Attitude to the historical meaning of Ps. 125 (126) in Augustine and his predecessors

The content of the article concerns one of the aspects of Augustinian exegesis of Psalm 125. Here the question is raised: is it possible to assume that Psalm 125 is talking specifically about the historical event of the return of the Jews from Babylonian captivity? The article traces the relationship between the interpretation of this psalm by Blessed Augustine and the Latin tradition of interpretation of the psalms that preceded him, primarily St. Hilary of Pictavia. Blessed Augustine, like St. Hilary, draws an analogy between the return of the Jews from captivity and the turning to God through Christ, which he portrays as liberation from the captivity of sin, granted to us through the Atonement. At the same time, in the interpretation of Augustine, unlike the interpretation of Hilary, the connection between the literal meaning of the psalm and the Babylonian captivity is not denied, although it is not emphasized. The sixth rule of Tychonius (“On recapitulation”) is cited as another possible source of such exegesis. This essay is a small but necessary addition to the analysis of Augustine's interpretation of Ps. 125. Here we will try to answer the question: how does Augustine’s interpretation relate to the common idea that this psalm is about the return from Babylonian captivity, and what is the place of Augustine’s interpretation in the tradition. In modern times, within the framework of the historical-critical method, an understanding of Ps. 125 1 has been proposed that refuses to connect this psalm with a specific historical situation (that is, with the Babylonian captivity). According to supporters of this understanding of the psalm, it is not about the “return of the captivity of Zion,” but about the “restoration of Zion.” The psalm is consistently examined from this angle in a special monograph by Byerly, who offers the following translation 2: 1 When the Lord restores Zion (It's like we're dreaming) 2a Then our mouth will be filled with joy, our tongue with gladness. 2b Then the nations say: The Lord has done great things for them! 3 The Lord has done great things for us! 4 We rejoice. Restore Zion, Lord, like the dry rivers of the Negev! 5 He who sows with weeping will reap with joy. 6 They go and go and weep, throwing away their seeds, but they will return with joy, bearing their sheaves. However, the form that Psalm 125 has in the translation of the Seventy and in the Old Latin translation (vetus latina) dictates a different perception of the situation described in it. Let us first give the Russian translation of the text of the psalm in the Septuagint (the Latin text that Augustine interpreted exactly corresponds to it): 1 When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion, we were as if comforted. 2a Then our mouth was filled with joy and our tongue with gladness. 2b Then they will say among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” 3 The Lord did great things for us; we rejoiced. 4 Bring back, O Lord, our captivity, like streams in the south wind (or: in the south). 5 Those who sow in tears will reap with joy. 6 Those who went away went and wept, throwing away their seeds; those who come will come with joy, lifting up their sheaves. Let us consider the time plans that are observed in the text of the Septuagint and following it in the Old Latin translation. Verses 1, 2a and 3. A certain community of worshipers speaks in the past tense about the return, thanks to God, of captive Zion (with which this community obviously identifies itself), about the joy of the delivered captives, and that in the eyes of this community itself the liberation was a great act of God. Verse 2b and 4. The community also says that this act will be perceived by the pagans as great and in the present tense asks God for deliverance from captivity, comparing it to streams in the south or on the south wind. 3 Verses 5–6. The gnomic statement about tearful weeping and joyful harvest (5) is applied to this situation: whoever sowed with weeping will reap (again future tense) with rejoicing. There is a clear contradiction between verses 1, 2a and 3, on the one hand, where liberation is spoken of as something accomplished, and verses 2b, 4 and 6, where it is yet to come 4 . For an exegete explaining a text with just such a relationship of tenses, there are two possible ways to resolve this contradiction. First: part of the community has already been liberated, and part is still in captivity; in this case, the psalm is sung on behalf of the freed, who in the fourth verse pray to God for the return of the remaining part from captivity. Second: the entire community is still in captivity; in this case, the first three verses are their dream of a future liberation, which they speak of (prophetically) as accomplished. In any case, from the point of view of interpreters of the patristic era, the spiritual meaning of this psalm is to express the hope of believers for deliverance from the captivity of passions, worldly attachments and turning to God. Some authors read this meaning through the image of the Babylonian captivity (Eusebius of Caesarea, St. John Chrysostom), for others the spiritual meaning of the psalm is the first and only (St. Hilary of Pictavia). How does Augustine resolve this contradiction? Augustine, strictly speaking, is difficult to attribute to one line or another, although his answer is quite definite. We can see it in two places of interpretation on Ps. 125 5 . First, at the end of the second and at the beginning of the third paragraphs, Augustine shows that liberation from captivity carries with it the meaning of redemption, and therefore has already happened: “And for whom innocent blood was given, they are redeemed, and, returning from captivity, they sing this Psalm. (3.) When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion, we became as if we were comforted. By this he wanted to say: we have become joyful. When? When the Lord returned the captivity of Zion. What kind of Zion is this? Jerusalem is the eternal Zion. How to understand eternal Zion, how to understand captive Zion? Eternal in the Angels, captive in people. Not all the citizens of this city are captives, but those who wander away from it are captives. The man is a citizen of Jerusalem, but, having sold himself for sin, he became a stranger. From his branch the human race was born, and the Zionist captivity filled the earth” (En.ps. 125, 2–3. P. 166–167). However, in the same third paragraph there are statements that indicate that the final return from captivity awaits people at the end of time: “The shadow of this Zion, which was given to the Jews as an example, was in Babylonian captivity, and after seventy years this people returned to their city (Jer. 29:10; 1 Ezra 1). Seventy years signify all the time, which is converted into seven days, and when all the time has passed, then we will return to our homeland, just as that people returned after seventy years of Babylonian captivity. Because Babylonia is this world, for Babylonia is translated as “confusion.” See if human life is not all confusion...” (En.ps. 125, 3, P. 167). However, at the end of the third paragraph we again read about the return from captivity as something already accomplished: “So confusion is the whole life of worldly affairs that has no relation to God. In this confusion, in this Babylonia, Zion was in captivity, but the Lord returned the captivity of Zion” (ibid.). Probably, these two lines can be reconciled like this: redemption has already been received in the sacrifice of Christ, and believers are joining it now, but the fullness of freedom from worldly captivity and the assimilation of the fullness of life is seen in an eschatological perspective. The second place of interpretation on Psalm 125 related to the explanation of the temporal plans of the psalm is the tenth paragraph, in which Augustine clearly presents his solution to the contradiction between the past tense of the first verse and the future tense of the fourth: “Bring back, O Lord, our captivity, like a stream on the south wind. Listen carefully, brothers, to what this means. He has already said: When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion. He spoke as if about the past, but it often happens that speaking as if about the past, the Prophet foretells the future. For example, he seemed to be talking about the past when he said in another psalm: They pierced my hands and my feet and counted all my bones (Ps. 21:17). He did not say: “they will pierce”, he did not say: “they will count”, he did not say: “they will divide my clothes among themselves”, he did not say: “they will cast lots for my clothes”; it was all in the future, but was sung as accomplished, because all the future with God was already accomplished. Therefore, when the Prophet said: The Lord has done great things with us, we have become joyful, then, to show that in the image of the past he thinks about the future, he says: Then they will say among the foreigners. “They will say” is already about the future. The Lord has done great things with us, we have become joyful. Then, when it was sung, it was seen as the future, but now we see it in the present. Therefore, the predictor of the future prays for the future under the guise of the past: Return, O Lord, our captivity. The captivity had not yet been returned because the Redeemer had not yet come. So, what they prayed for when they sang the psalms has already happened” (En.ps. 125, 10. P. 176–177). So, in general, the picture of time plans for Augustine is as follows. Ps. 125 speaks of redemption, represented as liberation from Babylonian captivity (but not of this liberation itself). The psalm was created at a time when redemption had not yet been accomplished, therefore the fourth verse of the psalm speaks of it as a desired future. At the same time, the Prophet sees it as definitely having to happen and, as happens in other prophetic writings, presents it as already accomplished - this explains the past tense of the first verse. For those who sing this verse now, during the time of redemption, this past time naturally appears to be truly past, although they will fully participate in salvation at the end of the world. Let us now try to find how this explanation of the times of Ps. 125 relates to the tradition preceding Augustine and whether we can talk about its originality. An example of a “historical” approach to Ps. 125 is the interpretation of Eusebius in his preamble to the explanation of the “Songs of Ascension” (it seems that it is this preamble that first develops the “historical” perspective of the interpretation of this collection of psalms in Christian literature, consistently connecting their historical meaning with the Babylonian captivity). He literally writes the following: “The seventh song is sung by those who have already completely returned to their previous state. But seeing that they are small in number (since many people and the entire people in general were still in Babylon), they send out prayers for them. Therefore, they say about themselves: When the Lord returned the captivity of Zion, we became as if consoled, etc., clearly showing that before that they were in captivity; and about those who still remained in Babylon, they add: Return, O Lord, our captivity, and: Those who went walked and wept, throwing their seeds, but those who came will come in joy, carrying their sheaves” 6. This interpretation was subsequently adopted by supporters of the historical understanding of the psalm in connection with the Babylonian captivity, in particular, by the Antiochian school and its brilliant representative St. John Chrysostom. Augustine seems to have remained aloof from this line of interpretation of Ps. 125. The roots of his concept of understanding Ps. 125 can be found in Latin exegesis, namely in Hilary of Pictavia and Tychonius. Among other interpretations on Ps. 125, Hilary’s interpretation stands out in that he resolutely does not accept the connection of the psalm with the Babylonian captivity. In the third paragraph of Tract. in ps.125 Hilary insists that, although David (who for him is the author of this psalm) could have prophetically foreseen the Babylonian and Assyrian captivity, it would be unworthy of the Prophet to rejoice at the return from this captivity, since it was followed by an even more severe captivity (grauior captiuitas). According to Hilary, this is a prophecy that does not fit, does not agree with the literal understanding of the psalm and thereby reveals its spiritual meaning, while pushing aside the historical one: “If there were not certain prophecies in the psalms that do not apply to the affairs and people of the times when these psalms were written, many might consider that nothing is said spiritually in the psalms, and would think that we are looking for false statements and fabricated interpretations, thanks to which we want to pretend that we have understood something deeper and higher than the understanding of others, and further, that we rather adjust what is written to our understanding than strive to find a meaning that is revealed more careful and diligent understanding" (Hilar. in ps.125, 1, CSEL 22). The conclusion that Hilary conveys to the reader is this: “This psalm proclaims only the joy of the soul returning from captivity to vices to the freedom of knowing God” (§ 3). This concept has a point of contact with Augustine's interpretation: the priority of the spiritual understanding of the psalm. But while Hilary denies the possibility of a connection between the situation described in the psalm and the Babylonian captivity, Augustine simply pushes it into the background, justifying the judgment expressed about his interpretations of the psalms by the Benedictine publisher: “Just as it is impossible for us to reach that spiritual meaning if we do not first clearly understand the literal one, so the literal one will be unnecessary if we do not make an effort to to comprehend the spiritual. For this reason, the holy Primate (Augustine), omitting the literal meaning wherever he considered it sufficiently open and understandable, rushed straight to the spiritual” 7 . However, both interpreters also agree regarding the explanation of the temporal perspective of the verse Ps. 126:4: for the author of the psalm, in their opinion, conuersio captiuitatis is a matter of the future, and the past tense of the first verse is a feature of prophetic use (perfectum propheticum). Here is Hilary's explanation: “And since the Prophet spoke about the joy of future hope, he could, according to the custom of Scripture, rejoice as if about the past, but in the subsequent prayer he shows that we are not talking about his time: Turn around, O Lord, our captivity. If he was as if consoled when the captivity of Zion was turned away, how can he now pray that it be turned away from him now? The point is that the speech of prophetic knowledge was cited above, proclaiming the joy of future events as if already past, but now there is a joint prayer for what needs to be averted, and the Prophet joins him, as if he himself were in captivity and words, but he admits that he is still among them ”(§ 10). The similarity between the interpretations of Hilary and Augustine is all the more noticeable because Augustine, like Hilary, considers the question of the discrepancy in time plans only in relation to the 4th verse, but not in relation to the 2nd, where this correspondence first becomes obvious. Thus, we can note with some caution the likely dependence of Augustine on Hilary in solving the difficulty that the combination of different times in Ps. 125 presents to the interpreter. However, it would be interesting to compare this way of solving the issue with the special way proposed by another Latin interpreter, the Donatist Tichonius, whose “rules” Augustine will use when compiling the third book “On Christian Doctrine.” For Tikhonius, in this case we are talking about “recapitulation,” a seeming violation of the temporal sequence in the biblical text, which in this case is due to the fact that “Scripture concentrates, collects (breuiare) several events into one, interweaving situations and events and mixing chronology in accordance with the analogy of situations” 8. Here is the entire passage in which Tikhonius shows why “recapitulation” is present in Ps. 125: “Sometimes recapitulations are not like that, but represent a future likeness... This is the kind of saying the Spirit uses in the psalms. When the Lord turned away the captivity of Zion, we became as if we