Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 59/87

'Remember, O Lord,' what is it but 'have mercy, and for my patiently borne humiliation render the loftiness which you swore to David in your truth'? But if we assign these words to the Jews, those servants of God could say such things who, when the earthly Jerusalem was conquered, before Jesus Christ was humanly born, were led into captivity, understanding the exchange of Christ—because, namely, not through him was an earthly and carnal felicity, such as appeared for a few years of king Solomon, but a heavenly and spiritual one to be faithfully awaited; which the unbelief of the nations then not knowing, when it exulted and insulted that the people of God were captive, what else than the exchange of Christ was it reproaching, though not knowing it, to those who did know?

And therefore what follows, where this psalm is concluded: 'Blessed be the Lord forever: amen, amen,' fits well enough with the whole people of God pertaining to the heavenly Jerusalem, whether in those who lay hidden in the Old Testament before the New was revealed, or in those who now, the New Testament having been revealed, are manifestly perceived to belong to Christ. For the blessing of the Lord in the seed of David is to be hoped for not for some time, such as appeared in the days of Solomon, but forever, in which most certain hope it is said: 'Amen, amen.' For the repetition of this word is the confirmation of that hope. This, then, understanding, David says in the second book of Kingdoms, from which we digressed to this psalm:

'And you have spoken concerning the house of your servant for a long time to come.' Therefore a little after he says: 'Now begin and bless the house of your servant forever,' and the rest, because then he was about to beget a son, from whom his progeny would be led down to Christ, through whom his house was to be eternal and the same the house of God. For it is the house of David on account of the lineage of David; but the same house is the house of God on account of the temple of God made of men, not of stones, where God may dwell forever with his people and in his God, and God with his people and in his people; so that God is the one filling his people, and the people full of their God, when God shall be all in all, he himself in peace the reward, who is strength in war. Therefore, since in the words of Nathan it was said:

'And the Lord will declare to you that you shall build a house for him,' afterward it was said in the words of David: 'Since you, O Lord almighty God of Israel, have revealed to the ear of your servant, saying: I will build a house for you.' For this house both we build by living well, and God by aiding us that we may live well; because unless the Lord shall build the house, in vain do they labor who build it. When the final dedication of this house shall come, then that will come to pass which God here spoke through Nathan, saying: 'And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, and they shall dwell apart, and shall no more be anxious, and the son of iniquity shall no more add to humble them, as from the beginning, from the days when I appointed judges over my people Israel.'

CHAPTER XIII. Whether the truth of the promised peace can be ascribed to those times which flowed by under Solomon. Whoever hopes for this so great good in this age and on this earth is foolishly wise. Will anyone suppose that it was fulfilled in the peace of Solomon's kingdom? Scripture indeed commends that peace with excellent commendation as a shadow of what is to come. But this suspicion has been vigilantly met, since, after it was said: 'And the son of iniquity shall no more add to humble him,' there was immediately subjoined: 'As from the beginning, from the days when I appointed judges over my people Israel.' For judges, before kings had begun to be there, had been appointed over that people, from the time it received the land of promise.

And assuredly the son of iniquity—that is, the foreign enemy—did humble it, through the intervals of times in which peaces are read to have alternated with wars; and there are found there periods of peace longer than Solomon had, who reigned forty years; for under that judge who was called Ehud, there were eighty years of peace. Far be it, therefore, that the times of Solomon should be believed to have been foretold in this promise; much less, then, those of any other king whatsoever. For none of them reigned in so great a peace as that one; nor did that nation ever at all so hold the kingdom that it was not anxious lest it should be subjected to enemies;

because in so great a mutability of human affairs, never at any time was so great a security granted to any people that it should not dread the hostile incursions of this life. That place, therefore, which is promised, of so peaceful and secure a habitation, is eternal and is owed to the eternal ones in the free mother Jerusalem, where there shall be truly the people of Israel; for this name is interpreted 'seeing God'; out of desire for whose reward a godly life through faith must be led in this toilsome pilgrimage. CHAPTER XIV. Of David's zeal in the arrangement and mystery of the psalms. As the city of God, therefore, ran its course through the ages, first in the shadow of what was to come, namely in the earthly Jerusalem, David reigned.

