On the Inscriptions of the Psalms 1 part 7/9

since we possess but one single counter-hold against every assault of the tempter, namely repentance—he who has rightly achieved this within himself becomes, through all things, the victor over the one who forever wrestles against him.

But after this, even if the historical narrative in the titles lacks proper sequence, yet the sense is bound together in [proper] order.

But the spiritual sense is not concerned with the chronological and fleshly order of events.

according to the sequence, by the ascent that follows [each stage], receiving victory upon victory.

But I will read to you the sequence of the historical title, which runs thus:

It would be clear who the mules are, over whom this Idumean presides — he who herds a barren nature, in which the blessing of God has found no place, the blessing which from the beginning implanted increase in creation, saying, 'Increase and multiply.'

For increase does not come from God for the sake of vice.

Just as, indeed, the succession of the mule kind does not come from breeding among themselves, but nature is ever contriving the creature anew, through her own cunning, bringing in and introducing what does not properly exist in creation.

And from what has been said it is altogether clear toward what aim the discourse looks.

For if all things that the Lord made are very good, but the mule is outside the list of things that have come to be in creation, it would be clear that this name has been taken up by the history as an indication of vice.

Therefore it has its existence neither from God, nor, once it has come to be in the manner it does come to be, does it persist in subsistence unto its own continuance.

For just as the nature of mules does not preserve itself by itself, so too vice does not remain continually the same, kept unchanged, but is always coming to be anew, one begotten by another, whenever the noble and high-spirited, the swift and high-necked element of the nature within us slips down into desire for an ass-like and irrational mating.

And whenever he perceives that the soul is in the house of the true priest, being unable to strike her with the kicks of mules, then he informs against her to the ruler of wickedness, the spirit that works in the sons of disobedience.

But he who is rooted like a fruitful olive tree in the house of God utters against the tyrant those words which we have heard in the psalmody, saying: 'Why do you boast in evil, O mighty one of iniquity, whose tongue is like a sharpened razor' — which, whenever it falls upon any, strips away the comeliness of their hair and cuts off the seven braided locks in which our strength lies.

And you surely understand the sense from the sevenfold number of the spiritual locks, just as Isaiah enumerated the grace of the Spirit as coming in a sevenfold manner.

When these are cut off, as happened in the case of Samson, there follows the loss of his eyes and his becoming a laughingstock to the foreigners, when they are drunk.

And after stating the things by which the characteristics of the one mighty in evil are delineated, he adds that God will bring him down utterly.

But for the present he will pluck him out and remove him from the divine tabernacle, and will dig up out of the land of the living the roots of his wickedness and bitterness, and whatever else the psalm contains in due sequence, looking to this same sense.

Through these things the firmness is secured of those who, as the divine apostle said, are rooted in the faith.

'For I,' he says, 'like a fruitful olive tree in the house of my God, have hoped in the mercy of God forever' — that is, for the age, and also for the interval beyond it, whose measure is infinity, which he calls 'the age of ages.'

In this span he also promises that he will offer thanksgiving to God everlastingly, saying:

'I will give thanks to you forever.'

'For you have done for me things worthy of thanksgiving.'

'And I will wait,' he says, 'upon your name.'

'For waiting is good for your holy ones.'

...it passes imperceptibly, in its very bloom, into a different hue, fittingly blending the outermost rays of the colors into one another — so too, at the very extremity of this psalm as well, one may see the ray of its meaning blending, in due sequence, with the radiance of the proem of the psalm that lies next to it;

so that the boundary between them is imperceptible, the mind being carried spontaneously from this one to the psalm that lies next above.

For he who, rooted like a fruitful olive tree in the house of God, has confirmed in himself the steadfast and immovable quality of the foundation that comes by faith, and has, through thanksgiving, extended the hope of the divine oil to the infinity of the ages, employs indignation against those who are foolish — the chief point of whose folly is to say that he who truly is, who is over all and in all, does not exist.

'For,' he says, 'these things being of such a kind and so many in number' (first he shows the providence of God on behalf of mankind —

— in respect of which the certainty of hope is so unshakable that the longing, stretched out together with the everlastingness of the ages, does not grow weary) — how then does the fool say in his heart:

'There is no God'? They have been corrupted and become abominable in such pursuits of the mind.

For falling away from him who truly is, is truly corruption and dissolution of that which has been constituted.

