones. He has employed the order of the plagues without distinction, and does not enumerate them all, because, I think, the power of God is shown even from the wonders that are spoken of on each occasion; but it is necessary that the power of God be recognized, and that a history of events should not in every respect be made without omission. And he says that the frogs came into being not simply on the earth but into the houses, and of the houses the most distinguished and their innermost parts, so that their onset might be unhindered and most violent, and no one able to prevent it, not even the most powerful. And it is paradoxical also that the lice and the dog-fly were poured over the whole land and stopped at the boundaries, not proceeding further, so that the punishment might then appear to be wrought against Egypt alone. Therefore also the turning of the river into blood happened to stop at the boundaries, and the streams were no longer such in the neighboring land, because the chastisement was against the Egyptians, taking away the abundance of the river.

In addition to the salvation that was given, he speaks also of the prosperity that comes from God's power, which he brought the Egyptians to provide for those who were about to leave the land and were asking for many costly things. And it is a great thing that those who had suffered the worst at the land's hands departed unharmed, not even one of them. When they tested God in the waterless place, he, being untempted and forgetful of wrongs, did not requite them but gave them their request; and when they provoked him bitterly as they went up through the Red Sea, even then he made known to them his dominion. But when they provoked Moses and Aaron in the camp, then the earth was opened and swallowed them up. For it was necessary that the servants not be despised. But also, since there is both kindness and severity with him, according to "See therefore the kindness and severity of God," he first provided them the things of his kindness; but since they did not profit by it, in due course he comes upon them with the corresponding remedy of punishment. Now Dathan and Abiram and their company provoked Moses by saying, "Did God speak to Moses alone? Did he not also to us?" And Korah and his congregation provoked Aaron by daring to bring strange fire and sacrifices to God in the land of the priests. But those who spoke against Moses—Dathan with his whole family—the earth, having opened, swallowed up and covered over against the congregation of Abiram; and Korah and those with him, as they were about to offer their censers, a flame that came forth from the tabernacle consumed. By justice, the boundary of destruction; by love of humanity, the forgiveness of being saved.

But the petition gave scope to the concession, both because of the holiness of the one petitioning and because of his providence for the world, according to which the petitioner pleaded that the grace of God toward Israel might not be thought incomplete, and because of the remembrance of the fathers and the promise made to them, which Moses called to mind as he pleaded—since by their impiety and by the foreknowledge of all their wickedness they would have perished. And the dispute concerning the land is older than the sedition of Korah and Dathan, but greater and more impious, contending against the promise of God and not striving eagerly for the worship of God; reasonably, therefore, it has been ranked with the aforementioned impiety toward God, having come about through cowardice just as that one did through faint-heartedness, despair of success in the cowardice bringing on despair just as faint-heartedness through the separation of Moses produced despair of the return of Moses. For not only desires but also cowardices and faint-heartednesses take away the fulfillment of what is owed to God and to men, hindering the steadfastness in obedience to God and the good order in honors among men, since the nature according to the flesh corrupts that according to the spirit and by its own pleasant and painless lot makes to disappear the good that is in that other. But God brings matters about by ways of discipline; of the

But the end of discipline is the righting of man in the rule of the spirit, and in the obedience of the flesh. For this reason he deferred the supplies of pleasures, training them to subject the desire for these things to the mind according to the will of God, and he led them into dangers, exercising them to endure what is otherwise to be shunned through hope in God, which is fitting for those who think rightly. And since men are rather fleshly in their present condition, at first he relaxed the penalty for the disobedient and fainthearted, but later he punished them for their conversion. Since, then, he did not punish them when they were afraid and spoke against him at the Red Sea, he punishes those who did not dare to follow him to the promised land. For this was a manifest proof of unbelief. For it was right for those who had seen so many and such great wonders to trust in the power of their savior for all things. And indeed, since for the making of the calf, although it was more impious, he punished them less severely in partial judgments, he chastised them more grievously with the death of the people in the disobedience of all the people of that time concerning the possession of the land, because through the former judgment they were not brought to their senses and they endured to tempt God to the greatest extent. He did not state the cause of idolatry, which was the fornication that led them into fellowship with the object of worship (for this was connected with gluttony), but he accuses the result, for the sake of which the law also forbade intercourse with foreign women, so that through sympathy for the women they might not be led into fellowship with impiety, which indeed also happened.

For he led them to such a pitch of folly that they were initiated into the rites of Beelphegor and defiled themselves with sacrifices offered to the dead. He shows that the return through the mercy of those who had taken them captive will not be unshaken, adding a prayer concerning the gathering in from the nations and concluding with this, so that they may find the salvation that comes from God himself firm and immovable, and may give thanks always to the one who saved them, and have their boasting in God. And one must await the mercy that comes after the present disobedience, as the apostle says, so that they may dance before God all their days, having made supplication, as Zechariah foretells. He says that these things were spoken concerning the Jews, who of old were set free from their sojourn in Egypt by crying out to the Lord, but now will suffer the same and be delivered from every kind of wandering, if they cry out to the Lord and desire to obtain the perfect freedom that comes through Christ himself. And this is the allegory concerning the same things, whence it is especially evident that these things are also spoken allegorically. For taken literally, it does not agree that the same people wander in the desert and are bound in a dark prison. And the one who says in Isaiah, "Come out, you who are in bonds, and be revealed, you who are in darkness," is clear, concerning whom Zechariah also says, "By the blood of his covenant he sent forth prisoners from the pit that has no water." Christ, then, is Savior from the Father, and Father through Christ. But Israel is now covered by death and bound by lowliness and the necessity of slavery. For the covering is a shadow, the lowliness is poverty, and the necessity is iron.

