The whole psalm is understood about David according to history and about the Lord according to prophecy.

Throughout the entire psalm, the words are those of the Lord Savior. At the very beginning he asks the Father that he be freed of the evils that threaten him, and then he rejoices that he has certainly been heard. In the second section he returns to his passion, and he describes the occurrence of the matter in a marvelous way through a variety of allusions. In the third section he offers a general thanks for himself and for his faithful people, because God has lavished gifts of mercy on the entire church. He also urges the saints, who have heard the rewards of the good and the punishments of the wicked, to persevere in the love of the Lord.

There is a justice that belongs to God but becomes ours as well when it is given to us. It is called God’s justice to ensure that humans do not imagine that they have any justice as from themselves. . . . The Jews, on the contrary, assumed that they were able to achieve perfect justice by their own efforts, and in consequence they tripped over the stumbling stone, the rock of scandal, and failed to recognize the grace of Christ. . . . The reason why they did not recognize God’s grace was that they did not want to be saved gratis. For who is saved gratis? Everyone in whom the Savior has found nothing to crown but only what he must condemn, one in whom he has found nothing that deserves rewards but only what merits torments. . . . Why call it grace? Because it is given gratis. And why is it given gratis? Because there were no preceding merits on your part; God’s benefits forestalled you. . . . With this in mind, in you, O Lord, have I put my trust, not in myself. Let me not be shamed forever, because I trust in him who does not shame me. In your justice set me free, and rescue me. Because you have found in me no justice of my own, set me free in yours; let me be freed by what renders me just, what makes a godless person godly, what enables a blind person to see, what raises up one who is falling, what makes a mourner rejoice. That is what sets me free; I do not liberate myself. In your justice set me free, and rescue me.

He rightly made an appeal for the Lord’s justice, since he knew that he would suffer at the hands of the unjust. What a truly amazing and divine exchange! He received death and gave salvation in return; he endured injuries and distributed honors; he took upon himself pain and conferred safety. He is both unique and fully devoted who offered sweet things when he received what was bitter.

Not only does God free us into righteousness but also into temperance, fortitude and love. He uses righteousness to embrace all virtues. Perhaps he understands Christ for righteousness. He is made wisdom to us by God and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.^[1]

God bends his ear to us when he pours down his mercy on us. What greater mercy could there be than that he should send his only Son, not to live with us, but to die for us?

God rescues and frees the one who puts his hope in him. He bends his ear to them, and he snatches them . . . so that they are saved.

Now, through all the verses occurring here, at any rate, we learn the measure of his prudence: his appeal for divine assistance is made on the basis not of his own virtue but of God’s name and of God’s righteousness and because he hoped in him.

You are for me both fortitude to endure my persecutors and my place of refuge so that I can leave them behind.

He leads through right faith and works and nourishes through his own understanding.

The enemy’s trap is stretched out ready; there are twin loops in it, error and terror: error to entice, terror to break and grip us. You must shut the door of greed against error and the door of fear against terror; and then you will be led clear of the trap.

By this he indicated the plot of Ahithophel, which he put into operation against him, as we have spoken about previously.^[1] . . . After frequently encountering many disasters I was freed from them by your aid—thus I entrust my soul to your providence. He calls providence here once again hands.

The snare was certainly hidden by the enemies, but there was not one which could be hidden from Christ, nor did he fall into death by being deceived, but consciously he accepted it in order to liberate us. So the Jews hid a trap for Christ because they believed that he was only a man, and they were devising a plan to destroy him by an ambush. So he says that he will be brought out, in other words, by the kindness of the resurrection he will be raised quickly to the heavenly realms.

Now, it is to be noted that the Lord cited this verse when on the cross, not that it was said of him in prophetic manner, as some commentators think, but because these words suited him when exposed to the risk of death and passion. So he cited this verse at the time when his soul was separated from his body, and [he] rightly entrusted it to the Father so that he might restore it to his body when it was in need of it at the time of the resurrection.

Here spirit indicates mind. The mind that clings to God is one spirit.

