Собеседование 42 на псалом 94

Ps.94:1. Fucking song of praise. David A. Not inscribed in Hebrews 1. Although this psalm is not inscribed among the Jews, because its content is of a general nature, the seventy give it a corresponding inscription, calling it a “song of praise,” since it combines doxology with prophecy, and similar psalms are usually inscribed in this way. “Come, let us rejoice in the Lord, let us shout to God our Savior” (Ps. 94:1). To whom does the prophet say “come”? As you can see, he does not indicate this, but expresses the invitation impersonally and thus invites everyone to come as if invited. What this invitation is and what it teaches is indicated by further words. “Let us stand before Him in confession and in psalms we will shout to Him” (Ps. 94:2). Do you see that the prophet proclaims deliverance from sins? Confession clearly indicates this. So, about this last the prophet commands to rejoice and exclaim, that is, to proclaim a victorious cry, since mental enemies are defeated. But he commands to exclaim and rejoice in God, because His work is the defeat of our enemies and the forgiveness of our sins. Therefore, the prophet refers to the appearance before the face of God to Christ, Who is the face of the Father, exhorting us to come to Him through confession, because we, sinners, cannot otherwise appear before the face of the Judge, as soon as we first confess our sins: “Let us begin to be judged, so that we may be justified” (Is. 43:26). psalms, because the song of victory, which is what exclamation means, cannot be harmoniously pronounced from an unclean heart and defiled lips, and when both are purified by confession, then the song is a sacrifice, and the psalm becomes an exclamation. “For God has led the Lord and the King has led throughout all the earth” (Ps. 94:3). Do not attribute the victory to yourself, he says, and, while exclaiming, do not boast as if you yourself had defeated the enemies. Indeed, how could you, the earthly one, defeat the enemies of the heavenly? Or how could you, the fleshly one, defeat the bodiless? If you have won, it is because God, who stood up for us, is “the leader to the Lord and the King led to": as the great Lord, He not only frees those who served Him well, but also adopts; like a great King, he not only makes leaders of those who fought with good zeal, but also makes them participants in his kingdom. Over whom is He great? Above all the gods, i.e. righteous. The greatness of God is unknown to the wicked, but known to the pious. But just as the glory of the sun is not diminished by the fact that the blind do not know the light, so in view of the fact that the wicked deny the power of God, one should not belittle in one’s mind His power to the pious, whom He calls gods, since the righteous are made gods for the wicked, which is why God says, for example, to Moses: “I have made you God to Pharaoh” (Ex. 7:1). “In His hand are all the ends of the earth, and the peaks of the mountains are in His hand” (Ps. 95:4). Having called God great, the prophet naturally speaks of greatness, not as it is, but as we are able to comprehend it from visible creatures. The Psalmist says in this case, in agreement with the prophet Isaiah: “He is the One who sits above the circle of the earth” (Is. 40:22), and also: “weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in scales?” (Isa.40:12). “For His is the sea, and He created it, and His hands made the dry land” (Ps. 94:5). Having named the elements, the prophet naturally pointed out what is contained in the elements. Therefore, whether we travel by sea or cultivate the land, knowing by whom they were created and to whom they belong, let us thank God for the fact that He has produced such benefits for our benefit, glorifying Him not only in words, but also in deeds. How exactly? “Come, let us worship and fall down before Him, and let us weep before... the Lord, who has done this” (Ps. 94:6). Let us bow down as slaves, let us fall down as those in need of His help, let us cry as sinners who can receive His protection only through His mercy. We should not be ashamed of any of this, since all this is done in the face of the One who created us, i.e. produced from nothingness; The same One who brought us into existence from nothingness is also the author of all good things. 