Chapter VI.
David is questioning whether he appears to have forgotten God, confessing both the merits of his own sins and his own weakness, which cannot survive without divine help. At the same time, he mourns that he has been rejected by God, whom he had previously embraced. How blessed it is to cast oneself from the womb to God, and how is that relevant to Christ?
Why have you forgotten me and why have you rejected me (Ps. 41:10)? God does not forget. It is impossible for Him to forget, as He is aware of all things that have been and will be: but our sins deserve to be forgotten by Him; so that He may forget those whom He deems unworthy of His visitation. For the Lord knows those who are His. However, when some commit iniquity, He says to them: I never knew you (Matthew 7:23). So who is there that can say to God: Why have you forgotten me? But yet this is common to the saints and to us the weak. The saint says it as if conscious of his own merits; and yet the holier he is, the more humble. And if the saint hardly says it, what should I, a sinner, say, unless I refer to this: Why have you forgotten your own work; why have you forgotten your own visitation? Lastly, why have you forgotten my weakness? For what is man, if not that he should be visited? So do not forget the weak. Remember, Lord, that you have made me weak; remember that you have formed me from dust. How can I stand unless you always strengthen this clay, so that my strength may come forth from your face? When you turn your face away, everything is thrown into turmoil; if you pay attention, woe is me; you have nothing in me to look at, except the stains of sin; it is neither useful to abandon me, nor is it beneficial to behold me; for while we are seen, we offend. However, we can estimate that he does not reject those whom he sees; for he cleanses those whom he beholds. The fire burns before him, which consumes the crime.
23. It is good for us, therefore, not to be rejected. And this is why David is asked, because he believed himself to be rejected, who had been received before. Finally, in the later [verses], it says: In you I have been confirmed from the womb (Psalm 70:6). But we also have the above written: I have been cast upon you from the womb; you are my God from my mother's womb (Psalm 21:11). It is good to be cast, but [cast] upon God. Finally, in the person of Christ, this is said in Psalm 21, who was truly cast into the Father from the womb of the Virgin; for the earthly ones did not receive him while dying. And when he was placed on the cross and was releasing his spirit, he said to the Father: Into your hands I commend my spirit. (Luke, 23:46).
24. Therefore let no one say, Lord, as the psalmists do, what I have not found either in my Latin codex, nor in the Greek, nor in the Gospel, which is more evident. Finally, He had said before, Father, forgive them this sin (Ibid., 34); and therefore, like a son committing his spirit into the hands of the Father, in whose bosom the Son always is. Although, even if they add that He said, Lord, let them consider that He speaks this as a man placed in death.
Therefore he was thrown from the womb into the Father, from the womb of his mother, that is, he declared that the womb that threw him out is the mother's. But the Father said: From the womb before the morning star I begot you (Psalm. 109:3). Certainly the Father did not throw out the Son, from whom the Son has never departed, as he himself says: I am handed over, and I do not leave (Psalm 87:9). He did not throw him out, to whom he is connected by the unity of the same substance. Therefore, it can also be read as follows: 'In you I have been cast from the womb; from my mother's womb you are my God' (Psalm 22:10), so that it may be followed by: 'Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help' (Psalm 22:11). It can also be read as follows: 'From my mother's womb you are my God; for I have been placed in the womb by you and have never departed from it. Like Jonah, who was placed in the belly of the whale, I was interceding for the people. And he truly was with God in his mother's womb, as it is written: 'Before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste' (Isaiah 7:16).' And before he called father or mother, he plundered the virtue of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria (Isaiah 8:4); so that, with the nations called forth, he might acquire a kingdom for the Father with the pious worship of devotion. Let us see the rest.