Interpretatio in Ezechielem

Thus this people is fit for nothing else but destruction and punishment. The fire, he says, consumes its yearly cleansing, and it fails completely. Will it be made fit for work? (5) Not even while it is still whole will it be fit for work. How much less, if fire consumes it completely, will it still be fit for work? For if, before being handed over to the fire, it is fit for no work at all, it will scarcely be useful after it has become fuel for the fire. Having spoken the parable in this way, he adds the interpretation. (6, 7) Therefore say, Thus says Adonai the Lord: Just as the wood of the vine among the woods of the forest, which I have given to the fire for consumption, so I have given the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And I will set my face against them. He has said this by way of metaphor for those who show a wrathful and grim face. "They shall come out from the fire," he says, "and fire shall devour them." For having escaped famine, they shall be handed over to slaughter and captivity. And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I set my face against them. (8) And I will give the land over to desolation, because they fell into transgression, says Adonai the Lord. For I will hand them over to captivity and slaughter, and I will make the land cultivated by them desolate, since there will be no cultivators. And they shall suffer these things, paying the penalty for the offenses they committed.

Since, therefore, whatever was written beforehand was written beforehand for our benefit, so that through the endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope, let us not become wood, and grass, and stubble, which are the food of fire, but gold and precious stones, the material of the royal diadem, so that we may reign together with Christ, with whom glory is fitting to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, unto the ages of ages. Amen. TOME 5. CHAPTER 19. 1, 2. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, testify to Jerusalem of her sins. The reproof of sins is good, and is done for benefit. For it implants perception in those sick with insensibility, and brings to memory their own transgressions. For to be sick is distressing and very grievous, but far more grievous is it to be ignorant even of the disease itself; for this reason, often even the sons of physicians, to those so disposed, who are unwilling to receive perception of their sufferings, declare the severity of the disease, so that, perceiving it, they may cease nourishing the materials of the disease by disorder, and may follow the laws of the medical art. This also the God of all continually does in the case of the lawless and those who remain insensible; for to the sinner he says through David: "I will reprove you, and I will set your sins before your face;" and to Jerusalem through Jeremiah: "Know, that you have acted impiously against the Lord your God;" and again: "Behold the ways

in the burial place, and know what you have done"; and countless other such things can be found. This, then, he also urges the prophet Ezekiel to do here: "Testify," he says, "to Jerusalem of her lawless deeds." Show, he says, her wounds; point out her sores, so that she may not regard the punishment as severity, but, having learned that the cutting is medical, may acknowledge gratitude to the physician. Then he himself recounts her transgressions in detail. 3. And you shall say: Thus says Adonai the Lord to Jerusalem. Everywhere the doubling teaches the truth of the lordship. "Your root and your origin are from the land of Canaan; your father is an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite." The Jews thought highly of themselves on account of their kinship with Abraham; therefore they also said to the Lord in the holy Gospels: "We are the seed of Abraham, and we have never been slaves to anyone." This arrogance the blessed John the Baptist also demolishes, saying: "Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore produce fruits worthy of repentance, and do not presume to say among yourselves: We have Abraham as our father; for truly I say to you: God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones." Just as, therefore, this inspired man likened them, beast-like and living with wickedness, to venomous beasts, so here too the Master God through the prophet calls their root Canaanite, their father an Amorite, and their mother a Hittite, and, in a word, their origin foreign;

For they zealously pursued impiety, and reasonably they received kinship with them, being allotted to this race by reason of their manner. And it was quite sufficient to strike them, not only because of the lawlessness of these very nations at that time, but also because of their low birth from of old. For Canaan was subjected to curses, and was condemned to slavery by his forefather Noah. Of this man, he says, you are a descendant, and you have no kinship with Abraham and Shem; for those whose piety you denied, you have destroyed even that kinship itself, and you have been wholly stripped of that nobility. Having thus struck them with the low birth of Canaan, he recounts in turn both their own lawlessness and his own beneficence. 4. Your navel, he says, was not cut. That is, You still draw Egyptian nourishment. And he calls her "birth" the exodus from Egypt. Now the sons of physicians say that the embryo in the womb has the navel as a kind of root, and through it is nourished and grows; since, then, midwives are accustomed to cut the part of the navel that protrudes from the infant, he says figuratively, by way of metaphor: "Your navel was not cut around"; instead of, You still today draw from the maternal womb, that is, from Egypt, the nourishment of impiety. "And you were not washed in water for salvation." And this perhaps is by way of metaphor from infants, who are washed after birth, and cleansed, and freed from the maternal blood. You, then, he says, were not freed from these things, but still today you bear the marks of the maternal womb.

You were not rubbed with salt, and you were not wrapped in swaddling clothes." You did not receive, he says, the salt of teaching, nor the swaddling clothes brought to you through the law, which are offered to infants so that, if any of the limbs is distorted in the pangs of birth, it may be straightened and receive its proper form. 5. Nor did my eye spare you to do for you one of all these things, to suffer anything for you; and you were cast out onto the face of the field by the crookedness of your soul, in the day you were born. For immediately, he says, and at once, having been born and having been delivered from Egypt, and having been taught equality by my law, you were perverted, always loving crooked and twisted things. For here he called equality a "field." But I, he says, in Egypt brought no law upon you, nor the salt of the commandments, nor the circumcision of the navel, nor the articulation of the limbs through swaddling clothes; but after your departure from there, I deemed you worthy of every kind of care. Therefore he adds: 6, 7. And

I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, and I said to you, "Live in your blood," and I said to you, "With your blood, life; multiply without guilt, as I have given you the rising of the field." For when I beheld you stained with the blood of idolatry and embracing the blood of sacrifices, I permitted you to sacrifice—not to idols, but to me. For this is what he indicated by saying, "With your blood, life; multiply without guilt"—that is, not lawlessly, but lawfully; sacrificing not to demons, but to God. For doing this, you will sprout like a flourishing field and be adorned with fruits of every kind. "And you multiplied and grew great, and you entered into cities of cities." The work, he says, followed my blessing; for I said, "As I have given you the rising of the field," and you, having received the blessing, acquired both multitude and greatness, and you appeared distinguished and renowned, and you held the greatest of cities in subjection. Having thus briefly shown her origin and her progress, he again explains the growth in detail. "Your breasts, he says, were raised up, and your hair grew." He says all these things figuratively, by way of metaphor from children, displaying through these the greater disposition. He calls the breasts the discernment of the rational soul (for the breasts cover the heart), and the hair the adornment that comes from maturity. "But you were, he says, naked and shameful." For you had not yet received the covering of the law. And I passed through you and saw you; and behold, your time, and the time of those who destroy—

And I spread my wings over you, and covered your shame, and I swore to you, and I entered into a covenant with you, says Adonai the Lord. For when I saw you were now fit to receive the fellowship with me that comes through the law, I stretched out, as it were, certain wings—the teaching of the saving commandments—and I covered the nakedness of your lawlessness; and to the marriage there followed also a written contract as a dowry. "For I entered," he says, "into a covenant with you." And since it was necessary that an oath also be added to the contract, I did not decline to do this either; but being trustworthy and promising by my word alone, I also added an oath to my word. And it is easy for one who wishes to learn this by reading the writings of the law; for he will find even in the song of the blessed Moses that the God of all himself says: "I will lift up my hand to heaven, and I will swear by my right hand, and I will say: As I live forever." "And you became mine," he says. That is, you were joined to me, and the marriage was consummated. 9, 10. And I washed you in water, and I washed away your blood, and I anointed you with oil. And I clothed you with embroidered garments, and I put a hyacinth-blue tunic on you, and I girded you with fine linen, and I wrapped you in a hair-covering. He went through his own benefits one by one; for first, he says, I washed you with the water of teaching, and I brought purifications and sprinklings. Then "I anointed you with oil." Here he now sets out the forms of the priesthood. For the priests were anointed with the holy oil; and they themselves also put on the linen and hyacinth-blue garments.

He also hints at the wealth that came to that people themselves, both bodily and spiritual, through his own care. "And I clothed you with a trichapton." This is a braided ornament made from hair, placed on women's heads. Figuratively, then, he indicated the comeliness bestowed on them through all kinds of care. He hints, I think, also at the tabernacle made from hair-skins, in which both the sacrifices for sin and those for consecration were offered, and divine revelations came from the mercy seat, when God conversed with the high priest. 11, 12. And I adorned you with ornament, and I put bracelets around your hands, and a necklace on your neck. And I gave a nose-ring for your nostril, and earrings on your ears, and a crown of boasting on your head. Each of these ought to be understood figuratively. "Bracelets placed on the hands" mean the practical virtue; the necklace placed on the neck means the yoke of the law; the nose-ring inserted in the nostril means the overthrow of wickedness through the commandments, applied like a bridle by a metaphor from bulls, which receive the iron bridle in their nostrils and are led hither and thither by it. That he also likened their boldness to oxen, the prophet Hosea bears witness, speaking in the person of God: "Like a heifer in heat, Ephraim has gone into heat." The earrings brought to the ears he says mean good teaching, which through obedience brings adornment to the hearing.

And a crown placed on the head means the good repute that comes from piety, from lawfulness, and from all good things together. 13. And you were adorned with gold and silver, and your garments were of fine linen, and haircloth, and embroidered work. Each of these can be understood in this way; and it is fitting to add to what has been said that he hints not only at spiritual things through these words, but also signifies bodily prosperity. For immediately after coming out of Egypt they used silver and gold vessels from the Egyptians, and they despoiled the Egyptians, demanding a just wage for their forced labor. And indeed they also plundered all the wealth of the nations inhabiting Palestine. Therefore he signifies, in addition to spiritual things, also bodily abundance. Wherefore he adds: "You ate fine flour, and honey, and oil." All the good things of the earth, he says, you enjoyed. And you became exceedingly beautiful. You had, in fulfilling the law, the comeliness that comes from lawfulness. "And you were directed into a kingdom." Thus, he says, you increased, so as to become feared by all your neighbors and to enjoy royal honor. For this is what he hinted at by what he added: 14. And a name went out for you among the nations because of your beauty. For you became renowned and much talked of everywhere. Then he also states the cause of this: "Because it was perfected in beauty, which I set upon you, says Adonai the Lord." For I became the cause of this beauty for you, adorning you with my own commandments and laws. 15. And you trusted in your beauty.

This is the beginning of evils: to abandon divine hope and to pride oneself on one's own achievements. "And you played the harlot because of your name, and you poured out your harlotry on every passing way; it became his, and it shall not be." Having become most renowned, he says, and having therefore thought greatly of yourself, you departed from me and plunged into the utmost licentiousness, receiving not one lover, nor two, but everyone who wished to pass through you; and you consorted with each one, granting the union unlawfully. For this is what he indicated by saying: "It became his, and it shall not be"—that is, You joined yourself to others, belonging to them from no source; for you had dedicated yourself to me from the beginning. And here he calls idolatry harlotry; and "every passing way" means the various plots of the demons. 10. And you took from your garments and made for yourself stitched idols, and played the harlot after them, and you shall surely not enter in—things that shall not be, nor shall they come to pass. New, he says, and strange are your practices of idolatry. For you did not emulate only the evils of others, but you yourself devised others besides, fashioning images of idols from garments and proclaiming them gods, even though I had forbidden you such things through the law. 17. And you took the vessels of your boasting from my silver and from my gold, from what I gave you, and you made for yourself male images, and played the harlot with them. Taking silver and gold from me, he says, you fashion gods from my gifts, and you preferred these to my service.

He called them masculine images, since he figuratively calls idolatry harlotry. 18, 19. And you took, he says, your variegated garment and covered them with it, and you set my oil and my incense before their face. And the loaves which I gave you, fine flour and honey, and I fed you with oil, and you set them before their face for a sweet-smelling savor. The good things, he says, which you received from me, these you offered to those adulterous demons, adorning and embellishing them with the former, and performing sacrifices and libations to them with the latter. And it came to pass, says the Lord Adonai. (20) And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore, and sacrificed them to them for consumption. Then the reproof comes by way of irony: "How little you played the harlot." From this it is clear, and very evident, that here he calls the worship of idols harlotry. 21, 22. And you slaughtered, he says, your children and gave them up in your averting them to them. This is beyond all your harlotry and your abominations. For truly the most defiled and most polluted of all things is the unjust slaughter of children, which those who were mad performed in averting evil, contriving for themselves, as they foolishly supposed, a release from evils. "And you did not remember the day of your infancy, when you were naked and shameful and defiled in your blood, and you lived. You did not, he says, take to mind the former things—how, when you were naked and deprived of all providence and stained red with the blood of idols, I took you and washed you and made you enjoy life and all care. 23.

And it came to pass after all your iniquities, Woe, woe to you, says Adonai the Lord. And he says that from this senseless disposition you reap as fruit lamentation and wailing. Then he sets out her impiety more broadly. 24, 25. And you built for yourself a brothel, and you made for yourself a display in every street. And at the beginning of every road you built your brothels, and you marred your beauty, and you spread your legs to every passerby. One might learn these things more clearly both from the history of the Judges and from the writing of the Kingdoms; for everywhere, both in the houses and in the marketplaces, they set up the statues of the idols; and they filled the bodies of this impiety, and in the very temple of God they built altars to the accursed demons, and set up images and likenesses of demons. And the Master accuses them of this here too, calling the idolatrous precincts a brothel. And exposing the excess of such harlotry, he shows her plainly set out before all who wish to consort with her, through the idols with which she filled the roads and the streets and the marketplaces, and marred the beauty of piety, and welcomed every passerby into such licentiousness, now worshipping the gods of the Egyptians, now those of the Assyrians and Chaldeans. And teaching this, he added: And you multiplied your harlotry. (20) And you played the harlot with the sons of Egypt who border you, the great-fleshed, and you played the harlot in many ways, to provoke me to anger.