But being cast out into the land of the nations, they establish themselves among the very nations—the poor from the beginning, concerning whom the 110th Psalm says, "The poor shall eat and be filled." Having allegorized the wanderings and famine and thirst and darkness and bonds as the evils of the Jews, he now employs the allegory of things of the sea, bringing the disturbances in the sea and the changes from these into calm, and safety all the way to a fair harbor, to the same point as their labors; and he shows that the rest which succeeds their labors—the calm of old disturbed into a surge not without God, but by divine command—just as the command raised a squall and stirred up their former fair voyage with the waves, by which, as they are lifted up to the height when the waves crest and carried down when they subside, as commonly happens in the sea, they are humbled and confounded and lose their understanding through ecstasy, and then obtain a change when the wind yields, whenever God commands this too and loosens the violence of the winds into a gentle breeze and lulls the roar of the waves—where they will have the gladness that comes from the wilderness and will obtain the lodging they long for, into a harbor; for which things it is fitting to confess thanks to God in the assembly of the people and to hymn him in the seat of the elders—him who for the sake of sins, as has been said, handed the nation over to the surge, but by mercy transferred them to good things. And mercy itself shows that this has been brought about by sins. For those who are not worthy of good things, but are pitiable in their evils, are shown mercy.

Here indeed the matter is not common in the way it often happens at sea, where both the good are storm-tossed and shipwrecked, as even Paul was, and the wicked are carried along with favoring winds, the same things befalling both parties, so that, being tested in the same circumstances, they might show forth in their disposition the difference, with a view to the recompense that will come afterward, right and just, pre-attested by their very deeds. So the word is not about those who sail the sea, but about the people storm-tossed by sin and who through mercy will come to a harbor, whose assembly also is for confession and the seat of elders for the praise of God. Mercy—the mercy toward men—he asks on behalf of men; though he is not himself in need of mercy, he who lightens the troubles of the worthy, being good in granting favor and not measuring back an equal return, but indeed all things have come to Christ and he is shown mercy on our behalf; inasmuch as he himself is us, both as poor and lowly he is pitied, and as one in turmoil in that he shared the nature troubled by evils, and as going into obscurity in that his bodily appearance ceased, and as one shaken and lifted up, like one of the lightest things, in that he gave himself over to those who seized him, and the weakness from fasting and the dryness from unanointing he bears upon himself from us, placing nothing between us and himself; and on these things he calls the mockery from the enemies, which through us he now has—we who are reproached in his name.

He shows that the mighty authority of the divine King, having begun from Jerusalem, will be sent forth over the whole world, according to “I have been established as king by him upon Zion, his holy mountain,” and that all will obey and serve him. But Apollinaris, setting down Symmachus’s interpretation, says: the unceasing and unfading peak, being compared to eternal life as to morning dews, just as the life that was dissolved was compared to a declining shadow— “The Lord swore and will not repent,” and what follows. The eternal priest is the one living eternally, a priesthood sure as though confirmed by an oath, the type being Melchizedek, whose death is not declared, as a sign of him who has no death at all; and having just now been shown to be king, he is now also displayed as priest, which was impossible in Israel and under the law. This too was prefigured in Melchizedek. For it is clear that Christ was high even before being exalted by the exaltation that comes from men, inasmuch as he was in the form of God and came down from heaven. But a symbol of lowliness is journeying on foot and drinking water from a river; and we see the Lord indeed traveling on foot and asking the Samaritan woman for water to drink.

In the present passage the hymn is spoken briefly, and through the twenty-two letters of the Hebrews the first sounds of the verses come forth in the Hebrew tongue, from the first to the last, that is from Aleph to Tau, such a composition possessing a grammatical elegance and calling forth beforehand to acquaintance with letters and the learning of books, inasmuch as the psalms also immediately and clearly urge us on to the study of the law, since Moses from above also commanded and ordered that teachers of letters be appointed and that the children be taught the law, because they had their learning through hearing, not wisdom through the spirit as those who are perfected in Christ.

He says that the righteousness of the blessed man is not extinguished nor does it stand still even up to the present, but extends also into the age to come; in which age His horn shall be exalted in glory, that is, the kingdom of which he shall be deemed worthy, having obtained the promises of salvation. For it is customary for the Scripture to name the kingdom a horn.

But it is also just that those who worship things as more beautiful and regard lifeless things as divine should be brought into a likeness of them. And this would not justly appear to them a curse, but rather becoming gods, as they suppose, is worthy of prayer, and having what they admire.

