The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^12. “The wicked therefore watches the righteous, and seeks to slay him. But the Lord will not leave him in his hands”. Wherefore then did He leave the Martyrs in the hands of the ungodly? Wherefore did they do unto them “whatsoever they would”? Some they slew with the sword; some they crucified; some they delivered to the beasts; some they burnt by fire; others they led about in chains, till wasted out by a long protracted decay. Assuredly “the Lord forsakes not His Saints.” He will not “leave him in his hands.” Lastly, wherefore did He leave His own Son in “the hands of the ungodly”? Here also, if you would have all the limbs of your inner man made strong, remove the covering of the roof, and find your way to the Lord. Hear what another Scripture, foreseeing our Lord's future suffering at the hands of the ungodly, says. What says it? “The earth is given into the hands of the wicked.” What is meant by “earth” being “given into the hands of the ungodly”? The delivering of the flesh into the hands of the persecutors. But God did not leave “His righteous One” there: from the flesh, which was taken captive, He leads forth the soul unconquered....

“The Lord will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when there shall be judgment for him”. Some copies have it, “and when He shall judge him, there shall be judgment for him.” “For him,” however, means when sentence is passed upon him. For we can express ourselves so as to say to a person, “Judge for me,” i.e. “hear my cause.” When therefore God shall begin to hear the cause of His righteous servant, since “we must all” be presented “before the tribunal of Christ,” and stand before it to receive every one “the things he has done in this body,” whether good or evil, when therefore he shall have come to that Judgment, He will not condemn him; though he may seem to be condemned in this present life by man. Even though the Proconsul may have passed sentence on Cyprian, yet the earthly seat of judgment is one thing, the heavenly tribunal is another. From the inferior tribunal he receives sentence of death; from the superior one a crown, “Nor will He condemn him when there shall be judgment for him.”

13. “Wait on the Lord”. And while I am waiting upon Him, what am I to do?— “and keep His ways.” And if I keep them, what am I to receive? “And He shall exalt you to inherit the land.” “What land”? Once more let not any estate suggest itself to your mind:— the land of which it is said, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” What of those who have troubled us, in the midst of whom we have groaned, whose scandals we have patiently endured, for whom, while they were raging against us, we have prayed in vain? What will become of them? What follows? “When the wicked are cut off, you shall see it.”...

“I have seen the ungodly lifted up on high, and rising above the cedars of Libanus”. And suppose him to be “lifted up on high;” suppose him to be towering above the “rest;” what follows?

“I passed by, and, lo, he was not! I sought him, and his place could nowhere be found!”. Why was he “no more, and his place nowhere to be found”? Because you have “passed by.” But if you are yet carnally-minded, and that earthly prosperity appears to you to be true happiness, you have not yet “passed by” him; you are either his fellow, or you are below him; go on, and pass him; and when you have made progress, and hast passed by him, you observe him by the eye of faith; you see his end, you say to yourself, “Lo! He who so swelled before, is not!” just as if it were some smoke that thou were passing near to. For this too was said above in this very Psalm, “They shall consume and fade away as the smoke.”...

14. “Keep innocency”; keep it even as you used to keep your purse, when thou were covetous; even as you used to hold fast that purse, that it might not be snatched from your grasp by the thief, even so “keep innocency,” lest that be snatched from your grasp by the devil. Be that your sure inheritance, of which the rich and the poor may both be sure. “Keep innocency.” What does it profit you to gain gold, and to lose innocence?

“Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing which is right.” Keep thou your eyes “right,” that you may see “the thing which is right;” not perverted, wherewith you look upon the wicked; not distorted, so that God should appear to you distorted and wrong, in that He favours the wicked, and afflicts the faithful with persecutions. Do you not observe how distorted your vision is? Set right your eyes, and “behold the thing that is right.” What “thing that is right”? Take no heed of things present. And what will you see?

“For there is a remainder for the man that makes peace.” What is meant by “there is a remainder”? When you are dead, you shall not be dead. This is the meaning of “there is a remainder.” He will still have something remaining to him, even after this life, that is to say, that “seed,” which “shall be blessed.” Whence our Lord says, “He that believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live;” — “seeing there is a remainder for the man that makes peace.”

15. “But the transgressors shall be destroyed in the self-same thing”. What is meant by, “in the self-same thing”? It means for ever: or all together in one and the same destruction.

“The remainder of the wicked shall be cut off.” Now there is “(a remainder) for the man that makes peace:” they therefore who are not peace-makers are ungodly. For, “Blessed are the peace-makers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

16. “But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord, and He is their strength in the time of trouble”. “And the Lord shall help them, and deliver them; He shall deliver them from the sinners”. At present therefore let the righteous bear with the sinner; let the wheat bear with the tares; let the grain bear with the chaff: for the time of separation will come, and the good seed shall be set apart from that which is to be consumed with fire. The one will be consigned to the garner, the other to “everlasting burning;” for it was for this reason that the just and the unjust were at the first together; that the one should lay a stumbling-block, that the other should be proved; that afterwards the one should be condemned, the other receive a crown....