Psalms 10:4
For they have destroyed the things which thou hast made: but what has the just man done?
Open Psalms 10:4 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- quoniam quæ perfecisti destruxerunt ; justus autem, quid fecit ?
- Septuagint (Swete) shown from Psalms 10:3
- ὅτι ἃ κατηρτίσω καθεῖλον· ὁ δὲ δίκαιος τί ἐποίησεν;
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 11:3
- כִּ֣י הַ֭שָּׁתוֹת יֵֽהָרֵס֑וּן צַ֝דִּ֗יק מַה פָּעָֽל
Haydock's commentary
Made. In choosing me for king, Hebrew, "the foundations are, or shall be destroyed; and what shall the just do? or, what has the just man done?" The foundations, both of religion and of the kingdom, depend on God's ordinances, as the Septuagint well explain. (Berthier)
Pagnin has, "the nets;" St. Jerome, "the laws." In these days of infidelity and rebellion, the just must experience the greatest perplexity. (Haydock)
If faith be lost, who shall be just? (Berthier)
Persecutors, and especially heretics, pull down what others have built. (Worthington)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter I. 34-51
18. Let us now see the rest concerning this man. “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.” What is “in whom is no guile?” Perhaps he had no sin? Perhaps he was not sick? Perhaps he did not need a physician? God forbid. No one is born here in such fashion as not to need that Physician. What, then, is the meaning of the words, “in whom is no guile”? Let us search a little more intently, it will appear presently, in the name of the Lord. The Lord says dolus [guile]; and every one who understands Latin knows that dolus is when one thing is done and another feigned. Give heed, beloved. Dolus (guile) is not dolor (pain). I say this because many brethren, not well skilled in Latin, so speak as to say, Dolus torments him, using it for dolor . Dolus is fraud, it is deceit. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm XI
6. Let the Catholic soul then say, “In the Lord I trust; how say ye to my soul, Remove into the mountains as a sparrow? For, lo, the sinners have bent the bow, they have prepared their arrows in the quiver, that they may in the obscure moon shoot at the upright in heart:” and from them let her turn her speech to the Lord and say, “For they have destroyed what Thou hast perfected” ( ver. 3 ). And this let her say not against these only, but against all heretics. For they have all, as far as in them lies, destroyed the praise which God hath perfected out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, when they disturb the little ones with vain and scrupulous questions, and suffer them not to be nourished with the milk of faith. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm XI
12. But if any one would understand the moon of the synagogue, let him refer the Psalm to the Lord’s passion, and of the Jews say, “For they have destroyed what Thou hast perfected;” and of the Lord Himself, “But what hath the Just done?” whom they accused as the destroyer of the Law: whose precepts, by their corrupt living, and by despising them, and by setting up their own, they had destroyed, so that the Lord Himself may speak as Man, as He is wont, saying, “In the Lord I trust; how say ye to my soul, Remove into the mountains as a sparrow?” by reason, that is, of the fear of those who desire to apprehend and crucify Him. Since the interpretation is not unreasonable of sinners wishing to “shoot at the upright in heart,” that is, those who believed in Christ, “in the obscure moon,” that is, the Synagogue filled with sinners. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).