The story from which this prophecy took its origin is easy to identify in the second book of Kings. For there, Hushai, the friend of King David, crossed over to the camp of Absalom, David’s son, who was waging war against his father, to spy on Absalom’s tactics and to report what he was plotting against his father at the instigation of Ahithophel. It is not the story itself that is due for consideration in this psalm. The prophet has drawn back the veil of mysteries from it, and if we have crossed over to Christ, let the veil be removed.

That same adversary, Absalom, as if he has been born again from ourselves, prepares the war against us. Our sound judgment concerning the matter, or rather our alliance with God, turns him who is bloodthirsty against us back. For because he attributes the cause of the good things that have been accomplished for him through the words of Cush to God, he composes this thanksgiving. . . . It would be worthwhile to apply the figures of the story to the virtuous life, how the advice that saves us becomes the strangling of the adversary; and this saving advice has been recorded, on the one hand, in the history, and on the other, in the psalm.

David wrote the psalm, offering songs of thanksgiving to God. . . . Not in Hushai, nor in human wisdom, nor in that man’s shrewdness nor in my advice but in you have I hoped. Let us therefore act likewise: even if some achievement comes to us through human beings, let us give thanks for them to God, both for the benefits that fall to us through our own means as well as through others. . . . See the wonderful frame of mind with which he speaks, which was customary with him. He did not say, note, O Lord God, but O Lord my God; and elsewhere, O God, my God, I look for you at break of day.^[1] . . . This is the way God acts with righteous people, and being God of everyone equally he says he belongs to righteous people individually. I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.^[2]

While my son trusts in numbers, weapons, horses and above all the audacity and frenzy of those with him, I hope in you alone, who are capable of saving me not only from him but also from all those conspiring with him against me.

Therefore, after saying, in the plural, Save me from all my persecutors, the psalmist went on to use the singular, saying, lest he ever, like a lion, tear my soul. He did not say, In case they tear, because he knows exactly which enemy, one violently opposed to the perfect soul, stands in his way.

For proof that the devil is called a lion in Scripture, listen to it saying, Your enemy the devil prowls around like a lion roaring and looking for someone to devour.^[1] And this inspired author himself says elsewhere, You will tread on the lion and the serpent.^[2] This beast is wily, you see; but if we are on the alert, this lion and serpent will be less than dirt in importance, neither will it mount an assault against us directly, but if it does mount an assault, it will be trodden on. Walk on snakes and scorpions,^[3] Scripture says, remember. He goes around in an awful rage, in fact, like a lion; but if he attacks those who have Christ, and his cross on their forehead, and the fire of the Spirit and the lamp that is never spent, he will not succeed even in looking them in the eye but will turn tail, not daring even to face about. And for you to learn that the words are not froth and bubble, consider, pray, the example of Paul. I mean, he too was human, but this lion had a such a healthy respect for him as to shun his garments and his shadow. Rightly so: he could not bear the fragrance of Christ emanating and ascending from him and had not the strength to raise his eyes to the lamp of his virtue.

Who is that one except he who says, There is no one who can save except me,^[1] the one who has come to seek and to save that which has been lost^[2] and to give his soul as a ransom for many?^[3] These things show that God the Father saves through God the Son. Through this the deity of the Father and the Son must not be distinguished by the words above and must not be seen as different from one another.

Cush is the one who went to Abasalom in the guise of a traitor, and brought to naught the counsel of Ahithophel and saved David from death. When David learned of these things, he knew that his Savior was not a man but God.

To be sure, he had assembled an army and had a large number with him; so why does he say, with no one to ransom or save me? Because he considers not even the whole world as help should he not enjoy influence from on high, nor does he think of it as solitude if he is alone, as long as he shares in help from God.

This must everywhere be our concern, not simply to pray but to pray in such a way as to be heard. It is not sufficient that prayer effects what is intended, unless we so direct it as to appeal to God. For the Pharisee too prayed and achieved nothing, and again the Jews prayed but God turned away from them in their prayer. They did not pray, you see, as they should have prayed. Hence we were bidden to pray the prayer most likely to be heard. . . . Being heard happens in this fashion: first, of course, worthiness to receive something; then, praying in accordance with God’s laws; third, persistence; fourth, asking nothing earthly; fifth, seeking things to our real benefit; sixth, contributing everything of our own.

When the perfect soul prays for the words of Hushai, the son of Jemini, it prays for the knowledge of that secret and that silence, which the Lord, who is merciful and kindly disposed toward us, effected for our salvation, enduring the plots of his betrayer and bearing them with the utmost patience. It is as if he were to say to this perfect soul, explaining the meaning of the secret, It was for you, ungodly sinner, that I endured my betrayer in deep silence and inexhaustible patience, so that your iniquities might be washed away by the shedding of my blood. Should you, then, not imitate me and, in your turn, refrain from rewarding evil with evil? Perceiving and understanding what the Lord has done for him and by following his example advancing toward perfection, the psalmist says, If I have repaid those who have paid me back with evil, that is, if I have not myself done what you, by doing it, taught me, let me fall empty-handed before my enemies.

The soul of the one who is just, severing itself from affection for the body, has its life hidden with Christ in God, so that it can say like the apostle: It is now no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live in faith.^[1] But the soul of the sinner and of one who lives according to the flesh and is defiled by the pleasures of the body is wrapped up in the passions of the flesh as in mud; and the enemy, trampling on this soul, strives to pollute it still more and, as it were, to bury it, treading on him who has fallen, and with his feet trampling him into the ground.

This is the dust that the wind hurls forth from the face of the earth, that is to say, the vain and silly boastings of the proud, puffed up but without substance, like a handful of dust lifted high by the wind. . . . This particular vice of groundless boasting is the only vice there really is, or the one most to be avoided by those who are perfect. For the soul conquers last of all the very vice by which it fell first. The starting point of all sin is pride, and the starting point of human pride is rebellion against God.^[1]

So, it is spoken: He asks that God on high appear at the borders of his enemies. Then, he says, their iniquities that make them my enemies will end. Perhaps the boundaries of the enemies refer to the pride in which they have rejoiced. They think they are going to dwell with stability in the furthermost boundaries.

Arise, he says, using the word to mean appear; he employs a human and obscure expression, as though God were asleep, when really he is hidden and unrecognized in his secret plans.

Arise, in order that a vast multitude may believe in you, for after you have risen, what else would we pray for? Return to the Father. Above them on high be enthroned.^[1] For whose sake? For the assembly of the peoples. In that you suffered, you suffered for us; in that you rose again, you rose for us; in that you ascended to the Father, ascend for us. Above them on high be enthroned. And no one has ascended into heaven except him who has descended from heaven: the Son of man who is in heaven.^[2]

The mass of adversaries cannot otherwise be destroyed, if the Lord has not risen on our behalf, and death must by all means precede the resurrection. He, then, who has revealed the resurrection of the Lord has, at the same time, shown that which is bound up together with the resurrection, I mean, of course, the mystery related to the passion. For this reason, having been inspired by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, he says, Rise up, O Lord, in your anger; be exalted in the ends of my enemies. By anger he indicates the retributive power of the just judge, and by the rest he indicates the destruction of evil. For that which is perceived as contrary to the good, being only hostile by nature, is the evil whose end is destruction and a passing over into nonexistence. He, then, who said, Be exalted in the ends of my enemies, predicts, through the evil of his enemies being brought to an end, that the course to evil no longer remains in [his] life.

And a congregation of people shall surround you. It is evident that if one unjust person is chastened, many will be converted. Punish, therefore, the wickedness of this person, in order that a great congregation of people may surround you.

A great crowd of people will surround you when you [Lord Jesus] root out your enemies, when the lie of the demons is destroyed, when the assembly of the elect is established and when it becomes the one who calls the nations. Then you, placed in the midst of it as if in a chorus, will bring a hymn to that church worthy of your Father, and so by you, O Lord, it is spoken: I will tell your name to my brothers; I will praise you in the midst of the church. David prophesies all these things through the Holy Spirit, indicating a theophany of the Savior, things that are not to be passed over as for himself alone but for every race of humankind.

In these words the divine David has not left a testimony to his own righteousness: we hear him protesting the opposite, because I acknowledge my lawlessness, and my sin is always before me; and, I said, ‘I shall declare my lawlessness against myself to the Lord,’ but he calls it justice in the matter before us. I committed no wrong, in fact, he is saying, against Absalom, or Ahithophel or those arrayed in battle with them against me. So I beg to be judged in the light of this righteousness and innocence and not in the light of the faults previously committed by me. I ask for judgment on these current grounds and not for a payment of penalty at this time for other sins.

These words seem to contain some boastfulness and to be very much like the prayer of the Pharisee who was exalting himself, but, if one considers them reasonably, the prophet will be seen to be far from such a disposition. . . . According to my justice [means] according to that attainable by people and possible for those living in the flesh. And according to my innocence, [in this] he names his innocence as if it were simplicity and ignorance of things useful to know according to the saying in the Proverbs: The innocent believes every word. Since, therefore, we people through ignorance fall unguardedly into many sins, he entreats God and asks to meet with pardon because of his innocence. From this it is evident that these words show the humility of the speaker rather than arrogance.

Judge me, Lord, according to my righteousness and my harmlessness, which are above me. . . . The addition above me can be understood as referring . . . to righteousness. . . . By such an addition the psalmist shows that the soul does not have its righteousness and innocency through itself but through God, who gives light and brightness. For of the soul he says in another psalm, You, Lord, will light my lamp,^[1] and of John the Baptist it is said, He was not himself in the light but came to bear witness about the Light;^[2] and again, He was a burning, shining lamp.^[3] That Light, from which souls are lit like lamps, shines forth with its own dazzling splendor, not with one borrowed from someone else. This Light is Truth itself. When, therefore, the psalm says, According to my righteousness and my innocence, which are above me, it is as though a burning, shining lamp were to say, Judge me according to the flame that is over me, that is, not by that which I am of myself, but by that flame with which I shine when set on fire from you.

There is an important difference between human righteousness and that of God; the Psalmist wishes to be judged according to the righteousness of the Lord, knowing for sure that this will mean salvation for him.

God sees the thoughts of everyone; this is what the word heart means. He also sees the things that give everyone pleasure: they are to be understood by the expression inward parts. . . . God, therefore, examines our heart and explores carefully to see that it is where our treasure is, that is, in heaven. He examines also our inward parts and explores carefully to see that we do not capitulate to flesh and blood but rejoice in God. Thus he guides the just person’s conscience in his own presence, guides it in the place where no human being sees; he alone sees who discerns what each person thinks and what causes each person delight. For delight is the object of our efforts: each of us strives by care and thought to attain our own delight. Therefore the one who examines the heart sees the things that we really care about. But he who explores our inward parts sees also the object of our striving and where we seek our joy, so that when he finds that our efforts do not incline toward the lust of the flesh, or toward the craving of the eyes or toward worldly ambition, all of which pass away like a cloud, but are raised upward to the joys of things eternal, which are disturbed by no changefulness, then God, who examines the heart and the inward parts, can direct the just. For our works, expressed in deeds and words, can be well known by other people, but only the God who examines the heart and the inward parts knows with what intention they are done and what we want to gain through them.

My help is not from wealth or from corporal resources or from my own power and strength nor from human ties of kinship, but my help is from God. What assistance the Lord sends to those who fear him, we have learned elsewhere in a psalm that says, The angel of the Lord shall encamp round about them that fear him and shall deliver them.^[1] And in another place: The angel who has delivered me.^[2]

Medicine has two functions, one whereby infirmity is cured, the other whereby good health is maintained. . . . In the former case it is said, Save me, Lord, because of your mercy. In the latter case, my righteous help is from the Lord, who saves the upright in heart. Both in fact save us, but while the former effects the transition from sickness to health, the latter upholds us in that state of good health. Therefore in the former case the assistance is merciful, because the sinner has no merit of his own but still longs to be justified by believing in the one who justifies the ungodly. In the latter case, the assistance is just, because it is given to one who is already righteous. Therefore, the sinner who confessed, I am weak, was right to say there, Save me, Lord, because of your mercy, and the just person who said previously, If I have repaid those who paid me back with evil, can say now, My righteous help is from the Lord who saves the upright in heart. For if God dispenses the medicine by which in our weakness we are healed, how much more should he provide the means by which we are preserved once we are well? If Christ died for us when we were still sinners, how much more, now that we are justified, shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him?

He is just who will recompense each of us in proportion to our works. He is strong who, while himself most powerful, for our salvation endured even godless persecutors. He is long-suffering who did not, immediately after his resurrection, seize those who persecuted him, in order to punish them; instead he bore with them, in order that they might eventually turn from such impiety to salvation. And still he bears with them, reserving the final punishment until the final judgment and even today still inviting sinners to repentance.

God is a righteous judge, . . . who does not give free rein to his wrath every day. Instead, he also shows lovingkindness, by which he bears people’s faults for a longer time. For whenever he sees people not reaping profit from it, he gives them further opportunity with the addition of threats, putting the punishments off; but if they scorn the opportunity and persist in sinning, he immediately brings on their ruin in keeping with justice.

God alone is the just Judge, he alone is the one who sees hearts. He gives to each one according to his works. Truly, man looks at the outward appearance,^[1] but the Lord is a judge of thoughts and the feelings of the spirit. There is no judgment hidden from him.

Do not be so poorly disposed toward God as to think that he is too weak to avenge, for he is also strong. What reason is there, then, that swift vengeance is not inflicted on the sinner? Because he is patient, he is not angry every day.

If long-suffering were not associated with his justice, there would have been nothing to stop him punishing day in day out, since sinners always provide grounds for just punishment. Sinners, however, should not for this reason be disposed to indifference: those of right mind rightly respect long-suffering as a threat and take delay in wrath as an aggravation of punishment; this should also be the attitude of those on whom the imposition of judgment does not fall promptly.

These are not words of punishment, note, but of threat: he said wield, not inflict; bent his bow, not fired the arrow. And to teach us against whom he will fire the arrows, he immediately attached the words he made his arrows into flaming shafts, that is, those taking combustible material of sin, building with wood, hay and stubble, as the divine apostle says, will be struck with these fiery arrows.

Just as men who are polishing up their arms indicate by this action the attack in war, so Scripture, wishing to bespeak a movement of God toward vengeance, says that he polishes his sword. He has bent his bow. . . . There is no bowstring that stretches the bow of God, but a punitive power, now strained tight, again loosened. Scripture threatens the sinner that future punishments are prepared for him, if he remains in his sin.

I would happily understand [the bow in this verse] as the holy Scriptures, where the rigidity of the Old Testament is bent and subdued by the strength of the New Testament, as by some sort of bowstring. The apostles are launched from it like arrows, or divine proclamations are hurled from it. These arrows he has fashioned . . . to make those who are struck by them blaze with the love of God. . . . Once struck by these and set on fire by them, you must blaze with so great a love for the kingdom of heaven that you scorn the tongues of all who block your path and want to call you back from your fixed resolve. . . . But the Lord is said to have prepared not only arrows but also implements of death in his bow. It may be asked what the implements of death are. Perhaps they are heretics? For they, too, out of the same bow, that is, from the same Scriptures, leap into souls who are destined not to be set alight with love but to be destroyed by poisons, but this only because they deserve it. And so even that arrangement is to be attributed to divine providence, not because providence makes them sinners, but because it works them into an ordered framework after they have sinned. For by reading the Scriptures with a perverse hidden agenda because of sin, they are forced to understand them perversely. This itself is a punishment for sin. And yet by their death, the children of the catholic church are raised from sleep, as if pricked by thorns, and they progress to an understanding of the divine Scriptures.

Many maintain that these words of the psalm refer to the devil; they mean, unless you will have been converted, unless you will have repented, you will be in the power of the devil. He will bend and aim his bow. The devil always has his bow ready, and he is ever alert to shoot his arrows and strike us down. . . . They whose hearts are burning with lust and passion are the very ones whom the devil conquers. . . . The psalm did not say for those who are about to burn—that is, about to burn from his arrows. The hearts of those he sees already burning, no matter whose they are, are his target.

