My eyes became weak from want. For what eyes are we to understand? If the eyes of the flesh in which He suffered, we do not read that His eyes became weak from want, that is, from hunger, in His Passion, as is often the case; as He was betrayed after His Supper, and crucified on the same day: if the inner eyes, how were they weakened from want, in which there was a light that could never fail? But He meant by His eyes those members in the body, of which He was Himself the head, which, as brighter and more eminent and chief above the rest, He loved. It was of this body that the Apostle was speaking, when he wrote, taking his metaphor from our own body, If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? etc. What he wished understood by these words, he has expressed more clearly, by adding, Now you are the body of Christ, and members in particular. Wherefore as those eyes, that is, the holy Apostles, to whom not flesh and blood, but the Father which is in Heaven had revealed Him, so that Peter said, You are Christ, the Son of the Living God, when they saw Him betrayed, and suffering such evils, saw Him not such as they wished, as He did not come forth, did not manifest Himself in His virtue and power, but still hidden in His secrecy, endured everything as a man overcome and enfeebled, they became weak for want, as if their food, their Light, had been withdrawn from them.

8. He continues, And I have called upon You. This indeed He did most clearly, when upon the Cross. But what follows? All the day I have stretched forth My hands unto You, must be examined how it must be taken. For if in this expression we understand the tree of the Cross, how can we reconcile it with the whole day? Can He be said to have hung upon the Cross during the whole day, as the night is considered a part of the day? But if day, as opposed to night, was meant by this expression, even of this day, the first and no small portion had passed by at the time of His crucifixion. But if we take day in the same sense of time (especially as the word is used in the feminine, a gender which is restricted to that sense in Latin, although not so in Greek, as it is always used in the feminine, which I suppose to be the reason for its translation in the same gender in our own version), the knot of the question will be drawn tighter: for how can it mean for the whole space of time, if He did not even for one day stretch forth His hands on the Cross? Further, should we take the whole for a part, as Scripture sometimes uses this expression, I do not remember an instance in which the whole is taken for a part, when the word whole is expressly added. For in the passage of the Gospel where the Lord says, The Son of Man shall be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, it is no extraordinary licence to take the whole for the part, the expression not being for three whole days and three whole nights: since the one intermediate day was a whole one, the other two were parts, the last being part of the first day, the first part of the last. But if the Cross is not meant here, but the prayer, which we find in the Gospel that He poured forth in the form of a servant to God the Father, where He is said to have prayed long before His Passion, and on the eve of His Passion, and also when on the Cross, we do not read anywhere that He did so throughout the whole day. Therefore by the stretched-out hands throughout the whole day, we may understand the continuation of good works in which He never ceased from exertion.

9. But as His good works profited only the predestined to eternal salvation, and not all men, nor even all those among whom they were done, he adds, Do you show wonders among the dead?. If we suppose this relates to those whose flesh life has left, great wonders have been wrought among the dead, inasmuch as some of them have revived: and in our Lord’s descent into Hell, and His ascent as the conqueror of death, a great wonder was wrought among the dead. He refers then in these words, Do You show wonders among the dead? to men so dead in heart, that such great works of Christ could not rouse them to the life of faith: for he does not say that wonders are not shown to them because they see them not, but because they do not profit them. For, as he says in this passage, the whole day have I stretched forth My hands to You: because He ever refers all His works to the will of His Father, constantly declaring that He came to fulfil His Father’s will: so also, as an unbelieving people saw the same works, another Prophet says, I have spread out my hands all day unto a rebellious people, that believes not, but contradicts. Those then are dead, to whom wonders have not been shown, not because they saw them not, but since they lived not again through them. The following verse, Shall physicians revive them, and shall they praise You? means, that the dead shall not be revived by such means, that they may praise You. In the Hebrew there is said to be a different expression: giants being used where physicians are here: but the Septuagint translators, whose authority is such that they may deservedly be said to have interpreted by the inspiration of the Spirit of God owing to their wonderful agreement, conclude, not by mistake, but taking occasion from the resemblance in sound between the Hebrew words expressing these two senses, that the use of the word is an indication of the sense in which the word giants is meant to be taken. For if you suppose the proud meant by giants, of whom the Apostle says, Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? there is no incongruity in calling them physicians, as if by their own unaided skill they promised the salvation of souls: against whom it is said, Of the Lord is safety. But if we take the word giant in a good sense, as it is said of our Lord, He rejoices as a giant to run his course; that is Giant of giants, chief among the greatest and strongest, who in His Church excel in spiritual strength. Just as He is the Mountain of mountains; as it is written, And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be manifested in the top of the mountains: and the Saint of saints: there is no absurdity in styling these same great and mighty men physicians. Whence says the Apostle, if by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. But even such physicians, even though they cure not by their own power (as not even of their own do those of the body), yet so far forth as by faithful ministry they assist towards salvation, can cure the living, but not raise the dead: of whom it is said, Do You show wonders among the dead? For the grace of God, by which men’s minds in a certain manner are brought to live a fresh life, so as to be able to hear the lessons of salvation from any of its ministers whatever, is most hidden and mysterious. This grace is thus spoken of in the Gospel. No man can come to Me, except the Father which has sent Me draw him;…in order to show, that the very faith by which the soul believes, and springs into fresh life from the death of its former affections, is given us by God. Whatever exertions, then, the best preachers of the word, and persuaders of the truth through miracles, may make with men, just like great physicians: yet if they are dead, and through Your grace have not a second life, Do You show wonders among the dead, or shall physicians raise them? And shall they whom they raise praise You? For this confession declares that they live: not, as it is written elsewhere, Thanksgiving perishes from the dead, as from one that is not.

