Commentarium In Oseam

Verse 2. — And lest perhaps they say in their hearts, I have remembered all their malice. This verse has been inserted by way of commending modesty. Otherwise, the promises belong to the following context (that is, The thief has entered in, plundering; the robber is outside). Now their own devices have surrounded them; they have been done before my face: and lest perhaps they say in their hearts, I have remembered all their malice, or I should set forth some portion of the profanity they have committed, so that they may understand that the punishments are far less than their deserts. The enemies have surrounded them, and having obtained their desire, by the right of victory, they have searched out everything so diligently, as if either thieves had burst into the inner chambers of houses, or robbers into the open fields. Their own devices have surrounded them, which have been done before my face, as he had said above, when I wished to heal Ephraim, the malice of Samaria was revealed. According to what the blessed David confesses in the person of the same people: You have set our iniquities before you, our age in the illumination of your countenance; and all our days have failed, and in your wrath we have failed (Ps. 89). By your crimes, therefore, you have been overwhelmed; you bear the weight of your own devices. You have fashioned lies of gods, but in the truth of sorrows. But let us hear what those things are which he said were revealed.

Verses 3–7. — In their malice they made the king glad, and in their lies the princes. All are adulterers, like an oven heated by the baker; the city rested a little from the mingling of leaven, until the whole was leavened. The days of our king: the princes began to rage from wine; he stretched out his hand with mockers. Because they applied their heart like an oven, while he lay in wait for them: all night the baker slept, in the morning he himself was kindled, like a flame of fire. All are warmed, like an oven, and they devoured their judges. He remembers that festival and time, whose order is contained in the history of the Kings. For when through the folly of Rehoboam the departure of the people had been fulfilled, and Jeroboam had begun to preside over the ten tribes, he said, it says (3 Kings 12:23 and following), in his heart: Now the kingdom will return to the house of David, if this people goes up to make sacrifices in the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. And having devised a plan, he made two golden calves, and said to them: Behold your gods, Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And he placed one in Bethel, and the other in Dan, and this word became an occasion of sin: for the people went to adore the calf even as far as Dan. And he made shrines in the high places, and priests from the farthest of the people, who were not of the sons of Levi. And he established a solemn day in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, in the likeness of the solemnity which was celebrated in Judah.

And going up, he likewise made an altar in Bethel, to sacrifice to the calves which he had made. He appointed in Bethel priests of the high places, which he had made. And he went up upon the altar which he had built in Bethel, on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, which he had devised from his own heart, and he made a solemnity for the children of Israel. Since, therefore, he reports that King Jeroboam, consulting only his own power, and commended to the people by so many miracles and so many schisms, drove out the worship of the true God by a trivial contrivance, and that the whole nation was so obedient to the profanities of the court that it indicated rather emphatically that it had nothing of the observance of truth, he describes a kind of contest between the impiety of the flatterers and of those who ruled, namely, which of them would surpass the other in crimes. Therefore the Tribes, as it were, made the king glad, who distrusted his own affairs if the people should go up to the worship of the temple, by their contempt of religion, and removed from his mind the scruple of fear. In their lies also the princes: that is, either the king's attendants or his relatives, they made him rejoice in their lies, and applied such fervor to his deadly devices that they seemed to burn like an oven to which flame is applied. Or certainly, as leaven is accustomed to be hidden in the mass which is leavened, and in a brief span of time the whole is soured: so the iniquity of one man calling the Tribes to wickedness penetrated and infected them all.

And so, degenerate from the profession of virtue, so as to be horrible through the occasion of their impiety, they began to call that time the days of their king—time to be celebrated, of course, with games and banquets; time, I say, in which either the life or the security of their king had befallen them. Drunkenness consequently took hold of such a festivity, so that not only the common people, but even the marriageable, whom he calls the princes of the nation, began to rage from wine. But the king himself, the defiler of that dignity and the fabricator of sacrilegious error, stretched out his hand with the mockers, who flattered him with open adulation: so that, because they had prepared their hearts like an oven that glowed with the fires of impiety beneath, he slept the whole night cooking them—that is, he did not remove the kindled fire, but, as though the furnace had been trodden down with wood, he safely gave himself over to sleep, knowing that through the whole night their drunkenness and wantonness would boil them down. Nor did the opinion deceive the craftsman; for when every light of reason had been extinguished, they were found at dawn so seething with crimes that they plainly surpassed their judges—namely, those whom they had had as teachers of impiety. All their kings have fallen, and there is no one who cries out to me among them. Why then do you wonder if all are compelled to undergo torments, when all have committed such crimes that not merely of the common people, but not even any of the nobles was found who escaped the fall of public impiety?

