Psalms 11:9
The wicked walk round about: according to thy highness, thou hast multiplied the children of men.
Open Psalms 11:9 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- In circuitu impii ambulant : secundum altitudinem tuam multiplicasti filios hominum.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- κύκλῳ οἱ ἀσεβεῖς περιπατοῦσιν· κατὰ τὸ ὕψος σου ἐπολυώρησας τοὺς υἱοὺς τῶν ἀνθρώπων.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 12:9
- סָבִ֗יב רְשָׁעִ֥ים יִתְהַלָּכ֑וּן כְּרֻ֥ם זֻ֝לּ֗וּת לִבְנֵ֥י אָדָֽם
Haydock's commentary
About. Their life is a circle of relapses; or rather they continually attack the just, (Calmet) but their designs are made subservient to their advancement in virtue, by the power of God. (Tirinus)
Hebrew, "They (the just) shall go round the wicked, when baseness shall have raised herself up, on account of the children of men." When God shall have restored the Jews to liberty, the Babylonians shall be, in their turn, oppressed by Cyrus and the Persians, whom they now despise: or, when the miserable shall be placed in power, the wicked shall not dare to approach them. (Calmet)
"The wicked shall walk round about, when the vilest of the sons of men shall be exalted." (St. Jerome) (Haydock)
The former have spent their life in vanity, and shall be kept for ever out of the kingdom of heaven; as the error of the Platonists, who assert that all things will come to pass again, the world being compared to a wheel, is manifestly refuted by Scripture, which assures us that God will preserve the just from this generation, (St. Augustine) and the wicked will knock at the door, like the foolish virgins, and will be rejected with, I never knew you, Matthew xxv. (St. Jerome or some other learned author.) (Worthington)
For some suspect that the commentary which goes under the name of St. Jerome, is not in the state in which it came from his hands.
(Haydock)
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
Clement of Alexandria The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Chapter I. Plan
Now knowledge is otherwise spoken of in a twofold sense: that, commonly so called, which appears in all men (similarly also comprehension and apprehension), universally, in the knowledge of individual objects; in which not only the rational powers, but equally the irrational, share, which I would never term knowledge, inasmuch as the apprehension of things through the senses comes naturally. But that which par excellence is termed knowledge, bears the impress of judgment and reason, in the exercise of which there will be rational cognitions alone, applying purely to objects of thought, and resulting from the bare energy of the soul. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm XII
9. “The ungodly walk in a circle round about” ( ver. 8 ): that is, in the desire of things temporal, which revolves as a wheel in a repeated circle of seven days; and therefore they do not arrive at the eighth, that is, at eternity, for which this Psalm is entitled. So too it is said by Solomon, “For the wise king is the winnower of the ungodly, and he bringeth on them the wheel of the wicked. After Thine height Thou hast multiplied the sons of men.” For there is in temporal things too a multiplication, which turns away from the unity of God. Hence “the corruptible body weigheth down the soul, and the earthy tabernacle presseth down the mind that museth upon many things.” But the righteous are multiplied “after the height of God,” when “they shall go from strength to strength.”
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm CXL
12. “The head of their going about, the toil of their own lips shall cover them” ( ver. 9 ). Me, he saith, the shadow of Thy wings shall cover: for, “Thou hast covered me in the day of battle.” Them what shall cover? “The head of their going about;” that is, pride. What is, “their going about”? How they go about and stand not, how they go in the circle of error, where is journeying without end. He who goeth in a straight line, beginneth from some point, endeth at some point: he who goeth in a circle, never endeth. That is the toil of the wicked, which is set forth yet more plainly in another Psalm, “The wicked walk in a circle.” But “the head of their going about” is pride, for pride is the beginning of every sin. But whence is pride “the toil of their own lips”? Every proud man is false, and every false man is a liar. …