Psalms 118:166
I looked to thy salvation, O Lord: and I loved thy commandments.
Open Psalms 118:166 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Exspectabam salutare tuum, Domine, et mandata tua dilexi.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- προσεδόκων τὸ σωτήριόν σου, Κύριε, καὶ τὰς ἐντολάς σου ἠγάπησα·
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 119:166
- שִׂבַּ֣רְתִּי לִֽישׁוּעָתְךָ֣ יְהוָ֑ה וּֽמִצְוֺתֶ֥יךָ עָשִֽׂיתִי
Haydock's commentary
Loved. Hebrew, &c., "performed." (Calmet)
The difference is but small. (Berthier)
He is actuated by real charity. (Worthington)
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
164. “I have waited,” he saith, “for Thy saving health, O Lord, and have loved Thy commandments” ( ver. 166 ). For what would it have profited the righteous of old to have loved the commandments of God, save Christ, who is the saving health of God, had freed them; by the gift of whose Spirit also they were able to love the commandments of God? If therefore they who loved God’s commandments, waited for His saving health; how much more necessary was Jesus, that is, the saving Health of God, for the salvation of those that did not love His commandments? This prophecy may suit also the Saints of the period since the revelation of grace, and the preaching of the Gospel, for they that love God’s commandments look for Christ, that “when Christ, our life, shall appear, we” may then “appear with Him in glory.”
St John Cassian The Conferences of John Cassian. Part II. Containing Conferences XI-XVII, Chapter XII. That a good will should not always be attributed to grace, nor always to man himself
For we should not hold that God made man such that he can never will or be capable of what is good: or else He has not granted him a free will, if He has suffered him only to will or be capable of evil, but neither to will or be capable of what is good of himself. And, in this case how will that first statement of the Lord made about men after the fall stand: “Behold, Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil?” For we cannot think that before, he was such as to be altogether ignorant of good. Otherwise we should have to admit that he was formed like some irrational and insensate beast: which is sufficiently absurd and altogether alien from the Catholic faith. Moreover as the wisest Solomon says: “God made man upright,” i.e., always to enjoy the knowledge of good only, “But they have sought out many imaginations,” for they came, as has been said, to know good and evil. …