I will sing a new song unto you, O God: upon a psaltery and an instrument of ten strings will I sing praises unto you.
All Commentaries on Psalms 144:9 Go To Psalms 144
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
7. But there are some that conspire, that "gather themselves together against the Lord, and against His Christ." They have come together, they have conspired. "Flash forth Thy lightnings, and Thou shall scatter them." Abound with Thy miracles, and their conspiracy shall be broken. ..."Send forth Thine arrows, and Thou shall confound them." Let the unsound be wounded, that, being well wounded, they may be made sound; and let them say, being set now in the Church, in the Body of Christ, let them say with the Church, "I am wounded with Love." "Send forth Thine Hand from on high." What afterward? What in the end? How conquereth the Body of Christ? By heavenly aid. "For the Lord Himself shall come with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God shall He descend from heaven," Himself the Saviour of the body, the Hand of God. What is, "Out of many waters"? From many peoples. What peoples? Aliens, unbelievers, whether assailing us from without, or laying snares within. Take me out of many waters, in which Thou didst discipline me, in which Thou didst roll me, to free me from my filth. This is the "water of contradiction." ..."From the hand of strange children." Hear, brethren, among whom we are, among whom we live, from whom we long to be delivered. "Whose mouth hath spoken vanity" (ver. 8). All of you to-day, if ye had not gathered yourselves together to these divine shows of the word of God, and were not at this hour engaged in them, how great vanities would ye be hearing! "whose mouth hath spoken vanity:" when, in short, would they, speaking vanity, hear you speaking vanity? "And their right hand is a right hand of iniquity." What doest thou among them with thy pastoral scrip with five stones in it? Say it to me in another form: that same law which thou hast signified by five stones, signify in some other way also. "I will sing a new song unto Thee, O God" (ver. 9). "A new song" is of grace; "a new song" is of the new man; "a new song" is of the New Testament. But lest thou shouldest think that grace departeth from the law, whereas rather by grace the law is fulfilled, "upon a psaltery of ten strings will I sing unto Thee." Upon the law of ten commandments: therein may I sing to Thee; therein may I rejoice to Thee; therein may "I sing to Thee a new song;" for, "Love is the fulfilling of the law." But they who have not love may carry the psaltery, sing they cannot. Contradiction cannot make my psaltery to be silent.