For how could anyone be, in being, without being in him who is? And how could anyone abide in him who is, without believing of him who is that he is? But he who truly is, is assuredly God, as the vision of the theophany bears witness to the great Moses.

He, then, who casts the being of God out of his own mind, by saying that he is not, has thereby corrupted his own being, having become one who exists outside of him who is.

For this reason he says: since they have turned aside from God, all of them have immediately become useless, condemned like some cast-off vessel to uselessness.

And that which is useless for the good clearly demonstrates, through its unfittingness for the better, its aptness for evil.

Since, then, on account of these things, 'the Lord looked down from heaven upon the sons of men' —

— and such a statement foretells the Lord's dwelling among men, when the whole subject people followed those who led the way into unbelief: the priests, the Pharisees, and the scribes.

For those were the ones who tore and devoured the people with their blasphemous teeth.

For this reason he says: 'There they feared a fear where there was no fear' — those who devour my people as they would the eating of bread, suffering something like the affliction of those afflicted with hydrophobia.

For whom, if the water could somehow be received, it would be curative of the affliction for the sufferer.

But they somehow fear that which is set before them for salvation, and are estranged from him who saves — through fear of perishing, contriving destruction for themselves.

So also those others, when the fountain cries aloud to them:

'If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink' — they, their soul's organs of perception having been seized beforehand by the rabid madness of unbelief, feared a fear where there was no fear, turning away from the drink of salvation, not knowing that God is present in the generation of the righteous — he who gives salvation to Israel out of Zion, and turns back again to himself the captivity of his people from him who has wickedly held us captive through sin — when the true Israelite and the spiritual Jacob comes to be in gladness and exultation.

Such, then, is the sense of the psalm, as one may discover by proceeding through the very words of the psalm itself.

And the title of the psalm accords with this sense.

For the title signifies that the discourse of the psalm is a victory-ode, coming to be through a dance performed with understanding.

And 'dance' is what 'Maeleth' is interpreted to mean.

And instead of 'unto the end,' other translators have rendered it 'victory-ode.'

For just as this creature is the fruit of that ambivalent tree, which Scripture calls 'good and evil' — good, because sin is concealed beneath the bait of pleasure, which the friends of the body pursue in place of the good —

but evil again, because what is now eagerly pursued as good ends in a bitter conclusion.

So too, in the animal we are considering, one may see the marks of both natures, that of the horse and that of the donkey —

so that the mule is one and the same, both horse and donkey, not each separately, but the two in one, the double nature of the two animals having been blended together for the making of this new creature.

Whenever, then, that alien man whom we have discerned becomes an informer to the tyrant concerning our sojourn with the priest, and thereupon we, through divine alliance, cast down from power him who boasts in evil and holds his strength in lawlessness, and uproot him utterly, root and all, from the land of the living — having become an olive tree, exulting and laden with abundance of fruit, and, strengthened through hope in God, dance the victory dance over him who has been defeated —

then, consequently, we ascend to the loftier heights, truly according to the voice in the Song of Songs: 'leaping over mountains and bounding upon the hills.'

Those who lie in wait at the narrow places of the arid crossing, whenever they prove unable to hinder our passage through the narrow way, then run back again to Saul, who grieves over our salvation.

And certainly he who is not ignorant of the history knows that a certain narrow and arid place is mentioned in this part of the narrative.

And by the narrowed passage we have understood that evangelical way of the kingdom, which the Ziphites indeed hinder — that is, the alien nation of demons, the servants of the opposing power —

but the few who turn away from the broad way find it.

And the wording of the history runs thus:

And the New Testament shows us this way, through which it is possible to ascend to the very summit of the mountain's peak, which the word of the history calls 'the hill.'

Whenever, then, we pass through that narrow way unhindered, the Ziphites report our salvation to the tyrant.

But we ascribe to the name of him who has saved us the power of our judgment toward the good, saying:

'O God, save me in your name, and in your power you shall judge me.'

For that which has already come to pass has been represented by the discourse as though still expected, since Scripture in this way disregards precision with respect to time.

For indeed prophecy has often narrated what is to come as though it were past, and what has happened as though it were still expected, as one may also see in this psalm at its conclusion.

For he did not say, 'it will look upon my enemies,' but 'my eye has looked upon them.'

By these things we learn that for God nothing is future, nor anything past, but all things are in the present.

So that even if the words contain some implication of the past or of the future concerning the divine power, the sense has not gone outside the present.

He, then, who has trodden the arid and narrow way and put to flight the band of the Ziphites, says to God that in your name has come to be for us salvation, and in your power the judgment toward the good has its strength, and these things will come to pass forever.

And on account of these things he summons the divine hearing to attend to his thanksgiving, speaking of the uprising of strangers, and the seeking after his soul by the mighty ones in evil — men before whom God does not go, but rather he who is conceived from the opposite side.

'... God before them' — but God helps me, he who turns back the evils upon those who devised evil, and through truth utterly blots out all that is enemy and alien to the truth.

'But I,' he says, 'will give thanks to that name in which I was saved, for thanksgiving is good in respect of those things wherein I both came to be outside my afflictions and beheld with my eyes the destruction of my enemies.'

For at this the prophetic eye rejoices, whenever nothing any longer contrary to virtue is to be seen.

For when wickedness—which stands opposed to virtue in the rank of an enemy—has been removed, the name of enemies will no longer remain.

For how could anyone still be called an enemy, when the enmity that peace has slain—as the Apostle says—no longer lives? But so that the ideas just stated may be fittingly applied to the words of the psalm, read it through in its own text: the psalm placed fifty-third in sequence, in which, having now prevailed over the Ziphites and having witnessed the utter destruction of wickedness, he again, understanding the alliance from above, offers to God a hymn of victory.

For thus the wording of the title runs:

But just as in bodily contests the athletes do not remain matched with the same opponents whom they overcame in the wrestling-school in their youth, but, as their strength increases, strip for greater and stronger antagonists, and, should they overcome those as well, engage in the dust against ones yet more powerful, always contending—in proportion to the increase of their strength—against opponents correspondingly more capable;

in the same manner also he who, through so many <contests>, has been trained by victories over his enemies, makes his victories for himself more notable, grappling with adversaries who are more notable and greater.

And for this reason he calls upon the hearing of the judge of the contest, saying, "Give ear, O God, to my prayer"; and he entreats him to attend to his struggle, saying, "Attend to me, and hear me."

And through his words he indicates the toils of the contests, recounting grief and troubled musing and disturbance of heart and the voice of the enemy and the affliction of the sinner, displaying to the judge of the contest, as it were, the wrestling-holds inflicted on him by his adversaries.

and moreover, besides these, disturbance of heart and fear of death and dread and trembling and gloom taking hold of his whole life—for all of which he devised a single device to rise above and be superior to so great a constraint: that he be winged with the swift pinions of the dove, and, having become airborne, cease his flight there, in that place which, being empty of all evils, flourishes with the things of God.

"For having lodged," he says, "in the wilderness," away from the faintheartedness below and from the storm-blast of temptations, there to receive the salvation of God, where wickedness disappears.

For "submersion" signifies disappearance;

because everything that has come to be in the deep disappears.

Submersion, then, is the sinking of sin, and destruction is the dissolution of what constitutes wickedness.

For this reason he says that evil is submerged by God when the tongues of those who conspire together for evil are divided asunder.

And whatever else the sense of this psalm goes on to contain—the description of the city built up by wicked practices—all of it looks to the same end.

For he speaks and enumerates the evil inhabitants of this city, naming lawlessness and contentiousness going about the wall of the city by night, and again lawlessness and toil and injustice turning about in the midst of the town.

And he also points out the wicked populace that fills its broad streets, naming usury and deceit;

and of all these things mentioned, he says that hypocrisy is the heaviest, which, assuming the guise of like-mindedness and affection, hides its deceit under a fair veil.

For this reason the just judge expels the settlers, as being worthy of such fellow-indwellers.

"Let death be upon them, and let them go down alive into Hades."

And having set forth in his words all the grim things concerning them, he adds that sweet utterance by which he has also conquered the city together with its whole population, saying, "But I will hope in you."

By the "population" of this city he means "men of blood and deceit"—men who leave no form of an evil day incomplete, nor display their wickedness half-done, but possess perfection in evil; over all of whom he becomes victor by this one utterance, in which he declares his disposition toward God, saying, "I will hope in you."

But just as those who ascend a steep and difficult path, when, having come upon some resting place along the way, they refresh themselves from the great and intense labor, then, their strength having been restored, rouse themselves again toward the ascent of the heights that lie above;

so too the traveler of virtue, whose steps are victories over adversaries, as the title of the preceding psalm attests, having braced himself by the victory already achieved, again strains toward the contest that lies above;

For great also was this struggle which he mastered in the psalm just mentioned—a struggle of grief and troubled musing and disturbance, of enmity and of a certain hearing;

for this is "the voice of the enemy";

and of the affliction from sinners and of the wrath of those who bear malice, through which arise disturbance of mind and dread of death and fear and trembling and darkness and the like.

He, then, who has thus prevailed over such and so many adversaries by the wing that appeared to his life as of a dove, and who has migrated from those who run riot in wickedness like an overgrown thicket to the wilderness that is empty of the wicked growth of tares, in which rest comes to be—by conquering, with the whole population of its indwellers, the entire city set against him, whose inhabitants are lawlessness and toil and contentiousness, usury and deceit and death and the descent of life into Hades, and, worst of all kinds, the hypocrisy of those who ever dwell there, which by displaying likemindedness works its treachery—

over which he becomes superior who extends his confidence in the divine throughout the whole time of his own life;

for by saying "evening and morning and noon" he comprehends the whole measure of a day, within which he speaks these things which God deigns to hear;

redeeming his life through peace from those who thus draw near to him in a great throng, whom he calls "men of blood" and of deceit and perfect in wickedness.

Having thus prevailed over so many and such foes by hoping in God, he again, as though putting into oblivion the labors already accomplished, rouses himself against adversaries stronger and greater still.

For behold what manner of toil he adds to himself through his contests:

"On behalf of the people," he says, "that is estranged from the holy ones."

Now this people is the whole fullness of humankind, which the separation from the holy commandments has walled off from God by a great and boundless interval between.

This people he calls back through his victory over the adversary, making the salvation of the lost the prize of his contests; for whose sake his achievement is also inscribed on a pillar in ineradicable writing, the memory of what has occurred being thus made eternal.

But so that the sense woven into the discourse through the riddles of the history may not slip past us, I will run through the history briefly, summarizing it in few words.

And by every device, both secretly and openly, Saul was preparing murder against him, now contriving plots in secret, now again openly taking up arms and stirring up his subjects against him.

His being "seized" among the Philistines, then, does not signify that a capture hostile to him took place (for it did not happen so), but rather a loving kindliness and disposition.

For him who was being driven out from his ancestral land, the Gittites settled among themselves.

Or rather it is clear from the sequence of the narrative that he who went outside the borders of Judea, and settled a city for himself among foreigners, and reposed in a twofold marriage—having received into his chamber one wife of the Israelite race and another from the foreigners—is so great that, if one must strip the account concerning this bare more plainly, this is that same one who is at once both victor and bridegroom;

for by the very things through which he did battle against the one who holds the power of death, he who is mighty in war rescued into freedom this countless people who were held captive in Hades;

But while the Israelite people, out of envy and jealousy, rushed to murder against him, he is "seized" through goodwill by the foreigners, and establishes among them a city—I mean the Church—in which he strengthens his own kingdom, he who said to those set under the Law, "The kingdom shall be taken from you and given to a nation producing its fruits."

In this city there is indeed also something of Israelite nobility, according to the prophetic proclamation which says, "In the churches bless God the Lord, you who are from the fountains of Israel."

For those who initiated the word of faith, the heralds of truth, the founders of the Church—I mean the disciples and apostles—were from the fountains of Israel.

"Princes," it says, "of Judah, their leaders; princes of Zebulun, princes of Naphtali."

Through certain signs and symbols the prophecy signifies beforehand the distinctive characteristics of the race of the disciples, among whom is also the younger Benjamin, taught the mysteries through ecstasy—even Paul, the divine apostle, of the seed of Abraham and the tribe of Benjamin.

Yet even though the king is recorded to dwell with the Israelite woman, Abigail is loved more—she with whom Nabal of Carmel had formerly dwelt, the one surnamed "the dog," that harsh and mountain-dwelling man who shore the sheep.

When he had perished, the woman came to dwell with the king and became the mother of kings.

The title of the psalm, then, contains so many mysteries, signifying the victory won on behalf of the people estranged from the holy ones, and the pillar erected upon his achievements among the foreigners—a pillar which, through the letters inscribed upon it, stands as a reproach to those who are estranged through the unbelief of the Jews, but as a guide toward the good and an example to those who are being saved through faith.

Nor could anyone say that the thoughts of the psalm are out of tune with the riddles of the title.

For he who looks truly toward theology, and in the manner in which one ought, will assuredly show his life to be in harmony with his faith,

the pursuits of virtue having fallen into decline.

And the sum of virtue is the alliance of God, of which he is deemed worthy who makes the divine mercy his own through his life.

And just as, if some robber or murderer should suddenly attack, a man might call upon some of his friends for help, not being sufficient by himself to escape the dangers, so too here, being in the midst of contest through his grappling with "man" (and by "man" I mean whatever the passions of nature indicate by that comprehensive term), he calls upon help from above, saying that he is trodden down by the one warring against him, and that through the whole-day battle he grows weary and is hard pressed.

For the one who grapples with him in the contests is not merely a single individual, but this "one man" is a whole populace of enemies.

"For my enemies," he says, "have trodden me down the whole day," hurling from on high, because they have become superior to the one trodden down.

And what happens is neither in day nor in light; for otherwise he would not have feared, being aided by the light.

"By day I shall not be afraid," thereby indicating, by what is left unsaid, that fear is brought upon him by his enemies through darkness.

But such a one makes day for himself by hoping in the light, through which the darkness is made to vanish;

"For by day I shall not be afraid."

But perhaps one might rather attain to the sense of what is written by looking at the riddle of the title.

For as long as the people of mankind was estranged from the holy angels, it was trodden down by the sufferings of nature, growing weary in the continuance of the war, and being hard pressed, and pelted from above, and having its fear in the night;

but when it hoped in God, having shaken off, as it were a burden, the hope that had gone astray after vain things, then it praised its own words, which are the confession of faith.

"For in God," it says, "I will praise my words."

"But these praiseworthy words," he says, "my enemies abhor," devising their designs against me for evil, and contriving a plot that is hidden and concealed within their sojourning among us.

who, making this their own peculiar practice, never cease continually watching for my heel.

For this is the work of the murderer of mankind from the beginning: to watch closely for man's heel.

But even though the assault of the enemies is grievous, they will be repelled through your alliance, salvation coming to men from you as a free gift, not from works of righteousness, but from your grace alone.

"For you will save them without recompense."

And the whole sequence of the psalm thereafter interprets the recall of human nature.

Its chief point is the ineffaceable victory over the adversary — set forth, like a monumental stele, as a memorial of God's loving-kindness to all creation, for a theme of doxology.

Therefore, at the end of the psalm, looking toward this monument, he says: "In God will I praise his utterance, in the Lord will I praise his word, in God have I hoped."

because of whom I no longer fear the fear of the flesh.

And, he says, "Upon me are vows, which I will render through praise, because you have delivered my soul from death, and my feet from slipping."

By "slipping" he means the deviation from the path taken through the commandments, from which the fall occurred.

Having therefore been freed from death and raised up from the fall, he comes to be in the presence of God — from whom, having first eaten of the things forbidden by the commandment, he had departed, hiding himself in shame in the shadow of the fig tree.

Having therefore regained his boldness, he is restored to the living light.

"For I will be well-pleasing," he says, "to the Lord in the light of the living" — whence at the beginning he had been estranged because of sin.

And concerning these things, so much shall suffice.

For I do not think it necessary, by examining each particular too laboriously, to extend the discourse beyond due measure.

Since there are many victory-psalms among the sacred hymns — which the heading "unto the end" indicates — and since the victory over adversaries is contemplated in them in many ways, the victory over the one wrestling against him, signified through the riddling figures of the history, appears to have a distinctive rationale of its own.

he goes through the narrative concerning Saul.

In these, the arrangement of the psalms was not constituted from the sequence of historical events, but followed those who are being brought to perfection through progress in virtue — fitting each of the things signified in the events appropriately, so as to indicate the growth in virtue, so that first and last were set in due sequence according to the principle of virtue, and the order was not made a slave to the material coincidence of the events.

In this the power to kill was turned to its opposite: the man who was being pursued to death came to stand over the slaughter of his murderer, and though he had it in his power to take vengeance on his enemy, he stayed his strength at the point of mere authority, killing within himself his own wrath in place of his enemy.

Now the matters of the history are surely evident to all for whom divine things are not pursued as a mere side-concern.

But we will speak briefly, cutting short, as far as possible, the narrative concerning this in few words.

In this place there was a spacious cave, receiving through a single opening those who descended into it.

Now while these men were already in the cave, Saul too entered inside the opening after them, in order to see to some necessary need, unaware of the stratagem that had spontaneously arisen against his own safety.

And having drawn the sword from its sheath, and having secretly stood behind Saul, having no witness to his undertaking against him —