Jerome
Patristic
c. A.D. 347–420
“(Verse 18, 19) But as for me, I will rejoice in the Lord, and exult in God my savior. God, the Lord, is my strength, and he will make my feet like the feet of deer. And he will lead me up to the high places triumphantly, singing in Psalms. According to the Septuagint: But as for me, I will exult in the Lord; I will rejoice over God my savior. The Lord God is my strength, and he will set my feet in the consummation: he will place me upon the high places, so that I may overcome in his song. Ficus tree, vine, and olive tree, as I explained, not producing their fruit, and the fields of the Jews not yielding food, and also the livestock and cattle being cut off from the sheepfold and the stalls, after they heard from the Lord: Your house shall be left desolate (Matthew 23:38), and the people also being handed over to captivity and dispersed throughout the whole world, the prophet from the people of Judah, who is called the embrace (because he loved the Lord and clung to him, and joined himself to him), speaks on behalf of the apostles and the people who believe in Christ: But I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will exult in the God of my Jesus. For they translated LXX as τῷ Σωτῆρί μου, that is, my Savior. The same with Gabriel interpreting: And His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people (Matt. II, 21). God the Lord is my strength; for I shall have no other but in Christ, and I shall count all the righteousnesses of the law as garbage. And He shall make my feet like the feet of a deer, to tread upon the asp and the basilisk, and like a little child I shall put my hand in the hole and draw out the serpent (Alexandria. Judah) and play. For my brother is like a roe or a young stag (Song of Solomon II, 9). And because he himself is a stag, he also gave to me, that I may be a stag, with lofty horns, splitting hooves, chewing cud, and driving away serpents by my scent: of which it is said in the seventeenth Psalm: He made my feet like those of stags, and he will set me on high. And in the twenty-eighth: The voice of the Lord who accomplishes stags. Therefore, he will set my feet among his other stags, and he will lead me to the heavenly things, so that I may sing the glory of the Lord among the angels, and announce peace on earth to people of good will. Let us sing of his victory and triumph and the trophy of the cross. This, according to the Hebrew version and the fifth edition, we should refer to the time of the destruction of Judea and the coming of the Lord. But if we wish to understand the consummation of the world, it should be explained as follows: just as in Exodus (Chapter 9) when Egypt was struck, and God struck their vineyards and fig trees, and killed the firstborn of men and animals with hail, and destroyed the Egyptian crops with caterpillars and locusts. The fig trees in Egypt did not bear fruit, nor were there any buds on their vines; the olive tree, where it could still be found in Egypt, produced no oil, and their fields did not yield food; and their cattle were dying in the pasture and there were no oxen in the stalls. But the people of Israel rejoiced in the Lord, and delighted in God their Savior: so in the consummation of the world, when charity shall have grown cold through multiplied iniquity, and the fig-tree shall not bear fruit, and the vineyard shall not yield grapes, and the work of the olive shall be deceitful, and the fields shall not yield food, and other things that follow: then whoever shall be found just and worthy of God's election, shall speak in exultation. But I will rejoice in the Lord, I will exult in God my Savior. The Lord is my strength. And being placed by God above the end of the age, so that afterwards He might ascend to higher things, and being educated by God to the highest, He shall say: He will set my feet upon the end, He will place me upon the highest places, so that when with Jesus, the ἀγωνοθέτης, who first triumphed in the struggle, the reward will be given to those singing hymns: I will conquer in His song, and my hands will play the lyre, and the harp, and every kind of instrument, and I will write a panegyric praising the triumphant one. And I, who spoke at the beginning, said: How long shall I cry out, and you will not hear? I will cry out to you of violence, and you will not save? And I have been accused of his justice and judgment: then I will praise his equity, and surpass the other singers with my song.”