Again he has figuratively called them "great of flesh," those who have attached themselves to the worship of idols beyond measure. For these worshiped goats and oxen and sheep, dogs and apes, crocodiles and ibises and hawks. 27. And behold, I will stretch out my hand against you, and I will remove your statutes, and I will deliver you into the souls of those who hate you, the daughters of foreigners, who turn aside from your way, which you have done wickedly. I will move, he says, my hand for discipline, and I will strip you of the splendor of the law, and I will make you a laughingstock to your enemies, and I will cause the neighboring cities to mock you, which have not emulated the excess of your impiety. 28, 29. And you played the harlot, he says, with the sons of Assur, and not even so were you filled; and you played the harlot, and you were not filled. And you multiplied your harlotries toward the land of Canaan, and to the Chaldeans, and not even in these were you filled. Each nation, he says, served its own idols; but you, having worshiped the gods of all, and having embraced the worship of idols everywhere, have not even to this day taken your fill of impiety. 30. With what shall I cleanse your heart, says Adonai the Lord, when you have done all these things, the works of a harlot woman acting boldly? What punishment, he says, worthy of your impiety shall I bring upon you? With what

Having used a remedy, shall I accomplish the cleansing of your foul-smelling wounds? For you have dared to do the deeds of a woman who scrapes the modesty from her foreheads and shamelessly and openly pursues licentiousness. "And you played the harlot threefold in your daughters." Your transgression, he says, is three times that of the cities subject to you, and she who ought to have become a teacher of piety has been shown forth as the archetype of all impiety. 31. When you built, he says, your brothel at the beginning of every road, and made your display in every broad street, and you did not become like a harlot gathering wages. For neither did the need of necessities lead you to this licentiousness; for enjoying all good things and reveling in my gifts, you offered to them the things given to you by me. Therefore you are like a woman joined to a husband but giving her beauty to adulterers, and carrying out her husband's goods and supplying her lovers. 32. For the woman, he says, even the one who is adulterated away from her own husband to strangers, is like you, who receives wages from her own husband and gives wages to all who play the harlot with her. And he sets out the same thing more broadly, in order to refute the absurdity clearly. 33. For to all harlots, he says, wages are given, but you gave wages to all your lovers, and you loaded them to come to you from round about in your harlotry. For no one ever received any good from the avenging demons; but those who choose to serve them, offering to them the things supplied by God, draw upon themselves their dominion.

For this is what he hinted at when he said: "And you burdened them by coming to you from all around in your prostitution." For by the things, he says, which you offered, you urged them to run to you and to hasten and to be with you continually. 34. And it came to be in you, perverted beyond the women in your prostitution, and after you they shall not commit prostitution; for in your giving payments, and payments not being given to you, perverted things have come to be in you. For you seem, he says, like the licentious women who are exposed to all in their intercourse with many lovers; but in offering a wage rather than receiving one, you continue to do the opposite of those women; wherefore you have surpassed both those before you and those after you in this form of licentiousness. Having thus laid bare her lawlessness, he assigns her the name from her deeds, and says: 35. Therefore, prostitute, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says Adonai the Lord: Because you poured out your bronze, and your shame shall be uncovered in your prostitution toward your lovers and in all the thoughts of your lawless deeds, and in the blood of your children, which you gave to them. Bronze-plated coinage is what is called the counterfeit, which has received an admixture of other materials.

Since, then, he says, you mixed no small transgression into my laws, but poured out much bronze, so that the nature of the gold no longer even appeared, but your whole coinage was seen to be bronze, I will strip you of my providence from now on, and fill you with shame, exacting the penalty for your manifold transgression, and especially for the unjust slaughter of your children, which you brought to the murderous demons. 37. Therefore behold, I gather against you all your lovers, with whom you mingled, and all whom you loved, together with all whom you hated, and I will gather them against you from all around. Through your very lovers, he says, I will punish you. You were jealous of the impiety of the Chaldeans and Assyrians, and of the Canaanites and Egyptians; I will use these as instruments against you, bringing upon you the punishments you deserve. And with your lovers I will join those who are hated by you, so that both these and those may behold your great transgression. For I will uncover, he says, your evils before them, and they shall see all your shame. 38. And I will avenge you with the vengeance of adulteresses and of those who shed blood, and I will put you in the blood of my wrath and jealousy. For you shall pay the penalty of murderous and adulterous women; for those whose transgression you imitated, from them you shall receive the

punishment. 39. And I will deliver you into their hands, and they shall tear down your brothel. That is, the shrines of the demons. "And they shall demolish your base." By these words he hinted at the divine temple; for its base, and foundation, and pedestal was the worship performed in it. "And they shall strip you of your garments, and take the vessels of your boasting, and leave you naked and shameful." By these words he indicated the sack and the enslavement. 40, 41. And they shall bring crowds against you, and they shall stone you with stones, and shall slaughter you with their swords; and they shall burn your houses with fire, and shall execute vengeance in you before many women. These things happened at the time of the captivity; but he set them forth figuratively, as upon an adulterous woman, who is stoned, and slaughtered, and burned; for which reason, persisting in the figure, he added: "And they shall execute vengeance in you before many women;" yet he does not call women "women," but figuratively he thus calls the cities, since he brings her, though she is a city, into the court of judgment in the manner of a woman. Then he hints at the benefit that comes from the punishment. "And I will turn you away from your prostitution, and you shall no longer give wages." For having been stripped of prosperity, and delivered over to captivity, you shall no longer have the materials for that wicked provision; and scarcity shall become for you the procurer of benefit. 42. And I will bring my wrath upon you, and my jealousy shall be taken away from you, and I will rest, and I will no longer be anxious.

Again figuratively, as in the case of a man jealous over his wife's adultery, he said these things. For by the punishment, he says, which I have brought to bear, I will put an end to your licentiousness, and I will be released from my care for you; for your lovers will no longer provoke me to jealousy. And I will bring this punishment upon you: 43. Because you did not remember the day of your infancy, and you grieved me in all these things; and behold, I have given your ways upon your head, says Adonai the Lord. You, he says, have drawn upon yourself the burden of these evils, not wishing to take into your mind what you were and what you have become, and how, though you were worthless and small and utterly insignificant, I made you renowned and exceedingly illustrious. "And thus I did not do according to all your impiety in all your lawless deeds." You suffer nothing worthy of your sins, he says; for the punishment is small compared with the impiety. 44. All these things are what I have spoken against you in a parable, saying: As the mother, so also the daughter. The proverb that is bandied about fits you, he says, that the daughter resembles her mother; and above he called her mother the Hittite woman. 45. You are a daughter of your mother, who thrust away her husband and her children, and a sister of your sisters, who thrust away their husbands and their children. By these words he shows that God is not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles; for he was formerly reckoned their God, before they received the stain of idolatry; therefore he said that those also thrust away their husband and their children, denying God as their husband and sacrificing their children to demons.

Then he makes his meaning clearer: Your mother was a Hittite, and your father an Amorite. (40) Your elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters, and she who dwells on your left, and your younger sister who dwells on your right, Sodom, and her daughters. He calls Samaria the elder sister, not in respect of time, but he named her so in respect of the teaching of impiety; for in respect of time Sodom is the elder. But since Samaria first emulated their practices, and then extended its lawlessness in part, so as even to be likened to Sodom. And he calls Sodom the younger sister, as having later embraced kinship with her; for he called the fellowship of impiety kinship. And the phrase "on the right and on the left" he set down because of the position of the places; for to those in Jerusalem facing east, on the right lies Sodom—for it is more southerly—and on the left is Samaria, situated more northerly. And he calls the cities and villages subject to each of them "daughters." And wishing to show the excess of their impiety, he added: (47) And you did not walk in their ways, nor did you do according to their lawless deeds; you are almost beyond them in all your ways. You have increased, he says, their evil practices by your devices, and you are in danger of winning the prize of impiety. (48) As I live, says Adonai the Lord, your sister Sodom, she and her daughters, did not do as you have done, you and your daughters. Then he shows the difference.

49, 50. However, the iniquity of Sodom was in pride, and in fullness of bread and in prosperity they lived luxuriously, she and her daughters; this was in her and in her daughters; and they did not take hold of the hand of the poor and needy, and they were arrogant. And they committed iniquities before me, and I removed them, as I saw. Having become exceedingly wanton, he says, through the abundance of good things, they fell into pride and arrogance, and those who enjoyed every luxury looked down on those in want; hence they fell into the utmost licentiousness, and they underwent punishments worthy of their impieties. 51. And Samaria did not sin according to half of your sins, and you multiplied your iniquities beyond them, and you justified your sisters in your sins, and in all your iniquities which you committed. But he makes this comparison not according to the quality of the sin alone, but according to that of the care. For even if Samaria sinned and dared countless unlawful things, yet she was far from the divine temple, and had at least some small excuse, being subject to another king, and unable to perform the ordinances in the divine temple. And Sodom had neither prophet nor lawgiver, but enjoyed only the teaching of the natural law. But you, having both law and priests and prophets and the divine temple and the lawful worship, practiced their impiety; therefore you show them to be worthy of excuse. 52.

And you, bear your torment that surpasses theirs, in that you corrupted your sisters by your sins, in which you transgressed beyond them, and you justified them beyond yourself. He did not say simply "you justified," but "beyond yourself." For you, having imitated their lawlessness, have no defense, being aided by neither law nor prophets; but they, because of the excess of your impiety, wish to obtain pardon. Receive, therefore, the punishment of your practices, through which you became harmful even to them. "And you, be ashamed, and take your dishonor, when you justify your sisters." When someone in honor does not understand, once clothed in dishonor he comes to a perception of his former honor. And Jerusalem, therefore, not having recognized the honor given to her by God, through siege and captivity came to know her own God; therefore she cries out, taught by the blessed David: "The shame of my face has covered me, from the voice of one who reproaches and speaks against me, from the face of the enemy and pursuer." 53. And I will turn back, he says, their turnings back, the turning back of Sodom and her daughters, and I will turn back the turning back of Samaria and her daughters. It is fitting to know the idioms of Scripture; for it is not possible otherwise to discern its purpose. It has, then, among many other things, this idiom also: to speak of things that have happened as things that will be, and things that will be as things that have happened. Thus, then, here too it speaks of things that have already happened as things that will be: Sodom has been turned back, and the cities under her; and likewise Samaria with her subjects.

But I too turned away and exacted the penalties for the sins she committed. And I will likewise turn your turning away back upon you in the midst of them; (54) so that you may receive your torment, and be dishonored for all that you did in provoking me to anger. You will suffer the same things as they, he says, and you will pay the penalties for the offenses you committed against me. (55) And your sister Sodom, and her daughters, will be restored as they were from the beginning; and you, and your daughters, will be restored as you were from the beginning. Here he has called "restoration" not the change for the better but the change for the worse; for the peculiar idiom of Scripture is again applied to Sodom in a meditative sense. What he means is this: Just as I brought Sodom, which was splendid and inhabited by very many, back to its ancient condition, and made it utterly uninhabited, such as it was before it was settled, so too, stripping away all your comeliness, I will bring it about that you return to your former state. (56, 57) And if Sodom your sister was not a report in your mouth in the days of your pride, before your wickednesses were uncovered, in the manner that you are now a reproach to the daughters of Syria, and to all those around you, and to the daughters of the foreigners who surround you on every side. If you had not learned, he says, the punishment of Sodom, and their utter destruction were not carried about in your mouth, in the manner that now your siege is in the cities of Syria and Palestine, what greater evil would you have done?

For the example of those women did not benefit you; but although you knew both the things they dared to do and the evils that were brought upon them, you none the less persisted in lawlessness. Therefore (58), (59). You shall bear your own impieties and your own iniquities, says the Lord. Thus says Adonai the Lord: And I will do in you as you have done, in that you dishonored the curse, so as to transgress my covenant. The law had a curse that followed upon those who transgressed it; and it commanded the six tribes standing on Mount Gebal to recite it in turn, and all the people to say Amen, as it were subscribing and consenting to the curse of the law. Since, then, he says, you did not fear even the curse, but fearlessly transgressed my covenant, receive the bundles of the seeds. Then he promises also the good things that come after the punishment. (60). And I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your infancy; and I will establish for you my covenant everlasting. For you, he says, have trampled underfoot the agreements made with me; but not even this will persuade me to abandon you completely, but having disciplined you with instruction and taught you gratitude, I will remember those agreements which I made with you long ago when you were still an infant; and thus he calls the time of your sojourn in the wilderness. And I will establish my covenant, an everlasting covenant. Not the covenant of the law, but that of grace; not the one through Moses, but the one through the apostles; for the former has what is temporary, the latter what is everlasting. And he promised to do this also through Jeremiah the prophet.

For he says, I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they did not remain in my covenant, and I rejected them; but I will make a new covenant with them, giving my laws into their mind, and I will write them upon their hearts. This covenant he promises here as well. 61. And you shall remember, he says, your ways, and you shall be dishonored when you take up your sisters, your elder sisters together with your younger. For coming through punishment to a perception of her own ways, and seeing the dishonor that surrounds her, you shall recognize your own Master; and you shall see these sisters of yours enjoying this covenant together with you, or rather yourself being found with them. For I will give them, he says, to you for building up, and not from your covenant. For it is not they who will profit through you, but you who will reap the benefit from them—this fellowship not being brought about by this covenant in accordance with which you now live, but by the eternal one that will be given later. Through Sodom and Samaria he hints at the piety of all the nations and of the Jews that will be the same, and at faith in one God administered from the New Covenant. 62. And I will raise up, he says, my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord. For first, to the Jews

The Gospel was proclaimed, and then to all the nations; but it will also be proclaimed again through the great Elijah before the consummation of the world. I, then, he says, will do all things, attending to your benefit; for you will know from these things what sort of things were done by you against me, and what sort of good things were brought about by me for you. Therefore he added: That you may remember, and be ashamed, and there be no more opening of the mouth for you because of your dishonor, when I make atonement for you according to all that you have done, says Adonai Lord. The three youths in the furnace also used these words. For appropriating the transgressions of the people, they said in prayer: "And now there is no opening of the mouth for us; we have become a shame and a reproach to your servants, and to those who worship you." And the inspired Daniel likewise cried out in prayer in the captivity: "To you, Lord, belongs righteousness, and to us the shame of face, as on this day, and to our kings, and to our rulers, and to our fathers." And showing the cause, they reasonably added: "Because we have sinned against you." This prophecy, then, has also received its end; for he who inspires the prophets is truthful. It is necessary, then, that we also, examining our own affairs and making a precise scrutiny of our conduct, and setting the divine benefits alongside our own transgressions, should use these words in prayer, and by the shame of our former sins flee the activity that produces shame, and illumine the soul with the divine remembrance.

For in this way we shall be able to be far from the devices of sin, and to attend upon God, and to enjoy the grace that comes from him, in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom glory is fitting to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, unto the ages of ages. Amen. TOME 6. CHAPTER 17. a–c. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, tell a tale, and speak a parable against the house of Israel. And you shall say: Thus says Adonai the Lord. He commands him to compose his prophecy in an enigmatic manner, so that those who hear, not understanding what is said, may become more earnest in their inquiry about these things, and may receive the interpretation from the prophet by way of question. "The great eagle, the great-winged, the long in extent, the full of talons." By these words he hinted at Nebuchadnezzar, calling him great because he became much talked of, "great-winged" because he extended his rule as far as possible, "long in extent" because he was great-minded and boastful; and he called him "full of talons" because he had a great army, both cavalry and infantry, both light-armed and heavy-armed. For the soldiers of a king are his talons, both because they are the outermost part of the body, in that they are subject to their leaders, and because of their sharpness and strength for striking and tearing, like a wild beast, those who attempt to oppose them. "Who has the leadership," he says, "to enter into Lebanon." Here he clearly taught that he did not come to Jerusalem of his own accord, but because the God of all invisibly stirred him up and led him.

For he called Jerusalem Lebanon, not only as being distinguished, but also as being then flourishing, both in the multitude of inhabitants and in the priests according to the law, and in the prophets foretelling divine things. And he entered, it says, and took the choice things of the cedar. (4.) He plucked off the tip of the tenderest part. By these things he hinted at Jeconiah; and he called the choice things of the cedar because of the kingship, and "the tip of the tenderest part," not only because of the height, but also because of the youth of his age; for while he was still young, he both received the kingship and endured captivity. And fittingly he also used "he plucked off," since he had called the eagle one that uses very many talons. "And he brought them, it says, into the land of Canaan, he set them in a fortified city." By these things he signified Babylon; and he called it "a city of Canaan" because of the kinship of their manners. (5.) And he took from the seed of the land, and gave it into a sown field, to take root as plants; he set it being looked upon in much water. By this he indicated Zedekiah; for having appointed this one king instead of Jeconiah, he departed; and no longer does he name Jerusalem Lebanon, but "a sown field," because the kingship had become more lowly. And the phrase, "he set it being looked upon in much water," signifies the subjection and the tribute imposed upon him. (6.) It sprang up, it says, and became a weak vine, and small in size, so that its branches appeared upon it, and its roots were beneath it; and it became a great vine, and it made shoots, and it stretched out its vine-branch.

The last kingdom of the Jews became very weak; for already three times they had endured siege and enslavement, and they were driven into poverty and deprived of their multitude. Therefore he says, "It became a weak vine, and small in size, and its branches were upon it." No longer, he says, was it extended, according to David's prophecy, as far as the sea and as far as the rivers, nor did its shadow cover mountains, and its vine-branches the cedars of God; but the phrase "It stretched out its vine-branch" does not signify its size, but its friendship toward the Egyptian. Therefore he added: "And there became another great eagle, with great wings, and many in claws, and behold this vine was entwining itself upon him, and its roots were toward him, and it sent out its branches to him, to water it together with the clod from the stem of its planting. In a good field, by much water she shall be watered, to make shoots, and to bear fruit, to become a great vine." He calls kings eagles because of their leadership; for the creature is royal, and has obtained leadership over the birds; and through these he hinted at the king of the Egyptians. This was Ouaphres, and Jeremiah the prophet makes mention of him; for it was with him that Zedekiah made the oaths, transgressing them, and the agreements which he had made with Nabuchodonosor. And the phrase "She sent out her branches to him" signifies the money sent by Zedekiah to the king of the Egyptians.

And he sent, he says, "to water it with the clod," so that, he says, he might fight on behalf of both the king and the subjects; for he called the people a clod, persisting in the metaphor, since he also named the king a vine. And the vine, planted in the earth, both gives its own roots and draws moisture from it. He sent, then, he says, money of the Egyptians to the king—Sedekias—so that through that one's help both he and the people might enjoy care, "so that it might make shoots and bear fruit"; and a vine that has remained, instead of, that has not cast off the dignity which it received. 9. Therefore say, Thus says Adonai Lord, Shall it prosper? Shall not the roots of its tenderness, and its fruit, rot, and all its early sproutings be dried up? He shall be deceived, he says, of his hope, and shall not obtain what he expects; for the irrigation of the Egyptian shall not only bring it no benefit, but shall even work rot in the roots, and shall dry up the shoots growing from there; and this also happened through the events themselves. For Sedekias, trusting in the help of the Egyptian, transgressed the agreements with Nabouchodonosor. And he, having marched against him, both took him captive and enslaved the people and burned the city. "And not with a great arm, nor with a numerous people, to pluck it out from its roots." For the Egyptian, he says, shall not send him a large army, and this very army shall not only benefit him in nothing, but shall even uproot him. 10. And behold, it shall drink, shall it prosper? And for now, he says, he trusts in the

by his help, but he will not enjoy it to the end. "Will it not, as soon as it touches it, be dried up by a scorching wind? Will it not be dried up with the clod of its rising?" For immediately, he says, when the Babylonian king arrives, both the king and all the subject people will be enslaved. For again here he called the people a clod, and the campaign of the Babylonian a scorching wind; for just as he called the king a vine and the people a clod (for it was planted in him), so figuratively he calls the help of the Egyptian irrigation, and the attack of the Babylonian a scorching wind. 11, 12. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, say to the house that provokes me: Do you not know what these things are? Say to them: Behold, the king of Babylon comes against Jerusalem, and he will take its king and its rulers, and he will bring them to himself into Babylon. The phrase "Behold, he comes" is used in place of "Behold, he came"; for in the meantime he recounts the things that have already happened, and he has set these things out concerning Jeconiah, according to his own idiom speaking of past things as not yet having happened; but that he spoke those things concerning Jeconiah, who was now in the sixth year of his captivity, what follows teaches, according to the prophet's own teaching. 13, 14. And he will take, he says, from the seed of the kingdom, and he will make a covenant with him, and he will bring him under a curse; and he will take the leaders of the land, so that he may become a weak king, not to exalt himself at all, but to keep his covenant and to establish it.

He said these things about Zedekiah, and these things had happened six years earlier. Therefore, "he shall take, and make a covenant, and bring in" stands for "he took, and made a covenant, and brought in." For when making the covenant with Zedekiah, he demanded from him the most dreadful oaths, that he not transgress the agreed terms; but he immediately trampled on the oaths. And while appointing him king, he says, he shall take captive all those who abound in wealth. The fourth book of the Kingdoms and the second of Paralipomenon taught us this; and likewise the blessed Jeremiah the prophet; and all these things, he says, the Babylonian brings about, making the kingdom weak, so that it may be subject continually, and have no pretext for rebellion. 15. And he shall withdraw from him, from sending men to Egypt, to give him horses and a great people. What he said above in a veiled and parabolic manner, here he taught clearly. Then by way of question he adds: "If he shall direct his way, shall he who does contrary things and transgresses the covenant be saved? Shall he escape?" You, he says, I have used as judges, whether it is just that the transgressor of oaths and covenants escape punishment and obtain salvation; but since you answer nothing, I pronounce the verdict. 16, 17. As I live, says Adonai the Lord, unless in the place of the king who reigned over him, who dishonored my curse and transgressed my covenant with him, in the midst of Babylon he shall die; and not with great power, nor with a great multitude. The king of the Babylonians, he says, who does not know me, demanded these oaths from him according to my will;

But this man, though living under my laws, became a transgressor of the oaths. Therefore he shall be delivered to the king who appointed him, and in Babylon he shall receive the end of his life. "And Pharaoh shall make war with casting up of mounds, and with building of siege-towers, to take away many souls." And this again the blessed prophet Jeremiah teaches us: for when the Chaldeans were besieging Jerusalem, the king of the Egyptians came to the aid of the Jews; and the Chaldeans, fearing this assault, withdrew. But God, the Lord of all, advises Zedekiah through the prophet Jeremiah not to trust in the help of the Egyptian. "For immediately," he says, "the king of Babylon will come, and will take the city." And God says these things here too through Ezekiel. 18. And he dishonored the oath by breaking the covenant, and behold, he has given his hand, and has done all these things to him—shall he be saved? He will reap no benefit, he says, from the alliance of the Egyptian, but will pay the penalty for his transgression. 19–21. Therefore say, Thus says the Lord God: My oath, which he dishonored, and my covenant, which he broke—I will give it upon his head. And I will spread my net upon him, and he shall be caught in his enclosure, and I will bring him to Babylon, and I will plead with him there concerning his injustice, which he committed against me in all his banishments.

And all his chosen men with all his battle lines shall fall by the sword, and all their remnant I will scatter to every wind, and you shall know that I the Lord have spoken. Having trusted, he says, in the help of the Egyptians, he trampled my oaths underfoot; but I, using the campaign of the Chaldeans as a kind of net, will take him alive and send him away into Babylon, and his picked men and the best of his army I will deliver to slaughter; and those who escape death from the war I will deliver as captives, and through experience itself you shall learn that my words are true. For this is what he signified when he said: And you shall know that I the Lord have spoken. (22, 23.) Thus says Adonai the Lord: I will take from the choice ones of the tall cedar, from its top, and I will give from the head of its shoots; from the heart of its top I will cut off, and I will plant it on a high mountain, even I. And I will hang him on a lofty mountain of Israel, and I will plant him, and he shall bring forth a shoot and bear fruit, and he shall become a great cedar, and every bird shall rest beneath it, and every winged creature shall rest under its shadow, and its branches shall be restored. Truly the house of Israel is provoking, and they have eyes and do not see, and they have ears and do not hear.

But if these things are not so, let them show us who this is who was taken from the chosen ones of the lofty cedar, from the heart of the top, and was first planted on a high mountain, then hung on the lofty mountain of Israel, and after being hung brought forth a shoot, and produced fruit, and became a great cedar, so that every bird and every winged creature—not a four-footed beast, nor a creeping thing, but every bird and flying creature—rests under its shadow. For if they should claim that these things were said about Zerubbabel, let them show on what mountain Zerubbabel was hung, or that all the birds and flying creatures rested under his shadow; for Zerubbabel continued to rule only over the people who came up with him from the captivity, but the other nations not only did not obey him, but even warred against him continually. For this reason even the building of the divine temple did not receive a swift completion. But if the things said in no way fit Zerubbabel, they would scarcely fit any other. And if they should attempt to drag the prophecy to the Maccabees, their falsehood will easily be refuted. For those men were not of the royal tribe, but of the priestly tribe; but here he calls the royal race a cedar. For thus he also said concerning Jeconiah: "The great eagle, the great-winged, plucked off the tender tops of the cedar and carried them to Babylon," instead of, the royal race.

If, then, the things said do not fit Zerubbabel, nor the Maccabees, it is clear that these things were foretold concerning our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who drew his descent according to the flesh from David, not having his forefathers from certain offshoots of the kingdom, but from the very succession of the kings. And the blessed Matthew teaches us this precisely; for having said that Solomon was the son of David, and Rehoboam of him, and then having gone through all the genealogies in order up to the deportation to Babylon, he adds: "And after the deportation to Babylon, Jechoniah begot Salathiel"—this is the one who himself became a captive—"and Salathiel begot Zerubbabel"—this is the one who led the people after the return. From these the Master Christ draws his descent according to the flesh; therefore he says: "I will take from the chosen ones of the lofty cedar, from the top," that is, from the very royal root; and again, signifying the same thing, "And I will give from the head of its offshoots, from the heart of the top I will cut off." The Babylonian cut off the captives, but the flesh which he himself took up, the Master cut off, as we have said before; for he built for himself the human temple. "And I will plant it on a high mountain, I," not the Babylonian; and he calls the high mountain the conspicuous height of the Church; for thus Isaiah and Micah also prophesied: "And it shall be," he says, "in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord shall be manifest, and the house of God upon the tops of the mountains," and the rest. Having thus shown his preeminence through the wonders, and through the proclamations, he foretells also the passion.

And I will hang him on the mountain of Israel.” For when he permitted it, the passion was accomplished. The Lord himself made this clear when he spoke with Pilate; for when that man boasted that he had authority both to punish and to release, the Lord said: “You would have no authority unless it had been given to you from above.” So he called the permission an operation. “And I will hang him on a high mountain of Israel.” Golgotha is high, where the saving cross was fixed. Then he speaks of the resurrection after the passion, and the sprouting of the preaching. “And I will plant him, and he shall bring forth a shoot, and shall bear fruit,” which the inhabited world, gathering and feeding on it, hopes for eternal life. “And every bird shall rest beneath him.” Then more clearly: “And every winged creature shall rest under his shadow.” Nothing of beasts, nor of reptiles and things that crawl on the ground, but whatever is winged and flies in the air and has its impulse toward things above. For such are those nourished by faith, sending their thought upward and imagining heavenly things, and sitting under the shadow of the greatest cedar. He called him a cedar in accordance with the human aspect, since he also named the Davidic kingdom a cedar; and the cedar has incorruptibility, just as the Master too, in accordance with the human aspect, possessed sinlessness. “And his branches,” he says, “shall be restored.” He brought this in because of the desolation of Jerusalem at that time; instead of: Do not look to the desolation of the city that will come after the captivity; for this eternal king, setting out from there, will reign, and from it will take branches.

He means the apostolic choir; the kingdom will therefore be restored, he says, to the tribe of David, according to the covenants God made with David. Then he adds: 24. And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord, who brings low the high tree and raises high the low tree, and dries up the green tree and makes the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it. All men, he says, shall know that it is easy for me both to bring low the lofty and to raise up the lowly, to dry up the moist and to show the dry flourishing. For when, after the desolation of the city, they see a shoot springing from it, according to the prophecy of Isaiah—for he says, “There shall come forth a rod from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up from the root”—and when they see this one proclaimed king of the whole inhabited world, all shall know that I am the Lord, who foretell and bring the deed to follow the word. CHAPTER 18. 1–4. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, what is this parable among you concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers ate a sour grape, and the teeth of the children were set on edge? As I live, says Adonai the Lord, this parable shall no longer be in Israel. For all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son; all souls are mine, and the soul that sins, it shall die. Some think that the prophecy has passed over to another chapter; but it is possible to see that what is said agrees with what has been said before. For since

Having mentioned the transgression of Zedekiah, he foretold the dominion over the world that would come from the royal seed, and he necessarily teaches the people not to use the proverb that accuses God of injustice—that when the fathers ate sour grapes, the children's teeth were set on edge, or, according to Symmachus, "gnashed." For behold, he says, though the kings at that time were lawless, the seed from them will rule the world. For I will not endure to demand from the children the penalties for what the fathers did wrong; for I am Master of both these and those, and I exercise the same care over all; for all souls are mine, and the soul that sins, this one shall pay the penalties. Then he teaches us what are the forms of righteousness, and how it is possible both to enjoy life and to be delivered from punishment. 5. But the man who is righteous, who does judgment and righteousness. That is, the one who holds the scales of justice equally. 6. He shall not eat upon the mountains. He says: the one who keeps far from the worship of idols; for on the mountains their shrines were established. "And he shall not lift up his eyes to the desires of the house of Israel." In place of: If he does not follow the evil thoughts of Israel; and through these things likewise he made clear both the impiety and the lawlessness. "And he shall not defile the wife of his neighbor, and he shall not approach a woman in her separation." And it is fitting, he says, that he neither plunder another's bed nor approach a woman who is in a flow of blood; for this too was forbidden by the law. 7.

And he shall not oppress a man, and he shall restore a pledge owed, and he does not commit robbery. He says, if one be seen free from all covetousness. Then the intensification of virtue: "He will give his bread to the hungry, and clothe the naked with a garment." For it is not enough not to have robbed, but one must also make those in need sharers of what one has. 8. He shall not give his silver at interest, and shall not take increase. For these too are forms of covetousness. "He will turn back his hand from injustice." He has briefly forbidden lawlessness. "And he shall execute judgment between a man and his neighbor." If he appears as a just judge, not bringing forth his verdict for favor or enmity; then briefly: 9. And he has walked in my commandments, and has kept my statutes to do them; this man is just, he shall surely live, says Adonai the Lord. He says, the one who has done all the things spoken of, and is free from all the things forbidden, will be honored with the name of the just, and will reap the fruits of life. 10. And if he beget a pestilent son, who sheds blood, and commits sins. Then briefly: "He does not walk in the way of his just father." But he has done each of the things already forbidden, and has traveled the opposite way; he says, this man has committed lawlessness. 13. He shall not surely live, he has done all these lawless deeds, he shall surely be put to death, his blood shall be upon him. He says, the lawless man will profit nothing from his father's virtue, choosing a life contrary to that man, but he will pluck the fruits of his own seeds. 14.

When, he says, he begets a son, and he sees all the sins of his father which he committed, and fears, and does not do according to them. Then he says in order: Because he has freed himself from the worship of idols, and has not shared in the lawlessness of the house of Israel, and did not plot against another's marriage, hated every form of covetousness, and offered the healing that was in his power to those in need, driving away famine from some, and clothing others and freeing them from nakedness, and he kept all the commandments together. 17. This one, he says, shall not die in the iniquities of his father, but shall surely live. For it is not just that this one be exacted punishment for that one's lawlessness. 18, 19. But his father, he says, since he oppressed with oppression, and committed robbery, and did contrary things in the midst of the people, and died in his own injustice. And you said, Why did the son not receive the injustice of his father? But you, he says, judging unjustly, wish the son of the lawless one to undergo punishment for his father, and you ask one another, Why ever did he not pay the penalty for his father's lawlessness? But I say to you, "Because the son has done judgment, and righteousness, and mercy, kept all my statutes, and did them, he shall surely live." Since he did not walk the same road as his father, but preferred my road to his father's, he found a worthy end of his road. 20. But the soul that sins, this one shall die; the son shall not receive the injustice of his father, nor shall the father receive the injustice of his son. The same things again he has indicated more clearly and concisely.

The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the lawlessness of the lawless shall be upon him." He often says the same things, wishing their memory to become firm in those who hear. 21, 22. And if the lawless man turns back from all his lawless deeds which he has done, and keeps all my commandments, and does judgment and righteousness and mercy, he shall surely live, and shall not die. And all his transgressions, as many as he has done, shall not be remembered to him; in his righteousness which he has done, he shall live. He says, I am so far from exacting punishment from one man on behalf of another, that even the transgressor of the law himself, even if he works countless acts of lawlessness, when he changes and repents and chooses the way of righteousness, I will both receive him and deem him worthy of life; then he indicates his own goodness. 23. Shall I not desire the death of the lawless man, says Adonai the Lord, but rather that he turn back from his evil way and live? He says, I do not desire the death of the lawless man but his repentance; for I did not create the nature of men in order to punish, but in order to impart life. And the facts bear witness to the words; for he would not have inspired prophets, and sent apostles, and given written laws, and promised good things, and threatened Gehenna, if he wished to punish; but he would have let men be carried along as they wish. But now he does all these things continually, in order to free them from the terrible things that have been threatened. And that what has been said is not mere words but facts, both having happened and happening, the divine Scripture is witness.

For Hezekiah, born of the impious father Ahaz, not only did not pay the penalty for his father, but also became most illustrious through his own piety. But Manasseh, most blessed in all things, having walked a path diametrically opposite to the one who begot him, enjoyed nothing of his father's piety; yet by making use of repentance he obtained salvation. But Amon his son, emulating his father's wickedness but no longer his repentance, ended his life miserably; but his child Josiah, abhorring his father's impiety and adorning his soul with every form of virtue, has been numbered in the catalogue of the saints, having drawn no stain from his father's lawlessness; but his children, not emulating him but living together with all impiety, paid the penalties for their own offenses, reaping no benefit from their father's love of God. And so from the very history of the holy Scriptures, the oracles of the Master have been shown to be true. Come then, let us return to the sequence of the interpretation. 24. And when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits injustice, according to all the injustices which the lawless man has committed, if he does them, he shall surely not live; all his righteous deeds which he has done shall surely not be remembered; in the transgression in which he transgressed, and in his sins in which he sinned, in them he shall die. Just as, he says, if one of the lawless, having abhorred his former life, should choose the opposite, I will accept his repentance and deem him worthy of life.

Thus, if any of the righteous, having completely abandoned the path of righteousness, turns to the other, he will lose all his former course, and will find the end suited to that path; for in his sins he shall die. But one must note that he did not say simply, "If he sins," but "If he turns away from his righteousness and does injustice according to all the injustices which the lawless man did"; since even some of the pious stumble, but rising again they walk that same path, and by using repentance they obtain salvation; but those who depart from it completely reap the fruits of the opposite path. 25. And you said, he says, "The way of the Lord is not straight." Hear now, house of Israel: Is my way not straight? Is not your way not straight? Seeing this just verdict of mine, he says, do you dare to accuse it of injustice? And yet you ought to make the accusation against yourselves, because seeing such righteousness in the judge, you choose injustice. Then again he briefly runs through the same things: the righteous man who turns to the opposite will be handed over to the death of sin, and the sinner who again uses repentance and chooses to walk through all of virtue will reap life from his change of mind. 29. But seeing these things, he says, the house of Israel says, "The way of the Lord does not set right." Is not the way of the Lord set right, house of Israel? Is not your way not set right? The facts themselves, he says, cry out that my judgments are upright and just, but your choice is full of lawlessness. 30.

Therefore I will judge each of you according to his own way, O house of Israel, says Adonai the Lord. Having thus threatened, and having pronounced the just verdict, he turns his discourse to exhortation. 31. Turn and turn away from all your impieties, and they shall not become for you a punishment of iniquity. Cast away from yourselves all your impieties, which you committed impiously against me, and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit; and why do you die, O house of Israel? Abandon, he says, the way of impiety, and take up another disposition, and run to my laws, so that you may not harvest death from wickedness. For a new heart and a new spirit he called the turning of the soul toward better things; then he also lays bare his own goodness. 32. For I do not desire the death of the one who dies, says Adonai the Lord, but that he turn from his way and his soul live, says Adonai the Lord; turn and you shall live. Knowing, he says, that I desire not the punishment but the repentance of the sinner, make use of repentance and receive the fruits of life. This remedy is fitting for you as well. "For God is not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles, and he himself is Lord of all, rich toward all who call upon him." Let us therefore abandon the way of wickedness, whose end is destruction and ruin, and let us learn instead the divine path, which leads up to the heavens and provides us with boldness toward God; may we attain it in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom glory is fitting for the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, unto the ages of ages.

Amen. TOMOS 7. CHAPTER 19. 1, 2. And you, take up a lamentation for the prince of Israel. And you shall say: What is your mother, a lioness? He says, Foretell the things that will befall the king of Israel, by which you lament him. And he does not call him king of Israel who sits in Samaria—for that kingdom was long ago dissolved—but the one in Jerusalem. For the king of Judah ruled over all those left at that time; and the fourth book of Kingdoms teaches us this, and the second of Paraleipomena. And he called Jerusalem the mother of the king, for from there the kings came; and he calls her a lioness, not only because of the royal character of the city, but also because of the boldness of its disposition. "In the midst of lions she was nourished." He says, She emulated the manner of the kings round about. "Among the lions she multiplied her cubs." And he signifies the things that happened after Josiah; for four kings ruled Jerusalem in a short time—Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, Zedekiah. 3, 4. And one of her cubs leaped away; he became a lion, and learned to seize prey, he devoured men. And nations heard concerning him, and he was caught in his destruction, and they brought him in a muzzle into the land of Egypt. He means Jehoahaz, who succeeded his father Josiah, and became impious toward the Divine, and lawless toward his subjects; but Pharaoh Necho, the king of the Egyptians, took him captive and brought him bound into Egypt, and there he paid the penalties for his lawlessness; and this he signified by saying, "He was caught in his destruction." Then he adds: 5–7.

And she saw that her hope was driven away from her, and her substance perished, and she took another from her whelps; she appointed him a lion. And he went about in the midst of lions; he became a lion, and he learned to seize prey, and he devoured men. And he pastured in his boldness, and he laid waste their cities, and he destroyed the land and its fullness by the sound of his roaring. By these things he has indicated Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim; for he makes his discourse concerning those who became captives and received the end of life in a foreign land; therefore for the present he has left off the mention of Jehoiakim; for this one received his slaughter in Jerusalem. In brief, then, he has gone through the lawlessness of Jeconiah, who, having reigned three months and a few days, filled the city with unjust murders. But that he hints at Jeconiah, not Jehoiakim, through these things, the following words testify. For he says: 8, 9. And nations set themselves against him round about from the countries, and they spread out their nets against him, and in their destruction he was caught. And they put him in a muzzle and in a cage, and they brought him to the king of Babylon, and they brought him into prison, so that his voice should no longer be heard upon the mountains of Israel. But Jehoiakim was not led away captive, but was slain in Jerusalem; whereas Jeconiah suffered all the things foretold; and reasonably, as in the case of a lion, he called the assault of the army nets, and the bonds placed around him a muzzle and a cage; for since he called him a lion figuratively, consistently he also names the things that befell him figuratively.

For the net and the hunting-net suit the lion; having narrated these things, he again passes over to another kind of parable and says: 10, 11. Your mother is a vine, like the blossom of a pomegranate planted by water; her fruit and her shoot came from much water. And she became a rod of strength upon a tribe of rulers, and she was exalted in her greatness in the midst of stems, and she saw her greatness in the multitude of her branches. Your mother, he says, is like a vine, and like a pomegranate planted by the bank of water, and through the irrigation from there made luxuriant and adorned with blossoms and teeming with much fruit. But it is fitting to note that he did not call the fruit good. And through the water he indicated the manifold gifts of God, and "a rod of strength" he called the kingdom itself. For the rod is for discipline. And he added "upon a tribe of rulers" because she did not rule over all Israel, but over the ruling tribe of Judah. And "She saw her greatness in the multitude of her branches" makes clear the arrogance that came upon her from her prosperity. Hence he adds: 12. And she was broken in wrath, she was cast upon the ground, and a scorching wind dried up her chosen things; they were avenged, and the rods of her strength were laid waste; fire dried her up, fire consumed her. All these things are said figuratively and parabolically, as of a vine and a pomegranate; and a scorching wind he called the assault of the enemies, and fire, the punishment from divine wrath that overtook them. And he said that the rods of strength were dried up, because the kingdom was quenched.

Then he again teaches the evils that will befall after the captivity of Zedekiah. 13. And now they have planted her in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty land. After the burning of the city and of the divine temple, when all the leading men had either been slain or carried off as captives of war, Nabuzardan appointed Gedaliah as ruler over the poor who were left there; and the city was utterly desolate, or rather all Judea, both because the walls had been torn down and the houses burned, and because most of the inhabitants had been given over to slaughter and captivity. Therefore he says: "And now they have planted her in the wilderness." But not even so, he says, will she remain, but even the remnant will receive destruction. 14. For fire, he says, will come out from her chosen rods and will devour her. For Ishmael, being of royal stock and envying Gedaliah, while feigning friendship toward him, plots against him in secret and kills most of those with him; and fearing what had happened, he flees; but all the rest, fearing the anger of the Chaldeans, reached Egypt with Jeremiah the prophet. And he made this clear when he said, "And fire will come out from her chosen rods and will devour her. And there will not be in her a rod of strength of a tribe, a scepter to exercise authority; she is become a parable of lamentations, and she will be for a lamentation." And it is clear that he speaks of the things before the return; for at that time she was lamented by her own people, and to strangers she became a proverb of lamentation; for men are accustomed, in the case of those who have fallen into the greatest calamities, to say:

May I not suffer what that man suffered. This, then, he called a "parable of lamentation"; and he added that there is in it neither a rod of strength, nor a tribe, nor a scepter. For she had no ruler, nor any body capable of making a tribe, before the return; for after the return she again received her former splendor. Having foretold these things in this way, he places a short narrative in the middle of the prophecy, and immediately joins the prophecy to the narrative. CHAPTER 20. 1–4. And it came to pass in the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month, that men from among the elders of the house of Israel came to inquire of the Lord, and they sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, speak to the elders of Israel, and you shall say to them: Thus says Adonai the Lord: Are you coming to inquire of me? As I live, if I will answer you, says the Lord. If you will surely avenge them, son of man, if you will surely avenge them. To these words fits very well what was said by our God and Savior: "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of God; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter the kingdom of God." For these men also, living in wickedness and unwilling to be healed by the medicines of repentance, attempted to question the Master, not so that they would certainly do what was commanded, but so that they might learn whether the divine oracles agree with their own thoughts.

Zedekiah also did this many times: having sworn Jeremiah to make plain to him what seemed good to God, once he learned the commands, he did the opposite of them; and those who entered Egypt after the captivity dared to do this same thing. For this reason the God of all does not wish to answer them; for he himself knows, according to the teaching of the holy Gospels, what is in man. Therefore he also enjoins the prophet to despise them and to offer no supplication on their behalf. For this is what he indicated when he said: "If you exact vengeance, exact vengeance, son of man, if you exact vengeance on them"—instead of: Do not concern yourself with them, as though you were their guardian; do not receive their question. 5. And the iniquities, he says, of their fathers make known to them. And you shall say to them: Thus says Adonai the Lord: From the day when I chose the house of Israel, and I was made known to the seed of the house of Jacob, and I was made known to them in the land of Egypt, and I took hold of their hand, saying, I am the Lord your God. In that day I took hold of them with my hand, to lead them out of the land of Egypt into the land which I prepared for them, a land flowing with milk and honey; a honeycomb is it beyond all the land. To these, he says, O prophet, who have come to you, both show my benefactions and recount the transgressions of their fathers; and relate how I appeared in Egypt to their fathers while they were still impious and serving the idols of the Egyptians, and I taught them that I am both God and Master.

And I used these words, desiring to release them from slavery, and to fulfill my promises, and to give them the land I had promised, which is the mother of countless good things and bears all kinds of fruits for its inhabitants; and no one would err who declares it better than the whole earth, and calls it the work of bees; for this is what he indicated when he said: "It is a honeycomb beyond all the earth." Thus he named the honeycombs filled with honey. 7. And he said, it says, to them: Cast away each one the abominations of his eyes, and do not defile yourselves with the practices of Egypt, I am the Lord your God. But I exhorted them, it says, to flee fellowship with the impiety of the Egyptians, and to acknowledge my dominion, having taught them this through signs and wonders; but they were in no way willing to attend to my instructions. And signifying this he added: 8. And they revolted from me, and were not willing to obey me; each one did not cast away the abominations of his eyes, and they did not abandon the practices of Egypt. Then he teaches the justice of his anger. "And I said to pour out my wrath upon them, to accomplish my anger upon them in the midst of Egypt." Then he teaches the philanthropy and the long-suffering by which he governs the nature of men. 9. And I did so, that my name might not at all be profaned before the nations, among whom they are in their midst, before whom I was known to them in their sight, to bring them out of the land of Egypt. I wished, it says, to punish them immediately for their disobedience;

But since they were called my people, I did not exact punishment for them upon their enemies, so that my name might not be profaned at all before the nations among whom they dwelt; so that, he says, their punishment might not become a pretext for blasphemy against me. For I wished through beneficence toward them to change the minds of those others as well. The book of Exodus teaches us these things more clearly. For blessed Moses recounts how all the people attributed the divine words to him as he conveyed them to Pharaoh. Having exercised this longsuffering, then, he says: I brought them out of the land of Egypt. And I brought them out of the land of Egypt. And I led them into the wilderness. And I gave them my statutes, and I made known to them my judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them. And I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and between them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them. Having set them free, he says, from that bitter slavery, as in a kind of wrestling school, in the wilderness I trained them with good and beneficial laws, contriving life for them through their observance of these; for the laws were productive of life. He called them both statutes and judgments. For the statutes are not one thing and the judgments another, but the same things are called by different names. For they are statutes, as written by God and Master, and commanded to be kept; and judgments, not only as written justly and possessing what is just, but also as able to justify the one who fulfills them.

It is necessary to note that of these commandments and statutes which are able to give life to those who keep them, he set apart the Sabbaths. For having said, "I gave them my commandments, and I made known to them my statutes," and having shown the gain from these: "The man who does them shall live in them," then he added: "And I gave them my Sabbaths." And he did not say, "So that keeping them they might live in them," but "So that it might be a sign between me and between them, and that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them." For I legislated the rest of the Sabbaths for them, not as something able to give them life, but so that the distinctiveness of their way of life might separate them from the practices of the nations, and bring my benefits to remembrance. For by the rest from fleshly things, and by attendance upon God and the hearing of the divine oracles, they received the gain, learning from the divine oracles that God is both maker and benefactor. Therefore the rest is not simply life-giving, but attendance upon God. "And I said," he says, "to the house of Israel in the wilderness: Walk in my commandments." And the house of Israel provoked me in the wilderness; they did not walk in my commandments, and they thrust away my statutes, which a man shall do and live in them, and they greatly profaned my Sabbaths. Again here also he made mention of the Sabbaths separately, not joining them to the other statutes; for these are not life-giving as those are, but contain certain distinctive marks of a way of life.

For "You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal," and the rest that are joined to these, the law of nature also taught the other men; but of the keeping of the Sabbath, nature is not the teacher, but the institution of the law. In the other commandments, then, they shared in common with the others, but in the keeping of the Sabbath they seemed to have a certain polity of their own. For none of the other nations observed this rest. Nor did circumcision separate them from the others as the Sabbath did; for all the Idumeans had circumcision, tracing their descent from Esau; and the Ishmaelites likewise, and the Egyptians too, having learned it from the Jews, were zealous to keep it. And God has made this clear through the prophet Jeremiah, saying: "And I will visit upon all the circumcised their foreskin, upon Egypt, and upon Edom," and the rest. But the keeping of the Sabbath the nation of the Jews alone observed. Therefore God said: "I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and between them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them." Having recounted, then, their disobedience that took place in Egypt, and his own long-suffering, he again reminded them of the legislations and exhortations in the wilderness, and of their contradiction and transgression. Then he teaches both the just anger and the ineffable goodness. 14. And I said to pour out my wrath upon them in the wilderness, to consume them utterly. And I acted so that my name should not be profaned at all before the nations, from whom I brought them out before their eyes.

And the divinely inspired Moses teaches these things too, saying that God had said: "And now leave me alone, and being provoked to anger I will wipe them out, and I will make you into a great nation." Then he sets out his own entreaty, and adds at the end: "If you strike them down, Egypt will hear and will say: Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which he promised to their fathers, he destroyed them in the wilderness." This he also indicated here, saying: "And I acted so that my name should not at all be profaned before the nations, from among whom I brought them out before their eyes." Then he recounts more fully that he wished to subject them all to utter destruction in the wilderness, as those who had trampled on the statutes that provide life and had profaned the Sabbaths. And again, after mentioning the Sabbaths apart from these, he adds: 17. And my eye spared them, so as not to blot them out, and I did not make an end of them in the wilderness. For after handing those lawless ones over to various punishments, their children, who were going to be disposed no better than they

He preserved them and brought them into the land promised to their forefathers. 18–20. And he says, I said to their children in the wilderness: Do not walk in the ordinances of your fathers, and do not keep their statutes, and do not mix with their practices. I am the Lord your God; walk in my commandments, and keep my statutes, and do them. And sanctify my Sabbaths, and it shall be a sign between me and you, that you may know that I am the Lord your God. And to their children also, he says, who had been separated from the teaching of their fathers, I exhorted in the wilderness, and advised them to depart from the customs of their fathers, and to acknowledge my dominion, and to follow my commandments, and to fulfill the statutes that were given, and by the keeping of the Sabbaths to make known the distinctiveness of their citizenship, and to be led to the lawgiver through the law; but even these, he says, continued to despise these laws. And making this clear, he added: 21. And they provoked me to anger, even their children; they did not walk in my commandments, and they did not keep my statutes to do them, which a man shall do and live in them, and they profaned my Sabbaths. Then he adds that I wished to exact punishment from these also for their impiety, and to deliver some to captivity and some to slaughter. For this is what he indicated when he said: 23. And I lifted up my hand against them in the wilderness, to scatter them among the nations and to disperse them among the lands.

But so that no harm might come from this to the Egyptians and Canaanites either, this, he says, I did not do, but — 25. And I gave them commandments that were not good, and statutes by which they shall not live in them. Some, then, took these as referring to the worship of idols, understanding "I gave" in place of "I permitted"; but they are clearly far from having grasped the meaning of what was said. For no one of sound mind would call the impious religion of idols "not good," but exceedingly evil. Therefore the fount of wisdom, the lawgiver of piety, the accuser of impiety, did not call the utmost impiety "not good"; for he names it the limit of wickedness. Something else, then, is what the passage hints at. For since, he says, I gave them statutes "which a man shall do and live in them" — and by these words he means the ten words of the law — but they transgressed these and continued trampling them without fear, I bound and fastened them to other commandments, which could provide them no life, but by the guarding of and occupation with these they might cease from the transgression of those necessary laws. And by these he hints at the commandments concerning leprosy, and a dead bone, and a carcass, and one with a discharge, and the other such things, and the frequent sprinklings on account of these, and the sacrifices offered for these; for being wrapped up in the guarding of such things, they could no longer in the same way despise those necessary and beneficial laws. Therefore he did not say that he had given them evil commandments, but "not good.

For neither did it teach wickedness, nor was it in itself productive of virtue, but it frequently compelled them to go to the divine temple and to attend upon God. For the one who believed himself to be defiled ran to purification, and arriving there he received the remembrance of God. And this remembrance banished the impious opinion and persuaded them to keep the divine laws. These things, then, in themselves were not good—for they did not correspond to the divine purpose, but were suited to the weakness of those who were being legislated for—yet though they were not good, nor even necessary, they led to things good and necessary. To these he adds: 20. And I will defile them in their gifts, in their passing through every one that opens the womb, so that I may destroy them, that they may know that I am the Lord. This resembles what was said by God through the blessed David: "And I sent them away according to the devices of their hearts; they shall walk in their own devices." For since I saw that they received no benefit from my counsels, I left them thereafter to follow their own reasonings, no longer enduring to steer them; this he also hinted at here, having said: "I will defile them in their gifts." But Aquila interpreted this more clearly, having said: "And I defiled them in their doctrines," in the passing through of every one that opens the womb; for I permitted them to be defiled by their own practices, in passing their children through the fire and offering the firstborn of their children to the demons, thereafter bringing upon them the punishments they deserved. 27, 28. Therefore speak to the house of Israel, son of man, and you shall say to them:

Thus says Adonai the Lord: Even to this point your fathers provoked me in their transgressions, in which they fell away to me. And I brought them into the land which I lifted up my hand to give to them, and they saw every high hill and every shady tree, and they sacrificed there to their own gods, and they appointed there the fury of their own gifts, and they set there the odor of their own sweet savor, and they poured out there their own libations. They were not satisfied, he says, with the rebellion in Egypt and the lawlessnesses in the wilderness, but even entering into the land promised to them they filled it with great impiety, building altars on all the hills and in the groves, and setting up idols, and offering to them libations and various sacrifices. And the phrase, "They appointed there the fury of their own gifts," is instead of: By those lawless gifts of theirs they stirred up my fury. 29. And I said to them, What is Abama (or, as Symmachus said, what is Bama), that you go in there? And they called its name Bama until this day. This is a place that became notable from the impiety concerning idols. He said to them, therefore, What profit do you receive from there? What benefit will come to you from Bama, that you even made it so notable, as also its name has remained secure until the present? 30, 31. Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says Adonai the Lord: If you are defiled in the lawlessnesses of your fathers, and you go out after their abominations:

And in the firstfruits of your labors, and in your setting apart, when you cause your children to pass through fire, you defile yourselves, and in all your thoughts, even to this day—and shall I answer you, house of Israel? Shall I answer you, and shall this come up upon your spirit? You hope, he says, since the ancestral transgression and the impiety are practiced among you, and all these things which I have recounted are dared by you, to obtain some answer from me. Do not deceive yourselves; for it is impossible for me to answer your questions, when such impiety is dared by you. But I persuade you through events to cast away even such a hope; for this is what he indicated by saying, "And shall this come up upon your spirit?" 32. And it shall not be as you say, "We shall be as the nations, and as the tribes of the earth, to serve wood and stones." Nor indeed shall that end of yours be fulfilled, that, deifying wood and stones just like all the nations, you shall bring to God the honor that is fitting for them. He has again used the customary oath; for according to the blessed Apostle, since he has no one greater by whom to swear, he says: 33. Therefore, as I live, says Adonai the Lord, surely with a strong hand, and with an uplifted arm, and with poured-out wrath, I will reign over you. For no longer, he says, will I use my customary longsuffering, but I will lay bare my kingdom and my authority through chastisement; for by "the strong hand and the uplifted arm" he has indicated both the powerful and the punitive; then he also teaches the manner of the chastisement.

34. And I will bring you out from the peoples, and I will receive you from the countries where you were scattered among them, with a mighty hand, and with an uplifted arm, and with burning wrath. For first, he says, I will set you free from the captivity that now holds you, and I will bring you back to your former land. 35, 36. Then I will bring you out into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will plead with you face to face. Just as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of Egypt, so I will judge you, says Adonai the Lord. He calls the nations a wilderness of the peoples, because they were long ago a wilderness without God; and by this he foretold that, when piety was brought to the nations, these too would depart from the worship of idols, ashamed at the change of the nations that were formerly impious. And the phrase, "I will plead with you face to face," indicates the conviction that comes about through events; for these very events, he says, then all but crying out, convict your disobedient and lawless mind, showing the obedience of the peoples who were formerly deprived. Just as, therefore, when I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness, I handed them over to utter destruction, so also I will bring punishment upon you; and he has made this clearer through what follows, saying: 37, 38. And I will cause you to pass under my rod, and I will bring you into the number of the covenant; and I will choose out from among you the impious and those who have revolted. For the impious and those who have abandoned my legislation I will scatter, using the rod, but those worthy of the number, and who have become guardians of my covenant, I will bring in, and I will deem them worthy of my providence.

By these words he signified both the apostolic choir and those who through them believed the divine proclamation; then, persisting in the threat against the wicked, he adds: "Because I will bring them out from the land of their sojourning, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel; and you shall know that I am the Lord." For, he says, having brought them back from the captivity, I will again scatter among all the nations these very men who practiced impiety. And this received its fulfillment after the cross of our Savior; for the Romans enslaved them and scattered them throughout the inhabited world, and drove them out of their royal city. Thus, having foretold the sorrowful things, the lover of mankind again offers them exhortation and counsel; for he remembers his own promises; and he said that he does not will the death of the lawless one, but rather that he turn back and live. He says, then: 39, 40. And you, house of Israel, thus says Adonai the Lord: Let each man remove his own practices; and after these things, if you will listen to me, and you shall no longer profane my holy name with your gifts and with your practices. For upon my holy mountain, upon the high mountain of Israel, says Adonai the Lord: there shall all the house of Israel serve me to the end upon the land, and there I will receive them, and there I will visit your firstfruits, and the firstfruits of your separations, in all your sanctuaries.

