Annotatio CXCI
”He that dwelleth in the help of the Most High.” — Psalm 90:1
The commentaries on the Psalms inscribed to Jerome have, under this little verse, these words:1 “‘Help’ [adiutorium] is interpreted ‘Ezra’; hence Ezra is called βοηθός [helper] — this is he who led back the people from the Babylonian captivity, and brought them into the land of promise.” Augustine [Giustiniani], bishop of Nebbio, in his Octaplum, refutes Jerome, [alleging] that by these words he denied this Psalm to have been said of Christ, [affirming it said] rather of Ezra. But I do not see whence Augustine could rightly elicit a sense of this kind2 — especially since, in the very beginning of the explanation, Jerome most evidently pronounces that the present psalm regards Christ, thus beginning: “This psalm has no title, because it is sung of [Christ] the head and of his members. The head is in heaven, the members on earth. And it is properly understood of the fast, and of that temptation of the desert: for the prophet foresaw that Christ was to come in the flesh, to be tempted by the Devil in the desert.”