Bellarmine on Psalm 125 : Verses 2 & 3

 Verse 2

Then was our mouth filled with gladness; and our tongue with joy. 

Tunc repletum est gaudio os nostrum, et lingua nostra exsultatione. 

From interior consolation bursts forth exterior joy, which is recognised in a cheerful face and joyful voice. “Then,” he says, that is, on hearing the good news of their deliverance, “was our mouth filled with gladness,” that is, our face appeared joyful and glad, and our tongue burst out with words of happiness and rejoicing. In Hebrew it has for the word gaudio / gladness the word risus / laughter; but the meaning is the same : for laughter is a sign of gladness. But if someone prefers to understand by os / mouth not the face but the mouth, properly speaking, then the sense will be: Our mouth was filled with joyous words and praises, and the same will be signified by the words that follow, “and our tongue with joy,” which is a very common repetition in the Psalms.

Verse 3

Then shall they say among the Gentiles: The Lord hath done great things for them.

Tunc dicent inter gentes : Magnificavit Dominus facere cum eis.

The news of this deliverance not only affected with great joy  those who were delivered but it also filled with great admiration those who heard about it, and so they said: “The Lord hath done great things for them,” that is, the Lord has acted magnificently towards His people. For although it was Cyrus who liberated the Hebrew people from such a long captivity, yet everyone understood that this was done through divine prompting; for the deliverance took place at that very time that God had predicted through Jeremiah that it would take place, that is, after seventy years; and Cyrus himself, as it says in book I, chapter I of Esdras, acknowledged that he had been given his rule over the earth by God, and that he had been ordered by the same God to let the people go  and to build the temple in Jerusalem; and finally, it was a thing never to be expected that any king of his own will , and without any ransom, should release so many thousands of captives, and not only release them, but release them laden with great gifts. Accordingly, it was understandable that all the gentiles attributed such a great gift to divine 

Providence. But why does the prophet use the future tense  when a little earlier he used the preterite tense? For he said: “Then was our mouth filled with gladness,” from which it would follow that he should say: “Then they said among the Gentiles;” so why did he say: “Then shall they say among the Gentiles?” The Hebrew codex puts both words in the future, but both words, according to the custom of the Hebrew language, can be translated in the preterite tense. But the Greek codices, which the Latin translator followed, puts the first word in the preterite and the second in the future. This is perhaps then a Hebraism, and the future may be taken for the preterite. Perhaps too the word tunc / then does not refer to the time of deliverance (which was) now past, but to the time of the announcement of this thing to the gentiles in far distant places, which was to be in the future, so that the sense would be: When the fame of this thing shall reach the gentiles in far distant places, then shall they say among the Gentiles : “The Lord hath done great things with the people of the Jews.” Nor is this admiration any the less among the gentiles when men who were of this world turn their backs on the world to follow the way of virtue and the imitation of Christ up to their homeland in heaven. For the world does not love those who are not of the world and yet it wonders at them  and cannot deny they God is in them and with them.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.