Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Many take this chapter and song literally as concerning Christ, and the victory and redemption of Christ, because the Prophet here frequently speaks with verbs of the future tense. So St. Jerome, Theodoret, Theophylact, Euthymius, Haymo, Rupert, Emmanuel, and St. Augustine in book XVIII of the City of God, II, 32, seem to think. Others take these things literally as concerning Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon and the liberator of the Jews, to whom therefore they accommodate all these future events, as if they truly occurred then just as they sound, and they prove this from Herodotus and Xenophon. So Hugh, Albert, Lyra, and Mariana.
But I say that literally the Prophet, when in response to his complaint about the tyranny, dominion, and destruction of the Chaldeans against the Jews, he had received from God the answer concerning the punishment of Babylon and the liberation of the Jews from it by Cyrus, gives thanks to God with this song, and beseeches Him to carry out the same in reality. Accordingly he sings the great deeds, plagues, and wonders which God wrought for the Hebrews, from their departure from Egypt to their entrance into the land of Canaan, to signify that God will work similar things for the same people in their liberation from Babylon, and their return to Judea; all of which he ascribes to the merits of Christ Jesus, whom Cyrus typically foreshadowed. So the Chaldee, the Hebrews, Vatablus, Arias, Jansenius; and finally St. Jerome, Theodoret, and Theophylact also acknowledge the same. That this is so is clear first, from chapters I and II, especially verse 3, and from the whole connection of this prophecy. For this is the report of which he says in verse 1: O Lord, I have heard Your report, and was afraid. For in chapters I and II, hearing the cruelty of the Chaldeans against the Jews, he was terrified and alarmed; second, because for that reason from the beginning of the chapter up to verse 24, he recalls very many benefits granted to the Hebrews at the departure from Egypt, to demonstrate that similar ones will be granted to them at their departure from Babylon, and to sharpen their faith and hope for believing this; third, he clearly indicates the same when he says in verse 16: That I may go up to our armed people. Finally, the title signifies this: a prayer for ignorances, that is, for his own sins and those of the people, lest God on account of them should delay the liberation from Babylon, although promised, or entirely revoke and take it away.
In the allegorical sense, however, which is chiefly intended here by the Holy Spirit, he speaks of Christ, and the mysteries and redemption of Christ. For just as Nebuchadnezzar the tyrant, and the devastator of the people of God, bore the type of the devil; so Cyrus, the liberator of the same, was a figure of Christ the Redeemer: and just as Babylon represents the kingdom of sin, so the liberation from Babylon represented the redemption of Christ who overthrew the kingdom of sin, and freed mankind from its and the devil's servitude. For this reason the Prophet now speaks in the past tense, to signify that he is speaking literally of Pharaoh, Egypt, and the Hebrews of the past; now in the future, to signify that in the literal sense similar things will befall the Jews through Cyrus, in the storming of Babylon. But allegorically similar, indeed far greater things, are to be bestowed on all nations through Christ, the Redeemer of the world. Hence he names Christ and Jesus, verse 18: I will exult, he says, in God my Jesus, and he reviews in typical fashion His birth, miracles, and deeds up to His last judgment. So Theophylact, Euthymius, Rupert, Ribera, Titelmann, Jansenius on this canticle. In a similar way, Moses in Exodus XV, Deborah in Judges V, Judith in her last chapter, Hannah in 1 Kings II, David in Psalms LXXI and LXXXVIII celebrate in their songs the victories and benefits of their own time literally, which allegorically they represent the victory and grace of Christ.
Note here that because the allegorical sense is chiefly intended here by the Holy Spirit, certain things are inserted which more fittingly apply to the allegory than to the letter, such as the name Jesus; and what the Septuagint has in verse 2: In the midst of two animals You shall be known; and verse 5: Before His face death shall go; and: The devil shall go forth before His feet. In a similar way Isaiah mixes allegory with the literal sense in chapter XIV, where under the type of Lucifer, he depicts the fall of Belshazzar; and Ezekiel, chapter XXVIII, where under the type of the Cherub, he represents the ruin of the king of Tyre.
Literally therefore there are three parts to this canticle. First, the Prophet beseeches God to actually perform and accomplish the promised work of redemption of the Hebrews from Babylon. Second, from verse 2 to 16, he recalls and celebrates the great deeds of God, performed in their liberation from Egypt, by which he tacitly asks that He perform similar ones in their liberation from Babylon. Third, in verse 16, he returns to verse 1, and stands in awe at the disaster of Babylon: then he rejoices and exults in the Lord, who will liberate the Jews from Babylon, and will lead them back to Judea like swift and nimble deer. the heavens and the very soul be silent to itself, and pass beyond itself, not by thinking of itself; let dreams and imagined revelations be silent, every tongue, and every sign, and whatever comes to pass in passing — if all these be completely silent to someone: for if anyone listens, all these things say: We did not make ourselves, but He who abides forever made us. If, after saying this, they now fall silent, and He alone speaks — not through them, but through Himself — so that we hear His word not through the tongue of flesh, nor through the voice of an angel, nor through the sound of a cloud, nor through the riddle of a similitude; but we hear Him whom we love in these things, Him Himself without these things, just as we now extended ourselves, and with swift thought touched the eternal Wisdom abiding above all things; if this were continued, and other visions of a far different kind were withdrawn, and this one alone were to ravish and absorb and enclose its beholder in interior joys, so that eternal life might be such as was that moment of understanding for which we sighed — is not this what is meant by, 'Enter into the joy of your Lord'? And when shall this be?" they too confessed the same. I questioned the sea, and the deeps, and the creeping things of living souls; and they answered: We are not your God, seek above us. I questioned the heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars, etc., and they cried out with a loud voice: He made us. I questioned the whole mass of the world about my God, and it answered me: I am not He, but He made me," etc. The same author [Augustine], Book IX, chapter x, conversing with his mother St. Monica, shortly before her death, about the eternal life of the Saints, which is God — which neither eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man: "Raising ourselves, he says, with a more ardent affection toward the Selfsame, we walked step by step through all bodily things, and heaven itself, whence sun and stars shine upon the earth. And still we ascended inwardly, thinking and speaking of You, and marveling at Your works, and we came to our own minds, and transcended them, that we might reach the region of unfailing abundance, where You feed Israel forever, etc. We were saying therefore: If to anyone the tumult of the flesh were silent, if the phantasms of earth, and of waters, and of the air were silent, if...
Many take this chapter and canticle literally as referring to Christ, and the victory and redemption of Christ, because the Prophet here frequently speaks using verbs in the future tense. So St. Jerome, Theodoret, Theophylact, Euthymius, Haymo, Rupert, Emmanuel, and St. Augustine (Book XVIII of The City of God, 11, 32) seem to hold. Others take these words literally as referring to Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon and liberator of the Jews, and accordingly apply all these future events to him, as though they truly happened just as they sound, and they prove this from Herodotus and Xenophon. So Hugh, Albert, Lyra, and Mariana.
But I say that the Prophet, literally, after having received from God — in response to his complaint about the tyranny, dominion, and destruction inflicted by the Chaldeans upon the Jews — the answer about the punishment of Babylon and the liberation of the Jews from it through Cyrus, gives thanks to God in this canticle and entreats Him to carry out that very thing in reality. Therefore he sings of the great deeds, plagues, and prodigies which God wrought for the Hebrews, from their departure out of Egypt up to their entrance into the land of Canaan, to signify that God would perform similar things for them in their liberation from Babylon and their return to Judea; all of which he ascribes to the merits of Christ Jesus, whom Cyrus typologically foreshadowed. So the Chaldean paraphrase, the Hebrews, Vatablus, Arias, Jansenius; and St. Jerome, Theodoret, and Theophylact ultimately acknowledge the same. That this is so is clear, first, from chapters 1 and 2, especially verse 3, and from the entire connection of this prophecy. For this is the message about which he says in verse 1: 'Lord, I have heard Your report, and I was afraid.' For in chapters 1 and 2, hearing the savagery of the Chaldeans against the Jews, he feared greatly and was terrified; second, because for that reason, from the beginning of the chapter up to verse 24, he commemorates very many benefits bestowed upon the Hebrews in the exodus from Egypt, to demonstrate that similar things would be granted to them in their departure from Babylon, and to sharpen their faith and hope to believe this; third, he clearly indicates the same when he says in verse 16: 'That I may ascend to the people girded for battle who are ours.' Finally, the title signifies this — 'A prayer for ignorances,' that is, for his own sins and those of the people, lest God, on account of them, delay or entirely revoke and withdraw their liberation from Babylon, even though it had been promised.
In the allegorical sense, however, which is principally intended here by the Holy Spirit, he speaks of Christ, and the mysteries and redemption of Christ. For just as Nebuchadnezzar the tyrant and devastator of God's people bore the type of the devil, so Cyrus the liberator of the same people was a figure of Christ the Redeemer; and just as Babylon represents the kingdom of sin, so the liberation from Babylon represented the redemption of Christ, who overthrew the kingdom of sin and freed men from its servitude and that of the devil. For this reason the Prophet now speaks in the past tense, to signify that he is speaking literally of Pharaoh, the Egyptian, and the Hebrews of past times; now in the future tense, to signify that... literally similar things would befall the Jews through Cyrus, in the conquest of Babylon. Allegorically, however, similar things — indeed far greater ones — would be bestowed upon all nations through Christ, the Redeemer of the world. Hence he names Christ and Jesus in verse 18: 'I will exult,' he says, 'in God my Jesus,' and he recounts His birth, miracles, and deeds up to His last judgment in a typological manner. So Theophylact, Euthymius, Rupert, Ribera, Titelmann, and Jansenius on this canticle. In a similar way, Moses in Exodus 15, Deborah in Judges 5, Judith in her last chapter, Anna in 1 Samuel 2, and David in Psalms 71 and 88 celebrate in their canticles the literal victories and benefits of their own time, by which they allegorically represent the victory and grace of Christ.
Note here that because the allegorical sense is principally intended by the Holy Spirit, certain things are interspersed which pertain more to the allegory than to the letter, such as the name of Jesus; and what the Septuagint has in verse 2: 'In the midst of two animals You will be known'; and in verse 5: 'Before His face death shall go'; and: 'The devil shall go forth before His feet.' In a similar way Isaiah mixes allegory with the literal sense in chapter 14, where under the type of Lucifer he depicts the fall of Belshazzar; and Ezekiel in chapter 28, where under the type of the Cherub he represents the ruin of the king of Tyre.
Literally, therefore, there are three parts to this canticle. First, the Prophet entreats God to actually perform and accomplish the promised work of delivering the Hebrews from Babylon. Second, from verse 2 to 16, he recalls and celebrates the great deeds of God, performed in their liberation from Egypt, by which he tacitly asks that He perform similar things in their liberation from Babylon. Third, at verse 16, he returns to verse 1, and stands in awe at the destruction of Babylon: then he rejoices and exults in the Lord, who will liberate the Jews from Babylon and lead them back to Judea like swift and eager deer.
Vulgate Text: Habakkuk 3:1-19
2. O Lord, I have heard Your report, and was afraid. O Lord, Your work, in the midst of the years bring it to life. In the midst of the years You shall make it known: when You shall be angry, You will remember mercy. 3. God shall come from the south, and the Holy One from mount Pharan: His glory covered the heavens, and the earth is full of His praise. 4. His brightness shall be as the light: horns are in His hands: there is His strength hid: 5. before His face death shall go. The devil shall go forth before His feet. 6. He stood, and measured the earth. He beheld, and melted the nations: and the mountains of ages were crushed to pieces. The hills of the world were bowed down by the journeys of His eternity. 7. For iniquity I saw the tents of Ethiopia, the curtains of the land of Midian shall be troubled. 8. Were You angry, O Lord, with the rivers?
The same author, book IX, chapter X, speaking with his mother St. Monica, shortly before her death, about the eternal life of the Saints, which is God; which neither eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man: "Lifting ourselves up, he says, with more ardent affection toward the Self-same, we traversed step by step all bodily things, and heaven itself, whence the sun and stars shine upon the earth. And still we were ascending inwardly, thinking and speaking of You, and marvelling at Your works, and we came to our own minds, and transcended them, to touch that region of unfailing abundance, where You feed Israel forever, etc. We were saying therefore: If for someone the tumult of the flesh should be silent, if the phantasms of earth, and of waters and of air should be silent, if the heavens also should be silent, and the soul itself should be silent to itself, and pass beyond itself by not thinking of itself; if dreams and imagined revelations should be silent, every tongue, and every sign, and whatever comes into being by passing away, if for someone all these should be entirely silent: for if anyone listens, all these things say: We did not make ourselves, but He made us who abides forever. If, having said these things, they should now be silent, and He alone should speak, not through them, but through Himself, so that we might hear His word not through the tongue of flesh, nor through the voice of an angel, nor through the sound of a cloud, nor through the enigma of a likeness; but Him whom we love in these things, Him without these we might hear, just as now we have stretched ourselves out, and with rapid thought touched the eternal wisdom abiding above all things; if this could be continued, and other visions of a far different kind be withdrawn, and this one alone should ravish and absorb, and hide its beholder in interior joys, so that eternal life might be such as was this moment of understanding for which we sighed, would this not be: Enter into the joy of your Lord? And when shall this be?"
Verse 1
A Prayer for Ignorances.
Verse 1. FOR IGNORANCES. — In Hebrew it is שגינות (sigionot), which some, such as R. David, Pagninus, and Vatablus, take as a certain genre of canticle, harmony, or musical instrument; hence the Septuagint translates: 'A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet with a canticle'; because this is partly a prayer and partly — and more so — a canticle, by which he celebrates God's past benefits in order to obtain future ones. For this is the true method of praying and obtaining: to celebrate the generosity, power, qualities, and praises of Him from whom we seek something. Hence in Scripture, prayer is sometimes called praise, as in Lamentations 2:19: 'Arise, praise (that is, pray by praising) in the night.' Jeremiah 11:14: 'Do not take up praise for them,' that is, do not pray for Jews so wicked. Hence also R. Jonah, and from him Genebrardus, translate sigionot as joy, delight. 'A prayer,' they say, 'of Habakkuk the prophet with delights,' by which he delights himself and the people, commemorating their future liberation. Others, such as R. Judah, translate: 'A prayer for occupations,' that is, for the weighty affairs which the Prophet turned over in his mind and with which he occupied himself. The Zurich Bible: 'A dialogue, or disputation of Habakkuk the prophet concerning perplexing matters.' But our translator [the Vulgate] more correctly renders: 'For ignorances'; for so also translate Aquila, Symmachus, the Fifth Edition, and the Chaldean paraphrase. For the Hebrew שגה (saga) means to err, to be ignorant; hence שגיונות (sigionot) is called error, ignorance — that is, a fault and sin, both one committed from ignorance and any other, even a voluntary one. Hence Theodotion translates: 'For voluntary [offenses],' namely sins. For as Aristotle says, 'every sinner is ignorant.' And the Wise Man says: 'They err who work evil' (Proverbs 14:22). For some ignorance — namely, lack of consideration — is always joined to sin.
For if the sinner were to consider the baseness and damages of sin, and God the avenger, whose wrath and eternal torments he provokes, he would certainly not sin.
Now various interpreters give various senses here. First, the Chaldean paraphrase, in its usual paraphrastic manner, renders it thus: 'A prayer which Habakkuk prayed, when it was revealed to him concerning the length of time which God gave to the wicked: that if they were to convert to the law with a perfect heart, it would be forgiven them, and all their crimes which they committed in His sight would be as ignorances.' Second, St. Jerome, Remigius, Albert, and Jansenius hold that Habakkuk here begs pardon for his ignorance — that is, for his sin, by which he ignorantly and rashly dared to dispute with God, and indeed to complain about His providence, by which He allows the wicked to dominate the pious. But in this entire canticle the Prophet gives no indication of such a request for pardon.
I say therefore: by 'ignorances' are meant the sins of the people, as if to say: I pray, O Lord, for the sins of the people, that You may pardon and overlook them, lest on account of them You delay the work of our liberation from Babylon, and much more, allegorically, the work of the incarnation of Christ and the redemption of the human race promised by You.
Verse 2
2. O Lord, I have heard Your report, and I was afraid. O Lord, Your work — in the midst of years give it life. In the midst of years You will make it known: when You are angry, You will remember mercy. 3. God will come from the South, and the Holy One from Mount Paran: His glory covered the heavens, and the earth is full of His praise. 4. His splendor shall be as light: horns are in His hands: there His strength is hidden. 5. Before His face death shall go. The devil shall go forth before His feet. 6. He stood, and measured the earth. He beheld, and dissolved the nations: and the mountains of ages were crushed. The hills of the world were bowed down, by the journeys of His eternity. 7. For iniquity I saw the tents of Ethiopia; the curtains of the land of Midian shall be troubled. 8. Were You angry at the rivers, O Lord? or was Your fury in the rivers? Or was Your indignation in the sea? You who will mount upon Your horses, and Your chariots are salvation. 9. You will surely rouse Your bow: the oaths to the tribes which You have spoken. You will cleave the rivers of the earth. 10. The mountains saw You and were in anguish; the flood of waters passed by. The abyss gave forth its voice; the deep raised its hands on high. 11. The sun and moon stood still in their dwelling, at the light of Your arrows they went, at the splendor of Your flashing spear. 12. In fury You will trample the earth; in wrath You will astonish the nations. 13. You went forth for the salvation of Your people, for salvation with Your Christ. You struck the head from the house of the wicked one; You laid bare the foundation even to the neck. 14. You cursed his scepters, the head of his warriors, who came like a whirlwind to scatter me. Their exultation was as one who devours the poor in secret. 15. You made a way in the sea for Your horses, through the mud of many waters. 16. I heard, and my bowels were troubled; at the voice my lips trembled. Let decay enter into my bones, and let it swarm beneath me. That I may rest in the day of tribulation, that I may ascend to the people girded for battle who are ours. 17. For the fig tree shall not blossom, and there shall be no fruit on the vines. The yield of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall not produce food. The flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls. 18. But I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will exult in God my Jesus. 19. The Lord God is my strength, and He will make my feet like the feet of deer. And upon my heights He will lead me, the victor, singing in psalms.
Verse 2. O Lord, I have heard Your report. — This is a metonymy, for the act is put for the object: 'Your report,' that is, the thing or word heard, namely the oracle which I have heard from You — that is, such great destruction and devastation, both of the Jews by the Chaldeans, and then of the Chaldeans themselves by the Medes and Persians. And therefore 'I feared,' especially fearing lest the Babylonian catastrophe and the destruction of the Chaldeans to be inflicted by Cyrus might likewise engulf and utterly destroy us dwelling in Babylon as captives. So St. Jerome, Remigius, and Theodoret. Moreover the Septuagint adds: 'I considered Your works, and I was astonished' (or 'I was terrified'), which St. Augustine, Book XVIII of The City of God, chapter 32, rightly refers allegorically to the work of the incarnation of Christ, which, on account of its novelty and the self-emptying of such great majesty, strikes not only astonishment but also a kind of sacred dread and awe, from reverence for it. 'For what is this,' he says, 'but the ineffable wonder at the foreknown, new, and sudden salvation of mankind?' For who would not be astonished, who would not be terrified, if he were to see God in the flesh, God on the cross? This is the great mystery of godliness, at which the Seraphim and Cherubim are struck with awe, which, as the Apostle says (1 Timothy 3:16), 'was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to angels (who all, in astonishment, adored Him, Hebrews 1:6), was preached to the Gentiles, was believed in the world, was taken up in glory.'
Truly, St. Bernard, Sermon 3 on the Vigil of the Nativity: 'Three works, three mixtures did that almighty Majesty make in the assumption of our flesh, so singularly wonderful and wonderfully singular that such things neither have been done nor shall be done again upon the earth. For God and man, mother and virgin, faith and the human heart have been joined to one another. These are admirable mixtures, and more wonderful than any miracle — how things so diverse and so divided from one another could be joined.' And below: 'The Majesty contracted Himself, so that what was best in Him — namely, Himself — He might join to our clay, and in one person God and clay, majesty and weakness, such lowliness and such sublimity might be united to each other. And note: just as in that singular divinity there is trinity in persons, unity in substance; so in this special mixture there is trinity in substances, unity in person. For the Word, the soul, and the flesh came together in one person; and these three are one; and this one is three, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.'
Therefore rightly did St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Bernard, St. Francis, and other Saints, in the contemplation of this mystery, as if caught up outside themselves and thunderstruck, tremble and stand in amazement. Indeed, if like St. Magdalene we were to withdraw and become absorbed, contemplating nothing else for our whole life but this — 'the Word was made flesh, God became man' — we would be ceaselessly astonished; and the more and the longer we contemplated it, the more we would be carried into astonishment, indeed into ecstasy.
Indeed, the very humanity of Christ in the incarnation, seeing itself assumed and elevated above all the heavens and angels to the throne of the divine Majesty, was astonished and trembled; nay, it is ceaselessly astonished and trembles, as it sees itself sitting and subsisting in the same not only seat but also hypostasis with the divinity. For it sees itself raised from creature to Creator, from nothing becoming all things, from man becoming God; and this not from any dignity of its own (for it is unworthy of such great honor and good) or merit, but from the sheer condescension of God, who chose it from among all men, angels, and creatures, and raised it to such a pinnacle of glory. Therefore, ceaselessly astonished at its own lowliness and unworthiness, and at God's condescension and grace, it exclaims with gratitude: O immense goodness of God toward me, O abyssal, O incomprehensible goodness!
Tropologically, St. Leo applied these words to himself when he was elected Pope. For thus he says in Sermon 2 on his Elevation: 'O Lord, I have heard Your report, and I was afraid; I considered Your works, and I trembled. For what is so unusual, so fearful, as labor for the frail, exaltation for the lowly, dignity for the undeserving?'
O Lord, Your work — in the midst of years give it life. — The word 'it' is redundant by Hebrew pleonasm: for the Hebrews repeat the relative or demonstrative pronoun and join it with the noun that preceded it. Now by 'work' he means the liberation of the Jews from Babylon, and mystically the redemption of the human race from the captivity of the devil and of sin through Christ. Hence the Chaldean paraphrase interprets this work as the renewal of the world and the mercies of God. So St. Jerome and Augustine in the passage cited. For this is called the work of God par excellence, because of all God's works it was the greatest and most excellent. For in this one work more than in the works of creation, conservation, governance, and all others, God showed the human race His immense clemency, wisdom, power, and love. And what the poet said of Brutus — 'And that great work of great Caesar' — one may say far more truly of the incarnate Word, that is, of Christ: 'And that great work of the great God.' This work, I say, 'in the midst of years,' that is, within the years, or in the years — namely those appointed by You — 'give life,' that is, bring about, raise up, fulfill. For the Hebrews metaphorically give life to inanimate things, such as years, days, weather, fertility, barrenness, captivity, liberation, etc.; for when these come to pass and flourish, they are said in Hebrew to be given life and to live.
In the midst of years. — Various interpreters explain this 'midst' variously. First, Guevara and Vatablus: 'In the midst of years,' they say, that is, in the midst of those calamitous and unhappy days, in which the Prophet had heard that Chaldea and its inhabitants would be utterly devastated by fire and sword. 'In the midst,' I said, that is, when evils are at their height, when dangers press more fiercely, when with the floods of calamities flowing in from every side no hope of escape shines forth. For to be 'in the midst' of something is sometimes said of that which is pressed and beset by it, especially when, with the flood of evils all around, no way of escape lies open. Such is that passage in Psalm 22:4: 'For even though I walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.' And Psalm 137:7: 'If I walk in the midst of tribulation, You will give me life.' Therefore Habakkuk prays to God that He may snatch His own chosen people from the midst of the calamities of the Chaldeans, and not allow the people whom He has favored with so many benefits until now — upon whom, as artisans do with the most perfect work of their hands, He has inscribed His own name and branded the mark and stigma of circumcision — to perish by the savagery of the Chaldeans, or to be destroyed and utterly wiped out together with the Chaldeans in Babylon by the Medes and Persians. This sense seems to fit this passage very well. For 'midst' is often taken to mean the extreme, as when we say: I am in the midst of tribulations; I am tossed in mid-sea; I dwell in the midst of wild beasts — meaning I am in the very worst of evils, dangers, and enemies. For 'year,' 'day,' and 'time' are often taken metonymically for a notable defeat and calamity which occurred or will occur in that year, day, and time. Thus the Prophets often call the 'day of the Lord' the day of vengeance, on which He will punish and destroy Judea, or Babylon, or other cities and nations, as Zephaniah 1:14: 'The great day of the Lord is near, etc. A day of wrath, that day, a day of tribulation and anguish.' Joel 2:1: 'The day of the Lord comes, etc., a day of darkness and gloom, a day of cloud and whirlwind.' Similar passages are Jeremiah 30:7; Amos 3:18.
Second, others take 'midst' in the opposite sense, as meaning the best, as if to say: After the seventy years of most calamitous captivity have elapsed, in the midst — that is, in the best year following those seventy years — You will grant and bestow this long-desired work of our liberation. Thus it is said in Ezekiel 5:5: 'This is Jerusalem: in the midst' — that is, in the best — 'of the nations I have placed her.' And in Isaiah 38:10, Hezekiah says: 'In the midst of my days' — that is, in the best and most flourishing age — 'I shall go to the gates of the netherworld.' Although others take 'the midst' in the proper sense; for Hezekiah was then 39 years old, which age is approximately half of human life — for its full span is what is noted in Psalm 89:10: 'The days of our years in themselves are seventy years. But if in the powerful, eighty years.'
Third, more simply, others take 'midst' here not geometrically but physically, or rather in the common Hebrew manner of speaking, by which 'in the midst of years' means the same as 'within the years,' namely those foreordained and appointed by God. Hence Symmachus translates: 'Within the years make it live again'; Aquila: 'As the years draw near, give it life'; the Septuagint: 'When the years draw near, You will be known.' Thus God made 'a firmament in the midst of the waters,' that is, between the upper and lower waters, Genesis 1:6; and 'the tree of life in the midst of paradise,' that is, within paradise, Genesis 2:9; and fire in the midst of the bush, that is, within the bush, Exodus 3:2. And he says 'in the midst' rather than 'at the end' of years, because he wishes these years not to be completed, but rather to be diminished and halved, as if to say: Grant, O Lord, that the seventy years which You have assigned to our captivity may not run their course to the end, but be shortened and halved.
Fourth, some, such as Albert, take 'midst' here geometrically and precisely, meaning the middle of the years of the world. For the liberation of the Hebrews took place around the three-thousandth year of the world, namely the year 3419, which is nearly the middle of the world's duration — for the world will last six thousand years, as the Hebrews and the Fathers teach, whom I cited at Revelation 20:6. Again, Jansenius explains this half as the 37th year of the deportation of Jehoiachin, when Evil-merodach exalted him (2 Kings 25:27), which was, as it were, a prelude and beginning of the happiness and liberation of the Hebrews, which was completed in the 70th year of the captivity — for 37 is nearly half of 70. In this sense, the word 'give life' is to be taken not in a completed but in an incipient sense, as if to say: 'Give life,' that is, begin to give life and to fulfill Your work; begin the construction of Your work, give a foretaste of it, like the dawn of a coming light and liberty.
Allegorically, the work of the incarnation and redemption of Christ was accomplished 'in the midst of years,' according to the first sense: because Christ came at a most calamitous time. For He did as a wise physician does, who allows the disease to grow to its highest paroxysm, so that it may exert and exhaust all its strength; and once this is done, the disease being as it were drained and enfeebled, he applies an easy cure. Thus Christ permitted sin and concupiscence to grow to their height over four thousand years, and to exercise and pour out all their malice; and once this was done, He applied His healing hand to it — when both nature and the law of Moses had already shown all their power, and yet had been unable to cure sin, so that all people and all things were tacitly crying out for and imploring the help of Christ.
Second, this same event was 'in the midst,' that is, in the best, 'of years'; because He Himself brought in the golden age of jubilee, according to the Apostle's words: 'Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation' (2 Corinthians 6:2). Third, it was 'in the midst of years,' that is, among the years, or in the years appointed and established by God. Again, 'in the midst,' that is, in the completion of years. For the middle is the center of the extremes — indeed, the perfection and completion. Hence 'in the midst of years' means the same as 'in the consummation of years,' or as the Apostle says in Galatians 4:4, 'in the fullness of times,' when the times appointed by God for so great a work had been fully consummated and completed. For the middle of extremes is their end: for extremes are terminated and finished in the middle. So St. Jerome. Therefore Christ was born in the midst of years, because the age of Christ was the end of the preceding wretched ages and the beginning of the most blessed ages to follow. And he says 'in the midst' rather than 'at the end,' because he wishes these years to be hastened, and therefore halved; just as through the prayers of Daniel and the Prophets, the seventy weeks preceding Christ were shortened and cut short, as I said at Daniel 9:21.
Fourth, arithmetically, 'in the midst of years' Christ suffered by this reckoning: first, because in the middle of the 70th and last week of Daniel He suffered and redeemed the world (Daniel 9:27). For although Daniel came after Habakkuk, nevertheless these 70 weeks had already been decreed before Daniel in the mind of God, who revealed them here obscurely and implicitly to Habakkuk, and later expressed them clearly to Daniel. Second, 'in the midst of years,' because Christ suffered and redeemed us in the 34th year of His age, which is the middle of human life — for this is reckoned at 70 years. Third, the Hebrews, from the oracle of Elijah, teach that the duration or age of the world will be six thousand years, or three times two millennia, of which the first two pertain to the law of nature, which existed before the flood and after it up to Abraham; the second, or middle two, to the law of Moses; the third, or last two, to the Gospel and the time of the Messiah and of grace. Now Christ was born during the law of Moses: therefore He was born in the middle of these three ages, and consequently in the midst of years, that is, of the ages of the world. So Francesco Giorgi of Venice, in his Problemata, volume III, section IV On the Coming of Christ, number 142. Again, Christ came in the midst of years because the time of His Gospel and grace is the middle between the time of the law and the time of glory, or between the present age and the future. For Christ was, as it were, the horizon of time and eternity: for He Himself is the end of the law and of time, and the beginning of eternity and the blessed life. Hence by Isaiah, chapter 9, He is called 'the father of the world to come.'
Finally, lest I omit anything, from these words of Habakkuk some, as St. Vincent Ferrer reports in his epistle to Benedict, and Adrianus Finus in Book V of his Flagellum, chapter 8, have held that Christ assumed flesh in the middle of the world's duration, so that exactly as many years preceded the incarnation of Christ as will follow after it. Virgil indicated the same, who, flattering Augustus Caesar (in whose age Christ was born) from the oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl, sang in Georgics III: 'But soon I shall gird myself to tell of Caesar's fiery battles, and to bear his name through fame for as many years as Caesar is removed from Tithonus' first origin.' But this is plainly uncertain, and seems to many scarcely probable; certainly it cannot be proved from this passage.
Symbolically, Christ is the middle — the mediator both of the Most Holy Trinity and of the entire universe and all ages, as well as of our redemption and happiness. For in the Most Holy Trinity, He, as the Son, is the middle between the Father and the Holy Spirit: He proceeds from and is begotten by the Father, and once begotten, He together with the Father breathes forth and produces the Holy Spirit. Second, because He is the Word, which is the idea through which God created all things; therefore He, as the Word, is the knot, bond, link, middle, and center of all things. Third, in Him likewise as the Word, all ages and times were created and ordered: 'For by faith we understand that the ages were fashioned by the word of God,' says the Apostle (Hebrews 11:3). Fourth, hence He fittingly assumed human nature, in order to be the mediator of God and men. For it was fitting that the middle Person in the Most Holy Trinity should assume human nature, and in it become mediator, because human nature itself is the middle between heaven and earth, the middle between God and the rest of creation, participating in the nature of both, so that through this middle nature He might unite both extremes. For human nature is the center and, as it were, the bond of all things, and having a share in all things, it delights with all things; for man either feeds on or enjoys with his eyes or other senses every other creature; the earth sustains us, water gives us drink, air provides breath, fire warms us; we feed on plants, fish, and animals; we are illuminated by the sun and sky, instructed, purified, and perfected by angels. In the same way, Christ, having become man, delights with all things, and all things with Him. Hence His type was the tree of life placed by God in the midst of paradise (Genesis 2).
Therefore Christ, being born, living, and dying, always occupied the middle. For He was born in the middle of the night, while a quiet silence held all things and night in its course was accomplishing its middle journey (Wisdom 18:14). At His birth He was also placed in the midst of two animals: the weaker donkey signifies mercy; the stronger ox, fair and faithful to its master in plowing, signifies justice. For Christ made these two meet together, and therefore at His birth He stood in the midst of them. As a boy He was found in the temple, in the midst of the teachers. At home He was in the middle between His mother and father — that is, Mary and Joseph. For just as He is the middle in the uncreated Trinity, so He is the middle also in the created Trinity, which is Joseph, Jesus, Mary. As a man He was in the midst of the Apostles: 'I am in the midst of you,' He says, 'as one who serves' — that by an equal distribution, at least a geometric one, He might distribute to all the gifts He had received. Again, by preaching He worked salvation in the midst of the earth (Psalm 73:12). In dying He hung in the midst of two thieves, as their judge already appointed, to render to each what was due according to each one's merits — a foreshadowing of the great and final judgment, in which, positioned in the middle, He will have the saints on His right, whom He will reward with eternal life, and the reprobate on His left, whom He will punish with eternal death. In heaven He holds the middle place; for He is the middle between the Father and us, as our advocate. So St. John saw Him in Revelation 5:6, as a lamb in the midst of the throne, in the midst of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders. Hence Isaac, to be sacrificed by his father, the laughter and joy of the world, represented Him; for Isaac was the middle between Abraham and Jacob — he was the son of Abraham and the father of Jacob. Again, He Himself openly declares: 'Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them' (Matthew 18:20). Therefore He from eternity was decreed, and in time was made the true and... best mediator between God and man, according to the Apostle's words: 'One mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus' (1 Timothy 2:5). For He, having been made man, became the bond and glue, binding, connecting, and uniting man with God. He is like a middle channel, through which from the living fountain — that is, from God — living waters and streams of graces flow to us. He is the ladder of Jacob, through which as through a middle, from one extreme to the other — that is, from earth to heaven, to God — we ascend.
St. Bernard beautifully says, Sermon 4 on St. Michael: 'Jesus always loves the middle; the Son of Man, the mediator of God and men, always rejects byways and reclining places. My beloved is mine, and I am his, who feeds among the lilies.' Namely, by all these things He wished to signify and commend the golden mean, which makes us pleasing to God and men; for virtue consists in the middle. Likewise peace and concord; for the middle is the bond, and as it were the peace and concord of extremes. This is what He says in Matthew 5:9: 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God'; because I, who am the natural Son of God, am the peace of the universe, reconciling all things that are in heaven and on earth (Colossians 1:20). Rightly therefore do those who take up the office of mediating and reconciling peace — an office proper and intimate to Him — obtain the name of sons of God.
Of years. — So also translate Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Chaldean paraphrase, and others generally; for they read in the Hebrew שנים (shanim), which means 'years.' But the Septuagint, reading with different vowel points שנים (shenayim), meaning 'of two,' and again reading חיות (chayyot), meaning 'of animals,' instead of חיהו (chayyehu), meaning 'give it life,' translate: 'in the midst of two animals You will be known.' Yet immediately after, they read shanim ('years') with the rest. Hence they add: 'When the years draw near, You will be known,' and add by way of explanation: 'When the time has come, You will be revealed.' For these words are not in the Hebrew; yet they are read in the Septuagint by the Vatican, Complutensian, and Royal codices, St. Jerome, Cyril, Theodoret, and others generally. Some, however, hold that the Septuagint read the Hebrew as the others did, namely that 'when the years draw near, You will be known' corresponds to what our translator rendered as 'in the midst of years give it life,' and that 'when the time has come, You will be revealed' corresponds to what our translator rendered as 'in the midst of years You will make it known'; but that what precedes — 'in the midst of two animals You will be known' — was added by the Septuagint prophetically and paraphrastically, just as by the same translators 'from a tree' was added, which is not in the Hebrew nor in the Latin, at Psalm 95:10. For where they read 'God has reigned,' the Septuagint added 'from a tree,' that is, from the cross; for the cross was, as it were, the throne of Christ's kingdom. Perhaps in the Hebrew there was a double reading, one in the text and another in the margin, such as many now exist in the Hebrew, which the Rabbis call qere u-khetiv; namely, that in the text there stood bekereb shanim chayyehu, that is, 'in the midst of years give it life'; but in the margin, bekereb shenayim chayyot, that is, 'in the midst of two animals'; and the Septuagint wished to express both readings, for by a slight change, from shanim one gets shenayim, and from chayyehu, chayyot. Now regarding the literal sense concerning the destruction of the Chaldeans, the two animals that accomplished this and liberated the people of God from Babylon were the Medes and the Persians, that is, Darius and Cyrus. This alludes to the oracle of Isaiah, chapter 21:7: 'And he saw a chariot of two horsemen, a rider of a donkey and a rider of a camel' — namely Cyrus, who ruled over the Persians as if over donkeys, and Darius, who ruled over the Medes as if over camels; for these overthrew Babylon. Hence there was an oracle, issued through Nebuchadnezzar, says Eusebius (Book IX of the Preparation for the Gospel, last chapter): 'A Persian mule will come, who will bring servitude upon you, O Babylonians.' The mule is Cyrus, born of a Median mother, as if from a camel, and a Persian father, as if from a donkey. So Sanchez.
As for the allegorical sense, and the principal one concerning Christ, various interpreters explain this version in various ways. First, Theophylact took the two animals as the two Cherubim that were above the ark in the propitiatory (Exodus 25:17), as if to say: Your type, O Christ, was the propitiatory erected between the two Cherubim; there You were known typologically through a shadow, indeed foreknown; for the propitiatory signified that You would be the propitiation for the world. Second, others take the two animals as the two Seraphim whom Isaiah saw in chapter 6, crying out to Christ in human appearance, as if incarnate, sitting upon a throne: 'Holy, holy' — as if those 'veiling the head and feet of the Lord,' says St. Jerome, 'veil only in the present age, and cry out to one another the mystery of the Trinity, and one of the Seraphim is sent (which is interpreted 'burning'), and comes to earth, and cleanses the Prophet's lips, and says: I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already blazing?' Third, the phrase 'in the midst of two animals You will be known,' many think is to be understood of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 'because the Father is understood through the Son and the Spirit,' says St. Jerome. In the same way, the Son, who is the middle between the Father and the Holy Spirit, is understood through the Father who begets Him and through the Holy Spirit whom He produces and breathes forth. Fourth, the two animals are the two thieves, between whom Christ was crucified and recognized, says the same St. Jerome. Fifth, the two animals are two peoples, namely the Babylonians and the Jews in the time of Habakkuk, in the midst of whom God was recognized, overthrowing the Babylonians and liberating the Jews. Again, in the time of Christ, He was recognized in the midst of the Jews and the Gentiles. For with these two peoples encircling Him on either side, the Savior was understood and believed, says St. Jerome, who, sixth, adds: There are those who understand the two animals as the two Testaments, the New and the Old, which are truly living and vital things that breathe, and in the midst of which the Lord is known. Seventh, Tertullian in Book IV Against Marcion, chapter 22, takes the two animals as Moses and Elijah, between whom, transfigured, and... Christ was recognized by the Apostles as the Messiah on Mount Tabor. Eighth, and best of all, 'in the midst of two animals,' that is, in the manger between the ox and the donkey, You will be recognized, O Christ, when You come into the flesh and into the world, according to Isaiah 1:3: 'The ox knows its owner, and the donkey the manger of its lord.' The Fathers whom I cited there understand this of Christ laid in the manger between the ox and the donkey. So the Church takes this passage in the Office of the Nativity of Christ: 'O great mystery,' it says, 'and wondrous sacrament, that animals should see the Lord born and lying in a manger!' And in the Office of the Circumcision of the Lord: 'O Lord, it says, I have heard Your report and I was afraid; I considered Your works and I trembled: in the midst of two animals He lay in a manger and shone in heaven.' And St. Augustine in his oration Against the Jews and Pagans, chapter 13, bringing forward the fourth, sixth, and seventh expositions which I have just recited, adds: 'Do you also speak, Habakkuk the prophet, and bear witness to Christ. O Lord, he says, I have heard Your report and I was afraid; I considered Your works, O God, and I trembled. What works of God did he admire and tremble at? Did he admire and tremble at the fabric of the world? Far from it; but hear at what he trembled. In the midst, he says, of two animals Your works will be made known, O God. The Word was made flesh: in the midst of two animals You are known — how far You descended, You made me tremble, because the Word through whom all things were made lay in a manger. The ox recognized its owner, and the donkey the manger of its lord. In the midst of two animals You are known.' So also Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen in their orations on the Nativity of Christ, Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechesis 12), St. Jerome (Epistle 27 to Eustochium), St. Paulinus (Epistle 10 to Severus), Origen (Homily 13 on Luke), St. Ambrose (on Luke 2:7). Wherefore St. Jerome in Epistle 18 says: 'The manger in which the little infant cried should be honored with silence rather than with humble speech.' Furthermore, the ox and donkey were not brought by Joseph — as Lyra, St. Bonaventure, and others would have it — since he was a poor man, but rather by the master of the inn, or some other traveler, or a poor local resident. So Sanchez, following St. Chrysostom.
