Bellarmine on Psalm 147 : Verses 5 & 6

Verses 5 & 6 

Who giveth snow like wool: scattereth mists like ashes. He sendeth his crystal like morsels: who shall stand before the face of his cold?

Qui dat nivem sicut lanam, nebulam sicut cinerem spargit. Mittit crystallum suum sicut buccellas : ante faciem frigoris ejus quis sustinebit?

Moving from universal providence, the Prophet focuses on one particular effect, in which appear the admirable power and wisdom of God, on account of which the Lord deservedly should be praised, even by those who dwell above in the supernal Jerusalem, beyond temporal changes. One effect of the miraculous power and wisdom of God which is discernible by the senses and is known to all, may be perceived in the cold and heat of the atmosphere. For sometimes in certain regions there will suddenly be such a great quantity of snow, frost and ice that lakes and rivers, and even the seas are frozen over, and so hardened with ice that heavily laden wagons can be hauled across them just as if they were going over fields : St. Basil is a witness of this in his orat. in Quadraginta martyres;  and we ourselves have seen seen the like in Belgian Gaul. When the ice can scarcely be broken by iron bars, God, when it so pleases Him, sends a warm wind from His store, and by a word quickly melts the ice of all the rivers, lakes and seas, and waters flow down from rooftops, mountains and hills. Thus in a trice God replaces the severely rigorous cold with a gentle warmth. But let us explain each of the words : “Who giveth snow like wool,”that is, He sends snow from the sky in such abundance that every flake looks like flocks[1] of wool. In this text snow is compared to wool not 

only because of its lightness and whiteness but because of the size of the flakes : for sometimes it snows so lightly that the snowflakes seems like atoms; but it sometimes snows so heavily that the flakes are like flocks of wool. “Scattereth mists like ashes.” St. Jerome  in his commentary on this text reproves the Latin translator who used the word nebulam / mist when he should have used pruinam / frost; but the Latin translator has translated the Greek and not the Hebrew into the Latin idiom : and the Greek word used in this text properly means nebulam / mist. Although the Hebrew word means frost and fits in with the imagery of this text which is speaking of the cold, the texts can in fact be easily reconciled. Indeed, when a heavy frost sets in, it renders the air misty and caliginous,[2] and the frost itself hardens under the caliginous air. Moreover, the comparison of frost to ash relates to the heaviness of the frost, as we have said in the comparison of snow with wool. And so the sense is : He spreads the caliginous frost or mist from the frost so heavily that he seems to be spreading ashes; for the ashes, being spread out, make a sort of extremely thick mist. “He sendeth his crystal like morsels;” crystallus comes from a Greek word which we say means not only the common word crystal but also ice: and that it means ice in this 

context is plainly apparent from the Hebrew. Some commentators choose to translate crystallum in this context as hail, which is water frozen in the air; but hail is not like morsels, and in Hebrew it has his ice, not his hail; finally, hail normally falls in summer hence it is not made by the cold of winter, which is what is referred to here: “Who shall stand before the face of his cold?” The words therefore “who sendeth his crystal” do not mean : who makes it rain down from the sky; but : who, by His command, is the cause that coldest ice exists on earth ; in this way God was said to send the Prophets, and John is said to have been sent by God, who did not fall from the sky. The words like morsels refer to the pieces of ice which are found on the earth in the coldest of times, wherever there had been any water, which are similar to morsels of bread, because they have the shape of bread crumbs. “Who shall stand before the face of his cold?” This is an apostrophe2 of the prophet, admiring the rigour of the cold, as though he might say : Who can withstand such great cold? Who will not be frozen and perish? The Hebrew expression ante faciem / before the face of is very commonly used for coram / in the presence of.

[1] A lock, tuft or particle (of wool, cotton, etc.). OED.

[2] Misty, dim, murky; obscure, dark; also figurative. (Now archaic.) OED.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.