Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Lent series: Introduction to Psalm 141 - A psalm for the hour of our death

Psalm 141 opens Friday Vespers in the Benedictine Office, and the placement is not random: it is also used at Vespers during the Triduum due to its allusions to the Passion and descent into hell.

It is perhaps most famous for being used by St Francis Assisi at the hour of his death.

The text of the psalm

You can hear the Vulgate version of the psalm read aloud here.  The video above is of the neo-Vulgate, chanted.

Psalm 141 (142): Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi 
Vulgate
Douay-Rheims
Intellectus David, cum esset in spelunca, oratio
Of understanding for David, A prayer when he was in the cave.
1 Voce mea ad Dóminum clamávi: * voce mea ad dóminum deprecátus sum.
2 I cried to the Lord with my voice: with my voice I made supplication to the Lord.
2. Effúndo in conspéctu ejus oratiónem meam, * et tribulatiónem meam ante ipsum pronúntio
3 In his sight I pour out my prayer, and before him I declare my trouble:
3. In deficiéndo ex me spíritum meum: * et tu cognovísti sémitas meas.
4 When my spirit failed me, then you knew my paths.
4  In via hac, qua ambulábam, * abscondérunt láqueum mihi.
In this way wherein I walked, they have hidden a snare for me.
5 Considerábam ad déxteram, et vidébam: * et non erat qui cognósceret me.
5 I looked on my right hand, and beheld, and there was no one that would know me.
6. Périit fuga a me: * et non est qui requírat ánimam meam.
Flight has failed me: and there is no one that has regard to my soul.
7. Clamávi ad te, Dómine, * dixi: Tu es spes mea, pórtio mea in terra vivéntium.
6 I cried to you, O Lord: I said: You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living.
8.  Inténde ad deprecatiónem meam: * quia humiliátus sum nimis.
7 Attend to my supplication: for I am brought very low.
9.  Líbera me a persequéntibus me: * quia confortáti sunt super me.
Deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.
10 Educ de custódia ánimam meam ad confiténdum nómini tuo: me exspéctant justi, donec retríbuas mihi.
8 Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise your name: the just wait for me, until you reward me.


The title of the psalm: A time to hide; a time to confront persecutors

The title of the psalm given in the Vulgate is Intellectus David, cum esset in spelunca, oratio, or 'Of understanding for David. A prayer when he was in the cave', thus pointing us to the story set out in 1 Kings 24: David was being hunted by King Saul, who on learning intelligence of where he was took out 3,000 men to find him, leaving virtually no place to hide.

David and his men found themselves forced to retreat to the inner part of a cave.  Fortunately for David, Saul entered it by himself, making him vulnerable to him, and David even managed to cut off a piece of his clothing to prove it.  

Rather than taking advantage of the situation and killing him though, he threw himself at the mercy of Saul, making it clear that he didn't attack Saul because he was the anointed king.

Cassiodorus explains the significance of this in relation to the meaning of the psalm as referring to Christ's avoidance of his persecutors until he had fulfilled his teaching mission:

David, the son of Jesse, fled from the prince Saul, and when he lay hidden in a cave he uttered a prayer which he revealed that the Lord Christ would make in the flesh before His passion. When understanding prefaces this prayer, the comparison is shown to refer to Him who avoided His persecutors as He prayed and hid himself by moving to various places. This was so that the Son of God could fulfil the promise which He had made about Himself through the prophets, and reveal the truth of the incarnation which He had assumed; for this psalm includes the words of the Lord Saviour when He sought to avoid the most wicked madness of the Jews. So the flight of David was rightly placed in the heading to point to the persecution by the Jews, for David, as we have often said, denotes both that earthly king and the King of heaven. 

Psalm 141 and the Passion

Pope John Paul II summarised the traditional interpretation of this psalm as follows:

Christian tradition has applied Psalm 141 to the persecuted and suffering Christ. In this perspective, the luminous goal of the Psalm's plea is transfigured into a paschal sign on the basis of the glorious outcome of the life of Christ and of our destiny of resurrection with him. 

The entire psalm is a passionate prayer, which can be interpreted as the prayer of Our Lord on the cross, with extensive references to his path to the cross; his abandonment by the disciples; and suffering.

Two particularly key verses are Verse 5, where the speaker finds himself alone and abandoned, is generally seen as a reference to the denial by St Peter and the Apostles who fled; and verse 8, as a plea to be freed from the prison of flesh, or alternatively from Hades, so that he might come to the Resurrection.

Cassiodorus explains that:

In the first section, the Lord Christ cries to the Father, recounting the wicked tricks of the persecution by the Jews. In the second, He prays to be delivered from the prison of hell, for the trust of all the faithful hung on His resurrection. 

A treatise on prayer

St Augustine, in his commentary on Psalm 141, also treated this psalm as a treatise on prayer, and the key points of his exposition were nicely summarised and amplified by Cassiodorus, who, drawing also on Cassian, provides a commentary that echoes St Benedict's own instructions on prayer:

...We must especially follow the commandments, and signing our lips with the seal of the cross we must pray to the Lord that He may cleanse our mouths which are disfigured with human foulness; in Isaiah's words: I have unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of people that have unclean lips. 

Next we must pray in words not such as human longings prompt, but those which the Godhead Himself has granted as a remedy for our wickedness. Prayer itself must come from a humble, meek, pure heart; it must confess its sins without making excuses, and in the course of bitter tears show trust in the most sweet pity of the Lord. It must not seek earthly aims, but desire heavenly ones. It must be sequestered from desires of the body, and attach itself solely to the divine. In short, it must be wholly spiritual, bestowing nothing but tears on the flesh. 

In so far as it is lawful, seek to behold in mental contemplation Him whom you entreat, and then you realise what sort of person you should be in offering yourself prostrate before Him. He is, as Paul says: the Blessed and only Mighty, King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and inhabits light inaccessible, whom no man has seen nor can see.  So such is the mighty Lord whom we should approach with all fear or love, directing our mental sight on Him in such a way as to realise that such splendour, brightness, brilliance and majesty as is conceivable to the human mind is all inferior to God, who with goodness beyond compare controls all His creatures. 

We must not with false presumption within ourselves form some mental picture of Him, for the hidden substance of God who made all things cannot be grasped in its essence by the knowledge which creatures possess. God has no shape, no outline; His nature cannot be assessed, nor His power grasped, and His devotion is unique. As has been most aptly remarked of Him, we can say what God is not, but we cannot grasp what He is. So we are to pray to Him who is almighty and without beginning or end, who traverses and fills all parts of the universe and every creature, but in such a way that He is wholly within Himself everywhere. 

He forsakes evil men not by His presence but by the power of His grace. Father Augustine when writing to Dardanus explained this at greater length. The words of the prophet warn us in salutary fashion to make haste: Come, let us adore and fall down before the Lord: let us lament before God (then he added, so that we should not be left wholly floundering and trembling) who made us; so that once we recognise that we have been created by Him, we may pray with confidence to our Maker. 

Then the humble plea which we are to utter in divine praise we virtually realise as we pray, for we gain a merciful hearing from the Lord, provided that what we ask for is in our interest. No-one is rebuffed coldly from heaven's generosity if grace is lent him to entreat with a simple and a committed heart, for a person feels that he has gained pardon to the degree that he knows that he has shed devoted tears. 

There is this further mark of our progress: the more a person realises that he loves and fears God, the more necessary he finds it to crawl near to divine help. Thus by the Lord's kindness all the devil's guile is defeated, and by His pity our sins are overcome.  

We have said as much about prayer as our mean intelligence and the nature of the occasion have demanded.  If anyone desires to gain the fullest abundance of satisfaction on this subject, he must read the most eloquent Cassian, who in his ninth and tenth conference has discussed the types of prayer with such power and quality that the holy spirit seems clearly to have spoken through his mouth.

Liturgical and Scriptural uses of the psalm

NT references
-
RB cursus
Friday Vespers+AN 4316 (6)
Monastic feasts etc
Triduum Vespers
AN 1891 (5), 3724 (8)
Roman pre 1911
Friday Vespers
Responsories
6622 (5, 8)
Roman post 1911
1911-62: Friday Vespers  . 1970:
Mass propers (EF)
-

Notes on the notes

The verse by verse notes that follow are also intended to assist those who wish to learn to pray the Office in Latin, particularly since there is no officially approved English version of the traditional Benedictine Office, and the translations that are included for study purposes in editions such as the Farnborough Monastic Diurnal do not always mirror the Latin Vulgate.

In general, the English translations of the psalms themselves (unless otherwise indicated) are from an updated version of the Douay-Rheims (previously on the New Advent site), since this is generally the most literal translation from the Latin Vulgate.  Text comments will often focus on the reasons for variations in the translations most commonly used for reference purposes for those saying the Office, viz Coverdale and the early twentieth century Collegeville translation used in the Farnborough edition of the Monastic Diurnal, as well as variations adopted by the 1979 Neo-Vulgate (used in the Novus Ordo Divine Office).

The vocabulary lists are generally derived from Dom Matthew Britt, A Dictionary of the Psalter (Preserving Christian Publications 2007 reprint of Benziger Brothers, 1928), supplemented by others sources such as Cassell's Latin Dictionary and Lewis and Short.

Where other translations are provided (note that the selection is limited by copyright considerations), the abbreviations used are as follows:

V            =Vulgate (available on the New Advent website)
NV         =Neo-Vulgate (available on the Vatican website)
JH          =St Jerome's translation from the Hebrew
R            =Psalterium Romanum 
Sept       =Septuagint (available on the New Advent website)
DR         =Douay-Rheims (generally the version previously on the New Advent website)
MD        =Monastic Diurnal published by Farnborough Abbey (Collegeville translation)
Brenton  =Sir Lancelot Brenton's translation from the Septuagint
NETS    =New English Translation from the Septuagint, available here
RSV       =Revised Standard Edition
Cover    =Coverdale
Knox      =Ronald Knox's translation available from the New Advent site
Grail      =Grail Psalter

The Hebrew, with links to Strong's Concordance, can be found (along with numerous other translations) at Blue Letter Bible.

The word by word translations, text notes and commentary are my own, but draw heavily on the commentaries of the Fathers and Theologians (on whom overview notes can be found elsewhere on this blog), Magisterial teaching, and other psalm commentaries.  

Quotes from the Fathers and Theologians are taken from their commentaries on the psalms using the translations recommended in my separate posts on these here and here, unless otherwise specified.

As well as these, the text notes draw mainly on the following sources:

TE Bird, A Commentary on the Psalms 2 vols, (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1927)
Msgr Patrick Boylan, A Study of the Vulgate Psalter in the Light of the Hebrew Text, 2 vols (Dublin: M H Gill and Son, 2nd ed 1921)
David  J Ladouceur, The Latin Psalter Introduction, Selected Text and Commentary (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2005),

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