Bellarmine on Psalm 128: Verse 3

Verse 3

The wicked have wrought upon my back: they have lengthened their iniquity.

Supra dorsum meum fabricaverunt peccatores; prolongaverunt iniquitatem suam.

What the Prophet said in his own words, he now repeats and confirms, using similes and metaphors; the people of God therefore say of their persecutors : “The wicked have wrought upon my back,” that is, they have applied the smith’s technique to my back, using my back like an anvil which metal smiths hammer repeatedly. In the Hebrew it has a word which the Septuagint translators render as they have wrought, and St. Jerome renders using the verb to plough; he renders the words as : Ploughing, they have ploughed my back, and truly it can mean either of these senses, for although we do not find any place in Scripture  (that I know of) where the Hebrew word means fabricare / to work, we do have in Gen, iv 22 and in III Kings vii 14, the word choresh from the same root, which means an artisan smith, from which charash is derived, which means to exercise the calling of a smith. Nor can there be any doubt that the Septuagint translators, most learned men, drew from the word fabri / artisan smith the verb fabricare / to work,  which in this context does not mean to construct a house with stones and wood (for the simile would appear inappropriate, if anyone were to say a house could be built or wrought on a 

man’s back); but, as we have said, according to the proper sense of the Hebrew it means to work with iron tools upon the back, as though upon an anvil; this simile signifies a steady and most grievous persecution : for nothing is hammered more frequently and forcefully than an anvil by smiths. The same is signified by the words that follow, “they have lengthened their iniquity;” for the prolongation of sin is the continuation of persecutions, which the good always suffer from the wicked. St. Jerome translates this as they have lengthened their furrow.  But although the Hebrew word which is currently found in the Hebrew text signifies furrow, if one letter is advanced or another is put back, it will mean iniquity, and without doubt it was read in this way by the Septuagint Elders; and because the letter vau ought to be placed before, it is clear from where it is currently placed that it is redundant and otiose. And so the Septuagint translators did not read the Hebrew as their furrow but as their iniquity, from the word avon, which is iniquity. But it is permissible to harmonise the Greek and the Latin with the Hebrew in this way and we greatly support the sentence as written in the Vulgate, without however denying that St. Jerome’s reading makes good sense, if it is explained as follows: The ploughmen have ploughed upon my back, they have lengthened their furrow, that is, they have placed an extremely heavy yoke upon my back, and the ploughmen have ploughed using me like a misused ox, and they have forced me to bear the yoke not for a short time but for a very long time, because they wanted to plough an extremely long furrow.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.