They also that render evil for good are my adversaries; because I follow the thing that is good.
Read Chapter 38
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
25. "They also that render evil for good, were speaking evil of me, because I have pursued the thing that is just" (ver. 20). Therefore was it that I was requited evil for good. What is meant by "pursued after the thing that is just"? Not forsaken it. That you might not always understand persecutio in a bad sense, He means by persecutus pursued after, thoroughly followed. "Because I have followed the thing that is just." Hear also our Head crying with a lamentable voice in His Passion: "And they cast Me forth, Thy Darling, even as a dead man in abomination." Was it not enough that He was "dead"? wherefore "in abomination" also? Because He was crucified. For this death of the Cross was a great abomination in their eyes, as they did not perceive that it was spoken in prophecy, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." For He did not Himself bring death; but He found it here, propagated from the curse of the first man; and this same death of ours, which had originated in sin, Hehad ta...
Detracted me, by insinuating that my repentance is hypocrisy. Another mode of detracting is by making known secret faults, (Worthington) as calumny imputes false ones. (Haydock)
Goodness. Septuagint, "justice. "Many Greek and Latin copies add: "They have rejected me, the beloved, (Theodoret; Arabic) as one dead, as an abomination. "
Forsake, ver. 22. (St. Ambrose) (Calmet)
