Heresy V, Of the Book of Psalms

OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS — Heresy V (De Libro Psalmorum. Haeresis V)

That the book of Psalms is falsely inscribed with the name of David, and composed without any prophetic spirit; and that, besides certain human ditties (cantilenae) of secular poets, it contains nothing else.

ASSERTORES HVIVS HAERESEOS [The Assertors of this Heresy]

Philastrius, in the catalogue of heresies, attributes this heresy to the Nicolaites, the Gnostics, and the Manichaeans, who also said that David was not a prophet of Christ, and a writer of the divine scriptures, but a composer of human and secular song. But in the epistle of the Council of Antioch, which is had in book 7 of the Ecclesiastical History [of Eusebius], the same error is ascribed to Paul of Samosata, in these words: “Paul of Samosata [suppressed] the psalms which were sung (dicebantur) unto our Lord Jesus Christ ¹

(printed p. 637)

[the psalms which were sung unto our Lord Jesus Christ, Paul of Samosata caused to] cease, as [being] modern and recently invented; but those composed by himself he commanded women to sing, in the days of Pascha [Easter], in the midst of the church — especially [those women] whom he himself had before instituted for singing — so that one would shudder if he heard [it]. Theodore of Mopsuestia also (as is noted in the acts of the Fifth Synod) affirmed that nothing about Christ is written in the psalms. Lastly, the Anabaptists of our own times raised up this heresy again, asserting that the psalms were composed neither by David, nor by any holy man divinely, but by certain more recent masters of the Jews after the advent of Christ; and [that they are] filled with many dire [things] and imprecations against Christ, and against the [Christian] people — so that the Hebrews might have, for the solace of [their] captivity, some ditties by which, gathering publicly in their synagogues, by praying and singing, they might imprecate calamities and destruction upon their enemies. ²

IMPVGNATIO [The Refutation]

Two [things] are said by the heretics, of which the first is: that the book of Psalms is falsely entitled with the name of David the prophet. The vanity of which most slight opinion the most weighty testimonies of divine scripture crush. For we read, first of all, that David was an admirable psalmist, and for this cause was summoned by King Saul, that he might soothe his sick mind by songs modulated to the cithara; and when the ark was carried up into Jerusalem, we read that he sang hymns before the Lord upon instruments. Whence in the books of Kings it is written of him: “The man said (Dixit vir), to whom it was appointed concerning the Christ of the God of Jacob, the excellent psalmist of Israel.” ³ But that he put forth psalms, and gave [them] to be sung in the temple of the Lord, the first book of Annals [Chronicles] testifies, commemorating that David placed in the temple four thousand psalmists, singing to the Lord upon instruments, and that he chose out of them especially the sons of Asaph, and Heman, and Idithun, who beside him should sing canticles in the temple upon citharas, psalteries, and cymbals. ⁴ There are found also, here and there, in many books of holy scripture, very many psalms out of this book of psalms particularly cited under the name of David: so that it cannot be denied that the book is his, by whose name it is inscribed. In the second volume of Kings [2 Samuel], there is recited an entire psalm from the mouth of David, which in the book of psalms is numbered the seventeenth [Ps 18]. And in the first [book] of Annals is similarly related the whole hundred-and-fourth psalm [Ps 105], which David, when the ark was being brought back, gave to Asaph the chief of the singers to be sung. ⁵ And in the 1st book of Esdras it is written that, after the restoration of the temple, the Levites, the sons of Asaph, praised God upon cymbals, “by the hands of David the king” — that is, by the psalms composed by David; and that out of these they sang by name those which have the beginning, “Give thanks (Confitemini) to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy [endureth] unto the age” — that is, the hundred-and-fifth [Ps 106], the hundred-and-sixth ⁶, the 117th, and the 135th — all beginning from this one song. ⁷ And in the new testament Christ, out of this book, under the name of David, brought forth the 109th psalm [Ps 110] against the Pharisees, saying: “How (Quomodo) then does David, in [the] Spirit, call him lord, saying: The Lord said to my lord, Sit at my right hand?” — which words, lest anyone should suspect [them] to be cited by our Savior rather from another book of David than from this one, Luke in the Acts [added]: ⁸ “David himself says in the book of Psalms: The Lord said to my lord, Sit at my right hand, etc.” And Peter, in the Acts, ascribed the fifteenth psalm of this book [Ps 16] to David, saying: “David says in the book of psalms: I foresaw the Lord in my sight always.” Of which [David] also the Apostles testified the second psalm to be, saying: “O Lord (Domine), who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David thy servant, hast said: Why have the nations raged?” — which psalm Paul by name called “the second,” saying: “As (Sicut) it is written in the second psalm: My son art thou; I this day have begotten thee.” ⁹ And elsewhere the same Apostle testified the thirty-first psalm [Ps 32] to be David’s, and likewise the sixty-eighth psalm [Ps 69]. It is manifest also, from some inscriptions by which certain psalms of this book are prefixed, that David — besides the psalms already mentioned — sang with his own mouth also many others: namely those whose arguments and histories are read in the books of Kings; as are the third psalm, to which is prefixed the title, “A psalm (Psalmus) of David, when he fled from the face of Absalom his son,” whose history is written in the second [book] of Kings; ¹⁰ and the psalm of like argument to which is titled, “A psalm of David, when, fleeing from the face of Absalom, he was ascending the Mount of Olives with bare feet and covered head”; and the 32nd psalm [Ps 34], having for [its] title, “A psalm of David, when he changed his countenance before Abimelech, and cast him out, and, being dismissed, went away,” whose argument is had in the first volume of Kings; likewise the fiftieth psalm [Ps 51], and the 51st [Ps 52]; and many others, whose occasions are related in the books of Kings and of Annals. ¹¹

