Prayer, separation from the wicked, and the unity of God and Lord

So now a person needs intense crying out, because he has been pressed in by darkness and weighed down by the evils that surround him. He cries to the only one who can give light, who can show dawn out of evening and day out of night, and who can bring about a change from these evils (Ps 140:4-5).

He speaks, then, against wickedness, wanting to be pure from it and a stranger to those who live in it. For the wounds of friends are more trustworthy than willing kisses of enemies (Proverbs 27:6).

They mock what is good, he says, and disparage what is by common agreement the most beautiful thing of all—prayer—twisting it to suit their own will. And this, he says, will destroy them, uprooted from the earth, as if dug out, with a rock pushing through and dislodging their rooting. They made my words a laughingstock and a pleasure, mocking what is holy because they delight in what is unholy, and because their long habit in these things has cut off their asking for what is good and truly lovely and delightful. Second, he speaks of the sorrow of death, describing the dissolution of a human being: like a clod of earth breaking apart, he is scattered (Psalm 141:7).

Symmachus says: 'Let the lawless fall into their own nets.' Let their schemes, he says, turn against them and not against us who are innocent. But I, he says, will turn aside from mixing with the wicked, until I am able to escape them altogether. For this is the safeguard against being harmed by them at all: not to come near them or be entangled with them. Jeremiah also says this: 'It is good for a man when he bears the yoke in his youth; he will sit alone and be silent' (Lamentations 3:27-28). But for us now the separation from the wicked is spiritual, because a bodily separation is impossible, since we would have to go out of the world, as Paul says.

The unity of the dyad is beautiful when it places the Lord and God in such a relation, but for those who have learned the perfect things, the comprehension of the dyad in the unity is more revealing. Paul presents this when he expounds one God and one Lord, and unites the two, who are two, so that God is understood in the Lord and the Lord in God. In this way the properties of the divine and lordly essence are seen in identity, proceeding from the Father to the Son according to what is divine, and led back from the Son to God according to what is lordly (Ps 141:8).

He does not set as the goal the escape from the siege of enemies, but something still more beautiful: to offer thanks to God (Ps 142). For this is indeed the highest goal.

Others say the psalm is not without a title, but is inscribed: 'A Psalm of David, when his son pursued him.' This is not found, however, in all the versions. But what is said is not foreign to it; and nothing prevents these words from having been spoken about the persecution by Saul (Psalm 143:8; LXX 142:8ab).

Or, according to the whole theme of the life of the righteous, he does not yet receive the perfect mercy now, but awaits the future appearing from heaven that announces the morning, when the Master will shine upon the righteous, appearing from heaven (Psalm 143:8).

He asks that the name of goodness become for him the occasion of God's salvation, according to the apostle who says: 'To the praise of the glory of his grace' (Ephesians 1:6) (Psalm 143:11; LXX 142:11).