Psalms 118:136
My eyes have sent forth springs of water: because they have not kept thy law. SADE
Open Psalms 118:136 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Exitus aquarum deduxerunt oculi mei, quia non custodierunt legem tuam.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- διεξόδους ὑδάτων κατέβησαν οἱ ὀφθαλμοί μου, ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἐφύλαξαν τὸν νόμον σου.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 119:136
- פַּלְגֵי מַ֭יִם יָרְד֣וּ עֵינָ֑י עַ֝֗ל לֹא שָׁמְר֥וּ תוֹרָתֶֽךָ
Haydock's commentary
Law. This shews that David composed this psalm, as he fell by seeing Bethsabee.
They. Men. (Duport.) Septuagint, "I." But this is unnecessary. The eyes and all our senses lead to our ruin, Romans vii. 18, 24. (Berthier)
True repentance requires lamentation, as well as a firm purpose of amendment, (Worthington) commissa diluere & abluta non iterare. (St. Jerome)
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, Pe
135. “My eyes have descended streams of waters, because they have not kept Thy law” ( ver. 136 ): that is, my eyes. For in some copies there is this reading, “Because I have not kept Thy law, streams of waters” therefore “descended,” that is, floods of tears.…
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Rusticus
The Saviour also wept over the city of Jerusalem because its inhabitants had not repented; and Peter washed out his triple denial with bitter tears, thus fulfilling the words of the prophet: “rivers of waters run down mine eyes.” Jeremiah too laments over his impenitent people, saying: “Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for…my people!” And farther on he gives a reason for his lamentation: “weep ye not for the dead,” he writes, “neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more.” The Jew and the Gentile therefore are not to be bemoaned, for they have never been in the Church and have died once for all (it is of these that the Saviour says: “let the dead bury their dead”); weep rather for those who by reason of their crimes and sins go away from the Church, and who suffering condemnation for t …
St Ambrose Concerning Repentance, Chapter X. In order to do away with the feeling of shame which holds back the guilty from public penance, St. Ambrose points out the advantage of prayers offered by the whole Church, and sets forth the example of saints who have sorrowed. Then, after reproving those who imagine that penance may be often repeated, he points out the difficulty of repentance, and how it is to be carried out
93. Let, then, nothing call you away from penitence, for this you have in common with the saints, and would that such sorrowing for sin as that of the saints were copied by you. David, as it were, “ate ashes for bread, and mingled his drink with weeping,” and therefore now rejoices the more because he wept the more: “Mine eyes ran down,” he said, “with rivers of water.”
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).