Apologies for the gap in posting, I've been preoccupied with other things! But I will hopefully, start get moving on this blog very shortly indeed. In the meantime, a few notes on St Hilary's commentaries on the psalms.
St Hilary on the psalms
It is likely that St Hilary, like so many of the Fathers, wrote commentaries on most, if not all of the psalms. Unfortunately though, only a few of these have survived, namely those on psalms 1,2,9,13,14,51-69, 91 and 118-150, available on Migne in the Patrologia Latina series.
These have all been translated into French (in the Sources Chretienne series) but only psalms 1, 53 and 130 are available in English online.
What has come down to us, though, is well worth reading, not least because he often takes a slightly different view than many of the other Fathers. On Psalm 1, for example, he disputes the standard view that the psalm provides a description of Our Lord, and argues instead that it provides instruction and encouragement for those trying to imitate him.
By way of a taster, then, here is an extract from St Hilary's commentary on Psalm 1 dealing with the psalms as divine revelation, and how to interpret who the speaker is in them.
Interpreting the psalms as divine revelation
"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 him. He shall call Me, You are 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 has 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 has 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, the terms used are exactly appropriate, for instance: He shall call Me, You are my Father, my God and the upholder of my salvation; and in that one in which we hear the Son speaking, He proclaims Himself to be the author of the words by the very expressions He employs, saying, A people whom I have not known has served Me. That is to say, when the Father on the one hand says: He shall call Me; and the Son on the other hand says: a people has served Me, they show that it is They Themselves Who are speaking concerning Themselves. Here, however, where we have But his will has been in the Law of the Lord; obviously it is not the Person of the Lord speaking concerning Himself, but the person of another, extolling the happiness of that man whose will is in the Law of the Lord. Here, then, we are to recognise the person of the Prophet by whose lips the Holy Spirit speaks, raising us by the instrumentality of his lips to the knowledge of a spiritual mystery.
...The Holy Spirit made choice of this magnificent and noble introduction to the Psalter, in order to stir up weak man to a pure zeal for piety by the hope of happiness, to teach him the mystery of the Incarnate God, to promise him participation in heavenly glory, to declare the penalty of the Judgment, to proclaim the two-fold resurrection, to show forth the counsel of God as seen in His award. It is indeed after a faultless and mature design that He has laid the foundation of this great prophecy ; His will being that the hope connected with the happy man might allure weak humanity to zeal for the Faith; that the analogy of the happiness of the tree might be the pledge of a happy hope, that the declaration of His wrath against the ungodly might set the bounds of fear to the excesses of ungodliness, that difference in rank in the assemblies of the saints might mark difference in merit, that the standard appointed for judging the ways of the righteous might show forth the majesty of God.
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