Psalms 57:9
Like wax that melteth they shall be taken away: fire hath fallen on them, and they shall not see the sun.
Open Psalms 57:9 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Sicut cera quæ fluit auferentur ; supercecidit ignis, et non viderunt solem.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ὡσεὶ κηρὸς ὁ τακεὶς ἀνταναιρεθήσονται· ἐπέπεσε πῦρ, καὶ οὐκ εἶδον τὸν ἥλιον.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 58:9
- כְּמ֣וֹ שַׁ֭בְּלוּל תֶּ֣מֶס יַהֲלֹ֑ךְ נֵ֥פֶל אֵ֝֗שֶׁת בַּל חָ֥זוּ שָֽׁמֶשׁ
Haydock's commentary
Wax. Hebrew shabbelul, occurs no where else, and this signification is surely preferable to that of the Rabbins, "a snail." (Protestants) (Haydock)
Fire. Hebrew, "like the untimely birth of a woman, which has not seen the sun." (Houbigant after St. Jerome)
Septuagint may not have read th at the end of esh, "fire." But both version imply, that the wicked shall perish, without resource (Berthier) or struggle. This in enforced by a multiplicity of examples. (Haydock)
Haydock wrote amid the controversies of his day. The Church teaches that those born into communities separated from her cannot be charged with the sin of separation, and embraces them as brothers (CCC 818).
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 LVIII
12. “Like wax melted they shall be taken away” ( ver. 8 ). For thou wast about to say, all men are not so made weak, like myself, in order that they may believe: many men do persevere in their evil, and in their malice. And of the same fear thou nothing: “Like wax melted they shall be taken away.” Against thee they shall not stand, they shall not continue: with a sort of fire of their own lusts they shall perish. For there is here a kind of hidden punishment, of it the Psalm is about to speak now, to the end of it. There are but a few verses; be attentive. There is a certain punishment future, fire of hell, fire everlasting. …
St Jerome Jerome's Apology for Himself Against the Books of Rufinus, The way of peace is through the wisdom taught in the Book of Proverbs, and through unity in the faith
Such are the lessons in which I have been trained and therefore I was unwilling to return bite for bite, and to attack you by way of retaliation; and I thought it better to exorcise the madness of one who was raving, and to pour in the antidote of a single book into his poisoned breast. But I fear I shall have no success, and that I shall be compelled to sing the song of David, and to take his words for my only consolation:
St Gregory the Great Book IX, To Januarius, Bishop of Caralis (Cagliari)
The Jews who have come hither from your city have complained to us that Peter, who has been brought by the will of God from their superstition to the worship of Christian faith, having taken with him certain disorderly persons, on the day after his baptism, that is on the Lord’s day of the very Paschal festival, with grave scandal and without your consent, had taken possession of their synagogue in Caralis, and placed there the image of the mother of our God and Lord, the venerable cross, and the white vestment ( birrum ) with which he had been clothed when he rose from the font. Concerning which thing also the letters of our sons, the glorious Magister militum Eupaterius, and the magnificent governor, pious in the Lord, concur in attesting the same. And they add also that this had been foreseen by you, and that the aforesaid Peter had been prohibited from venturing on it. …
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).