The literal reason why Christ wished to be laid in a manger, in the midst of the ox and the donkey, was the one given by the Evangelist Luke in chapter 2:7: 'Because there was no room for them in the inn.' For all the Jews were then flocking to the census decreed by Augustus Caesar, and since the wealthier had already taken all the places in the inn, or at any rate had arrived ahead of Joseph and Mary, who were coming from far-off Nazareth, and had already occupied the entire lodging. Therefore the Blessed Virgin, about to give birth to Christ, excluded from the inn, withdrew into a stable — or rather a cave used as a stable, attached to the inn, which served to house the animals of the inn's keeper — and borrowed for herself a meager place from the beasts. Since she had no cradle, she laid the infant Christ in the manger among the hay and straw, so that He might lie there somewhat more comfortably and feel the cold less, especially being warmed by the breath of the ox and donkey; while she herself kept vigil at the manger with the holy angels and Joseph, admiring and adoring the divine mystery. So Franciscus Lucas and Toletus on Luke, chapter 2. Christ wished from His very birth to demonstrate the truth of His saying in Matthew 8:20: 'Foxes have dens, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.' Indeed, 'for our sake He became poor, though He was rich, so that by His poverty we might become rich' (2 Corinthians 8:9). Again, Christ wished to be born as the son of a shepherd among animals and to be placed in a manger, to signify that He was the true shepherd of the sheep foretold by Ezekiel in chapter 34:23. Third, to signify that His kingdom does not consist in display, palaces, riches, and pomp, but in contempt of the world; and that this poverty would not be a disgrace to Christ, but a glory — indeed, that this would be His proper sign and mark. Hence the angel gave the shepherds this sign of the newborn Messiah: 'You will find,' he said, 'an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.' Therefore the stable cries out, the manger cries out, the ox and donkey cry out, the tears cry out, the swaddling clothes of Christ cry out; and what do they cry? They cry out humility, they cry out the poverty of Christ, they cry out penance, they cry out austerity of life, they cry out contempt for wealth, pleasures, and comforts of the world, as St. Bernard devoutly and eloquently teaches in his Sermons 3 and 6 on the Nativity of the Lord.
There exists a type of the poverty and the poor kingdom of Christ, in which is depicted the newborn Christ placed in a manger, lying in the hay between the ox and... the donkey, with St. Mary and Joseph standing by and adoring, with its inscription dictating golden maxims: 'Here learn, O faithful soul, by the most complete resignation and renunciation of created things, and by the purification of your affections, to present to your God a free, undisturbed, quiet, and naked mind, so that, having nothing, you may truly possess all things in Him. For true poverty is: UNENCUMBERED — If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor (Matthew 19:21); NAKED — What have I in heaven, and what did I desire upon earth besides You? (Psalm 72); PATIENT — The patience of the poor shall not perish forever (Psalm 9); TRUSTING — To You the poor man has been left (Psalm 34); RICH — He shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess eternal life (Matthew 19:29); SECURE — But I am a beggar and poor; yet the Lord is concerned for me' (Psalm 39).
This indeed is the sermon which from the manger Christ proclaims — not by word but by deed — and which He proclaimed throughout His whole life, and even in death itself from the gibbet of the cross, namely: O sons of men, why do you love vanity and seek falsehood? All the riches of the world are vain, vain its pomps, vain its pleasures, vain its honors. Despise what is vain; seek what is true. True riches, true pleasures, true honors are in heaven with God, who shares them with Me, with the angels, and with the saints. These I announce to you, these I offer, these I promise. I am the Wisdom of the Father, I am a wise child, the Word become infant: I know how to reject evil and choose good. Therefore believe Me, not the lying and deceitful world: what I chose, I taught should be chosen; what I despised, I showed should be despised. I am the life; I teach you that the true heavenly and divine life consists in the love and desire of heavenly and eternal goods. Therefore embrace that life, and for that reason flee the animal and carnal life, which leads to present and eternal death. 'For the grace of God our Savior has appeared to all men,' says the Apostle (Titus 2:11), 'instructing us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly, justly, and piously in this world, looking for the blessed hope and the coming of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.' Whoever therefore is wise, whoever follows the teaching of Christ, whoever is a Christian — strip off all love of earthly things and lay them before the manger of Christ between the ox and the donkey, and resolutely and effectively offer your whole heart, all your love, all your hopes and possessions to Christ the Lord, that with the poor you may become poor, with the humble humble, with the sober sober, with the spiritual spiritual, with the heavenly heavenly, with the wise wise, with the blessed blessed. For this is why He was born and laid in a manger — 'so that, while we know God visibly, through Him we may be carried away into the love of things invisible.' For He lay in the manger and shone in heaven; hay was the bed for Him whose is the earth and its fullness; He is enclosed in this cradle who fills heaven and earth; He shivers and weeps between the ox and the donkey — He who is the life, the ardor, and the jubilation of the angels.
Truly, St. Bernard, Sermon 4 on the Vigil of the Nativity: 'More precious,' he says, 'are the Savior's swaddling clothes than all purple, and more glorious is this manger than the gilded thrones of kings. Richer, in fine, is the poverty of Christ than all the wealth and all the treasures of the world; for what is found richer, what more precious, than humility? By it the kingdom of heaven is purchased and divine grace is acquired, as it is written: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' The same, Sermon 4 on the Nativity: 'The Savior,' he says, 'to whom gold and silver alike belong, consecrates sacred poverty in His own body.' Therefore, as the poet sings: 'The stable is heaven, Christ the sun, the Virgin the moon; the ox and the donkey bear the mark of Bootes.'
Finally, Christ, placed between the ox and the donkey, by this very fact cries out the words of the Psalmist, Psalm 72:23: 'I am become as a beast of burden before You,' to serve You in all things and entirely, as a beast serves its master. The beast of burden therefore signifies the supreme humility, obedience, resignation, labors, patience, and finally the sacrifice, death, and martyrdom of Christ: that He offers Himself as a victim to God, like an ox, according to Jeremiah 11:19: 'I was like a gentle lamb'; where Vatablus, Pagninus, and others translate: 'But I was like a lamb and an ox.'
The tropological reason was that which St. Chrysostom gives in Homily 1 on Luke, saying: 'Why in a manger? So that the prophecy of Isaiah might be fulfilled: The ox knows its owner, and the donkey the manger of its lord. It is written in another place: Men and beasts You will save, O Lord. If you are a man, eat bread; if you are an animal, come to the manger.' And Gregory of Nyssa pursues nearly the same reasoning at greater length, while hinting at other meanings as well, in his oration On the Holy Nativity of Christ, with these words: 'Now the manger is the dwelling of animals devoid of reason and speech; in it the Word is born, so that the ox might know its owner and the donkey the manger of its lord — the ox, subject to the law; the donkey, an animal destined to bear burdens, burdened and weighed down by the sin of idol worship. For brutes, the fitting food and sustenance is grass and hay — for He who produces grass and hay for the beasts, says the Prophet; but the rational animal is nourished by bread. Therefore in the manger, which is the dwelling of brutes, the bread of life who descended from heaven is set before them, so that even the brutes, by taking in turn rational food, might attain reason. Therefore, in the middle between the ox and the donkey in the manger, the lord of both is present, so that having broken down the dividing wall between them, He might create both in Himself into one new man, and from the one remove the heavy yoke of the law, and from the other lift the burden of idol worship.'
To this Sophronius, Archbishop of Constantinople, adds in his Oration 1 on the Nativity of Christ: 'God is set openly before us in the manger, and to us who are wasting away with hunger, and who are led by virtually no reason, like beasts of burden, He offers Himself as food. Who, having cast aside that Eucharistic nourishment as though utterly unworthy of divine banquets and divine love, would not delight in His divinity? Truly I would say: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will. I leap with joy and exult in the manner of the shepherds, when I hear such plainly divine voices; and, carried away with my whole soul's impulse to the manger that received God and to that heavenly cave, I ardently desire to behold face to face the mystery hidden in it, and to pour forth that hymn — Glory to God in the highest, etc. — in honor and glory of the newborn one.'
The same thing was typologically signified by Job in chapter 6, saying: 'Will the wild donkey (that is, the wild ass) bray when it has grass, or will the ox low when it stands before a full manger?' For the wild donkey, which is a free ass, signifies the Gentiles, lawless before Christ; but the ox, accustomed to the yoke, signifies the Jews, subject to the law; for Christ became the food of both. Hear St. Gregory explaining the words of Job in his customary mystical manner, Book VII of the Moralia, chapter 4: 'The grass of the wild donkey and the hay of the ox is this very incarnation of the Mediator, through which at the same time the gentile world... and Judea are satisfied. For since it is said through the Prophet: All flesh is hay — the Creator of the universe, taking flesh from our substance, willed to become hay, lest our flesh should remain hay forever. Then the wild donkey found its grass, when the Gentile people received the grace of the divine incarnation. Then the ox did not have an empty manger, when the law presented to the Jewish people, awaiting His flesh, the one whom it had long prophesied and awaited. And so the Lord, being born, is placed in a manger, to signify that the holy animals, which had long been found fasting under the law, would be satisfied with the hay of His incarnation. For at His birth He filled the manger, who offered Himself as food to the minds of mortals, saying: He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.' Again, Christ lying in the manger — who, as St. Fulgentius says in Sermon 1 on the Epiphany, 'is carried as a little child, adored as God; little in the manger, immense in heaven; lowly in swaddling clothes, precious in the stars' — made Himself the food and fodder of beasts of burden, because man through sin made himself a beast, according to Psalm 48:21: 'Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he is compared to senseless beasts and has become like them.' Specifically, the donkey, being a lazy, voracious, and lustful animal, represents the slothful, gluttonous, and lustful, according to Ezekiel 23:20: 'Whose flesh is as the flesh of donkeys.' The ox, by its... nature brings to mind the harsh, stupid, obstinate, fierce, and proud. Symbolically, the manger of Christ between the two animals represents the things which I reviewed shortly before from St. Jerome, Augustine, and others, namely: first, the oracle between the two Cherubim, for this was the seat of God; second, the throne of God in Isaiah 6, between the two Seraphim; third, the throne of the Son of God in the middle between the throne of the Father and the throne of the Holy Spirit; fourth, the cross of Christ between the two thieves; fifth, the Church of Christ gathered from Jews and Gentiles; sixth, the Church of the New and Old Testaments; seventh, the tabernacle of Christ's glory between Moses and Elijah on Tabor.
For this reason St. Jerome migrated from Rome to Bethlehem, to live at the manger of Christ, and to the same place he summoned St. Paula, Eustochium, and other most noble Roman matrons and virgins. For this reason we venerate with great honor the manger of Christ translated to Rome, preserved in the basilica of St. Mary Major, as also the body of St. Jerome, which has fittingly been placed beside it, so that, just as he lived beside it, so he might rest in death beside it.
Second, some in the Septuagint version, instead of ζωών with a penultimate accent, meaning 'of animals,' from ζωόν ('animal'), read ζωῶν with a circumflex accent, meaning 'of lives,' from ζωή ('life'), which corresponds to the Hebrew חיהו (chayyehu), which is not only a verb meaning 'give it life,' but also a noun meaning 'its lives.' Following this, Eusebius (Book VI of the Demonstration of the Gospel, chapter 15), Theodoret, and Theophylact thus translate and read: 'in the midst of two lives You will be known' — namely as the avenger and vindicator of wrongs, says Sanchez: because in the life of Nebuchadnezzar You are known as the vindicator of the wicked Jews; and in the life of Cyrus You are known as the avenger of the wicked Chaldeans. Allegorically, however, You are known in Christ: first, in the midst of the divine and human life, for Christ embraced both in Himself, inasmuch as He is θεάνθρωπος and ὁμόθεος, that is, God-man. So Gregentius, Archbishop of Taphar, in his Disputation with Herbanus the Jew, volume IV of the Library of the Holy Fathers: 'In the midst of two animals, that is,' he says, 'in the midst of two essences, namely the divine and the human, Christ subsists as God and man.' Second, in the midst of lives, that is, of years and of life — for the Hebrew חיים (chayyim) is used only in the dual form, hence in it the singular, dual, and plural life is signified. For Christ suffered and redeemed us in the 34th year of His age and life, which is the middle age of human life. Third, in the midst of temporal and eternal life: for from the former to the latter Christ leads us, He who has become for us the way, the truth, and the life. Fourth, in the midst — that is, between two lives, namely the heavenly and blessed, and the infernal and miserable in hell: for Christ is the arbiter, judge, lord, and distributor of both. Hence the Arabic version translates: 'O Lord, I looked at Your works, terrified... or I was troubled in the years of life, and in the years You will be known.' So Eusebius, Theodoret, Theophylact, and others.
In the midst of years You will make known (that which follows, namely, that) when You are angry, You will remember mercy. — By 'mercy' he means the liberation from Babylon, and allegorically the redemption of Christ. Up to this point is the prayer, that is, the petition of Habakkuk; what follows is his canticle, by which he establishes and confirms his prayer.
Verse 3
Verse 3. God from the South. — The Hebrew reads: 'God will come from Teman.' For Teman, son of Eliphaz, son of Esau (Genesis 36:15), gave his name to a region of Idumea, from which Eliphaz the friend of Job (Job 4:1) was surnamed the Temanite, because, as the Chaldean paraphrase there translates, he was a prince of the Temanites. Hence Idumea is called Mount Seir, or Edom. For Esau, because he was hairy, was called Seir; because he was ruddy, Edom. This is clear from Jeremiah 49:7 and 20. Now because Teman and Idumea were to the south of Judea, as is clear from Joshua 11:16, just as Lebanon on the opposite side was to its north, hence Teman signifies the south, that is, the southern region.
There are those who want the South to be called Teman, that is, 'right hand,' from the root yamin, meaning 'right hand' (so that the initial tau in Teman is a heemantic and added letter, as in talmid, that is, 'disciple,' and talmud, that is, 'teaching'; for these are derived from the root למד lamad, meaning 'he learned'), because when we face east, the south stands at our right. Hence St. Jerome, at Psalm 88:12, where the Septuagint translated 'The north and the sea You have created' — because in Hebrew instead of 'sea' there is yamin, that is, 'right hand' — rendered it: 'The north and the south You have created' — 'the south,' that is, the right, for this is the opposite of the north. The right-hand part of the world, therefore, is the south; the left is the north; hence the former is the symbol of happiness and good things, the latter of unhappiness and evils. Therefore God and Christ are fittingly said here to come from the south and from the right, because He comes to bring salvation and all good things, as a true Benjamin — that is, 'son of the right hand,' strong, fortunate, salvific — strengthening, enriching, and blessing us all. For the warm south wind brings life, health, and every good; but the cold and harsh north wind brings death and every evil. For 'from the north evil shall spread over all the inhabitants of the earth' (Jeremiah 1:14). In Rome, however, and in Italy, the south wind is turbulent, harmful, and pestilential, while the north wind is healthful. Hence Horace, Book I, Epistle 2: 'We are not driven with swelling sails by a favoring north wind; yet we do not lead our lives against adverse south winds.' That is, we are neither in the greatest prosperity nor in the greatest calamity.
Habakkuk alludes to Deuteronomy 33:2: 'The Lord came from Sinai, and rose from Seir upon us (that is, from the south; for both Sinai and Seir, or Teman, were to the south of Judea): He appeared from Mount Paran, and with Him thousands of holy ones.' Moses speaks of the law given by God to him on Sinai, and of the pillar of fire and cloud by which God showed Himself to the Hebrews and went before them on the way through the desert to Canaan. The Psalmist celebrates the same benefit in Psalm 67:8, and Deborah in Judges 5:4. Moreover, by 'the south' he means the desert of Arabia, in which were situated the mountains of Sinai, Paran, and Seir (or Idumea), for all these places were to the south of Judea. The meaning, then, is this: God, who once showed Himself to our fathers departing from Egypt and journeying through the deserts of Arabia, in a cloud — while gradually emerging, as it were, from the mountains of Seir and Paran, and displaying His majesty through the pillar of fire and cloud and through prodigies — led us to Sinai, where with lightnings, thunders, and earthquake He gave the law, and from there led us safely through a thousand dangers into Canaan: the same God will show Himself and His presence and help to us in Babylon. For from the south — namely from Persia and Media, which are to the south of Chaldea — He will bring Cyrus and Darius, who will lay waste Babylon and liberate us from there, so that under God's guidance and protection, through so many enemies and dangers, we may return safe and sound to our homeland. The same God will show Himself most openly and will appear to us face to face when He becomes man — He, I say, who appeared to the fathers of old on the mountains of Seir, Paran, and Sinai, and was not seen afterward, but lay hidden there, as it were, in order to reveal Himself clearly in Christ in the fullness of time. Hence...
Allegorically, Sinai, where the old law was given, bore the type of Zion, where the new law was given at Pentecost; Seir, where the bronze serpent was raised, by the sight of which the Hebrews bitten by serpents were healed (Numbers 21:4 and 6), bore the type of the cross of Christ, by whose faith we are healed from the bite of all sin, concupiscence, and the devil; Paran, where the seventy judges designated by Moses were filled with the Holy Spirit (Numbers 11:15), bore the type of the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. See what was said at Deuteronomy 33:2.
Hence again St. Jerome, Theodoret, and Theophylact explain this passage as referring to the incarnation of Christ in this way: 'The Lord will come from the south,' that is, from Bethlehem, which is to the south with respect to Jerusalem, because He will be born in Bethlehem. Again, 'from the south,' that is, from the warmth of charity — namely, pouring out the bowels of His mercy, with which He visited us, the rising sun from on high. For the south wind is warm, life-giving, and fruitful, which nourishes and makes plants fertile. The south wind, therefore — that is, charity — caused Him to become incarnate, 'from Paran,' that is, from the mouth of the one who beholds, for He Himself proceeded from the mouth of the Most High, who beheld and pitied the miseries and deaths of men. Hence the Septuagint translates: 'God will come from Teman, and the Holy One from the shady and dense mountain.' Where by 'the shady and dense mountain' Theophylact and Euthymius understand the Blessed Virgin Mother of God, who, like a mountain of virtues higher than all other saints, conceived and brought forth Christ by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, according to the promise of Gabriel: 'The power of the Most High will overshadow you, and therefore the holy one to be born of you shall be called the Son of God.' Others, such as Theodoret, understand Jerusalem and the Synagogue, which was under the shadow — that is, the protection — of God, and which was the shadow and type of the brightness and glory of God, which He Himself in Christ revealed and spread out, as it were opening a cloud.
Symbolically, St. Augustine, Book XVIII of The City of God, chapter 32, takes the 'shady mountain' as 'the height of the Scriptures, by which,' he says, 'Christ was prophesied. For many things therein are shady and dense, which exercise the mind of the seeker. And from there He comes, when the one who understands finds Him there.' And St. Gregory, Book XXXIII of the Moralia, chapter 1: 'God will come from Lebanon,' he says, 'and the Holy One from the shady and dense mountain. For He who promised through the pages of His Testament that He would come, as it were comes from where He held Himself, as under a promise. Which Testament is rightly called a shady and dense mountain, because it is darkened by the thick obscurities of allegories.' But St. Jerome takes the 'shady mountain' as God the Father, who dwells in inaccessible light, and with His majesty, as with a shadow, protects all things; for from the Father the Son proceeded and came to us. Or, it is heaven, which overshadows and covers the earth, and which is, as it were, a paradise shady and dense with the most beautiful trees — that is, virtues, angels, and saints. For from heaven the Son descended to us, as from a mountain of blessedness and glory to the valley of sorrows.
Finally, the Septuagint translates: 'God will come from the south-west wind, and the Holy One from the shady mountain,' which words the Donatists misused, as though the Prophet here designated their sect and church — for their movement began in Africa, which they held to be the same as Africus (the south-west wind). St. Augustine laughs at this in his book On Pastors, chapters 15 and 16, where by 'Africus' he understands Jerusalem, which lies to the south-west; and by the 'shady mountain' he understands the Mount of Olives, from which Christ sent the Apostles to preach the Gospel throughout the whole world. So he, in the mystical sense.
Anagogically, Paran, that is, 'mouth of the one who sees,' is a symbol of heaven, where God offers Himself to the blessed to be seen and enjoyed. Again, Paran can be derived from פאר (pe'er), that is, beauty, glory, magnificence, which is in heaven, where likewise there is a shady and dense place — that is, a most delightful one — where also God will reveal to His own His secret and hidden judgments, which to us here are shadowy and obscure, says Rupert.
Note: In the Hebrew selah is added, a word found only in this canticle and in the Psalms. Hence it appears to be a notation of chant and melody, for raising or prolonging the voice, so that the singers would dwell longer or more intensely on the verse to which selah is added, on account of the gravity of the matter, or would pause as if meditating. For the root sala means to tread upon, to urge, to press on; and salal means to raise up, to elevate. Selah therefore means the same as intensification and elevation — namely, of the voice, to rouse the listeners, so that they attend to the matter being sung as something wondrous, weighty, and sublime, or festive, and admire it, meditate upon it, and applaud it — whether in triumph, or in astonishment, or in congratulation. For selah is a notation now of wishing, now of affirming, applauding, and confirming. Hence Aquila translates selah as 'always'; the Fifth Edition as 'continually' or 'unto the end'; the Chaldean paraphrase as 'forever' — that is, 'it is so,' or 'may what is being sung come to pass.' Hence the Hebrews also in their epitaphs pray for the dead, saying: 'May his soul be in paradise. Amen, amen' — selah, that is, 'always, for all eternity.' The Septuagint, Symmachus, and Theodotion translate selah as diapsalma, meaning, as it were, an interruption of the canticle, or rather a change, says St. Jerome in the passage cited. Therefore those who refer selah, meaning 'always,' to what follows — in this manner: 'You will always cleave the rivers of the earth' — are in error. For as St. Jerome says in Epistle 138 to Marcella, 'Just as we, at the end of little works, are accustomed to interpose Explicit, or Feliciter, or something of the sort to distinguish from the following matter; so too the Hebrews, to strengthen what has been written, are accustomed to say Amen, or Forever; or they note what is to be written by putting Selah; or they attest to past good fortune by adding Peace at the end.' And shortly before: 'From this we observe that this word Selah connects what precedes with what follows equally, or at any rate teaches that what has been said is everlasting.'
The meaning, therefore, is this: 'God will come from the south, and the Holy One from Mount Paran; Selah' — as if to say: Attend, consider, be amazed, celebrate perpetually this condescension and beneficence of the most high God toward us, by which His majesty deigned to show Himself to us, indeed to clothe Himself in our flesh, that He might become our brother, redeemer, and savior. Some interpreters cited by St. Jerome explain it thus: Selah, as if to say: 'He who was born in Bethlehem, and who on Sinai — that is, on Mount Paran — gave the law, is always, in all benefits, past, present, and future, the author and bestower.' It is very probable, as St. Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, and others soon to be cited hold, that selah intimates some remarkable emotion, by which the singer — for example David — was affected by the moving Spirit; and since this is not in our power, it cannot be had by us in every psalm or in every verse, but only as the Holy Spirit moves the heart and suggests these emotions to it. And this is the reason why selah is found placed so confusingly in the Psalms and without any rationale that we can discern, while elsewhere, where the sentiments seem more illustrious, it is omitted. Moreover, selah is repeated three times in this canticle, and in the Psalms seventy-one times, for which the Septuagint everywhere translates diapsalma, which Suidas interprets as 'alternation of singing,' others as 'change of meter,' others as 'pause for breath,' others as 'the beginning of another sentiment,' others as 'a distinction of rhythm,' and still others have said it is 'a silence of a certain musical variety.' Hence it is clear that selah does not literally signify 'always,' as Burgensis rightly proves, but is merely a notation of song and music, and therefore our translator did not render selah. The Septuagint, however, translated it as diapsalma.
But what precisely this notation was, none of the ancients explained. Hence we can assert nothing certain here. Therefore the Fathers and interpreters go off into various opinions and conjectures. For first, Marinus in his Lexicon holds that selah was a sign of a higher pitch in the singing, and when they reached it, they would play only instruments; and for this reason, he says, it is almost always placed in those Psalms which are prefaced with the name מזמור (mizmor), that is, songs to be sung both with voice and instrument. Furthermore, selah supplies a deficiency of meter and fills out the verse, just as the Greeks, when a verse is lacking a syllable or foot, supply it by adding ἐα, δέ, μέν, γε, and other enclitic particles. So he. Second, Eugubinus on Psalm 3 says that selah means the same as 'certainly,' 'indeed,' 'always,' as St. Jerome translates it, with emphasis of voice — like Amen, meaning 'so be it'; and he adds that he suspects the Septuagint retained the Hebrew selah, but copyists through ignorance substituted diapsalma for it. But this does not seem probable. Third, Gregory of Nyssa in his Treatise on the Psalms 2, chapter 10, says that diapsalma is a cessation and rest made suddenly during the singing, for the reception of a divinely sent illumination. St. Jerome, in Epistle 136, seems to deny that selah is a sign of silence — because, he says, it is sometimes placed at the end of Psalms. But to this one could respond that the beginning of another psalm succeeded the end of one; selah... would be placed at the end of a psalm so that the mind might rest there and dwell upon the matter being sung. Fourth, others hold that selah indicates that the same verse is to be sung by the alternate choir. Hence our Lorinus on Psalm 3:3 thinks selah hints at a doubling of the singing, from the root סלל (salal), that is, to heap up, to accumulate. Fifth, St. Chrysostom, Preface to the Psalms: 'When a change was made,' he says, 'in the musical song, or in the rhythm, or in the variation of the thought, the translators wrote diapsalma, as that most wise man Hippolytus says.' Sixth, Eusebius, on Psalm 4, holds that diapsalma is a sign of cessation, so that when the Holy Spirit leapt into another Prophet, the first would cease and be silent, and give place to the other, according to the Apostle's precept in 1 Corinthians 14. Seventh, Agellius, at the end of his Preface to the Psalms, holds that this word signifies a change of the entire choir, when the choirmaster in the middle of a psalm handed over the remaining part to another choir to sing; and so that succession of singers in the psalmody was called diapsalma. For the word διά itself signifies an interruption and alternation of the singers, and at the same time, where this alternation occurs, another thought also succeeds in the psalm itself; just as happens when, one period being finished, another follows, and it is likely that a new melody was customarily fitted to the new thought, so that all three of these things necessarily coincide in the diapsalma: namely, a change of singers, of melody, and of thought. All these opinions agree in this, that diapsalma, according to its etymology, denoted some change of poem and song. Therefore selah denotes the same thing, for in its place the Septuagint and others translated diapsalma. Moreover, if it is permissible to conjecture from the etymology of selah, this change was made either by raising, or intensifying, or prolonging the voice. For the root sala means to heap up, to tread upon, to press on; and this is what the other translators wished to signify when they translated 'always,' as I said at the beginning. Therefore Genebrardus on Psalm 3, and many others, assert that selah is a sign not only of a musical melody but also of exclamation and attention, so that the mind and thought may be roused to weigh and ponder what is being sung.
His glory covered the heavens. — The Septuagint reads δύναμις, that is, His 'virtue' or 'power,' as if to say: That glorious one coming from the south once showed His glory both in heaven and on earth, so that rightly the dwellers of heaven and the earthborn, admiring it, celebrated it with praises — especially the Jews at Sinai and in the desert, when they saw the lightnings, thunders, fire, and smoke on Sinai, by which the glory of God seemed to fill and cover the sky, that is, the air. Again, when from heaven He gave them continuous manna and quails (Exodus 16), likewise the pillar of fire and cloud, and very many other prodigies. So the Chaldean paraphrase, Arias, Clarius, and Jansenius. In a similar way His majesty will show His glory — that is, His glorious power, vengeance, and mercy — when He destroys Babylon and its monarchy through Cyrus, and liberates us from its captivity, says Albert and Lyra.
Allegorically, this was fulfilled in the nativity of Christ, says St. Jerome; for the glorious wisdom, power, and goodness of God filled heaven and earth when the Word was made flesh and united man to God and heaven to earth. Hence rightly the angels sang at it: 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will'; and likewise in His glorious teaching, life, and miracles, and especially in His glorious resurrection and ascension into heaven. So Theodoret and Theophylact. In a similar way the Psalmist in Psalm 56:12 celebrates the immense glory of God, saying: 'Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and Your glory above all the earth.' And Isaiah in chapter 6:3 saw the Seraphim acclaiming God: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.' And Ezekiel in chapter 1 saw the Cherubic chariot of the majesty and glory of God, driven most swiftly in every direction throughout the whole world on four wheels.
Verse 4
Verse 4. His splendor shall be as light — that is, the brightness and splendor of God at Sinai was like the light of the sun illuminating the earth, for He appeared in a very great fire. Hence in Deuteronomy 33:2 it is said of Him: 'In His right hand a fiery law.' See what was said there. So the Chaldean paraphrase and the others already cited. Allegorically, at the birth of Christ, an angel announced Him to the shepherds, 'and the brightness of God shone around them' (Luke 2:9). Likewise, the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Christ shone with all virtues, by which He illuminated the whole world. Hence St. Augustine, Book X of The City of God, chapter 32, says: 'His splendor shall be as light — what is this, except that His fame will illuminate believers?' The Chaldean paraphrase renders: 'His splendor appeared as the primeval splendor.'
Horns are in His hands. — The Hebrew reads: 'Horns from His hand to Him,' as if to say: He has horns in His hand, which are His strength, so that by wielding them against enemies, He pierces them through. You will ask: what are these horns of God? First, Vatablus, Mariana, and Jansenius take the horns as rays of light, which God, when giving the law to Moses, breathed upon him and, as it were, affixed to him at Sinai, to display His power and terrible vengeance to the Hebrews, lest they dare to violate the law given by Him; so that Moses here is called the 'hand,' that is, the instrument and mediator of God the lawgiver, wielding rays of light, which are called 'horns' because of the pyramidal and twisting shape of the rays, such as horns have. And from this, says Guevara, the poets invented Vulcan, the lord of fire and light, as lame. Hence the Syriac translates: 'His splendor shall be as light, and in the horns of His hands' — namely, that splendor and light is there.
Second, others more aptly take these as rays of light, which God shot forth from Himself and from His tablets of the law, which He was giving to Moses and the Hebrews. Hence Vatablus and Pagninus translate: 'Splendors from His hand were His'; and the Chaldean paraphrase: 'Sparks from the chariot of His glory went forth...' went forth. For the fiery tablets of the law shot forth rays far and wide. Hence in Deuteronomy 33:2 it is called 'a fiery law.' 'Horns,' therefore, 'in His hands' is the same as what preceded: 'His splendor shall be as light.' For in this display of light and splendor, as in a kind of tent and canopy, the majesty, power, and strength of God lay hidden, veiled and concealed, so that the Jews could not see it but could only admire and adore. For the fiery tablets in the hands of God, shooting forth pyramidal rays like horns, signified that the horns and weapons of God are fire — that is, they are fiery, most efficacious, and most penetrating, which He would brandish against violators of the law. The Syriac version, which I cited a little earlier, favors this interpretation.
Third, Guevara takes the horns of God as the devil and death. Hence the Prophet, explaining these horns, adds: 'Before His face death shall go, and the devil shall go forth before His feet,' as if to say: God, through the devil and death as through two horns, fighting for the Jews, rushed upon the Canaanites, and killed, crushed, and expelled them. For the devil and death are vessels — that is, most powerful instruments of destruction for God, as Ezekiel says in chapter 9:1 — and as it were the splints of His strength.
Fourth, most plainly by 'horns' one may understand the might, strength, and weapons of God, for horns are the symbols of these. For he alludes to Deuteronomy 33:17: 'As the firstborn of a bull, his beauty; his horns are the horns of a rhinoceros; with them he shall gore the nations.' And Psalm 43:6: 'In You we shall gore our enemies with a horn.' Hence 'to lift up horns' means to be puffed up in spirit, as in Psalm 74:5: 'I said to the wicked: Do not act wickedly; and to the transgressors: Do not lift up your horn; do not raise your horn on high; do not speak iniquity against God.' Similar is the poet's verse: 'For against the wicked I am most fierce; I raise my horns at the ready.' The meaning is: God, after giving the law at Sinai, in order to protect it and His people, like a strong and fierce bull assumed and wielded His might, strength, and weapons — like the most powerful horns — with which the angel, the leader of the Hebrews through the desert, armed by Him, repelled death and the demon from them, and sent those same upon the Canaanites, destroyed them, and in their place in their land settled and established the Hebrews. In a similar way God will pierce and destroy the Chaldeans through Cyrus and Darius, as through His two horns, and through their bows, which have the appearance of horns, for the sake of liberating His Jews — says Albert, Hugh, and Lyra.
Mystically, the horns of Christ are the cross, or the power of the cross, by which He overcame the demons and all enemies, so that before His triumphal chariot He leads death and the devil in triumph, as conquered foes. Hence Christ became for us a horn of salvation, as Zechariah sings (Luke 1:69). So St. Jerome, Theophylact, Rupert, Haymo, Ribera, Emmanuel... so says also, in this passage, St. Augustine at the place already cited, Eusebius (Book VI of the Demonstration of the Gospel, chapter 15), and St. Cyprian (Book II Against the Jews, chapter 21). The horns of the cross, therefore, were the horns and weapons of Christ, with which He shattered His and our enemies. Now although properly Christ's hands were on the cross and its horns, yet in turn the cross and its horns were in the hands of Christ: both because the nails of the cross were in the hands of Christ, and because the stretching and torment of the cross was in the hands of Christ, and because the horns — that is, the strength of Christ — were in His crucified hands; for by these He paid the ransom for our sins and merited grace and salvation for us. And finally, by the hypallage common to the Hebrews, the horns of the cross were in His hands because His hands were on the horns of the cross. Thus shoes are said to be on the feet, meaning the feet are in the shoes (Exodus 12:11). Thus the poet says: 'The pipe blew through the cheeks,' instead of 'the cheek blew through the pipe.' Hence the Arabic version translates: 'In the city of His hands He placed His strength in the temple.'
Tropologically, these horns were the patience, humility, and other virtues of Christ, but especially His burning, unconquered, and most powerful charity and love for God and men, which drove Him to the cross and to death. With these darts of His love He wounded the hearts of the first Christians, especially the martyrs — such as St. Stephen, St. Paul, St. John, St. Ignatius, St. Lawrence, etc. — and compelled and set them on fire to love Him in return and to render life for life, so that they burned with an insatiable desire for martyrdom and for suffering the most things for Christ. Hence the Septuagint translates: 'Horns are in His hands, and He placed the strong love of His strength.' Namely for this reason, says... St. Jerome: 'God the Father covered the heavens with glory, and filled the earth with praise, and placed horns — that is, the kingdom — in the hand of His Son, so that He might make His beloved one to be loved by men, not lightly, but with strength,' that is, vehemently and mightily. For strong as death was His love for us, hard as hell His jealousy, which therefore hurls at us the strong and mighty arrows of His love — fiery arrows — by which He wounds and pierces our minds, so that like deer transfixed by the arrow of His love, through crosses, through weapons, through enemies and fires we may run after Him, saying with St. Paul: 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation? Or distress? Or hunger? Or nakedness? Or peril? Or persecution? Or the sword?' etc. These were the horns of St. Stephen, with which he pierced Paul and others and subjected them to Christ. Hear St. Fulgentius in his sermon On St. Stephen: 'Stephen, in order to merit the crown of his name, had charity for his weapons, and by it he was victorious everywhere. By the charity of God he did not yield to the raging Jews; by charity for his neighbor he interceded for those who stoned him. By charity he rebuked the erring, that they might be corrected; by charity he prayed for those who stoned him, that they might not be punished. Supported by the strength of charity, he conquered Saul who was cruelly raging, and the one whom... he had on earth as a persecutor, he merited to have as a companion in heaven.'
There His strength is hidden. — Pagninus: 'There was the hiding of His strength'; the Zurich Bible: 'There was the hiding-place of His strength'; Vatablus: 'There was revealed and uncovered His strength, which before was hidden.' 'There' — namely, both in the splendor and in the horns and hands, that is, in His mighty works performed through Moses and Joshua — God, lying hidden, concealed Himself and His majesty and strength; and in the same way He will conceal it in the conquest of Babylon and the liberation of the Jews through Cyrus. For in Cyrus the strength of God was hidden, says Albert. Allegorically, in the weakness of the humanity, passion, and cross of Christ, His majesty, divinity, and immense strength were hidden. Hence, wielding it in the passion, He shook the whole earth with a tremendous earthquake, split open rocks and cliffs, and darkened the sun and moon. The Septuagint, as I said, translates: 'He placed the strong love of His strength' — that is, through His strength — namely, the Father through His Son, says Cyril in the Catena. Or, as others say: When Christ was born and suffered for us, He showed us His strong love. For He suffered not from weakness, but from strong and mighty love; so that His strength and power was love, and in turn love was for Him the power and strength to overcome mightily all labors, sorrows, and crosses. So Theodoret and Theophylact. Or, as others say: 'He placed the strong love of His strength' — that is, in proportion to the measure of His immense love, God the Father measured out to the Son the force of His power, which He would employ and exert both for generously sustaining His immense struggles, labors, and sorrows, and for displaying His immense exaltation and glory in the resurrection and ascension into heaven.
For where love is the engine, how great an elevation of weights, even the heaviest, can be hoped for! For the weight and balance of every weight is love. Truly St. Augustine: 'My love is my weight; by it I am carried wherever I am carried.' 'For just as the impulses of bodies,' says the same author (Book XI of The City of God, chapter 28), 'are the momenta of weights, whether they tend downward by gravity or upward by lightness — so the body is carried by its weight, as the soul is carried by its love, wherever it is carried.' And St. Gregory: 'The engine of the mind is the power of love, which, drawing the mind from the world, lifts it to the heights.' And St. Bernard: 'My labor is scarcely one hour's, and if of longer duration, I do not feel it on account of love.' Thus Christ, by the weight of love, overcame all the weight of the passion and the cross so steadfastly that He seemed not to feel it, as if it were light. Again, the weight of love by which the Father was carried toward Him and weighed down was so great that the eternal and divine weight of glory which He gave to Him rising and ascending seemed, in comparison with His love, and in comparison with the Son's merits, light and trifling to Him.
Verse 5
Verse 5. Before His face death shall go. — In Hebrew דבר (deber), that is, pestilence, and consequently death. So Aquila, Symmachus, the Fifth Edition, our translator [the Vulgate], Pagninus, the Zurich Bible, Clarius, Arias, and Vatablus. But the Septuagint and Theodotion, reading with different vowel points דבר (dabar), that is, 'word,' translate: 'Before His face the word shall go,' namely by which He will command the enemies to be slain. He speaks of the pestilence and slaughter which God sent upon the Canaanites, by which He wore them down so that the Hebrews coming into Canaan might easily occupy it, according to what He had promised through Moses in Exodus 23:27: 'I will send My terror before you, and I will slay every people into whose land you enter, etc., first sending hornets, which will drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, before you enter.' And that God actually did this is clear from Joshua 24:12. That God sent similar plagues ahead against the Chaldeans so that they might easily be conquered by Cyrus, Lyra teaches.
Allegorically, Christ by His cross and death defeated death and the devil, and led them as it were before Him in triumph, as the Apostle teaches in Colossians 2:15, especially when through the Apostles He expelled the devil from temples and idols, as well as from the minds of men.
The devil shall go forth before His feet. — For 'devil' the Hebrew is רשף (resheph), which signifies everything that, flying like a bird, burns, and burning, flies — such as lightning, sparks, and fiery arrows. Hence it signifies the devil, of whom Christ says in Luke 10:18: 'I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.' For he, like lightning on the earth, blights everything, devastates everything, and inflicts whatever harm he can upon men. Wherefore Homer and the pagans, from this fall of Lucifer, invented the goddess Ate — that is, Harm — who, cast down from heaven by Jupiter, exercises her power on earth and does damage to all; for she entangles men in every kind of evil, seduces and disturbs their minds. So Vilalpandus on Ezekiel 28:23. See what I said about resheph at Deuteronomy 32:24. Habakkuk therefore means that God, through the devil and evil angels — as the Psalmist says in Psalm 77:49 — sent lightning, plagues, fiery arrows, etc. against the Canaanites before the entrance of the Hebrews into Canaan, by which He crushed and destroyed them. Hence the Zurich Bible translates: 'Plague precedes His face, and conflagration goes forth at His feet'; and the Chaldean paraphrase: 'From His sight was sent the angel of death, and His word went forth in a flame of fire'; another version cited in the Roman edition of the Septuagint: 'Before His face destruction shall go before, and at His feet the greatest of birds shall follow'; the Syriac and Antiochene Arabic: 'A bird shall go forth at His foot, or to His fold, or to His migration'; the Alexandrian Arabic: 'The word shall walk before Him; but He went forth into the fields, and the birds shall follow Him.'
Allegorically, St. Jerome refers this to the devil tempting Christ in the desert, who, vanquished by Him, fled in disgrace. More fully, one may refer it to the entire life and death of Christ and of the Apostles, for by these the devil was gradually prostrated and cast out from his dominion over the world.
Verse 6
Verse 6. He stood — not the devil, but God, the conqueror of death and the devil, as if to say: God, after the long pilgrimage with the Hebrews through the desert, and many wars and crises, entered Canaan victorious and there took His stand in the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant at Gilgal (Joshua 4:19), and having measured the promised land through Joshua (chapter 15), distributed it by equal lot among the twelve tribes of Israel. He had first, by His mere gaze, as it were, and threatening countenance, dissolved and destroyed the nations of the Canaanites and their kings and princes, who by their gigantic strength, the size and multitude of their soldiers, seemed to be like certain firm, eternal, and impregnable mountains, and had possessed those regions unconquered for many centuries. But the eternity of God — that is, the eternal God sitting in the propitiatory and the ark between the Cherubim, leading the people of Israel by sure, safe, and victorious routes, marching as victor through these His enemies — bent them low, crushed, and ground them to pieces. In a similar way God, having conquered Babylon through Cyrus, took His stand there as it were a victor, and having measured the regions subject to Babylon from there, distributed them among the princes of Cyrus, after having routed all who fought for the cause of the Chaldeans. So Albert, Lyra, and Hugh. Hence the Syriac translates: 'His are the goings (journeys) that are from of old; steps, and the traces of steps'; the Antiochene Arabic: 'The hills that are from of old were weakened, their endurance that is from of old'; the Alexandrian Arabic: 'The valleys were crushed in His strength, and the hills were loosened forever; His goings forth are from eternal ages.'
Allegorically, Christ the eternal, measuring out and distributing all nations to the Apostles — as to St. John, Asia; to St. Matthew, Ethiopia; to St. Andrew, Achaia; to St. Thomas, India, etc. — subjected them all to Himself and to His faith; and this while they recognized and marveled at the immense journeys of His eternity, which He Himself undertook for the sake of men, so that from heaven and eternity He might descend to our earth and time, having become man; for 'His goings forth are from the days of eternity,' says Micah 5:2.
Hear St. Augustine, Book XVIII of The City of God, chapter 32, explaining the Septuagint version: 'He stood, and the earth was moved — what is this, except that He stood to help, and the earth was moved to believe? He beheld, and the nations wasted away — that is, He showed mercy and made the peoples penitent. The mountains were crushed by violence — that is, by the miracles working with force, the pride of the haughty was crushed. The eternal hills flowed down — that is, they were humbled for a time, that they might be raised up forever. I saw His eternal goings-in for His labors — that is, not without the reward of eternity did I behold the labor of charity.'
You will ask: what are literally the journeys of eternity? First, Vatablus understands by these journeys the motions of the heavenly spheres, for these are constant and, as it were, eternal, as if to say: God governs not only the hills of the age — that is, powerful men — and this lower world, but also the journeys of eternity, that is, the upper world and the celestial spheres and... the celestial motions. For many pagans believed that kingdoms and human affairs are governed by the stars, and that this is fate. From this belief, says Arias, arose the loathsome arrogance of kings and princes, who thought that they were lords of others by nature and fate, and that they, like certain mountains and hills, were established as princes over other mortals by some celestial right — a disease of madness by which would that Christian princes were not afflicted! Recently a certain prominent man, asked why he had given his vote for such-and-such a candidate for a principality, answered: 'Thus it was in the fates.' To which another wittily replied: 'Rather, thus it was in the fools.' This error is certain: for the heavens and stars have no power over kingdoms and empires; rather, these are assigned by the sole counsel and will of God, who at His pleasure humbles one, exalts another, and transfers kingdoms from one to another. 'For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and He has set the world upon them,' as Hannah sings in 1 Samuel 2.
Second, the Hebrew עולם (olam) means 'age' and 'world.' Hence one may translate plainly and clearly: 'The hills of olam, that is, of the world and the age, were bowed down by God, because the journeys — that is, the successions and vicissitudes — of olam, that is, of the world and the age, are His.' Therefore the Chaldean paraphrase translates: 'The power of the age is His,' as if to say: God bows down the hills — that is, casts princes from their thrones and substitutes others — because He Himself presides over the world and the age, and He moderates, rules, and distributes its journeys — that is, its order, rotation, motions, and vicissitudes — at His pleasure.
Third, the Septuagint and our translator render olam as 'eternity'; for the root על (alam) means 'to hide...' to conceal; hence olam is called eternity, whose duration and end are hidden and impenetrable, because eternity is an immense duration that has no limit. As if to say: The hills of olam, that is, of eternity — namely the Canaanite princes, who boasted that they had possessed Canaan from every age and century, and would possess it for all time — were bowed down, removed from their place and kingdom, cast down, and crushed by God, who is far more ancient than they and possessed Canaan before them. For to Him alone are subject the journeys of eternity — that is, the vicissitudes, turnings, and sequences of all times and ages, which under His eternity course by, pass through, and traverse in parts, as through various ways and journeys (hence the Hebrew הליכות halichot, which our translator renders as 'journeys,' would more properly be translated as 'traversings' or 'passages'). For He is the king of the ages, the president of times, the lord, and — as the Syrians say — the giant of eternity. Hence Pagninus translates: 'The hills of long time bowed themselves from the journeys of His age.'
For the eternity of God is the fountain, origin, and cause of all times and ages; for these emanate and arise from it, as a ray from the sun, as water from a spring, as a spark from fire. Therefore, just as various rays emanate alternately and successively from the sun, various waters from the spring, various sparks from the fire, yet the same sun always remains and endures, the same spring, the same fire, which ceaselessly shoots forth these rays, these waters, these sparks — so the various days, years, ages, times, and all the orders and vicissitudes of the centuries emanate from the eternity of God; but eternity itself always remains the same, fixed and immovable. For eternity is that which in a wheel is the axle, which in a circle is the center. For just as the wheel revolves around the axle and the circle around the center — just as all the heavenly and elemental spheres revolve and turn around the center of the earth — so around eternity as around an axle and center, all times revolve and turn, and whatever through the individual times arises, sets, comes, goes, is raised up, or once raised is bowed down and depressed. Hence Cesare Ripa in his Iconologia, Part I, page 159, depicts divinity as a matron clothed in white, having on her head a flame of fire which divides itself equally into three parts; in each hand she holds a globe of lapis lazuli, and on each sits a flame. The white garment denotes the purity of the divine essence; its flame, love and ardor; the division into three equal parts, the trinity of persons; the spherical globe, eternity — and a double eternity: one which God has in Himself, the other which He communicates to the angels and blessed humans in the enjoyment of Himself, and this through Christ, who has a twofold nature, perfect in every respect, and therefore, as it were, spherical.
Hence again God, on account of His eternity embracing all times, is called 'the age of ages' by St. Dionysius, chapter 5 of On the Divine Names. And St. Bernard, Sermon 80 on the Song of Songs: 'Times pass beneath it (the divine and eternal nature), not for it; it does not await the future, does not remember the past, does not experience the present.' The journeys of eternity, therefore, are the journeys of time — namely the past, present, and future — which course along and pass by under eternity. For as any time courses along and, as it were, journeys, by our way of conceiving it, eternity, connected and co-measured with it, seems to course along and journey with it, so as to propel it and force it to give place to what follows and succeeds it. He alludes to the journeys of the Hebrews in the desert for forty years, during which God continually traveled with them to invade and subdue the Canaanites; for these journeys, being so long, were olam — that is, of the age, and of a certain secular eternity. More fully, St. Augustine, Book I of the Confessions, chapter 6: 'You are the Most High,' he says, 'and You do not change; nor is today's day completed in You, yet it is completed in You, because in You are all these things also; for they would have no way of passing unless You held them. And because Your years do not fail, Your years are today; and how many of our days and our fathers' days have passed through Your today, and from it have received their measure, and have somehow existed; and still others will pass, and will receive their measure, and will somehow exist. But You are always the same, and all things of tomorrow and beyond, and all things of yesterday and before, You will do today, You have done today.'
Finally, properly the journeys or walkings of eternity are His — namely God's — as the Hebrew has it, as if to say: God walks — that is, He dwells, moves, lives, and thrives — in those lofty mountains of His eternity, and from there He looks down upon these subject valleys and hills of times, kingdoms, and ages, bows them down, changes, moderates, and directs them as it pleases Him. Again, from these eternal ages of His, which we imagine in our minds as having coexisted with His eternity, He set out as on great journeys — that is, He traversed, passed through, and arrived through innumerable and infinite, as it were, ages to the beginning of time, in which He created, preserves, adorns, governs, and changes the world, and to the beginning of His synagogue, so that by driving out and crushing the Canaanites through Joshua, He might settle Israel in their region, and in it establish His Church, His temple, His priesthood, and His kingdom — which is what Habakkuk properly has in view here. Therefore Guevara takes 'eternity' as meaning the eternal God: for no attribute of God makes His majesty more wonderful and worthy of reverence to men than His eternity. As if to say: The hills — that is, the princes of Canaan — were crushed when the eternal God journeyed with the Hebrews and fought for them — God who is eternity itself, that is, eternal majesty; because wherever that majesty, journeying with them in Canaan, set foot, there He established a seat for Himself and His Hebrews. For in ancient times, by placing one's foot in a field or place, usucaption took place — that is, possession of the place was taken. Hence Psalm 59:10: 'Over Edom I will extend my sandal,' as if to say: By the placement of my shoe and foot I will occupy and claim Edom for myself. Moreover, the Prophet plays on the word olam: for first he calls the hills of olam the princes of the world, then the journeys of the eternity of God — because the olam of God is one thing, the olam of men and princes another. The olam of God is heaven and eternity; the olam of men is earth and time. Thus the Apostle plays on the word 'sin,' saying: 'Christ, from sin, condemned sin.' And: 'Him who knew no sin, for us He made sin' (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Mystically, St. Bernard, Sermon 10 on Psalm Qui habitat, says: The journeys of eternity and of the eternal God are mercy and truth. 'By these journeys the hills of the world were bowed down — the proud demons, the princes of this world, who did not know the way of truth and mercy. What has he to do with truth, who is a liar and the father of lies? When was he ever merciful, who was a murderer from the beginning? In this way, then, those swollen hills were bowed down by the journeys of eternity: since from the ways of the Lord, which are straight, they collapsed through their own twists and distortions — not so much on journeys as on precipices. But how much more prudently and usefully were other hills bowed down and humbled by these journeys unto salvation! Can we not see the hills of the world now humbled, when the exalted and the powerful bow themselves to the Lord with devout submission and adore His footsteps? Are they not bowed down when from their own ruinous height of vanity and cruelty they are turned to the humble paths of mercy and truth?'
Morally, St. Bonaventure wrote a short work On the Seven Journeys of Eternity, which is found in volume II of his Works, in which he learnedly and devoutly, in his customary manner, teaches and describes seven journeys for entering into the inmost secret and eternal realm, which is the homeland of the soul — namely, the very sanctuary of the divinity and eternity of God, in which our eternal life and blessedness consist. The first journey, he says, is a right intention toward eternal things, so that the soul approaches one eternal end by intending, one by attending, one by entering, one by remaining, for the sake of one eternal end, which is the best and the one thing necessary, and the end that quiets and consummates the multitude of all desires into one — which will not be taken away forever, which Christ assigned to Magdalene in Luke 10:42. The second journey of eternity is a studious meditation on eternal things, according to St. Gregory, Book IV of the Moralia, chapter 28: 'To remain in solitude is to expel from the secret of the heart the tumult of earthly desires, and in a single intention toward the eternal homeland, to yearn in the love of inmost quiet.' The third journey is a clear contemplation of eternal things (which is the peak and summit of meditation), which he describes from Richard [of St. Victor] thus: 'Contemplation is the free insight of the mind, suspended in wonder at the spectacles of wisdom,' according to Job 7: 'My soul has chosen hanging.' That 'hanging' is the extension of the mind into the eternal spectacles, so that whenever possible, the mind's gaze is never turned away from there by intention of the will, but only by the interruption of necessity, as the Psalmist says: 'My eyes are always toward the Lord' (Psalm 24). The fourth journey is a charitable affection for eternal things, about which St. Bernard says in Sermon 83 on the Song of Songs: 'Love is a great thing, if it returns to its own beginning, if it is led back to its origin, if, poured back into its fountain, it always draws from it, whence it may perpetually flow.' For love transforms the lover into the likeness of the beloved as much as possible — not only with respect to substance, but also with respect to arduous and difficult activities. Hence St. Gregory, Book VII of the Moralia, chapter 6: 'Holy men, when they pant for the desire of eternity, lift themselves up to such a height of life that they consider hearing the things of the world a heavy and depressing burden. For they deem utterly intolerable whatever does not sound like what they love within.' And below, chapter 7: 'And with charity multiplied, they burn with greater desires, and they now yearn to arrive at the life of the spirit even through the torments of the body.' So the bride in Song of Songs 5:8: 'I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,' she says, 'etc., that you tell my beloved that I am sick with love,' as if to say: On account of the greatness of love, all temporal things are distasteful to me; hence I languish. But that languishing is caused by perfect love. O how hard it is for the lover to divide the heart between Christ and the world! Again: 'Nothing is so hard and iron-like that it cannot be conquered by the fire of love,' says St. Augustine in his book On the Morals of the Church, chapter 22.
The fifth journey of eternity is a hidden revelation of eternal things. For the assiduous pondering of spiritual revelations provides a continual growth of knowledge and exultation of the mind; and from this the mind attains the transcendence of eternal things and the entrance into hidden things. For those who love more ardently see more deeply, discern more subtly, and know more clearly; the more ardently, therefore, eternal things are loved, the more perfectly they are known. Hence St. Gregory, Book XVIII of the Moralia, says: 'In the saints, eternity comes to be by gazing upon the eternity of God.' Thus, when the divine ray shines upon the mind, it is led with Moses into the darkness of hidden silence, in which the Lord appears openly and truly in a super-intellectual way, says St. Dionysius in his book On Mystical Theology, chapter 2. The sixth journey is a certain experiential foretaste of eternal things, which the Psalmist had when he said (Psalm 33:9): 'Taste and see that the Lord is sweet.' And the bride in Song of Songs 2:3: 'His fruit is sweet to my palate.' And 5:1: 'I ate the honeycomb with my honey.' The honeycomb, says Origen, is virgin wax divided into cells filled with honey. What else, then, is 'I ate the honeycomb with my honey,' other than to eat the body of virginal flesh filled with the sweetest divinity? And thus through the taste of His humanity one arrives at the taste of His divinity, and therefore at the foretaste of eternity. Many saints have experienced and continue to experience such a foretaste and prelibation of eternal life in the devout and ardent reception of the Eucharist. Speaking of these things, St. Gregory, Book XXIV of the Moralia, chapter 7, explaining the passage from Job, 'He shall see His face with jubilation,' says: 'Many, by a certain contemplation of eternal reward, even before they are stripped of the flesh, become joyful, as they behold the face of God in jubilation; which happens when someone fixes the spiritual eye on the ray of the eternal sun. There he sees the living light, because having trodden down every vicissitude of mutability and every shadow, he clings to the truth of eternity, and by clinging to the one he beholds, he rises to the likeness of immutability, and while gazing upon it, takes on in himself the unchangeable form of his Creator. For that which had fallen by itself into mutability is, by its manner of living, formed into the immovable state of immutability.'
The seventh journey is a meritorious operation of eternal things, or a God-like — that is, conformed to the divine operation — action, conduct, and life. 'For their works follow them' (Revelation 14). Just as, says St. Bernard (Book V of On Consideration, chapter 5), God in the Seraphim loves as charity, in the Cherubim knows as truth, in the Thrones sits as equity; so it is necessary that we too, as much as we can, love God the supreme good, know the supreme truth, and hold the supreme equity within ourselves. And thus we shall be well-ordered toward God through God-like operations: that we may burn with love with the Seraphim, shine with knowledge with the Cherubim, and, made spiritual, judge all things with the Thrones. 'Therefore, although in the practice of a work there is temporality, yet in the intention there should be eternity,' says St. Gregory, Book XXII of the Moralia, chapter 22. To these things leads us...
Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life, who makes our conversation to be in heaven: for He Himself opened for us the entrance to eternity by conquering death. These and many more things, word for word though scattered, are found in the cited work of St. Bonaventure. Happy is he who strives by these journeys toward blessed eternity. Happy is he who, transcending the swift revolution of all times and ages, poising himself above the courses of the year and sun, fixes his mind on stable and immovable eternity. Happy is he who, despising the vain and passing goods of earth that constantly revolve, lives for things eternal and solid, lives for eternity that abides forever.
In a similar way, St. Augustine (or whoever the author is), in the treatise On the Ladder of Paradise, tome IX, assigns four steps of this ladder, namely: reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. For reading is the path to meditation, meditation to prayer, prayer to contemplation. "For the attainment of contemplation without prayer is either rare or miraculous; the first step belongs to beginners, the second to those progressing, the third to the devout, the fourth to the blessed. Reading without meditation is dry; meditation without reading is erroneous; prayer without reading is lukewarm; meditation without prayer is unfruitful; prayer with devotion is the acquisition of contemplation."
Verse 7
7. FOR INIQUITY I SAW THE TENTS OF ETHIOPIA. — Vatablus: I saw the tents of the Ethiopians reduced to nothing. For the Hebrew און (aven) signifies both iniquity and nothingness. The Chaldean, Arias, and Clarius think that here is celebrated the victory of Othniel, by which he freed the Hebrews from the servitude of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Mesopotamia, Judges III, and the victory of Gideon, which he won over the Midianites, Judges VI; because Midian is named here, and because in Hebrew it is Cushan, not Cush or Cushim, which properly signifies Ethiopia and the Ethiopians. But the Septuagint, St. Jerome, and others translate Cushan as Ethiopia: Cushan therefore by paragoge is the same as Cush, just as Melchum is the same as Melech and Moloch. For Habakkuk here celebrates only the miracles of God wrought from the time of the departure from Egypt up to the entrance into Canaan, as is clear from what follows; but not those things which God afterwards wrought in Canaan through Othniel and Gideon. Moreover, the same people are here both Midianites and Ethiopians. For the Midianites in Scripture are called Ethiopians, namely Eastern ones, just as the Abyssinians are Western Ethiopians. Hence the wife of Moses the Midianite is called an Ethiopian, Numbers XII, 1. See what was said there. The meaning therefore is, as if to say: I saw, that is, I knew and received from the narration of the fathers, and understood from the Scriptures what You once did, O Lord, to the Ethiopians, that is, the Midianites, "for iniquity," that is, on account of the scandal of fornication and worship of Baal-Peor, which they gave to the children of Israel by sending into their camp their daughters, who enticed them to both crimes, Numbers XXV, 1. For I knew that You disturbed and routed their tents, that is, their encampments and camps, through Joshua, having slain their princes, and all the males, and Balaam the author of the scandal, Numbers chapter LI. Note the enallage of tense: "they shall be troubled," that is, they were troubled: for the past tense "I saw" preceded. Again it is a hendiadys: I saw and they shall be troubled, that is, they were being troubled, that is, I saw the tents of Midian being troubled. Albert and Lyranus add that "they shall be troubled" is said because at the same time the Prophet looks to the future victory of Cyrus, as if to say: Just as You troubled the Midianites through Joshua, so You will trouble and rout the same through Cyrus, on account of their iniquity which they committed against the children of Israel, by helping the Chaldeans in the siege of Jerusalem.
Allegorically, the Ethiopians are types both of demons and of impious men: because the latter are deformed and dark in morals, just as the Ethiopians are in skin and complexion. Again, the bodies and minds of impious men are nothing other than the skins and tents of the Ethiopians, that is, of demons. The meaning therefore is, as if to say: I, Habakkuk, in the spirit saw and foresaw how and how fiercely Christ would chastise the demons and impious men who persecute His Church and His faithful. Or as if to say: The Ethiopians and Midian, that is, "the nations suddenly terrified by the news of Your wonders, even those that were not under Roman law, were in the Christian people," says St. Augustine, book XVIII of The City of God, chapter XXXII, so that here is signified the conversion of the nations, even the barbarian ones, to Christ through the miracles, preaching, and heavenly life of the Apostles.
Verse 8
Are You angry at the rivers? — He calls the waters of the Red Sea rivers, as well as those of the Jordan. So Homer calls the ocean a river, saying: He left the stream of the river Ocean with his boat. And Hesiod: A daughter born of the river of perfect Ocean.