Let us consider why these words have been placed here which the Gospel text quotes. . . . Certainly so that you may recognize that here too he spoke who so many centuries later would speak the same words when fixed on the cross. Into your hands means Into your truth by which you always perform what is kind and just. In this way, he commends to the Father the inestimable treasure, namely, that soul that regularly carried out the Fathers desires in complete compliance with the Father’s intention. It was therefore fitting that such a spirit be commended to such a great guardian. Next he testifies that he was redeemed. But let us examine at what price; it was the price which the Apostle indicates: He emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant.^[1] You see how great the price was that he brought his majesty as low as human flesh, and he emptied himself in order that he might fill human things with heavenly things.

If you put your trust in money, you are paying futile regard to vain things; if you put your trust in high office or some exalted rank in human government, you are paying futile regard to vain things. . . . When you put your trust in all these, either you expire and leave them all behind, or they will crumble while you are still alive, and what you trusted will have let you down. . . . For my part, I do not put my trust in empty things as they do or pay futile regard to them; I have put my trust in the Lord.

You hated them and rebuffed those paying constant attention to doing wrong; far from doing evil in the heat of passion, they involve themselves in the practice of evil as though an obligation (the sense of paid constant attention). By futile things he refers to the wrongdoing. By in vain he means that they got no benefit from their involvement in evildoing because of his hating and punishing them and not allowing them to bring to completion the object of their efforts.

I will hope in the Lord, in whom there is nothing empty, . . . but everything remains fixed and whole.

Let us give attention to the one who says that his humility was respected. It is he who both created heaven and earth and holds them intact, he whom the heavenly powers serve. But there was humility in the Most High for this reason, because also a true human nature was connected to him, made perfect from his very conception.

The reasons of temptation, when they are realized, provide a broad plane for the soul.

You have not imprisoned me with no possible hope for liberty; you have not handed me over to the endless power of the devil. . . . The charity that is in me has been released from cramping fear and can walk unhindered forever into the broad stretches of freedom, for I know my Lord’s resurrection and the promise of my own.

When the flesh perceived that dangers were looming, it was troubled by fear. Note that he frequently says that he was troubled, but nowhere indicates that he despaired. This was spoken by him in order that the heavenly Master might display this pattern for us to imitate. Distress seeks out the human race to foster a familiar relationship with God, but despair does not stem from divine holiness.

Before we go off into darkness, our eye is confused by anger, and we must be careful that anger does not develop into hatred and blind us.

The deadly poison of anger has to be utterly rooted out from the inmost corners of our soul. For as long as this remains in our hearts and blinds with its hurtful darkness the eye of the soul, we can neither acquire right judgment and discretion nor gain the insight that springs from an honest gaze or ripeness of counsel, nor can we be partakers of life, or retentive of righteousness or even have the capacity for spiritual and true light: for, says one, my eye is disturbed by reason of anger.

Nothing darkens the mind like unbridled wrath.

Let your children take part in the instruction that is in Christ, let them learn how powerful with God is humility, how strong is a pure love, how the fear of him is beautiful and great and saves those who live in it in holiness with a pure mind. For he is a searcher of thoughts and desires; his breath is in us, and when he wills, he will take it away. 1

Christ the Lord, though innocent and undefiled, was being considered a disgrace among those who were desecrating themselves with wicked sin. . . . A disgrace indicates a terribly heinous act, what the evil Jews were convinced had been committed by our Lord Savior when they said: This man is not from God, who does not keep the Sabbath,^[1] and elsewhere: You are a Samaritan and have a demon.^[2]

Everyone has given me up for lost, he is saying, like a vessel mislaid or a corpse occupying a tomb. He brought out the degree of forgetfulness by reference to the worthless vessel: just as when lost it vanishes from the memory of the losers for reason of its worthlessness, he is saying, so too am I in their estimation like someone nonexistent and have become deserving of no esteem.

Those who do not believe the Scriptures at all saw the Lord fixed on the cross and walked away from his divinity, anticipating that their expectation was ended by this death. Likewise heretics, who hear the divine Scriptures in the church and who see miracles, walk away from the church to hear wicked proclamations, fleeing from the truth in which they have little tolerance to continue on. . . . A ruined vessel is one that is broken and without purpose, and so it is always thrown away. So also Jesus, when he died, was considered by unbelievers to be like a broken vessel that should be thrown away. How could it be said more humbly than that the almighty Majesty be compared to fragile jars? But consider that it was those who were mad who thought about Christ this way. But there always existed in him a unique omnipotence and an amazing divine fullness.