The ones who are burning are those who have received the flaming arrows of the devil.

A pit [in earthly matters] is opened when compliance is given to the evil prompting of earthbound desires. And it is dug out, when, after consenting, we press on to putting the deception into practice.

We do not find the name of pit ever assigned in the divine Scriptures in the case of something good or a well of water in the case of something bad. As to the reason for the pits being assigned among the worse things and the wells among the better, we think it is this. The water in the pit is something acquired, having fallen from the sky; but in the wells, streams of water, buried before the places were dug out, are revealed when the heaps of earth covering them and the material of any sort whatsoever, lying on them, which is also all earth, have been removed. Now, it is as if there were a pit in souls in which the better things, changed and debased, fall down, when a person, having resolved to have nothing good and noble of his own, puts to flight the thoughts of the good and noble that have slipped into it, twisting them to evildoing and to contradictions of truth. And again, there are wells, when a light and a stream of water unimpaired in word and in doctrines break forth after the baser materials that had been covering it are removed. Therefore, it is necessary for each one to prepare a well for himself, in order that he may guard the command mentioned previously, which says, Drink water out of your own cistern and the streams of your own well. Thus we shall be called the sons of those who have dug the wells, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But a pit must not be dug lest we fall into the hole, as it is said in this place, and so fail to hear the words written in Jeremiah in reproach of sinners, for, God says concerning them what we have briefly mentioned before: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

Truly, he sins first against himself, then he injures another; since sin is harmful and ruinous, foremost it harms and roughly handles the one sinning. … If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit.^[1] In this saying it must be realized that teachers and students become blinded by foolishness and wantonness.

These words seem to me to have been fulfilled literally in Ahithophel. At the time of the uprising of Cush, he was a man harboring envy, branded by disgrace, falling out as the watchman, who used his skill to be able to see ahead and predict future events that the affairs of Absalom would fail. Before he himself could be substituted by the men of David, he removed himself, and, withdrawing from the household, he hanged himself with a noose. While he gathered the seeds of evil in his thinking and devised against David whatever he had conceived in his thoughts, he brought forth the same seeds for his own destruction. . . . These words express the general opinion that as anyone plans evil in his spirit against his neighbor and wishes to harm others and builds a pit for their ruin, he does these things against himself, and his trouble will return on his own head. Each one will cause his own sentence on the day of judgment by his own deeds and will receive the fruits of his own labors.

Because he himself did not wish to escape sin, he has been subjected to sin like a slave. . . . His iniquity will be over him, since he is subject to his own iniquity. . . . It oppresses him and weighs him down and does not allow him to fly back to rest with the saints. This happens when in a wicked person reason is enslaved and lust holds the upper hand.

Just as anyone who tosses a stone straight up into the air and is foolish enough not to move out of its way is struck on the head and wounded by his own stone, in the same way, the devil downs himself by his own arrogance; the pride that exalts him is the same pride that defeats him. His mischief shall recoil on his own head. All the devil wants is to hold his head up high, but he cannot. Why can he not? Because his mischief shall recoil on his own head and crush him down.

He has built traps for no one. He has dug a pit for no one. He has despised iniquity. Knowing the future destruction of the wicked at judgment, he said, I will give thanks to the Lord according to his righteousness, my righteous works having been brought forth at the tribunal; and I will sing to the name of the Lord most high, bound by the hope that I am going to be received into the choir of those who are going to follow after salvation through him, through his merit.

Whoever sees that what souls deserve is ordered by God in such a way that while each is given his due, the beauty of the whole is in no sense violated, praises God in all things. This is the confession not of sinners but of the righteous. . . . The psalmist says, I will confess to the Lord in accordance with his justice, as if he were someone who saw that darkness was not created by God but set in a providential order. . . . There is no such thing as a nature consisting in darkness. For all nature, insofar as it is nature, must exist. . . . Therefore, whoever deserts the God by whom he was made and leans in the direction of that from which he was made, that is, toward nothing, is darkened in this sin. And yet he does not perish completely but is given a place in the ordered hierarchy among the lowest.