Bellarmine on Psalm 6: Verse 10

Today we conclude St Robert Bellarmine's commentary on the first of the Penitential Psalms, Psalm 6. 

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 10

Let all my enemies be ashamed, and be very much troubled: let them be turned back, and be ashamed very speedily.

Erubescant, et conturbentur vehementer omnes inimici mei; convertantur, et erubescant valde velociter.

He concludes by asking for a complete end to his spiritual wars. “Let all my enemies be ashamed,” because they have nothing gained but have laboured in vain. “Let them be turned back to their own place," whence they came; “and be ashamed,” that is, confounded, may they be gone most speedily; for truly I do not wish to defer any longer the change in my life; but from this hour, from this minute, I am taking up the straight and perfect way of the Lord. This conclusion can also be a prayer for the conversion of those men who, whether through

persecution or through enticement, had been the cause of his sinning. For he asks that they should be ashamed and very much troubled through a true acknowledgement and detestation of sin; and that they too might speedily be converted to God. Finally, this can be a prayer to be fulfilled in the day of judgement; for then indeed all the wicked, whether demons or men, who wished to lead the just into impatience or other sins, will be confounded and made to feel ashamed; and they will be converted to the knowledge of the truth, but in vain. For then they will say: “Therefore we have erred from the way of truth,” etc.[1] This will happen very quickly, for the day of the Lord does not tarry,

even if it may seem otherwise to us. But when it shall come, and it shall come all of a sudden, then it will be seen how quickly it came. In the Hebrew, it has: Erubescant, et conturbentur vehementer / Let (all my enemies) be ashamed, and be very much troubled: The word vehementer /  very much does not appear in our Greek and Latin codices but was in the Septuagint translation, as witnesses St Jerome in his epistle ad Suniam et Fretellam. But when rightly considered, this particle is not absent from our codices but is placed lower down. For, where we have “Let them be turned back, and be ashamed very speedily,” valde / very does not appear but only velociter / speedily. From which we understand the sense is not: erubescant valde velociter / be ashamed very speedily, but rather: erubescant valde et erubescant velociter / be very ashamed and be ashamed speedily.  

[1] Therefore we have erred from the way of truth, and the light of justice hath not shined unto us, and the sun of understanding hath not risen upon us. Ergo erravimus a via veritatis, et justitiae lumen non luxit nobis, et sol intelligentiae non est ortus nobis. [Sap. v. 6]

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.