The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

⁷ But there are some that conspire, that “gather themselves together against the Lord, and against His Christ.” They have come together, they have conspired. “Flash forth Your lightnings, and You shall scatter them.” Abound with Your miracles, and their conspiracy shall be broken....“Send forth Your arrows, and You shall confound them.” Let the unsound be wounded, that, being well wounded, they may be made sound; and let them say, being set now in the Church, in the Body of Christ, let them say with the Church, “I am wounded with Love.” “Send forth Your Hand from on high.” What afterward? What in the end? How conquers the Body of Christ? By heavenly aid. “For the Lord Himself shall come with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God shall He descend from heaven,” Himself the Saviour of the body, the Hand of God. What is, “Out of many waters”? From many peoples. What peoples? Aliens, unbelievers, whether assailing us from without, or laying snares within. Take me out of many waters, in which You disciplined me, in which You rolled me, to free me from my filth. This is the “water of contradiction.”...“From the hand of strange children.” Hear, brethren, among whom we are, among whom we live, from whom we long to be delivered. “Whose mouth has spoken vanity”. All of you today, if you had not gathered yourselves together to these divine shows of the word of God, and were not at this hour engaged in them, how great vanities would ye be hearing! “whose mouth has spoken vanity:” when, in short, would they, speaking vanity, hear you speaking vanity? “And their right hand is a right hand of iniquity.” What doest thou among them with your pastoral scrip with five stones in it? Say it to me in another form: that same law which you have signified by five stones, signify in some other way also. “I will sing a new song unto You, O God”. “A new song” is of grace; “a new song” is of the new man; “a new song” is of the New Testament. But lest you should think that grace departs from the law, whereas rather by grace the law is fulfilled, “upon a psaltery of ten strings will I sing unto You.” Upon the law of ten commandments: therein may I sing to You; therein may I rejoice to You; therein may “I sing to You a new song;” for, “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” But they who have not love may carry the psaltery, sing they cannot. Contradiction cannot make my psaltery to be silent.

8. “Who gives salvation to kings, who redeems David His servant”. You know who David is; be yourselves David. Whence “redeems He David His servant”? Whence redeems He Christ? Whence redeems He the Body of Christ? “From the sword of ill intent deliver me.” “From the sword” is not sufficient; he adds, “of ill intent.” Without doubt there is a sword of good intent. What is the sword of good intent? That whereof the Lord says, “I came not to send peace on earth, but a sword.” For He was about to separate believers from unbelievers, sons from parents, and to sever all other ties, while the sword cut off what was diseased, but healed the members of Christ. Of good intent then is the sword twice sharpened, powerful with both edges, the Old and New Testaments, with the narration of the past and the promise of the future. That then is the sword of good intent: but the other is of ill intent, wherewith they talk vanity, for that is of good intent, wherewith God speaks verity. For truly “the sons of men have teeth which are spears and arrows, and their tongue is a sharp sword.” “From” this “sword deliver me”. “And take me out of the hand of strange children, whose mouth has spoken vanity:” just as before. And that which follows, “their right hand is a right hand of iniquity,” the same he had set down before also, when he called them “many waters.” For lest you should think that the “many waters” were good waters, he explained them by the “sword of ill intent.”

9. “Whose sons are like young vines firmly planted in their youth”. He wishes to recount their happiness. Observe, you sons of light, sons of peace: observe, you sons of the Church, members of Christ; observe whom he calls “strangers,” whom he calls “strange children,” whom he calls “waters of contradiction,” whom he calls a “sword of ill intent.” Observe, I beseech you, for among them you are in peril, among their tongues ye fight against the desires of your flesh, among their tongues, set in the hand of the devil wherewith he fights....What vanity has their mouth spoken, and how is their right hand a right hand of iniquity? “Their daughters are fitted and adorned after the similitude of a temple.” “Their garners are full, bursting out from one store to another: their sheep are fruitful, multiplying in their streets”: “their oxen are fat: their hedge is not broken down, nor their road, nor is their crying in their streets”. Is not this then happiness? I ask the sons of the kingdom of heaven, I ask the offspring of everlasting resurrection, I ask the body of Christ, the members of Christ, the temple of God. Is not this then happiness, to have sons safe, daughters beautiful, garners full, cattle abundant, no downfall, I say not of a wall, but not even of a hedge, no tumult and clamour in the streets, but quiet, peace, abundance, plenty of all things in their houses and in their cities? Is not this then happiness? Or ought the righteous to shun it? Or do you not find the house of the righteous too abounding with all these things, full of this happiness? Did not Abraham's house abound with gold, silver, children, servants, cattle? What say we? Is not this happiness? Be it so, still it is on the left hand. What is, on the left hand? Temporal, mortal, bodily. I desire not that thou shun it, but that thou think it not to be on the right hand....For what ought they to have set on the right hand? God, eternity, the years of God which fail not, whereof is said, “and Your years shall not fail.” There should be the right hand, there should be our longing. Let us use the left for the time, let us long for the fight for eternity. “If riches increase, set not your heart upon them.”...

10. “They have called the people blessed who have these things”. O men that speak vanity! They have lost the true right hand, wicked and perverse, they have put on the benefits of God inversely. O wicked ones, O speakers of vanity, O strange children! What was on the left hand, they have set on the right. What do you, David? What do you, Body of Christ? What do ye, members of Christ? What do ye, not strange children, but children of God?...What do you say? Say ye with us, “Blessed is the people whose Lord is their God.”