# The psalm joins the very virtues the paragraph separates

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH03.P002](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH03.P002/#char=1666,1710): "make righteousness and peace kiss each other"

The wording adapts Psalm 85:10 in the King James Version: ‘Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.’ The first half of the verse matters as much as the borrowed second half: the psalm already brings together the mercy and truth that Chesterton's humanitarian and scientist have pulled apart. [KJV, Psalm 85:7–13, Gutenberg #10](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10).

The corresponding verse is Psalm 84:11 in the inspected Douay-Rheims text (Gutenberg #8300), which uses *justice* for *righteousness*. The difference in wording and numbering should not be treated as a different biblical passage. [Douay-Rheims, Psalm 84:8–14](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8300). Chesterton changes the accomplished meeting into something a historical religious system could effect only ‘to some extent’, then reduces the kiss to the modern failure even to bow. That comic social gesture recasts a scriptural image of reconciliation as an argument about the coordination of virtues. The psalm supplies the image, not historical evidence for his assessment of Torquemada's society.

## Sources

- [The King James Version of the Bible, Project Gutenberg #10](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10), Psalm 85:7–13, especially 85:10
- [The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete, Project Gutenberg #8300](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8300), Psalm 84:8–14, especially 84:11; title matter identifies Douay Old Testament first publication in 1609 and 1610

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