Psalms 147:16
Who giveth snow like wool: scattereth mists like ashes.
Open Psalms 147:16 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine) shown from Psalms 147:5
- Qui dat nivem sicut lanam ; nebulam sicut cinerem spargit.
- Septuagint (Swete) shown from Psalms 147:5
- τοῦ διδόντος χιόνα ὡσεὶ ἔριον, ὁμίχλην ὡσεὶ σποδὸν πάσσοντος·
- Hebrew (WLC)
- הַנֹּתֵ֣ן שֶׁ֣לֶג כַּצָּ֑מֶר כְּ֝פ֗וֹר כָּאֵ֥פֶר יְפַזֵּֽר
Haydock's commentary
Like wool. Because it is white, and light, and covereth the earth as with a fleece, which keeps it warm, and makes it fruitful. On which account also, in the following words, mists (or as it is in the Hebrew, hoar frosts) are compared to ashes, which give a fruitfulness to the ground. (Challoner)
Trees and fruits are preserved by the snow resting upon them. Vota arborum frugumque....nives....insidere. (Pliny, [Natural History? xvii. 2.)
Mists are succeeded by clear weather. By penance and austerity sins are remitted, and devils expelled, Isaias i. 18. (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 CXLVII
24. We then are burdened by the sluggishness of this cold body, and the bonds of this earthly and corruptible life; have we no hope of receiving “the Word,” which “runneth even unto swiftness”? or hath abandoned us, though by the body we are depressed to the lowest depths? Did not He predestinate us, before we were born in this mortal and sluggish body? He then, who predestinated us, gave snow to the earth, even ourselves. For now let us come to those somewhat obscure verses of the Psalm, let those entanglements begin to be unrolled. Behold, we are sluggish on this earth, and are as it were frozen here. And just as happens to the flakes of snow, for they freeze above, then fall down; so as love groweth cold, human nature falleth down to this earth, and involved in a sluggish body becometh like snow. But in that snow are predestined sons of God. For, “He giveth snow like wool” ( ver. …