Jerome — Commentary on Scripture

Psalms 5:11

Our beatitude is of the future, to which alone the promise refers. Let some rule with power; others possess wealth; still others receive honors and recognition. We, however, are miserable in this life in order to be happy in the next. Let us follow Christ our Lord. He who says he believes in Christ “ought himself also to walk, just as he walked.” Christ, the Son of God, “has not come to be served but to serve”;46 he did not come to command but to obey; he did not come to have his own feet washed but to wash the feet of his disciples; he did not come to strike others but to be struck; he did not give blows, but he received them; he did not crucify but was crucified; he did not destroy but himself suffered destruction; he was poor to make us rich; he was scourged for our sake, let us offer our cheek to the blows; let us lay bare our back to receive the stripes; let us imitate Christ. He who is struck with blows imitates Christ; he who strikes imitates the Antichrist.

HOMILY ON PSALM 5

Psalms 5:12

Does anyone really crown with a shield, you ask? Surely, he who crowns, crowns with flowers, or with gold or with other crowns. Now how does one crown with a shield? But the Lord’s shield is a crown, for he surrounds us with his protection and defends us and so crowns us.

HOMILY ON PSALM 5

Psalms 5:12

God is our shield, he is our crown. He protects us as if he were a shield; as God he crowns us. He is our shield; he is our crown.… Let us give thanks to God, and let us beseech him in his good will to be our shield and crown that we may never depart from him and that we may follow him and declare with Jeremiah: “I was not weary of following you.”

HOMILY ON PSALM 5

Psalms 6:4

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

BRIEF COMMENTARY ON PSALM 6

Psalms 6:5

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.

HOMILY ON PSALM 105[106]

Psalms 6:10

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.

BRIEF COMMENTARY ON PSALM 6

Psalms 7:6

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.” 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.”

HOMILY ON PSALM 7

Psalms 7:12-13

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.

HOMILY ON PSALM 7

Psalms 7:16

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.

HOMILY ON PSALM 7

Psalms 8:3

The psalmist is speaking here of the frailty of the body and of human weakness, and what does he say? If you consider his flesh, what is a person? If you consider his spirit, he is noble. Let us by no means scorn the flesh, but let us reject its works. Let us not despise the body that will reign in heaven with Christ. “Flesh and blood can obtain no part in the kingdom of God”; no, not flesh and blood of themselves, but the works of the flesh. “Flesh and blood can obtain no part in the kingdom of God.” How, then, are they going to reign together with Christ; how shall we be seated together in heaven in Christ?

HOMILY ON PSALM 143

Psalms 11:2

Sinners or rebels have ready burning arrows that must be repelled with the shield of faith. In their quivers, they carry darts to shoot at the just, not in the daytime, not in the glimmering night when the moon comfortingly tempers the darkness, but when the night is deep and the darkness groping.

HOMILY ON PSALMS 10[11]

Psalms 15:2

This is a noble thing to say. Never, says the psalmist, has a neighbor murmured against him; never, he says, has he found occasion for his disparagement. This virtue is beyond … human power; it exists by the grace of God. “By whom the reprobate is despised.” Mark what it says: “By whom the reprobate is despised.” Even if he is an emperor, even if he is a governor, if he is a bishop, if he is a priest, … whoever he is, if he is evil, he is nothing in the sight of the saint.

HOMILY ON PSALM 14[15]

Psalms 15:2

Note exactly what the psalmist is saying: “And does justice.” Now, the Holy Spirit did not say, one who practices chastity, who applies wisdom, who exercises fortitude. Yet these are excellent virtues indeed. Wisdom, for example, is of great advantage to us; fortitude is valuable in resisting persecution; finally, temperance and chastity are indispensable in preventing us from losing our souls. Justice alone is the great virtue and the mother of them all. Someone may ask, “How is justice greater than all the other virtues?” The other virtues gratify the one who possesses them; justice does not give pleasure to the one possessing it but instead pleases others. If I am wise, wisdom delights me; if I am brave, my fortitude comforts me; if I have been chaste, my chastity is my joy. On the contrary, justice does not benefit the one who has it but all the wretched who do not have it. Suppose that some poor person has a quarrel with my brother; suppose that my brother is powerful and with his power crushes the other one, I mean, the stranger to me, the poor and wretched person. Of what avai…

Note exactly what the psalmist is saying: “And does justice.” Now, the Holy Spirit did not say, one who practices chastity, who applies wisdom, who exercises fortitude. Yet these are excellent virtues indeed. Wisdom, for example, is of great advantage to us; fortitude is valuable in resisting persecution; finally, temperance and chastity are indispensable in preventing us from losing our souls. Justice alone is the great virtue and the mother of them all. Someone may ask, “How is justice greater than all the other virtues?” The other virtues gratify the one who possesses them; justice does not give pleasure to the one possessing it but instead pleases others. If I am wise, wisdom delights me; if I am brave, my fortitude comforts me; if I have been chaste, my chastity is my joy. On the contrary, justice does not benefit the one who has it but all the wretched who do not have it. Suppose that some poor person has a quarrel with my brother; suppose that my brother is powerful and with his power crushes the other one, I mean, the stranger to me, the poor and wretched person. Of what avail is my wisdom to the poor person? Of what avail my courage? My chastity, how does it help the poor person? Justice is the virtue that benefits him, for I do not regard the person of my brother but judge according to truth. Justice knows no brother, it knows no father, it knows no other; it knows truth; it is not a respecter of persons; it imitates God.

HOMILY ON PSALM 14[15]

Psalms 16:2

God, the omnipotent, does not need our goods, nor do our virtuous acts contribute to the perfection of God, since increase is impossible to him. But whatever we produce by toil and bring forth in labor, that he exacts and takes from us in order to give back to us what he has received.

HOMILY ON PSALM 15[16]

Psalms 16:5

He who in his own person is the Lord’s portion, or has the Lord for his portion, must so bear himself as to possess the Lord and to be possessed by him. He who possesses the Lord and who says with the prophet, “The Lord is my portion,” can hold to nothing beside the Lord. For if he holds to something beside the Lord, the Lord will not be his portion.

LETTER 52.5

Psalms 16:7

What the Lord is saying … is this: My knowledge, deepest thought and the inmost desire of my heart was with me, not only in my heavenly mansions but also when I dwelled in the night of this world and in darkness; it remained in me as man, and it instructed me and never left me, so that whatever the weakness of the flesh was unable to achieve, divine thought and power accomplished.

HOMILY ON PSALM 15[16]

Psalms 16:8

Consider here that it is always in our power to set the Lord before us. The one who resembles the Savior in his integrity places God at his right side and says, he is at my right hand to keep me steadfast. The just person places the Lord at his right hand because he keeps his eyes on him whom he follows, but the sinner casts the word of the Lord behind him.… For the Lord Savior, or through the Lord Savior for his saints, God is always standing at the right side. The just person has, in fact, no left side, and in whatever directions he turns, “the angel of the Lord encamps round about those who fear him and delivers them.”

HOMILY ON PSALM 15[16]

Psalms 16:9

There are some who, from the fact that the Lord entered through closed doors, adduce proof that a different body arose from that which died. Let these heretics hear what the Lord recounts in this verse.… Most certainly, after the Savior suffered and died, that body was laid in the tomb that had been alive; that same body, therefore, that had been lying lifeless and dead in the tomb rose from the dead. If, moreover, that same body arose from the dead in the Lord, how do some come to the conclusion that, though it was wonderful and spiritual, it was not a human body? We are not saying that we deny the body of Christ assumed that glory that we believe we also are going to receive as saints, for then indeed, this corruptible body will put on incorruption, and this mortal body will put on immortality. Just as before the Lord suffered his passion, when he was transformed and glorified on the mountain, he certainly had the same body that he had had down below, although of a different glory, so also after the resurrection, his body was of the same nature as it had been before the passion but…

There are some who, from the fact that the Lord entered through closed doors, adduce proof that a different body arose from that which died. Let these heretics hear what the Lord recounts in this verse.… Most certainly, after the Savior suffered and died, that body was laid in the tomb that had been alive; that same body, therefore, that had been lying lifeless and dead in the tomb rose from the dead. If, moreover, that same body arose from the dead in the Lord, how do some come to the conclusion that, though it was wonderful and spiritual, it was not a human body? We are not saying that we deny the body of Christ assumed that glory that we believe we also are going to receive as saints, for then indeed, this corruptible body will put on incorruption, and this mortal body will put on immortality. Just as before the Lord suffered his passion, when he was transformed and glorified on the mountain, he certainly had the same body that he had had down below, although of a different glory, so also after the resurrection, his body was of the same nature as it had been before the passion but of a highter state of glory and in more majestic appearance.

HOMILY ON PSALM 15[16]

Psalms 16:11

He who is the Way and the Life said that he had learned the ways to life; he had learned in what way people would follow him who said he is the Way and the Life.… The body he had received—and in his body, the entire human race—rejoiced that the divinity of the Son was made known to it. That is why he rejoices, he says, and has the fullness of joy with the Father … and his delight is full and perfect and his happiness ineffable because he sits at the right hand of the Father.… This is his delight, this his happiness to the end of the divine decree … because the Lord suffered and rose from the dead and entered heaven as victor in order to establish humanity at the right hand of the Lord.

HOMILY ON PSALM 15[16]

Psalms 18:2

Unless one has a horn with which to rout his enemies, he is not worthy to be offered to God. That is why the Lord is described as a horn to those who believe in him; and it was with the horns of the cross that he routed his enemies. On the cross he confounded the devil and his entire army. To be sure, Christ was crucified in his body, but on the cross, it was he who was crucifying there the devils. It was not a cross; it was a symbol of triumph, a banner of victory. His whole purpose in mounting the cross was to lift us up from earth. I think the cross of the Savior was the ladder that Jacob saw. On that ladder, angels were descending and ascending; on that ladder, that is, the cross, the Jews were descending and the Gentiles ascending.… Others may have many horns; I have only one. “But as for me, God forbid that I shall glory save in the cross of the Lord, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.”

HOMILY ON PSALM 91[92]