Verse 8. — Ephraim himself mingled among the peoples: because above, after running through the parts, he had judged the nation to be a transgressor (or perhaps "had declared"), namely the people obedient to kings, and thereafter by signifying that the princes had fallen together with the common people, so that there would be no one to take up the role of an intercessor: he indicated this very thing abundantly and briefly in the following verse, saying: Ephraim himself mingled among the peoples. That is, it was not one or another, or a few or more coming from the stock of Israel, who inserted themselves into the errors of the nations; but Ephraim, as whole as he could be, was mixing himself with the profane nations; and he was striving to abolish that very name by which he had been renowned, and to be reckoned by the appellation of the nations instead. This desire, indeed, since it always burst forth in him toward adversity, was in no way made more correct even by affliction: and therefore, in order to mark him as foolish amid extreme miseries, he brought forth a fitting image: Ephraim has become a cake baked under the ashes, which is not turned over. Strangers have devoured his strength, and he himself did not know. Like a small loaf, not made by the baker's art, but put together as if in haste by a hungry man, which, placed under the embers, happens not to be turned but to be scorched on only one side, while the other remains raw: so, when frequent affliction had struck his strength, he says, he nonetheless remained in the pursuits of impiety, so that he might be called at once raw, because untamed, and burnt, because he was groaning that he had been afflicted by decay.

He has kept the metaphor, so that, since he had likened the foolish and hard-hearted people to bread baked under the ashes, which is not turned over, he might call even its devastators its devourers. For he says:

Verse 9. — Strangers have eaten his strength, and he himself did not know. That is, he did not receive the discernment of good and evil, which he lacked from the meditation of virtue, nor from the blows inflicted. But he does not know who they were who consumed his strength, and with wondrous stupidity he loved his own destruction. Nor indeed, which is the last kind of instruction, did he grow wise even after experience, but in the foolishness which he embraced in his first age, he persisted even to his gray hairs, that is, even to the time of old age. He emphasizes, in a cumulative way, that gray hairs did not appear but rather faded and were shed, that is, so that he might show that they had not merely approached but, as it were, had filled out the years of old age: and yet that the ignorance of evil or right, which is scarcely excusable in little children, persisted even to the very end. Now we have also noted above that he calls the infancy and adolescence of the people that time when it went out from Egypt and occupied the land of promise. But its middle youth, when it reigned in that region; its old age, however, the years of captivity, whose end the prophet calls renewal. In which, surely, with youth restored like eagles, it seems to fly.

Verse 10–11. And the pride of Israel shall be humbled before his face, and they have not returned to the Lord their God, and they have not sought him in all these things. And Ephraim has become like a deceived dove, having no heart. The prophet freely changes the inflections of tenses, though the consideration of what is said can adapt the sequence. Hence here too he put "shall be humbled" for "the pride of Israel has been humbled before his face." That is, it appeared even to itself how deformed it was. For losing the beauty of its former security, it saw itself foul with the sores of wretched servitude, and not even so did it seek God, whom it knew it had offended. Ephraim has become like a deceived dove having no heart. What above he called folly advanced even to old age, this now he names simplicity, plainly open to the deceits of seducers. But we ought to remember that all the similitudes which the divine word is accustomed to take from created things can be set forth as much for blame as for praise, just as now the prophet has composed blameworthy folly from doves, which in the Gospel the Lord named for praiseworthy innocence. Be, he says, wise as serpents, and simple as doves. Ephraim has become like a deceived dove having no heart.

