Psalms 138:13
For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast protected me from my mother's womb.
Open Psalms 138:13 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quia tu possedisti renes meos ; suscepisti me de utero matris meæ.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ὅτι σὺ ἐκτήσω τοὺς νεφρούς μου, Κύριε, ἀντελάβου μου ἐκ γαστρὸς μητρός μου.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 139:13
- כִּֽי אַ֭תָּה קָנִ֣יתָ כִלְיֹתָ֑י תְּ֝סֻכֵּ֗נִי בְּבֶ֣טֶן אִמִּֽי
Haydock's commentary
Reins, and interior. (Theodoret)
Nothing seems more hidden than a man's entrails, or a child in his mother's womb, who is formed by God, ver. 16., and 2 Machabees vii. 22. (Worthington)
Protected. Hebrew, "covered," which may also mean formed. (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
Origen Origen's Commentary on Matthew, Chapter XXVII
Then again one might inquire at what time those who are called their angels assume guardianship of the little ones pointed out by Christ; whether they received this commission to discharge concerning them, from what time “by the laver of regeneration,” through which they were born “as new-born babes, they long for the reasonable milk which is without guile,” and no longer are in subjection to any wicked power; or, whether from birth they had been appointed, according to the foreknowledge and predestination of God, over those whom God also foreknew, and foreordained to be conformed to the glory of the Christ. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm CXXXIX
13. “For Thou, O Lord, hast possessed my reins” ( ver. 13 ). The Possessor is within; He occupieth not only the heart, but also the reins; not only the thoughts, but also the delights: He then possesseth that whence I should feel delight at any light in this world: He occupieth my reins: I know not delight, save from the inward light of His Wisdom. What then? Dost thou not delight that thy affairs are very prosperous, times fortunate to thee? dost thou not delight in honour, in riches, in thy family? “I do not,” saith he. …
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Chromatius, Jovinus, and Eusebius
3. You tell me that Bonosus, like a true son of the Fish, has taken to the water. As for me who am still foul with my old stains, like the basilisk and the scorpion I haunt the dry places. Bonosus has his heel already on the serpent’s head, whilst I am still as food to the same serpent which by divine appointment devours the earth. He can scale already that ladder of which the psalms of degrees are a type; whilst I, still weeping on its first step, hardly know whether I shall ever be able to say: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” Amid the threatening billows of the world he is sitting in the safe shelter of his island, that is, of the church’s pale, and it may be that even now, like John, he is being called to eat God’s book; whilst I, still lying in the sepulchre of my sins and bound with the chains of my iniquities, wait for the Lord’s command in th …