Psalms 106:26
They mount up to the heavens, and they go down to the depths: their soul pined away with evils.
Open Psalms 106:26 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Ascendunt usque ad cælos, et descendunt usque ad abyssos ; anima eorum in malis tabescebat.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ἀναβαίνουσιν ἕως τῶν οὐρανῶν, καὶ καταβαίνουσιν ἕως τῶν ἀβύσσων· ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτῶν ἐν κακοῖς ἐτήκετο,
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 107:26
- יַעֲל֣וּ שָׁ֭מַיִם יֵרְד֣וּ תְהוֹמ֑וֹת נַ֝פְשָׁ֗ם בְּרָעָ֥ה תִתְמוֹגָֽג
Haydock's commentary
Heavens. So Virgil says:
Tollimur in cælum curvato gurgite & iidem
Subducta ad Manes imos descendimus unda. (Æneid iii.)
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 Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm CVII
7. …“They who go down on the sea in ships, doing their business on the mighty waters” ( ver. 23 ); that is, amongst many peoples. For that waters are often put for peoples, the Apocalypse of John is witness, when on John’s asking what those waters were, it was answered him, they are peoples. They then who do their business on mighty waters, “they have seen the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep” ( ver. 24 ). For what is deeper than human hearts? hence often break forth winds; storms of sedition, and dissensions, disturb the ship. And what is done in them? God, willing that both they who steer, and they who are conveyed, should cry unto Him, “He spake, and the breath of the storm stood” ( ver. 25 ). What is, stood? Abode, continued, still disturbeth, long tosseth; rageth, and passeth not away. …
St Basil The Hexæmeron, On the Firmament
8. “ And God called the firmament heaven .” The nature of right belongs to another, and the firmament only shares it on account of its resemblance to heaven. We often find the visible region called heaven, on account of the density and continuity of the air within our ken, and deriving its name “heaven” from the word which means to see. It is of it that Scripture says, “The fowl of the air,” “Fowl that may fly…in the open firmament of heaven;” and, elsewhere, “They mount up to heaven.” Moses, blessing the tribe of Joseph, desires for it the fruits and the dews of heaven, of the suns of summer and the conjunctions of the moon, and blessings from the tops of the mountains and from the everlasting hills, in one word, from all which fertilises the earth. …