Psalms 83:4
For the sparrow hath found herself a house, and the turtle a nest for herself where she may lay her young ones: Thy altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God.
Open Psalms 83:4 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Etenim passer invenit sibi domum, et turtur nidum sibi, ubi ponat pullos suos : altaria tua, Domine virtutum, rex meus, et Deus meus.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ γὰρ στρουθίον εὗρεν ἑαυτῷ οἰκίαν, καὶ τρυγὼν νοσσιὰν ἑαυτῇ οὗ θήσει τὰ νοσσία αὐτῆς· τὰ θυσιαστήριά σου, Κύριε τῶν δυνάμεων, ὁ βασιλεύς μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 84:4
- גַּם צִפּ֨וֹר מָ֪צְאָה בַ֡יִת וּדְר֤וֹר קֵ֥ן לָהּ֮ אֲשֶׁר שָׁ֪תָה אֶפְרֹ֫חֶ֥יהָ אֶֽת מִ֭זְבְּחוֹתֶיךָ יְהוָ֣ה צְבָא֑וֹת מַ֝לְכִּ֗י וֵאלֹהָֽי
Haydock's commentary
Turtle. Moderns prefer to render "swallows," without reason. (Bochart)
Thy altars. They can rest in the ruins of the temple; (Kimchi; Muis) but in that supposition, the altars were destroyed. (Haydock)
It seems rather that this is an exclamation, (Berthier) which the enraptured psalmist is unable to conclude, giving us to understand that he desired his asylum and place of rest to be near God's altars, (Haydock) with the angels above, Isaias vi. (Worthington)
The faithful soul seeks to dwell in heaven, and in the mean time keeps in the Catholic Church, laying up store of good works. For, out of it, whatever good pagans and heretics may seem to do, by feeding the hungry, &c., as these things are not laid in the nest, they will be trodden under foot, conculcabuntur. (St. Augustine) (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 XI
1. This title does not require a fresh consideration: for the meaning of, “to the end,” has already been sufficiently handled. Let us then look to the text itself of the Psalm, which to me appears to be sung against the heretics, who, by rehearsing and exaggerating the sins of many in the Church, as if either all or the majority among themselves were righteous, strive to turn and snatch us away from the breasts of the one True Mother Church: affirming that Christ is with them, and warning us as if with piety and earnestness, that by passing over to them we may go over to Christ, whom they falsely declare they have. Now it is known that in prophecy Christ, among the many names in which notice of Him is conveyed in allegory, is also called a mountain. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm LXXXIV
7. Thou hast heard a groan in the winepress, “My soul longeth and faileth for the courts of the Lord:” hear how it holdeth out, rejoicing in hope: “My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.” Here they have rejoiced for that cause. Whence cometh rejoicing, but of hope? Wherefore have they rejoiced? “In the living God.” What has rejoiced in thee? “My heart and my flesh.” Why have they rejoiced? “For,” saith he, “the sparrow hath found her a house, and the turtle-dove a nest, where she may lay her young” ( ver. 3 ). What is this? He had named two things, and he adds two figures of birds which answer to them: he had said that his heart rejoiced and his flesh, and to these two he made the sparrow and turtle-dove to correspond: the heart as the sparrow, the flesh as the dove. The sparrow hath found herself a home: my heart hath found itself a home. …
St Gregory of Nyssa On the Making of Man, To those who say, “If the resurrection is a thing excellent and good, how is it that it has not happened already, but is hoped for in some periods of time?”
7. Let him therefore wait for that time which is necessarily made co-extensive with the development of humanity. For even Abraham and the patriarchs, while they had the desire to see the promised good things, and ceased not to seek the heavenly country, as the apostle says, are yet even now in the condition of hoping for that grace, “God having provided some better thing for us,” according to the words of Paul, “that they without us should not be made perfect.” If they, then, bear the delay who by faith only and by hope saw the good things “afar off” and “embraced them,” as the apostle bears witness, placing their certainty of the enjoyment of the things for which they hoped in the fact that they “judged Him faithful Who has promised,” what ought most of us to do, who have not, it may be, a hold upon the better hope from the character of our lives? Even the prophet’s soul fainted with de …