As it continues to be today, the Psalter was a spiritual classic in the early Church that along with the Gospels formed the principal scriptural component of Christian spirituality. Predictably, many of the Fathers devoted their attention to commenting on this rich resource. The Church of Antioch, too, enjoyed its conspicuous commentators on the Psalms; and while no complete commentary by Diodore of Tarsus, John Chrysostom or Theodore of Mopsuestia is now extant, we are fortunate to have from their successor in that school, Theodoret of Cyrus, a Commentary on the Psalms that not only treats all one hundred and fifty psalms but also, in Theodoret's habitual manner, acknowledges the work of his predecessors, including those of Alexandria as well.

Composed by the bishop of a busy see near Antioch in the decade before the council of Chalcedon of 451, this substantial exemplar of Antiochene exegesis comes from a period of tumultuous ecclesiastical and theological turmoil; and the text of the Commentary -- appearing in English for the first time in these two volumes -- reveals both the characteristically Antiochene approaches to the biblical Word and the theological accents of contemporary Antioch.

The Commentary on the Psalms by Theodoret of Cyrus, contained in these two volumes, is thus a classic patristic biblical commentary representing the approach to the Bible by the school of Antioch and revealing its positions on key Christian doctrines at a critical moment in their development. The translator has aspired to the ideal Theodore set himself in his Commentary on the Psalter, of letting the text speak for itself.