David’s Choirs and Other Fragments

However it stands with the question of when this idea of the Psalms first came to the inspired David, and how it came, he at least seems to have been the first to take it up, and the only one, and to have done it at the earliest period, when he trained his fingers to tune the psaltery. If anyone before him had shown how the psaltery and the lute were used, he did it in a very different way: he put together some rough and clumsy contrivance, or else simply played the instrument without singing either to a melody or to words, amusing himself with a crude sort of pleasure. David was the first to bring the thing under rhythm and order and art, and to wed the singing of the song to the melody. [a]

And what matters more, this most inspired of men sang to God, or about God. He began this way even in the days when he was among the shepherds and the young men, in a simpler and humbler style; later, when he had become a man and a king, he attempted something loftier and of more public concern. He is said to have made this advance especially after he brought the ark back into the city. In those days he often danced before the ark, and often sang songs of thanksgiving and songs to celebrate its recovery. Then, in time, he assigned the whole tribe of Levi to this duty and appointed four leaders of the choirs — Asaph, Heman, Ethan, and Jeduthun — since there are also four primary elements in everything visible. Then he formed choirs of men, chosen out of the rest, and fixed their number at seventy-two, with an eye, I think, to the number of the languages that were confused — or rather divided — at the time the tower was built. And what did that stand for, if not that one day all languages will come together again in one common confession, when the Word takes possession of the whole world?

God’s mercy is not so “marvelous” when it is shown in humbler cities as it is when it is shown in “a strong city.” That is why “God is to be blessed.”

Someone long ago used to say that the only people who go down alive into Hades are those who have been taught the knowledge of divine things; for anyone who has not tasted the words of life is already dead.

But since there is a time when the righteous will rejoice and sinners will meet the end foretold for them, we must with every reason fully acknowledge and declare that God inspects and oversees everything that is done among men, and judges all who live on the earth. It is worth asking further whether the prophecy before us, which matches and fits the ones that come before it, may describe the end.

When Hippolytus dictated these words, the grammarian asked him why he hesitated over that prophecy, as though he distrusted the divine power in that calamity of exile. The learned man was drawing attention to the question why I had used the word “describe” in the subjunctive, as if I were quietly signaling doubt. So Hippolytus answered: You know quite well that words in that form are used to carry an implied rebuke to people who study the prophecies about Christ and talk righteousness with their mouths, while they do not accept his coming and will not listen to his voice when he calls to them and says, “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear” — people who have made themselves like the serpent and made their ears like the ears of a deaf viper, and so on. God does in truth take care of the righteous, and he judges their case when they are wronged on the earth, and he punishes those who dare to wrong them.

This is why, even to our own day, though they see the borders of their country and go around them, they stand far off. And this is why they no longer have king or high priest or prophet, nor even scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees among them. He does not, however, say that they are to be cut off; and so their race still continues, and their children go on succeeding one another. They have not been cut off or wiped out from among men — they are here, and they still exist — but only as people who have been rejected and thrown down from the honor God once counted them worthy of. But again, “Scatter them,” he says, “by your power”; and that word too has come to pass. They are scattered over the whole earth, in servitude everywhere, taking the lowest and most menial work and doing any degrading job for hunger’s sake.

For if they had been destroyed from among men and were left nowhere among the living, they could not see my people, he means, nor know my church in its flourishing. So “scatter” them everywhere on the earth, where my church is to be planted, so that when they see the church I founded they may be stirred to rival it in devotion. And this too is what the Savior asked on their behalf.

Properly speaking, “aliens” are people who have been plundered by some enemy or adversary and have become wanderers as a result — something we ourselves also went through once, at the hands of the demons. But from the time Christ took us up through faith in him, we are no longer aliens from the true homeland, the Jerusalem that is above, and we no longer have to bear the exile of straying from the truth.

And sometimes he draws even the unbelieving by means of sickness and outward circumstances; and many have come to make their home with Jesus through visions as well.

And all around us the wise men of the Greeks are mocking and jeering at us, as people who believe without inquiry, and foolishly.

These words signify that the preaching of the good news will be spread across the seas and the islands of the ocean, and among the people living on them, who are called here “its fullness.” And that word has been made good. For churches of Christ fill all the islands, and they are multiplied every day, and the teaching of the word of salvation keeps gaining ground.

Anyone who loves truth and never speaks a false word with his mouth may say, “I have chosen the way of truth.” And anyone who always keeps God’s judgments before his eyes and remembers them in everything he does will say, “I have not forgotten your judgments.” And how our heart is enlarged by trials and afflictions! For they pull out the thorns of anxious thoughts inside us and widen the heart to take in the divine laws. For, he says, “in affliction you have enlarged me.” Then we walk in the way of God’s commands, well prepared for it by having endured trials.

Do you see that God’s power is mightiest on every side? For, he says, you will be able to save me in the middle of troubles, and to hold them in check when they rage and rave and breathe fire.

Those who write about the nature and generation of animals say as well that the change of blood into bone is something no one can see or touch, although in the case of the other parts — the flesh and the sinews, I mean — the way they are formed can be watched. Scripture brings this forward too, in Ecclesiastes, where it says, “As you do not know the bones in the womb of a woman who is with child, so you will not know the works of God.” But from you not even my substance was hidden, as it was at the first in the lowest parts of the earth. [m]