I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them my enemies.
Read Chapter 139
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
18. And then He telleth what meanwhile, during this whole time when He already has risen, and remaineth still with the Father, He suffereth by the intermixture of sinners in His Body, the Church, and by the separation of heretics. "If Thou, O God, shalt slay the sinners (since Thou shall say in Thy thought, Depart from Me, ye men of blood), they shall receive in vanity their cities" (ver. 19, 20). The words seem to be connected in this order; "If Thou, O God, shall slay the sinners, they shall receive in vanity their cities." Thus are sinners slain, because, "having their understandings darkened, they are alienated from the life of God." For on account of elation they lose confession, and so they are slain, and in them is fulfilled what Scripture saith, "Confession perisheth from the dead, as from one that is not." And so "they receive in vanity their cities," that is, their vain peoples, who follow their vanity; when, puffed up by the name of righteousness, they persuade men to burst ...
Hatred. Christ commands, "Love your enemies "not those who hate God. (St. Augustine)
We must love in them what God loves, and detest what he condemns. (Theodoret)
The Jews abused this passage, thinking they might hate those who were not of their nation. (Calmet)
The example of the prophet might have rectified them. (Berthier)
Fervent zeal against God's enemies is commendable.