For he says, "If you are willing to be persuaded and cease profaning my holy name (for by being called by my name, yet living lawlessly and offering gifts to idols, you bring upon me the blasphemy of impiety)—you shall return to the land of your fathers and enjoy my customary providence, offering gratefully the firstfruits of the good things you receive, and seeing that I too receive you favorably." 41, 42. For he says, "I will receive you as a sweet savor, when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands in which you were scattered, and I will be sanctified among you in the eyes of the peoples. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I bring you into the land of Israel, into the land which I lifted up my hand to give to your fathers." He has used "I will be sanctified" in place of "I will be glorified"; for all, seeing both my benefactions and your gratitude, will reap great benefit, beholding the weakness of those called gods, and contemplating my power through the beneficence shown toward you. 43. And there you shall remember your ways and all your practices by which you were defiled in them, and you shall strike your faces

in all your evils which you committed. For the knowledge of sin is the beginning of shame; for this reason, when conscience pricks, we are accustomed to strike our foreheads; this is what he indicated here as well. For, he says, having departed from your former lawlessness, and having embraced my service, and obtaining my providence, you will come to a sense of your former impieties, and you will strike your faces, reckoning with how many evils you were defiled. 44. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I have done thus to you, so that my name may not be profaned, not according to your evil ways, nor according to your corrupted practices, O house of Israel, says Adonai the Lord. He says, I will deem you worthy of this care, wishing through the beneficence shown to you to turn all other men as well to the knowledge of me; for neither are you worthy of loving-kindness or forgiveness, having been reared in lawless practices. Having learned, then, how impious it is to profane the divine name, let us flee from attaching blasphemy to the Master. For those who have been deemed worthy of his name, but who conduct themselves unworthily of it, provoke the tongues of the foolish to blasphemy against him. This is what God also said concerning the Jews: "And you profaned my name among the nations, in that it was said of you, These are the people of the Lord, and they have gone out from his land." But we too have received the very name of the Master; for we are named from Christ.

Therefore it is fitting that we all, according to the apostolic ordinance, "whether we eat or drink or do anything, do all to the glory of God, and be blameless toward Jews and Greeks and the Church of God," to whom be the glory unto the ages of ages. Amen. TOME 8. 45, 40. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, set your face toward Thaiman, and look upon Daroum, and prophesy against the forest that leads to Nageb. Thaiman is midday in the Greek tongue, and Daroum signifies the southwest, and Nageb the south; thus Symmachus also interpreted it: "Son of man, set your face toward the south, the way of the southwest, and prophesy concerning the forest of the southern country." Through all these things he hinted at Jerusalem; for Jerusalem lies to the south, and the midday, and the southwest of Babylon. And since it does not lie due south, but inclines a little toward the west, he necessarily added the southwest also, which has such a position. And he called Jerusalem a "forest that leads" because of its barrenness—for such is a forest—and because of the hardness of its mind, for such is the nature of the oak; and besides these, because the trees in a forest are not planted in order, but there is great disorder among them; and moreover because the forest is a dwelling-place of wild beasts. And all these things one would then find in Jerusalem. 47. And you shall say to the forest of Nageb: Hear the word of the Lord. Thus says Adonai the Lord: Behold, I kindle a fire in you, and it shall devour in you every green tree and every dry tree.

The flame that was kindled shall not be quenched. He persisted in the turning. And since he called Jerusalem a forest, fittingly he also names the campaign of the enemies fire, and the burning wood those slain by them; and green wood and dry wood, those flourishing in wealth and those living in poverty. Then he teaches that even the nations situated in between will share in the calamity; for he says: 49. And every face shall be burned in it from the east to the north; and all flesh shall know that I the Lord have kindled them, and it shall not be quenched. But Symmachus again interpreted "from the east" as "from the south." And he teaches that from the land of the Chaldeans as far as Jerusalem he will use the fire of the campaign, and will consume the nations situated in between, so that through the calamity at least all may learn that he himself is master of the inhabited world. 49. And I said: By no means, O Lord Adonai, they themselves say to me, Is not this that is spoken a parable? These things, he says, having been spoken thus, I made known the unbelief of the people to the Master, saying that they suppose the things spoken to be a parable and not the truth; but he, the Master, thereafter commanded me to say more clearly the things spoken parabolically. And he speaks as follows:

CHAPTER 21 1, 2. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Therefore prophesy, son of man, and set your face toward Jerusalem, and look upon their holy places, and prophesy concerning the land of Israel. Since, he says, they suppose that what has been said is merely a parable and not the truth, show them clearly that Nagab, that is, the southern and the south, is this Jerusalem. 3. And you shall say to the land of Israel: Thus says Adonai the Lord: Behold, I am against you, and I will draw my sword from its sheath, and I will destroy out of you the unjust and the lawless. It is clear that he calls punishment a sword; and the sheath, that is, the scabbard of the sword, he names long-suffering, when that ceases, punishment is thereafter brought bare upon the deserving. And showing the justice of the punishment, he has rightly added, "I will destroy out of you the unjust and the lawless." Then he teaches also the things that will befall the other nations situated in the midst at that time. 4. Because, he says, I will destroy out of you the unjust and the lawless, so shall my sword come forth from its sheath, and it shall not turn back any more. For because of the transgressions within you, he says, bringing forth as it were a sword from a scabbard—the campaign of the Chaldeans—I will deliver to the same punishment also those situated in the midst between you and the Chaldeans, and I will cause all to know by experience that I have authority over all, and that I have justly encompassed them with this calamity.

And you, son of man, groan in the breaking of your loins, and you shall groan in pains before their eyes. Let your compassion, he says, accompany the things that are spoken, and teach them by your groaning that the things spoken are true. 7. And it shall be, if they say to you: For what reason do you groan? you shall say: Because of the report, for it is coming, and every heart shall be crushed, and all hands shall be paralyzed, and all flesh and every spirit shall faint, and all thighs shall be defiled with moisture; behold, it is coming, and it shall be, says Adonai the Lord. While you groan, he says, they will necessarily ask, wishing to learn the cause of the suffering; to those who ask, then, answer: Foreseeing the evils that are to come, and the grievous reports, and the fear that from these comes upon all, I groan and lament the calamities of my kinsmen. 8–10. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, prophesy, and you shall say: Thus says Adonai the Lord, Say to the sword: Sword, be sharpened, and be enraged; that you may slaughter victims, be sharpened, that you may become for flashing, ready for paralysis; slaughter, bring to nothing, cast away every tree. Again he calls the punishment a sword figuratively, brought by the Babylonians upon the Jews and the other nations in their midst. And it seems to me that he himself enjoins it to be whetted, and to flash, and to slaughter, and to uproot every tree, teaching that these things will come to pass by his permission, and that each of these is accomplished not by the power of the Babylonian but by his own working.

Such also is what is said in Deuteronomy by God himself: "For I will provoke my sword like lightning, and my hand shall take hold of judgment, and I will execute vengeance, and I will repay justice to my enemies, and to those who hate me I will repay; I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh." For in these things too he called sword and arrows the punitive activity, exacting the deserved penalties from those liable. Then he adds: 11. And he gave it ready to take hold with its hand; it was sharpened, it is a sword ready to be given into the hands of those who pierce through. For this "sword," he says, having become "prepared," he handed over to those fit for punishing; and he signifies the Chaldeans. Such also is what is said by God through Isaiah against the Babylonian, or rather the Assyrian: "Shall the axe be glorified without the one who cuts with it? Or shall the saw be exalted without the one who draws it? Likewise if anyone takes up a rod, or a piece of wood." And again, "Woe to the Assyrians, the rod of my wrath and of my anger is in their hands." The rod, then, that is corrective, and the axe, and the saw, instruments destructive of plants, he called there; here he named a sword, sharpened and polished by the punishment of those being chastised, handed over as it were to certain executioners, the Babylonians. And this punishment he also called fire above, wishing by the many appellations to terrify and to bring to repentance those who were consumed by impiety. To these he adds: 12.

Cry out and wail, son of man, because it has come upon the people, this has come upon all the leaders of Israel; those who sojourn with me have become a sword with my people. What is comparable to this goodness? He punishes justly, and he commands the prophet to lament; for he does not punish willingly, but is compelled by the lawlessness of the people. And he urges the prophet to marvel in a manner like a woman, because not only the people but also their rulers were handed over to the sword, and—the most grievous of all—"Those who sojourn with me," he says, "have become a sword with my people." For the priests, having shared in the lawlessness of the people, shared also in the punishment. For he called these "those who sojourn," both as dwelling within the divine temple and as entrusted with the priestly services. 13. Therefore strike your hand, because it has been justified, and what if even a tribe be thrust away? It shall not be, says Adonai the Lord. By the striking of the hands, he says, signify the excess of the calamity, and marvel at the justice of the punishment. For not even a small benefit will come to those left behind through the punishment; for this will be established as the beginning of its justice; for even if now the tribe separated from the other nations be thrust away (and by this he signifies the whole Jewish people), yet it shall be again, and shall obtain a recall; for it is sufficient for the confirmation of what is said that the Master and Lord himself says these things. 14. And you, son of man, prophesy and strike hand upon hand, and double the sword—the third sword is of the wounded, the great sword of the wounded.

He calls the third sword the campaign against Jerusalem that took place in the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign; but in number it is the fourth, since the one against Jehoiachin came about without bloodshed (for the king went out of his own accord to Nebuchadnezzar with his mother, his wife, and his officials, and so was led away captive to Babylon). With good reason he calls the one that took place under Zedekiah the third sword, counting the engagements and the set battles, not simply the incursions. Therefore he also says: "The third sword is the great sword of the slain." Then he teaches why he urges him to clap his hands. 15. And I will terrify them, so that their heart may be broken, and those who are sick may be multiplied at every gate of theirs; they are handed over to the slaughter of the sword. Do, he says, and say the things that are able to terrify them, so that their hearts may be broken—that is, so that the resistance of their heart may be softened and, as it were, crushed by the foretelling of grievous things. It is enough to terrify them, that they will be handed over to slaughter, and that all their gates will be filled with those who are slain. Then, with a certain personification, he signifies the concession that came from him. Well done: it has become sharp for slaughter, it has become ready for flashing, passing through like lightning. (10.) Sharpen yourself on the right and on the left, wherever your face is roused. He says the sword is double-edged, sharpened on both sides; well

Very sharp, sending forth flashes like lightning. Therefore he says, "Separate to whichever part you wish, whether the right or the left; for you will have me also working with you." For he indicated this by adding: 17. And I also will strike my hand against my hand, and I will bring on my wrath, I the Lord have spoken. For this reason also the blessed Jeremiah said: "I know, O Lord, that a man's way is not in himself, nor shall a man walk and direct his own way," teaching that none of such things happens without the activity or permission from above: he works what is fitting, but permits other things in another manner of providence, yielding to the free will of men, and in this way exacting penalties for sins. 18–20. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: And you, son of man, appoint for yourself two ways, for the sword of the king of Babylon to enter; from one land the two rulers shall go forth; prepare a hand piercing at the beginning of the way of each city. Piercing at the beginning of the way you shall appoint, for the sword to enter against Rabbah of the sons of Ammon, and against Judah in Jerusalem. As in a picture, he says, draw one road divided in two, the one leading straight toward Jerusalem, the other stretching out to Rabbah of the sons of Ammon; for since Nebuchadnezzar, setting out from Babylon, campaigned both against Judea and against the Ammonites, God foretells these things through the prophet. And he said "Rabbah of the sons of Ammon" because there is also another of the same name, that of Amman.

Some say that this is the Ammon of the Arabs, now called Philadelphia in Arabia, which to this day is called Ammon in the local tongue. To these he adds: 21. Therefore the king of Babylon will stand at the ancient road, at the head of the two roads, to divine a divination, to make the rods burn, and to inquire among the graven images, and to inspect the liver. For having reached the road that divides in two, he says, of which one leads to Judea and the other to Rabbath, he will use the divination through the rods, and likewise the inspection of the entrails of the slaughtered victims, wishing to learn where he must march first. And while these things, he says, are being done by him: 22. From his right hand came the divination against Jerusalem, to cast up a rampart, and to open the mouth with a shout, and to raise the voice with the cry of a trumpet, to set ramparts against its gates, and to cast up a mound, and to build siege towers. But it is fitting to know that the demons know nothing of things to come; but guessing at events, they attempt to foretell; and sometimes they are right on target, but often they also miss the mark. And this can be seen not only from events, but one can also be taught it from the divine Scripture. For having spoken through Zedekiah the false prophet of victory for Ahab, they fell away from the truth; for he was not only defeated in battle, but also killed. And here also, knowing the law given to Israel, and seeing the constitution of life outside these ordinances, and moreover hearing the prophetic utterances, they were taught from every side the divine indignation.

These things, then, they foretold also through their divinations to the impious king, that he must first march against Jerusalem, and employ palisades and siege-mounds and all the other engines of war. But while these things, he says, are being done by him, those who are besieged despise them, not because they trust in virtue, but because they are sick with insensibility. And teaching this he said: 23. And he himself divining a divination before them, making weeks for them. Thus, he says, are they disposed, as though the divinations signified good things for them; for he hinted at this through "before them," that is, as though the divinations had been made on their behalf, and as though celebrating a week of weeks they thus pass their time; and this was one of the three greatest feasts; but the events, he says, will not follow their opinions. "For he himself, he says, remembering their injustice, that they be taken captive." For the memory of their transgression will be the cause of their capture. 24. Therefore, thus says Adonai the Lord, Because you have remembered your injustices, in that your impieties were revealed, so that your sins were seen in all your lawless deeds, and in all your practices, because you have remembered in these things, you shall be taken captive in them. You, he says, have become the cause both of the enemies' boldness and of the demons' truth; for the wickedness of your practices, and the excess of your impiety, stripped you of my grace, and made you to come under the enemies, who, making their assaults against you through divination, see the events following the divinations.

Since, therefore, you also became the agents of their truth, you will justly be captured and handed over to punishment. From here he turns to the rulers, both the king and the priests, and says: 25, 26. And you, profane, lawless one, leader of Israel, whose day has come in the time of iniquity, an end: thus says Adonai the Lord: Remove the turban, and take off the crown; this shall not be such. You, he says, the priest, because of your transgression have been stripped of the priestly turban; and you, the king, having lived with impiety, have deprived yourself of the crown. Let each leadership, then, put aside its own symbols; for this, he says, is a siege unlike the former ones; for the kingdom among you has reached its end. And teaching the cause: "You have brought low, he says, the high, and raised the low by injustice." For having used injustice as a collaborator, you have brought low the high through virtue, and raised the low through injustice by your words, corrupting what is just. Therefore he says: 27. Injustice, injustice I will make it. For this reason, he says, I will exact punishment from you for this injustice. Then he adds: "Nor shall this be such until he comes to whom it belongs, and I will deliver it to him." For this, he says, is harsher than the former sieges; yet, he says, I will not completely extinguish the spark of the royal lineage, until he comes to whom it belongs and to whom it is fitting, and to him I will deliver the kingdom. This also the blessed Paul says: "Until the seed comes to whom it was promised, ordained through angels by the hand of a Mediator." And Jacob the patriarch, blessing Judah, said:

The ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes to whom it is reserved, and he is the expectation of the nations.” And here, therefore, he hinted at the kingdom of the Master Christ, having said: “Nor shall this be such as it was, until he comes to whom it is fitting, and I will deliver it to him.” For even if Jerusalem endured siege and destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, yet not such as it endured by the Romans after the saving cross. For after the former capture, when seventy years had passed, it was rebuilt again and received its former prosperity; but after the saving cross it endured final desolation; and the Jews themselves do not even dare to set foot on those borders, being forbidden by law. Therefore he said: “Nor shall this be such as it was,” that is, as the one that was to come; for I will preserve the race, “until he comes to whom it is fitting, and I will deliver it to him.” For when, he says, that one appears to whom the promises point, then, having delivered the kingdom to him, I will give these over to utter destruction. From here he turns the prophecy against the Ammonites; for being hatefully disposed toward the Jews, they rejoiced in their calamities. 28, 29. And you, son of man, prophesy, and you shall say: Thus says Adonai the Lord to the sons of Ammon, and to their reproach; and you shall say: Sword, sword drawn for slaughter, and drawn for consummation; arise, that you may gleam in your vain vision, and in prophesying falsely. But it was not the sword that prophesied, but those who used it. And he called the divination and the vision false, as being alien to the truth.

For even if he was then foretelling the truth, yet when the divine prophets were proclaiming the divine declaration in advance, he seemed to foretell what he had heard from them. For the accursed demons, living in wickedness, conveyed to Nabuchodonosor through their oracles the things from the prophets, but to the Jews through the false prophets they proclaimed the opposite, promising them peace and the flight of their enemies, so that by disobeying God and contradicting him and being stripped of his customary providence, they might be handed over by justice to their enemies, and their oracles might be shown to be true. Thus, having commanded the sword to be laid upon the necks of those who had lived lawlessly and unlawfully, as if their limit and end had come, he exhorts them, saying: 30. Turn back to your sheath; do not destroy in this place where you were born; in your own land I will judge you. But you, he says, O Babylonians, whom I call a sword, having done these things which I commanded, I will not exact here, but in your own land, the penalties for your impiety. 31. And I will pour out my wrath upon you; in the fire of my wrath I will blow upon you. By these words he made clear the ease of the divine power. For just as, he says, to blow is easy, so it is easy and very effortless to hand you over to every kind of punishment. And I will deliver you into the hands of barbarian men who devise destruction. (32.) You shall be food in the fire; your blood shall be in the midst of your land; there shall be no remembrance of you, because I the Lord have spoken.

By these words he hinted at the revolt of the Medes and Persians against Babylon, who brought every kind of siege engine against its walls, and having got inside the city by night during a festival, they subdued the whole city, burned most of it, and filled both the houses and all the streets with blood. CHAPTER 22:1–3. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Do you judge the city of bloods? And will you show her all her lawless deeds? And you shall say, Thus says Adonai the Lord. He turned the discourse again to Jerusalem, and he charges the prophet, in the manner of a judge, to convict the things unlawfully dared by her; and he calls her a city of bloods, as one that had wrought many unjust slaughters; for which reason he again names the same titles, and cries out saying: O city that sheds blood in the midst of herself, that her time may come, and that devises thoughts against herself, to defile herself. You, he says, draw disasters upon yourself, O city, employing evil reasonings and bringing them into action, and through these raging and being filled with unjust bloods; and he called the disaster a time. 4. In your bloods which you have shed, you have fallen, and in your thoughts which you have made you were defiled, and you have brought near your days, and have brought the time of your years. For the greater the lawlessness becomes, the more it cuts short the appointed term measured out by divine longsuffering; this can be seen to have happened also in the case of Noah.

For having given the men of that time a term of one hundred and twenty years for repentance, when he saw their impiety increasing he cut short the term, and in the hundredth year he brought on the punishment through the flood. This he hinted at here also, saying: "And you have brought near your days, and you have brought the time of your years." Then he recounts the fruits of their lawlessness. Therefore I have given you as a reproach to the nations, and as a mockery to all the lands that are near you and to those far from you. For this reason, he says, I will make you a laughingstock and a derision to all your neighbors and those of neighboring lands, and not only to them but also to those who dwell far off. "And they shall mock you, and they shall cry out against you, 'The famous one is unclean, and great in your lawless deeds.'" For rejoicing in your evils, they will call you unclean and lawless and notable in wickedness. Then he enumerates the kinds of wickedness. Behold, the princes of the house of Israel, each one toward his own kinsmen

They mingled in you so as to shed blood. He began the accusation with the rulers, since the subjects follow the rulers; for when the head is in a bad state, the body must necessarily share in the sickness. He says, then, that they abstained from none of their kin, but even confounded the rights of kinship, working unjust slaughters. But also, "Father and mother," he says, "they reviled in you." And this too was one of the things forbidden by the law. "And toward the proselyte," he says, "they behaved with injustice, in you." And the law had forbidden this also, saying thus: "And you shall not mistreat a proselyte, because you were proselytes in the land of Egypt." From what you suffered, he says, learn kindness to strangers; but they transgressed this law too without fear. Then also another: "They oppressed the orphan and the widow in you." But the good God legislates the very opposite: "Judge," he says, "the orphan, and do justice to the widow." And in the law: "You shall not glean your vineyard a second time," he says, "and it shall be for the orphan, and the widow, and the proselyte." But these not only did not share any good with them, but even treated them badly. And worse than these: "And they despised my holy things, and they profaned my sabbaths in you." For they trampled, he says, my laws, and the day honored with idleness they insulted with lawless work. And more impious than these: "Men who were robbers were in you, so as to shed blood; on the mountains they ate in you.

For those who lived with lawlessness, being murderers and blood-stained, and those who honored demons on the mountains, and those who reveled in idolatrous precincts, you had dwelling among you. And they did, he says, unholy things in your midst. Then he relates each of these. 10. And they uncovered their father's shame in you, and they humbled in you her who was set apart in uncleannesses. They consorted, he says, with stepmothers; for this he called the uncovering of a father's shame; for so he also named it in the Law. For he says, You shall not uncover the shame of your father's wife, for it is your father's shame. For being, he says, most lewd and exceedingly intemperate, they did not even abstain from women who endured the affliction of the flow; which is not only unlawful but also exceedingly unclean. Then he persists in accusing them of lewdness. 11. Each one committed lawlessness with his neighbor's wife, and each one defiled his own bride in impiety. And this is an intensification of lawlessness; for it is not the same to mingle with another's wife and to plot against the marriage of one's own child; but by as much as adultery is harsher than fornication, by so much is union with a bride more impious than adultery. And each one humbled in you his sister, his father's daughter. And here too he clearly showed the excess of the abomination, indicating the offspring of one father, the man and the woman; from here he proceeds to the accusation of greed. 12. They took gifts in you, so as to shed blood. They continued, he says, selling justice, and for money they betrayed innocent slaughters.

Then finally he adds, as it were, a kind of capstone to the evils: "Usury and increase they took within you." And even if it was not placed last as being the more grievous, but was nevertheless set down among the things already said, it was sufficient to terrify those who practice it, and to persuade them to flee from this form of insatiability, as being yoked together with the utterly impious and lawless; for it was numbered with murderers and idolaters, and with the most licentious and the most dissolute. Having thus recounted the forms of wickedness, he then teaches also the punishment that is to come: "And I will bring to an end the end of your wickedness," upon those in oppression; "but you forgot me, says Adonai the Lord." (13, 14.) Behold, therefore, I will strike my hand against my hand for the things you have completed, and for the things you have done, and for your bloodshed that has come to be in your midst. Will your heart endure, or will your hands be strong, in the days when I act in you? In a lordly and judicial manner he says that he strikes his hands, indicating his wrath; for since, he says, you forgot me, and not even the benefits

of mine, nor were you willing to take remembrance of the laws, I will bring upon you, he says, such terrible things that your hands will be dissolved, and your heart, filled with all manner of confusion, will despair of salvation. Then [comes] the truthfulness of what has been said: "I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it." The dignity of the one who has spoken, he says, confirms what has been said; for it is enough for you, having learned who it is that has uttered it, to believe what has been said. 15. And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will disperse you in the lands. Then the benefit that follows from this. And your uncleanness shall fail from you; (10.) And I will take possession among you in the eyes of the nations, because I am the Lord. For when, he says, you become captives and sojourners, then by experience you will be taught to be of sound mind, and having ceased from your former lawlessness, you will learn that I am your God and Lord, and you shall be called my inheritance, and the nations among whom you sojourn shall learn through you my worth and power. 17, 18. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, behold, the house of Israel has become to me all mixed with bronze, and tin, and iron, and lead, mixed in the midst of a furnace of silver. This people, he says, O prophet, resembles silver that is debased and has a great admixture of bronze, and iron, and tin, and lead. And God says this also through Jeremiah the prophet: "Call them rejected silver, because the Lord God has rejected them;" and through the materials mentioned he has indicated the manifold forms of wickedness; and this again it is possible to learn through Jeremiah the prophet:

For making this accusation against the Jews, he said himself: "The blower has failed from the fire, the lead has failed, the silversmith smelts in vain; their wickednesses have not been melted." Therefore he added: "Call them rejected silver, because the Lord God has rejected them." He called the divine operation a blower; and fire, now the corrective and purifying word, now the punishment through deeds. Through both the divine power works. And again he named the prophetic teaching a silversmith, and lead the punishment; for lead is cast into silver being melted, so that it might consume the base metal in it, and punishment is brought upon the worthy, so that they may appear pure from sin. This he threatens to do here as well. 19–22. Therefore say: Thus says Adonai the Lord: Because you have all become one mixture, therefore behold, I will receive you in the midst of Jerusalem. Just as silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin are received in the midst of a furnace, to blow fire into it so as to melt it, so I will receive you in my anger and in my wrath, and I will bring you in and set upon you; and I will melt you, and I will blow upon you with the fire of my anger, and you shall be melted in the midst of it. In the manner that silver is melted in the midst of a furnace, so you shall be melted in the midst of it, and you shall know that I the Lord have poured out my wrath upon you.

Since, he says, you have received the admixture of wickedness, and, resembling unrefined silver, you have been shown to be counterfeit through your manifold wickedness, I will set Jerusalem as a crucible for you, and I will cast in the enemies like coals; and I will stir up my own working and will, like some bellows, and I will smelt you together at once, so that those who are incurably sick I may consume like the other materials, but those who admit of healing I may make manifest like silver that has been purified. 23, 24. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, say to her: You are a land not rained upon, nor did rain come upon you in the day of wrath. And laid waste by war, and receiving neither rain nor plow—and yet he was bringing to her the rain of teaching through the holy prophets; but since they did not receive it, but thrust it away, like some rock that gives no entrance to the downpour of rain, with good reason he called her a land not rained upon. Then again he accuses the rulers. 25. Whose leaders

in the midst of her, like roaring lions, snatching plunder, devouring souls in their dominion, taking wealth and honors, they multiplied her widows in the midst of her. For when the men were being slain, it is clear that widowhood was gaining ground; from this he transfers the accusatory word to the priests. 20. And her priests have set aside my law. This is the greatest transgression; for those who ought to have led others by the hand, these continued to be blind. "And they profaned my holy things." They performed the services, he says, unlawfully; then he sets out the forms of the transgression. "They did not distinguish between holy and profane, and between clean and unclean." They did not discern, he says, and did not teach what is holy and divine, and what is profane and human; for here he does not call profane that which is accursed, but that which is common and separated from divine things. Clean and unclean, the things separated according to the law, and again the things forbidden according to the law, not only concerning foods and sacrifices, but also concerning garments, and the other things that happen both according to intention and against intention—fluxes and a woman in her separation, and the touch of leprosy, and the touch of a corpse, and of a carcass, and of a beast killed by wild animals, and all the other things that the law prescribes.

To these things he adds, "And from my sabbaths they covered their eyes, and they profaned me in their midst." For seeing the day of the sabbaths openly outraged, and unlawful work being accomplished on the day of rest, they were unwilling to reprove those who dared to transgress the law, but as it were closing their eyes, they did not seem to see what they continually saw. Again, returning to the rulers, he says: 27. Her rulers in her midst, like wolves snatching plunder, to shed blood, to destroy souls, so that by covetousness they might covet. They made, he says, an occasion of gain—those who obtained rule—from unjust slaughters, and those who ought to have been champions of the wronged became partakers with the wrongdoers. From here he passes to the prophets, saying: 28. And her prophets anointing them. This he also said above, that the wall badly built by the people was worse anointed by the false prophets; teaching: they were confirming, he says, the so-called prophets, the things badly done by the rulers, employing flattering words, and taught to court the authorities. Then he teaches their punishment: "They shall fall seeing vain things, divining falsehood, saying, Thus says Adonai the Lord, and the Lord has not spoken." For imitating the true prophets, they attached their own false oracles to the person of God, and hung falsehood upon the fountain of truth. And these things, he says, they spoke: 29.

