Psalm 83 [MT 84]

If therefore you feel the passions of this world, even when you are happy, you understand now that you are in the winepress....If therefore the world smile upon you with happiness, imagine yourself in the winepress, and say, "I found trouble and heaviness, and I did call upon the name of the Lord." He said not, I found trouble, without meaning, of such a kind as was hidden: for some troubles are hidden from some in this world, who think they are happy while they are absent from God. "For as long as we are in the body," he says, "we are absent from the Lord." [2 Corinthians 5:6] If you were absent from your father, you would be unhappy: are you absent from the Lord, and happy? There are then some who think it is well with them. But those who understand, that in whatever abundance of wealth and pleasures, though all things obey their beck, though nothing troublesome creep in, nothing adverse terrify, yet that they are in a bad case as long as they are absent from the Lord; with a most keen eye these have found trouble, and grief, and have called on the name of the Lord. Such is he who sings in this Psalm. Who is he? The Body of Christ. Who is that? You, if you will: all we, if we will: for Christ's Body is one....

"How lovely are Your tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts" [Psalm 84:1]. He was in some tabernacles, that is, in winepresses: but he longed for other tabernacles, where is no pressure: in this he sighed for them, from these, he, as it were, flowed down into them by the channel of longing desire.

And what follows? "My soul longeth and faileth for the courts of the Lord" (ver. 2). It is not enough that it "longeth and faileth:" for what doth it fail? "For the courts of the Lord." The grape when pressed hath failed: but for what? So as to be changed into wine, and to flow into the vat, and into the rest of the storeroom, to be kept there in great quiet. Here it is longed for, there it is received: here are sighs, there joy: here prayers, there praises: here groans, there rejoicing. Those things which I mentioned, let no one while here turn from ashamed: let no one be unwilling to suffer. There is danger, lest the grape, while it fears the winepress, should be devoured by birds or by wild beasts. ...

You have heard a groan in the winepress, "My soul longs and fails for the courts of the Lord:" hear how it holds out, rejoicing in hope: "My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God." Here they have rejoiced for that cause. Whence comes rejoicing, but of hope? Wherefore have they rejoiced? "In the living God." What has rejoiced in you? "My heart and my flesh." Why have they rejoiced? "For," says he, "the sparrow has found her a house, and the turtle-dove a nest, where she may lay her young" [Psalm 84:3]. What is this? He had named two things, and he adds two figures of birds which answer to them: he had said that his heart rejoiced and his flesh, and to these two he made the sparrow and turtle-dove to correspond: the heart as the sparrow, the flesh as the dove. The sparrow has found herself a home: my heart has found itself a home. She tries her wings in the virtues of this life, in faith, and hope, and charity, by which she may fly unto her home: and when she shall have come there, she shall remain; and now the complaining voice of the sparrow, which is here, shall no longer be there. For it is the very complaining sparrow of whom in another Psalm he says, "Like a sparrow alone on the housetop." From the housetop he flies home. Now let him be on the housetop, treading on his carnal house: he shall have a heavenly house, a perpetual home: that sparrow shall make an end of his complaints. But to the dove he has given young, that is, to the flesh: "the dove has found a nest, where she may lay her young." The sparrow a home, the dove a nest, and a nest too where she may lay her young. A home is chosen as for ever, a nest is framed for a time: with the heart we think upon God, as if the sparrow flew to her home: with the flesh we do good works. For you see how many good works are done by the flesh of the saints; for by this we work the things we are commanded to work, by which we are helped in this life. "Break your bread to the hungry, and bring the poor and roofless into your house; and if you see one naked, clothe him:" [Isaiah 58:7] and other such things which are commanded us we work only through the flesh....We speak, brethren, what ye know: how many seem to do good works without the Church? how many even Pagans feed the hungry, clothe the naked, receive the stranger, visit the sick, comfort the prisoner? How many do this? The dove seems, as it were, to bring forth young: but finds not herself a nest. How many works may heretics do not in the Church; they place not their young in a nest. They shall be trampled on and crushed: they shall not be kept, shall not be guarded....In that faith lay your young: in that nest work your works. For what the nests are, what that nest is, follows at once. Having said, And the dove has found herself a nest, where she may lay her young; as if you had asked, What nest? "Your altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God." What is, "My King and my God?" You who rules me, who has created me.

