Bellarmine on Psalm 119 : Verse 5

Verse 5

Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged! I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Cedar: My soul hath been long a sojourner.

Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est! habitavi cum habitantibus Cedar; multum incola fuit anima mea.

As a result of so great and so frequent an evil in this our earthly peregrination, he sighs for his home country, and thus he truly sings from the heart this canticle of ascent. “Woe is me!” he says, “because my sojourning”, or, as St. Jerome translates from the Hebrew, my peregrination, is prolonged. For the true pilgrim, along with the Apostle, would prefer to be kept away from his own body rather than from the Lord, and so he judges the present life as too long to sojourn, away from his Lord. “I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Cedar.” It is no wonder that I should complain of too long a habitation here: for “I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Cedar,” that is, with wild and barbaric people, who dwell not in cities but in tents, a black and swarthy people like the Arabs. In the Hebrew and Greek text it has: I have dwelt in the tents of Cedar; but the sense is the same; for what is to dwell in the tents of Cedar other than to dwell with the inhabitants in tents. The word Cedar in Hebrew signifies black and shadows; hence, Cantic. Chapter i contrasts the tents of Cedar with the curtains of Solomon [1], that is, black and rustic tents as against splendid and precious curtains. Indeed, the cities and palaces of kings in this world are  nothing more than rustic tents compared with the mansions of the heavenly Jerusalem. And so God’s pilgrim again mourns, saying: “My soul hath been long a sojourner,” that is, my sojourn in a foreign land has already been much too long. From the Hebrew, the word sibi is added; but, as we said above, it has been added redundantly from the Hebrew wording, and it is moreover often omitted by translators; habitavit sibi and habitavit are the same in meaning, he hath dwelt. From this it may be gathered that few are found these days who sing from their heart the canticle of the steps, because most love their peregrination (on earth), along with the tents of Cedar, so that they are never more sad than when hearing a sermon about departing this life.

[1] I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon. SPONSA. Nigra sum, sed formosa, filiae Jerusalem, sicut tabernacula Cedar, sicut pelles Salomonis. [Cantic. i 4]

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.