Psalms 99:1

"The Lord is King, be the people angry" [Psalm 99:1]. For our Lord Jesus Christ began to reign, began to be preached, after He arose from the dead and ascended into heaven, after He had filled His disciples with the confidence of the Holy Spirit, that they should not fear death, which He had already killed in Himself. Our Lord Christ began then to be preached, that they who wished for salvation might believe in Him; and the peoples who worshipped idols were angry. They who worshipped what they had made were angry, because He by whom they were made was declared. He announced, in fact, through His disciples, Himself, who wished them to be converted unto Him by whom they were made, and to be turned away from those things which they had made themselves. They were angry with their Lord in behalf of their idols, they who even if they were angry with their slave on their idol's account, were to be condemned. For their slave was better than their idol: for God made their slave, the carpenter made their idol. They were so angry in their idol's behalf, that they feared not to be angry with their Lord. But the words, "be they angry," are a prediction, not a command; for in a prophecy it is that this is said, "The Lord is King, be the people angry." Some good results even from the enraged people: let them be angry, and in their anger let the Martyrs be crowned....You heard when Jeremiah was being read before the reading of the Apostle, if you listened; ye saw therein the times in which we now live. He said, "The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, let them perish from the earth, and from under the heaven." [Jeremiah 10:11] He said not, The gods that have not made the heavens and earth, let them perish from the heaven and from the earth; because they never were in heaven: but what did he say? "Let them perish from the earth, and from under the heaven." As if, while the word earth was repeated, the repetition of the word heaven were wanting (because they never were in heaven): he repeats the earth twice, since it is under heaven. "Let them perish from the earth, and from under the heaven," from their temples. Consider if this be not now taking place; if in a great measure it has not already happened: for what, or how much, has remained? The idols remained rather in the hearts of the pagans, than in the niches of the temples.

The Lord has reigned, let the peoples be angry. Three psalms have the same beginning: the ninety-second, the ninety-sixth, and the ninety-eighth. But although they have the same beginning in the opening verse, at the end they are different. For how does it read in the ninety-second? 'The Lord has reigned, he has clothed himself in beauty.' But in the ninety-sixth: 'The Lord has reigned, let the earth rejoice'; and in the ninety-eighth: 'The Lord has reigned, let the peoples be angry.' The sequence seems as it were to be contrary to itself. For it ought first to have said 'The Lord has reigned, let the peoples be angry,' and afterwards to say 'The Lord has reigned, let the earth rejoice,' and last of all 'The Lord has reigned, he has clothed himself in beauty.' But the different order gives us some hint toward understanding. 'The Lord has reigned, he has clothed himself in beauty.' The Lord has reigned, and he has clothed himself with the patriarchs and the prophets and the believing people. He has clothed himself in beauty: the patriarchs and the prophets were as it were the garment of Christ. That is the loincloth which is written of in Jeremiah: that is the loincloth which Jeremiah had about his loins. Do you wish to know that the saints are, as it were, a loincloth, the garment of God? Afterwards God himself speaks to Jeremiah: 'Just as you,' he says, 'placed that loincloth about your loins, so I too have joined my people to myself.' As, then, a garment is about a man, so the people is about God. But because this loincloth, because this beauty with which the Lord had been clothed, was exposed across the Euphrates in a cleft of the rock, and there rotted away, and was led off into captivity by the Assyrians—what does the Lord do? He is not naked, he cannot be without a loincloth, he cannot be without a garment: the former people having been lost, he makes himself a garment out of the people of the Gentiles. And what is said? The Lord has reigned, let the earth rejoice. Let the earth rejoice, the whole earth, that is, the entire people of believers. Then, do you wish to know that the second loincloth is spoken of concerning the people of the Gentiles? The Lord, he says, has reigned, let the earth rejoice: let the many islands be glad. Not one island, Judaea, but many islands, that is, the whole world. Let someone say to me: Give me an example from the…