Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Cassiodorus and Hugh of St. Victor: Psalm 17





Hugh of St. Victor: John Mason Neale, Commentary on the Psalms

First, he is our Savior because he saves us from the power of the devil; then our defense, because since we distrust our own strength, he undertakes the charge of us; our Stony Rock, to support us, when we stand; our strength to crown us when we fight. Our Savior in Baptism, our defense in repentance, our Stony Rock by patience, our strength by victory. The order of this first verse is the order of escaping evil.

Cassiodorus: Commentary on Psalm 17

2. I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. He loves the Lord, for he obeys his commands devotedly. As Christ says in the Gospels: He that hearth my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. Diligo (I love) derives from de omnibus eligo (I select from all). Note that the love promised for the future is such as is seen never to have failed. My strength: the prophet is freed from his foes, and rightly proclaims the Lord as His strength, for by His gift he was made to appear stronger to his enemies. This is the twelfth type of definition, which Greek calls kat'epainon and Latin per laudem. His proclamation announces God's nature in individual and varying words: now strength, now firmament, now refuge, now deliverer, now helper, now protector, now horn of salvation. All these terms beautifully denote what the Lord is.

3. The Lord is my firmament, my refuge, and my deliverer: my God is my helper. He justly calls the Lord his firmament, for He enabled him to stand firm in the line against his enemies, and to fight with lively spirit. And my refuge. Precisely so, for when he needed advice, he took refuge in the Scriptures, and found what could help him through the prompting of the Godhead. He rightly proclaims the Lord as his Liberator, for He freed him from the anger of Saul the most savage king as if from the mouth of hell. My God is my helper: charmed by the sweetness of what has been granted him, he repeats in summary the earlier things he has said, for God was everywhere at hand, and guarded him with the protection of His strength. But note that he runs through all the epithets in such a way as not to presume that gifts have been bestowed on his own deserving merit.

And in him will I put my trust. My protector and the horn of my salvation, my helper. He now makes a trusting request, as one who after seeing examples of the Lord's kindnesses is confident of His grace, for he says that he has trusting hope for the future, having experienced the Lord as Helper in the past. My protector expresses his being guarded when ambuscaded by his enemies. The description of the Lord here as the horn of his salvation refers to the scattering of the enemy, for horns are beasts' weapons by which they maintain their safety in crafty contention. My helper: the sweetness of the kindness made him repeat the phrase, for earlier he called Him by the same word helper, which he repeats here.

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