For man is empty and a deception both in his being and in his not being, because even when he seems to be he is not, but turns about rather in an image of life than in the truth. There is need of release from the bonds in Hades, so that the God of the living and not of the dead may be our God, and we may be his servants in the heavenly church, to which we return as we escape the bonds of death. He is confident as one who has been heard, and hopes as one who will obtain help; and he is strengthened by hope so as not to fear the plots of men nor to marvel at their powers, but to foresee their fall. These things long ago were concerning Israel when the other nations pressed upon it (and the word has been spoken hyperbolically), but after these things they were concerning the church from the nations, warred against by the uprisings of the unbelieving. For those who have believed in each nation endured the tumults and dangers from the unbelieving, but nevertheless both these and those, having trusted in God, conquered their adversaries. Those who war serve God with human power and are lifted up by human dominions, but those who have chosen the worship of God are emboldened by God's help and find it stronger than all strength; and most manifestly those of Christ, through the name of the Lord alone, defend themselves against the unseen enemies as well as the seen.

He clearly hymns the manifestation of the Lord, through which salvation is restored to all, calling him God according to the Father and Lord according to the name of the Son, because both the Lord is God and God is Lord, and having appeared as Lord he ruled over us ourselves unto life, according to "that he might rule over the dead and the living," and over his adversaries unto punishment, according to "to abolish every authority and power." He commands the establishment of a feast through a multitude of victims placed upon the altar up to its horns and the other projections. But proceeding to our own sacrifices, the word signifies those who present themselves as a sacrifice in the pattern of Christ, a living sacrifice truly well-pleasing to God, whose multitude also fills the altar up to the highest height that is joined to the heavenly angels, through the same power which both holds up the heavenly things to their height and raises up the things on earth, receiving those who approach God in the manner of an altar. These were those who did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly and did not stand in the way of sinners, but chose the law and the walk in it. He calls "blameless" not the one altogether free from blemishes and sins—for this was reserved for Christ and for the partakers of Christ through him—but for those, the blameless was judged to be in what is according to their power, by the forgiveness that comes from God and not by exactness regarding the commandments. For God does not demand what is impossible, but legislates, exposing what is lacking, and he forgives, knowing the weakness, and by the participation in Christ that was still to come at that time, of God who is able, he provides salvation. For us, then, blamelessness is fitting as we live according to Christ.

Since there were very many obstacles to virtue, reasonably, like stumbling blocks on a road, he asks for their removal. For thus the road is made ready when those things that block it are taken away, according to "Cast up the stumbling blocks out of the way of my people"; as a stumbling block came to the divine David—the woman and the untimely encounter of the sight—and to another, food seen for pleasure, as to Esau, and to another, glory, as to Saul, and to another, a possession, as to Ahab. Against all these things there is need of God, who prepares for the road, who would strip these away and preserve the love of what is noble in the readiness, † those more violent things of the purpose dragging it along and, as it were, draining it dry because of the inclination of nature. But for us, looking toward the divine Spirit, it will be ours not to be put to shame, whenever we see ourselves fitted to him in every way and in no way shifting toward the flesh, nor brought down by a fall from on high. "In that I have learned the judgments of your righteousness, I will keep your statutes." He asks for understanding, he says, and promises that he will not have it fruitless. For I will not only learn, he says, but I will also keep your statutes. Aquila says, "Do not let me be ignorant" [with reference to what we shall say]. Employing desire for the law, he fears senselessness, which for many turns their zeal to the opposite. And in the things in which they seem to succeed, they have erred, according to what is said by Solomon: "There is a way that seems right before men, but its end comes to the bottom of Hades." For understanding is not immediately from memory but from divine illumination; and statutes are the things able to justify. Pride is the mother of lawlessness.

For because of this they do not endure to obey God's commandments, as is the disobedient people who say, "We shall not be ruled, and we shall not come to you any more." But he says this displaying to God his own zeal for obedience to the commandments. Because he understands that they are guilty, he will rebuke those who through arrogance are disobedient and insubordinate. He prays to escape the true disgrace that is before God, which the Lord shows to be most fearful when he says that those who are ashamed of him will be put to shame; and indeed, showing the opposite of this, this lawful man here says, when mocked by great and arrogant men, that he does not stand aloof from the meditation of the sacred oracles and the correction that comes from them, and a little later he says, "I spoke of your testimonies before kings and was not ashamed"; as also Paul is, saying, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel." What he himself says is a sacrifice to God—a heart crushed and humbled—this he now says he has fulfilled, having brought his soul down as it were to the ground and humbled himself willingly, as concerning involuntary humiliation he says, "Our soul was humbled to the dust, our belly cleaved to the earth.

of us. Having therefore presented himself as it is fitting, humble, he seeks from God as a recompense the lawful conduct of life and the life according to God's word. And this very thing is also characteristic of the humble—not to attribute the good life to oneself but to seek it from God. It is a great thing to do all things as in the eyes of God and to say these things and recount them and to ask for the revelation that follows upon them, whether corrective or confirmatory, and that benefit for others will also accrue to him as he discourses from a more divine understanding and proclaims the wondrous beneficence of God that is laid up for those who do holy things. For he who teaches the things concerning righteousness also teaches the things concerning the end that is laid up for it, which is something wondrous and beyond expectation, that God greatly and beyond worth recompenses. Paul also discoursed concerning self-control and righteousness and the coming judgment, so that the governor became fearful. And instead of "I shall meditate," Aquila has "I shall converse," and Symmachus "I shall expound." Since the heart of man lies earnestly upon evil things from youth, there is need of God to move it toward the righteous commandments, that is, to lead our faculty of choice by his dispensations and by the illumination of the divine Spirit. Vanity is the madness concerning spectacles, the contemplation of things that do not even exist, and also the absurd imagination according to the mind, which Paul also makes clear when he says, "Being darkened in the vanity of their mind, being alienated in their understanding from the life of God.

Observe the vanity of mind that is spoken of, when someone has a mind and does not use it for the contemplation of true things, but hands it over to Satan who binds it. This, then, he says in prayer: Turn away my eyes from seeing vanities; for this is the grace of God. For in this way he will be able, having departed from such contemplation, to live in the way of God, walking in it and being given life by it; for at the same time that it is a way, it is also life. Therefore the Savior says: I am the way and the life. And since the Son is the righteousness of the Father, the one who wishes to live in the Son says this: For the righteousness of God is revealed in him from faith to faith. He says that this alone is sufficient to comfort us in our afflictions—to have the promise of true life; accomplish this for us. For if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are more pitiable than all men, because we are afflicted now and not in hope of the life to come. And the life to come is a revivification, inasmuch as we learn that the soul is not its own life, nor even true life, if indeed the soul is not a man. For if in its own life it had the truth of living, what had died would not have needed revivification. Therefore the Lord also said that the dead live to God, as not yet having life except insofar as they are in the power of God who gives life; and he says that they themselves have perished if they do not obtain the resurrection, saying that he will raise up his own, so that not one of them may perish. And Paul likewise says: If there is no resurrection of the dead, then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished.

For God did not from the beginning give the soul a bodiless life, but immediately a life in a body, breathing the breath of life into the body. To the sinner, godliness is a laughable disposition, but to the godly, lawlessness is a thing to shudder at, because he foresees the terror of punishment. But for me, he says, the only consolation is to look to your judgments, and good cheer is your precepts taken up in song and leading to gladness by their melody. And this alone I considered good, as in a strange and alien dwelling-place that can have nothing truly good, because for the stranger the things of home are longed for, and before his return to them all things are grievous. But God does not, like a moulder of a man, fashion him—even if he is said to fashion—but such as one who fashions might produce, such he brings to completion by the power that works such a formation; and to that first formation one must refer the formations now spoken of, as also the words Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; in accordance with which Job also says, You moulded me as clay, declaring in his own case the clay-moulding in Adam. And the request concerning the making is a thanksgiving, quite consistently that of the rational power that makes one understand the commandments. Concerning this Paul also says, Think about what I say; for the Lord will give you understanding in all things. And the petition is fitting as addressed to a creator, as it were: Take thought for your own handiwork and perfect by understanding the rational creature; and what you prepared for your own possession, make your own through your knowledge of your will.

Since from the beginning man needed a command—he whom the multitude of injunctions rendered in his mind free from need—and indeed, having fallen away from that one, he needs more of those that fulfill the greater want. For without training among many evils and without God's help coming beyond hope, it is not possible for a man to be firmly fixed in virtue. For those untested in struggle are easily shaken when the contest comes upon them. Having recognized, then, the confirmation that comes from many hardships within himself, he hymns the confirming providence of God; then indeed he asks for rest from his labors, saying, Let your mercy be, then, to comfort me according to your word to your servant. Perhaps the righteous become rather dead than living under their afflictions, so as to resemble wineskins rather than men, growing cold as frost frozen over, while choosing the warm and active life, as he says elsewhere: They sat me in darkness like the dead of old. But even while in such circumstances, he says, I did not depart from the God-taught righteousness, just as Joseph guarded just chastity. He calls the promises commandments. Trusting, he says, in your promises and in their truth, I seek the help that comes from you, my God. He deems it worthy that he not be handed over to the hands of those who plot against him unto death, asking for life—not yet the eternal life, but the present one. He does not ask for this as an end, but as something that will be a joint cause of a good end, because, he says, having lived I will keep the commandments of God, through which one can also procure eternal life. I will follow your laws, he says. For I will have life in them, just as you have also told me: The man who does them shall live in them.

The righteous man alone, then, lives, even if he seems to have died; but the unrighteous are dead, even if they appear to live. For the former have the constitution of life—righteousness—within themselves, while the latter, not having it, are like lifeless things moved not by themselves but from outside, since their vital principle is external, and they have not even one life within themselves. Therefore the Lord himself, being truly righteousness, both declares himself to be the life and says that those who do not partake of him have no life in themselves; and indeed the death of the Savior is not only life but also life-giving for men, having come to be by the dissolution of death. The unrighteous, then, are blind to the beauty of righteousness and do not discern the majesty and comeliness of the words concerning it, but the one who has chosen these things and wished to belong to them—this man alone is established in understanding, because wisdom reveals its own beauty only to those who love it, according to the saying: Desire her, and she will honor you; honor her, that she may embrace you. All things are beautiful in a man through meditation, whence also by the increase of meditation he was stretched out, so that through it he surpasses the old and the young and the disciple surpasses his teachers. Presenting himself as humble and obedient, he asks from God the salvation that comes from this, from God who gives grace to the humble and has promised mercy to those who love him. A greater proof of zeal is not to depart from the law even when passing through dangers, and not to be drawn away from righteous deeds when amid plots, by anger and

