Psalms 73:5
And they knew not both in the going out and on the highest top. As with axes in a wood of trees,
Open Psalms 73:5 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- et non cognoverunt sicut in exitu super summum. Quasi in silva lignorum securibus
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ὡς εἰς τὴν εἴσοδον ὑπεράνω· ὡς ἐν δρυμῷ ξύλων ἀξίναις ἐξέκοψαν
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 74:5
- יִ֭וָּדַע כְּמֵבִ֣יא לְמָ֑עְלָה בִּֽסֲבָךְ עֵ֝֗ץ קַרְדֻּמּֽוֹת
Haydock's commentary
Going out. Septuagint, "coming in." Both designate the same gates, (Haydock) or the ends of roads and streets, Matthew xxii. (Menochius)
Top. The doors of the temple were very lofty. The idolatrous ensigns were fixed there, as on an eminence, to give notice of an invasion, (Isaias xi. 12.) while the soldiers plundered all, before they set fire to the city and temple, 4 Kings xxv. 9. (Calmet)
Protestants, "a man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees." The text is very obscure, insomuch that St. Jerome's version is unintelligible. (Berthier)
Yet it may signify, "they have placed their ensigns for a trophy, manifest upon the entrance aloft; their hatchets in a wood of trees; and now its sculptures together they have defaced with axe and hatchets, dolatoriis." Not content with these excesses, they at last set fire to the fabric, (Haydock) which was easily reduced to ashes, as there was so much wood about it, and in the very walls. (Calmet)
St. Chrysostom contemplates the like havoc, which is made by sin. (Berthier)
In false religions, some external shew, festivals, and altars, are opposed to the true ones. (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 LXXIV
6. “And all they have boasted, that hate Thee” ( ver. 4 ). Observe the servants of demons, the servants of idols: such as at that time the Gentiles were, when they overthrew the temple and city of God, “and they boasted.” “In the midst of Thy festival.” Remember what I said, that Jerusalem was overthrown at the time when the very festival was being celebrated: at which festival they crucified the Lord. Gathered together they raged, gathered together they perished. “They have set signs, their own signs, and they have not known” ( ver. 5 ). They had signs to place there, their standards, their eagles, their own dragons, the Roman signs; or even their statues which at first in the temple they placed; or perchance “their signs” are the things which they heard from the prophets of their demons. …
Eusebius The Church History of Eusebius, Panegyric on the Splendor of Affairs
33. These things which were prophesied long ago have been recorded in sacred books; but no longer are they transmitted to us by hearsay merely, but in facts. This desert, this dry land, this widowed and deserted one, ‘whose gates they cut down with axes like wood in a forest, whom they broke down with hatchet and hammer,’ whose books also they destroyed, ‘burning with fire the sanctuary of God, and profaning unto the ground the habitation of his name,’ ‘whom all that passed by upon the way plucked, and whose fences they broke down, whom the boar out of the wood ravaged, and on which the savage wild beast fed,’ now by the wonderful power of Christ, when he wills it, has become like a lily. For at that time also she was chastened at his nod as by a careful father; ‘for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.’
St Gregory the Great Book IX, To Leander, Bishop of Hispalis (Seville)
I have the epistle of thy Holiness, written with the pen of charity alone. For what the tongue transferred to the paper had got its tincture from the heart. Good and wise men were present when it was read, and at once their bowels were stirred with emotion. Everyone began to seize thee in his heart with the hand of love, for that in that epistle the sweetness of thy disposition was not to be heard, but seen. All severally were inflamed, and all admired, and the very fire of the hearers shewed what had been the ardour of the speaker. For, unless torches burn themselves, they will not kindle others. We saw, then, with how great charity thy mind was aflame, seeing that it so kindled others also. Your life indeed, which I always remember with great reverence, they did not know; but the loftiness of your heart was manifest to them from the lowliness of your language. …