Monday, August 17, 2009

Psalm 74 - Speech like a cancer

AELW 10:441

Psalm 74:6. As with axes in a grove of trees they cut down at once its gates.

"This is the condition of the treacherous and heretics, that they are not content with their own destruction but destroy many with them and pour forth their poison and spread it far and wide, as the apostle says: “Their speech spreads like a cancer” (
2 Tim. 2:17), and their speech indeed is profitable for the subversion of the hearers (2 Tim. 2:14). Here the psalmist complains of the same thing when he says: “As with axes, etc.” It is not a great thing that trees and stones are destroyed, nor does the prophet lament this. For, according to Augustine, he will not be great who thinks it a great thing that trees and stones fall, and mortals die, but that they are destroyed in spirit, as also the Lord shows as he weeps over Jerusalem. The Romans devastated the Jews physically, but they devastate themselves far worse by means of their teachings."

No comments: