Psalms 134:4
For the Lord hath chosen Jacob unto himself: Israel for his own possession.
Open Psalms 134:4 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quoniam Jacob elegit sibi Dominus ; Israël in possessionem sibi.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ὅτι τὸν Ἰακὼβ ἐξελέξατο ἑαυτῷ ὁ κύριος, Ἰσραὴλ εἰς περιουσιασμὸν αὐτοῦ.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 135:4
- כִּֽי יַעֲקֹ֗ב בָּחַ֣ר ל֣וֹ יָ֑הּ יִ֝שְׂרָאֵ֗ל לִסְגֻלָּתֽוֹ
Haydock's commentary
Possession. Hebrew, "jewel," "property." Chaldean, "well-beloved." See Deuteronomy lii. 8., and Ecclesiasticus xvii. 14. (Calmet)
The first patriarchs corresponded with God's goodness: but their descendants were for the most part ungrateful: so that Christians have now entered into their place, and must praise 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, Psalm CXXXV
5. “For the Lord hath chosen Jacob to Himself, Israel for His own possession” ( ver. 4 ).…Let not Jacob therefore extol himself, let him not boast himself, or ascribe it to his own merits. He was known before, predestinated before, elected before, not elected for his own merits, but found out, and gifted with life by the grace of God. So with all the Gentiles; for how did the wild-olive deserve, that it should be grafted in, from the bitterness of its berries, the barrenness of its wildness? It was the wood of the wilderness, not of the Lord’s field, and yet He of His mercy grafted the wild-olive into the (true) olive. But up to this time the wild-olive was not grafted in.