Psalms 138:20
Because you say in thought: They shall receive thy cities in vain.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- quia dicitis in cogitatione : Accipient in vanitate civitates tuas.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ὅτι ἔρεις εἰς διαλογισμόν· λήμψονται εἰς ματαιότητα τὰς πόλεις σου.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 139:20
- אֲשֶׁ֣ר יֹ֭אמְרֻךָ לִמְזִמָּ֑ה נָשֻׂ֖א לַשָּׁ֣וְא עָרֶֽיךָ
Haydock's commentary
Because you say in thought, &c. Depart from me, ye wicked, who plot against the servants of God, and think to cast them out of the cities of their habitation; as if they had received them in vain, and to no purpose. (Challoner)
Thy cities. Sixtus V, &c., read "their." (Calmet)
Schismatics, and all innovators, endeavour to withdraw all their dependencies from the truth; (St. Augustine) and infidels wish to prevent the propagation of the gospel. (Berthier)
The enemies of Nehemias, &c., may be here meant, 2 Esdras iv. 2. (Calmet)
Depart from me, all you who would represent the felicity of heaven to be a dream. (Worthington)
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 CXXXIX
18. And then He telleth what meanwhile, during this whole time when He already has risen, and remaineth still with the Father, He suffereth by the intermixture of sinners in His Body, the Church, and by the separation of heretics. “If Thou, O God, shalt slay the sinners (since Thou shalt say in Thy thought, Depart from Me, ye men of blood), they shall receive in vanity their cities” ( ver. 19, 20 ). The words seem to be connected in this order; “If Thou, O God, shall slay the sinners, they shall receive in vanity their cities.” Thus are sinners slain, because, “having their understandings darkened, they are alienated from the life of God.” For on account of elation they lose confession, and so they are slain, and in them is fulfilled what Scripture saith, “Confession perisheth from the dead, as from one that is not.” And so “they receive in vanity their cities,” that is, their vain peopl …