He is anointed with the oil of
exultation more than his fellows, as if thereby in the anointing he
receives the reward of his love and his hatred. Now we are taught that we have
seeds of love and hate in us that can work in both directions, since he himself
who raised to heaven the first fruits of the mass of our bodies, both loved
justice and hated wickedness. Hence, David said: “Do I not hate those who hate
you, O Lord? And am I not consumed against your enemies? With perfect hatred I
hate them.” As for what follows: O God, your God has anointed you, you
have to understand that the first naming of God is in the vocative case, the
second in the nominative. Hence, I am quite surprised that Aquila did not
translate it in the vocative case, as he had begun in the first verse, but in
the nominative. Twice he names as God the one who anointed the one called God,
above. This passage sinks Photinus, but Arius raises his hand and produces the
testimony of the Gospel: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and my
God and your God.” but when he hears that he is called beloved, and that he
girds a sword on his thigh, and reigns by reason of the truth and gentleness,
and is anointed for having loved justice and abhorred iniquity,
and was anointed more than his companions, of whom it is written: “We
have become partners of Christ, provided that we hold firm until the end of the
beginning of our strength.” I am astonished that he misrepresents this by only
calling upon the God of God, as if all that is said suits the divinity of the
Word, not the humility of the man. Let him hear the Acts of the Apostles:
“Jesus of Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit.” Let him hear the
Gospel: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High
will overshadow you; that is why what will be born in you is holy and will be
called the Son of God.” Let him understand the Lord himself, who thunders: “The
Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, therefore he has anointed me.” Now partners
signifies the apostles and believers. He attributes to them the term that
refers to his anointing. Thusly they are called “anointed ones” by the
anointing one, that is, Christians. (Jerome, “Epistle 65 to the Virgin
Principia,” A.D. 397, in St. Jerome: Exegetical Epistles, 2 vols.
[trans. Thomas P. Scheck; The Fathers of the Church 147; Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2023], 1:285-87)
