Bellarmine on Psalm XLIV: Verse 18

Verse 18

Instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee: thou shalt make them princes over all the earth.

Pro patribus tuis nati sunt tibi filii; constitues eos principes super omnem terram.

Hitherto, the Prophet has explained the dignity and adornments of the Bridegroom and the Bride: now he mentions the issue of the nuptials, saying that the most blessed fruit of this marriage will rule the entire world. It is uncertain whether the Prophet is here addressing the Bridegroom or the Bride: certain recent commentators have said the Bridegroom, led by the following reasoning, that the pronouns tuis / thy and tibi / to thee are of the masculine gender; (on the other hand,) according to the teaching of the Holy fathers Basil, Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine and, with them, Euthymius in his Commentaries, these words are addressed to the bride. St. Jerome in his epistle ad Principiam states that either interpretation is possible, which is true; and the Hebrew text of the sentence is not incompatible with this reading if points are removed or altered, as specialists readily understand. Now, since the Prophet warned the Bride that she should forget her people and her father’s house,[1] that is, her elders; he now consoles her by promising her an abundance of children in 

place of the elders, whom she is leaving behind, and whom she is instructed to forget; at the same time, as we have said, he foretells that the fruit of the nuptials of the heavenly Bridegroom and the Church, His Bride, will be most happy. “Instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee,” that is, instead of the fathers you had and who are now dead, namely instead of the Patriarchs and the Prophets and the fathers whom you left behind in heathenesse[2] and whom you have been ordered to forget, “sons are born to thee,” that is, the Apostles and Disciples of Christ, who will be of such excellence as to issue laws for the whole world; and so “thou shalt make them princes over all the earth.” For truly, the Apostles, the first sons of the Church, gave laws for all the lands on earth, which no temporal monarch is able to do. For, as St. John Chrysostom notes, the monarchs of Rome could not give laws to the Persians, nor the Persians to the Romans; but the Apostles gave laws to the Romans, the Persians and all the other nations. And so, in the first age of the Church, she had Apostles for sons instead of the Patriarchs, their fathers; and then in the next age she had bishops for sons in place of the Apostolic fathers, who, not as individuals, but all together are princes of the whole earth; and so in this way, through successors to the bishops the Church always has sons in the place of fathers, whom she places in dignity on the thrones of the fathers.

[1] Vide Verse 12 supra.

[2] The quality or condition of being heathen; the belief and practice of the heathen; heathenism. OED online.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.