If you sleep among the midst of lots, you shall be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and the hinder parts of her back with the paleness of gold. (Psalm 67:14 DR)
This passage is one of the most obscure of the passages in the Psalms, as St. Bellarmine admits; St. Augustine spends four paragraphs plumbing its mysteries.
It must be remembered that the Psalmist is still prophetically speaking of the Church, the inheritance upon which the Lord will pour a free rain, which the gift of the Holy Spirit. This inheritance is carried forward into this passage and poetically reframed as lots. But a question is raised—if the Church is the inheritance, then why render in the plural rather than in the singular?
The parallelism leads from the plural of lots to be expanded to the plural of wings. Thus, while two different word pictures are employed, there is a deep relation between the two, and the former can be seen in the understanding of the latter. The wings of the dove being covered in silver describes a purity, a cleansing of sin. St. Augustine sees an allusion to another passage:
The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried by the fire, purged from the earth refined seven times. (Psalm 11:7 DR)
He concludes that:
[S]ilvered She is because with divine sayings she has been instructed. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 67, 14.)
We can then move backwards from this word picture to understand the opening description of the lots. For if the wings of the dove are silvered because of being instructed by the word of the Lord, then this would apply to God’s words in both Testaments, Old and New, which would correspond to the plurality of lots as given. And since the Church in this Psalm is to prophetically receive the promised inheritance, then this inheritance or lot comprises the entirety of God’s revelation to mankind. To sleep in the midst of these two lots is thus to have peace between them (since Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant) and to acquiesce to them both:
Some great good thing therefore it is, to sleep in the midst of the lots, which some would have to be the Two Testaments, so that to sleep in the midst of the lots is to rest on the authority of those Testaments, that is, to acquiesce in the testimony of either Testament: so that whenever anything out of them is produced and proved, all strife is ended in peaceful acquiescence. (ibid.)
We finally turn to the final description of this dove, which is to have the hinder parts covered with the paleness of gold. Hinder parts can be physically ambiguous term, generally referring generically to the back of a person. St. Augustine’s Latin translation rendered it as between the shoulders, which causes him to speculate if there is any connection to Psalm 90:4
He will overshadow thee with his shoulders: and under his wings thou shalt trust. (Psalm 90:4 DR)
He ultimately finds the two images to be speaking of different things, as he understands the paleness of gold—his translation has greenness of gold—to be a reference to the “vigor of wisdom,” which vigor he sees as a reference to love or charity. But since love is naturally associated with the heart, the physical description of the shoulders seems to him to lead away from this, for why speak of the gold on the back and not on the breast where the heart is located?
After considering various options, he concludes that this is an appropriate metaphor since the shoulders (as the Septuagint renders it) are, as it were, the root of the wings. It will be remembered that the wings are said to be silvered because of receiving instruction of divine things, but the basis for receiving this instruction is charity, which the root of keeping the commandments. And as the wings come from this root, they are the two greatest commandments, which contain the totality of the divine instruction they are silvered with:
Is there for this reason there the greenness of gold, that is, wisdom and love, because in that place there are in a manner the roots of the wings? Or because in that place is carried that light burden? For what are even the wings themselves, but the two commandments of love, whereon hangs the whole Law and the Prophets? [Matthew 22:40] what is that same light burden, but that same love which in these two commandments is fulfilled? For whatever thing is difficult in a commandment, is a light thing to a lover. Nor on any other account is rightly understood the saying, “My burden is light,” [Matthew 11:30] but because He gives the Holy Spirit, whereby love is shed abroad in our hearts, [Romans 5:5] in order that in love we may do freely that which he that does in fear does slavishly; nor is he a lover of what is right, when he would prefer, if so be it were possible, that what is right should not be commanded. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 67, 15.)
The image of the dove nicely dovetails with the totality of the previous few verses, for the the free rain which God provides for His inheritance is the Holy Ghost which pours God’s charity into the heart and enables one to keep the commandments. The whole of both Testaments is thus recapitulated and prophetically set forth in this obscure yet powerful image.
For this animation I found this stunning stained glass window of a dove. I cut out the dove in Photoshop and split the wings from the body. I also used Generative Fill to fill in the background of the stained glass window, and it performed admirably.
In After Effects I placed the pieces of the dove into a precomp and added the Puppet tool to the wings. I animated the pins to give the wings some bend and looped that animation, then placed the wings into separate precomps and animated the rotation of the precomp.
I parented the wings to the dove body and added some slight looping position animation and finished up by adding Trapcode Shine to an adjustment layer. I left the Source Point static so that the movement of the dove and wings would animate the light rays. I finally added some color correction and glow to finalize this.
Enjoy.
If you sleep among the midst of lots, you shall be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and the hinder parts of her back with the paleness of gold.
(Psalm 67:14 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: