Psalms 39:15
Let them be confounded and ashamed together, that seek after my soul to take it away. Let them be turned backward and be ashamed that desire evils to me.
Open Psalms 39:15 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Confundantur et revereantur simul, qui quærunt animam meam ut auferant eam ; convertantur retrorsum et revereantur, qui volunt mihi mala.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καταισχυνθείησαν καὶ ἐντραπείησαν ἅμα οἱ ζητοῦντες τὴν ψυχήν μου τοῦ ἐξᾶραι αὐτήν· ἀποστραφείησαν εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω καὶ ἐντραπείησαν οἱ θέλοντές μοι κακά.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 40:15
- יֵ֘בֹ֤שׁוּ וְיַחְפְּר֨וּ יַחַד֮ מְבַקְשֵׁ֥י נַפְשִׁ֗י לִסְפּ֫וֹתָ֥הּ יִסֹּ֣גוּ אָ֭חוֹר וְיִכָּלְמ֑וּ חֲ֝פֵצֵ֗י רָעָתִֽי
Haydock's commentary
Backward, as those who came to seize Christ were twice, John xviii. 6.
He prays for their conversion. (S.)
Shame might have proved very salutary to them. (Theodoret)
The reprobate will be confounded. (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 Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter VIII. 21-25
2. But of His own passion itself, which lay not in any necessity He was under, but in His own power, all that He said in His discourse to the Jews was, “I go away.” For to Christ the Lord’s death was His proceeding to the place whence He had come, and from which He had never departed. “I go away,” said He, “and ye shall seek me,” not from any longing for me, but in hatred. For after His removal from human sight, He was sought for both by those who hated Him and those who loved Him; by the former in a spirit of persecution, by the latter with the desire of having Him. In the Psalms the Lord Himself says by the prophet, “A place of refuge hath failed me, and there is none that seeketh after my life;” and again He says in another place in the Psalms, “Let them be confounded and ashamed who seek after my life.” He blamed the former for not seeking, He condemned the latter because they did. …
St Augustine Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter XI. 55-57; XII
3. “Then sought they for Jesus:” but with evil intent. For happy are they who seek for Jesus in a way that is good. They sought for Him, with the intent that neither they nor we should have Him more: but in departing from them, He has been received by us. Some who seek Him are blamed, others who do so are commended; for it is the spirit animating the seeker that finds either praise or condemnation. Thence you have it also in the psalms, “Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul:” such are those who sought with evil purpose. But in another place he says, “Refuge hath failed me, and there is no one that seeketh after my soul.” Those who sought, and those who did not, are blamed alike. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm XL
23. “Let them be ashamed and confounded together that seek after my soul to destroy it” ( ver. 14 ). For in a certain passage he makes an accusation, and says, “I looked upon my right hand, and beheld; and there was no man who sought after my soul;” that is, there was no man to imitate Mine example. Christ in His Passion is the Speaker. “I looked on my right hand,” that is, not on the ungodly Jews, but on Mine own right hand, the Apostles, “and there was no man who sought after My soul.” So thoroughly was there no man to “seek after My soul,” that he who had presumed on his own strength, “denied My soul.” But because a man’s soul is sought after in two ways, either in order that you may enjoy his society; or that you may persecute him; therefore he here speaks of others, whom he would have “confounded and ashamed,” who are “seeking after his soul.” But lest you should understand it in th …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).