Bellarmine on Psalm XXIII: Verses 6-7

Verse 6

This is the generation of them that seek him, of them that seek the face of the God of Jacob.

Haec est generatio quaerentium eum, quaerentium faciem Dei Jacob.

The Prophet now shows here the One who is innocent in hands and pure in heart, who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord; and He will receive blessing and mercy from God, not being the head alone but the head with the body, that is, Christ with the Church. “This,” he says, “is the generation of them that seek him,” that is, the one who ascends into Heaven is a certain generation of men regenerated in Christ; their main zeal is to seek God, panting for a sight of the face of God, and finally striving for the holy mountain with all their might. Indeed, one, if not perhaps the principal, mark of God’s elect is to sigh for their Father’s heavenly home. The generation of the sons of this world seeks everything other than God and fears nothing more than death; and if given the choice, they would prefer to live always in this world rather than to be dissolved and to be with Christ. In the Greek text it has: This is the generation of them that seek the Lord; and this is the reading of Jerome, Augustine, Euthymius and others: but the Hebrew has that seek him, as has our Latin version. The sense is entirely the same; for him refers to the Lord, of whom it was said (in verse 5) He shall receive a blessing from the Lord. And it seems the Septuagint translators explained in this way the pronoun him which is in the Hebrew. 

What follows, of them that seek the face of the God of Jacob, in Hebrew reads as of them that seek thy face, O Jacob! Of this text, the Septuagint translators have explained the obscure wording of the Hebrew text, in which the word God is to be understood, so that the sense is: of them that seek thy  face, God of Jacob: lest by Jacob in the Hebrew text is understood the company of the blessed or heavenly  Jerusalem, and then it renders the same -  seeking the face of God and seeking the face of Jacob, because no-one sees the face of Jacob, that is, of the Father’s heavenly home, who does not see the face of the God of Jacob, since the whole concern, and the whole happiness of that most blessed Jacob, is to contemplate the face of God. In Hebrew is added the word selah, that is, always, for this generation not only seeks God but always seeks God, that is, it does not tire of seeking God, neither does it allow itself to be distracted from seeking God so as to seek something beneath God.

Verse 7

Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, O eternal gates: and the King of Glory shall enter in.

Attollite portas, principes, vestras, et elevamini, portae aeternales, et introibit rex gloriae.

Because the holy Prophet had foreseen that the one who would be found worthy to ascend into the mountain of God is Christ, he predicts that He will now ascend into the very same, and that the eternal gates of heaven will be opened for Him. But as a poetic device, he employs prosopopœia,1 and he addresses firstly the princes of heaven, that is the angels, and then the gates themselves; he orders the angels to open them and he orders the gates to allow themselves to be opened, but they open up of their own accord for the approaching King of glory. Euthymius notes that the gates are not opened but are taken down, because it is a custom to raise a city’s gates for an approaching king and for them to be laid aside as a mark of submission. 

David does not say Take down the gates, but lift up; and he does not say Leave from the  middle (of the gateway), but be ye lifted up. Therefore he says lift up and be ye lifted up, because the gates of heaven are not hung as in a wall so that they have to bemoved sideways, but hang as if from the roof or ceiling, so that they have to be opened upwards. Whence may be rejected the opinion of those who had the prophet speaking of a particular building on the earthly mount Sion, into which the Ark was placed. In Hebrew, according to St.Jerome, the Prophet is addressing the gates alone, and says: Lift up ye gates your heads; be ye lifted up ye sempiternal gates, and the King of glory shall enter in.  Gates are said to lift their heads when they are raised up because then are lifted up their extremities which are in them then like heads. [Bellarmine concludes with an analysis of the Hebrew and Greek elements of vocabulary and syntax as it pertains to these lines about the gates.]

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.