Because of his sharp indignation against those who plotted against him, since Saul's plot did not cause David to go astray toward defending himself beyond what was fitting. He intensified the demonstration of his zeal for the law, when he said that the law had been made his own lot, choosing to live in it not for a time but forever, as one not under any yoke of necessity but holily in the joy of the soul. For this is precisely what is both stable and hard to shift—what is done with joy. Even if they are not hateful insofar as they are human beings, insofar as such people are said to be hateful even to God, it is not unworthy of God, according to "You hated all those who practice lawlessness," so that the greatest proof of loving the law is hating those who have departed from the law; therefore even Jehoshaphat was reproached for friendship with such a man through the prophet, because he loved one hated by God. He shows forth an imitation of God. If every apostate from the ordinances, with vain thoughts, is despised by God, they also appear to him no more honorable than grape-pits or dung; therefore he is also stirred up toward love of the divine ordinances, taking the vanity of the wicked as an incentive to care for what is good. But the Fifth Edition has "They were reckoned as nothing." By God's forbearance he longs for what is lacking to be filled up, as he waits for the good work still to come, as it were guaranteeing it as something that will be fulfilled, just like those who stand surety for debtors, so as not to fall grievously into deceptions. Symmachus: "Receive me, your servant, for good"; but Aquila and Theodotion gave "Give surety.

Others, he says, marvel at gold and precious stones, but I, knowing that the divine commandments are wonderful and the only good thing, hold fast to them and guard them more than any treasure. The oracles need opening; therefore the Lord also opened the mind of the disciples to understand the Scriptures, and the understanding given through the words drives away the deception that comes through pleasure or glory. This he asks, since exactness concerning sound reason is difficult amid disturbances and griefs. Observe the enmity that the righteous have. This was against their injustice and their forgetfulness of the law. What is said can indeed, according to the history, be referred to David, speaking these things about himself. For he was the shortest of all the sons of Jesse, but also despised. At any rate, when all his brothers had been taken by his father to the feast that Samuel had prepared, David was among his father's sheep, not taken to the banquet; yet although younger and despised, he himself obtained the kingdom by the vote of God, since he had not forgotten the ordinances of God. And the one who is younger and being instructed in the divine words, and despised because he humbles himself, and the people called from the nations after the elder and firstborn Israel, might utter the present passage. For those of the circumcision despise him as he guards the ordinances of God with unceasing remembrance. The passage also has what is proper to David, that, being pursued by Saul in vain and out of envy, he restrained himself from defending himself out of fear toward God.

This applies also to the common case, that one cannot otherwise come away unharmed from the wars of rulers unless guarded by the fear of God. After the gift of wisdom, he again asks for deliverance from dangers; this too is the reward of voluntary zeal for the divine law. Truly, then, he was just now speaking of expecting eternal salvation, and now, desiring it, he has made the study of the law his goal for this purpose. For he says that he will live again and praise God for his all-wise judgments, having been helped to this end—which indeed is Christ, who for the sake of men descends to a saving death for men and by suffering ransoms those who are in passions and

redeems those who die through death; and in accordance with this he adds, My soul shall live, and the rest.

This happened immediately after the first fall of man, when Cain struck down his brother by deceit, and it also runs through the whole of the present age, as is shown both in other matters and in the present affair. So then, the man who looks to God, being worn down and oppressed by this, asks for salvation from him. He does not foresee the rest that will be then, when he is brought up to the dwelling of the peaceful city and to the citizenship shared with good and evil. Another also indicates the foreign land in one respect, into which Israel, having fallen out, settled as a stranger, and that his sojourning was extended to the greatest length. Prophesying in lamentation, he brings this forth as reaching even to the present state; for this is the longest.

For the good and God-fearing, as far as lies in them, are at peace even with all people, whenever there is no need of the punitive judgment that God enjoined against the Canaanites and Amorites, forbidding friendship with them. But the wicked and those who do not know God would never come to friendship with the good, but they loathe godliness and do not favorably accept anything good from the God-fearing, nor are they tamed by the philanthropy shown by them. Here he calls the invisible and heavenly powers "mountains"; and awaiting help through them, he says that the help does not originate from them but from the Creator.

253 "Gladness" is what is said to be heard from the angels—evidently those who speak to the prophets and, as it were, lead the flock of Israel, such as the one indicated through Zechariah, who pleads on behalf of fallen Jerusalem and speaks of its future habitation. Having heard these things, the psalmist says that he was gladdened, and having foreseen the secure habitation in the holy city and, as it were, perceiving the matter as present, in a prophetic manner. For this is the meaning of "Our feet were standing in your courts, Jerusalem." And the standing of the feet is the unshakable habitation, which the holy prophets also foretell—the opposite of which occurred when, according to the history, God shook the foot of Jerusalem from its own land. The psalmist therefore speaks of the rebuilding of the city, having observed it just as Ezekiel did, and the building is that of a city united—not, of course, in the usual way, with walls uniting it, but with its inhabitants united to one another.

Therefore he did not say "a city" but "as a city having a joining together at once." For Ezekiel does not foretell that it will be inhabited under walls, nor does Zechariah, but unwalled, and its wall will be the Lord, inasmuch as God is the guardian and sustainer of the unity of the saints. He explains, then, that the union comes about through the inhabitants themselves, saying, "For there the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord, a testimony to Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord." Not because they were surrounded by walls did they become united, but because they were united of themselves. A testimony to Israel—that is, bearing witness to the truth of the promises—and "to give thanks to the name of the Lord," because thanksgiving for graces is owed by those who are benefited to the one who fulfilled the wondrous promise. And he says that thrones of the house of David were established upon it, since Daniel also prophesies a kingdom of all, not a rule belonging to some one person nor of one man, but a common one on behalf of the best and

most God-fearing, through whom the kingdom of David is set upright by the grace of Christ, who gave to the twelve apostles to sit upon twelve thrones and judge Israel.

But neither will he allow the good who are subject to him to be corrupted by evil demons; rather, after they have suffered a little at their hands, he will free the good from a harmful slavery, which has no power to assail those who are ruled by God. Solomon is inscribed as the author of the Song, because he built the temple. But it signifies the true Solomon, our Lord, the cause of the true and peaceful building. Therefore this building is also shown to be made by God, and its guard is firm, in that it is guarded according to God; and this is reasonably so, because the buildings and guards made by human hands, and the watchings of those who keep watch by night, and the careful and laborious effort by day, have fallen into futility. Therefore human things, being such as they are, came first, so that divine things might be recognized as alone possessing the firm and unchangeable, just as righteousness also came in through the law, so that the righteousness of God might be seen after it, possessing what is genuine and alone true, and true life after that which is in shadow and in image. When he gives sleep to his beloved. He has indicated the rest from God, resembling sleep, which will be given out of love. For I have bent you, he says, O Judah, for myself as a bow. And here he calls the holy ones who are left the arrows of the mighty, for the defeat of the impious and of those who are violent with injustice. Many and various are the ways of the introduction, and the lives of those who begin are manifold, but the perfection that reaches the summit is one. And he characterizes those who fear the Lord, what sort of people they are, when he says next: Those who walk in his ways. For those who do not do this do not fear the Lord.

For the fear of the Lord is a turning away from evils, and he who has turned away from evils is ready for the divine paths. And "out of the depths" might mean, as it were, out of the waters of the afflictions that have been poured around him, and the endurance and the repetition of the same things belongs to one who holds fast and clings and does not wish to let go of his supplication because of his desire. Therefore: Hear my voice, and let your ears be attentive. To David, who had not foreseen it, the place became manifest from his own affair. Therefore he also says, We heard and we found, because a command of God pointed out the threshing floor of Ornan, on which he built the altar for the turning away of the destroying death from the race of the Hebrews. And having loved the discovery exceedingly, as one who had come to know what was long desired, he rejoices in the matter and loves the worship here. And indeed he says that a visitation of God took place there, because the glory of God also became manifest through the presence of the angel. Similarly, he says, he foretells the time under Solomon, in which the ark is transferred from the tabernacle and set up in the temple, and the divine glory appeared and fills the house with a cloud. These things, he says, we see came to pass under Solomon according to the words of David. For the favor was toward David. Even if the beneficence extends to those after him—just as it is also said plainly to Solomon, because of David, that his kingdom shall not altogether fall away, and indeed the sparing has passed over to his descendants because of David, just as it is also said to Hezekiah, I will shield this city for my servant David's sake—to the earlier and brief gifts the

He brings about the greatest preservation of all those things. For from the beginning he gave an abundance of food, which he calls "game," while another translates it as "nourishment." And he promises to make the inhabitants free from want, and he has taken counsel concerning priests and holy ones, that they be saved and attend to the sacred hymns. But since all these things had already been corrupted, and the nation was unable to enjoy the good things of the earth because it had fallen under the authority of the Romans, and the priesthood was failing and all the gladness in the temple was dissolved, the great power sprang up there—the horn of David, which butts down every power of the enemies, a comely lamp shining with heavenly light for David and for his race, which, beginning there also, sends forth its radiance upon the whole world, as the prophet Symeon says: "A light for the revelation of the nations and the glory of your people Israel." And the parable of the myrrh was also a matter of divine things, but more manifest is what comes from God according to the parable of the dew that descends from heaven upon the mountains. For the gift and the good thing are heavenly, not human, nor appearing among men apart from the gift from above. He foretells that the work of hymns will be according to the gathering of all the saints, so that they will cease neither day nor night, since not even sleep prevails in that power of incorruptible and unwearied bodies. Hymns are the end of good things, and the subject of hymns is the works of God and his gifts and benefactions. And those who sing hymns are not strangers and those standing far off, but those who attend and remain, just as David also established the singers to remain for this purpose.

One might say that it is a great benefaction and the chief of all benefactions from God to bring humans into kinship with himself, just as he brought the people of the Hebrews into kinship and set them apart for himself beyond all the nations at that time, placing them as something exceptional and surpassing, inasmuch as the God of all, who is God in creation, is also his own God in intimacy. Recalling the wondrous things that happened concerning Israel—things done not by nature as it was revealed at the beginning, but by a will beyond nature (on the one hand, heavenly things such as fire and hail and darkness; on the other, earthly things such as frogs and locusts and gnats and the avenging activity against the firstborn; and again, things done in the sea and the deep, such as those at the Red Sea)—he refers them back to the creative authority, joining these to those as having come from the same power, saying that he is absolutely the one who lifts up the clouds from the ends of the earth and reveals lightning as the prelude of rains and sends winds from an invisible source—winds not previously known where they are until they actually blow. And he calls the unobservable and unknown origin of the winds God's treasury, meaning that the winds are continually understood to be stored up somewhere, as in the treasuries of bodies. He signifies that the wonders were not done for Israel alone but for the knowledge of God through all the earth and all time—the doer being known not only while the works were being done but also afterward through memory.

Above, then, he called them gods according to the custom of the nations—those who are not gods; but now, to the shame of the falsely named gods, he names them idols, discrediting them by their material—that they are silver and gold—and exposing them by their workmanship—that they are made by humans—and by their lifelessness together with the vain likeness of souls, because there is no spirit of life in them; all of which carries the open refutation of both the worship and the demons,

the manifest proof that they are not gods, whose likenesses such things are. For the likeness of God is divine; therefore the divine human is also an image, not the one deprived of divinity.

271 No less than subduing those who war against them, feeding them through the desert and leading them without want, and the slayings of the Amorite kings, he sets down as a demonstration of God's mercy, who provided the Hebrews their land as a good dwelling place. And this was the storing up for the righteous the wealth of the ungodly. For neither would they have perished otherwise except by coming to the fullness of their sins, just as God spoke to Abraham; and Moses indeed says that Israel did not conquer their land because of his own righteousnesses, but because of those men's lawlessness and because of God's love for the fathers, so that according to those men the destructive judgment was just, while toward these the beneficent gift was philanthropic, and the piety of the fathers became a preparation for participation in the philanthropy. For thus justly and well and fittingly the things from God are made manifest for the order of the world. In the desert he indicates that they will be as captives are after their removal from their own cities.

For this is the "Upon the willows we hung our instruments." And according to spiritual worship, they regarded foreign souls as a foreign land, and they were to be guarded in these things—to bring out the divine things as if being relocated from their own place into a foreign one, as the divine mouth of Christ says: "Do not give the holy things to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before the swine." Such was also Herod, who wished to see the signs of Christ, seeking this not for reverence but for pleasant spectacle; therefore he did not obtain it. "I will not use," he says, "another land as you do, O Jerusalem, nor will I place the unclean on equal footing with the clean, nor will I reckon the profane similar to the sacred; but even when I am outside your dwelling, your longing will draw near to me; and whenever I depart from this, let all my strength depart." For this reason they also made their prayers looking toward Jerusalem, and the power of their prayers was carried there according to Solomon's petitions and the divine promises, just as it is necessary for us to look toward the heavenly Jerusalem. For it is not right for the instrument of words to be strong when it is not taken up for the things it ought. Therefore the blessed men also dedicated their whole life to the care of hymns, saying: "I will sing to the Lord in my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I exist." And the city was also precious to them because of the worship of God established in it, as it has also been said before: "Because of the house of my God I have sought good things for you." For the summit and purity of gladness is placed in remembering the sacred city.

For in this way the joys that follow will also prove to be good, just as the Lord introduces the sacred foods to us before the common and bodily ones. They pray that the Babylonians receive back the very things they have done. For this is the holy judgment, according to "The Lord is known by executing judgments; in the works of his hands the sinner is caught." He declares blessed also the one who will be able to do this, through whom God reveals the righteous judgment and will turn plundering upon those who plundered and being slain upon those who slew. For the service is God's, and blessed is the one who serves God. But there must be added also the element of knowledge and of one's own purpose, so that he does not pronounce Cyrus, the king of the Persians who conquered the Babylonians, blessed, since he did not even know for what reason he was taking the power against them, nor did he know the God who gave it ("For you did not know me," it says), nor did he understand that he was being brought forward into authority for the sake of Israel's release, as the things prophesied through Isaiah have it; but the blessing will fall to those who render to Babylon its recompense and who dash her little ones against the rock and slay them. For indeed, in the first place it was blessed not ever to have beheld Babylon nor to have been in the confusion of her evils; but if once someone should be in her, having fallen away from the better things, he would be blessed if he should do what he has suffered and take the Babylonians captive in return and transfer the very souls of the Babylonians to the fear of God; and if he should not allow their little ones to grow but should even crush them against the rock, he would be far more blessed.

You would not be wrong to call the infant seeds of wickedness and the beginnings of the confusive sins "Babylon," which the one who is blessed in these things will be eager to destroy by the saving word (for the rock was Christ), so that they neither grow nor advance into deeds.

The correction of Israel's own affairs is indeed laid up for Israel, as the prophecies say, but the church from all the nations comes in first, leaving the second place to those who will turn back from Jerusalem. So then also in the present passages we were just now hearing of the captivity of the nation and a petition concerning the punishment of those who took them captive, and the present song follows, announcing the manifestation of the word of God throughout the whole inhabited world, just as also in the prophet Isaiah, when the word laments beforehand over Zion that she has become desolate and her holy place a curse, immediately the knowledge of God among the other nations is foretold, according to "I became manifest to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me." Such then was the order also of the composition of these songs, with thanksgiving following the petition on behalf of Israel, and hymns and acts of worship toward God being foretold, since by his mercy and truth, through the glory of the word of God above every name (that is, what has now been accomplished), God is glorified in the name of the word as he was never glorified before, because the worship of God occupied a part of the earth before the manifestation of the word.

