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Psalm XV
Complete historical editorial footnotes. These notes retain the original edition’s wording; individual note authors are unspecified.
English translation and editorial credits: Original anonymous translator (first thirty Oxford Psalms), A. Cleveland Coxe (abridgment).
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[This Psalm is called by some of the Fathers “the Ladder of Jacob,” by which the righteous ascend to God. It is the octave of Ps. viii., which is appropriate to the ascension of humanity in Christ.—C.]
Editorial footnote · Expositions on the Book of Psalms (Coxe abridgment), Psalm XV, editorial note cite_note-4 · Original source
1. Touching this title there is no question. “O Lord who shall sojourn in Thy tabernacle?” (ver. 1). Although tabernacle be sometimes used even for an everlasting habitation: yet when tabernacle is taken in its proper meaning, it is a thing of war. Hence soldiers are called tent-fellows, as having their tents together. This sense is assisted by the words, “Who shall sojourn?” For we war with the devil for a time, and then we need a tabernacle wherein we may refresh ourselves. Which specially points out the faith of the temporal Dispensation, which was wrought for us in time through the Incarnation of the Lord. “And who shall rest in Thy holy mountain?” Here perhaps he signifies at once the eternal habitation itself, that we should understand by “mountain” the supereminence of the love of Christ in life eternal.
[Malignus in the Vulgate, which the Anglican Psalter does not follow here.—C.]
Editorial footnote · Expositions on the Book of Psalms (Coxe abridgment), Psalm XV, editorial note cite_note-5 · Original source
4. “The malicious one hath been brought to nought in his sight” (ver. 4). This is perfection, that the malicious one have no force against a man; and that this be “in his sight;” that is, that he know most surely that the malicious is not, save when the mind turns itself away from the eternal and immutable form of her own Creator to the form of the creature, which was made out of nothing. “But those that fear the Lord, He glorifieth:” the Lord Himself, that is. Now “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” As then the things above belong to the perfect, so what he is now going to say belongs to beginners.
Ps. cxi. 10; Ecclus. i. 14; Prov. i. 7.
Editorial footnote · Expositions on the Book of Psalms (Coxe abridgment), Psalm XV, editorial note cite_note-7 · Original source
4. “The malicious one hath been brought to nought in his sight” (ver. 4). This is perfection, that the malicious one have no force against a man; and that this be “in his sight;” that is, that he know most surely that the malicious is not, save when the mind turns itself away from the eternal and immutable form of her own Creator to the form of the creature, which was made out of nothing. “But those that fear the Lord, He glorifieth:” the Lord Himself, that is. Now “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” As then the things above belong to the perfect, so what he is now going to say belongs to beginners.