Saint Robert Bellarmine Collection [3 Books]

Description

1. A COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK OF PSALMS
2. STEPS OF ASCENSION TO GOD
3. THE ART OF DYING WELL

The spirit in question, in Ps 50:14, is one of four other kinds of spirits St. David speaks of in the course of the entire Psalm. Interestingly, were it the typical formulaic term for “perfection”/“wholeheartedness,” the Hebraic adjective qualifying the noun “spirit” would be תָמִים (e.g. Gen 17:1). However, here in Ps 50:14, the adjective is נְדִיבָה, which isn’t perfectly translated by “perfect.” St. Jerome’s “principali” does make sense as an analogy derived from the primary sense of the original Hebrew, נְדִיב = “willing,” “generous,” “noble.” The stem נדב occurring in verbs and nouns as well, includes related meanings, “to decide,” “to offer voluntarily,” “free-will offering.”

I would guess St. Jerome used “principali” to mean “high,” “elevated” (i.e. “noble”), which is what a generous, voluntary, free-will, prompt and self-giving spirit entails in the words and overall attitude of contrition and reparation permeating St. David’s penitential Psalm. For it is “high” and “noble” on the part of a rational, free-willed spiritual being to promptly, generously, and voluntarily offer a sacrifice to the Most High, which is at the core of what the virtue of religion consists of (since we have freely received, cf. Matt 10:8).

The same high (principali) generous nobility of spirit conveyed by the word נדב similarly comes into play (featuring the same word) when souls enlist voluntarily for war (or promptly volunteer on behalf of God and the entire chosen nation/Church, e.g. to rebuild the Temple), which causes Deborah in Judges 5:2 to sing of “the people offering themselves willingly [“sponte obtulistis”/בְּהִתְנַדֵּב].” Likewise in II Esd/Neh 11:2 (“men willingly offering themselves to dwell in Jerusalem” to rebuild the holy city when returning from exile). The term is also found occurring in Ps 53:8, in the very context of offering (freely) a sacrifice unto the Blessed Trinity, whose Thrice Holy Name (YHWH) is good:

“Voluntarie/בִּנְדָבָה [= “With a free-will offering”] sacrificabo tibi…”

Notice that Psalm 50 ends with the offering of “sacrifices of righteousness, burnt-offering [that which goes up high] and whole offering,” and of “bullocks” upon the altar of God (Ps 50:21).

Spiritu principali sit in te.

Quæritur :

Ps 36:30: "Os justi meditábitur sapiéntiam…"

original Douai: "The mouth of the just shall meditate Wisdom" (DRC: "The mouth of the just man tells of wisdom…")

St. Robert commentates:

The just man will speak with so much wisdom, that he will not be caught in his language. To “meditate wisdom” means to be discreet in our conversation, as we have explained before; which he repeats when he adds, “and his tongue shall speak judgment;” that is, the tongue of the just man will not scatter words at random, but will speak what is right, and at the right time, which is the essence of speaking with wisdom; and he assigns a reason for it, saying, “the law of God is in his heart.”

It still seems a strange expression to say mouths meditate. What is the Hebrew?

Answer:

It is a very good question, and I will simply give you what I think is the best “empirical” answer, which does bear on the spiritual implication of the verse itself, in relation with the act of meditating (i.e. on divine things, such as are eminently found in the revealed Word of God).

The Hebrew does correlate mouth/פִּי (meaning also “edge” of a sword, “command,” “face”) with the (intellectual) act of meditating/יֶהְגֶּה (“pondering,” “thinking,” “separating”). It does so because Sacred Scripture, which is wholly divine and wholly human, first happened as an inherently memory-based ethnic phenomenon. What I mean by that is that you cannot separate the reality of Scripture, as an observable historical, ethnic, geographical, linguistic, and most importantly religious (divinely inspired and guided) phenomenon from how it was first formed, practiced, and transmitted.

Biblical texts are carried by a much larger tradition of orally-structured religious knowledge, and were themselves made for the rigorous transmission of “by heart” (repeated) lessons in the first place. The same ethnological reality applies to the original formation, composition, and transmission of evangelical recitatives, which is why the NT essentially existed before the first written lectionaries (evangeliaries) we know call “Gospels,” dating back to the mid, late 30’s A.D.—while the first Greek and pre-Vulgate Latin translations of the original Aramaic evangeliary based on Matthew’s direct oral composition of his precisely cycled catechesis (cata-techesis => κα-τήχησις, lit. ‘day-by day oral/mouth repetition, κατ-, in echo’ => ηχώ) were not long in coming (as early as the early 40’s).

I’m not specifically treating here of the matter of the principles of NT composition, which modern exegesis is essentially unable to understand on account of its own scientistic dogmas, but it is useful to keep in mind that the many anachronisms, methodological errors and projections in force in the West regarding the empirical making of Scripture are the same, whether you deal with Old or New Testaments. It is so because their common scriptural culture is lost, through ethnic misunderstanding, positivist prejudices (claiming to be be scientific), and modernist distortions (from the unbelief of a great many biblical scholars).

These topics do in fact have to do with your interesting question.

Returning to the anthropological phenomenon of memory, it is at the heart of the formation, practice, and transmission of the Word of God in the vast and diversified oral culture of the Old Testament, from Abraham to St. John the Evangelist (to choose one simplified time span, which is enough to make the important, routinely ignored point). The cultural world of the Psalms, for example, is one of intense memory, repetition (echo), and meditation (especially on earlier episodes of Scripture). It is interesting to notice and remember that St. Thomas himself and his learned medieval contemporaries, while leaving outside the ethnic conditions of the Semitic oral milieu in which Scripture first happened and formed, still heavily memorized Scripture, with their mouths and minds, and accordingly meditated upon it—and even explained it extensively.

This is what verse 30 in Psalm 36 (Heb, 37) essentially captures and, I contend, really accounts for in correlating mouth and meditation. The righteous meditates on the divine Word first and foremost by repeating it with his mouth, thereby memorizing it, learning it, praying it, and meditating upon it (which is the office of his intellect). Notice also that, in Latin, the connection between mouth (an opening), prayer (pleading/entreating), and adoration/worship is neatly preserved: oralis , from os (forming the ‘ r ’ with the genitive oris, “mouth”); orare (inf. “to pray”), oro (“begging,” “entreating”); adoro (ad + oro) => ad-orare (inf. “to adore”). The righteous therefore prays (oratur), first by way of his mouth (os , oris), therefore by repeating the divine Word (lit. by re-echoing it) he is memorizing and meditating on; through his diligent meditation, he finally reaches adoration (ad-or-atio , “worship” in prayer of the Λόγος, i.e. with both his meditating mouth and intellect).