Now David was a man skilled in songs, who loved harmonious music not with a vulgar pleasure but with a faithful purpose, and by it served his God, who is the true God, by the mystical figuration of a great reality. For the rational and measured concord of diverse sounds, by a harmonious variety, suggests the compacted unity of a well-ordered city. In short, nearly all his prophecy is in the Psalms, of which the book we call the Psalter contains a hundred and fifty. Concerning these, some hold that those alone were composed by David which are inscribed with his name. There are likewise those who think that none were composed by him except those which are headed 'Of David himself' (Ipsius David); while those which bear in their titles 'For David himself' (Ipsi David) were composed by others and adapted to his person.

This opinion is refuted by the evangelical voice of the Saviour himself, where he says that David in the spirit called Christ his Lord; for the hundred and ninth psalm thus begins: 'The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.' And certainly this same psalm does not have in its title 'Of David himself,' but 'For David himself,' as very many do. To me, however, those seem to judge more credibly who ascribe all those hundred and fifty psalms to his work, and hold that he prefixed to some even the names of others, signifying something pertaining to the matter, but willed that the rest should bear in their titles the name of no man, as the Lord inspired in him the arrangement of this variety—

—an arrangement obscure, indeed, yet not empty, which the Lord inspired. Nor ought this to move anyone to disbelief, that the names of certain prophets who lived long after the times of king David are read inscribed upon some psalms in that book, and what is there said seems to be spoken as if by them. For the prophetic Spirit was surely able to reveal to king David, as he prophesied, even these names of future prophets, so that something fitting to their person might be sung prophetically; just as king Josiah, who was to arise and reign more than three hundred years afterward, was revealed by his own name to a certain prophet who also foretold his future deeds. CHAPTER XV.

Whether all the things prophesied in the Psalms concerning Christ and the Church are to be brought into the framework of this work. Now I see that it is expected of me to disclose at this point of this book what David in the Psalms prophesied concerning the Lord Jesus Christ and his Church. But that I should not do this in the way that the expectation itself seems to demand (although I have already done so in one psalm), I am hindered more by abundance than by scarcity; for to set forth all is forbidden me for the sake of avoiding prolixity. And I fear lest, when I have chosen some, I may seem to many who know them to have passed over things more necessary;

and then, because the testimony that is brought forward ought to have the support of the whole context of the psalm, or at least there should be nothing in it that contradicts it, even if not everything supports it; lest, after the manner of centos, we should seem to pluck out little verses for the matter we wish to prove, as though from some grand poem which is found to have been composed not about that subject but about another and far different one. But that this can be shown in any given psalm, the whole must be expounded; and how great a labor this is, both the volumes of others and our own, in which we have done it, sufficiently indicate. Let him therefore read those, who is willing and able; he will find how many and how great things king David, who was also a prophet, prophesied concerning Christ and his Church—that is, concerning the King and the city which he founded. CHAPTER XVI.

Concerning those things in the forty-fourth psalm which pertain to Christ and the Church and are said either openly or figuratively. For however proper and manifest prophetic utterances may be concerning any matter whatsoever, it is necessary that figurative ones also be mingled with them; which especially, on account of the slower minds, impose upon teachers the laborious task of disputing and expounding. Yet some things at the very first sight, as soon as they are spoken, show forth Christ and the Church; even if at leisure there remain to be expounded the things in them which are less understood. Such is that in the same book of Psalms: 'My heart hath uttered a good word; I tell my works to the king. My tongue is the pen of a scribe writing swiftly. Beautiful in form beyond the sons of men;'

'grace is poured upon thy lips; therefore God hath blessed thee for ever. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, in thy comeliness and thy beauty; and bend thy bow, and prosperously go forward, and reign, because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and thy right hand shall guide thee wonderfully. Thine arrows are sharp, most mighty (the peoples shall fall under thee) in the hearts of the king's enemies. Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the rod of direction is the rod of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. Myrrh and stacte and cassia from thy garments, from the houses of ivory; out of which the daughters of kings have delighted thee in thy honor.'

Who, however slow he may be, would not here recognize Christ, whom we preach and in whom we believe, when he hears of God whose throne is for ever and ever, and of one anointed by God, surely as God anoints, not with a visible, but with a spiritual and intelligible chrism? For who is so rude in this religion, or so deaf against its fame spread far and wide, as not to know that Christ is named from 'chrism,' that is, from anointing?

But the King Christ being recognized, let him now—as one already subject to him who reigns because of truth and meekness and righteousness—at leisure inquire into the other things which are here said figuratively: in what way he is beautiful in form beyond the sons of men, with a certain beauty so much the more to be loved and admired the less it is corporeal; what is his sword, what his arrows, and the rest set down in this manner not properly but figuratively. Then let him behold his Church, joined to so great a husband by a spiritual marriage and divine love, concerning which it is said in what follows: 'The queen stood at thy right hand in a gilded garment, clothed about with variety. Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thine ear; and forget thy people and thy father's house;'

'for the king hath greatly desired thy beauty, because he himself is thy God. And the daughters of Tyre shall adore him with gifts; the rich among the people shall entreat thy countenance. All the glory of the king's daughter is within, in golden fringes, clothed about with variety. Virgins shall be brought to the king after her; her companions shall be brought to thee. They shall be brought with gladness and exultation; they shall be led into the temple of the king. Instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee; thou shalt make them princes over all the earth. They shall be mindful of thy name in every generation and generation. Therefore the peoples shall confess to thee for ever and unto the age of the age.' I do not suppose anyone is so foolish as to believe that here some mere woman is praised and described;

that is, the spouse of him to whom it was said: 'Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the rod of direction is the rod of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows'—Christ, that is, above Christians. For these are his fellows, out of whose unity and concord in all nations that queen is formed, as is said of her in another psalm: 'The city of the great king.' She herself is Sion in a spiritual sense; which name, interpreted in Latin, is 'watching'; for she watches for the great good of the age to come, since thither is her intention directed. She herself is also Jerusalem in the same spiritual sense, concerning which we have already said many things.

Her enemy is the city of the devil, Babylon, which is interpreted 'confusion'; yet out of that Babylon this queen is delivered among all nations by regeneration, and passes from the worst king to the best King, that is, from the devil to Christ. For which reason it is said to her: 'Forget thy people and thy father's house.' Of this impious city the Israelites also are a portion—those who are such by flesh alone, not by faith; enemies even they of this great King and his queen. For coming unto them, and slain by them, Christ became rather the King of others, whom he did not see in the flesh. Whence through the prophecy of a certain psalm our King himself says: 'Thou wilt deliver me from the contradictions of the people; thou wilt set me at the head of the nations. A people whom I knew not hath served me;'

'as soon as they heard of me, they obeyed me.' This people of the nations, then, whom Christ did not know by bodily presence, yet which believed in the Christ announced to it, so that it was rightly said of it, 'As soon as they heard of me, they obeyed me'—because faith is from hearing—this people, I say, added to the true Israelites both by flesh and by faith, is the city of God, which also bore Christ himself according to the flesh, when it existed in those Israelites alone. For thence indeed was the virgin Mary, in whom Christ assumed flesh that he might be man. Of which city another psalm says: 'Mother Sion, a man shall say, and a man is made in her, and the Most High himself hath founded her.' Who is this Most High but God?

And therefore Christ, who is God, before he was made man in that city through Mary, himself founded her in the patriarchs and prophets. Since, then, to this queen, the city of God, it was said so long beforehand through prophecy what we now see fulfilled: 'Instead of thy fathers sons are born to thee; thou shalt make them princes over all the earth' (for indeed out of her sons throughout all the earth are appointed her rulers and fathers, when the peoples confess to her, gathering to that confession of eternal praise unto the age of the age)—without doubt, whatever has been here said somewhat obscurely in figurative expressions, in whatever way it be understood, ought to agree with these most manifest realities. CHAPTER XVII.