2. Who is ashamed to bow down and beg with tears from someone who has shown even a small benefit, and not such a great one (like God)? That is why the prophet is very consistent and continues further: “For He is our God, and we are the people of His life and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you hear His voice” (Ps. 94:7). Although God is the creator, says the prophet, yet, because of His providence and care for us, we are “the people of His life,” i.e. we find in Him our pasture and food, as well as “the sheep of His hand,” since God is the shepherd of the human race. How does He shepherd us? With your own hand, i.e. human nature, since He appeared in it, and, as befits a shepherd, laid down His soul for the flock. That is why Isaiah says: “He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will take the lambs in His arms and carry them on His bosom” (Is. 40:11). “Do not harden your hearts as they did when they provoked you to anger in the day of temptation in the wilderness, where (says the Lord) “your fathers tempted Me, they tortured Me, and saw My works” (Ps. 95:8-9). That “day” does not mean one day, nor a present age, Paul explained this to us in his letter to the Hebrews, where he says: “Train one another every day, as long as you can say, “Today,” lest any of you become hardened by being deceived by sin” (Heb. 3:13). So, if we hear His voice in this life (we have heard: “My sheep obey my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” - (John 10:27), we will not harden our hearts, and we will not imitate the people of Judah, which the prophets call a house of sorrow and a hard-hearted people, who repeatedly tempted and grieved God in the wilderness, and especially when, having defeated the Canaanites, instead In order to give thanks, he grumbled at God and blamed Him for bringing him out of Egypt, for which God sent deadly snakes against him, in view of which Paul says: “Let us not tempt Christ, as some of them were tempted and were killed by snakes” (1 Cor. 10:9). So, the prophet exhorts us so that when the mental enemy is defeated and the voice of God is heard at the coming of the Only Begotten (because then the prophet was not some simple prophet, not a mediator of the law, but God himself spoke), we should not blame Him for what we should give thanks for, as the Jews did, calling Christ a deceiver and a breaker of the law (Matthew 27:63), since for this the blasphemers are subjected to death from mental snakes. “They tempted Me... and saw My works for forty years" (Ps. 94:9-10). Stop here and then chant what follows: “I was indignant with the generation... and he said: I always err in heart, but they themselves did not know My ways” (Ps. 94:10). Paul also made such a stop: bringing the real testimony of the psalm, saying: “They tempted Me... and saw My works for forty years.” , he then added: “Therefore I was angry with this generation” (Heb. 3:9-10), and made such a division justly and reasonably, because indeed God was tempted in the desert by the Jews for forty years. He was tempted by performing signs, when the Jews, for example, said: “Although He struck a stone and waters flowed and streams flowed, but can He give bread? Or will you prepare a table for your people?” (Ps. 77:20), - while He “sent them manna for food and gave them the bread of heaven; and... like the sand of the sea, feathered birds” (Ps. 77:24, 27), as told by the Holy Spirit in the seventy-seventh psalm. For this reason, God was indignant at that race, which after so many signs remained ungrateful and unbelieving, and, moreover, not temporarily, but permanently, why the time was not indicated. Other translators, instead of: “indignant,” read: was dissatisfied, i.e. very little and was even completely dissatisfied. “And he said: I always go astray in my heart, but they themselves have not known My ways” (Ps. 94:10). Rightly, God did not favor the Jews, since they indulged not in temporary, but in permanent error. And when will one who is constantly erring be converted? heart, the disease becomes incurable. That is why God rebuked the Jews through the prophet Isaiah: “This people draws near to Me with their lips, and honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me” (Is. 29:13). What was the cause of the error of the heart? non-performance. True knowledge is knowledge in practice. So, for example, we all know the sea by ear or from afar, but those who work on it have true knowledge of it. “Therefore I have sworn in My wrath that they shall not enter My rest” (Ps. 94:11). “Therefore” is used here not for comparison, but to confirm what was said, and means: truly swore, just as when it is said: “How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!” (Ps. 72:1), or: “How majestic are Your works, O Lord! You created everything... with wisdom” (Ps. 103:24). By oath, understand the immutable threat of God. If we are not allowed to change our oaths, then even more so God does not change his promises and threats. This is what the word means: oath. What did God swear? The fact is that the Jewish people will not enter His rest, which is what happened to those who angered Him in the wilderness, who died in the wilderness and did not inherit the Promised Land. With this expression, the prophet also pointed to the true peace that will be in the future life, because he would not have even spoken about the latter at the conclusion of the psalm, if, as Paul says, he had not imagined some other peace assigned to those who will obey (the voice of God) - peace when God will rest from all present affairs. Creations attributed to St. John Chrysostom and in the Patrology of Min, classified as Spuria The paragraphs in the text were arranged by us. – Editorial staff of “ABC of Faith” You might be interested in: