Sing praises to the LORD with the harp, with the harp and the voice of melody.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 5. Adore his foot-stool. The ark of the covenant was called, in the Old Testament, God’s foot-stool: over which he was understood to sit, on his propitiatory, or mercy-seat, as on a throne, between the wings of the Cherubim, in the sanctuary: to which the children of Israel paid a great veneration. But as this psalm evidently relates to Christ, and the New Testament, where the ark has no place, the holy Fathers understand this text of the worship paid by the Church to the body and blood of Christ in the sacred mysteries: in as much as the humanity of Christ is, as it were, the foot-stool of the divinity. So Saint Ambrose, l. 3. de Spiritu Sancto, chapter 12. and S. Augustin upon this psalm. Challoner.—The last mentioned holy Doctor inculcates the obligation of adoring Jesus Christ in the blessed Eucharist, and refutes the Capharnaites, and so forth John 6. Worthington.—The Jews adored God, shewing a relative honour, by prostrating themselves before the ark, in the same manner as Catholics do before holy images. Bert.—It is. Septuagint and some psalters, “he is holy.” Calmet.—Hebrew is ambiguous. Bert.—“I discover how I may adore the foot-stool, … without impiety. Christ took flesh of Mary, … and give it us to eat for our salvation. But none eats that flesh, till he have first adored it.” Saint Augustine