The phrase about the eighth seems obscure, though the remainder of this title is clearer. Some have taken it as pointing to the day of judgment, that is, the time of our Lord’s second coming, when he will come to judge the living and the dead. . . . Then will come the number eight, the day of judgment, which assigns to each one’s merits what is due. It will conduct the saints not to temporal activities but to eternal life, and the ungodly it will condemn forever.

All the diligence of the virtuous life looks to the next age, whose beginning, which succeeds perceptible time, which repeats itself in hebdomads,^[1] is designated octave. The inscription for the octave advises, therefore, that we not look to the present time, but that we look toward the octave. For whenever this transitory and fleeting time ceases, in which one thing comes to be and another is dissolved, and the necessity of coming to be has passed away, and that which is dissolved no longer exists, and the anticipated resurrection transforms our nature into another condition of life, and the fleeting nature of time ceases, and the activity related to generation and corruption no longer exists, the hebdomad too, which measures time, will by all means halt. Then that octave, which is the next age, will succeed it. The whole of the latter becomes one day, as one of the prophets says when he calls the life which is anticipated the great day. For this reason the perceptible sun does not enlighten that day, but the true light, the sun of righteousness, who is designated rising by the prophecy because he is never veiled by settings.

This psalm is sung for the end because these are the most perfect contemplations concerning the eighth. . . . Just as he who is circumcised in the flesh has removed a certain part of his body, so also he who casts off every care of life is circumcised in his heart and is like the true pure ones who dwell earnestly on thoughts of the Lord. On the eighth day the circumcision is completed.

The practitioners of allegory . . . refer mention of the eighth to numerology, coming up with ideas as their trade suggests and causing the readers to go gray in the process of wearing themselves out over perfect and imperfect numbers. This not being the way to go, then, people with a more sober idea of the eighth claim instead it is the Lord’s day since the eighth day is the same as the first. If this were the case, however, I still cannot understand why the psalm does not keep to hymns but instead involves confession and declaration of sin and is a petition for freedom from current misfortune, even though the title says in hymns, a psalm of David. For this reason, then, we leave the whole title to those prepared to guess at it.

We have heard some people trying to excuse this most pernicious disease of the soul [anger] in such a way as to endeavor to extenuate it by a rather shocking way of interpreting Scripture: as they say that it is not injurious if we are angry with the brethren who do wrong, since, say they, God is said to rage and to be angry with those who either will not know him or, knowing him, spurn him, as here: And the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people;^[1] or where the prophet prays and says, O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, neither chasten me in your displeasure; not understanding that while they want to open to people an excuse for a most pestilent sin, they are ascribing to the divine Infinity and Fountain of all purity a taint of human passion.

When you hear of anger and rage in God’s case, do not get the idea of anything typical of human beings; the words, you see, arise from considerateness. The divine nature, after all, is free of all these passions.

When we speak of God’s wrath, we do not hold that it is an emotional reaction on his part but something that he uses in order to correct by stern methods those who have committed many terrible sins. That the so-called wrath of God and what is called his anger has a corrective purpose, and that this is the doctrine of the Bible is clear from the words of Psalm 6: Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor correct me in your wrath.

He does not beg to be uncensured but rather not to be censured in anger, nor does he plead to avoid discipline but not to suffer it with wrath. Discipline me like a father, he asks, not like a judge; like a physician, not like a torturer. Do not fit the punishment to the crime; instead, temper justice with lovingkindness.

Every fault arises from weakness because the spirit is always inclined to a wicked disposition, on account of which it flees to the Savior and Healer, namely, the Son of God. For when one comes to the word and reason of God, he gives up his unreasonable actions; as wisdom frees the spirit from foolishness, justice from injustice, truth from lying.

According to the spiritual meaning, the bones are the companion virtues of a reasonable spirit that will draw one to discernment. There are steadfastness, discretion and the temperance that is strength according to God, justice, and, in short, absolutely every type of excellence, which, when they are not found in us (that is, properly provided and in order), it is inevitable that the spirit, since it does not have fitting strength, is thoroughly stirred up with those inordinate passions that are in it.

Under the influence of weakness, sin overcomes. After all, if the reasoning faculty within us were not weak, the passions would not rebel; to put it another way, provided the charioteer is firm and steers and controls the horses skillfully, there is no occasion for bucking. . . . He calls reasoning bones, since bones are naturally rather dense and support the body; speaking figuratively he gave the name bones to reasoning, by which the living being is steered. Disturbance in that faculty, he is saying, ruffled and shook me. Hence I beg to be allowed to enjoy your lovingkindness so as to receive healing through it.

Here, obviously, is a soul wrestling with its own diseases but long untreated by the doctor, in order that it may be convinced how great are the evils into which it has launched itself by sinning. . . . God . . . is . . . a good persuader of the soul with regard to the evil it has occasioned for itself.