And he was hymned as the maker of all things and proclaimed as the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but all these things had their knowledge and their honor only as far as the nation of the Hebrews; but when his living oracle appeared, having come forth from God and been revealed to the world through a body, then every nation and the whole inhabited world runs together to the worship of God and serves the name of the Word and glorifies God in the presence of the Word, now indeed among the nations the reverence having abounded according to mercy, but being preserved also for Israel according to the truth of the promises. He indicates the great goodwill and the swift obedience in the name of Christ and the supply of power given to souls. For Christ says, If you ask anything in my name, I will do it; and the apostle says that the supply of the Spirit comes upon those who believe. Let the providence of God be hymned, because great is God and his greatness is made manifest through providence, just as it was also hymned by the seraphim, who cry out the glory of God in the present providence and economy, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory. Because, he says, the human creation enjoys the gift of God, and of this even the lesser and more dishonored part, which was formerly Gentile, is not now overlooked, since to God all things are lowly, even the most exalted, so that these too are known from afar, because they cannot draw near to the unattainable height of God. Since, then, all things are small compared to God, it is no wonder if he reaches even to the smallest things

By his benefactions, that is, upon those who have no hope and are atheists in the world, whom the apostle called even though they were not. Second, he brings forward the portion of Israel, encompassed by afflictions but destined to be restored to salvation; through which your enemies are struck by God, and they themselves will obtain salvation from God. The Lord will repay on my behalf; for he will repay on behalf of the nation that has been wronged, so as to rescue them from the hands of those who do violence. Even if, he says, we do not offer fruits worthy of your love, yet at least because we are your works, we deem it right not to be overlooked. Here he is seen placing both soul and body into one and arranging both under a single formation, in that he says God has knowledge of the soul's properties from the formation, just as another has also said, He who formed the spirit of man within him. For the workmanship is not in separation, but even if the making of the soul is nobler than that of the body, it is not as it were handmade according to the shaping of matter but inspired according to its subsistence from divine power. In general, then, both contribute to one, just as they also share one name, sometimes the soul being called the composite, sometimes the flesh; just as when the apostle, calling the man the image of God because of the inspiration that came upon him from God, which did not come upon woman, he is clearly including the body together with the soul insofar as male is distinguished from female.

Just as this also appeared in the case of Jonah, who fled to the sea and found, as it were, the power of God both in the movement of the waters, which raised the waves, and in the nature of living creatures, when the sea monster received him and did not crush him, and he was kept safe in the monster and suffered no corruption. "You know," he says, "my very substance, and the composition of my bones is your work; in the secret place of my mother's womb, as if within the earth, you knew me, intricately formed, even before I was shaped; and I have been written before you as in a book, and every man whatsoever is fashioned in a measured time, by a quantity of days; and this is truly wonderful in its order and exact proportion, that the giving of life should be accomplished with no day lacking. And I did not think," he says, "that the righteous were few, because they are found to be few at each particular time, but I looked to the whole multitude that has existed from the beginning, and I saw them to be many and greater in number, whom the resurrection will show all at once, and especially now, having increased into a multitude at the coming of Christ, according to 'The whole earth was filled with the knowledge of the Lord,' and 'I will give thanks to you in a great assembly; in a mighty people I will praise you.' Since righteous men are precious before you and are appointed to eternal glory, but the wicked to destruction, I beseech you to be cleansed of all wickedness by the cleansing that comes from you, who are able mightily to cleanse us even in the things we do not know, when we fall into evil. Having cleansed me, then," he says, "of every evil that leads to destruction, may you lead me through good deeds to those things for which eternal life is laid up.

What is said is worthy of God: that no thought contrary to the law, nor any exaltation against righteousness, was granted to them, nor that their bitter and destructive impulse should come to fulfillment and be allowed to prevail in those things wherein they have their bitterness. For injustice, when it succeeds, is far more grievous and grows into blasphemy against the righteousness of God. And they shall fall with a fall, not such as the righteous fall and rise again, but the incurable one that no longer comes to resurrection; and they shall depart into obscurity, unable to become established on the earth but driven out from it in destructive punishments.

If in the morning we understand the life to come, the life of the righteous in rest and glory, let us understand night and evening as the present life—evening, as having some portion of light through the knowledge of the good that remains, and for the sake of the gifts that come from God; but night, in respect of the darkness of wickedness and the domination of the rulers of the darkness of this world. Therefore man now needs intense crying out, because he has been thickened with darkness and weighed down by the evils present, to the One who alone is able to enlighten, and to show dawn out of evening and day out of night, and to bring about a change from evils. He therefore makes his discourse against wickedness, wishing to be pure from it and a stranger to those who live in it. For the wounds of friends are more trustworthy than the willing kisses of enemies. For, he says, they mock what is good and that which is confessedly most beautiful, ridiculing prayer according to their own will. And this, he says, will destroy them and drive them out of the land, as though dug out by a pushing rock and displaced from their root.