The Prophet poetically describes the division of the Red Sea, Exodus XIV, and of the Jordan, Joshua III, so that the Hebrews might cross: whence he metaphorically depicts the zeal of God as anger against the sea and rivers, and calls His strength chariots and quivers, His horses and chariots he calls clouds and winds: hence also by the same trope, as if the waters suffered violence, he attributes pain to them. The meaning therefore is, as if to say: To save Your people Israel, You appeared, O Lord, to be angry and indignant at the Jordan and the Red Sea, when for their sake against Pharaoh and against His other enemies, You were about to fight, You mounted the clouds as a war chariot, and drove as horses both the winds and the swiftest angels, with which partly You cut through the Jordan and the sea, to open a path and way of escape for Your people; partly You hurled storms and lightning, as arrows from Your bow, against the Egyptians, crushed them, and drowned them in the sea, so as to fulfill "the oaths," that is, Your promises confirmed by oath, which You had made to the Israelites; and therefore "the rivers," that is, these waters of the Red Sea and the Jordan, "You will cleave," that is, You cleft them, so that "the deep" and abyss "of waters" might recede, and against nature, as if with pain, fear, astonishment, noise, and the roar of waves crashing together, rising up on both sides into mountains, that is, into the mass and height of mountains, and as if lifting suppliant hands to heaven toward God, might provide a dry and level path in the middle for the Hebrews to cross. In a similar way, through Cyrus You will divert the channel of the Euphrates into ditches, and through its now-dried bed You will send the Persians into Babylon, which lies beside the Euphrates, so that they might devastate it and free the Hebrews from it, says Albert and Hugh. For I showed from Xenophon in Daniel chapter V, at the end, that Cyrus captured Babylon by this stratagem.
Note: in verse 9, in the Hebrew is added selah, about which I spoke at verse 3, as if to say: O the power, O the victory, O the faithfulness, O the goodness of God, who frees His own through the division of the sea and rivers — something to be marveled at and celebrated in every age!
Allegorically, many waters are many peoples, Revelation XVII, 15, as if to say: Are You angry at the nations, O Lord? Not at all, because You sent them Christ the Savior. "Because," says St. Augustine in the passage already cited, "You will mount upon Your horses, and Your riding is salvation, that is, Your Evangelists will carry You, because they are guided by You, and Your Gospel is salvation to those who believe in You. By rivers the earth will be cleft, that is, by the flowing sermons of those preaching You, the hearts of men will be opened to confession, about which it was said: Rend your hearts, and not your garments. What does it mean, 'The peoples will see You and grieve'? — that by mourning they may be blessed. What does it mean, 'Scattering waters in Your advance'? — that by walking among those who everywhere proclaim You, here and there You scatter the streams of doctrine. What does it mean, 'The abyss gave forth its voice'? Did the depth of the human heart express what seemed good to it?" The Gloss aptly applies these words to the exaltation of the Church under the Emperor Constantine. "The torrent of waters passed over, that is, he says, the fury of persecutions passed over the Christians up to the times of Constantine. The abyss gave forth its voice, the height lifted up its hands. By the height is understood Constantine, to whom the whole world was subject: and he lifted up his hand to protect Christianity; and then the abyss gave forth its voice, because the Christians, previously placed in the abyss of tribulation, burst forth solemnly in praise of God. The sun and moon stood still in their dwelling place, that is, Christ and the Blessed Virgin openly—"
YOUR CHARIOTS ARE SALVATION. — He calls clouds the horses and chariot of God, upon which, as it were riding, God hurled lightning and thunderbolts against the Egyptians, according to that of Psalm CIII, 3: "Who makes the cloud Your ascent," that is, Your chariot, as if to say: Who uses the clouds as Your vehicle. And Psalm LXXVI, 18: "The clouds gave forth a voice: for indeed Your arrows
Tropologically, St. Gregory, book VIII of the Morals, chapter XIII, reading according to the Septuagint: The abyss gave forth its voice from the height of its imagination, explains it thus: "For the abyss bears the height of imagination, when the human mind, darkened by immense thought, does not penetrate even itself by examination: but to give forth a voice from this height is this: because when it cannot apprehend itself, it is compelled to rise in admiration, so that it does not dare to scrutinize what is above it, since thinking of its own incomprehensibility, it cannot find what it is."
Anagogically, Christ will plainly do these very things, as they sound, at the end of the world, when He will punish and destroy the Antichrist and the followers of Antichrist with waves, the roaring of the sea, the bitterness of waters, stench, putrefaction, thunder, rains, hail, and lightning, as is clear from Luke chapter XXI, 25, Revelation chapters VIII and XVI; so that the abyss and the height, that is, the lower and upper realms, earth and heaven, and the whole world may fight and contend on His behalf against the impious, Wisdom V, 21, and may sing and celebrate the vengeance and triumph of God the avenger, with applause of mouth and hands. pass over; the voice of Your thunder is in the wheel." So the poets display the power of Jupiter, when they call him the thunderer, the cloud-gatherer, the thundering one, hypsothorimetēn, that is, the high-roaring one, as Lucian says in the Misanthrope. Hence that of Ovid: There he bade the mists, there the clouds to stand, / and thunders that would move the minds of men. And in book II of the Metamorphoses: That father and ruler of the gods, whose right hand / is armed with three-forked fires, who shakes the world with a nod.
He alludes in the word "chariot" to the Ark of the Covenant: for God, attended by the Cherubim, sat upon it as upon a war chariot of His glory, going before and leading the camp of the Hebrews through the Red Sea. For although the Ark in relation to the two Cherubim appeared to be a two-horse chariot, it was nevertheless also a four-horse chariot: both because it rested on four little globes or spheres, by which it was raised from the floor, as if on four wheels; and because the two Cherubim had four-fold and four-formed faces, namely the faces of four animals — ox, lion, eagle, and man — as four insignia of the divine virtues; and because Ezekiel in chapter I, describing the same chariot of God's glory, gives it four wheels as well as four Cherubim. Hence the Psalmist, alluding to this in Psalm LXVII, verse 18, says: "The chariot of God is multiplied ten thousandfold, thousands of those rejoicing, the Lord is among them in Sinai, in the holy place," as if to say: Many phalanxes of angels, indeed myriads, drive and attend the chariot of God, and the Lord, riding among them and over them, came to Sinai and remained in the sanctuary. Hence he adds: "They saw Your processions, O God, the processions of my God and my King, who is in the holy place," that is, in the sanctuary. So Prado on the first vision of Ezekiel, chapter X, and Pineda, book VI of On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter I. When therefore Habakkuk says: "You will mount upon Your horses, and Your chariots are salvation," the meaning is, as if to say: God does not mount a horse except to save, says Guevara. Secondly, more vigorously, Alcazar on Revelation chapter VI, note 2, as if to say: God's horses and chariots are the very salvation of men, that is, their deliverance; as if he were saying: God has no other horses, no chariots that He mounts, except works of this kind, which pertain to the salvation of men, in which He Himself glories, and presents Himself to be recognized by men, according to that of Zechariah X, 3: "The Lord of hosts has visited His flock, the house of Judah, and has made them like His glorious horse in battle." If you object, how then does it follow: "Before His face death shall go"? I answer: death goes before, in order to slay the enemies of His people, and thus to save them.
Symbolically and allegorically, St. Ambrose, on Psalm XL, takes the horses and cavalry of God to mean the flesh and humanity of Christ, upon which, as upon a horse and chariot, the divinity sat and rode, in order to win for us the victory over sin and the devil. "Hence," he says, "it was said in Habakkuk III: Your riding is salvation: because His flesh was about to take upon itself the sin of the whole world, so that salvation might succeed ruin, and eternal life succeed death. Therefore the horse alone was wounded, not false for salvation. Wounded was the horse who took upon himself the sins of the whole world, and bore our burdens: and he was not wearied. And therefore perhaps to John the Evangelist, Revelation XIX, heaven was opened, and a white horse was shown, upon which sat One having on His head many diadems, and on His thigh a name written: King of kings, and Lord of lords, etc. This horse therefore was wounded, but not held back. Finally, with that very wound he rose from the tomb, ran to heaven above all angels and archangels, found swifter than all the cavalry of the heavenly host: above even those fiery horses by which Elijah was taken up."
Secondly, the same Ambrose in Psalm CXVIII, at the end of the fourth octonary, takes the horses to mean the Apostles: "You mounted," he says, "Your horses, Your riding is health. O wonderful twelve-yoke team of good horses, who are bound with reins of peace, bridles of charity, fettered together by bonds of concord, and subjected to the yoke of faith, carrying the mystery of the Gospel on the four wheels to the ends of the whole world, bearing the good charioteer, the Word of God; by whose whip the allurements of the world were put to flight, the prince of this world was cast out, the course of the just was completed! O great contest of rational horses, O marvel—"
Verse 11
11. THE SUN AND MOON STOOD STILL IN THEIR DWELLING PLACE. — He commemorates the miracle of Joshua by which he stopped the sun and moon, and consequently all the celestial orbs, in order to pursue the victory against the Amorites and destroy them. For commanding them he said: "Sun, do not move against Gibeon, and moon, against the valley of Ajalon; and the sun and moon stood still until the nation avenged itself against its enemies, and the sun stood in the middle of the sky, and did not hasten to set for the space of one day," Joshua X, 12. So the Chaldean, Albert, Clarius, Jansenius, Emmanuel, Mariana, and others. Vatablus interprets differently; for he thinks that here is signified the ninth plague of the Egyptians, which was the densest darkness for three days, so that the sun and moon seemed to stand still, Exodus X, 21. But then neither the sun nor the moon stood still, nor were these darknesses produced from the standing still of the sun and moon, but from God darkening the air.
IN THE LIGHT OF YOUR ARROWS, THEY SHALL GO (that is, they went, or had gone; for the past tense "they stood" preceded) IN THE SPLENDOR OF YOUR FLASHING SPEAR. — He calls God's arrows and flashing spear the lightning, thunderbolts, hailstones, and rocks that God then hurled from heaven on behalf of Joshua and the Hebrews against the Amorites. Hence Tertullian, book IV Against Marcion, chapter XXXIX, reads: "The sun and moon stood still in their order; your flashes will go into light, into splendor: lightning is your shield, in your threatening you will diminish the earth." The meaning is, as if to say: When with Your great arrows, namely stones and lightning mixed with hail, You were striking down the enemies of the Israelites; then the Israelites themselves, unharmed by the light of those same flashes and thunderbolts, indeed illuminated by them, pursued their enemies. Thus by Your wonderful dispensation it was brought about that these weapons of Yours served the advantage of Your people, which brought the utmost destruction upon the enemy. For the Israelites had begun to attack the Amorites by night, as is clear from Joshua X, 9.
Secondly, more plainly Arias, who refers "they shall go" not to the Israelites but to the sun and moon, which went, that is, moderated their course according to the command and convenience of Joshua, "in the light," that is, for the light, or to illuminate God's arrows, as if to say: The sun and moon, which at other times are accustomed to travel their course for the use of the whole earth and all nations, on that day reversed and diverted their course for the sole use of Joshua and God's victory: for they stood as if watching the light of the weapons and flashing spears of God, and at the same time by their light they went with the Hebrews, and went before them in pursuit of the Amorites. For the sun and moon by standing still cooperated in this battle and victory. Hence by this standing still of theirs they seemed to go against the enemies of the Hebrews, and to strike them down and overthrow them.
With a similar figure and applause, Deborah and Barak celebrate their victory against Sisera, Judges V, 20, to show that it was won not by human but by divine strength. "From heaven," they say, "there was fighting against them: the stars, remaining in their order and course, fought against Sisera"; because they shone for the Hebrews to fight and conquer, but struck the enemies with their splendor and brilliance as if with lightning. Hence Plato in the Cratylus thinks that astra (stars) is said as if from astrapē (lightning); and astrapē, because it anastrephē, that is, turns the eyes with its light.
Thirdly, Albert, Hugh, and Lyranus take "they shall go" properly as a future, and explain it of Cyrus and the Persians, who after the times of Habakkuk, in the dead of night, as is clear from Daniel V, 30, suddenly attacked Babylon, and by the light of their arrows and flashing spears, as of torches shining before them, they went and entered the city, and devastated it with sword and flame: just as Joshua had devastated the Amorites in the same manner.
Allegorically, St. Augustine, book XVIII of The City of God, chapter XXXII: "The sun was lifted up," he says, "and the moon stood in its order, that is, Christ ascended into heaven, and the Church was ordered under its King. Your weapons will go into the light, that is, Your words will be sent not into concealment, but into the open. In the splendor of the flashing of Your arms, it must be understood, Your weapons will go. For He had said to His own: What I tell you in darkness, speak in the light. In threatening You will diminish the earth, that is, by threatening You will humble men. And in fury You will cast down the nations: because those who exalt themselves, You will dash down by avenging."
And St. Gregory, book XXX of the Morals, chapter II, takes the arrows and weapons to mean the words of preachers; the flashing spears, their miracles: for by these the nations were pierced, struck, and converted to Christ. To this Anastasius of Sinai, Patriarch of Antioch, agrees, in book IV of the Hexaemeron, tome I of the Library of the Holy Fathers, where he teaches that, just as the moon rises after the setting of the sun, so after Christ's departure the Church arose: "The sun was lifted on high," he says, "that is, Christ ascended into heaven; and then the moon stood in its order, namely the Church in its strong state, in its beauty, in its splendor, in its illumination, in its course. And he rightly said: In its order; for previously it was disordered and unformed, as being given over to idolatry." Secondly, "the sun rules the summer, as being a dry element, as a type of Christ, who at the end of the harvest of the consummation will dry up those who are under sin by a river of fire: but the moon has the governance of water and of the Holy Spirit, who was given and entrusted by Christ to the Church as to a moon, so that through it we may be regenerated, until the night of this age has passed, and the sun of justice has risen again." He then adds that the faithful grow as the Church grows, just as animals grow when the moon waxes, and gives examples: The ibis, he says, a bird hostile to serpents, does not see nor eat at the time when the moon does not appear in the sky. The orbits of apes' eyes dilate when the moon waxes, and diminish when it wanes. The lychnis stone, when the moon waxes, emits a melodious sound. The clopias fish whitens when the moon waxes, and darkens when it wanes. In a similar way the changes of the Church overflow and pour themselves into the soul of each believer.
Anagogically, God will do plainly the very same as the words express, at the end of the world, when He will darken the sun and moon, and hurl lightning against His enemies, according to that of Wisdom V, 22: "The shafts of lightning will go straight, and as from a well-bent bow of clouds they will be destroyed, etc. And hailstones full of wrath will be cast from a stony place." Finally, then the sun, the moon, and all the motion of the heavens will stand still, and will stop forever.
Tropologically, when the sun, that is, the prelate, raises himself to the reformation and perfection of life, then the moon also, that is, the congregation of the Church subject to him, is raised to the same. Hence St. Bernard, epistle 142 to the Alpine Monks: "Your good Father and ours," he says, "by God's doing has been raised to a higher rank. Let us therefore do what the prophet Habakkuk says, chapter III: The sun was raised, and the moon stood in its order. The sun is he through whom the Alpine congregation is made illustrious everywhere, like the moon through the sun. Therefore, with him elevated, let us stand in our order, all we who have chosen to be lowly in the house of our God, rather than to dwell in the tents of sinners. Our order is lowliness, is humility, is voluntary poverty, obedience, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit. Our order is to be under a master, under an abbot, under a rule, under discipline. Our order is to devote ourselves to silence, to be exercised by fasting, vigils, prayers, manual labor, and above all to hold the more excellent way, which is charity. Moreover, to make progress in all these things from day to day, and to persevere in them until the last day. And indeed we trust that you are constantly doing these things. However, you have done one thing, and all marvel that, when you were holy, not reckoning your own holiness sufficient, you took care to share in another's, that you might be holier:" because they had passed over to the stricter Order of the Cistercians. Hence he adds: "With what joyful embrace the Cistercian multitude received you, with what eager countenance the angelic height beheld this!"
Verse 12
indeed corrupted it, Symmachus and Theodotion, who, because they were Ebionites and denied that Christ is God, hence translated it: that you might save your Christ; for Christ is not here said to be saved, but the people through Christ the Savior: For to go forth for the salvation of the people with Christ is to save the people through Christ. The Chaldean also wrongly translates: You were revealed to free Your people, to free Your Christ, as if the people of Israel and the faithful were here called Christ, according to that of Psalm CIV, 15: "Do not touch my anointed ones," that is, my Israelites. But there by "anointed ones" the Psalmist means the Patriarchs, as St. Jerome and Theodoret correctly noted, namely Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom God had anointed, that is, consecrated and authorized by His grace, as prophets and princes of His nation. Hence explaining, he adds: "And do not deal wickedly against my prophets." Add that the Hebrew here does not have "to free Your Christ," as the Chaldean translates, but "to save" or "to free," namely the people, "with Your Christ" or "through Your Christ"; for the preposition את signifies "with" or "through." Therefore the Hebrew precisely reads thus: You went forth for the salvation of Your people, for salvation with Your Christ.
You struck (Pagninus: you pierced through; the Tigurines: you crushed) the head from the house of the wicked. — By "head" understand Pharaoh, whom God struck by drowning him in the Red Sea: for he was the head and prince of the house of the wicked Ham, who was most wicked, and first reigned in Egypt, which was thenceforth called the land of Ham, Psalm CIV, 23, and Psalm LXXVII, 51. Others, such as Albert and Vatablus, by "head" understand the firstborn son of Pharaoh, whom God struck with death, Exodus XII, 29. Or "head," that is, heads, namely the princes of the wicked Pharaoh. In a similar way You will strike Belshazzar, who is the head in the house of the wicked Nebuchadnezzar, through Cyrus, says St. Jerome, Hugh, and Lyranus.
Allegorically, Christ struck the devil, who is the head of the wicked, and at the end of the world He will strike the Antichrist, who will be the prince in the house and family of the devil. So St. Jerome.
Verse 13
13. YOU WENT FORTH FOR THE SALVATION OF YOUR PEOPLE (when You freed them and led them out of Egypt): FOR SALVATION WITH YOUR ANOINTED ONE, — to save and lead out the people through Moses, whom as an anointed one You anointed with Your spirit, that he might be the leader and prophet of Your people. In a similar way You will go forth with Cyrus into battle against Babylon, to free and lead out Your captive people from it. Hence Cyrus is called Christ (Anointed) by Isaiah, chapter XLV, 1, when he says: "Thus says the Lord to my anointed Cyrus." So Albert, Hugh, Lyranus, and Dionysius. Allegorically, properly and rather through Christ the Lord, whose antitype was Moses as well as Cyrus, You will save the faithful people, and lead them out of the captivity of the devil. Hence the Sixth Edition has: He went forth that You might save the people through Your Jesus Christ. So the Hebrews, St. Augustine, book XVIII of The City of God, XXXII, St. Jerome, and others everywhere. Therefore they fraudulently translated this passage,
YOU LAID BARE ITS FOUNDATION UP TO THE NECK. — "Its," namely not of the head, but of the house: for a house has a foundation, not a head, as if to say: The house of the wicked Pharaoh, that is, the royal family and Egypt itself, You uncovered from the lowest foundations up to the neck, that is, up to the very highest summits, that is, by uncovering You demolished and overturned it, by metalepsis, as if he were to say: The entire army of Pharaoh from the least to the greatest, You destroyed in the Red Sea, and as it were wiped them from the earth. For the head is Pharaoh, the neck is the princes, the foundations and lowest parts are the soldiers. He combines two metaphors, of a man and of a house: for the neck and head belong to a man, while the foundation properly belongs to a house. For the Hebrews call a man, that is, a son, ben, as being a house which his father בנה (bana), that is, built. For if man is a microcosm, much more is he a mikrosikos, that is, a small house. And conversely, just as the world is a kind of great animal and great man, whose soul is the spirit of God, whose liver is the sea, whose bladder is the rivers, whose eyes are the springs, etc.: so a house, family, and republic is a kind of great civil and political man, whose head is the father of the family, the prince, or king; whose neck is the princes, whose arms are the soldiers, whose feet and lowest parts are the common people. For the common people are the most necessary part, and as it were the foundation of the republic, on which all its burdens rest. In a house, particularly and as it were physically, the head is the roof, the neck is the joints of the roof with the walls, the body is the walls themselves, the feet and soles are the foundations. Now symbolically, a house is a family and republic, whose head and roof is the father, prince, or king; the neck and joints are the princes, the body and walls are the citizens and merchants, the feet are the farmers and colonists, from whom soldiers are gathered. He says therefore: You, O Lord, laid bare the foundation of the house of Pharaoh, that is, of the kingdom of Egypt, so as to demolish it from the ground up, as it were from its foundations. For those who want to overturn a house lay bare the foundations, according to what the Psalmist invokes against Babylon in Psalm CXXXVI: "Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof," as if he were to say: You slew the army of Pharaoh with its leaders and princes, in which was the foundation, that is, the strength and might of all Egypt. So Vatablus.
Secondly, Guevara explains it thus, as if to say: You afflicted Egypt with the greatest reproaches and ignominies, O Lord, no differently than if You had shaved her head, and stripped bare her lower body parts (which are like bases and foundations) and her very private parts even up to the neck. For "to lay bare" in Scripture sometimes means to shear, as in Isaiah III, 17: "The Lord will make bald the crown of the daughters of Zion, and will strip bare their hair." He alludes to Isaiah VII, 20: "On that day the Lord will shave with a hired razor, among those who are beyond the river, by the king of the Assyrians, the head and the hair of the feet, and the whole beard." For what Isaiah said: "He will shave the head," Habakkuk said: "You struck the head" — You struck, namely, with nakedness and baldness. Again, by "foundation" we can understand the head. For man is like an inverted tree, having hair for roots, hands and feet for branches. Moreover, how great a disgrace is the shaving, scalping, and depilation of the whole person is clear from that of the Poet: Shameful is a mutilated flock, shameful a field without grass, / and a bush without leaves, and a head without hair.
So far Guevara. The former explanation, as it is plainer, so also it is more conformable and germane to the letter. Finally, in the Hebrew selah is added, as a mark of admiration and applause at so great a slaughter and victory.
Verse 14
14. YOU CURSED HIS SCEPTERS. — To curse, on God's part, is to do harm, to injure, to kill, to destroy: for God's speaking is efficacious, and the same as doing. By scepters, understand either the princes who bore scepters as the insignia of their authority; or by metonymy, "his scepters," that is, the kingdoms and provinces over which Pharaoh ruled with his scepter, that is, with royal power, as if to say: You destroyed the kingdoms and dominions of Pharaoh, and all his tyrannical force and power. For formerly all princes and magistrates bore scepters. So each of the tribes of Israel had its own rod, as a scepter, Numbers XVII, 1. So Homer gives scepters not only to Agamemnon, but also to Achilles and Telemachus as princes, by which they swear: because the ancients believed scepters had something of divinity. Hence we read that the Chaeroneans worshiped the scepter of Agamemnon above all the gods. Guevara proves this with many examples. Hence Ahasuerus in Esther chapter V, 2, extended his scepter, which she kissed in veneration of the king. And in chapter VIII, 4, he again held out the scepter to her, as a sign of clemency. The same is found in chapter IV, 11; moreover, Jacob worshiped the tip of his rod, that is, the scepter of Joseph, Hebrews XI, 21. Scepters therefore here denote princes bearing scepters. For "you cursed," in Hebrew it is נקבת nakapta, which also means to pierce through. Hence Pagninus translates: You dug through with his rods the head of his armies; the Tigurines: You pierced with his own rods the head of his pagans (colonists, who dwell in villages and towns), or, as Vatablus, of his troops, namely of Egypt or of Pharaoh; that is, you slew him, just as if you had pierced his heads with his own weapons, as if to say: By Your doing the army of Pharaoh perished, by his own counsel: for Pharaoh counseled the Egyptians to pursue the Hebrews in the Red Sea, which while they do, with the sea turning back, they were drowned. In a similar way God cursed, pierced, and cast down the scepter of Belshazzar and the Chaldeans through Cyrus.
Against the head of his warriors. — "Against the head," that is, the heads, namely all the leaders of his warriors, namely of the wicked Ham, or of Pharaoh, who was the head and prince of the house of Egypt, as was said above. It is an epanalepsis, or repetition and exposition of the former sentence; for the princes whom he called scepters, that is, scepter-bearers, he here calls heads, or leaders of warriors. Hence the Septuagint translates: You divided in astonishment the heads of the powerful. Hence about them he adds:
Coming like a whirlwind, etc. — as if to say: You cast down the scepters, that is, the scepter-bearers, who came with fury and rage like a whirlwind, to scatter me, namely Israel, who am Your people.
Their exultation, — that is, was, as if to say: The scepter-bearing Egyptian leaders were exulting because they saw me shut in at the sea; for they thought to devour me there, just as a powerful man exults when he finds the poor man whom he intends to slaughter or despoil in a hiding place, where no one can help him.
Note: The Prophet throughout this entire canticle so greatly celebrates the slaughter of Pharaoh and the liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt; because in every respect similar to that was going to be the slaughter of the Chaldeans, and the liberation of the Hebrews from Babylon, which he himself was properly looking to and hoping for; and both were similar to the liberation of mankind from the captivity of sin through Christ, which ultimately and above all he intended to represent. That this is so is clear from these antistrophic tristrophs:
Pharaoh — Belshazzar — The Devil. Moses — Cyrus — Christ. Egypt — Babylon — Sin. Servitude — Captivity — Tyranny. The Red Sea — The Euphrates — The Jordan. Hebrews — Jews — Christians. Judea — Canaan — The Church.
For Pharaoh the tyrant afflicting and persecuting the Hebrews was a type of Belshazzar holding the Jews captive, and both were a type of the devil oppressing the human race. Moses, the liberator of the Hebrews and slayer of Pharaoh, was a type of Cyrus the liberator of the Jews through the slaying of Belshazzar, and both were a type of Christ the liberator of the faithful through the destruction of the devil. Egypt, the prison of the Hebrews, was a type of Babylon the prison of the Jews, and both were a type of sin, death, and hell, to which as to a prison sinful men had been consigned. Egyptian servitude was a type of Babylonian captivity, and both were a type of the tyranny of sin and concupiscence. Moses split the Red Sea with his rod, and so freed the Hebrews and drowned the Egyptians; so Cyrus split and divided the Euphrates, and through its dry channel sent soldiers into Babylon, and so slew the Chaldeans and freed the Jews.
Allegorically, Christ is baptized in the Jordan, separating the waters of baptism from common waters, leading His faithful through them He justifies and saves them. Moses led the Hebrews from Egypt into Canaan, Cyrus sent the Jews from Babylon back to Jerusalem, Christ led the faithful from paganism and Judaism to the Church, both militant and triumphant.
Allegorically, Christ pierced through and overthrew the scepters of Nero, Decius, Diocletian, and the other persecutors of the Church; and in like manner at the end of the world He will overthrow the scepters of the Antichrist, Gog and Magog.
Verse 15
15. YOU MADE A WAY IN THE SEA FOR YOUR HORSES — as if to say: You, Lord, leading the children of Israel through the Red Sea, so securely and gloriously led them in the sight of the Egyptian enemies, as if You were surrounding and escorting them with a great cavalry. For poetically he calls God's horses and chariots His strength and power, which availed more than all Pharaoh's horses and horsemen, according to that of Psalm XIX, 8: "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God." Properly, by these horses he signifies the angel in the pillar of fire and cloud going before the camp of the Hebrews; for this angel with the angels attending him was like the cavalry and escort of the Hebrews, leading them and defending them against the Egyptians. Hence it is said of him in Exodus XIV, 19: "And the angel of God, who went before the camp of Israel, rose up and went behind them: and together with him the pillar of cloud, leaving the front, stood behind between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel." The same angel shortly after hurled weapons and lightning against the Egyptians and struck them down. For this is what is said in the same place, verse 24: "And behold, the Lord looking upon the camp of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and cloud, slew their army: and overturned the wheels of the chariots, and they were carried into the deep." Rightly therefore these are called the horses and cavalry of God, who destroyed the entire cavalry of Pharaoh. Hence the Chaldean translates: You were manifested upon the sea in the chariot of Your glory.
In a similar way God made a way for the horsemen of Cyrus in the Euphrates, for the invasion of Babylon.
IN THE MUD OF MANY WATERS. — God had already dried the bed of the Red Sea by sending a wind, so that the Hebrews might cross on dry foot; yet he calls it mud, because shortly before it had been mud, or because on the sides covered with water on both sides, between which the Hebrews crossed, there was a great deal of mud. For mud, in Hebrew it is חמר chemer, for which the Chaldean and more recent scholars, reading with different vowel points, read המר chomer, that is, a skin bag or a heap, whence they translate: in a heap of many waters. For on both sides the waters rose up like great skin bags and heaps, in the midst of which the Hebrews crossed on dry foot, according to that of Psalm LXXVII, 13: "He divided the sea, and led them through: and he made the waters to stand as in a bottle;" the Septuagint translates: You led your horses over the sea, disturbing many waters. For the root chamar signifies to mix, to disturb, to confound; hence chemer signifies mud, or mixed and turbid wine.
Allegorically, God as it were split the rivers and seas for the Apostles, when He made a passable way for them through these, that they might traverse the whole world preaching the Gospel and subject it to Christ. Hence St. Augustine, book XVIII of The City of God, XXXII: "You sent Your horses into the sea," he says, "disturbing many waters, which are nothing other than many peoples; for some would not have been converted by fear, and others would not have persecuted in fury, unless all were disturbed."
Tropologically, in a similar way, through the midst of calamities, as through the midst of the waters and waves of the sea, Christ leads and brings out His faithful safe and unharmed, as it were walking with them and protecting them; or, as St. Gregory, book XXXIV of the Morals, XIII: "You made a way in the sea for Your horses, in the mud of many waters, as if He were to say: You opened a path for Your preachers among the doctrines of this world, who are wise in sordid and earthly things. For to cling to mud is to be defiled by the sordid desires of carnal concupiscence." The same, book XXXI of the Morals, X: "You sent Your horses into the sea," he says, "disturbing many waters; for the quiet waters lay still, because human minds had long been lulled under the torpor of their vices; but the sea was disturbed by the horses of God, because when the holy preachers were sent, every heart that had been numb with pestilential security was terrified by the impulse of salutary fear."
Verse 16
16. I heard. — Here the Prophet, after the canticle and song of triumph of God's victory, returns to verse 1, as if to say: Such indeed was God's victory against Pharaoh, and such will be His victory against Belshazzar; but in the meantime, while I keep vigil watch at my post, to hear God's oracle, as I said in chapter II, 1, behold from Him I heard and hear, as I began to say at verse 1, that so great a slaughter of the Jews by the Chaldeans, and of the Chaldeans by Cyrus and the Persians, is to come, that thinking of it I tremble and shudder, so that as I ponder it, my heart seems moved and my voice seems to quake. For sad and atrocious misfortunes, even those of enemies, naturally strike horror, and excite in nature a certain movement and feeling of compassion, as did the fall of Babylon, Isaiah chapter XXI, 3. So St. Jerome, Hugh, Clarius, and others.
Allegorically, Theodoret, as if to say: I heard from You, O Lord, that my people would kill Christ, and therefore would be destroyed by Titus; wherefore I was disturbed and trembled; but I console myself that at that time I shall not be alive, nor shall I see such great evils.
Let rottenness enter my bones — as if to say: But why do I vainly torture myself with these slaughters? For they have been absolutely decreed by God, and therefore are inevitable. What then? This one thing remains for me to wish and pray for, namely: I wish, O Lord, and I pray that all tribulations and afflictions may come upon me, so much so that my bones may rot, and my flesh, like that of holy Job, may ooze pus and swarm with worms, provided that You grant me to rest in the day of tribulation, that is, the destruction of Babylon, so that then with the Chaldeans
I may not perish at the hands of the Persians, but going out of it at the command of Cyrus, I may return and ascend to our people, that being numbered among them, with them and among them I may proceed safe to our ancestral homeland. For he himself, under the leadership of Zerubbabel, equipped and girded for the journey as if in battle array, will return through the midst of enemies, strong and fortunate, to Judea. So St. Jerome, Hugh, and Jansenius. Or, as if to say: Let me die, O Lord, lest I see this tribulation and captivity of my nation; but resting in the sweet sleep of death, let me ascend and pass over to the assembly of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joshua, and the other holy and mighty men of my people, who in former times, girded with arms for their nation, won illustrious victories over their enemies.
Note: In the Hebrew, for יגודנו iegudennu, that is, he will gird him, our translator read יגודנו iegudenu, that is, whom he will gird, or who will be girded for us, that is, our girded one. Again, iegudenu signifies not only one girded, but also one united, gathered, bound, assembled, and joined; for from this root, bands and gatherings of soldiers are called גדודים gedudim. Now when the faithful and holy died, they were said to be gathered and collected to their people, and to be placed with and joined to their fathers, as is said of Moses, Numbers XXXI, 2, and of Josiah, II Chronicles XXXIV, 28. Moreover, pious men were said to be gathered, or bound in the bundle of the living, I Samuel XXV, 29, so that like bundles of the most fragrant flowers they might be forever in the hand of the Lord, Sirach XXXIX, 17. To this most flourishing garden of Palestine, therefore, blooming with the most fragrant flowers of the Patriarchs, Prophets, and the other righteous; to this holy people already girded, that is, already gathered and bound in the bundle of the living; buried moreover in the promised land — Habakkuk rejoices that he will ascend, and at the same time prays, representing the person of the Hebrew people. For it is credible that the Israelites held this as their supreme desire in captivity. So Jacob desired to be buried not in Egypt, but in Canaan, where his parents, Abraham and Isaac, had been buried, Genesis XLVII, 29. So also Joseph, Genesis L, 23.
Moreover, Aeneas in Virgil mourns the death of Palinurus, because he would be buried far from his own in a foreign land: O trusting too much in the calm of sky and sea! / Naked on an unknown shore, Palinurus, you will lie.
The Israelites therefore yearned to return from Babylon and be joined to their holy fathers who lay buried in Palestine, like certain garrison soldiers and guards of that land, by whose support the Jews had continually been rescued from so many dangers and calamities, and had been blessed with so many benefits from God. So Guevara.
Pagninus translates differently, namely: Rottenness has entered my bones, and in my place I was terrified, I who thought I would rest in the day of distress, which will be when the enemy plans to march against the people, to cut them down. Vatablus and others also translate differently, as they supply in various ways, according to their manner, the concise Hebrew, and depart from the Vulgate.
Moreover, Guevara goes in an entirely contrary direction; for he judges that these words belong to a Prophet not grieving, but rejoicing, and exulting at the happy oracle of the destruction of the Chaldeans and the freedom of the Jews. For vehement joy usually alters and moves the whole body, indeed, with the spirits vanishing, it passes into fainting and even death itself. For many have breathed their last from sudden and unexpected joy, as Guevara demonstrates with many examples. He therefore gives this meaning to the passage: I heard, says Habakkuk, that Babylon would be destroyed by Cyrus, and my Jews would be freed from it; and while I perceive such joyful news with the ears of my mind, my heart and all my inner parts were shaken, and at the voice and this most joyful announcement, my lips trembled for joy. For of all the limbs, tremor is accustomed to invade these three especially: the lips, the knees, and the heart. For at sudden disturbances of the soul, whether they are of grief or of joy, the heart palpitates, the lips are shaken, and the knees likewise give way. But the Prophet in Hebrew idiom put "belly" for heart. For from the heart the motion of joy, as well as of sorrow, arises, and in the same it ends. For whatever of the body is from the neck to the groin is called belly by the Hebrews. But what follows: "Let rottenness enter my bones, and let it swarm beneath me," is a periphrasis for death, which according to Aristotle is a kind of rottenness. For he, asking in the Problems: "Why do those who spend their lives in warm places live longer?" answers: "Is it because they are drier in nature? For what is drier is firmer and more lasting: but death is a kind of rottenness." Job used this periphrasis for death, saying in chapter XIII, 28: "Who am to be consumed as something rotten." And chapter XVII, 14: "I said to rottenness: You are my father; my mother and my sister, to the worms." And chapter XXV, 6: "Man is rottenness, and the son of man a worm." And Sirach chapter XIX, 3: "He who joins himself to harlots will be wicked: rottenness and worms will inherit him," that is, he will die a swift and premature death.
Habakkuk therefore says: Having heard such a joyful announcement, I was so overcome with joy that both inwardly in all my bowels and outwardly on my lips I trembled, and it was not far from happening that I should faint and rot, and rotting swarm with worms; that is, it nearly happened that I should die of laughter, and unable to sustain such great joy, I should expire. Or, as if to say: From now on, because of such a favorable oracle, I die happy, and now indeed is the time when I might cheerfully and contentedly pass away: henceforth it will surely be permitted by me that rottenness enter my bones and swarm beneath me. And as Chaerea said: "Now indeed is the time when I could endure being killed." But against this interpretation stands what follows: "That I may rest in the day of tribulation:" which words signify that these are the words not of one rejoicing, but of one grieving and fearing, and out of fear wishing to endure anything whatsoever, provided that in the day of such great tribulation he may be granted rest, and escape its evils and their perception.
Mystically, let every faithful person take up these words, let him pray them, and say with St. Augustine: Burn here, cut here, O Lord, that You may spare in the future, that I may deserve to rest in the day of judgment, when the mystical Babylon, that is, the world, in which there is the confusion of proud tyrants and of all vices, will be destroyed by You and thrust into the eternal misery of hell: namely, that when the reprobate say to the mountains: Fall upon us; and to the hills: Cover us; I with the saints may ascend to the people of the elect, and with them may climb into heaven — they who in this life, girded with spiritual arms, fought bravely against sin and the devil, and therefore on that day will be given an eternal crown; so that just as here they were girded with the sword for battle, so there they may be girded with the mantle and belt of glory for triumph. So St. Augustine in the Manual, chapter XIV, tome IX: "O my soul," he says, "if every day we had to endure torments, if we had to bear even hell itself for a long time, in order that we might see Christ in His glory and be joined to His saints, would it not be worthwhile to suffer everything that is sorrowful, that we might be made partakers of so great a good and so great a glory? Let the demons therefore lie in ambush, let them prepare their temptations, let fastings break the body, let clothing press the flesh, let labors weigh down, let vigils dry out, let this one shout at me, let that one or another disturb me, let cold bend me, let conscience murmur, let heat burn, let my head ache, let my chest be aflame, let my stomach be inflated, let my face grow pale, let my whole body grow weak, let my life fail in sorrow and my years in groaning, let rottenness enter my bones and swarm beneath me, that I may rest in the day of tribulation, and ascend to our girded people."
Finally, St. Gregory, book XXXII of the Morals, chapter X, reading from the Septuagint: And trembling entered my bones, and beneath me my strength was disturbed: and he explains it thus, as if to say: "It is not my virtue by which, rapt upward, I remain undisturbed; but it is my weakness by which I am inwardly disturbed. He is therefore undisturbed above himself, he is disturbed below himself: because he had ascended above himself insofar as he was caught up to the heights, and he was below himself insofar as he still dragged remnants toward the depths. He is undisturbed above himself, because he had already passed into the contemplation of God: he is disturbed below himself, because below himself the weak man still remained."
Verse 17
17. For the fig tree shall not blossom — as if to say: So great will be the devastation of Babylon by Cyrus, so great the conflagration, so great the desolation, that fig trees, vines, crops, sheep, and cattle will wither. The Chaldean paraphrases too freely, indeed violently and falsely, translating thus: For the kingdom of Babel will not endure, nor will it exercise dominion over Israel: the kings of Media will be slaughtered, and the mighty of Greece will not prosper: the Romans will be destroyed, nor will they collect tribute from Jerusalem. These words smack of Judaism: for the Jews expect their Messiah, who will destroy the Romans, and subject the Greeks, Medes, and all other nations to himself and the Jews.
Mystically, St. Augustine, book XVIII of The City of God, XXXII, explains these words of the spiritual barrenness that the Jews suffered and suffer on account of having slain Christ: "He saw," he says, "that the nation which was going to kill Christ would lose the abundance of spiritual riches, which he figured in prophetic manner through earthly fertility. And because that nation suffered such wrath of God because, ignoring the justice of God, it wished to establish its own, he continues immediately: But I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will exult in God my Jesus."
THE WORK OF THE OLIVE SHALL LIE. — The work of the olive is the fruit of the olive, which the olive tree produces, as if to say: The olive tree will not bear olives, which by putting forth leaves it was promising, and so it will deceive its master, and as it were lie to him, by promising fruit which it will not deliver. Hence explaining, he adds: "And the fields will not bring forth food." So Horace: "The harvest that lied about our hope."
Verse 18
18. BUT I WILL REJOICE IN THE LORD. — In Hebrew אעלוזה eeloza, which in Greek the Septuagint renders ἀγαλλιάσομαι, that is, I will exult, I will jubilate, I will sing the war-cry, and this "in the Lord," on account of the help and salvation provided to me by Him. To rejoice in the Lord is to take delight in His rule over us, His governance, and His protection; whatever good and joyful thing happens to us internally or externally, to attribute it to Him, and to repay Him with gladness and jubilation for the benefits received from Him. See what was said on Philippians IV, 4.
Note the word "but," which connects and contrasts these words with the preceding, as if to say: Our enemies and oppressors the Chaldeans, in the destruction of Babylon, will be in the utmost misery, devastation, and desolation of all things: but I, who am to be freed with my Jews from Babylon and am to return to my homeland, will now happily rejoice in the Lord, who took just vengeance on the Chaldeans, and granted us, snatched from their servitude and tyranny, to return home free and cheerful. For I will continually profess with joy and thanksgiving that He prepared for me this salvation, this honor, this happiness.
