Psalms 128:6
Let them be as grass on the tops of houses: which withered before it be plucked up:
Open Psalms 128:6 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Fiant sicut fœnum tectorum, quod priusquam evellatur exaruit :
- Septuagint (Swete)
- γενηθήτωσαν ὡς χόρτος δωμάτων, ὃς πρὸ τοῦ ἐκσπασθῆναι ἐξηράνθη·
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 129:6
- יִ֭הְיוּ כַּחֲצִ֣יר גַּגּ֑וֹת שֶׁקַּדְמַ֖ת שָׁלַ֣ף יָבֵֽשׁ
Haydock's commentary
Houses. Which were flat, so that grass might grow, but the heat of the climate would not suffer it to come to perfection.
Up. (St. Jerome)
Chaldean, "flourish," as some copies of the Septuagint read. Yet Hammond, &c., declare for our version. The precise import of the Hebrew is not known. The same comparison occurs, (4 Kings xix. 26.; Calmet) and Plautus says, Qualis solstitialis herba paulisper fui, &c. (Pseud. i.) (Haydock)
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, Psalm CXXIX
9. But what saith he of them? The next words are, “Let them be even as the grass of the house tops: that withereth before it be plucked up” ( ver. 6 ). The grass of the house tops is that which groweth on house tops, on a tiled roof: it is seen on high, and hath not a root. How much better would it be if it grew lower, and how much more joyfully would it bloom? As it is, it riseth higher to a quicker withering. It hath not yet been plucked up, yet hath it withered: not yet have they received sentence from the judgment of God, and already they have not the sap of bloom. Observe their works, and see that they have withered.…The reapers will come, but they fill not their sheaves from these. For the reapers will come, and will gather the wheat into the barn, and will bind the tares together, and cast them into the fire. …
St Gregory Nazianzen The Last Farewell in the Presence of the One Hundred and Fifty Bishops
4. To return to my original startingpoint. This was my field, when it was small and poor, unworthy not only of God, Who has been, and is cultivating the whole world with the fair seeds and doctrines of piety, but, apparently, even of any poor and needy man of slender means. Nay it did not deserve to be called a field, requiring neither barn nor threshing-floor, and not even worthy of the sickle; with neither heap nor sheaves, or small and untimely sheaves, like those on the housetop, which do not fill the hand of the reaper, nor call forth a blessing from them which go by. …