I want to stress what I think that we (or at least I) need more; the joy and delight in God which meet us in the Psalms, however loosely or closely, in this or that instance, they may be connected with the Temple. This is the living centre of Judaism. These poets knew far less reason than we for loving God. They did not know that He offered them eternal joy; still less that He would die to win it for them. Yet they express a longing for Him, for His mere presence, which comes only to the best Christians or to Christians in their best moments. They long to live all their days in the Temple so that they may constantly see 'the fair beauty of the Lord' (27:4). Their longing to go up to Jerusalem and 'appear before the presence of God' is like a physical thirst (Ps. 42). From Jerusalem His presence flashes out 'in perfect beauty' (50:2). Lacking that encounter with Him, their souls are parched like a waterless countryside (63:2). They crave to be 'satisfied with the pleasures' of His house (65:4). Only there can they be at ease, like a bird in the nest (84:3). One day of those 'pleasures' is better than a lifetime spent elsewhere (84:10).

In heart, let us migrate from living in this world, from which we are rapidly going to migrate in the body, that that heavenly dwelling may receive us, concerning which the apostle says that we have an eternal dwelling from God, a house not made by hands, in the heavens. Concerning this dwelling it has been written: "Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise." There, just as there is an eternal dwelling, so there is eternal praise. Those who live there always praise God because they are always exulting about God and in God; and just as for those who give praise, there is the sweet eternity of a holy dwelling, so the eternal sweetness of giving praise remains for those who dwell there.

"Even the sparrow finds a home, and the turtledove a nest in which she puts her young." For the present, let us be satisfied with a simple interpretation. Notice all that the verse implies: I long, O Lord, for your eternal dwelling places; my soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord; I long for some place to dwell, a nest for my soul and my body. The birds that fly about to and fro with no restraint, nevertheless, after their flight, have a place and a nest in which to rest. How much more ought not my body and soul procure for itself a resting place?

..."Blessed are those who dwell in Thy house" (ver. 4). ...If thou hast thy own house, thou art poor; if God's, thou art rich. In thy own house thou wilt fear robbers; of the house of God, He is Himself the wall. Therefore "blessed are those who dwell in Thy house." They possess the heavenly Jerusalem, without constraint, without pressure, without difference and division of boundaries; all have it, and each have all. Great are those riches. Brother crowdeth not brother: there is no want there. Next, what will they do there? For among men it is necessity which is the mother of all employments. I have already said, in brief, brethren, run in your mind through any occupations, and see if it is not necessity alone which produces them. Those very eminent arts which seem so powerful in giving help to others, the art of speaking in their defence or of medicine in healing, for these are the most excellent employments in this life; take away litigants, who is there for the advocate to help? take away wounds and diseases? what is there for the physician to cure? And all those employments of ours which are required and done for our daily life, arise from necessity. To plough, to sow, to clear fallow ground, to sail; what is it which produces all these works, but necessity and want? Take away hunger, thirst, nakedness; who has need of all these things? ...For instance, the injunction, "Break thy bread to the hungry." For whom could you break bread, if there were nobody hungry? "Take in the roofless poor into thy house." What stranger is there to take in, where all live in their own country? What sick person to visit, where they enjoy perpetual health? What litigants to reconcile, where there is everlasting peace? What dead to bury, where there is eternal life? None of those honourable actions which are common to all men will then be your employment, nor any of these good works; the young swallows will then fly out of their nest. What then? You have said already what we shall have; "Those who dwell in Thy house are blessed." Say now what they shall do, for I see not then any need to induce me to action. Even what I am now saying and arguing springs from some need. Will there be any such argument there to teach the ignorant, or remind the forgetful? Or will the Gospel be read in that country where the Word of God Itself shall be contemplated? ..."They shall be always praising Thee." This shall be our whole duty, an unceasing Hallelujah. Think not, my brethren, that there will be any weariness there: if ye are not able to endure long here in saying this, it is because some want draws you away from that enjoyment. If what is not seen gives not so much joy here, if with so much eagerness under the pressure and weakness of the flesh we praise that which we believe, how shall we praise that which we see? "When death shall be swallowed up in victory, when this mortal shall have put on immortality," no one will say, "I have been standing a long time;" no one will say, "I have fasted a long time," "I have watched a long time." For there shall be great endurance, and our immortal bodies shall be sustained in contemplation of God. And if the word which we now dispense to you keeps your weak flesh standing so long, what will be the effect of that joy? how will it change us? "For we shall be like Him, since we shall see Him as He is." Being made like Him, when shall we ever faint? what shall draw us off? Brethren, we shall never be satiated with the praise of God, with the love of God. If love could fail, praise could fail. But if love be eternal, as there will there be beauty inexhaustible, fear not lest thou be not able to praise for ever Him whom thou shalt be able to love for ever. For this life let us sigh.

But how shall we come thither? "Happy is the man whose strength is in Thee"(ver. 5). He knew where he was, and that by reason of the frailty of his flesh he could not fly to that state of blessedness: he thought upon his own burden, as it is said elsewhere; "For the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly house depresses the understanding which has many thoughts." The Spirit calls upward, the weight of the flesh calls back again downward: between the double effort to raise and to weigh down, a kind of struggle ensues: this struggle goes toward the pressure of the winepress. Hear how the Apostle describes this same struggle of the winepress, for he was himself afflicted there, there he was pressed. ..."Miserable man that I am: who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." ..."For I delight in the Law of God according to the inner man." But what shall I do? how shall I fly? how shall I arrive thither? "I see another law in my members," etc. ...And as in the words of the Apostle, that difficulty and that almost inextricable struggle is alleviated by the addition, "The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord;" so here, when he sighed in the ardent longing for the house of God, and those praises of God, and when a kind of despair arose at the feeling of the burden of the body and the weight of the flesh, again he awoke to hope, and said (ver. 5), "Blessed is the man whose taking up is in Thee."

What then does God supply by His grace to him whom He taketh hold of to lead him on? He goes on to say: "He hath placed steps in his heart." ...Where does it place steps? "In his heart, in the valley of weeping" (ver. 6). So here thou hast for a winepress the valley of weeping, the very pious tears in tribulation are the new wine of those that love. ...They went forth "weeping," he says, "casting their seed." Therefore, by the grace of God may upward steps be placed in thy heart. Rise by loving. Hence the Psalm "of degrees" is called. ..."He hath placed steps of ascent to the place which He hath appointed" (ver. 7). Now we lament; whence proceed our lamentations, but from that place where the steps of our ascent are placed? Whence comes our lamentation, but from that cause wherefore the Apostle exclaimed that he was a wretched man, because he saw another law in his members, warring against the law in his mind? And whence does this proceed? From the penalty of sin. And we thought that we could easily be righteous as it were by our own strength, before we received the command; "but when the command came, sin revived; but I died," saith the Apostle. For a law was given to men, not such as could save them at once, but it was to show them in what severe sickness they were lying. ...But when sin was made manifest by the law given, sin was but increased, for it is both sin, and against the Law; "Sin," saith he, "taking occasion by the command, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence." What does he mean by "taking occasion by the law"? Having received the command, men tried as by their own strength to obey it; conquered by lust, they became guilty of transgression of this very command also. But what saith the Apostle? "Where sin abounded, grace hath much more abounded;" that is, the disease increased, the medicine became of more avail. Accordingly, my brethren, did those five porches of Solomon, in the middle of which the pool lay, heal the sick at all? The sick, says the Evangelist, lay in the five porches. In the Gospel we have and read it. Those five porches are the law in the five books of Moses. For this cause the sick were brought forth from their houses that they might lie in the porches. So the law brought the sick men forth, but did not heal them: but by the blessing of God the water was disturbed, as by an Angel descending into it. At the sight of the water troubled, the one person who was able, descended and was healed. That water surrounded by the five porches, was the people of the Jews shut up in their law. The Lord came and disturbed this people, so that He Himself was slain. For if the Lord had not troubled the Jews by coming down to them, would He have been crucified? So that the troubled water signified the Passion of the Lord, which arose from His troubling the Jewish people. The sick man who believeth in this Passion, like him who descended into the troubled water, is healed thereby. He whom the Law could not heal, that is, while he lay in the porches, is healed by grace, by faith in the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. ...

"For the lawgiver will give a blessing." Somebody may ask, "Why in the valley of tears, in the place that God has set for the contest—or for the conflict—why has he placed us as athletes? Why has he willed us to fight?" The psalmist gives the answer: He has willed that this place be set for us as an arena that he may reward our victory with a crown. "For the lawgiver will give a blessing." This Lawgiver, our president of the contest, has willed us to contend only that he may bless us. Just consider what the victory means! What are the blessings of this Master of the games? "They go from strength to strength";6 they win the victory here that they may receive the crown there. If a person of courage gives evidence of strength here, there he becomes stronger. "They go from strength to strength"; hence, unless we are strong here, we cannot have greater strength there. The psalmist did not say, they shall go from weakness to strength, but from strength to strength. Do you want to be a person of fortitude there? Then be one here first. Do you want to be crowned there? Fight here.

The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly and the Son more obscurely. The New [Testament] manifested the Son and suggested the deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit dwells among us and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of himself. For it was not safe, when the Godhead of the Father was not yet acknowledged, plainly to proclaim the Son; nor when that of the Son was not yet received to burden us further (if I may use so bold an expression) with the Holy Spirit; lest perhaps people might, like persons loaded with food beyond their strength and presenting eyes as yet too weak to look at the sun's light, risk the loss even of that which was within the reach of their powers; but that by gradual additions, and, as David says, "Goings up, and advances and progress from glory to glory," the light of the Trinity might shine on the more illuminated. It was for this reason, I think, that [the Holy Spirit] gradually came to dwell in the disciples, measuring himself out to them according to their capacity to receive him, at the beginning of the Gospel, after the passion, after the ascension, making perfect their powers, being breathed on them and appearing in fiery tongues.

And again, from the thought of those joys he returns to his own sighs. He sees what has come before in hope, and where he is in reality....Therefore returning to the groans proper to this place, he says, "O Lord God of virtues, hear my prayer: hearken, O God of Jacob" [Psalm 84:8]: for Jacob himself also You have made Israel out of Jacob. For God appeared unto him, and he was called Israel, [Genesis 32:28] seeing God. Hear me therefore, O God of Jacob, and make me Israel. When shall I become Israel? When the God of Gods shall appear in Sion.

"Behold, O God our defender. And look on the face of Your Christ" [Psalm 84:9]. For when does God not look upon the face of His Christ? What is this, "Look on the face of Your Christ"? By the face we are known. What is it then, Look on the face of Your Christ? Cause Your Christ to become known to all. Look on the face of Your Christ: let Christ become known to all, that we may be able to go from strength to strength, that grace may abound, since sin has abounded.

"For one day in Your courts is better than a thousand" [Psalm 84:10]. Those courts they were for which he sighed, for which he fainted. "My soul longs and fails for the courts of the Lord:" one day there is better than a thousand days. Men long for thousands of days, and wish to live here long: let them despise these thousands of days, let them long for one day, which has neither rising nor setting: one day, an everlasting day, to which no yesterday yields, which no tomorrow presses. Let this one day be longed for by us. What have we to do with a thousand days? We go from the thousand days to one day; let us hasten to that one day, as we go from strength to strength.

I want to stress what I think that we (or at least I) need more; the joy and delight in God which meet us in the Psalms, however loosely or closely, in this or that instance, they may be connected with the Temple. This is the living centre of Judaism. These poets knew far less reason than we for loving God. They did not know that He offered them eternal joy; still less that He would die to win it for them. Yet they express a longing for Him, for His mere presence, which comes only to the best Christians or to Christians in their best moments. They long to live all their days in the Temple so that they may constantly see 'the fair beauty of the Lord' (27:4). Their longing to go up to Jerusalem and 'appear before the presence of God' is like a physical thirst (Ps. 42). From Jerusalem His presence flashes out 'in perfect beauty' (50:2). Lacking that encounter with Him, their souls are parched like a waterless countryside (63:2). They crave to be 'satisfied with the pleasures' of His house (65:4). Only there can they be at ease, like a bird in the nest (84:3). One day of those 'pleasures' is better than a lifetime spent elsewhere (84:10).