I seemed to myself to be of no use any longer for the Lord’s purposes, living on in this world but winning no one over to him, since they were all afraid to be associated with me.

The order of the words is wonderful and most holy. When his enemies . . . held on to a hope in their own strength, he says that he put his hope in the Lord, since he knew that their power was nothing and by the plots they were attempting they would kill themselves rather than him. . . . The Lord Christ says: You are my God, but he says this from the perspective of the human nature that he assumed, which, as he says later, was subject both to time and to death. He does not, as his enemies were thinking, mention that his life was going to be ended by their persecution, but he commends the times of his life to the Lord. For we exist by his work as our Creator; we are enlivened as he determines; and we also pass on when he gives the command. For this reason, it is necessary that his hope be set on the Lord, for he knew that his life and his death were under God’s control.

You have undergone no change, so you will not fail to save me, though you discipline me.

He says my lot in the sense of all my relief and all my tribulation. Since everyone has times when they are distressed and times when they are also made happy, he means, my lot, the times allotted to me for being made glad and for being distressed, all these are in your hands and capable of being changed as you wish.

We have to distinguish between enemies for whom we must pray and enemies against whom we must pray. Human enemies, of whatever kind, are not to be hated, lest when a good person hates a bad person who is causing trouble, the result is two bad people. A good person must love even the bad person he or she has put up with, so that at any rate there is only one who is bad. The enemies against whom we need to pray are the devil and his angels. . . . Even when human enemies assail us, it is only as the instruments of these evil spirits. When the apostle Paul warns us how careful we must be to guard against those enemies, he is speaking to God’s servants who are being harassed, and probably by the factions and dishonesty and hostility of human beings; yet he says to them, It is not against flesh and blood that you have to struggle—not against human enemies, then—but against principalities and powers and the rulers of this world.^[1]

In this I trust, that I shall be saved if you make your face to shine on me, hiding your back from me.

Since it seemed as though God had turned away from them and was angry with them, he asks for reconciliation: Only have regard to me, he is saying, and it is sufficient for my salvation.

In saying, Save me in your mercy, he denies his own merit. He constantly repeats the same things in order to teach us, nor does he ever become weary of his beloved confession, because the sweetness of the truth does not become distasteful to him. He also adds: Lord, may I not be put to shame, for I have called upon you. Wonderful and complete is this proclamation which contains both the petition of a humble person and the indestructible strength of one who believes. So he asks not he not be put to shame by God failing to answer his prayer. But how does he believe that he is heard? For I have called on you. Calling upon the Lord in faith is an act which finds favor rather than insulting God, for the one who calls cannot at all be deceived, assuming that he is heard by God.

One who speaks falsely receives mercy when he becomes silent. He gives up deceit.

When will such lips be struck dumb? In this age? Never. Daily they rant against Christians, especially the lowly ones; they blaspheme daily; every day they bark their insults. . . . Where is your God? What do you worship? What do you see? You believe, yet you have a hard life; your hard life is certain, but what you hope for is far from certain. But when that certainty for which we hope has become real, those lying lips will be struck dumb.

Now, the verse has this sense: You hide the rewards and prizes for those who fear you, O Lord, many and great and marvelous though these are, and instead you allow them to struggle with sweat and tears. Yet there comes the time when you reveal the rewards, giving cheer to the athletes. . . . Then he described in detail the providence in their favor. . . . Your appearance suffices, he is saying (he calls it presence), for them to be freed from all human disturbance and commotion, and to conceal them as though admitted to the precincts of some tabernacle and render them invisible.

There is an abundance of sweetness, for the Lord’s sweetness is expressed by the many benefits that he gives. He is sweet when he corrects, sweet when he pardons, and sweet when he promises eternal rewards to believers. But you must understand that he is only sweet to those who have acquired a taste for him. His sweetness cannot come to those who have not deserved to experience him.

This is the voice of the prophet, exclaiming in wonder as he discerns how abundant and how varied are the expressions of your sweetness, O Lord. You dearly love even those you discipline, but to ensure that they do not relax their guard and behave carelessly, you hide the sweetness of that love from those who will profit by fearing you. . . . You have shown the perfection of your sweetness to those who trust in you, for you do not withhold it from those who persevere in hoping for it to the end.

From the law comes our fear of God, from faith our hope in him; but grace is hidden from those who are in fear of punishment. The soul that labors under that fear, not yet victorious over evil concupiscence and still held in the stern ward of that same fear, must take refuge by faith with the mercy of God, that he may grant what he commands, impart the sweet savor of grace and by his Holy Spirit make the delight of his precepts greater than the attraction that obstructs the keeping of them. Thus that countless sum of his sweetness, the law of faith that is the love of him written and shed abroad in our hearts, is perfected to them that hope in him, so that the healed soul may work that which is good, not in fear of punishment but through love of righteousness.

The sum of your sins does not surpass the magnitude of God’s mercies. Your wounds are not beyond the healing skill of the great Physician. Only surrender to him with faith, tell the Physician of your malady. Repeat the words of David: I said, I will confess against myself my iniquity to the Lord, and in like manner will be verified the second part of the verse: And you forgave the wickedness of my heart.^[1]

Although the just suffer trials in this age, a greater sweetness awaits them, if they persevere to the future, which the Lord hides meanwhile for those who fear him. He does not wish to show it in this age, so he may complete it for the ones hoping in him in the presence of those who mock them. Now he hides them in the secret of his presence from the vexation of people. . . . Then he magnifies his mercy when he prepares a fortified city, which angels surround, the mother city of holy Jerusalem.

God’s abounding goodness aids us in a hidden way, and in the present life it is not clearly evident. For every objection of unbelievers would be removed, could we actually see what we only hope for. But our hopes await the ages to come, so that there may then be revealed what at present our faith alone apprehends.

He surrounded and enclosed me in his habitual lovingkindness, he is saying, as the inhabitants encircle a city with a strong rampart.

Blessed may the Lord be, because after the church had undergone the discipline of such bitter persecutions, he made his mercy wonderful all around the world, through the widest circles of human society.

We should regard the surrounded city as the physical location of Jerusalem, which is set in the midst of the nations and is known to exist as the temple of God. The nations that are located around it were worthy to receive the precepts of the Christian teaching, as if the purest of springs opened itself up to them, and they were irrigated with the gifts of heavenly life. So in this city the Lord has made his mercy wonderful, since it was there in fact that he deemed it fitting to teach, to perform miracles, and to suffer for human salvation. There too he revealed the glory of his resurrection, where he chose to make known such immense mysteries.

This psalm is likely to have been spoken by blessed David at the time of being pursued by Absalom. . . . I thought that on falling into sin, he is saying, I was far from your care; but you took account of my humble words and did not despise me in my need. Now, he rightly called his sin departure: after treading the way of righteousness he left it and turned aside; but he stumbled and fell foul of bloodthirsty brigands. This very thing reveals David’s virtue: he was not in the habit of sinning, but departing a little from his chosen course he suffered that awful slide.

You who pass through the present life with divine hope, strengthen your souls with bravery and heed the directions of the pilot, traveling wherever he leads.

When he has completed a hymn on the kindnesses granted to him, he urges the saints to love the Lord, since his members love the Author of such a kindness when they recognize that it has been bestowed on their Head. Love he says, now as to his friends, not as if speaking to servants, for fear is characteristic of servants, but love characterizes the relationship between friends.

He repays extraordinarily those who are guilty of arrogance so as to bring out that God loathes this transgression more than every other sin.

There will be a judgment in which the Lord will require truth and he will repay the haughty. Be strong; flag not; let your heart be comforted. Be secure, you who hope in the Lord.

This is the power of the entire psalm and in it the usefulness of the sacred passion is concentrated . . . namely, that they not be frightened by the sufferings predicted, but that the hearts of the faithful find strength for the glorious imitation that they knew had been introduced to provide the healing of salvation for the world. . . . So this is an appeal to good people not to withdraw themselves from their good intention because of the weakness of their flesh. . . . For in this way, the hearts of those who endure are strengthened, if they fortify their hope through the Lord’s power.