Eusebius of Caesarea — Commentary on Scripture

Psalms 1:1

Our Savior, who made many blessed, offers happiness in abundance. He is the first of them who rightly are called blessed. The first psalm, therefore, must refer to him inasmuch as he is the husband of his bride the church. Which, it seems, the Hebrew word for “man” indicates when it is written with the article added.

COMMENTARY ON THE PSALMS 1:1

Psalms 1:1

The first are the people who are saturated with well-known false reasoning, wicked people who grasp nothing firmly and with stability; they are swayed through their own will with no testing of their oppressive thought. The second are people who time after time fall into sin after the understanding of truth. The third group includes morally corrupt people who labor in no measure of grief, but they will thoroughly fill others with corrupt doctrine, either by their thinking, or by their behavior or by both. These are people who are grounded in evil, while the second group continues in sin and the first walks the way of error. The one who is called blessed is freed and delivered from all of these.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 1:1

Psalms 2:1-2

The leaders of the nations throughout the whole world and the kings of the earth who have held dominion at various times have all been drawn into this impious alliance together, holding on to whatever insult or for whatever reason, or having suffered whatever offense, so that they devise treacheries, they enter into the wicked counsel against the Lord of the universe and God the King and against his anointed one.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 2:2

Psalms 3:4

The preceding psalm calls to mind this mountain when it says, “I have installed my king on mount Zion, my holy mountain.” Christ was the one he was speaking of, and now David bears witness that he must be heard plainly by Christ from his holy mountain. Further, he says who is going to hear him except the Lord who has been installed as king upon Zion his holy mountain? Through this statement he [David], now alone, believed that he would be forgiven, that his glory would return and that his head would be lifted up.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 3:5

Psalms 3:5

As in the previous psalm so here the future is prophesied.… “I lie down, and I sleep” is spoken prophetically, namely, I will lie down, I will sleep, I will rise up, because you, Oh Lord, are my sustainer, my glory and the lifter of my head.… For “sleep” indicates death, concerning which the future is prophesied for us. It refers to the time of the life of the Savior, which when it was finished, prophecy came to an end; when, namely, the Son of man Christ descended even to hell and the Savior was clearly shown to the captives who were awaiting destruction; so as in the time of his resurrection from death many bodies of the saints who had been sleeping will live again with him, in whom was the likeness of the spirit of David.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 3:6

Psalms 3:6

He predicts that there are going to be many thousands of adversaries who will wish to hinder the resurrection of the saints because they are jealous of their salvation: which ones I will regard as nothing, he said. I have trusted my defender, the victor over death, who, after the bronze gates were torn down and the iron bolts thoroughly broken, opened the gates of death that had been closed for ages, and with those people known to him, from which number was David, he prepared for the resurrection life.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 3:7

Psalms 3:7

When he foresees his deliverance after death, he has faith that he has been saved by grace and that kindness has been granted. He is certain that this faith of some in the resurrection of the Savior is able to come to him, and consequently he prays that the resurrection of the Lord be hastened so that through it he himself will experience salvation.… Now, he says, you have broken the teeth of sinners; that is, their conversations and blasphemous words hurled against me you have stripped away.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 3:8

Psalms 4:2

David seems to be speaking here of those who, when being tested and put through various trials, would rather do anything than find refuge in God. Why is it necessary, he asks, to be disturbed and upset at the conditions of the times? What makes you hand yourselves over to vanity, you heavy-hearted people? Why do you seek lies and leave the truth behind? Rather than being informed by these things, know that the Lord God is the one who watches and controls everything, the one who never ever deserts his own righteous ones but always does miraculous things for them. You yourselves, as the upright, know that the Lord is going to be near to you and me whenever you will call out to him.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 4:3

Psalms 4:8

Even if grief, calamities, temptations, disasters are not lacking to me in this present life, nevertheless there is a future time for me in which I will depart from the body and sleep in peace.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 4:9-10

Psalms 5:3

The person “who inherits” (as in the title of the psalm) is consecrated by prayers and by service to God as the first fruits of his daily deeds. Moreover, it is a token of his innocence to go forth from his chamber cleansed by his pure prayers and to be able to say to God, “Early in the morning I will wait on you, and I will look up.”

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 5:1-5

Psalms 5:9

Vain is the heart of the philosophers of alien ideas, about whom it is said, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain”; from their throats they spew out death-bearing dogmas as they teach the Word of God is not alive, and they bring forth lies and words of death.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 5:10-11

Psalms 5:11

It is the goal of good people to receive the inheritance promised to them, to follow the Lord, to have him living within as a companion, in accordance with those things that were promised, saying, “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 5:12

Psalms 6:2

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.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 6:2-4

Psalms 7:7

“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.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 7:7-8

Psalms 7:11

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,” but the Lord is a judge of thoughts and the feelings of the spirit. There is no judgment hidden from him.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 7:10, 11

Psalms 7:16

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.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 7:15-17

Psalms 7:17

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.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 7:18

Psalms 8:3

You are mindful of man, and you have concern for him because you did not make him as if he were a small and worthless animal, but he is worthy of so much honor that he is celebrated with hymns from the mouths of infants and sucklings.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 8:4-5

Psalms 8:6

When it is says, “You have set him over the works of your hand,” clearly the word reveals that he is set over the heavens, a man established by the God of the universe. How and when are these future things unless when the kingdom of heaven is received as an inheritance according to the promises made and according to the word of the apostle: “The heir of God and the coheirs of Christ”? So in this age, let the earthly creatures as oxen, cattle, beasts of burden, birds and fish, be subject to humankind. To humankind is reserved the life common to angels in the heavenly city of God, when people are received into the kingdom of heaven and appointed over the works of the hands of God, and they will be the rulers and protectors of all things of the heavens, the moon and stars and everything of the heavens above. The letter to the Hebrews considering this word treats the statement for the future age: “All things you have placed under his feet.” For after the lower course of this life, whenever that new age comes in which the kingdom of heaven is awaited and following the glorious appearance…

When it is says, “You have set him over the works of your hand,” clearly the word reveals that he is set over the heavens, a man established by the God of the universe. How and when are these future things unless when the kingdom of heaven is received as an inheritance according to the promises made and according to the word of the apostle: “The heir of God and the coheirs of Christ”? So in this age, let the earthly creatures as oxen, cattle, beasts of burden, birds and fish, be subject to humankind. To humankind is reserved the life common to angels in the heavenly city of God, when people are received into the kingdom of heaven and appointed over the works of the hands of God, and they will be the rulers and protectors of all things of the heavens, the moon and stars and everything of the heavens above. The letter to the Hebrews considering this word treats the statement for the future age: “All things you have placed under his feet.” For after the lower course of this life, whenever that new age comes in which the kingdom of heaven is awaited and following the glorious appearance of our Savior all things will be subjected, according to that witness that has been made by the promise from the Father to him: “Sit on my right, until I place your enemies a footstool under your feet.”

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 8:6

Psalms 9:3

These things, he said, I will assuredly do “when my enemies are turned back.” But who is such an enemy unless it is death, the enemy of life about which it is said, “You knew the enemy death will be destroyed.” Destruction will be Death’s end when he is turned back. But “back” where, unless the return into the pristine condition when he did not exist? “For God did not make death, but through the envy of the devil, death entered into the world.” When, therefore, as death is turned back, it will no longer be, then all the rest of the enemies will be enfeebled and the enemies of your Word will be destroyed before your face.

COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 9:3-4