Verse 4
Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O thou most mighty.
Accingere gladio tuo super femur tuum, potentissime.
He passes from the praise of His beauty and eloquence to the praise of His military courage; and in a poetic vein he does not simply narrate but utters a prayer or invitation: “Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O thou most mighty,” that is, O beloved God, who art not only the most beautiful and gracious, but also the most mighty and powerful, gird on Thy weapons and come, deliver Thy people. What these weapons may be is explained in the next verse.
Verse 5
With thy comeliness and thy beauty set out, proceed prosperously, and reign.
Specie tua et pulchritudine tua intende, prospere procede, et regna.
These words: “With thy comeliness and thy beauty,” can be linked to the preceding line so that the sense is: “Gird thy sword ..., O thou most mighty, With thy comeliness and thy beauty.” They can also be linked to the following words, so that the sense is: “With thy comeliness and thy beauty set out, proceed prosperously, and reign;” but either way, the meaning is that the arms of Christ are His own comeliness and beauty. To understand this, it should be noted that the true and highest beauty, as St. Augustine says, is spiritual beauty, which never fades and which is pleasing to the eyes not only of men but of angels, and also in the sight of God Himself, who cannot be deceived. But spiritual beauty may also be known from physical beauty. For just as the beauty of bodies consists in the proportion of the parts of the body and the pleasing nature of the colours, so spiritual beauty consists in justice, which is a certain proportion, and wisdom, which shines like a light, or rather, as it says in Wisdom, chapter vii: “ being compared with the light, she is found before it.”
[1] That soul, therefore, is the most beautiful which has justice in her will and wisdom in her intellect. These two, then, render the soul beautiful and which through this is lovable in God’s sight, and they are like the most mighty weapons with which God vanquishes the devil : for Christ has fought against the devil not with his omnipotent might, as he could, but by His wisdom and justice; wisdom defeating cunning and justice overcoming malice. For the devil by his cunning
incited the first man through disobedience to anger God; and that first man took away from God the honour due to Him and from himself and the whole human race he took away the life of blessedness; because this cunning was linked to malice, or envy; the devil did this all twisted with envy, because man seemed to be ascending into the heaven, from which he himself had fallen; but Christ’s wisdom vanquished (the devil’s)cunning, since through His obedience shown to God in human nature, He rendered much more honour to God than Adam through his disobedience had taken away. At the same time, He exalted the human race to a glory much more sublime than that was to be from which he had fallen : besides, Christ through His charity, which is true, and His perfect justice, overcame the envy and malice of the devil: since he loved His enemies, and from the very Cross he prayed for His persecutors, and He willed to suffer and to die so that His enemies might be reconciled unto God and so that from enemies He might make them friends and brothers, and His co-heirs. This is therefore what the Prophet now says: “With thy comeliness and thy beauty,” that is, by Thy splendour, which abides in the comeliness of Thy wisdom and the beauty of Thy justice, as if girded and equipped with a sword and a bow, “set out, proceed prosperously, and reign,” that is, set Thy course for a battle against the devil, triumph in the battle against the devil, and having defeated and vanquished the Prince of this world, take possession of Thy kingdom, so that henceforth Thou mayst reign in the hearts of men through faith and charity. By the word
intende / set out, St. John Chrysostom understands
intende sagittas / aim[2] (Thy) arrows, which is the probable meaning, because a little later it says, “Thy arrows are sharp.” This is clear from the original text,
intende cannot be explained correctly as
attende / attend to, or
considera / consider; but only
intende sagittas / aim Thy arrows, or
intende / aim, or
dirige iter / direct the path (of). St. Jerome renders the line as :
in Thy glory and in Thy beauty prosperously ascend. But the Septuagint translators take it differently, or read the same Hebrew letters in a different way. For where the Hebrew repeats
with Thy beauty, because they read the characters as
vahadareca, the Septuagint reads
vahadrec, which means
intende /set out, or
dirige / direct, from the word
darac. And the word
tselach, which St. Jerome takes for an adverb and translates as
prosperously, the Septuagint takes as a verb in the imperative mood and translates as
prosperously proceed, or
to prosper. Indeed, the word can be taken in either sense. Finally, the word
recab, correctly translated by St. Jerome as
ascend, the Septuagint translates as
reign/royal power, because this better respects the sense: for by
ascent is understood
reign/royal power. The same Hebrew word can mean more than this, e.g., be mounted in a chariot or on a horse, which can refer to a
reign/royal power, for when kings are inaugurated, they mount and ride on the royal horse or the royal mule, as may be gathered from the first chapter of the third book of
Kings; and to be seated in a triumphal procession is proper to a king who has vanquished his enemies in battle.
[1] For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of the stars: being compared with the light, she is found before it. Est enim haec speciosior sole, et super omnem dispositionem stellarum : luci comparata, invenitur prior. [Sap. Vii. 29]
[2] intendō, ī, tentus or tēnsus, 3, a.: to stretch to or towards; strain; stretch strings or chords; strain, aim, shoot.
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam.
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