Bellarmine on Psalm 101: Verse 4

We continue our series of posts featuring St Robert Bellarmine's commentary on Psalm 101, the fifth of the Seven Penitential Psalms.

The Latin is reproduced courtesy of the Digital Collection site  - UANL and is accompanied by my fairly literal translation. The Scripture excerpts (Douay Rheims/Vulgate) are taken from the DRBO site but the verse numbering follows that of Bellarmine’s Latin text.

Where footnotes are included, the text follows each section.

Verse 4

For my days are vanished like smoke: and my bones are grown dry like fuel for the fire.

Quia defecerunt sicut fumus dies mei, et ossa mea sicut cremium aruerunt.

He gives a reason why he said, “Hear me speedily;” the reason is that human life moves very speedily towards its end; and so, if sin’s injury be not healed, the danger is that the wound may become incurable. “For my days are vanished like smoke,” that is, the time of my life that has elapsed up to now will fade away very speedily like smoke which, although it (firstly) grows larger, swelling in a great mass, yet suddenly disperses and vanishes into the air; and without any doubt, what is left will pass away: “ and my bones,” which are like supporting columns for the whole body, in a very short time “are grown dry” and through this they have been weakened and threaten imminent ruin. By cremium / fuel is meant wood or dry twigs that can easily be burned, as St. Jerome teaches in his Commentary on Chapter x of Osee; or, as others have it, wood half-burnt and almost burnt through; either way, it is weak and feeble, so that it may not for long bear any weight laid upon it. St. Augustine has: my bones are fried as in a pan, and this reading we find in the ancient Roman edition. St. Jerome translates the Hebrew as, my bones as though roasted, do waste away.

 The Hebrew word appears only in this text; and so anyone can interpret this according to his judgement. The Septuagint translates the Greek as are grown dry as if fuel for the fire, and as if fried in a pan. These words can also refer to lamenting the time wretchedly wasted in sin, so that the meaning might be, “My days,” in which I was wont to do my own will, and following whose judgement I wasted my time in carnal pleasures, without fear of God, they, I say, are “ days ... vanished like smoke,” which were fleeting and covered in darkness, and which left no trace behind. “And my bones,” that is, the foundations and supporting columns of my prosperity, “are grown dry like fuel for the fire.” So passes most quickly all human happiness and it leaves nothing behind, except for a vile stench like something burnt or roasted, which is to say ill fame and an accursed name.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.