Hymns, wonders, and the true God

He signals beforehand the work of hymns that will take place at the gathering together of all the saints, when neither day nor night will it cease, since sleep itself will not prevail in the power of the incorruptible and untiring bodies of that time (Psalm 134:1-2; LXX 133:1-2).

Hymns are the end of good things, and the subject matter of hymns is the works of God, his gifts and benefits (Psalm 135:1-2; LXX 134:1-2). Those who hymn are not strangers standing far off, but attendants who remain near, just as David appointed the singers to remain for this purpose.

One might say that a great benefit, and the chief of all benefits from God, is the making of humans his own, just as he made the people of the Hebrews his own and set them as exceptional for himself beyond all the nations at that time, placing them as something more and superior, inasmuch as the God of all is his own God to them in intimacy, though in creation he is God of all (Ps 134:3-4; Psalm 135:6-7; LXX 134:6-7).

Remembering the wonders that happened around Israel—things not done by the nature that appeared at the beginning, but by a will beyond nature, some heavenly, such as fire and hail and darkness, some earthly, such as frogs and locusts and gnats and the punishing power against the firstborn, and some done in the sea and the deep, such as the things at the Red Sea—he brings them back to the creative authority, joining these to those as having come from the same power, saying that he is the one who once for all lifts up clouds from the ends of the earth and flashes forth lightnings as the prelude of rains and sends out winds from an unseen source (Psalm 135:7). They are not known where they are before they blow. He says that the unseen and unknown origin of the winds is God's treasury, the winds being understood to be stored away somewhere continually, as in the treasuries of bodies.

He indicates that the wonders did not happen for Israel alone, but for the knowledge of God through all the earth and all time—not only while the works were being done was the doer known, but also afterward through memory.

Above, then, he called them gods according to the custom of the nations, though they are not gods. Now, to shame the falsely named gods, he calls them idols, discrediting them by the material, because they are silver and gold, and by the workmanship, because they are made by humans, and by the lifelessness along with the vanity of the likeness of souls, because there is no spirit of life in them. All these things carry the open discredit of the worship and the open refutation of the demons, that those whose likenesses are such things are not gods. For the likeness of God is divine; therefore the human being who is an image is the divine one, not the one deprived of the Godhead.

No less than the subduing of those who warred against them, the feeding in the desert and the guiding of them without want, and the destruction of the kings of the Amorites, he sets down as a demonstration of God's mercy, who gave their land to the Hebrews as a good land to dwell in (Psalm 136:16-22; LXX 135:16, 22). And this was the treasuring up for the righteous of the wealth of the impious. For they would not have perished otherwise, had they not come to the fullness of their sins, as God said to Abraham. And Moses says that Israel did not take possession of their land because of his own righteousness, but because of their lawlessness and because of God's love for the fathers. So against those the destructive judgment was just, while toward these the beneficent gift was loving, and the piety of the fathers became a preparation for sharing in that love. For in this way the things from God are shown forth justly and well and fittingly for the world.

He makes clear that they will be in a desert, like the condition of captives after their removal from their own cities (Psalm 137:1-2; LXX 136:1, 2). For this is what it means: "On the willows we hung up our instruments" (Psalm 137:2; LXX 136:2).

And according to the spiritual worship, they considered the foreign souls a foreign land, and they guarded against bringing out the divine things among them, as things being moved from their own place into a foreign one, as the divine mouth of Christ says: "Do not give what is holy to the dogs, and do not throw your pearls before the pigs." Such was Herod, who wanted to see the signs of Christ, not seeking this for reverence but for pleasant spectacle, and therefore he did not obtain it.