10. Shall one show Your loving-kindness in the grave, or Your faithfulness in destruction?. The word show is of course understood as if repeated, Shall any show Your faithfulness in destruction? Scripture loves to connect loving-kindness and faithfulness, especially in the Psalms. Destruction also is a repetition of the grave, and signifies them who are in the grave, styled above the dead, in the verse, Do you show wonders among the dead? for the body is the grave of the dead soul; whence our Lord’s words in the Gospel, You are like whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within are full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

11. Shall your wondrous works be known in the dark, and your righteousness in the land where all things are forgotten?, the dark answers to the land of forgetfulness: for the unbelieving are meant by the dark, as the Apostle says, For you were sometimes darkness; and the land where all things are forgotten, is the man who has forgotten God; for the unbelieving soul can arrive at darkness so intense, that the fool says in his heart, There is no God. Thus the meaning of the whole passage may thus be drawn out in its connection: Lord, I have called upon You, amid My sufferings; all day I have stretched forth my hands unto You. I have never ceased to stretch forth My works to glorify You. Why then do the wicked rage against Me, unless because Thou showest not wonders among the dead? Because those wonders move them not to faith, nor can physicians restore them to life that they may praise You, because Your hidden grace works not in them to draw them unto believing: because no man comes unto Me, but whom You have drawn. Shall then Your loving-kindness be showed in the grave? That is, the grave of the dead soul, which lies dead beneath the body’s weight: or Your faithfulness in destruction? That is, in such a death as cannot believe or feel any of these things. For how then in the darkness of this death, that is, in the man who in forgetting You has lost the light of his life, shall Your wondrous works and Your righteousness be known…

12. But that those prayers, the blessings of which surpass all words, may be more fervent and more constant, the gift that shall last unto eternity is deferred, while transitory evils are allowed to thicken. And so it follows: Lord, why have You cast off my prayer?, which may be compared with another Psalm: My God, My God, look upon me; why have You forsaken me? The reason is made matter of question, not as if the wisdom of God were blamed as doing so without a cause; and so here. Lord, why have You cast off my prayer? But if this cause be attended to carefully, it will be found indicated above; for it is with the view that the prayers of the Saints are, as it were, repelled by the delay of so great a blessing, and by the adversity they encounter in the troubles of life, that the flame, thus fanned, may burst into a brighter blaze.

13. For this purpose he briefly sketches in what follows the troubles of Christ’s body. For it is not in the Head alone that they took place, since it is said to Saul too, Why do you persecute Me? and Paul himself, as if placed as an elect member in the same body, says, That I may fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh. Why then, Lord, have You cast off my soul? Why hidest Thou Your face from me?

I am poor, and in toils from my youth up: and when lifted up, I was thrown down, and troubled.

Your wraths went over me: Your terrors disturbed me.

They came round about me all day like water: they compassed me about together.

A friend You have put far from me: and mine acquaintance from my misery. All these evils have taken place, and are happening in the limbs of Christ’s body, and God turns away His face from their prayers, by not hearing as to what they wish for, since they know not that the fulfilment of their wishes would not be good for them. The Church is poor, as she hungers and thirsts in her wanderings for that food with which she shall be filled in her own country: she is in toils from her youth up, as the very Body of Christ says in another Psalm, Many a time have they overcome me from my youth. And for this reason some of her members are lifted up even in this world, that in them may be the greater lowliness. Over that Body, which constitutes the unity of the Saints and the faithful, whose Head is Christ, go the wraths of God: yet abide not: since it is of the unbelieving only that it is written, that the wrath of God abides upon him. The terrors of God disturb the weakness of the faithful, because all that can happen, even though it actually happen not, it is prudent to fear; and sometimes these terrors so agitate the reflecting soul with the evils impending around, that they seem to flow around us on every side like water, and to encircle us in our fears. And as the Church while on pilgrimage is never free from these evils, happening as they do at one moment in one of her limbs, at another in another, he adds, all day, signifying the continuation in time, to the end of this world. Often too, friends and acquaintances, their worldly interests at stake, in their terror forsake the Saints; of which says the Apostle, all men forsook me: may it not be laid to their charge. But to what purpose is all this, but that early in the morning, that is, after the night of unbelief, the prayers of this holy Body may in the light of faith prevent God, until the coming of that salvation, which we are at present saved by hoping for, not by having, while we await it with patience and faithfulness. Then the Lord will not repel our prayers, as there will no longer be anything to be sought for, but everything that has been rightly asked, will be obtained: nor will He turn His face away from us, since we shall see Him as He is: nor shall we be poor, because God will be our abundance, all in all: nor shall we suffer, as there will be no more weakness: nor after exaltation shall we meet with humiliation and confusion, as there will be no adversity there: nor bear even the transient wrath of God, as we shall abide in His abiding love: nor will His terrors agitate us, because His promises realized will bless us: nor will our friend and acquaintance, being terrified, be far from us, where there will be no foe to dread.