Annotatio CCVI
”As an arrow in the hand of the mighty, so [are] the sons of those cast out.” — Psalm 126:4
Hilary’s exposition upon this little verse, Jerome, writing to Marcella, disapproves in these words:1 “That also of the same Psalm thou hast deigned to ask — Who are the ‘sons of those cast out’ [filij excussorum]? I wonder that thou hast not read [it] in Hilary’s Commentaries — that he interprets ‘the sons of those cast out’ [as] the peoples of believers, namely, that he supposed the Apostles to be called by that name, to whom in the Gospel it is enjoined, into whatever city they enter, and are not received, to shake off the dust of their feet in testimony against the unbelievers: although thou subtly object beforehand that the Apostles cannot be understood under the name of ‘the shaken-off,’ since it is one thing [to be] of the shakers, another of the shaken (because the shakers are those who shake off, but the shaken those who are shaken off by others), and that it is incongruous [for] the Apostles to be taken [as] ‘shaken off,’ who ought rather to have been called ‘shakers.’ What, then, shall I do? So great a man, and in his own times most eloquent, I dare not reprehend — [one] who, by the merit of his confession, the industry of [his] life, and the brightness of [his] eloquence, is praised wherever the Roman name is: except that it must not be ascribed to his fault that he was ignorant of the Hebrew tongue.2 Of Greek letters also he had caught a certain little breeze [smattering], but from Heliodorus the presbyter, with whom he was familiarly acquainted, [he sought] those things which he could not understand — how they had been said according to Origen; who, because he could not find Origen’s commentary on this psalm, chose to insinuate his own opinion rather than confess his ignorance — [an opinion] which he set forth in clear speech, and pursued another’s error the more eloquently. It remains, therefore, that we run back again to the fountain of the Hebrew speech, and see how it is written where we have ‘As the sons of the shaken-off’: there is read ken bene ha-neurim (כן בני הנעורים) — which Aquila translated ‘As the sons of [their] youth’; Symmachus and Theodotion, ‘As the sons of youth’; the Seventy [rendered it otherwise], which we may render ‘Sharpened perceptions’ [Exacuti sensus] — from which it is manifest that by [the sons] of youth the Christian peoples are to be understood.”