Psalms 118:161
Princes have persecuted me without cause: and my heart hath been in awe of thy words.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Sin Principes persecuti sunt me gratis, et a verbis tuis formidavit cor meum.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- Ἄρχοντες κατεδίωξάν με δωρεάν, καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν λόγων σου ἐδειλίασεν ἡ καρδία μου.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 119:161
- שָׂ֭רִים רְדָפ֣וּנִי חִנָּ֑ם ומדבריך פָּחַ֥ד לִבִּֽי
Haydock's commentary
Princes. Of darkness, or the chiefs of the Philistines, &c. (Berthier)
Daniel was much exposed to the fury of the Babylonian princes, but he was more afraid of the terrors of the law, (Leviticus xxvi.) than of all that they could do against him. (Calmet)
Thus the martyrs despised the threats of tyrants. (St. Augustine)
Cause. The powerful men of this world have no just reason to persecute the just, nor can they make them abandon virtue. (Worthington)
St. Basil answered Valens with great intrepidity, shewing how little he apprehended what the emperor could take from him, as we read in St. Gregory of Nazianzus (or. 20.) who says, (or. 6.) let us fear only one thing, which is, to fear any person more than God. (Berthier)
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, Schin
159. We know what persecutions the body of Christ, that is, the holy Church, suffered from the kings of the earth. Let us therefore here also recognise the words of the Church: “Princes have persecuted me without a cause: and my heart hath stood in awe of Thee” ( ver. 161 ). For how had the Christians injured the kingdoms of the earth, although their King promised them the kingdom of heaven? How, I ask, had they injured the kingdoms of earth? Did their King forbid His soldiers to pay and to render due service to the kings of the earth? Saith He not to the Jews who were striving to calumniate Him, “Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”? Did He not even in His own Person pay tribute from the mouth of a fish? Did not His forerunner, when the soldiers of this kingdom were seeking what they ought to do for their everlasting salvation, instead o …
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).