Expositions on the Book of Psalms (continued)
PsaLtm LXXVIIL] ON THE PSALMS. Sif: the Sodomites, and by means of evil angels, as upon the Egyptians, we read: but that just men with corporal penances by means of good angels are tried and proved, doth not occur to me. milk and honey, which doth signify the sweetness of grace.
29. The Psalm proceedeth then after the commemoration of the plagues of the Egyptians
28. But as far as regardeth the present passage of this Psalm, if we dare not ascribe those things which were marvellously formed out of creatures, to evil angels ; we have a thing which without doubt we can ascribe to them; the dyings of the beasts, the dyings of the first-born, and this especially whence all these things proceeded, namely, the hardening of heart, so that they would not let go the people of God.' For when God is said to make this most iniquitous and malignant obstinacy, He maketh it not by suggesting and inspiring, but by forsaking, so that they work in the sons of unbelief that which God doth duly and justly permit.? . Moreover, those evil manners which we said were signified by these corporal plagues, on account of that which was said before, "I will open in parables my mouth,''3 are most appropriately believed by means of evil angels to have been wrought in those that are made subject to them by Divine justice. For neither when that cometh to pass of which the apostle speaketh, "God gave them over into the lusts of their heart, that they should do things which are not convenient," 4 can it be but that those evil angels dwell and rejoice therein, as in the matter of their own work : unto whom most justly is human naughtiness made subject, in all save those whom grace doth deliver. 'And for these things who is sufficient?" 5 Whence when he had said, '"' He sent unto them the anger of His indignation, indignation and anger and tribulation, an infliction through evil angels ;" for this which he hath added, "a way He hath made for the path of His anger ''(ver. 50), whose eye, I pray, is sufficient to penetrate, so that it may understand and take in the sense lying hidden in so great a profundity? For the path of the anger of God was that whereby He punished the ungodliness of the Egyptians with hidden (ver. 51) and saith, "And He took away like sheep His people, and He led them through like a flock in the desert" (ver. 52). 'And He led them down in hope, and they feared not, and their enemies the sea covered" (ver. 53). This cometh to pass to so much the greater good, as it is a more inward thing, wherein being delivered from the power of darkness, we are in mind translated into the Kingdom of God, and with respect to spiritual pastures we are made to become sheep of God, walking in this world as it were in a desert, inasmuch as to no one is our faith observable: whence saith the Apostle, But we are being led home in hope, " For by hope we are saved."® Nor ought we to fear. For, "If God be for us, who can be against us?' 9 And our enemies the sea hath covered, He hath effaced them in baptism by the remission of sins.
. | "Your life is hidden with Christ in God.''7
30. In the next place there followeth, " And He led them into the mountain of His sanctification" (ver. 54). How much better into Holy Church! 'The mountain which His right hand hath gotten." How much higher is the Church which Christ hath gotten, concerning whom has been said, "And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" *° (ver. 55). "And He cast forth from the face of them the nations." And* from the face of His faithful, For nations in a manner are the evil spirits of Gentile errors. 'And by lot He divided unto them the land in the cord of distribution." And in us "all things one and the same Spirit doth work, dividing severally to every one as He willeth"
31. "And He made to dwell in their tabernacles the tribes of Israel." In the tabernacles, he saith, of the Gentiles He made the tribes of Israel to dwell, which I think can better be explained spiritually, inasmuch as unto celestial glory, whence sinning angels have been cast forth and cast down, by Christ's grace we are being uplifted. For that generation crooked and embittering, inasmuch as for these corporal blessings they put not off the coat of oldness, "Did tempt" yet, "and provoked the high God, and His testimonies they kept not (ver. 56) : and they turned them away, and they kept not the covenant, like their fathers" (ver.57). For under a sort of covenant and decree they said, " All things which our Lord God hath spoken we will do, and we will hear." "3 It is a remarkjustice: but for that same path He made a way, so that drawing them forth as it were from secret places by means of evil angels unto manifest offences, He most evidently inflicted punishment upon those that were most evidently ungodly. From this power of evil angels nothing doth deliver man but the grace of God, whereof the Apostle speaketh, "Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love:''® of which things that.people did bear the figure, when they were delivered from the power of the Egyptians, and translated into the kingdom of the land of promise flowing with 8 Rom. viii. 24. 9 Rom. viii. 31. 11 Oxf. mss. add, "' He did cast out nations." 13 Exod. xix. 8.
7 Colstics, To Tsa, liii. x. 12 x Cor. xii, 11.
3 Ps. Ixxviii. 2. ' 2 Eph. ii. 2. 6 Col. i, 13. 1 Exod. iv. 21. i i 5 2 Cor. ii. 16. 4 Rom. i. 24, 28, 378 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN. [PsaALmM LXX VIII. sword the sons of Heli, of one of whom the able thing indeed which he saith, "like their fathers: while throughout the whole text of the Psalm he was seeming to speak of the same men as it were, yet now it appeareth that the words did concern those who were already in the land of promise, and that the fathers spoken of were of those who did provoke in the desert. "They were turned," he saith, "into a crooked," or, as some copies have it, "into a perverse bow" (ver. 58). But what this is doth better appear in that which followeth, where he saith, " And unto wrath they provoked Him with their hills" (ver. 59). It doth signify that they leaped into idolatry. The bow then was perverted, not for the name of the Lord, but against the name of the Lord: who said to the same people, "Thou shalt have none other Gods but Me."* But by the bow He doth signify the mind's intention. This same idea, lastly, more clearly working out, " And in their graven idols," he saith, 'they provoked Him to indignation." wife being widowed, and presently dying in child-birth,4 because of the same confusion could not be mourned with the distinction of a funeral.
And the Lord was awakened as one sleeping" (ver. 65). For He seemeth to sleep, when He giveth His people into the hands of those whom He hateth, when there is said to them, "' Where is thy God?" 5 " He was awakened, then, like one sleeping, like a mighty man drunken with wine." No one would dare to say this of God, save His Spirit. For he hath spoken, as it seemeth to ungodly men reviling; as if like a drunken man He sleepeth long, when He succoureth not so speedily as men think.®
33. " And He smote His enemies in the hinder parts" (ver. 66) : those, to wit, who were rejoicing that they were able to take His Ark : for they were smitten in their back-parts.?7, Which seemeth to me to be a sign of that punishment, wherewith a man will be tortured, if he shall have looked back upon things behind ; which, as saith the Apostle, he ought to value as dung. For they that do so receive the Testament of God, as that they put not off from them the old vanity, are like the hostile nations, who did place the captured Ark of the Testament beside their own idols. And yet those old things even though these be unwilling do fall: for "all flesh is hay, and the glory of man as the flower of hay. The hay hath dried up, and the flower hath fallen off:"'9 but the Ark of the Lord " abideth for everlasting," to wit, the secret testament of the kingdom of Heaven, where is the eternal Word of God. But they that have loved things behind, because of these very things most justly shall be tormented. For " everlasting reproach He hath given to them." (ver. 67).
32. " God heard, and He despised: "' that is, He gave heed and took vengeance. "And unto nothing He brought Israel exceedingly" (ver. 60). For when God despised, what were they who by God's help were what they were? But doubtless he is commemorating the doing of that thing, when they were conquered by the Philistines in the time of Heli the priest, and the Ark of the Lord was taken, and with great slaughter they were laid low.? This it is that he speaketh of. "And He rejected the tabernacle of Selom, His tabernacle, where He dwelled among men" (ver. 61). He hath elegantly explained why He rejected His tabernacle, when he saith, "where He dwelled among men." When therefore they were not worthy for Him to dwell among, why should He not reject the tabernacle, which indeed not for Himself He had established, but for their sakes, whom now He judged unworthy for Him to dwell among. "And He gave over unto captivity their strength, and their beauty unto the hands of the enemy." The very Ark whereby they thought themselves invincible, and whereon they plumed themselves, he calleth their "virtue" and " beauty." Lastly, also afterward, when they were living ill, and boasting of the temple of the Lord, He doth terrify them by a Prophet, saying, " See ye what I have done to Selom, where was My tabernacle."3 ' And He ended with the sword His people, and His inheritance He despised" (ver. 62). "Their young men the fire devoured :" that is, wrath. "And their virgins mourned not'? (ver. 63). For not even for this was there leisure, in fear of the foe. 'Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows were not lamented" (ver. 64). For there fell by the
34. "And He rejected," he saith, " the tabernacle of Joseph, and the tribe of Ephraim '*° He chose not" (ver. 68). 'And He chose the tribe of Judah" (ver. 69). He hath not said, He rejected the tabernacle of Reuben, who was the first-born son of Jacob ; '* nor them that follow, and precede Judah in order of birth ; so that they being rejected and not chosen, the tribe of Judah was chosen. For it might have been said that they were deservedly rejected ; because even in the blessing of Jacob wherewith he blessed his sons, he mentioneth their sins,* and deeply abhorreth them ; though among them the tribe of Levi merited to be the priestly tribe, whence
4 x Sam. iy. 19. 5 Ps. xlii. 3. 6 Al, " require." 7 x Sam. v. 6. 8 Phil. iii. 8. 9 Isa, xl. 6, 7. 10 [Jeroboam represented the house of Joseph (1 Kings xi. 28), and was offended at the removal of the '[abernacle (1 Kings viii. 4) to Jerusalem. But God overruled his rebellion in such wise, that Ephraim (as the ten tribes were called, from the pre-eminent one) carried away, and, not returning, did not, as tribes, share in the rejection of the Messiah, ' 'the Shepherd and Stone of Israel;"" thus indicated in the prophetic benediction of Jacob, Gen. xlix. 24. —C.]
It Gen. xlix. 3. 12 Gen. xlix. 5.
T Exod. xx. 3. 2 1 Sam. iv. 10, etc. 3 Jer. vii. 12.