Psalm 18 (17):10Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

He brought low the Just One so that He could descend to the frailties of humanity. Darkness rests beneath Him. However, those who indulge in worldly pleasures, enveloped in their own wickedness, have failed to recognize Him; for the ground beneath Him serves as a mere footstool for His feet.

And You will lower the heavens and descend. This is the most explicit prophecy regarding the Lord's arrival. It closely mirrors the notion that He willingly humbled Himself to the point of death. And darkness was beneath His feet. This conveys to us the concealed nature of His initial coming and the unseen quality of God, so that His message does not lead us into a purely earthly understanding.

God took on human form because we are frail and insignificant, unable to raise ourselves up. Hence, the Lord listens and honors us with His focus. Moreover, since we are human beings incapable of attaining divinity, God chose to become one of us, and as it is written, He bowed the heavens and came down.

Once again, the portrayal of God's arrival instills a significant sense of awe among the listeners. However, we cannot fully grasp the descent or ascent of the Divine essence, as the Godhead is beyond description, present in all places, and sustains all creation. Through this, we become aware of the varied manifestations of creation, as God can appear to humanity, at times extending grace, at others displaying grandeur; and at moments intended to evoke fear, He unveils something wondrous and remarkable. Thus, the phrase "He bowed down the heavens, and came down" should be interpreted as His own revelation of presence. The darkness below signifies the hidden nature of this coming, while the elevation of the Cherubim and the swiftness of the winds illustrate the urgency of His arrival.

He lowered the heavens and came down. To reveal the mystery of God's incarnation, the prophet conveyed that the Lord brought the heavens to the earth and descended silently without a sound. For He secretly inhabited the virgin's womb, hidden from all powers. The prophet illustrates this divine mystery of God's incarnation in a vividly sensory way, which becomes particularly evident in his subsequent account. And darkness was beneath His feet. This darkness signifies obscurity, symbolizing the very coming of God or His descent to the earth; both the reason for His incarnation and the nature of it remained beyond human comprehension. Alternatively, as Scripture often refers to the people of the earth simply as earth, so too are the heavenly beings, or angels, at times called heaven.

According to the prophet David, "He bowed down the heavens and came down," and beneath His feet was darkness (Psalm 17:10). What sort of darkness is this? It refers to the body of the Lord. He descended and took on flesh as if it were a veil of darkness.

David likens the clouds and mists that envelop the heavens to the dense smoke exhaled by a furious individual, illustrating the magnitude of God’s fury as He shrouds the sky with a mere breath, obscuring the brilliance of the sun and stars and enveloping us in shadows. The subsequent phrase, “fire shall be kindled from His face,” conveys that God can effortlessly ignite flames in an instant when the smoke issues forth from His nostrils and His mouth opens, igniting a blaze that could cloak the entire earth in its smoke, ultimately reducing all to ashes. He includes the phrase “The coals are kindled by Him” to differentiate the flames that will flicker out swiftly.

Lower the heavens – the profound mystery of Christ's arrival on earth, when He entered the womb of the Most Pure Virgin to take on human form. The darkness surrounding this mystery of the incarnation is not fully grasped. Christ trampled both the darkness and the demonic forces. The Virgin is honored as a participant in the glory of her Son, with virginity and nativity united, for from the Virgin shone forth the Light and the dawn of divine knowledge. The Mother of God and the Mother of Light are revered as the most esteemed Cherubim and the most glorious Seraphim, reigning as the Queen of both heaven and earth.