Bellarmine on Psalm 124 : Title, theme and Verse 1

Title and subject matter

Titulum et argumentum

A canticle of the steps

Canticum graduum  

In this Psalm, the Prophet gives good advice to the pilgrims going up to their homeland, whether the earthly or heavenly homeland. The advice is that they should place all their hope in God, for God is almighty, completely faithful and He never disappoints those who hope in Him and who hasten to Him with all their hearts.

Verse 1

They that trust in the Lord shall be as mount Sion: he shall not be moved for ever that dwelleth in Jerusalem.

Qui confidunt in Domino, sicut mons Sion : non commovebitur in aeternum, qui habitat in Jerusalem.

The Prophet lays down at the start a general and most certain promise, and he repeats it twice for a greater asseveration[1] of the truth. He says: “They that trust in the Lord shall be as mount Sion,” that is, all those who truly trust in the Lord shall be unmoveable and secure, no matter how great a storm (may come), just like mount Sion which is unmoveable, not only because it is a mountain, but also because it is sacred and most dear to God. He then repeats this, as though explaining what he has said : “He shall not be moved for ever,” that dwelleth in Jerusalem; what he says here, “He shall not be moved for ever,” corresponds to the (earlier) words : he will be unmoveable like mount Sion. The following words, “that dwelleth in Jerusalem,” correspond to the other words, “They that trust in the Lord.” They who dwell in thought and hope in 

the heavenly Jerusalem are the very ones who trust in the Lord. Trust in God is explained by Psalm XC : “He that dwelleth in the aid of the most High, shall abide under the protection of the God of heaven.”[2] With regard to the wording, in the Hebrew codex it has different interpunction,[3] and hence a different word order. But since this interpunction was not in the ancient codices but was added by the Rabbis, it should not be mad so much of as to reject the interpunction found in the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate editions. Besides this the phrase he that dwelleth in Jerusalem, is ambiguous in Hebrew, as it can refer either to mount Sion, or to a man placing his trust in God; but the Septuagint translators have declared this is to be referred to man and not to the mountain: for mountain in Greek is neuter; and the word qui / who is of the masculine gender in Greek and Latin. It is also to be noted that a mountain, unlike a man, cannot properly be said to dwell in a city. Indeed, not to be moved for ever does not apply to all those who dwell in the earthly Jerusalem, since that very Jerusalem itself cannot last forever; and because, to dwell in Jerusalem means the same thing here as to trust in the Lord, and so we have said with St. Augustine that this refers to the inhabitant of the heavenly Jerusalem through hope and desire, in the same way that they dwelled who said: “Our conversation is in heaven.”[4]

[1] Emphatic confirmation of a statement; a word or phrase used to express confirmation; OED.

[2] The praise of a canticle for David. He that dwelleth in the aid of the most High, shall abide under the protection of the God of Jacob. Laus cantici David. Qui habitat in adjutorio Altissimi, in protectione Dei caeli commorabitur. [Ps. xc 1]

[3] The insertion of points between words, clauses, or sentences; punctuation. OED.

[4] But our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ. Nostra autem conversatio in caelis est : unde etiam Salvatorem exspectamus Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum. [Phil. iii 20]

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

Bellarmine on Psalm 123 : Verse 7 (conclusion)

Verse 7

Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini, qui fecit cælum et terram.

The Prophet concludes with praise for God, humbly acknowledging that such a great victory, and deliverance from such dangerous temptations, are not to be attributed to his own powers, but to the celestial help he received from God almighty : whose omnipotence is shown by the fact He made heaven and earth. The way in which God is wont to remove His servants from dangerous temptations is implied when he says: “The snare is broken,” for the snare is often broken when a bird, either alarmed by some cry, or drawn by more attractive food, uses force and thus breaks the snare. When a bird, although trapped in a snare, will not leave the bird-catcher’s bait, and does not know it is captured and does not try to escape, it is in this way easily captured and killed. It is the same when the soul of a man falls into temptation, and is then illuminated by God and, either fearful of divine judgement and hell, or drawn by the promises of heavenly glory, the soul begins to think on how hard are the sufferings of the present time, yet how much harder beyond any comparison will be the eternal torments to come; or the soul thinks how sweet this present life seems, how sweet the pleasure and the riches, yet how much sweeter by far shall be the rewards of eternal life: the soul is ablaze with love for the blessings of heaven and is fired by fear of hell’s torments; ablaze with this fire, it conceives divinely assisted strength, and with the grand impetus of a most firm commitment of not sinning against God, it breaks the snare of temptation and, being set free, it flies off and sings in joy: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” This form of escape is written of by St. Cyprian in the last chapter of his book De Exhortatione martyrii. What persecution can vanquish or what torments can overcome reflections such as these?