Concerning those things which pertain to the priesthood of Christ in the hundred and ninth psalm, and concerning those which in the twenty-first psalm regard his passion. As also in that psalm where Christ as priest, just as here as king, is most openly proclaimed: 'The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.' That Christ sits at the right hand of the Father is believed, not seen; that his enemies also are put under his feet does not yet appear; it is in process, it will appear at the end; this too is now believed, afterward it will be seen. But what follows:

'The Lord shall send forth the rod of thy power out of Sion, and rule thou in the midst of thine enemies'—this is so clear that it is denied not only unfaithfully and unhappily, but even shamelessly. For the very enemies confess that the law of Christ, which we call the Gospel, was sent forth from Sion, and we acknowledge it to be the rod of his power. But that he rules in the midst of his enemies, those very ones among whom he rules themselves bear witness, by gnashing their teeth and wasting away and prevailing nothing against him. Then what he says a little after: 'The Lord hath sworn, and it shall not repent him'—by which words he signifies that what he adds is to be immutable:

'Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek'—from the fact that nowhere now is there a priesthood and sacrifice after the order of Aaron, while everywhere offering is made under the priest Christ, that which Melchizedek brought forth when he blessed Abraham—who is permitted to doubt of whom these things are said? To these manifest things, therefore, are referred those which are placed a little more obscurely in the same psalm, when they are rightly understood; which we have already done in our popular sermons. So also in that psalm where Christ utters through prophecy the humiliation of his passion, saying: 'They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones;'

'but they themselves looked and gazed upon me' (by which words he surely signified his body stretched out on the cross, with hands and feet fastened and pierced through by the driving of the nails, and that in this manner he offered himself as a spectacle to those looking on and gazing), adding also: 'They divided my garments among them, and over my vesture they cast lots'—which prophecy, in the way it was fulfilled, is narrated by the evangelical history; then indeed the other things also are rightly understood which are there said less openly, when they agree with these which have shone forth with such great manifestation:

especially since even those things which we believe not as past but contemplate as present, just as in the same psalm they are read foretold so long beforehand, so now we discern them already exhibited throughout the whole world. For a little after it is there said: 'All the ends of the earth shall be reminded and shall be converted to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall adore in his sight; for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he himself shall rule the nations.' CHAPTER XVIII. Concerning the third psalm, and the fortieth, and the fifteenth, and the sixty-seventh, in which the death and resurrection of the Lord are prophesied. Of his resurrection also the oracles of the Psalms have by no means been silent. For what else is that which in the third psalm is sung in his person: 'I slept and took my rest;'

'I awoke, because the Lord sustained me'? Or perhaps would anyone be so foolish as to believe that the prophet wished to indicate to us something great, namely that he slept and awoke, unless that sleep were death and that waking the resurrection, which it was fitting should thus be prophesied of Christ? For also in the fortieth psalm this is shown much more manifestly, where in the person of the same Mediator, after the usual manner, things are narrated as though past which were prophesied as future; since the things which were to come had already, in the predestination and foreknowledge of God, as it were been done [because they were certain]. 'Mine enemies,' he says, 'spoke evil things against me: When shall he die, and his name perish?'

'And if he came in to see me, his heart spoke vanity, it gathered iniquity unto itself. He went forth abroad and they talked together as one. All mine enemies whispered against me, against me they devised evils for me. They appointed an unjust word against me: Shall not he that sleepeth add to rise again?' Here certainly these words are so set down that nothing else is understood to have been said than if he had said: 'Shall not he that dieth add to live again?' For the foregoing words show that his enemies thought of and devised his death, and that this was effected through him who came in to see and went forth to betray. And to whom does there not here occur Judas, who from being his disciple became his betrayer?

Therefore, because they were going to do what they were contriving, that is, were going to kill him, showing that they would in vain, with empty malice, kill one who would rise again, he thus added this verse, as though he said: 'What do you do, vain men? What will be your crime, will be my sleep': 'Shall not he that sleepeth add to rise again?' And yet that they would not do so great a wickedness with impunity, he indicates in the following verses, saying: 'For even the man of my peace, in whom I hoped, who did eat my bread, hath enlarged his heel against me'—that is, hath trampled me down. 'But thou, O Lord,' he says, 'have mercy on me, and raise me up, and I will requite them.'

Who would now deny this, who sees the Jews, after the passion and resurrection of Christ, utterly rooted out from their dwellings by warlike slaughter and overthrow? For having been slain by them, he rose again and repaid them in the meantime with a temporal chastisement, except that he reserves for the unamended one to come, when he shall judge the living and the dead. For the Lord Jesus himself, pointing out this very betrayer of his to the apostles by the bread held forth, also recalled this very verse of this psalm and declared it fulfilled in himself: 'He that did eat my bread hath enlarged his heel against me.' But what he says, 'in whom I hoped,' does not befit the head, but the body. For the Saviour himself was not ignorant of him, of whom he had already before said: 'One of you is a devil.'

But he is wont to transfer to himself the person of his members, and to attribute to himself what is theirs, because the head and the body are one Christ; whence comes that saying in the Gospel: 'I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat,' which, in expounding, he says: 'When ye did it to one of these my least, ye did it to me.' He said, then, that he himself hoped, when his disciples had at that time hoped concerning Judas, when he was numbered among the apostles. But the Jews do not hope that the Christ whom they hope for will die. Therefore him whom the law and the prophets announced they do not think to be ours, but some other of their own, whom they fashion for themselves as a stranger to the suffering of death.

Therefore, with marvelous vanity and blindness, they contend that the words which we have set down signified not death and resurrection, but sleep and waking. But the fifteenth psalm also cries out to them: 'Therefore my heart was gladdened, and my tongue exulted; moreover my flesh also shall rest in hope; for thou wilt not abandon my soul in hell, nor wilt thou give thy holy one to see corruption.' Who would say that his flesh rested in that hope, that—his soul not being abandoned in hell, but quickly returning to it—he should live again, lest he be corrupted, as corpses are wont to be corrupted, except him who rose again on the third day? This indeed they cannot say of the prophet and king David. The sixty-seventh also cries out:

'Our God is the God of saving, and the going forth from death belongs to the Lord.' What could be said more plainly? For the God of saving is the Lord Jesus, which is interpreted Saviour or salutary. For the reason of this name was thus given, when before he was born of the virgin it was said: 'She shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. For he himself shall save his people from their sins.' Since for the remission of these sins his blood was shed, it was surely fitting that he should have no other goings forth from this life than those of death. Therefore, when it had been said, 'Our God is the God of saving,' it was immediately subjoined: 'And the goings forth from death belong to the Lord,' that it might be shown that by dying he would save. But it was said with wonder: 'And to the Lord';

as though it were said: 'Such is this life of mortals, that not even the Lord himself went out from it otherwise than through death.' CHAPTER XIX. Concerning the sixty-eighth psalm, in which the infidelity and obstinacy of the Jews is declared. But that the Jews, even by such manifest testimonies of this prophecy, and even by realities brought to so clear and certain an effect, do not at all yield, that surely is fulfilled in them which is written in the psalm that follows this one. For when there too things pertaining to his passion were prophetically said in the person of Christ, that was commemorated which was made plain in the Gospel: 'They gave gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.'

And as though after such a banquet and feast exhibited to him in this manner, he soon brought in: 'Let their table become before them a snare, and a recompense, and a stumbling-block; let their eyes be darkened that they see not, and bow down their back always,' and the rest, which were said not by way of wishing, but foretold prophetically under the appearance of wishing. What wonder, then, if they do not see these manifest things, whose eyes are darkened that they see not? What wonder, if they look not up to heavenly things, who, that they may be bent down to earthly things, have their back always bowed? For by these words, transferred from the body, the vices of souls are signified. Let these things concerning the Psalms—that is, concerning the prophecy of king David—suffice to have been said, that there may be some limit.

But let those who read these things and know all of them pardon me, and let them not complain about those things which perhaps stronger I have passed over, as they either understand or suppose. CHAPTER XX. Concerning the kingdom and merit of David, and concerning his son Solomon, and that prophecy which is found pertaining to Christ, either in those books which are joined to his own writings, or in those which are without doubt his. David, then, reigned in earthly Jerusalem, a son of the heavenly Jerusalem, much extolled by divine testimony; for even his sins were so overcome by such great piety, through the most healthful humility of repenting, that he is altogether among those of whom he himself says: 'Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.'

After him there reigned over the same whole people his son Solomon, who, as was said above, began to reign while his father was yet living. He had good beginnings but bad endings. For indeed prosperity, which wearies the minds of the wise, harmed him more than his very wisdom profited him—wisdom even now and henceforth memorable, and then far and wide praised. He too is found to have prophesied in his books, of which three were received into canonical authority: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. But two others, of which one is called Wisdom, the other Ecclesiasticus, on account of some similarity of style, custom has obtained that they be called Solomon's; that they are not his, however, the more learned do not doubt;