were comforted. Then they will say among the pagans: The Lord has magnified to do with them; The Lord magnified to do with us, we became joyful. It should have been said: “When the Lord turned away the captivity of Zion, then it was said among the Gentiles.” But it is said: When he turned away, then they will say among the pagans. For we are the Gentiles, whose captivity He has turned away. In the same way, when we say: The Lord has done great things with them, the Lord has done great things with us, we have in their time a prototype of ours. So, because of the similarity between his time and ours, he made one of them and further added: Then they will say among the pagans, that is, when God does the same with the pagans" 9 . In Tichonia’s interpretation, therefore, the “nations” of the second verse of the psalm are non-Jews who received salvation, and the analogy between the deliverance of the Jews and the deliverance of the “nations” allows, according to Tichonius, to confuse the two narrative plans. The difference between this interpretation and Augustine’s is as follows: according to Tichonius, there is an analogy between the two liberations, and it allows the author of the psalm to speak in the same text either about the liberation of the Jews, or about the future liberation of the “nations”; according to Augustine, there is an analogy between the return of the Jews from Babylon and the conversion to God through Christ, and it allows the prophet to talk about conversion using the image of liberation from captivity. Given the obviousness of this difference, one cannot help but assume that Tychonius’s vision of this psalm could still shape or influence Augustine’s interpretation no less than Hilary’s interpretation of this psalm. As in many other cases, in this case it can be said that the interpretation of Augustine shows the undoubted influence of the Latin tradition of interpretation of the psalms that preceded him, and most of all St. Hilary of Pictavia; Moreover, the solution to any exegetical problem is not simply a reproduction of someone else’s solution, but is thought out and motivated anew. AN APPROACH TO THE HISTORICAL MEANING IN PSALM 125 (126) IN THE WRITINGS OF AUGUSTINE AND HIS PREDECESSORS This article deals with an aspect of Augustine’s exegesis of Psalm 125. It raises the question of whether it can be assumed that Psalm 125 refers precisely to the historical event of the return of the Jews from the Exile. The paper traces a correlation between Augustine’s exegesis of this Psalm and an earlier Latin tradition of Psalm exegesis, mainly, that of St. Hilary of Poitiers. Augustine, as well as St. Hilary, draws an analogy between the return of the Jews from the Exile and the conversion to God through Christ. The latter is being pictured as the liberation from the captivity to sin granted to us through the Redemption. Therefore, Augustine’s exegesis, unlike that of St. Hilary, does not deny (not does it emphasize) a correlation between the literal meaning of this Psalm and the Exile. The paper points to Tyconius’Sixth Rule (De Recapitulatione) as another possible source of such exegesis. See the translation of the interpretation and the preface to it in the book: Patristics: new translations, articles. Nizhny Novgorod, 2001. pp. 126–151. Taking this opportunity, I ask readers to correct the annoying mistake: on p. 139 in stk. 13 below should be read not “in time,” but “in our trouble.” Beyerlin W. „Wir sind wie Träumende“. Studien zum 126. Psalm. Stuttgart, 1978. S. 71. See in this book an explanation of why we can talk about the “restoration of Zion” and further references - p. 41 words On the (controversial) parentetic character of the statement “we seem to see in a dream,” see ibid., p. 23 pp. Here we talk about the interpretation of verb tenses of the Hebrew text. For this detail in patristic interpretations and in Augustine in particular, see: Stepantsov S. A. “Like streams on the south wind”: verse Ps 125:4b in Augustine’s interpretation // Bulletin of ancient history. 2005. No. 3. pp. 143–151. The gnomic sixth verse, however, can be left aside. Enarratio in psalmum CXXV, hereinafter En. ps. 125 indicating the interpretative paragraph and page according to the edition of CSEL 95/3. Mercati G. L’ultima parte perduta del Commentario d’Eusebio Cesarense ai Salmi // Mercati G. Opere minori. II. La città del Vaticano, 1937, pp. 62–63. Dulaey M. Tyconius // Dictionnaire de spiritualité. T. 15. P., 1991. Col. 1349–1350. Aliquotiens non sunt recapitulationes huius modi, sed futurae similitudines... Hoc genere locutionis dicit Spiritus in Psalmis. Cum auerteret Dominus captiuitatem Sion facti sumus uelut consolati: Tunc repletum est gaudio os nostrum, et lingua nostra exsultatione. Tunc dicent in gentibus: Magnificauit Dominus facere cum illis, magnificauit Dominus facere nobiscum, facti sumus laetantes (Psal. CXXV, 1-3). Dicendum erat: Cum auerterit Dominus captiuitatem Sion, tunc dixerunt in gentibus; nunc autem: Cum auerteret inquit tunc dicent in gentibus. Nos enim gentes, quorum captiuitatem auertit. Sicut illorum in figuram tempus habemus dicentes: Magnificauit Dominus facere cum eis, magnificauit Dominus facere nobiscum. De similitudine itaque tempus suum et nostrum unum fecit et iunxit dicens: Tunc dicent in gentibus, id est, cum similiter gentibus fecerit. – Tyc. Lib. reg. 6.3.2, text according to ed. SCh 488. P.314. See also: Dulaey M. La sixième Règle de Tyconius et son résumé dans le De doctrina christiana // Revue des études augustiniennes 35 (1989). P. 83–103.