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

Bellarmine on Psalm 123 : Verses 5 & 6

Verses 5 & 6

Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us to be a prey to their teeth. Our soul hath been delivered as a sparrow out of the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken, and we are delivered.

Benedictus Dominus, qui non dedit nos in captionem dentibus eorum.  Anima nostra sicut passer erepta est de laqueo venantium; laqueus contritus est, et nos liberati sumus.

The Prophet introduces another similitude, from which the divine benefits are still better illustrated and more clearly understood. He compares persecution or temptation to the snare of a bird-catcher, and he says God is to be thanked and blessed because he has not given us to be a prey to their teeth, that is, He did not permit us to be captured, killed and eaten. He explains how God did this, saying: “Our soul hath been delivered as a sparrow out of the snare of the fowlers,” that is, our soul fell indeed into persecution and temptation, like a sparrow, or any other bird (the Hebrew noun signifies birds in general), being trapped in the net of a bird-catcher or huntsman; but the soul is delivered from that temptation or persecution before it is captured by the tempter and killed; just like a bird captured in a snare but taken out before it can be seized, killed and eaten by the bird-catcher. This is done because “the snare is broken, and we are delivered,” that is, because the grace of God put an end to the temptation before the soul either denied its faith or consented to sin in any other way, just as the snare holding the bird is broken and the bird flies off, and frustrates the hope of the bird-catcher standing with his mouth open.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

Bellarmine on Psalm 123 : Verse 4

Verse 4

Our soul hath passed through a torrent: perhaps our soul had passed through a water insupportable.

torrentem pertransivit anima nostra; forsitan pertransisset anima nostra aquam intolerabilem.

He persists with the same similitude, comparing the persecutions of his enemies to a a swift and deep torrent, which cannot be crossed without most powerful help. If anyone wonders what were the persecutions of the pagans and the heretics against the holy martyrs, and the temptations of the devils against the holy hermits and confessors,[1] he will see that they were like an extremely violent torrent, and although the holy and glorious martyrs and confessors survived its passage, yet many, almost without number, perished as though borne away and swallowed up by the force of this torrent, as can be learned from Cyprian in his sermon De Lapsis, and from Eusebius  of Cæsariensis in book viii, chapter I, of his Hist., the Ruffinus version. Speaking in the person of the saints, the Prophet says:

“Our soul hath passed through a torrent,” that is, our soul has passed through a persecution, as through a torrent; for the flesh succumbed and yielded before the fury of the persecutors, but the soul gloriously passed through it; but “If it had not been that the Lord was with us, perhaps our soul had passed through a water insupportable,” that is, it had entered into a very deep deep torrent from which it could not escape. The word pertransisset / had passed through, does not signify transivisset / had crossed, or evasisset / had escaped, butrather intrasset / had entered into, and pertransire coepisset / had begun to pass through, or pertransire coacta fuisset / had been forced to pass through. The word intolerabilem / insupportable is correctly translated by the Septuagint as ἀνυπόστατον, that is, without substance, without hypostasis, without foundation, without a firm base where the feet can be set, and by this word is signified the depth of the waters, which cannot be passed. But at this point appears an open contradiction between the Hebrew and Septuagint texts. For the Hebrew clearly has a torrent hath passed  over our soul; and a little later, the Hebrew text has perhaps insupportable waters had passed

over our soul; but the Septuagint has perhaps our soul had passed through a water insupportable. Indeed, St. Jerome, in his commentary on this text, does not hide the superiority of the Hebrew reading. But we are of the opinion that these (different) readings may be reconciled in two ways. Firstly, it may be that the Septuagint translators did not have in their text the Hebrew particle which signifies super / above; this particle determines the noun anima / soul in the accusative case, but when it is removed, there is an ambiguity as to whether the word anima / soul, and the words torrens / torrent and aquæ / waters should be in the nominative or accusative. Accordingly, the Hebrew words can support either reading, namely that of St. Jerome : A torrent hath passed through our soul; and that of the Septuagint : Our soul hath passed through a torrent; since it is likely that the Septuagint translators had better codices than St. Jerome, and that they translated faithfully what they found, it follows that the Septuagint reading, which is that of our Vulgate edition and of the Hebrew, as it now appears is to be retained and preferred. It is also possible that the Septuagint translators read the text like St. Jerome but preferred to transfer the sense rather than the words, since when someone passes through a deep torrent, it also comes to pass he passes through the torrent and the torrent passes over him. But the sentence seems clearer if the man is said to pass through the torrent than if the torrent is said to pass over him. For it is possible for a torrent to pass over a man, even when he is motionless and prostrate in the depths, but (such) a man cannot pass through a torrent, so that (truly) the torrent passes over him. So that the Septuagint translators could signify that the torrent passed over a man who was not prostrate but walking or swimming, they preferred to say that the man passed through the torrent rather than that the torrent passed over the man.

[1] One who avows his religion in the face of danger, and adheres to it under persecution and torture, but does not suffer martyrdom; spec. one who has been recognized by the church in this character. (The earliest sense in English.) OED.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

Bellarmine on Psalm 123 : Verses 2 & 3

Verses 2 & 3

When men rose up against us, perhaps they had swallowed us up alive. When their fury was enkindled against us, perhaps the waters had swallowed us up.

Cum exsurgerent homines in nos, forte vivos deglutissent nos; cum irasceretur furor eorum in nos, forsitan aqua absorbuisset nos;

Behold what might have befallen us if had God had not been in us, and had not helped us with His all-powerful strength. “When men rose up against us, perhaps they had swallowed us up alive,” that is, when our persecutors rose up against us, there was a danger they might swiftly destroy us as the sea or a river swallows up living men who perchance are cast into their waters. Three things are considered in this text: firstly, the persecutors of the just are referred to as men, because they are led by human reason alone, insofar as it remains in a nature corrupted by sin; for human reason, after the corruption of nature, has no taste for anything elevated, divine or spiritual, and it has no other aim than preserving and increasing its own worldly happiness. Of these men, the Apostle says in I Cor. iii: “For, whereas there is among you envying and contention, are you not carnal, and walk according to man?”[1] and a little further on: “Are you not men?”[2] where the Apostle reads to be carnal and to be a man as having the same meaning; as he does with to walk according to the flesh and to walk according to man. Here there is some difficulty relating to the word perhaps, which is repeated a little further on. It seems that this word is not well placed in the Vulgate since an affirmative word should have been used, such as assuredly, in any case, properly. For if we read it as perchance, it follows that God’s help is not necessary in overcoming temptations, seeing that 

the prophet would certainly not dare to affirm this, but he leaves the doubt that a very serious temptation might destroy us, if God is not with us. Although this reading is not absent from the more recent commentators, to whom this word is not pleasing, they do not opt to translate the Hebrew and the Greek as perhaps or perchance but as assuredly or certainly : we, however, dare not depart from the Vulgate translation : for St. Jerome was a man most learned as well as most expert in both these languages; and more faith is to be had in him than in any dictionaries. He consistently translates the Hebrew as perhaps; and in his commentaries on the Psalms in which he interprets the Septuagint edition, he reads the word as perhaps;  finally, in his corrections of the Psalter (ad Suniam et Fretellam), he makes no corrections in this text. St. Hilary too, following Origen, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Augustine are all of one mind in reading the word as perhaps; nor is there any variation of this reading in the Bibles. Nor is it to be feared that this little word should oblige us to take anything away from the grace of God: for the word perhaps does not mean that we could perhaps, without God’s protective grace, resist the enemies rushing into attack us; but it could be that we are not swallowed up alive, because perhaps the enemy did not advance in rage as far as that point. But since there was a danger that the enemies might rush in rage to a most cruel slaughter, the Prophet says: “If it had not been that the Lord was with us, perhaps they had swallowed us up alive.” Finally, we have said that the words they had swallowed us up alive is taken from the similitude of the sea or a river swallowing up and engulfing men alive, for there are no beasts, however cruel, that swallow men whole without tearing and mangling them, as is known; the following verse requires this reading, for as is common in the Psalms, it repeats the same with other words: it reads thus: “When their fury was enkindled against us, perhaps the waters had swallowed us up.” The sense is, perhaps the water had swallowed us up, that is, the fury of our enemies like the watery depths had swallowed us up. Not only in this verse, but also in the ones following, the Prophet maintains the similitude of waters, as we shall see soon.

[1] For, whereas there is among you envying and contention, are you not carnal, and walk according to man? Cum enim sit inter vos zelus, et contentio : nonne carnales estis, et secundum hominem ambulatis? [I Cor. iii 3]

[2] [I Cor. iii 4]

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

Bellarmine on Psalm 123 : Title, theme and Verse 1

Title and subject matter

Titulus et argumentum

A Canticle of the Steps

Canticum graduum

This Psalm contains the rejoicing of those who were delivered from the direst tribulations. And indeed, the children of Israel who returned from the Babylonian captivity to Jerusalem, are not described as suffering any grave persecutions on their journey : but only while they were held as captives, and between the building of the city and the temple, as may be understood from either of Esdra’s books. Accordingly, insofar as this Psalm pertains to Israelites according to the flesh, it should be referred to those afflictions they suffered either when they were in captivity or while they were rebuilding the city and the temple; insofar as it pertains to spiritual Israelites, that is, to Christians going up to the celestial Jerusalem, it should be referred to the persecutions by pagans and other wicked men, from whom the holy martyrs were delivered and other chosen souls are today being delivered.

Verse 1

If it had not been that the Lord was with us, let Israel now say: If it had not been that the Lord was with us.

