Homilies on the Psalms

Hilary of Poitiers (315–368)

Psalm I

The primary condition of knowledge for reading the Psalms is the ability to see as whose mouthpiece we are to regard the Psalmist as speaking, and who it is that he addresses. For they are not all of the same uniform character, but of different authorship and different types. For we constantly find that the Person of God the Father is being set before us, as in that passage of the eighty-eighth Psalm: I have exalted one chosen out of My people, I have found David My servant, with My holy oil have I anointed hint. He shall call Me, Thou art my Father and the upholder of my salvation. And I will make him My first-born, higher than the kings of the earth ; while in what we might call the majority of Psalms the Person of the Son is introduced, as in the seventeenth: A people whom I have not known hath served Me ; and in the twenty-first: they parted My garments among them and cast lots upon My vesture . But the contents of the first Psalm forbid us to understand it either of the Person of the Father or of the Son: But his will hath been in the law of the Lord, and in His Law will he meditate day and night . Now in the Psalm in which we said the Person of the Father is intended…

See also

• More works by Hilary of Poitiers

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