Annotatio CCVII

”Because thou shalt eat the labors of thy hands.” — Psalm 127:2

Hilary, in the interpretation of this little verse — though erring slightly — Jerome noted, in the epistle to Marcella, writing thus:¹ “In this Psalm Heliodorus rather than our Hilary erred: who, concerning that passage in which it is written, ‘Thou shalt eat the labors of thy fruits,’ opining various things, asserted that the sense stands better if it be written, ‘to eat some fruit of [one’s] labors,’ and not ‘the labors of [one’s] fruits’ — whence a spiritual understanding must be sought; and, entering upon this occasion into a long disputation, he used as much elaborateness [to make] what he wished to be understood [seem persuasive] as falsehood always needs, that it may seem true. Whereas in this place not the Seventy interpreters, but the Latins — deceived by the ambiguity of the Greek word — translated καρπούς rather ‘fruits’ than ‘hands,’ although καρποί are also called ‘hands’ [wrists]; which in the Hebrew is set as calphecho (כפיך) — and Symmachus, and the Fifth Edition, translated ‘of thy hands,’ that they might escape the ambiguity of the former [Greek] speech.”