Psalms 68:13
They that sat in the gate spoke against me: and they that drank wine made me their song.
Open Psalms 68:13 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Adversum me loquebantur qui sedebant in porta, et in me psallebant qui bibebant vinum.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- κατ᾽ ἐμοῦ ἠδολέσχουν οἱ καθήμενοι ἐν πύλῃ, καὶ εἰς ἐμὲ ἔψαλλον οἱ πίνοντες τὸν οἶνον.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 69:13
- יָשִׂ֣יחוּ בִ֭י יֹ֣שְׁבֵי שָׁ֑עַר וּ֝נְגִינ֗וֹת שׁוֹתֵ֥י שֵׁכָֽר
Haydock's commentary
Song. Both judges and common people (Worthington) derided me over their cups of shecar, (Haydock) or strong drink, and palm wine, Lamentations iii. 14. (Calmet)
Thus the soldiers made Christ their jest, while they drank on the long night of his passion. (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
St Augustine Letter LXXVIII
6. It is indeed manifest that such things do not take place in the Church without great sorrow on the part of saints and believers; but let Him be our Comforter who hath foretold all these events, and has warned us not to become cold in love through abounding iniquity, to endure to the end that we may be saved. For, as far as I am concerned, if there be in me a spark of the love of Christ, who among you is weak, and I am not weak? who among you is offended, and I burn not? Do not therefore add to my distresses, by your yielding either by groundless suspicions or by occasion of other men’s sins. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm LXIX
15. “Against Me were reviling they that were sitting in the gate” ( ver. 12 ). “In the gate” is nothing else but in public. “And against Me they were chanting, they that were drinking wine.” Do ye think, brethren, that this hath befallen Christ alone? Daily to Him in His members it happeneth: whenever perchance it is necessary for the servant of God to forbid excess of wine and luxuries in any village or town, where there hath not been heard the Word of God, it is not enough that they sing, nay more even against him they begin to sing, by whom they are forbidden to sing. Compare ye now His fasting and their wine.
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To a Mother and Daughter Living in Gaul
1. A certain brother from Gaul has told me that his virgin-sister and widowed mother, though living in the same city, have separate abodes and have taken to themselves clerical protectors either as guests or stewards; and that by thus associating with strangers they have caused more scandal than by living apart. When I groaned and expressed what I felt more by silence than words; “I beseech you,” said he, “rebuke them in a letter and recall them to mutual harmony; make them once more mother and daughter.” To whom I replied, “a nice task this that you lay upon me, for me a stranger to reconcile two women whom you, a son and brother, have failed to influence. You speak as though I occupied the chair of a bishop instead of being shut up in a monastic cell where, far removed from the world’s turmoil, I lament the sins of the past and try to avoid the temptations of the present. …