Nisi quia Dominus erat in nobis, dicat nunc Israel, nisi quia Dominus erat in nobis.

Incomplete and interrupted speech, at the beginning of the Psalm, is a sign of the great and unaccustomed joy which does not allow the person speaking to utter complete sentences. The multitude of the Saints, delivered from great temptations, say: “If it had not been that the Lord was with us,” that is, unless the Lord almighty had been with us, we might never have escaped. But before he completes this sentence, rejoicing in his gladness, he invites Israel, that is, all of God’s people, to offer praise and thanksgiving, saying: “Let Israel now say;” and he repeats the words: “If it had not been that the Lord was with us.” Concerning the words, the quia / because in the Hebrew follows the noun Dominus / the Lord, in this way: Nisi Dominus quia erat in nobis / Unless the Lord because he was with us. But the Septuagint translators, in order to make the sentence clearer, seem to have changed the order of the words; St. Jerome omitted the particle from his version as being redundant and otiose, and his version reads Unless the Lord had been in us. If anyone wanted to retain it, it could be supplied: Unless the Lord, who was in us, had delivered us: or, according to the Septuagint: Unless we had been delivered, because the Lord was in us. What could have been done if the Lord had not delivered us, is explained in the following section.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

Bellarmine on Psalm 122 : Verse 5 (conclusion)

Verse 5

For our soul is greatly filled: we are a reproach to the rich, and contempt to the proud.

quia multum repleta est anima nostra opprobrium abundantibus, et despectio superbis.

In this last verse, David tells us that the contempt and hatred, of which he spoke earlier, as befalling the poor and humble pilgrims, proceeds from the wealthy and the proud. Some commentators read the words a reproach to the rich, and contempt to the proud as a curse, so that the sense is: May reproach fall upon the wealthy and contempt upon the proud; but if we consider the original text and we want to harmonise St. Jerome’s translation with that of the Septuagint, we are obliged to follow St. Augustine and say that the sense is: “My soul is greatly filled,” namely with confusion, because I am made “a reproach to the rich, and contempt to the proud.” For St. Jerome correctly translated the Hebrew as the soul is greatly filled with the reproach of the rich and the contempt of the proud. The Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate correctly agree with this if the words I am become are understood as implied and the text continues with a reproach, etc. The Prophet therefore says, “My soul is greatly filled,” which is the same as what he said earlier: “We are greatly filled with contempt.” But for the sake of explanation in this context he names the soul, since the sense of contempt pertains properly to the rational soul; for those who lack a rational soul can feel pain but not contempt. The words is filled are read in Hebrew as is satiated with, and this adds to 

the meaning in a marvellous manner; because if they who are greatly satiated, that is, who are filled beyond satiety, even if they are filled with good food, they experience great discomfort: what will be the feeling of those who are filled with bad food, such as are reproaches and contempt? From this it truly follows that: “a reproach to the rich, and contempt to the proud” signify exactly the same thing: for reproach and contempt are the same, as are the wealthy and the proud. All the proud are inflated and are accordingly rich; but they abound in empty wind not in any solid good, that is, they abound in the opinion and estimation they have of themselves; for if they possess worldly riches, they think they are their own and they do not think they will have to render an account  of them to God. If they enjoy (positions of) dignity and honour, they judge all those things to be due to themselves and to be theirs, and they do not understand they will have to render a most strict account for this dignity, and that this is anything other than a burden. In this, they would be no less foolish in boasting of such a burden than would a walking stick that boasted that it walked greatly burdened.[1] If they have a number of strengths, or intelligence, or learning, they convince themselves they are much greater than they are, and they attribute to themselves what are actually gifts from God. Finally, if they are lacking in riches, dignities and honours but on the contrary are punished and scourged, they judge themselves to have been injured and they murmur and blaspheme against God; all this arises from the fact they are full of themselves, or rather they are full of the empty wind of their own self-regard. But there will come a time when reproach and contempt will return to them, namely, when on the last day they will say, as written in Wisdom V: “ These are they, whom we had some time in derision, and for a parable of reproach. We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honour. Behold how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints.”[2] And further on, “What hath pride profited us? or what advantage hath the boasting of riches brought us? All those things are passed away like a shadow.”[3]

[1] By the body of the person carrying the stick.

[2] dicentes intra se, poenitentiam agentes, et prae angustia spiritus gementes : Hi sunt quos habuimus aliquando in derisum, et in similitudinem improperii. Nos insensati, vitam illorum aestimabamus insaniam, et finem illorum sine honore; ecce quomodo computati sunt inter filios Dei, et inter sanctos sors illorum est. [Wisdom v 3-5]

[3] 

Quid nobis profuit superbia? aut divitiarum jactantia quid contulit nobis? Transierunt omnia illa tamquam umbra. [Wisdom v 8-9]

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.