Annotatio CLXXXIX

”Lord, thou hast been made our refuge from generation to generation; before the mountains were made, or the earth and the world were formed, from everlasting and unto everlasting thou art God.” — Psalm 89:1–2

The Interpretation of Origen — the author’s name being suppressed — Jerome reprehends, writing thus in his explanation of this psalm to Cyprian:¹ “This passage certain [men] subvert by a depraved punctuation — especially those who wish that souls existed before man was created in the number of the sixth day. For thus they read and punctuate: ‘Lord, thou art made a refuge for us, from generation unto generation. Before the mountains were established, and the earth and the world were formed.’ ‘From everlasting and unto everlasting thou art God’ — for thus they expound it: If the Lord was a refuge of men before the mountains were established and the earth and the world were formed, then Souls existed in the heavens before the bodies of men were formed. But we, as we have set forth the reading, ought so to punctuate: ‘Before the mountains were established, and the earth and the world were formed, from everlasting and unto everlasting thou art God’ — so that our refuge was not before the foundation of the world (we who did not yet exist), but [the sense is] that God, from eternity unto eternity, is always God.”