Psalms 108:9
May his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Open Psalms 108:9 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Fiant filii ejus orphani, et uxor ejus vidua.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- γενηθήτωσαν οἱ υἱοὶ αὐτοῦ ὀρφανοί, καὶ ἡ γυνὴ αὐτοῦ χήρα·
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 109:9
- יִֽהְיוּ בָנָ֥יו יְתוֹמִ֑ים וְ֝אִשְׁתּוֹ אַלְמָנָֽה
Haydock's commentary
Wisdom. Judas was married, (St. Augustine) and stole for his family; (Lyranus) though as the Scripture is silent, St. Chrysostom believes the contrary. (Menochius)
The synagogue being rejected, the Jews are in a manner orphans. (Calmet)
The posterity of persecutors prosper not long. (Worthington)
All sorts of imprecations are used that some may fall upon the guilty. (Genebrard) (Menochius)
Where a note speaks of the Jewish people, the Church teaches that the Passion 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).
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 Answer to the Letters of Petilian, the Donatist, Chapter 8
Chapter 8. 17. Petilianus said: "We must consider, I say, and declare how far the treacherous traditor is to be accounted dead while yet in life. Judas was an apostle when he betrayed Christ; and the same man was already dead, having spiritually lost the office of an apostle, being destined afterwards to die by hanging himself, as it is written: ‘I have sinned,’ says he, ‘in that I have betrayed the innocent blood; and he departed, and went and hanged himself.’ The traitor perished by the rope: he left the rope for others like himself, of whom the Lord Christ cried aloud to the Father, ‘Father, those that Thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled.’ For David of old had passed this sentence on him who was to betray Christ to the unbelievers: ‘Let another take his office. …
St Augustine Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Chapter XXI
71. Here indeed arises a question in no way to be blinked, that to this precept of the Lord, wherein He exhorts us to love our enemies, and to do good to those who hate us, and to pray for those who persecute us, many other parts of Scripture seem to those who consider them less diligently and soberly to stand opposed; for in the prophets there are found many imprecations against enemies, which are thought to be curses: as, for instance, that one, “Let their table become a snare,” and the other things which are said there; and that one, “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow,” and the other statements which are made either before or afterwards in the same Psalm by the prophet, as bearing on the case of Judas. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm CIX
11. “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow” ( ver. 8 ). After his death, both his children were fatherless, and his wife a widow. “Let his children be vagabonds, and be carried away, and beg their bread” ( ver. 9 ). By “vagabonds” he meaneth, uncertain whither to go, destitute of all help. “Let them be driven from their habitations.” He here explaineth what he had said above, “Let them be carried away.” How all this happened to his wife and children, the following verses explain.