Sometimes with no prompting from tradition a second meaning will impose itself upon a reader irresistibly. When the poet of Psalm 84 said 'For one day in thy courts is better than a thousand', he doubtless meant that one day there was better than a thousand elsewhere. I find it impossible to exclude while I read this the thought which, so far as I know, the Old Testament never quite reaches. It is there in the New, beautifully introduced not by laying a new weight on old words but more simply by adding to them. In Psalm 90 (4) it had been said that a thousand years were to God like a single yesterday; in 2 Peter 3:8—not the first place in the world where one would have looked for so metaphysical a theology—we read not only that a thousand years are as one day but also that 'one day is as a thousand years'. The Psalmist only meant, I think, that God was everlasting, that His life was infinite in time. But the epistle takes us out of the time-series altogether. As nothing outlasts God, so nothing slips away from Him into a past. The later conception of the timeless as an eternal present has been achieved. Ever afterwards, for some of us, the 'one day' in God's courts which is better than a thousand, must carry a double meaning. The Eternal may meet us in what is, by our present measurements, a day, or (more likely) a minute or a second; but we have touched what is not in any way commensurable with lengths of time, whether long or short. Hence our hope finally to emerge, if not altogether from time (that might not suit our humanity) at any rate from the tyranny, the unilinear poverty, of time, to ride it not to be ridden by it, and so to cure that always aching wound ('the wound man was born for') which mere succession and mutability inflict on us, almost equally when we are happy and when we are unhappy.

"I have chosen to be cast away in the house of the Lord, rather than to dwell in the tents of sinners" [Psalm 84:11]. For he found the valley of weeping, he found humility by which he might rise: he knows that if he would raise himself he shall fall, if he humble himself he shall be exalted: he has chosen to be cast away, that he may be raised up. How many beside this tabernacle of the Lord's winepress, that is beside the Catholic Church, wishing to be lifted up, and loving their honours, refuse to see the truth. If this verse had been in their heart, would they not cast away honours, and run to the valley of weeping, and hence find in their heart the way of ascent, and hence go from virtues to virtue, placing their hope in Christ, not in some man or another? A good word is this, a word to rejoice in, a word to be chosen. He himself chose to be cast away in the house of the Lord; but He who invited him to the feast, when he chose a lower place calls him to a higher one, and says unto him, "Go up higher." [Luke 14:10] Yet he chose not but to be in the house of the Lord, in any part of it, so that he were not outside the threshold.

..."Because God loveth mercy and truth" (ver. 12). The Lord loveth mercy, by which He first came to my help: He loveth truth, so as to give to him that believeth what He has promised. Hear in the case of the Apostle Paul, His mercy and truth, Paul who was first Saul the persecutor. He needed mercy, and he has said that it was shown towards him: "I who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, that in me Christ Jesus might show forth all longsuffering towards those who shall believe in Him unto life eternal." So that, when Paul received pardon of such great crimes, no one should despair of any sins whatever being forgiven him. Lo! Thou hast Mercy. ...Lo, we see that Paul holdeth Him a debtor, having received mercy, demanding truth. The Lord, he says, shall give back in that day. What shall He give thee back, but that which He oweth thee? How oweth He unto thee? What hast thou given Him? "Who hath first given unto Him, and it shall be restored to him again." The Lord Himself hath made Himself a debtor, not by receiving, but by promising: it is not said unto Him, Restore what Thou hast received: but, Restore what Thou hast promised. He hath shown mercy unto me, he saith, that He might make me innocent: for before I was a blasphemer and injurious: but by His grace I have been made innocent. But He who first showed mercy, can He deny His debt? "He loveth mercy and truth. He will give grace and glory." What grace, but that of which the same one said: "By the grace of God I am what I am"? What glory, but that of which he said, "There is laid up for me a crown of glory"? Therefore "the Lord will not withhold good from those who walk in innocence" (ver. 12). Why then, O men, are ye unwilling to keep innocence, except in order that ye may have good things? ...Thou seest wealth in the hands of robbers, of the impious, the wicked, the base; in the hands of scandalous and criminal men thou seest wealth: God giveth them these things on account of their fellowship in the human race, for the abundant overflowing of His goodness: who also "maketh His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and causeth it to rain upon the righteous and upon the sinners." Giveth He so much to the wicked, and keepeth nothing for thee? He keepeth something: be at ease, He who had mercy on thee when thou wast impious, doth He desert thee when thou hast become pious? He who gave to the sinner the free gift of His Son's death, what keepeth He for the saved through that death? Therefore be at ease. Hold Him a debtor, for thou hast believed in Him promising. What then remains for us here, in the winepress, in affliction, in hardship, in our present dangerous life? What remains for us, that we may arrive thither? "O Lord God of virtues, blessed is the man that putteth his hope in Thee."