The psalm we are considering also refers to Christ, including the prayer of Christ that he prayed at the time of his passion.

The speaker here is the Mediator himself, strong . . . in the conflict of his passion.

We confess the Son of God, fully God, fully man, whom we think this psalm speaks of in his own inner man, in which he cries that he who committed no sins not be handed over with sinners.

The twenty-eighth psalm, as was remarked, makes mention both of the illness and the recovery of Hezekiah himself: when the victory went to his head, human as he was, illness chastised him. But he was also freed from it, and he gives thanks for both.

He sings this psalm in the person of those who have come to faith in Christ, and with entreaty he calls on Christ for assistance. . . . The psalm was spoken by David when he was pursued by Saul and was the object of schemes on the part of those who seemed to be friends but betrayed him and tried to reveal his whereabouts to Saul, like Doeg^[1] and Ziphites^[2] and many others in addition to them. This psalm . . . and in fact the psalms before it as well, are suited to everyone encountering calamities of this kind: like blessed David it is possible for the person intent on persevering both to petition God and thereby to secure his providence.

I shall attribute the fact of the victory not to my virtue but to you, the God who proved its source for me.

Frequently, in Scripture, the righteous are said to have called out to God. Each one tries to beseech God with a cry, and I may say with an unusual cry. He goes to his bedroom closet, locks the door and calls out to God: Do not be silent before me. It was written of Moses, Aaron and Joshua the son of Nun. Indeed, they were the worthy ones to whom God spoke. He spoke through the prophets whenever the people stood before God. Let us not think that God speaks to us externally, for those righteous thoughts that are in our hearts are the words we speak and the voice through which God speaks to us. Understand this when Scripture says that God spoke to this one or that. Thus Scripture testifies, Blessed is the one whose help is from you. . . .^[1] We have this help through which the word of God is received. Holy is that one . . . who hears the word of the Lord and does it.

To you, Lord, I have cried; O my God, do not sever from my humanity that unity that binds your Word to me. . . . It is because the eternity of your Word never ceases to unite itself to me that I am not like the rest of humankind. They are born into the deepest misery of this world, where because your word is not known, it is as if you are silent.

If you keep silence with me and deprive me of your help, I shall immediately be consigned to death, which he called pit, since the grave is dug like a pit.

Often, we communicate by the lifting of hands, as when Moses’ arms were lifted up and Israel was victorious. When his hands were down, the Amalekites won. . . . Our hands are our deeds of piety. If we store treasures in heaven, we have hands lifted to God and overcome the enemy. When, therefore, I raise my hands to God, I lift my spirit to him through my uplifted hands. Amalek is conquered by me. So, it is needful to lift your hands to God. The temple of God is his glory.

Though the temple was not yet built, he gives the name temple to the tabernacle in which he prayed, distant from it in body but directing his mind there. Likewise also when blessed Daniel in Babylon prayed, he opened the windows facing Jerusalem,^[1] not under the impression that God was confined there but from his knowledge that the divine manifestation occurred there.

The prayer of blessed David is to have no truck with those who practice duplicity: he calls abhorrent those who say one thing but mean another.

It is good that the Spirit descended upon the Lord in the form of a dove, so that the faithful may learn that they cannot be filled with his Spirit unless they are simple, unless they possess true peace with their brothers, which is signified by the kiss of doves. Ravens also have kisses, but they tear flesh (which a dove does not do at all), signifying those who speak peace with their neighbor, but wicked things are in their hearts. A dove, which by nature is innocent of the tearing of the flesh, most suitably fits those innocents who pursue peace and sanctity with everyone.

Let no one think, however, that the righteous person is cursing his enemies: the words are a mark not of cursing but of a just verdict. Grant them their due repayment, he says, meaning, May they fall foul of their own schemes, which they hatch against one another. This is said also in the seventh psalm, Their trouble will come back on their own head, and their wrong will come down on top of them.^[1]

Because they do not understand through blessings, they will understand through suffering.

Amid such grievous suffering the Lord helps me, and with immortality he protects me when I rise again. . . . Now that the fear of death has been done away with, those who believe in me will confess to him, not constrained by fear under the law but freely and in harmony with the law. And since I am in them, I shall confess to him. ^[1]

Take note of the expression he used. He does not say flourished, but flourished again, for nothing flourishes again unless it had flourished previously. The Lord’s flesh flourished when he first came forth from the Virgin Mary’s undefiled womb, just as Isaiah says: A shoot will come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower will come up from his root.22 It flourished again, when, after the flower of his body was cut down by the Jews, it sprouted forth from the tomb with the renewed glory of the resurrection. In the manner of a flower, it breathed forth at the same time a scent and the gleam of immortality on all people, circulating the scent of good works with its sweetness and demonstrating the incorruptibility of the eternal divinity with its gleam.

This does not refer to the people which was ignorant of God’s righteousness and tried to establish its own.^[1] Rather, it refers to a different people that did not look to itself for its strength but knew instead that the Lord would be its strength as it contends with the devil in the difficulties of this life.

All that he suffered, he suffered by his own will, as he said, I have the power to lay down my spirit and to take it back.^[1] And he also said, freely I will confess him. He himself is the strength of his own people because he fulfills his words by his deeds. He said that he was going to suffer and he suffered, that he was going to die and he died, that he was going to arise and he arose from the dead, overcoming weakness of fear and giving strength to a most eager will. Because he is the protector of the salvation of his own anointed, because without a doubt he is God in Christ, reconciling the World to himself,^[2] saving his own people by bringing deliverance to spirit and body, and by blessing the nations, his own inheritance, by freeing them from demonic subjection, so that the Son of God, with the Father and Holy Spirit, may extol them and rule forever.

This teaches us that all the wonders of Christ written in the holy Scriptures, done for our salvation, whether teachings or writings, or the mysteries of his resurrection now referred to, were all done by the will and power of the Father defending his own Christ as with a shield in all his marvelous and saving words and works.

Whoever is baptized in Christ is his anointed.

The prayer for the people befits the king as well: it is also admirable about mighty David that though pursued also by the people, who waged war on him along with Saul, he offered supplication on their behalf to God. He foresaw their future conversion, you see, and had regard not for the injustice but for the servitude to come.

He aids and saves the people that were anointed for inheritance and the priestly kingdom, and he tends and exalts them forever, showing us to be raised up and glorified in future infinite ages.