Bellarmine on Psalm 31: Verses 4 & 5

Today we continue St Robert Bellarmine's commentaries on Psalm 31, the second in the series of 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 verse.

Verse 4

Because I was silent my bones grew old; whilst I cried out all the day long.

Quoniam tacui, inveteraverunt ossa mea, dum clamarem tota die.

Many evils followed on from David’s sin: for the son born from his adulterous act died whilst a baby; his daughter, by name Thamar, was raped by her half-brother Amon; the same Amon was killed by her brother Absalom; Absalom, rising against his father, was himself killed. All these brought David to the deepest of sorrows. The Second Book of Kings tells the story. Of these divine scourges, he says: “For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me:” that is, continually, without intermission, you do not cease to scourge me repeatedly; a person’s hand is said to be heavy upon someone when he strikes him not gently but heavily. “I am turned in my anguish, whilst the thorn is fastened;” that is, on account of this kind of scourging, my thoughts turn to the gravity of my sin in my anguish, while the thorn of tribulation is fastened to me; that is, tribulation and anguish of the mind have opened my eyes, which pleasures and delights of the flesh had closed. It is even possible thorn may be understood, following St Jerome, to mean the pricking of conscience, so that the sense might be I am turned in my anguish, while my conscience is pricked. In the Hebrew and Greek text is added mihi / to me: so in Latin it should be read into the text. 

In the Hebrew text are found other words and another sense: My greenness is turned into the dryness of summer, that is, all my goods have perished, as greenness and  moisture are dried by the sun’s heat in summer and perish. But the Septuagint reads differently to the Hebrew text; for my greenness is turned becomes I am turned in my anguish , and thus reads St Jerome who translates from the Hebrew: I am turned in  my misery. Then what follows,  into the dryness of summer, the Septuagint translates as whilst the thorn burns into me; which is the same as we have, whilst the thorn is fastened; for  the thorn is fastened certainly includes the meaning burns and destroys, which is signified by the Hebrew charab. Accordingly, with the slightest change in signs, of one or another similar letter, we see the reading may be found which the Septuagint has. We cannot doubt that the truer reading is the one now in our codices, 

to which the Rabbis added signs, rather than what was in the Septuagint.

Verse 5

I have acknowledged my sin to thee, and my injustice I have not concealed.

Delictum meum cognitum tibi feci, et injustitiam meam non abscondi.

After his conversion to acknowledging the magnitude of his sin, about which he has spoken in the verse above, he no longer passes over his sin in silence or seeks to hide it. In Hebrew, it has the future tense: I shall acknowledge; it uses the future rather than the praeterite which is the tense of the verb which follows, kissithi / I have concealed. In Greek the word tibi / to thee is absent, but it is there in the Hebrew and should be understood in the Greek. But the words, cognitum tibi feci / I have made known to thee, should not be taken to mean that God did not know before David confessed it, but is used in the human manner of speaking. For even if the judge were to know of the sinner’s crime, because he might perhaps have seen him commit it; he may not yet be said to know it juridically unless the sinner were to be convicted by the testimony of several witnesses, or the sinner himself were to have confessed publicly, or perhaps were to have been constrained into confession by torture. Now God had indeed seen David sinning but wanted him to confess openly; and so he applied the scourge like an interrogation. Then in truth did David begin to confess; and he did not only say I have sinned to the Lord, which he said before the scourge to Nathan the Prophet; but he made known publicly his sin to the Lord, that is, he confessed juridically, and through the writing of the Psalms he showed forth his sin to the whole world; and so most truly did he add: “And my injustice I have not concealed.”

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.