The second [thing] asserted by the heretics is: that this whole book, composed without any prophetic spirit, contains nothing divine in itself. Whose stolidity the other books of divine scripture refute — but especially the books of Kings, in which David himself, with open voice, proclaims that he was inspired by the Holy Spirit, that he might fore-sing the Christ to come, saying: “The man said (Dixit vir), to whom it was appointed concerning Christ, the excellent psalmist of Israel: The Spirit of the Lord hath spoken through me, and his speech through my tongue. The strong [one] of Israel said to me, [that there should come] the ruler of men, the just [one], the ruler in the fear of God” — which our Savior confirmed, when he said to the Jews: “How (Quomodo) then does David call him, in [the] Spirit, lord, saying: The Lord said, etc.?” ¹² And after his resurrection, when he opened the sense of the scriptures to his disciples, he testified that the Holy Spirit had spoken, in the book of psalms, concerning [his] life, passion, death, and resurrection, and the preaching of the gospel. ¹³ And the apostles call David, the author of this book, a prophet, and everywhere bring forth his vaticinations as [those] of a truthful prophet. “A prophet (Propheta),” says Peter, “since he was, and knew, because God had sworn to him with an oath, etc.” And the apostles, in the Acts: “O Lord (Domine), who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of thy servant David, hast spoken.” And Paul: “I will give (Dabo) you the holy faithful [things] of David” — that is, I will give you to recognize that the vaticinations of David were faithful. ¹⁴ But, although it may have been doubtful among the Catholic fathers (as Augustine writes in the seventeenth book of the City of God) whether all the psalms of this book were put forth by David, or whether per-[haps some by others] ¹⁵

(printed p. 638)

[whether] several of these were composed by certain [other] holy men, whom David had ordained [as] psalmists in the temple of God — namely by Asaph, Heman, Idithun, Chore [Korah], and their sons (because many of their psalms are prefixed with their names): nevertheless it behooves to believe that those too, by whomsoever they were [composed], were dictated by the Holy Spirit. For it is written in the first book of Annals [Chronicles] that all those singers — namely Asaph, Heman, Idithun, Chore, Moses — and their sons, were prophets, and holy doctors, in the temple of God. Whence Christ and the apostles approved their psalms as [things] put forth by the prophetic spirit, and confirmed their own preaching by the authority of them. ¹⁶ Of the psalms inscribed [to] Asaph, we find that our Savior cited that [saying] of the eighty-first psalm [Ps 82]: “I said (Ego dixi), you are gods”; and [we find] that Matthew similarly called Asaph himself a prophet, when — a versicle of his psalm being produced — he said: “All these things (Haec omnia) Jesus spoke in parables, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: I will open my mouth in parables.” ¹⁷ Of the psalms inscribed [to] Moses, Paul took a testimony, saying: “As (Sicut) the Holy Spirit says: Today, if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” And of the psalms attributed to Chore [Korah], the same Apostle received that testimony: “Thy throne (Thronus tuus), O God, [is] unto the age of the age.” ¹⁸ From all which it evidently appears that all the psalms were composed by the Holy Spirit, and sung through the mouth of David and of his singers. But the present Book of Psalms is inscribed with the name of David the prophet, either because the first and nobler part of the book was composed by David through his very self, or because — David suggesting the matter of the psalms to his singers — the greater part of the book was written and sung by them.

OBJECTIONS OF THE HERETICS (Obiectiones Haereticorum)

1. Those who affirm the book of psalms to be David’s are led (say the Anabaptists) by no certain conjecture. For neither does the inscription of the book show this, in which the name of David is not [always] placed; nor in the whole of holy scripture is there ever mention of the author of this volume; nor is it ever read that any psalm was composed by David, except one only — when God had freed him from the hand of Saul — whose beginning is: “The Lord [is] my rock (Dominus petra mea),” which is written in the 2nd book of Kings [2 Sam 22]. And concerning this one psalm, whether it truly be his, it scarcely is agreed: because the Book of Psalms judges otherwise about it, and the second [book] of Kings otherwise; in which it is written that this psalm was the very last of all ¹⁹ the words which David spoke; but in the book of psalms it is written that the last of all the psalms of David was that one which is placed in the seventy-second number [Ps 72], at whose foot it is written: “Finished (Finitae) are the prayers of David, son of Isai [Jesse].” ²⁰

2. There are, moreover, in this book very many psalms which are ascertained to have been composed neither by David nor in David’s time — both from their inscriptions containing the names of men who were long after David’s time, and from those things which are related in them [as] done many years after David: as the destruction of Jerusalem, of which the seventy-third psalm [Ps 74] speaks as of a thing already past; and the mourning of the captives at the rivers of Babylon, which is commemorated in the 136th psalm [Ps 137]; and the return from the captivity of Babylon into Jerusalem, of which [is] the 125th psalm [Ps 126], as [the psalter] speaks of it as already completed. Which [things] also seven-and-forty psalms more openly indicate — namely, from the hundred-and-eleventh even to the end of the book of psalms — which are inscribed “Reversions (Reversiones)” of Aggaeus [Haggai] and Zacharias [Zechariah], because through these two prophets they were sung for the return of the sons of Israel from Babylon into Jerusalem.

3. To this it accedes [is added], that almost all authors, as much Jews as Christians, affirm that the greater part of this volume is not David’s. R. David Kimhi thinks those only to be psalms of David to which is prefixed the title לדוד (le David), that is, “of David himself” (Ipsi David); but the others to be [the psalms] of those by whose name they are entitled — whom Aben Ezra [Ibn Ezra], calling into doubt, says that it is uncertain whether every psalm to which is prefixed the name לדוד (le David), that is, “of David himself,” be his, or rather of some singer who composed it concerning David. Jerome also, in the epistle to Cyprian, says: “They err (Errant) who think all the psalms to be David’s, and not [the psalms] of those by whose names they are inscribed — as David, Asaph, Idithun, the sons of Core [Korah], Heman, [Ethan] the Ezrahite, Moses, and Solomon, and the rest, whom Esdras comprehended in the first volume.” But Augustine, in the preface to the 2nd psalm, judges that David sang only nine psalms, but that the others, to which his name is prefixed, were sung by his singers. John Chrysostom, in the preface to the psalms, asserts [the same]. The inscriptions which are now prefixed to the psalms, he asserts to be for the greater part false. Which consensus of opinions makes faith [gives assurance] that this book is not David’s.

4. But as to [the claim] that nothing prophetic is in this book, the Hebrews themselves testify, who exclude it from the prophetic scriptures. And you [Christians] also confirm the same, when you make David the author of the book — [David] who was not a prophet, but a king assumed for the governance of the kingdom. For those are called prophets in the scriptures who are divinely called to the office of prophesying, or are sent to a king, or to some people, with the public dignity of an office, that they may announce future things to them — as Moses to Pharaoh, and Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other prophets to the people of Israel: but David we nowhere read to have been called to this dignity of prophesying. But also the psalms of this book themselves most clearly show that nothing is found in this book which pertains to prophecy. For those testimonies which are wont to be brought forth from the psalms as presages of Christ agree to none less than to Christ. For how do those words pertain to the crucifixion of Christ: “They have dug (Foderunt) my hands, and they divided (Diviserunt) my garments” — which can in no way be adapted to Christ? ²¹ For, besides that the Hebrews read those words otherwise, saying, “Like (Sicut) a lion my hands and my feet they have observed [watched],” it is also evident that Christ was not crucified with nails driven through hands and feet — because it was not the custom in Israel that those who were hanged on wood should be fastened to the cross with hands and feet transfixed by a nail, but the law so prescribing, that [men], suspended and transfixed, should hang on the cross. Likewise, that which is taken from the eighteenth psalm [Ps 19]: “Into (In) all the earth their sound went out” — how can it be twisted to the preaching of the apostles, when ²²

(printed p. 639)

[how can “Into all the earth their sound went out” be twisted to the preaching of the apostles,] when it [the psalm] speaks expressly of the heavens themselves, according to a certain poetic prosopopoeia? By which two testimonies, if the matter be more attentively inspected, there are found also other testimonies like [these], which our elders referred to the vaticinations of Christ.

5. The sentences, moreover, and words of this book so abhor from the mind of every pious man that it appears its author was not divine, but a certain barbarous, inhuman [man], greedy of slaughter, of vengeance, and of blood, who everywhere sends against his enemies dire [things], imprecations, execrations: “Judge (Iudica),” he says, “O Lord, those who harm me; overthrow those who impugn me; pour out the lance (framea), and shut up [the way] against those who persecute me. Let them become as dust before the face of the wind, and let the angel of the Lord straiten them. Let their ways become darkness and slipperiness, and let the angel of the Lord persecute them.” ²³ And, “Let death (Veniat mors) come upon them, and let them descend into hell living.” And again, “Make (Fac) them as Madian [Midian], and Sysara [Sisera], and as Iabin [Jabin], in the torrent of Cyson [Kishon]; let them perish, and become as the dung of the earth. Make their princes as Oreb, and Zeb, and Zebee [Zebah], and Salmana [Zalmunna]. My God, make them as a wheel, and as stubble before the face of the wind; as fire which burneth the wood, and as a flame burning the mountains, so shalt thou persecute them in thy tempest, and in thy wrath shalt thou trouble them.” ²⁴ With which indignations and maledictions almost all the psalms are so full, that they bear a similitude of those imprecations with which Callimachus devoted [cursed] Apollonius of Rhodes, and Ovid [devoted] his Ibis.

