Psalms 118:28
My soul hath slumbered through heaviness: strengthen thou me in thy words.
Open Psalms 118:28 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Dormitavit anima mea præ tædio : confirma me in verbis tuis.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ἐνύσταξεν ἡ ψυχή μου ἀπὸ ἀκηδίας, βεβαίωσόν με ἐν τοῖς λόγοις σου·
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 119:28
- דָּלְפָ֣ה נַ֭פְשִׁי מִתּוּגָ֑ה קַ֝יְּמֵ֗נִי כִּדְבָרֶֽךָ
Haydock's commentary
Slumbered. Enustaxen, for which Origen, thinking it a mistake of copyists, substituted estaxen, "has melted," (Calmet) or "distilled," (Aquila, &c., Heracleot.) as more conformable to the original, though the sense is much the same. Loss of blood often causes people to slumber. (Berthier)
St. Hilary would not abandon the Septuagint. (Calmet)
Heaviness, being in such anxiety, as to be almost distracted. (Worthington)
Chaldean, "has been in an agony." Sleep is often put for death. (Calmet)
My soul perishes through grief. (Houbigant)
Hence the three apostles slept, Luke xxii. (Haydock)
Akedia, or torpor of mind, hinders the persecution of any business. (Menochius)
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 On Baptism, Against the Donatists, Chapter 27
Chapter 27. 38. And in that the Church is thus described in the Song of Songs, "A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed, a well of living water; thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits;" I dare not understand this save of the holy and just, not of the covetous, and defrauders, and robbers, and usurers, and drunkards, and the envious, of whom we yet both learn most fully from Cyprian’s letters, as I have often shown, and teach ourselves, that they had baptism in common with the just, in common with whom they certainly had not Christian charity. For I would that some one would tell me how they "crept into the garden enclosed and the fountain sealed," of whom Cyprian bears witness that they renounced the world in word and not in deed, and that yet they were within the Church. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Daleth
28. Finally he addeth, “Intimate to me the way of Thy righteousness” ( ver. 27 ); or, as some copies have it, “instruct me;” which is expressed more closely from the Greek, “Make me to understand the way of Thy righteousnesses; so shall I be exercised in Thy wondrous things.” These higher commandments, which he desireth to understand by edification, he calleth the wondrous things of God. There are then some righteousnesses of God so wondrous, that human weakness may be believed incapable of fulfilling them by those who have not tried. Whence the Psalmist, struggling and wearied with the difficulty of obeying them, saith, “My soul hath slumbered for very heaviness: O stablish Thou me with Thy word!” ( ver. 28 ). What meaneth, hath slumbered? save that he hath cooled in the hope which he had entertained of being able to reach them. …