Psalms 91:4
Upon an instrument of ten strings, upon the psaltery: with a canticle upon the harp.
Open Psalms 91:4 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- in decachordo, psalterio ; cum cantico, in cithara.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ἐν δεκαχόρδῳ ψαλτηρίῳ μετ᾽ ᾠδῆς ἐν κιθάρᾳ·
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 92:4
- עֲֽלֵי עָ֭שׂוֹר וַעֲלֵי נָ֑בֶל עֲלֵ֖י הִגָּי֣וֹן בְּכִנּֽוֹר
Haydock's commentary
Strings, upon. Hebrew, "on the hasor, and on the nabel, on the higaion with the cinnor." Yet the ten stringed instrument seems to have been the same with the psaltery, or nobol. (Haydock)
Bellarmine thinks and is redundant, and was not in the copies of the Septuagint, or it is only explanatory, as we know that the psaltery had ten strings, Psalm xxxii. 2., and cxliii. 9. (Menochius)
The matter is of small consequence. (Berthier)
Eusebius seems to insinuate, that instruments were not used in the Church of his time. (Calmet)
The observance of the commandments, and mortification, signified by the harp, are requisite. (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 XCII
5. “Upon a psaltery of ten strings, with a song, and upon the harp” ( ver. 3 ). Ye have not heard of the psaltery of ten strings for the first time: it signifies the ten commandments of the Law. But we must sing upon that psaltery, and not carry it only. For even the Jews have the Law: but they carry it: they sing not.…“And upon the harp.” This means, in word and deed; “with a song,” in word; “upon the harp,” in work. If thou speakest words alone, thou hast, as it were, the song only, and not the harp: if thou workest, and speakest not, thou hast the harp only. On this account both speak well and do well, if thou wouldest have the song together with the harp.
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).