Belching in the Psalms

“What a belch is to the rumbling stomach, that’s what praise is to the satisfied heart.” -Augustine¹

Leave it to patristic and medieval commentators to go to town when the Vulgate uses a word like belch [eructo]. Such an unexpected and indelicate word in inspired Scripture surely contains divine depths. And although modern exegetes will demur that the word is not really there in the Hebrew and that Jerome gave us a rather free rendering, the fact remains that this was the word of God for the entire Western church for a millennium and so the pre-critical and pro-spiritual exegetes bolstered by the four senses of Scripture dug at this well to find living water and new wine and then belched with delight.

Here are two extended examples:

Augustine

What happy banquets this evokes! What are they going to eat, if they are to belch like that? The memory of the abundance of your sweetness. What does that mean?… It means that You did not forget us, even though we forgot You… Because He did not forget us, His abiding mindfulness of us is a matter for proclamation, a truth to be told and told again. And because it is very delicious, it is to be eaten and then belched forth. So eat, that you may belch; so receive, that you may give. When you learn, you are eating it; when you teach, you are belching it forth; when you listen, you are eating; and when you preach, you are belching it forth. But make sure that what you belch forth is what you have eaten… Brothers and sisters, if you want to belch forth grace, drink grace. ²

Bernard of Clairvaux

The affectus have their own language, in which they disclose themselves even against their will. Fear has its trembling, grief its anguished groans, love its cries of delight. Are the lamentations of mourners, the sobs of those who grieve, the sighs of those in pain, the sudden frenzied screams of those in fear, the yawns of the replete—are these the result of habit? Do they constitute a reasoned discourse, a deliberate utterance, a premeditated speech? Most certainly such expressions of feeling are not produced by the processes of the mind, but by spontaneous impulses. So a strong and burning love, particularly the love of God, does not stop to consider the order, the grammar, the flow, or the number of the words it employs, when it cannot contain itself, providing it senses that it suffers no loss thereby. Sometimes it needs no words, no expression at all, being content with aspirations alone. Thus it is that the Bride, aflame with holy love, doubtless seeking to quench a little the fire of the love she endures, gives no thought to her words or the manner of her speech, but impelled by love she does not speak clearly, but bursts out with whatever comes into her mouth… When she has satisfied her desires with good things, why should it be strange if she utters a cry rather than words; or, if she seems to form words, that they should be inarticulate, not polished or well-chosen. The Bride thinks it no robbery to take to herself the words of the prophet: My heart has belched a goodly theme (Ps 45:1), since she is filled with the same spirit.

My beloved is mine, and I am his (Sg 2:6). There is no conclusion here, no prayer. What is there? It is a belch. Why should you look to find connected prayers or solemn declarations in a belch? What rules or regulations do you impose upon yours? They do not admit of your control, or wait for you to compose them, nor do they consult your leisure or convenience. They burst forth from within, without your will or knowledge, torn from you rather than uttered. But a belch gives out an odor, sometimes good, sometimes bad, according to the quality of the vessel they come from. Now a good man out of his good treasure brings forth good things, and an evil man evil things! The Bride of my Lord is a vessel of good things, and the odor which comes from her is sweet.³

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1. Augustine, Sermon 255. ↩︎
2. Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 144.9. ↩︎
3. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 67:3-4. ↩︎