Psalm 7:14
shot through the heart
And in it he hath prepared the instruments of death, he hath made ready his arrows for them that burn. (Psalm 7:14 DR)
The Psalmist continues his thought about the recompense that the Lord will visit upon the ungodly in vindication of the righteous. In the previous passage he made reference to the bow that God had bent and made ready, which implies that although God is patient and allows the wicked to repent of their ways, if they do not then the wrath that is promised against wickedness is the only expectation, like an archer who has pulled back the string and now must expend effort to keep the arrow from flying.
This already bent bow is now further examined, it being the instrument of the instruments of death. The Vulgate uses the word vas which is rendered in English as either vessel or instrument, the idea being that not only is this the means of the action but that the action is the specific purpose of the instrument. Thus the Psalmist says:
Nam et ego confitebor tibi in vasis psalmi veritatem tuam, Deus; psallam tibi in cithara, sanctus Israel.
For I will also confess to thee thy truth with the instruments of psaltery: O God, I will sing to thee with the harp, thou holy one of Israel. (Psalm 70:22 DR)
In this case the instrument is a literal musical instrument which has the specific purpose of making music. Similarly the instruments of death are the fiery arrows of the second clause. St. Jerome understood this literally as thunderbolts, whereas St. Augustine takes a more mystical approach.
The bow, he argues, refers to the Scriptures themselves, the New Testament being like the string which bends and subdues the Old Testament, in that latter’s meaning is revealed and understood through that of the former. This, after all, is the precise program he adopts in interpreting the Psalms, for he sees them as speaking of Christ or of His body, and thus the Psalms should be interpreted primarily through this hermeneutic.
If the bow is the Scriptures as he has said, then the arrows that burn are the apostles:
From thence the Apostles are sent forth like arrows, or divine preachings are shot. Which arrows He has wrought for the burning, arrows, that is, whereby being stricken they might be inflamed with heavenly love. For by what other arrows was she stricken, who says, Bring me into the house of wine, place me among perfumes, crowd me among honey, for I have been wounded with love? (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 7, 14.)
There is for St. Augustine a question of the rendering of the passage, for in some Greek copies the sense is that the arrows make things burn, whereas in the Latin copies of his day the sense was that the arrows themselves burned. Ultimately he concludes that it amounts to the same sense:
But whether the arrows themselves burn, or make others burn, which of course they cannot do unless they burn themselves, the sense is complete. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 7, 15.)
Of course, his interpretation raises a question: if these arrows are the apostles, how can they be called instruments of death? For are not the apostles meant to preach the good news of salvation and bring the light of Christ to the world?
He firstly considers that this reference could be to heretics, who come out of the same bow (as it were, cf. 1 John 2;19) yet inflame their hearers with poison rather than the fire of divine love. Nevertheless, since heresies demonstrate the truth in a round about manner (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:19), they could be seen to come from the same bow and still be used by God for the ultimate edification of His Church.
And while St. Augustine doesn’t discount this interpretation, he offers (to my mind) a more plausible and cohesive meaning in that the apostles themselves are the instruments of death in that God uses them for the salvation of those who believe and the condemnation of those who do not:
Or has He haply ordained the same arrows to be at once instruments of death for the destruction of unbelievers, and wrought them burning, or for the burning, for the exercising of the faithful? For that is not false that the Apostle says, “To the one we are the savour of life unto life, to the other the savour of death unto death; and who is sufficient for these things?” [2 Corinthians 2:16] It is no wonder then if the same Apostles be both instruments of death in those from whom they suffered persecution, and fiery arrows to inflame the hearts of believers. (ibid.)
St. Augustine’s method is yet again demonstrated in his interpretation here. And while it may seem arbitrary and far-fetched to a modern understanding steeped in an (ironically) uncritical acceptance of the historical-critical method, one can see here that it is patently not arbitrary. He is not fishing for New Testament passages to prop up his interpretation; rather, it is because his understanding of the Scriptures is so permeated by the New Testament revealing the Old Testament that such natural connections and commensurate interpretations are immediately made.
That the apostles themselves (and their message of the Gospel by extension) are the fiery arrows that bring both life and death in also not foisted upon this passage by a singular quote from St. Paul, but is also found in the very words of our Lord:
For God sent not his Son into the world, to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him. He that believeth in him is not judged. But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:17-18 DR)
And into what city soever you enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you. And heal the sick that are therein, and say to them: The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. But into whatsoever city you enter, and they receive you not, going forth into the streets thereof, say: Even the very dust of your city that cleaveth to us, we wipe off against you. Yet know this, that the kingdom of God is at hand. I say to you, it shall be more tolerable at that day for Sodom, than for that city. (Luke 10:8-12 DR)
Wherefore it is said in the scripture: Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious. And he that shall believe in him, shall not be confounded. To you therefore that believe, he is honour: but to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set. (1 Peter 2:6-8)
In just these passages (more could be multiplied) we can clearly see that the same thing (whether our Lord Himself or His Word through His apostles) is the case of both salvation and of damnation. St. Augustine chooses to quote from St. Paul to the same effect as it is more explicit and uses the same terminology, but the underlying idea is the same throughout and permeates his understanding of this passage.
And this of course naturally flows from the Psalm itself, for in the previous passage the mercy and benignity of the Lord is juxtaposed to His wrath against sin, but it is the same Lord; what is different is the response of man to His mercy and kindness.
The same is thus true of the Gospel through His apostles in this passage. For those who accept that Word and believe these fiery arrows are an instrument of death for sin, as there hearts are enflamed with love for God and purified from unrighteousness. But for those who do not believe the fiery arrows pierce the soul, and that rejection enflames the heart towards sin, itself a form of punishment and condemnation (cf. Romans 1:27).
The Psalmist thus urges us to allow our hearts to be pierced with the the fiery arrows of the Gospel that they may be enflamed with love for God.
I guess I wanted to di something with fiery arrows for this one to be kind of literal, but I also didn’t want to have deal with a bunch of layers of images of arrows. Instead I created a new Solid and applied Trapcode Particular. I created a simple Emitter with some heavy Wind on the X axis and then created a new Emitter which has the original Emitter as a source. I cranked up the amount of particles generated by the second Emitter and modified the parameters and life span so that they formed the arrow-like streaks.
I then did the normal hold keyframe on the particles per second at the beginning to stop the emitter immediately after emitting and then duplicated it and offset to get the loop.
I finally added quite a few different glows to make it even more fiery and added in a background texture with Stretch applied to create movement in the opposite direction.
Enjoy.
And in it he hath prepared the instruments of death, he hath made ready his arrows for them that burn.
(Psalm 7:14 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: