Expositions on the Book of Psalms (continued)
THE 'WORKS:.0F ST: AUGUSTIN. [PsaLmM LX XVIII.
speaking the truth. These words therefore of divine sayings, concerning which the crooked generation doth cajole itself, let it not make crooked like its own heart: for even when it is made crooked, they continue right. For at first they may be understood according to that which is written in the Gospel, "that ye may be like your Father who is in the Heavens, who maketh His sun to rise upon good men and evil men, and raineth upon just men and unjust men."' For who could not see, how great is the long-suffering of mercy with which He is sparing evil men? But before the Judgment, He spared then that nation in such sort, that He kindled not? all His anger, utterly to root it up and bring it to an end: which thing in His words and in the intercession for their sins of ing back," 7 while a weight of evil deserts doth weigh it down unto the lowest and far places of evil, save through the election of grace? .. . For thus also is solved this no unimportant question, how it is written in the Proverbs, when the Scripture was speaking of the way of iniquity, " all they that walk in her shall not return."® For it hath been so spoken as if all ungodly men were to be despaired of: but the Scripture did only commend grace ; for of himself man is able to walk in that way, but is not able of himself to return, except when called back by grace.
23. I say then of these crooked and embittering persons, " How often they exasperated Him in the desert, and provoked Him to wrath in the waterless place!" (ver. 40). 'And they turned themselves and tempted God, and exasperated the Holy One of Israel" (ver. 41). He is repeating that same unbelief of theirs, of which He had made mention above. But the reason of the repetition is, in order that there may be mentioned also the plagues which He inflicted on the Egyptians for their sakes: all which things they certainly ought to have remembered, and not to be ungrateful. Lastly, there followeth what? "They remembered not His hands, in the day when He redeemed them from the hand of the troubler" (ver. 42). And he beginneth to speak of what things He did to the Egyptians : "He set in Egypt His signs, and His prodigies in the plain of Thanis" (ver. 43): "and He turned their rivers into blood, and their showers lest they should drink " (ver. 44), or rather, " the flowings of waters," as some do better understand by what is written in Greek, ra 6uBpypara, which in Latin we call scaturig?nes, waters bubbling from beneath. "He sent upon them the dog-fly, and it ate them up; and the frog, and it destroyed them" (ver. 45). "And He gave their fruit to the mildew, and their labours to the locust"? (ver. 46). "And He slew with hail their vineyards, and their mulberry trees with frost" (ver. 47). "And He gave over to the hail their beasts of burden, and their possessions to the fire" (ver. 48). "He sent upon them the anger of His indignation, indignation and anger and tribulation, a visitation through evil angels" (ver. 49). He made a way to the course of His anger, and their beasts of burden He shut up in death" (ver. 50). "And He smote every first-born thing in the land of Egypt, the first-fruits of their labours in the tabernacles of Cham" (ver. 51).
His servant Moses doth evidently appear, where God saith, " Let Me blot them out, and make thee into a great nation:'3 he intercedeth, being more ready to be blotted out for them than that they should be; knowing that he is doing this before One Merciful, who inasmuch as by no means He would blot out him, would even spare them for his sake. For let us see how greatly He spared, and doth still spare... . .
21. In the second place, that we may not seem to do violence to divine words, and lest in the place where there was said, " He will not destroy them," 4 we should say, " But hereafter He will destroy them : " concerning this very present
Psalm let us turn to a very common phrase of the Scripture, whereby this question may be more diligently and more truly solved. Speaking of these same persons a little lower down, when He had made mention of the things which the Egyptians because of them had endured, He saith, . . . "And He led them unto the mount of His sanctification, the mount which His right hand won. And He cast out from their face the nations, and by lot distributed to them the land in the cord of distribution."5 If any one at these words should press a question upon us, and should say, How doth he make mention of all these things as having been bestowed upon them, when the same persons were not led into the land of promise, as were delivered from Egypt, inasmuch as they were dead? What shall we reply but that they were spoken of, because they were the self-same people by means of a succession of sons? ...
22. "And He remembered that they are flesh, a spirit® going and not returning" (ver. 39). Therefore calling them and pitying them through
24. All these punishments of the Egyptians may be explained by an allegorical interpretation, according as one shall have chosen to understand them, and to compare them to the things whereunto they must be referred. Which we too will
His grace, He called them back Himself, because of themselves they could not return. For how doth flesh return, " a spirit walking and not turn-
2 Many mss. omit " not." 4 Ps. Ixxviii. 38. 6 Or, '* breath."
I Matt. v. 45. 3 Exod. xxxii, 10. 5 Ps, Ixxviii. 54, 55.
7 Li eanent, and not returning. — C.] 8 Prov. ii. 19.