They oppress the people of the land with injustice, and plunder plunderings, tyrannizing over the poor and needy, and not dealing with the stranger with judgment. By falsehood, he says, they occupied themselves, and they prophesied for favor with the rulers, wishing to obtain license against the poor, and making falsehood a source of gain. 30. And they sought from among them a man walking rightly, and standing in the breach of the wall before my face in the time of the land, so as not to destroy it utterly, and they did not find one. These things he also teaches through Jeremiah, saying: "Pass through the ways of Jerusalem, and see, and seek in her broad places, if you find one man doing judgment, and seeking faith, and I will be propitious to her." And here, then, he says that from the rulers and from the priests, and from all the others, they sought at least one man able to stand in the breach of the wall—that is, able to check the punishments being brought on by righteousness, and able to block up and wall off the breach that had arisen from lawlessness and the passage of punishment—and they did not find one. Therefore he says: 31. I poured out my wrath upon her in the fire of my anger, to consume them. And showing the justice of the punishment, he added: Their ways into

I have given their heads, says Adonai the Lord. For, he says, having walked wickedly and lawlessly, they found the end of their own path to follow. From this one can learn not only the excess of divine goodness but also the impiety of the Jews. For in the case of Sodom he promised that if he found five righteous men, he would keep the whole city untouched by punishment; but here, having sought one, he did not find him. Therefore he handed it over to its enemies and made it desolate. It is fitting, then, for us, knowing that divine mercy is yoked with judgment—"For mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord," he says—not to persist in the practices of sin, nor to despise the longsuffering of God, nor to treasure up for ourselves wrath on the day of wrath and revelation and of the righteous judgment of God, who will repay each one according to his works; to him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. TOME 9. CHAPTER 23. 1–3. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, there were two women, daughters of one mother. And they played the harlot in Egypt. In the passages already interpreted, he called the whole people one harlot; for at the beginning the people was also one. But since the division occurred in the time of Rehoboam, and some were called Ephraim and Israel, and others Judah, he reasonably uses the parabolic and figurative form according to the division. And he calls them from their mother-cities—the ten tribes from Samaria, and Judah and Benjamin from Jerusalem.

He says they are of one mother, not only because of the one root of the race, but also because in their impiety they had one mother, Egypt; for even above he figuratively called their mother a Hittite and named their father an Amorite. These, then, he says, played the harlot in Egypt; then he also makes clear the time. "In their youth they played the harlot; there their breasts fell, and there they were deflowered." For their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, shone in piety, and the sons of Jacob remained uninitiated in idolatry; but those sprung from them learned impiety from their sojourn in Egypt. He calls their youth the beginning of their increase into a multitude, and corruption and the falling of the breasts the learning of impious doctrines. For just as slackness follows the removal of virginity from the breasts, so upon apostasy from God follows the downfall of the governing principle within us; for the breasts are, as it were, its coverings and defenses. Then, since he has figuratively called them women, he also gives them the names of certain Egyptian women who were notable in licentiousness, and he says: "And their names: Oholah the elder, and Oholibah her sister, the younger." Having spoken the former things enigmatically, he brought the account to greater clarity, and he mentioned those harlot women, increasing the accusation, wishing to instill in them a perception of their impiety through the example. Then he recounts the beneficence that came to them from him.

And they became mine, and they bore sons and daughters, and their names were Samaria, Oolla, and Jerusalem, Ooliba. He calls "joining" and "fellowship" the agreement that had come to them through the law; for he gave the law, and they agreed to keep the legislation. And the phrase "they bore me sons and daughters" makes clear that, being under the law, they for a time reared their children in piety. Up to this point, then, he made a common accusation against both; but from here on, once the division of the tribes had taken place, he makes the first accusation of Samaria, which he named Oolla; for she was the first to fall into the impiety of the calves, when the kingdom was divided in two. 5. And Oolla, he says, played the harlot away from me, and set her desire upon her lovers. He has used the name of "lovers" as of a woman; and he hints at and indicates the demons, whom she served continually. Then he also teaches the forms of the impiety. And the Assyrians, he says, who drew near to her, (6, 7.) clothed in hyacinth, rulers and generals, all chosen young men, riding on horses. And she gave her harlotry to them, to all the chosen sons of the Assyrians, upon all whom she set her desire; in all her devices she was defiled. He says enigmatically "chosen young men clothed in hyacinth," meaning the idols written and fashioned by them in this way; for all the impious of old were accustomed to put upon their own gods the forms of civil dress that prevailed among them.

For Greeks and Romans arm Ares according to their own peculiar fashion of equipment; Persians according to theirs; and Indians in one way and Ethiopians in another, and likewise each of the nations that are named. Nevertheless he teaches also that they themselves were the first to call the Assyrians to their aid, having despised the alliance of God; for having summoned Phul—and he was king of the Assyrians—to their assistance against the Syrians, they promised to bring him tribute and tax; from that point on, the intermingling introduced impiety. Then he adds: 8. And she did not abandon her fornication from Egypt, because they lay with her in her youth, and they themselves deflowered her and poured out their fornication upon her. Having been joined, he says, to the Assyrians and having absorbed their superstition, she did not neglect the Egyptian teachings either, but continued to guard those as well with great diligence. Having thus recounted the forms of impiety, he also indicates the justice of the punishment. 9. Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands of the sons of the Assyrians against whom she was setting herself. For since she did not endure my laws, but being devoted to me desired others, I stripped her of my providence and delivered her to those whom she had preferred to my fellowship. 10. They, he says, uncovered her shame, they took their sons and daughters, and they killed her with the sword, and she became a byword among women, and they executed vengeance upon her against her daughters.

Thus, he says, having been set forth beforehand by me through experience, she learned what my fellowship is and what the wickedness of her lovers is. For immediately seizing her as subject, first by her punishment they stripped her fornication bare, and then very cruelly and pitilessly they slaughtered her; and her sons and her daughters they led away captive, and every city talks of what happened to her. For again he called the cities women figuratively. Nor did they show this cruelty only to her, but also to her daughters—he means the subject cities and villages. And these things the ten tribes endured: first under Tiglath-Pileser, then under Shalmaneser; these are kings of the Assyrians. Having thus narrated the events concerning Samaria, he transfers the discourse to Jerusalem, and says: 11, 12. And her sister Oholibah saw it, and corrupted her own design beyond her (Aquila interpreted the design as desire), and multiplied her fornication beyond the fornication of her sister. She set her desire upon the sons of the Assyrians, rulers and commanders near her, and clothed in fine garments, horsemen riding on horses, all of them chosen young men. These same things, he says, Jerusalem also did to Samaria; and in like manner, having trampled on the covenants made with me, she preferred the gods of the Syrians; for trusting in their alliance, and despising my help. For through the rulers and commanders he hinted at the alliance that came to them. 13. And I saw, he says, that one way of the two is defiled. Their practices, he says, are similar and comparable.

14–15. And she added to her prostitution, and she saw men painted on the wall, images of the Chaldeans painted in colors with a pen. Girded with embroideries on their loins, and dyed tiaras on their heads; the appearance of all three was like the sons of Babylon, Chaldeans of their native land. And she set her eyes upon them in the sight of her eyes. Rightly and very fittingly did he mock the impotence of idols, teaching that they are nothing other than colors, and shapes, and products of art. And the phrase "the appearance of all three" signifies their multiformity; but Symmachus translated it as "the appearance of all spoilers." These, he says, having seen, and seeing nothing other than the semblances of the painter's art, she fell in love with intercourse with them; and everywhere he hints at idolatry. And she sent messengers, he says, to them into the land of the Chaldeans. 17. And the sons of Babylon came to her, to the bed of those who lie down, and they defiled her in their prostitution; and she was defiled among them, and her soul departed from them. For she, he says, having summoned them to her aid, and having received impiety through her intercourse with them, again departed from them; and he speaks here of a departure not from the demons, but from the Babylonians themselves; for Jehoiakim, and Jeconiah, and Zedekiah transgressed the covenants that had been made with the Babylonians. 18. And she uncovered her prostitution, and she uncovered her shame, and my soul departed from her, in the manner that my soul departed from her sister.

Having seen, he says, the excess of her impiety, I stripped her of my providence; for again, in the manner of the allegory, he has set down the soul; not because the Divine is divided into soul and body—for it is incorporeal and uncompounded—but he conducts the discourse in a human way and in accordance with human customs, condescending to the weakness of men. Up to this point, then, he seemed to be addressing the prophet; but from here on, as if he had come to remembrance through the narration of the things she dared to do, he transfers the discourse to her. 19. And you multiplied, he says, your prostitution, to call to mind the days of your youth, in which you played the harlot in Egypt. You had, he says, consigned to forgetfulness your transgressions in Egypt; but you have caused the memory of them to blossom again through your second pursuits. For often the very sameness of lawlessness is wont to remind one of former sins. Then again, allegorically and figuratively, he brings the accusation of idolatry. 20, 21. And you set yourself upon the Chaldeans, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose members are as the members of horses. And you visited the lawlessness of your youth, which you did in Egypt in your lodging, where the breasts of your youth fell. Being mingled, he says, with the Chaldeans, you did not neglect the Egyptian pursuits either; but you served both their gods and those of the Egyptians. And their great atheism and polytheism he likened to the members of horses and asses, since he also calls idolatry prostitution.

For souls that are joined to God and devoted to him, and then abandon him and embrace fellowship with demons, are justly called adulteresses. 22–24. Therefore thus says Adonai the Lord: Behold, I will stir up your lovers against you, from whom your soul has departed, and I will bring them against you from every side. The sons of Babylon, and all the Chaldeans, Pekod, and Shoa, and Koa, and all the sons of the Assyrians with them, chosen young men, rulers and commanders; all captains and men of renown, riding on horses. And they shall come against you from the north, all of them, with weapons and chariots and wheels and a multitude of peoples; and they shall put on breastplates and shields and helmets against you, and they shall set a guard against you round about. By these things, he says, you shall learn from the events themselves who I am, and who your lovers are; for I, though despised by you, continued long-suffering; but these, as soon as they learn of your revolt, will come with every kind of full armor, employing horses and chariots, and bringing with them all their subjects, and with palisades they will wall off your entrances. For this is what he indicated by saying, "They shall set a guard against you round about." Then he adds: And I will give judgment before their face, and they shall execute vengeance on you in their judgments. (25.) And I will put my zeal in you, and they shall deal with you in the anger of my fury. For since you preferred them to my providence, through those very men I will exact from you the penalty for your lawlessness against me, and I will deliver you over to their punishments. And he recounts also the kinds of the punishment.

They will remove your nostrils and your ears, and they will strike down your remnants with the sword; they themselves will take your sons and your daughters, and fire will devour your remnants. (20) And they will strip you of your garment, and they will take the vessels of your boasting. For some, he says, they will carry off as captives of war, others they will pierce through in battle array, and others they will mutilate at the extremities, treating them with cruelty and savagery; and all that belongs to you they will plunder, and most of your possessions they will hand over to fire. He also shows the benefit that will come from the punishment. 27. And I will turn away your impieties from you, and you shall no longer remember your fornication from the land of Egypt. For when you have come into those evils, you will come to perceive your own lawlessness, and you will utterly loathe those things that became the cause of this calamity for you. 28–29. For thus says Adonai the Lord: Behold, I deliver you into the hands of those whom you hate, from whom your soul has turned away. 29. And they will deal with you in hatred, and they will take all your labors and your toils, and you shall be naked and shameful; and the shame of your fornication and of your impiety shall be uncovered. Having fallen in love, he says, with the Chaldeans, you again hated them, but I will deliver you to them, and through them I will exact from you the penalties of punishment, and through the punishment I will expose all your impiety naked; for those who behold your calamities will learn that the cause of these things was your own lawlessness. Therefore he fittingly added: 30. Your fornication.

He did these things to you when you went after the nations and defiled yourself with their thoughts. You followed, he says, the practices of the nations, which, employing their own reasonings, devised impiety. And not only, he says, did you imitate the impiety of the other nations, but also: (31) You walked in the way of your sister, and I will give her cup into your hands. What Samaria suffered, he says, you too will suffer; for he called punishment a cup, as it produces stupor and drunkenness in those who drink it. (32–34) Thus says Adonai the Lord: You shall drink the cup of your sister, deep and wide, and what overflows shall become a laughingstock and a mockery. To complete drunkenness, you shall be filled with faintness, a cup of disappearance and annihilation, the cup of your sister Samaria. And you shall drink it and drain it dry, and you shall gnaw its potsherds, and you shall tear your breasts. He called the cup deep because of the magnitude of the calamity, and wide because of the period of seventy years; and he named it a cup of annihilation because of the desolation that came upon the city. And he added "you shall drain it dry" because it endured the siege last, and he said that it would gnaw the potsherds because it would fall into the worst evils; and to tear the breasts because of the repentance that came from the evils. And your feasts, he says, and your new moons I will turn away, because I have spoken, says Adonai the Lord. Every assembly of yours and every delight I will extinguish, and I will set the end to my words; for I am a true and unlying Master. (35)

Therefore thus says Adonai the Lord: Because you forgot me and cast me behind your body, you also bear your ungodliness and your fornication. Since you preferred the pleasures of the body to my service, receive, he says, the wages of your licentiousness. By these words he hints that lawlessness became the foundation of ungodliness; for those enslaved to pleasures were rolled down into the worship of idols. 30. And the Lord said to me, Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah, and will you declare to them their lawless deeds? Because they committed adultery, and blood was on their hands, and in their thoughts they committed adultery, and their children, whom they bore to me, they passed through fire for them. The phrase "will you judge?" the other interpreters rendered as "be judged"; taking up my person, he says, O prophet, make the judgment against Samaria and Jerusalem, and convict them of their lawless deeds: how they abandoned me and mingled with idols; and how the children I provided them they offered as sacrifice to those idols, despising my laws and profaning my Sabbaths. For this he added: 39. Even until these things they did to me, they defiled my holy things on that day, and they profaned my Sabbaths. Then he teaches the manner of the profanation. 39. And when they slaughtered their children to their idols, and when they entered into my holy things on that day, they profaned them. Great indeed is the excess of their ungodliness. For first of all, their slaughtering of the children is the utmost limit of ungodliness.

But to offer such sacrifices even to demons is a further intensification of the evil; and to dare these things even on the Sabbath, on which even necessary work was forbidden, shows the impiety to be far greater; and to enter the divine porches even after such a deed—what excess of impiety does it leave behind? Therefore he has placed this last, and has added again: "And behold, thus they did in the midst of my house." This impiety, he says, they dared in the consecrated house. 40. And they sent to the men who came from afar; to whom they dispatched messengers, and as soon as they came you bathed, and you painted your eyes, and you adorned yourself with ornament. And you sat upon a spread couch, and a table adorned before it. He has described all that was said as of a harlot woman; but it signifies both the alliance that was made with the Assyrians and Chaldeans and the impiety introduced from there. It also indicates the adornments, luxuries, and changes of garments at the festivals of the demons, and all the other things they were accustomed to do at such assemblies. This is what the following also signifies: "And my incense and my oil you set before them." That is, before the idols. 42. And they rejoiced in them. For the joy of demons is the destruction of men. Moreover he says: "And they struck up the sound of harmony to men who came from a multitude of drunken men from the wilderness." For what is more desolate than those who worship idols?