THE OBJECTIONS ARE DISSOLVED (Diluuntur Obiecta)

1. So inept are the objections of the Anabaptists that a response seems in some manner superfluous. For if the book is on this account denied to be David’s — because it does not bear his inscription — then neither will Moses be the author of the five books of the law, because they are not titled with the name of Moses. The opposite of which thing Christ teaches, saying: “Moses wrote of me”; and all authors, as much Hebrew as Christian, confirm it. ²⁵ And lest most unskilled men wonder that the name of David is not prefixed to this book, let them know that among the Hebrews the divine volumes are inscribed in various ways: either from the name of the author, as the book of Joshua; or from the first word of the book, as the book of Genesis, which from its first word is entitled בראשת ברה (Berescith barah) [that is, בראשית ברא, “In the beginning [God] created”]; or from the matter contained in the book, as the book of Kings, and the present volume of Psalms — which, from the hymns and odes contained in it, the name of the author being omitted, is called ספר תהלים (Sepher theillim), that is, “the book of psalms, or of hymns, or of prayers”: which book, nevertheless, our Savior testified to be David’s, when he said to the scribes, “David himself says in the book of Psalms: The Lord said to my lord.” And we have already shown that the author of all the psalms which are in it was David, who — besides those psalms which he sang with his own mouth — supplied (as Augustine and Chrysostom say) all the subjects of the other psalms to those singers, who sang them, and inscribed them with their own names, and, the subjects being received from him, explained [them] in songs. ²⁶ But those are confuted who say that David put forth one [psalm] only, through the very same words which they bring against us. For if that psalm which is read in the second volume of Kings [2 Sam 22] was the last of the psalms, then it behooved that before it more other psalms were composed by David; for neither would it be called the last, unless others had preceded it. But as to [the fact] that after the end of the seventy-first psalm it is written, “Finished (Finitae) are the prayers of David,” it is not so to be understood, that I should believe the psalms of David to be there finished, and that [psalm] to be the last of all the psalms; but that we may know those prayers to be finished in that place, by which he besought God for the safety and the kingdom of his son Solomon. Similarly concerning the psalm of the book of Kings it is to be thought, that it was not the last of all David’s psalms, but only of those which he composed during the persecution of his enemies.

2. To the second objection of the Anabaptists — concerning the psalms which seem to have been composed after David’s time — Augustine, in the seventeenth [book] of the City of God, responds in these words: “It seems to me (Mihi) more credible to esteem that those [men] who attribute all these psalms to the work of David — and [say] that he prefixed some [of them] also with the names of others, prefiguring something which pertains to the matter [thereby dealt with] — [judge rightly]. Nor ought it to move [anyone] to this disbelief, ²⁷ that some names of prophets who were after the times of King David are read inscribed on certain psalms in that book, and [that] the things which are there said seem, as it were, to be said by them: for the prophetic Spirit was able to reveal to David these names also of future prophets — as King Josias [Josiah], who was to reign after more than three hundred years, was revealed by [his] own name to a certain prophet.” These [things] Augustine. But the Anabaptists say that those things which are contained in the psalms are not fore-announced as future, but narrated as past. Whom the divine Jerome meets, saying that this is set among the prophets as a custom: that, on account of the certitude of the prophecy, they should pronounce future things as if already past. ²⁸

3. To the third objection we respond, [that] three [things] are to be considered in the psalms: the invention, the disposition, and the pronunciation. If we inspect the invention, it is certain that David found out [devised] the matter and subject of all the psalms, and, [it] being found, supplied it to his singers — as the books of Kings and Paralipomenon [Chronicles] testify, and Aben Ezra [Ibn Ezra] in the preface to the psalms, and Augustine in the 17th [book] of the City of God, and Jerome, and Chrysostom in the preface to the psalms, confirm. If the discourse is about the disposition of the psalms, the aforesaid authors rightly judge that not all the Psalms were disposed by David through songs and modulations, but by Asaph, Chore [Korah], Idithun, Moses, and Samuel his son, and other singers accommodated to the meters, and fitted to the songs, and adapted to diverse musical instruments. But if the discourse is about the pronunciation of the living voice, Augustine, in the second preface to the psalms, best said that David alone sang nine psalms with his own mouth. But concerning the titles of the psalms, which Chrysostom said to be false, it is not to be believed that he himself thought the true titles to have been erased, and in their place other false titles substituted; but that he rather esteemed those titles to have been transposed, and — the order of the history being confused — permuted [rearranged], as his following words indicate, when he says that Esdras, after the Babylonian

(printed p. 640)

[that Esdras, after the Babyloni-]an [captivity], collected these psalms — dispersed here and there — into one volume, the order of the history being omitted. Which the very series of the book of psalms betrays: in which the third psalm, put forth by David when he fled from the face of Absalom, precedes the thirty-third psalm [Ps 34], which David had made many years before, when — his madness being feigned — he fled from the hands of Abimelech.

4. But when they add that David was neither a prophet, nor [that] the psalms inscribed to him are divine, they show themselves much worse than the Jews: who, although they do not believe that the psalms fore-announced anything about our Savior, nevertheless believe that the Holy Spirit was the author of this book. And although they do not place it [David/the book] among the prophets, but in the beginning of the books which they call כתובים (Chetubim [Ketuvim], so printed “cherubim”) — that is, ἁγιόγραφα (hagiographa), or “holy writings” — nevertheless they do not deny that many things in it are written by the prophetic spirit: as the second psalm, and the forty-fourth psalm [Ps 45], and the hundred-and-tenth [Ps 110], which they expound of their [own] Messiah. Therefore, to those vaticinations which — as if by us violently distorted — the heretics, together with the author of the book Nizaon [the Jewish Nizzahon], calumniate, we respond: [as to] those words of the twenty-first psalm [Ps 22], “They have observed (Observaverunt) as a lion my hands” — so it is read among the Chaldee translator [the Targum], who rendered it as it seemed [good] to them; but in the Hebrew exemplar it is read כארו ידי ורגלי (Chaari iadai, veragelai), that is, “They have dug (Foderunt) my hands, and my feet.” Whence we cast away the Chaldaic translation as repugnant to the Hebrew truth. Nor does it move us at all that the [Mosaic] law did not command the hands and feet of the damned to be fixed to the cross: because, since at that time the power of judging was taken away from the Jews by the Romans, [criminals] were no longer punished exactly according to the Mosaic law, but as the Roman governor (praeses), who was over the province of the Jews, had given sentence, so were the penalties inflicted. Whence also Joseph [of Arimathea] asked Pilate that he would grant him the body of Jesus — which, nevertheless, according to the [Mosaic] law was to be taken down before the setting of the Sun. The breaking of the legs (crurifragium) also, and the transfixion of the breast, are not from the [Mosaic] law; and by the same reasoning also the infixion of nails. Truly, therefore, the words of this vaticination were fulfilled in Christ; as also those words of the eighteenth psalm [Ps 19] were most truly fulfilled in the Apostles, according to the mystical and allegorical sense, and most faithfully expounded by Paul in the epistle to the Romans. For the apostles are most truly the “heavens,” who through the whole globe of the earth diffused Christ, the Sun of justice, and by his splendor illuminated the whole earth. ²⁹

5. Concerning the imprecations which are read in the psalms, we say that they are not evil, because they are born not from hatred, but from an ardent affection of charity. For this is the custom of the just: that they seek vengeance from their enemies in two ways — either that, by the occasion of vengeance, those who are predestined to life may be converted from evil to good; or that those who, God foreknowing, are to be damned, may die, and cease to sin, so that by this they may have a lesser penalty in hell (where each one, according to the quality of his works, will sustain the magnitude of the penalties): to which two ways a third also is added, by which, namely, the saints imprecate evils not by the wish of one desiring [them], but by the intuition of one foreseeing [them] — fore-announcing to men future evils, so that, after the fore-announced [things] shall have come to pass, they may know ³⁰ that men suffer [these things] not by chance or fortune, but by the certain deliberation and counsel of God.