AND I WILL EXULT (the Tigurines: I will leap for joy) IN GOD MY JESUS. — Vatablus and other more recent scholars: in God my salvation, who namely brought me this liberation from Babylon and this deliverance: for this is what the Hebrew ישעי iisci signifies. So God is called salvation by antonomasia and metonymy, because He is the source and author of all salvation. Psalm XXXIV, 3: "Say to my soul: I am your salvation." Psalm III, 9: "Salvation is the Lord's." Psalm XXXVII, 23: "O Lord God of my salvation." Psalm LXVIII, 30: "Your salvation, O God, has upheld me." But better and more sweetly, says St. Augustine, book XVIII of The City of God, XXXII, our translator rendered it: in God my Jesus. For he read, instead of iisci, with different vowel points, ישועי Iescui: for Iescua is Jesus, and Iescui is my Jesus, to signify the tender delights of love, like St. Francis jubilating: "My God, my Jesus, my love and my all." So also the Septuagint seems to have read, for they translate: in God my Savior, that is, my Deliverer: for Jesus is the same as savior; and the Chaldean: In God the maker of my redemption; the Syriac: And I will exult in God my savior (redeemer); the Alexandrian Arabic: And I will exult in the God of my salvation; the Antiochene Arabic: And I will rejoice in God the Lord of lords, jubilating.
Habakkuk therefore, foreseeing in the spirit that Joshua who led the Hebrews out of Egypt, and Cyrus who freed them from Babylon, were types of Jesus Christ both in deed and in name, and therefore brought this liberation and salvation to the people of God by the power of the divinity and the merits of the humanity of Jesus Christ; and finally that He Himself would bring a far greater and eternal redemption and salvation to the human race by His birth — exulting in the spirit he jubilates, and prophesies and names His name Jesus six hundred years before His birth, and delights in Him: because he foresaw that he and we would be freed through Him from all enemies, namely from the devil, sin, concupiscence, the flesh, the world, and hell, and would be heaped with every grace, glory, salvation, and happiness.
Morally, here we learn how lovable and venerable the name of Jesus is, so that we ought continually to exult and leap for joy in it, and say with St. Bernard: "Jesus is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, jubilation in the heart." For the name Jesus signifies first of all that all gifts and goods are given to us by Him: for all these things are encompassed by our salvation, which Jesus, that is, the Savior, brought. Just as therefore all waters flow from their spring and source, all rays of light from the sun, all inlets and arms of the sea from the Ocean; so all virtue, all grace, and all holiness in its beginning, middle, and end flows from Jesus. It is Jesus who washes away and cleanses all the stains of sins with His blood, who quenches the fires of concupiscence, who breaks the chains of evil habits, who subdues the fury of the passions, who shatters the yoke and tyranny of the devil, who restores liberty to the mind, who adorns the soul with His grace and makes it a daughter, bride, and temple of God, who calms and makes serene the conscience, who sharpens and enlivens the interior senses and the spirit, who illuminates the intellect with the knowledge of divine things, who inflames the will with desire for them, who strengthens our weakness, who gives victory in temptation and triumph in battle. If you live in desolation, invoke Jesus, and you will find Him a consoler. If fears, if scruples, if anxieties press upon you, invoke Jesus; He will give you breadth and gladness of heart. If anger assails you, invoke Jesus, and the gall of His passion and the honey of His meekness will sweeten it. If poverty, if sickness, if tribulations, if enemies assail you, confidently invoke Jesus: "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? If armies should rise up against me, my heart shall not fear; if battle should rise up against me, in this I will hope." Therefore pious men constantly have on their lips the name of Jesus and Mary, and frequently sigh to Him, saying: Jesus, be the guide and director of my every action. Jesus, be my helper in labor, my medicine in pain, my refreshment in heat, my life in death. Good Jesus, assist me in every action and suffering; restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and confirm me with a sovereign spirit. Sweetest Jesus, seize my heart to Yourself: be Jesus to me, inebriate me with Your love, that I may think of nothing, love nothing, desire nothing but You. My Jesus, in the hour of death be present to me, and receive my spirit, that bound by the closest bonds of love I may be united to You, and enjoy You forever in heaven.
Secondly, the name of Jesus signifies not only the Savior and the salvation which He gave us, but also the manner in which He saved us, which was extraordinary and admirable. For He did not recreate and save us by a word as He created us; but He took our infirmities upon Himself, in order to heal them in us: He made our sins His own, and paid for them in His body with the most bitter punishments, in order to abolish them in us: He took our death upon Himself, in order by His death to restore life to us. When therefore we say Jesus, we say the Word made flesh, God made man, who for us lay in a manger, was circumcised, labored, wept, endured hunger, thirst, heat, and cold; who for us was seized, beaten, spat upon, mocked, scourged, crowned with thorns, given gall to drink, pierced with nails, crucified, and slain. All these things we signify when we name Jesus. Therefore the name of Jesus, as it is supremely desirable to men and venerable to angels, so it is supremely fearful and dreadful to demons, so that upon hearing it they are terrified and flee. See St. Bernard, sermon 15 on the Song of Songs. Let Jesus therefore be our love and the center of our heart. Let Jesus be the breath of our mouth, Lamentations IV, 20. Let Jesus be our soul and our life, so that, just as in Him according to God we live, move, and have our being, so we may serve and please Him alone; for Him alone may we speak, see, walk, work, and suffer anything whatsoever, however difficult and arduous.
St. Chrysostom says splendidly, in homily 11 on the second epistle to the Corinthians: "Since we live through Christ Jesus who died, we surely ought to live for Him, on whose account we live." And St. Bernard, in the sermon On the Fourfold Debt, assigns this in the first place: "First," he says, "you owe your whole life to Christ Jesus, because He laid down His life for yours, and endured bitter torments, lest you endure everlasting ones." And after many things on this subject, he concludes thus: "When therefore I give Him whatever I am, whatever I can do, is not that like a star compared to the sun, a drop to a river, a stone to a mountain, a grain to a heap?" The same, in the treatise On Loving God: "If I owe my whole self for being made, what shall I add for being remade, and remade in this way? For I was not remade as easily as I was made: for He who made me with a single word, in remaking me indeed spoke many things, did wonderful things, and endured hard things; and not only hard things, but even unworthy things. In the first work He gave me to myself, in the second He gave Himself; and when He gave Himself, He gave me back to myself. Given therefore, and given back, I owe myself for myself, and I owe twice over. What shall I render to God for Himself? For even if I could repay myself a thousand times over, what am I compared to God?"
Verse 19
God the Lord is my strength. — In Hebrew, Jehovah our God, that is, our provider, governor, and ruler, is חילי cheli, that is, my virtue, my vigor, my energy, my army, my strength, my might. "For I have no other virtue except in Christ, and I will count all the justices of the law as refuse," says St. Jerome.
Moreover, the Prophet here exults and triumphs not in himself, but in the Lord, saying: "God the Lord is my strength." For just as the light of the air is the sun, and it matters not whether this light is innate to it or borrowed from the sun, provided it is so readily available and at hand as if it were innate: so we use the strength of God and of Jesus as if it were our own, and therefore He Himself is our strength. But what does this strength of His effect in us? "He will make my feet," he says, "like those of deer," so that they may run swiftly, eagerly, and without fatigue, not only in lowly places and on level ground, but "over the heights" and whatever is difficult, and this with me not grieving or groaning, but "in Psalms" singing with jubilation and thanksgiving. This can be seen plainly in the novices of Religious Orders, whom God fills with such joy, fervor, and spirit that they eagerly undertake all the arduous exercises of the Religious life, about which Father Platus recounts apposite and illustrious examples in book III of On the Good of the Religious State, chapter XVI.
AND HE WILL MAKE MY FEET LIKE THOSE OF DEER. — Under "deer" (masculine), understand hinds (female). For cervus (stag), bos (ox), equus (horse), ovis (sheep), etc., signify both females and males. For in Hebrew it is אילות aialoth, that is, of hinds. For hinds are swifter than male deer, because they are not weighed down by antlers as the males are. The male also, when he has grown fat, which happens greatly at the time of fruits, is nowhere to be seen, but retires far away, sensing that because of the heaviness of his corpulence he can more easily be caught. Add that among four-footed wild animals, as Aristotle says, the hind seems to excel most in prudence. Moreover, the Spaniards believed that the hind of Quintus Sertorius was prophetic, says Pliny, book VIII, chapter XXXII, both because the hind gives birth near paths, where wild beasts less frequently approach because of humans; and because when she has given birth, she first eats the afterbirth, then seeks the seseli herb, and having eaten it, returns to her offspring. Furthermore, leading the fawn she has borne to safe places, she accustoms it to where it should flee. This is a steep rock with one approach: at which place, even if someone attacks, they affirm that it waits and fights back, even if it is without horns. All these things are found in Aristotle, book IX of the History of Animals, chapter V, and Pliny in the passage cited. But of the males on the contrary: Degenerate is the spirit and ignoble the breast of stags. / Great horns stand out as a proud but useless weight, / so that they never dare to clash with their antlers.
By hinds therefore Habakkuk signifies that the Jews, by God's help, would not only return most swiftly from Babylon to their ancient dwelling places and the lofty and steep rocks and mountains of Palestine; but that they would also be fierce and warlike in battle, so that they would generously resist the neighboring nations interrupting the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem, and despite their opposition would restore it, says Guevara.
Tropologically, St. Gregory, book XXVI of the Morals, X: "The minds of the elect," he says, "are called deer, when whatever they see opposing them in this world, they transcend with the leap of contemplation, and in the manner of deer, despising the senses of earthly things, they raise themselves to the things above, that is, to things eternal."
AND OVER MY HIGH PLACES (the ridges of the hills and mountains of Judea) HE WILL LEAD ME (in Hebrew ידריכני iadricheni, that is, He will cause me to tread) THE VICTOR, SINGING IN PSALMS — with which, namely, I may resound and sing joyful songs of triumph to God the Victor, praises and thanksgivings with canticles, instruments, and jubilation. Habakkuk speaks in the person not so much his own, as of the Jews, who were going to return festively from Babylon. For he himself did not live that long, nor did he see this return or the joy of those returning.
Mystically, St. Jerome on Psalm XVII: God, he says, gives and makes our feet like those of deer, indeed of hinds, when He makes it so by His consolation and grace, by which He soothes the mind, that we may leap over all the high things of the world — both its enticements and its obstacles and temptations, all the arduous works of virtue, labors, sorrows, and crosses — not only bravely but also eagerly, with a joyful and cheerful spirit, singing and jubilating (hence some translate: He will set me upon the necks of my enemies).
Anagogically, by the feet of deer is signified the gift of agility, which will enable the saints to pass most swiftly through the heights of heaven, indeed to fly through them, as if to say: God, after the judgment is completed, will most swiftly lift me with the other saints into heaven, so that there I may sing perpetual praises to Him and to the Lamb, which St. John heard in Revelation V, 12, to Christ the Victor over death, hell, and all enemies, "who made me transcend every worldly solemnity by the contemplation of heavenly things," says St. Jerome. Who also adds: "And He will make my feet like those of deer, that I may tread upon the asp and the basilisk, etc. For my beloved is like a roe, or a young hart, Song of Songs II: And because He Himself is a deer, He also granted me to be a deer, lofty with horns, splitting the hooves, chewing the cud, and by my scent putting serpents to flight, of whom it is said in Psalm XXVIII: The voice of the Lord preparing the deer. He will therefore set my feet among His other deer, and will lead me to heavenly things, that among the angels I may sing the glory of the Lord, and announce on earth peace to men of good will. And I shall sing His victory and triumph and the trophy of the cross."
Victor — in Hebrew למנצח lamnatseach, that is, to the victor, namely me singing in psalms. Hence the Chaldean: Whose, he says, are the victory and the virtues, therefore before Him I strike the strings with my hymn; and Pagninus: To the victor, in my psalms. So also the Tigurines, Vatablus, Guevara, Ribera, Jansenius, and others everywhere, who judge that it should be read "to the victor" (not "the victor" in the nominative); for so reads St. Jerome in the Commentary, Remigius, and others. For the Prophet seems to allude to Psalms III, IV, V, and the following, whose title is lamnatseach, that is, to the conqueror, namely to Christ. Hence the Septuagint translates: unto the end, that is, unto Christ, who is the end and goal of the law and of the psalms; for those psalms are songs of triumph of Christ.
Although Aquila, Theodotion, Vatablus, Eugubinus, Jansenius, Arias, Genebrardus, and other more recent scholars everywhere, together with the Rabbis, judge that lamnatseach, that is, the conquering one, is the title of the director of singers: hence both the Psalmist and Habakkuk here add in the Hebrew binginoth, that is, in neginoth, which is a kind of music or instrument. Therefore the Tigurines translate: He will cause me to walk on my high places, to the director of singers, on my musical instruments, that is, that with and under the director, with him directing, I may sing psalms in praise of the Lord; or, as if to say: I will give thanks to God my leader, singing those psalms whose title is prefixed lamnatseach, that is, to the conqueror, that is, to the director of singers. For this is understood literally when lamnatseach is inscribed in the title of a psalm, through which Christ is allegorically understood. For the root נצח natsach signifies to press on, to urge, to conquer: hence the director, who directs and urges the singers subject to him, is called menatseach, that is, one who urges, conquers, surpasses: because he himself is the chief in music and song, surpasses the other singers, and drives and leads the singing all the way to the end. He therefore conquers and triumphs in music.
Moreover, the view of some that this canticle is inscribed by Habakkuk lamnatseach, that is, to the director of singers, and dedicated to him, so that he might arrange for it to be sung in the temple, just as David inscribes and destines the aforementioned psalms to the same for the same purpose, does not seem true, both because in that case lamnatseach should have been placed at the beginning of the canticle, as David places it at the beginning of his psalms, not at the end as it is placed here; and because binginotai is added, that is, in my psalms: he therefore means his own psalmody, not that of the director of singers.
But because sometimes (though rarely and anomalously) the letter lamed, which is at the beginning of lamnatseach and is the article and mark of the dative case, serves the nominative, so that it is the same as the demonstrative he; hence lamnatseach can be translated as "the victor" in the nominative, and so read Remigius, Haymo, Albert, Hugh, Clarius, and others. Again, lamed often serves the accusative: hence lamnatseach can be translated "the victor" (accusative), as well as "to the victor" (dative) and "the victor" (nominative). These three renderings are all placed and connected here: hence all seem intended and signified by the Holy Spirit, as if to say: God Himself, the Victor, made me a victor through Jesus Christ, and granted that I might sing perpetual and eternal praises to Christ the Victor, and especially those psalms which are songs of triumph of Christ, and therefore are inscribed lamnatseach. So St. Jerome, Remigius. This is the full meaning, and it encompasses all those already stated.
The Septuagint, reading lamnatseach as לנצח lanetsach, that is, to urge or to conquer, translate: that I may conquer in his song, as if to say: That in praising God, in singing psalms and giving thanks, I may surpass all others, indeed urge and encourage them, that on my behalf and with me they may sing psalms and jubilate to God. Hence Anagogically, St. Jerome refers these words to the triumphs and hymns of the Blessed, after they have trodden underfoot all the high things of the world. "Then," he says, "whoever is found just and worthy of God's election will speak exultingly: But I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in God my Savior. The Lord God is my strength. And as if placed by God upon the consummation of the age, that he may afterwards ascend to higher things, and be led by God to the summit, he will say: And He will set my feet upon the consummation, He will set me upon the heights, so that when by the agonothete Jesus, who first conquered in the contest, the prize has been set for those who sing, I may conquer in His song, and my hands may compose the lyre and the psaltery, and every kind of instrument, and I may write a panegyric for the triumphant one." And Remigius: "He will lead me," he says, "over my high places. But He Himself will lead me, because it is not my own virtue that will accomplish this, but His grace. And He will lead me singing to the Victor, that is, to Christ, the triumphant one over death and the devil. He will therefore lead me over the heights, that is, to the blessed multitude of the heavenly city, which consists of angels and holy men, so that mingled and united with them I may sing to the Victor with the angels: Glory to God in the highest."
Morally, learn that the Prophets and Saints attribute all their strength, virtues, victories, and triumphs to God and Christ. So Jephthah, Judges chapter XI, 24: "Are not those things," he says, "which your god Chemosh possesses, owed to you by right? But what the Lord our God, the Victor, has obtained shall pass into our possession." So David blessing the Lord, I Chronicles XXIX, 11: "Yours, O Lord," he says, "is the magnificence, and the power, and the glory, and the victory." So the Wise Man, Wisdom X, 19, 20: "The just," he says, "took the spoils of the ungodly, and they sang, O Lord, Your holy name, and they praised together Your victorious hand." So Moses, having won the victory over Pharaoh in the Red Sea: "Let us sing to the Lord," he says, "for He is gloriously magnified, the horse and its rider He has cast into the sea," etc., Exodus chapter XV, 1. And chapter XVII, 15, after Amalek was conquered, "Moses built an altar: and he called its name, The Lord is my exaltation." So Judith, after Holofernes was slain, chapter XVI, 15, sang a hymn to God the Victor: "Let us sing a hymn to the Lord," she says, "let us sing a new hymn to our God. Adonai, O Lord, great are You, and illustrious in Your power, and no one can overcome You. Let every creature serve You," etc.
Much more do the saints, having conquered the devil, the flesh, and the world, triumphing and reigning with Christ, ascribe to Him all their strength, victory, and glory. Revelation IV, 10: "The twenty-four elders," says John, "fell down before the One sitting on the throne, and adored the One living forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying: You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory, honor, and power." And chapter XV, 2: "I saw," he says, "as it were a sea of glass, etc., and those singing the canticle of Moses the servant of God, and the canticle of the Lamb."
Moreover, our Lessius excellently notes, in book XII of On the Perfections of God, chapter XIX, that we owe to our God an infinite thanksgiving, namely for infinite time into the future, with infinite affection and expression of gratitude, with infinite humility of soul, infinite devotion of mind, infinite jubilation of spirit, so that with Habakkuk we may perpetually jubilate to Him: "But I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will exult in God my Jesus." The reason is that His benefits, both the general ones of creation, the Passion, the Eucharist, etc., and the particular ones of vocation, justification, and of infinite benefits, both natural and supernatural, which we have continually received and continue to receive from Him freely, out of His pure liberality — they are everlasting and of infinite value, not only in themselves, but also by reason of the manner in which they have been conferred and are conferred upon us, especially because we are in some way infinitely unworthy of them, and they are given to us from that supreme and most august majesty of God, whom we do not even deserve to look upon. In a similar way, for the same reasons, but above all on account of the Word made man, that is, Jesus Christ, who deigned to become our flesh, our brother, indeed our father and redeemer, and therefore endured so many labors for thirty-three years on our behalf, and willingly and gladly sustained the most atrocious passion, the cross, and death for us, and finally spent and gave His entire self, as great as He is, for us, in order that He might provide for us this victory, salva- tion, and glory (especially since many are called by Him, but few are chosen for it), we owe to Him and to the entire Most Holy Trinity infinite praise and blessing, infinite love and devotion, both because by reason of His infinite perfection He is most worthy in Himself of infinite love, devotion, blessing, and praise; and because His labors, sufferings, loves, and benefits on His part demand this infinite recompense, even though on the part of the creature it cannot be rendered. It is astonishing that men, like St. Mary Magdalene, St. Francis, and St. Dominic, are not rapt into ecstasy when they think and meditate: "Behold, my God for me in the flesh, indeed on the cross."
We are therefore infinitely short in all things from what is owed to Him, or from what He Himself by His nature deserves, and what we owe Him, even though we are not able to pay. Yet, so that we may render to Him what we can, let us frequently jubilate to Him with the Psalmist, Psalm CII: "Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul: and do not forget all His benefits. Who forgives all your iniquities: who heals all your infirmities. Who redeems your life from destruction: who crowns you with mercy and compassion. Who fills your desire with good things." And Psalm LXXXVIII, 1: "The mercies of the Lord I will sing forever. From generation to generation I will declare Your truth with my mouth."
Moreover, since we are by no means sufficient to praise Him and give Him the thanks we owe, let us invite all the angels, all the blessed, all the heavens, all creatures both earthly and heavenly, that with us and on our behalf they may give thanks to God and to Jesus Christ for His infinite mercy toward us, and may praise and bless Him, and with Daniel let us say: "Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord: praise and exalt Him above all forever. Bless the Lord, you angels of the Lord. Bless the Lord, you heavens," etc. Moreover, drunk with divine love, let us wish for a thousand tongues, a thousand hearts, a thousand souls, a thousand lives, a thousand bodies, which we might consume and spend in His honor: indeed, let us wish to love and praise Him as much as all the saints in heaven love and praise Him, and let us as it were put on their praises and minds, so that through them we may love, worship, celebrate, and glorify God immeasurably. Amen.