Bellarmine on Psalm 119 : Verse 2

Verse 2

O Lord, deliver my soul from wicked lips, and a deceitful tongue.

Domine, libera animam meam a labiis iniquis et a lingua dolosa.

He makes clear what he prayed for when he called out (to the Lord): It was, he says: “O Lord, deliver my soul from wicked lips, and a deceitful tongue,” which is one of the most numerous and frequent evils on this our earthly sojourn. “Wicked lips” produce detractions, insults, false testimony and similar expressions against the law of justice; a “deceitful tongue” produces lying words, flattery, dissemblances and frauds; “wicked lips” may be found without a “deceitful tongue,” as when someone openly reviles or calumniates another; but when a deceitful tongue is added to wicked lips, the evil is most serious, so that almost nothing can be added to it, as it says in the next verse. Regarding the vocabulary, the words my soul stand for me, as though he were to say deliver me; souls is used, perhaps because this is the nobler part (of a man), or perhaps because the deceitful tongue can actually harm little other than the soul, by inducing the soul to sin. The words from wicked lips are read by St. Jerome from the Hebrew as from lying lips. But the Hebrew word can mean lying or prevarication: hence the Septuagint translates this correctly, a labiis ἀδίκων, that is from wicked lips, and the expression is fuller and more serious, as it also says in Psalm XLII: “Deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man.”[1]

[1]  A psalm for David. Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy: deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man. Psalmus David. Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta, ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me. [Ps. xlii. 1]]   

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.