For I heard the reproaches of many, and terror on every side: Persecute him, and let us persecute him: from all the men that were my familiars, and continued at my side: if by any means he may be deceived, and we may prevail against him, and be revenged on him.11 But the Lord is with me as a strong warrior: therefore they that persecute me shall fall, and shall be weak: they shall be greatly confounded, because they have not understood the everlasting reproach, which never shall be effaced.12 And thou, O Lord of hosts, prover of the just, who seest the reins and the heart: let me see, I beseech thee, thy vengeance on them: for to thee I have laid open my cause.13 Sing ye to the Lord, praise the Lord: because he hath delivered the soul of the poor out of the hand of the wicked.
For God does not hold out against his children when they beg his pity. And for you he will pray purely, held in high honor as an angel of God, and grieved not by you but for you. This is sincere repentance. "God is not mocked," nor does he give heed to vain words. For he alone searches the innermost recesses of the heart, and hears those that are in the fire, and listens to those who supplicate in the whale's belly and is near to all who believe, and far from the ungodly if they do not repent.
I will love thee, O Lord, my strength:3 The Lord is my firmament, my refuge, and my deliverer. My God is my helper, and in him will I put my trust. My protector and the horn of my salvation, and my support.3 The Lord is my firmament, my refuge, and my deliverer. My God is my helper, and in him will I put my trust. My protector and the horn of my salvation, and my support.4 Praising I will call upon the Lord: and I shall be saved from my enemies.5 The sorrows of death surrounded me: and the torrents of iniquity troubled me.6 The sorrows of hell encompassed me: and the snares of death prevented me.7 In my affliction I called upon the Lord, and I cried to my God: And he heard my voice from his holy temple: and my cry before him came into his ears.
Praise issuing from a pure conscience delights the Lord, and so the same psalmist exhorts us, "Praise ye the Lord because a psalm is good; to our God be joyful and comely praise." With this in mind, aware of how pleasing to God is this ministry, the psalmist again declares, "Seven times a day I have given praise to you." To this he adds a further promise: "And my tongue shall meditate your justice, your praise all the day long." Without doubt, he had experience of the good to be derived from this work, for he reminds us [in the psalm before us]: "Praising I will call on the Lord, and I shall be saved from my enemies." It was with such a shield of praise to protect him that as a boy [David] destroyed the great power of the giant Goliath, and, in many other instances, came out victorious over the invaders.
The Jews then took up stones to stone him.32 Jesus answered them: Many good works I have shewed you from my Father; for which of these works do you stone me?33 The Jews answered him: For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, maketh thyself God.34 Jesus answered them: Is it not written in your law: I said you are gods?35 If he called them gods, to whom to word of God was spoken, and the scripture cannot be broken;36 Do you say of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world: Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God?37 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.38 But if I do, though you will not believe me, believe the works: that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.39 They sought therefore to take him; and he escaped out of their hands.40 And he went again beyond the Jordan, into that place where John was baptizing first; and there he abode.41 And many resorted to him, and they said: John indeed did no sign.42 But all things whatsoever John said of this man, were true. And many believed in him.
(vii. de Trin. c. 23) The heretics now, as unbelieving and rebellious against our Lord in heaven, shew their impious hatred by the stones, i. e. the words they cast at Him; as if they would drag Him down again from His throne to the cross.
(vii. de Trin. c. 24) Before proving that He and His Father are one, He answers the absurd and foolish charge brought against Him, that He being man made Himself God. When the Law applied this title to holy men, and the indelible word of God sanctioned this use of the incommunicable name, it could not be a crime in Him, even though He were man, to make Himself God. The Law called those who were mere men, gods; and if any man could bear the name religiously, and without arrogance, surely that man could, who was sanctified by the Father, in a sense in which none else is sanctified to the Sonship; as the blessed Paul saith, Declared1 to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness. (Rom. 1:4) For all this reply refers to Himself as man; the Son of God being also the Son of man.
(vii. de Trin. c. 23) The Jew saith, Thou being a man, the Arian, Thou being a creature: but both say, Thou makest Thyself God. The Arian supposes a God of a new and different substance, a God of another kind, or not a God at all. He saith, Thou art not Son by birth, Thou art not God of truth; Thou art a superior creature.
(vii. de Trin. 26) What place hath adoption, or the mere conception of a name then, that we should not believe Him to be the Son of God by nature, when He tells us to believe Him to be the Son of God, because the Father’s nature shewed itself in Him by His works? A creature is not equal and like to God: no other nature has power comparable to the divine. He declares that He is carrying on not His own work, but the Father’s, lest in the greatness of the works, the nativity of His nature be forgotten. And as under the sacrament1 of the assumption of a human body in the womb of Mary, the Son of God was not discerned, this must be gathered from His work; But if I do, though ye believe not Me, believe the works. Why doth the sacrament of a human birth hinder the understanding of the divine, when the divine birth accomplishes all its work by aid of the human? Then He tells them what they should gather from His works; That ye may know and believe, that the Father is in Me, and I in Him. The same declaration again, I am the Son of God: I and the Father are one.
About CSB. A personal translation of the New Testament, rendered directly from the public-domain Greek in a literary style — not a scholarly critical edition, and not for liturgical or doctrinal authority. It is one reader's work, offered for enjoyment; where it matters, weigh it against an established translation. (Placeholder text — final wording to come.)