Verse 12. — They called upon Egypt, they went to the Assyrians. And when they have set out, I will spread my net over them, and like a bird of the sky I will drag them down, I will strike them according to the hearing of their assembly. Since they were destitute of the help of God, whom they had forsaken, and were already being assailed by frequent losses, as the history of the kings relates, they sought help from the Egyptians, that these might protect them against the Assyrians. But feeling nothing more than the loss of their money, they were carried off by those to whom the divine sentence had subjected them. This, then, is what he says: Because when they called upon the Egyptians, they went to the Assyrians, since, when the Egyptians were able to do nothing to help, the Assyrians transported them to the regions of Media. And because he had called Ephraim a dove, whom he also calls a bird of the sky, preserving the metaphor, he says that he will drag her down and cover her with his net: that is, You indeed have transgressed my command and forsaken it, yet you will not stand outside my judgment, but my fixed dominion will loom over you even as you migrate to remote places; and therefore, do not think that by this migration you have escaped all dangers. Behold, I foretell that there too you will endure the net of my vengeance, nor will you be able to escape my indignation, unless you correct those pursuits by which it was aroused.

Verses 13–16. — Woe to them, for they have withdrawn from me: they shall be laid waste, because they have transgressed against me; and I redeemed them, and they spoke lies against me. They did not cry out to me in their heart, but they howled in their beds: they chewed over grain and wine: they withdrew from me. And I instructed them, and strengthened their arms, and they devised malice against me. They turned back so as to be without a yoke: they became like a deceitful bow. Their princes shall fall by the sword, because of the fury of their tongue. So their mockery is in the land of Egypt. It is necessary, he says, that when calamity presses upon them, those who have withdrawn from me and transgressed the statutes of my law be harassed, and not content to have committed this once, they have resisted all the remedies of my judgments which I applied to heal them, and as if offended by gifts and benefits, so they have striven against my benevolence with the crime of an ungrateful mind. For just as from Egypt onward, so also often at other times, they clamored even against the words of things, and when they had been gladdened by their distresses, they returned false services for true remedies. For this is what he says: They spoke lies against me. That is, we were subject to me not in heart, but with the tips of the lips. To indicate this more plainly, he charged them: They had not cried out to me in their heart, but they howled in their beds.

For where the affection of a sincere mind is lacking, the prayer poured out by the drunken is rightly called a howling. Accordingly he added next: They were ruminating over grain and wine; they have withdrawn from me. That is, when I had bestowed the abundance of all crops, so that they passed from feast to renewed feast, and, like cattle, in which rumination is innate, these men kept chewing over the foods they had called for—by praising them or by renewing them—as though knowing nothing better, and they continually withdrew from me, who was the bestower of that abundance itself. And I trained them and strengthened their arms, and they devised malice against me. But when, he says, the time had come for them to go out to wars, I fulfilled the office of a vigorous commander, so that their arms might be strengthened for contests and they might sweetly taste the glory of victory. Yet they, abusing my benefits against me, straightway exercised the strength of breast that they had gathered in contempt of the law, and because they had driven off the hostile yoke, they refused also to be subject to me, saying in the voice of their deeds: Our lips are our own; who is our lord? They have become like a deceitful bow—that is, they had so much perversity that they seemed a deceitful bow, which, by a monstrous fraud, directed its arrows against the very man by whose hands it was drawn. Thus these men, he says, turned the boldness that they had conceived against their enemies by my favor into contempt and insult against us. The princes of their people shall fall by the sword because of the fury of their tongue.

This is their mockery in the land of Egypt. This can be understood in two ways: namely, that after enumerating their crimes of various ages he declared it to be most just that the princes should perish with the peoples; and that they should recognize with a fitting end what their mockery in the land of Egypt was—that is, that they despised the threats of the prophets while awaiting help from the Egyptians—and therefore, as if in mockery, by the one who convicts them, after the enumeration of the plagues, it seems to have been added: This is their mockery in the land of Egypt, that is, the ruin of princes and peoples. Or certainly, because he had said: They have turned back so as to be without a yoke—that is, they had withdrawn their necks from the law of God, and desired to be freed from his dominion. They did not begin to want this now, he says, but while placed in Egypt, before they were freed from Pharaoh's rule, they were resisting Moses and Aaron with similar impiety. Therefore their princes shall fall by the sword, who so violated the law of God with the atrocity of blaspheming that they seemed not so much to err as to rage.

CHAPTER VIII.

