Psalms 77:17
And they added yet more sin against him: they provoked the most High to wrath in the place without water.
Open Psalms 77:17 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Et apposuerunt adhuc peccare ei ; in iram excitaverunt Excelsum in inaquoso.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ προσέθεντο ἔτι τοῦ ἁμαρτάνειν αὐτῷ· παρεπίκραναν τὸν ὕψιστον ἐν ἀνύδρῳ,
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 78:17
- וַיּוֹסִ֣יפוּ ע֭וֹד לַחֲטֹא ל֑וֹ לַֽמְר֥וֹת עֶ֝לְי֗וֹן בַּצִּיָּֽה
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm LXXVIII
12. And yet, “they,” like a generation crooked and embittering, “added yet to sin against Him” ( ver. 17 ): that is, not to believe. For this is the sin, whereof the Spirit doth convict the world, as the Lord saith, “Of sin indeed because they have not believed on Me.” “And they exasperated the Most High in drought,” which other copies have, “in a place without water,” which is a more exact translation from the Greek, and doth signify no other thing than drought. Was it in that drought of the desert, or rather in their own? For although they had drank of the rock, they had not their bellies but their minds dry, freshening with no fruitfulness of righteousness. In that drought they ought the more faithfully to have been suppliant unto God, in order that He who had given fulness unto their jaws, might give also equity to their manners. …
St Ambrose On the Holy Spirit, Chapter VIII. The aforesaid unity is proved hereby, that as the Father is said to be grieved and tempted, so too the Son. The Son was also tempted in the wilderness, where a figure of the cross was set up in the brazen serpent: but the Apostle says that the Spirit also was there tempted. St. Ambrose infers from this that the Israelites were guided into the promised land by the same Spirit, and that His will and power are one with those of the Father and the Son
48. And we may behold this unity also in other passages of the Scriptures. For whereas Ezekiel says to the people of the Jews: “And thou hast grieved Me in all these things, saith the Lord;” Paul says to the new people in his Epistle: “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in Whom ye were sealed.” Again, whereas Isaiah says of the Jews themselves: “But they believed not, but grieved the Holy Spirit;” David says of God: “They grieved the Most High in the desert, and tempted God in their hearts.”
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).