Psalms 88:7
For who in the clouds can be compared to the Lord: or who among the sons of God shall be like to God?
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quoniam quis in nubibus æquabitur Domino ; similis erit Deo in filiis Dei ?
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ὅτι τίς ἐν νεφέλαις ἰσωθήσεται τῷ κυρίῳ; καὶ τίς ὁμοιωθήσεται τῷ κυρίῳ ἐν υἱοῖς θεοῦ;
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 89:7
- כִּ֤י מִ֣י בַ֭שַּׁחַק יַעֲרֹ֣ךְ לַיהוָ֑ה יִדְמֶ֥ה לַ֝יהוָ֗ה בִּבְנֵ֥י אֵלִים
Haydock's commentary
Sons. Angels (Calmet) to God the Son. None is like him. (St. Jerome)
Lucifer fell by aiming at it. I will be like to the Most High, Isaias xiv. 14.
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 LXXXIX
7. “For who is he among the clouds, who shall be compared unto Thee, Lord!” ( ver. 6 ). Is this to be the praise of the Heavens, is this to be their rain? What? are the preachers confident, because “none among the clouds shall be compared unto the Lord”? Does it appear to you, brethren, a high ground of praise, that the clouds cannot be compared with their Creator? If it is taken in its literal, not in its mystical meaning, it is not so: what? are the stars that are above the clouds to be compared with the Lord? what? can the Sun, Moon, Angels, Heavens, be even compared with the Lord? Why is it then that he says, as if he meant some high praise, “For who is he among the clouds?” etc. …
St Athanasius Against the Arians. (Orationes contra Arianos IV.), Texts explained; Sixthly, Proverbs viii. 22. Proverbs are of a figurative nature, and must be interpreted as such. We must interpret them, and in particular this passage, by the Regula Fidei. 'He created me' not equivalent to 'I am a creature.' Wisdom a creature so far forth as Its human body. Again, if He is a creature, it is as 'a beginning of ways,' an office which, though not an attribute, is a consequence, of a higher and divine nature. And it is 'for the works,' which implied the works existed, and therefore much more He, before He was created. Also 'the Lord' not the Father 'created' Him, which implies the creation was that of a servant
49. And from the visible creation, we clearly discern that His invisible things also, ‘being perceived by the things that are made,’ are not independent of each other; for it was not first one and then another, but all at once were constituted after their kind. For the Apostle did not number individually, so as to say ‘whether Angel, or Throne, or Dominion, or Authority,’ but he mentions together all according to their kind, ‘whether Angels, or Archangels, or Principalities:’ for in this way is the origination of the creatures. If then, as I have said, the Word were creature He must have been brought into being, not first of them, but with all the other Powers, though in glory He excel the rest ever so much. …
St Gregory of Nyssa Answer to Eunomius' Second Book
This, then, was the meaning of his safe guidance on the way to what he sought, that he was not blindly led by any of the means ready to hand for his instruction in the things of God, and that his mind, unimpeded by any object of sense, was never hindered from its journeying in quest of what lies beyond all that is known, but having gone by reasoning far beyond the wisdom of his countrymen, (I mean the philosophy of the Chaldees, limited as it was to the things which do appear) and soaring above the things which are cognizable by sense, from the beauty of the objects of contemplation, and the harmony of the heavenly wonders, he desired to behold the archetype of all beauty. …
St Ambrose Exposition of the Christian Faith, Chapter II. The Emperor is exhorted to display zeal in the Faith. Christ's perfect Godhead is shown from the unity of will and working which He has with the Father. The attributes of Divinity are shown to be proper to Christ, Whose various titles prove His essential unity, with distinction of Person. In no other way can the unity of God be maintained
14. Therefore we ought to believe that God is good, eternal, perfect, almighty, and true, such as we find Him in the Law and the Prophets, and the rest of the holy Scriptures, for otherwise there is no God. For He Who is God cannot but be good, seeing that fulness of goodness is of the nature of God: nor can God, Who made time, be in time; nor, again, can God be imperfect, for a lesser being is plainly imperfect, seeing that it lacks somewhat whereby it could be made equal to a greater. This, then, is the teaching of our faith, that God is not evil, that with God nothing is impossible, that God exists not in time, that God is beneath no being. If I am in error, let my adversaries prove it.
St Ambrose Exposition of the Christian Faith, Chapter XII. The comparison, found in the Gospel of St. John, of the Son to a Vine and the Father to a husbandman, must be understood with reference to the Incarnation. To understand it with reference to the Divine Generation is to doubly insult the Son, making Him inferior to St. Paul, and bringing Him down to the level of the rest of mankind, as well as in like manner the Father also, by making Him not merely to be on one footing with the same Apostle, but even of no account at all. The Son, indeed, in so far as being God, is also the husbandman, and, as regards His Manhood, a grape-cluster. True statement of the Father's pre-eminence
161. Thus far the one insult. As for the other, it lies herein, that if the Son is the Vine in respect of His eternally-begotten Person, then, He having said: “I am the Vine, ye are the branches,” that divinely-begotten One appears to be of one substance with us. But “who is like unto Thee among the gods, O Lord?” as it is written; and again, in the Psalms: “For who is there among the clouds that shall be equal to the Lord? Or who among the sons of God shall be like unto God.”