He constantly invokes this word Lord as though adducing some claim to pardon and grace. This, after all, is our greatest hope, his lovingkindness beyond telling, and the fact that he is such a one as to be ready to pardon.

We may understand the word turn in two ways. Sometimes the sense is this: Since you have turned your face away from me, I ask that now you return that mercy and show it to me. Sometimes the significance is this: Since my spirit has turned away into evil, may you, returning and calling that soul back to you (as You have turned who are given to turning away^[1]) redeem my soul from repeated sins and from the powers causing these evils.

In the act of turning itself, the soul prays that God also may turn to it, as Scripture says, Turn to me and I shall turn to you, says the Lord.^[1] Or perhaps Turn, Lord is to be understood to mean make me turn, since the soul in the very act of turning experiences difficulty and hardship. . . . While we are turning ourselves . . . we find it a tough and uphill struggle to twist ourselves away from the gloom of earthbound desires, back to the serenity and tranquility of the divine light. In a difficult situation such as this we say, Turn, Lord, that is, help us, so that there may be fully achieved in us the conversion that finds you ready and waiting, and offering yourself to those who love you for their enjoyment. And that is why, after saying, Turn, Lord, he added, and rescue my soul, as if enmeshed in the perplexities of this world and suffering the thorns of the longings that tear the soul apart, even as it strives to turn. Save me, he says, because of your mercy. He understands that it is not on his own merits that he is being healed, because a righteous condemnation is most certainly due to the sinner who transgresses the commandment as laid down. Heal me, therefore, says the psalmist, not in proportion to what I in fact deserve but in proportion to your own abundant mercy.

Unless he converts my soul, he can not deliver it from danger.

Now, it was appropriate for him to add for your mercy’s sake: I am not trusting in myself, he is saying, nor do I attribute your help to my own righteousness; instead, I beg to be granted it on account of your mercy.

Treat me lovingly, not because I am worthy but because it becomes you to grant me this, such as I am. . . . Let this happen completely and quickly, since it becomes you to grant such a thing, merciful as you are, and to be ever mindful of me as a recipient of your kindness.

[When the psalmist says] for in death there is no one to remember you, [he is] not implying that our existence lasts only as far as the present life: perish the thought! After all, he is aware of the doctrine of resurrection. Rather, it is that after our departure from here there would be no time for repentance. For the rich man praised God and repented, but in view of its lateness it did him no good. The virgins wanted to get some oil, but no one gave any to them. So this is what this man requests, too, for his sins to be washed away in this life so as to enjoy confidence at the tribunal of the fearsome judge.

It is not in death but in life that one recalls God. Likewise, confession and reform do not come to the departed in hades. God confined life and action to this life; there, however, he conducts an evaluation of performance. And in any case this is proper to the eighth day, giving no longer opportunity for preparation by good or bad deeds to those who have arrived at it; instead, whatever works you have sown for yourself you will have occasion to reap. For this reason he obliges you to practice repentance here, there being no practice of this kind of effort in hades.

He understands also that now is the time for conversion, because when life is past, there remains only the settling of accounts in relation to what we deserve. . . . By hell the psalmist means the blindness of the mind that captures and envelopes the person who is sinning—that is dying. . . . It is from this death and this hell that the soul prays earnestly to be kept safe while it sets about its conversion to God and experiences all the difficulties that stand in its way.

While you are still in this world, I beg of you to repent. Confess and give thanks to the Lord, for in this world only is he merciful. Here, he is able to be compassionate to the repentant, but because there he is judge, he is not merciful. Here, he is compassionate kindness; there, he is judge. Here, he reaches out his hand to the falling; there, he presides as judge.

It is better to be punished and cleansed now than to be transmitted to the torment to come, when it is the time of chastisement, not of cleansing. For as he who remembers God here is conqueror of death (as David has most excellently sung), so the departed have not in the grave confession and restoration; for God has confined life and action to this world, and to the future the scrutiny of what has been done.

The saints are not only mindful of God as they hold on to this life but even more so when they are separated from this perishable body. What, therefore, does he say? No one who is mindful of you falls into that death that sin brings forth, that is, that death that separates the sinning spirit from a life of virtue. I desire to be mindful of you by turning toward your kindness. Save me, lest I be consumed in death when my prevailing weakness has turned against me and my spirit is thoroughly distraught. For it is also said, he is not mindful of you who dies; but he who is mindful of you does not fall into that death about which the Savior said: He who hears my word will not see death in eternity.^[1]

For he who has made the inheritance known has also mentioned the octave, which becomes both the boundary of the present time and the beginning of the age to come. Now the characteristic feature of the octave is that it no longer affords those who are in it opportunity to procure things good or bad, but one hands over instead the sheaves from whatever seeds he has sown for himself through his works. For this reason he prescribes here that the one who is exercised in the same victories effect repentance, as such zeal is idle in hades.

Let those who have beds of silver listen to what the bed of the king was like: not jewel-encrusted or gilt but washed with tears. His were not nights of repose but nights of mourning and lamenting. Many cares would beset him at night, a time that all people devote to rest but that he would devote to confession, lamenting the more earnestly then. You see, while it is always good to weep, it is particularly so at night, when no one resists this wonderful experience, but given good will one is able to give free rein to it. Those who have tried what I speak of know the great elation stemming from such a flood of tears. Tears like this can extinguish an unquenchable fire, can stem the flood sweeping us to our condemnation. Hence Paul too wept night and day for three years, correcting unnatural passions. Far from correcting our own, we give ourselves over to merriment and indulgence and bury the night in utter stupor. Some are sunk in a sleep resembling death, while others pass sleepless nights more dire than death, devising fraud and usury and other schemes at that time. Not so are sober people, tending their souls’ welfare, applying their tears like a shower, promoting the growth of virtue. The bed that receives tears like that gives no access to any evil or licentiousness. The person who sheds such tears places no value on things of the earth and instead frees the soul from any siege, rendering the mind clearer than the sun. Do not think I am directing these remarks only to monks; in fact, the exhortation is for people in the world as well, and for them more than the others, they after all being in particular need of the remedy of repentance. The one uttering groans like this will rise with spirit in better condition than a calm haven, expelling every passion; such a one, filled with great joy, will approach the house of God in confidence, will converse with neighbors pleasantly, no anger lurking within, after all no lust inflamed, no hankering after possessions, no envy, nothing else of this kind. All these passions, you see, like savage beasts lurking in their dens, those groans and tears in the night succeeded in taming.

Perhaps someone thinks that he has committed such grievous sins that he is beyond God’s mercy. Let this be far from the thoughts of all sinners. Whoever you are, O man, you look at the multitude of your sins and do not see the almighty power of the divine Physician. Although God would like to show mercy because he is good, and he can because he is omnipotent, a person closes the door of divine mercy to his soul when he believes that God is either unwilling or unable to have pity on him. He does not believe that God is good or almighty. No one should despair of divine mercy after a hundred sins, nor even after a thousand. Rather, he should show his confidence by hastening to regain God’s favor without any delay. . . . David, who through divine mercy became both a king and a prophet, . . . was overtaken to such an extent that he committed both adultery and murder. However, he did not wait to take refuge in the healing of repentance in his old age. Immediately covering himself with a hairshirt and sprinkling his head with ashes, he repented with loud groaning and lamenting. Thus was fulfilled what he had said in the psalms: Every night I will wash my bed; I will water my couch with my tears.

So from all these and many other examples beyond count we learn the virtue of tears and repentance. Only the manner thereof must be noted—it must arise from a heart that hates sin and weeps, as the prophet David says. . . . Again the cleansing of sins will be wrought by the blood of Christ, in the greatness of his compassion and the multitude of the mercies of that God who says, Though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow.^[1]

My heart of stone has no tears to summon. . . . Delicacies are my pleasure while my soul goes hungry. Who could furnish me with a spring for streams of tears, so that I might lament my deeds and days? For I need a river to lament the heavy strokes that I deserve for a life spent in sin. Break the stone that is my heart, saving Jesus, so that the inner me may be softened and a stream of devotion pour forth.

In hell there is no amendment. No means of satisfaction can be given where no act of the will remains any longer, as David says in prophecy: Since in death there is no one who remembers you, who will give you thanks in hell? Let us flee harmful pleasures, dangerous joys and desires that perish right away. What fruit is there, what use is there, in wanting these things incessantly, things that we must abandon even if they do not abandon us? Let the love of ephemeral things be transferred to incorruptible ones. Let hearts called to lofty things find their enjoyment in heavenly delights.

What in this context is called the bed is where the sick and feeble mind rests, that is, in the gratifications of the body and in every worldly pleasure. Whoever tries to free himself from that delight bathes such pleasure in tears, for he sees that he is already condemning carnal longings; and yet his weakness is held captive by his delight and lies down in it willingly. The mind cannot rise from it unless it is healed.

Prayer offered up at night possesses a great power, more so than the prayer of the day-time. Therefore all the righteous prayed during the night, while combating the heaviness of the body and the sweetness of sleep and repelling corporeal nature. . . . And for every entreaty for which they urgently besought God, they armed themselves with the prayer of night vigil, and at once they received their request.

Listen to the psalmist tell how anger clouds the eye of the heart: My eyes are dimmed, he says, with sorrow.

In quarrels the very light of the soul, the light of good intent, is blocked. Whence the psalmist says, My eye is troubled because of anger.

There are many things that are allowed and legitimate, and yet we are to some extent defiled in the doing of them; as often we attack faults with anger and disturb the tranquility of our own mind. And, though what is done is right, yet it is not to be approved that the mind is therein disturbed. For instance, he had been angry against the vices of transgressors who said, My eye is disturbed because of anger. For, since the mind cannot, unless it is tranquil, lift itself up to the light of contemplation, he grieved that his eye was disturbed in anger, because, though assailing evil doings from above, he still could not help being confused and disturbed from contemplation of the highest things. And therefore his anger against vice is laudable, and yet it troubles him, because he felt that he had incurred some guilt in being disturbed.

By the phrase in all my enemies the psalmist is speaking of the men and women who refuse to turn to God. For even if these people do not know it, even if they are accommodating, even if they share, on the best of terms, the same meals and households and cities, without any obvious antagonism, and enjoy frequent social contacts in apparent cordiality, nonetheless by their aspirations they are opposed to those who are turning toward God, and hence they are enemies. For when one group loves and longs for this world and the other wishes to be freed from the world, who cannot see that the former is the enemy of the latter? If they could, they would be dragging them with them to their doom. And yet it is a very special gift to the way of God’s commandments. For often as the mind strives to press ahead toward God, it is roughly handled while on the road and loses its nerve. This is why it often fails to fulfill its good intention, for fear of offending those with whom it lives, who love and pursue other things that are good but nonetheless perishable and transient. Every sane person is separated from them, not geographically but in mind. Bodies are contained in particular places, but the mind’s place is what it loves.

Our life is a struggle, and our existence beset with countless foes who prove to be stronger when we fall into sin. Hence we should do everything to escape their clutches and never come to terms with them; this, after all, is the surest path to insecurity. Paul touches on the horde of those enemies in saying, Our wrestling is not with flesh and blood but with the powers and the authorities and the cosmic rulers of darkness of this age.^[1] Since, then, the horde of enemies is of this kind, we must constantly be on the alert and avoid the assault of sin.

It is as if we saw someone about to fall down a cliff and stopped him with the words, Fellow, where are you heading? A cliff lies in front of you, just so does this author demand that the evil people reverse their course. Likewise, too, unless you were quick to restrain a galloping horse, it would soon be lost. Likewise, too, when as frequently happens the poison of some serpent spreads through the whole of the body, physicians very promptly stop its spreading further, canceling its harmful effect. In exactly the same way do we behave, very promptly checking the evil in us lest it develop further and aggravate the ailment. The wounds of sin, you see, get worse when neglected, and the effects of disease and ill health do not stop short at wounds but even bring about undying death; similarly, if we dealt with small beginnings at the outset, greater consequences would not develop. . . . Accordingly, let us not be indifferent to the slightest sins but suppress them with great severity.

He prays not against his enemies but in their behalf so that they may be changed and may blush with shame at their sins; and they may blush not briefly but forcibly; not with delay but immediately.

As to his saying, Let them blush with shame and be thrown into confusion, I do not see how it can come about except on the day when the rewards of the just are revealed and the punishments of sinners too. For as things are, so far are the godless from blushing with shame that they never cease to insult us. What usually happens is that so successful are they with their mockery that they make the weak blush with shame at the name of Christ. . . . Take the case of someone who wishes to fulfill the sublime expectations of the commandments by sharing what he has, giving to the poor so that his righteousness may endure forever, selling off all his earthly possessions and distributing them to the needy so as to follow Christ . . . Such a person is a butt for the profane banter of the godless and is called insane by those who refuse to be restored to sanity. Often, in order to avoid being called insane by those who are beyond hope, he is afraid to act and puts off what the most trustworthy and powerful of all physicians has ordered. These, then, are not the ones disposed to feel shame at the present time, the ones we wish would stop causing shame to us, calling us back, obstructing and hindering us on the journey we have already decided to make. But the time will come when they will be ashamed.

He adds very quickly, for when everyone has already begun to think that the day of judgment will not come, when people say, ‘Now we have peace,’ sudden destruction will overtake them.^[1] But whenever it does come, the very thing we had ceased to expect will in fact come very quickly. It is only when our hopes are fixed in this life that we can think of life as long. In fact, though, nothing seems to have gone by more quickly than the portion of our life that is already over. When, therefore, the day of judgment comes, sinners will realize how short is the whole of this transient life. The very thing they do not want, or rather do not believe will come, will seem to them not to have been at all slow in coming.

Let those who do not see their own iniquities and yet ridicule my failings mock me no longer. I won divine favor, in fact, and am confident that through my entreaties he will overlook my faults and make me a beneficiary of his pardon.