A Commentary on the Book of Psalms: Psalm 68 — Christ in His Passion Declareth the Greatness of His Sufferings, and the Malice of His Persecutors the Jews; and Foretelleth Their Reprobation
6–7 In his solicitude for the members of his Church, and that his passion may not be a source of scandal to them, or perhaps of despair, in spite of his promise, he says, “Blessed is he who shall not be scandalized in me;” and on the eve of his passion, “You will be all scandalized in me this night;” he therefore now says, “Let them not be ashamed for me who look for thee;” that is to say, let not those who confide in thee be ashamed on my account, as if I had been abandoned by thee, and my hope had been vain. Let them not say, who will ever expect the Lord, or confide in the Lord, after his thus deserting and abandoning his only Son? which he repeats and explains, when he says, “Let them not be confounded on my account, who seek thee, O God of Israel;” the words being an explanation of the words, “Let them not be ashamed,” and the words, “who seek thee,” being synonymous with, “who look for thee.” Instead of Lord of Hosts, he has now O God of Israel, to show that men have just reason for confiding in him, he being Lord of Hosts, and therefore supreme in power; and at the same time he is the God of Israel, and in consequence, the friend and protector of his people, and therefore kind to them; and not only all powerful, but most willing, and ready to defend his own. He finally assigns his reason for this just demand. “Because for thy sake I have borne reproach;” it was for your honor, and not for my own sins, that I have suffered so much ignominy. It was on your account, that “shame hath covered my face,” for the same glory, your glory, I suffered contumely, stripes, derision, spits in the face, and the like, that truly filled my face with shame and confusion.
8–9 The prophet, speaking in the person of Christ, explains the cause of the persecution of the Jews. It was because the Lord censured and reproved their evil doings, as he himself says, John 7, “The world cannot hate you, but me it hateth, because I give testimony of it, that the works thereof are evil;” and in Wisdom, chap. 2, we read, “Let us lie in wait for the just, because he is not for our turn, and he is contrary to our doings, and upbraideth us with transgressions of the law, and divulgeth against us the sins of our way of life.” He therefore says, “I am become a stranger to my brethren;” my brethren the Jews look upon me as a stranger, “and an alien to the sons of my mother;” I am looked upon as a foreigner and an alien by the sons of my mother, the synagogue. The very thing that John wrote in the beginning of his Gospel, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” For though they once said, “We know him and whence he is;” and the Lord himself said to them, “You know me and whence I am;” still, at another time, they said, “We know that the Lord hath spoken to Moses; but as to this man, we know not from whence he is;” that is, we know him not, he is a foreigner; and he tells why they looked upon him as a foreigner, when he says, “For the zeal of thy house hath eaten me up;” because zeal for God’s temporal house, the temple which the Jews were in the habit of daily profaning by secular business; as also for God’s spiritual house, the congregation of the faithful, that they were daily defiling by their vices; “eat me up;” consumed, fired, and pained him; and, under the influence of such zeal, he reproved the Jews grievously, as may be seen in different parts of the four evangelists; and, while he justly reproved them, with a view to their correction, they, in return, abused and blasphemed him, saying, “Thou hast a devil. Thou art a Samaritan. In Beelzebub the prince of devils, he casteth out devils; we know that this man is a sinner;” and he, therefore, now adds, “And the reproaches of them that reproached thee, are fallen upon me.” Any offence against the Son constitutes one against the Father, they being essentially one;
and though all sins may be looked upon as common offences to the Father as well as to the Son, those connected with miracles may be said specially to touch the Father, on which Christ himself said, “The works which the Father hath given me to perfect, give testimony of me,” John 5; and in John 14, “The Father who abideth in me, he doth the works.” The calumny, then, in the reproach, “In Beelzebub the prince of devils, he casteth out devils,” offered special injury to the Father, inasmuch as it attributed those works of God, which the Son was performing in the name of his Father, and which the Father was producing through the Son, to the devil. Those “reproaches of them that reproached thee,” the Father, fell upon the Son, because it was him the Jews intended to calumniate, and not the Father, as also because the Son cheerfully suffered those calumnies that assailed the Father; and in this sense the verse is quoted by St. Paul, Rom. 15.
10–11 This is a very obscure passage, and the more so by reason of the difference between the Septuagint and the Hebrew versions. The most probable explanation of it seems to be as follows. The soul is taken here for the entire man, so that when David says, he “covered his soul,” he means, he covered himself, or covered his head, in fasting. Now, among the Jews, the covering one’s head was a sign of great grief and sorrow, and generally accompanied their fasts; hence we read in Psalm 34, “I humbled my soul in fasting;” and the practice of covering the head when in grief and trouble appears from many passages in the Scriptures; for instance, 2 Kings 15, “But David went up by the ascent of mount Olivet, going up and weeping, walking barefoot, and with his head covered.” And in chap. 19, “And the king covered his head, and cried with a loud voice: O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, O my son;” and in Esther 6, “Aman hastened into his house, with his head covered.” And Isaias, speaking of the manner of fasting, has, chap. 58, “Is this such a fast as I have chosen for a man to afflict his soul for a day? is this it to wind his head about like a circle, and to spread sackcloth and ashes?” In this passage, “to wind his head about like a circle,” means to wind the covering about it, and bind his head all round tightly with it. Now, we don’t read that Christ fasted with his head covered, nor that he wore sackcloth, much less that he was derided for so doing; on the contrary, it was objected to him that he was, “Behold, a man that is a glutton and a wine drinker;” and his disciples were found fault with because they did not fast like the disciples of St. John and the Pharisees. It is true, the Lord fasted forty days in the desert, but that was a private fast, with which he could not be reproached. He also fasted several days while he was taken up in preaching, as he watched several nights while absorbed in prayer; but we do not read that they were made a matter of reproach to him either. Finally, in his passion, he fasted from the vespers of Thursday to the ninth hour on Friday, and, from exhaustion and the punishment, no doubt, both hungered and thirsted; nor was his head without being covered, for, covered with a helmet of thorns, he fasted severely and bitterly, with no other food than gall, and no drink but vinegar;