Psalms 122:1
To thee have I lifted up my eyes, who dwellest in heaven.
Open Psalms 122:1 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Canticum graduum. Ad te levavi oculos meos, qui habitas in cælis.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ᾨδὴ τῶν ἀναβαθμῶν. Πρὸς σὲ ἦρα τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς μου, τὸν κατοικοῦντα ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 123:1
- שִׁ֗יר הַֽמַּ֫עֲל֥וֹת אֵ֭לֶיךָ נָשָׂ֣אתִי אֶת עֵינַ֑י הַ֝יֹּשְׁבִ֗י בַּשָּׁמָֽיִם
Haydock's commentary
Canticle. Hebrew adds, "of David." (Haydock)
Syriac also attributes it to him, though Zorobabel, &c., might recite it at their return. It may also refer to the captives groaning under oppression, (Calmet) and to every Christian, who must live in expectation of a better country. (St. Augustine) (Berthier, T. viii.)
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 Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter XIV. 4-6
2. What is it, then, that we also have not apprehended in this discourse? What else, think you, brethren, but just that He said, “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know”? And here we have discovered that they knew the way, because they knew Him who is the way: the way is that by which we go; but is the way the place also to which we go? And yet each of these He said that they knew, both whither He was going, and the way. There was need, therefore, for His saying, “I am the way,” in order to show those who knew Him that they knew the way, which they thought themselves ignorant of; but what need was there for His saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” when, after knowing the way by which He went, they had still to learn whither He was going, but just because it was to the truth and to the life He was going? By Himself, therefore, He was going to Himself. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm CXXIII
1. …Let this singer ascend; and let this man sing from the heart of each of you, and let each of you be this man, for when each of you saith this, since ye are all one in Christ, one man saith this; and saith not, “Unto Thee, O Lord, have” we “lift up” our “eyes;” but, “Unto Thee, O Lord, have I lift up mine eyes” ( ver. 1 ). Ye ought indeed to imagine that every one of you is speaking; but that One in an especial sense speaketh, who is also spread abroad over the whole world…