Verses 1–3. — Let the trumpet be in your throat, like an eagle over the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed my covenant, and have violated my law. They called upon me: My God, we have known you, Israel. Israel has cast away good things, the enemy shall pursue him. Even in the earlier portions I have advised that the custom of prophetic speech should be noted, which, whenever it has sounded with a grave threat, either by immediately adding the causes of indignation, or by bringing forward similar examples, both asserts its judgments and clears them of the report of injustice, and proves them to be consistent with justice in every respect. So therefore also now, after the Israelite people has set forth its faults and calamities, and has shown that it shuddered at them not only for their severity but even for their antiquity, lest it should seem that the reproaches were indeed of crimes, but yet were esteemed more cheaply than the tribe of Judah, which, though not with such great, yet with similar errors, had been defiled: therefore he suddenly introduced mention also of its captivity, which he knew was to be fulfilled after many long years, and said: Let the trumpet be in your throat, that is, let your jaws cry out like a trumpet, because over the house of God, that is, the temple situated at Jerusalem, he comes like an eagle, a fierce plunderer.

Not that the religion of the place and the power of the deity accustomed to appear there could not have defended them, but because even by his own words the natives have transgressed the covenant that had been struck between God and men—that is, they have violated the agreements of religion by serving the idols of the Gentiles. And the reckoning becomes of this sort: understand how great is the severity of the judge, and that he did not spare even that tribe which for a time, while you were transgressing, kept the ceremonies of the law, which in the time of Sennacherib was vindicated by a very great miracle, which is distinguished and revered by the support of the altar and the Temple—not even that one, I say, did I delay to strike down after it had slipped into your ways. For cold and worthless for defense is the mere boasting of names, and one that judges the impudence rather than the religion of the one who seasons it. That is, defiled by profane pursuits, they nevertheless dare to say: Our God, deliver us, we who have known you alone in the whole city, and we glory in the name of Israel given by you. For in the eyes of a good judge the weight of deeds is graver than that of words; and therefore the people of Israel, which has cast off its good worship—namely, the sacred rites of religion—will be subject to pursuing enemies.

Verse 4. — They have reigned, but not from me. They have become princes, and I did not know. They made their silver and their gold into idols for themselves, so that they might perish. This, he says, is the old madness of a rebellious people against me: long ago it hastened to cast off my rule. For as if it were too little that, like the other nations round about, it decided to obey kings rather than priests, so too in a short time it abandoned that reverence by which it had asked of me to be its king, and desiring to stand wholly outside our dominion, it made for itself princes whom neither the choice nor the blessing of priests or prophets consecrated, but who, as though I did not know, took up the rights of the court, and thus, being bound together in crimes, lavished their support and riches upon utterly undeserving idols. Your silver and your gold you have made into idols for yourself, so that you might perish. Concerning these things he had said above: And I multiplied silver and gold, which they made into Baals. Therefore, when they had been enriched by my generosity, they sacrilegiously abused what had been granted them, fashioning trifles for themselves out of the ornaments of groves and shrines. So they made their silver and their gold into idols for themselves, so that they might perish. Note the expression, which the authority of the sacred books especially frequents, where that which is the consequence is placed first. That is, they made idols for themselves, so that they might perish, although it was not from a desire to perish that they made the images, but because they made them, they deserve to perish.

Verse 5–6. — Your calf, O Samaria, has been cast down; my fury is enraged against them. How long will they be unable to be cleansed? For it is also from Israel: the craftsman made it, and it is not God. In all these verses there is a complaint full of indignation. That you have fallen through your own wickedness, he says, O people ungrateful for the benefits of your Creator, is proved above all by the testimony of adversity. Granted that the sharpness of your discernment was blunted by abundance of things and by security, and that you thought divinity to be in bovine images (for you saw even the neighboring nations hold that opinion), at least when you exchanged glad things for sad, and the victorious enemy laid waste those shrines in which you had placed your confidence, and at his will (though serving my indignation, whom you had abandoned) either the calves you had consecrated were thrown down or melted, you ought to have shuddered at the guilt of your opinion, so as to perceive that no help could be conferred on you by the images of mute cattle, which could not avenge themselves either from mockery or from destruction.

And to recount what was done: You, I say, O people, when you were aware that they themselves had supplied the material for the idols, that you had contributed the shape, and through this you understood that you were impiously calling gods those who had come to exist by your own benefit—those to whom you could certainly have given not life but form—nevertheless, even if you had occupied all that time which flowed by in luxurious leisure with these drunken rites as well, at least after the affliction that followed had convicted the vanity of such worship, you ought immediately to have taken care for amendment, and to have cherished the fire of reason, obscured as it was, by urgent experiences, and to have stripped off your filth with which you had been clothed. Because you did not do this, the prophet rightly exclaims: How long will they be unable to be cleansed? For it is also from Israel, the craftsman made it, and it is not God: since the calf of Samaria will be among the webs of spiders.

Verse 7. — Because they will sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind: there is no standing stalk in them, the sprout will not produce flour: and if it has done so, strangers will eat it. Your counsels, he says, unless imitation had disturbed them, you would judge that those were not gods, whom you knew had been put together by the hand of a craftsman. There followed next the hostile incursion; your divinities perished together with their worshippers, and they could no more delay the ravagers than the threads of spiders. Yet even against these perils of circumstances you resisted by obstinacy and imprudence, nor did you take care to cast off the filth of such profanities: [unclean] in mind.

Therefore both your vows and all your labors will be followed by a tearful frustration, so that you seem to have sown not grain but wind, and to have reaped not ears of corn but a whirlwind: that is, nothing of fertility and stability will remain with you, as is wont to happen in a stalk whose tallness, through some injury of the air, has not produced the fullness of an ear. So then, I say, you too will obtain nothing of profit from your labors, nor will any diligence of cultivation answer them, but even if something from the remnants of your former fertility begins to appear, all of it will come into the power of your enemies.

Verses 8–10. — Israel is devoured, now he is made among the nations like an unclean vessel. Because they themselves went up to Assur, a wild ass alone for himself: Ephraim has given gifts to his lovers. But even with a price they hired the nations: now I will gather them, and they will cease a little while from the burden of the king and the princes. By constant repetition he aggravates the things he threatens, so that the long description of adversities may sharpen the sense of fear, if perhaps before they are punished, the guilty may be corrected, terrified. Accordingly he now brings in the very condition of the captive people, and consequently calls them devoured, who have been placed under the will of those who consume them: and to whom nothing more remains for destruction, except as much as the savagery of the conquerors, satisfied by their successes, has granted. Israel, he says, is devoured, he is made among the nations like an unclean vessel.

The surface of the meanings indeed rebounds, but as far as concerns the aged, the things set forth beforehand are explained by what follows. For he shows what he had called devoured: that is, that all its strength had been drained, and that it could be consumed by slaughter if the wrath of those who dominate should demand this too. Furthermore, they compensate for the insults that are to be added, because they raged less, and therefore not among all the walled cities, so that they may have those whom they always shudder at, and they seem rather to have envied the comforts of death than to have conferred the benefits of life. For they did not preserve the wretched for the enjoyment of light, but for enduring contempt as slaves; and therefore he says, Israel has become among the nations like an unclean vessel. Other translators rendered this as a chamber pot. Never, he says, was Israel assigned to an honorable office, so that after the insignia of liberty and dominion, it might at least be preserved liberally among slaves, but like a vessel fashioned for the requirements of nature, so it was filled with the filth of insults. And having well recalled the condition of the nations, he heaped up the injury by saying: Israel has become among the nations like an unclean vessel.

As if he were saying, Alas, alas, how lamentable it was, and how great a reversal, that that people which alone, by the teaching of the sacred law, had learned to distinguish between the clean and the unclean, and was therefore set apart from all the nations, lest any contagion pollute it, is now judged unclean even by the verdict of those nations which from the first years of life to the last have reeked with the filth of every vice. And so It is made among the nations like an unclean vessel. Because they themselves have gone up to Assur, a wild ass solitary to himself. That is, what we have said, we shall suffer when the Assyrian brings it upon us. To him they will see that so great a preeminence in strength has been granted that whoever has come to him is said to have gone up to him. But the wild ass, solitary to himself, is to be referred to Ephraim: that is, a wild ass solitary to himself: Ephraim has given gifts to his lovers. The people, he says, of the Jews, which endured no foreign dominion, but like a wild ass, knowing nothing of the yoke and burdens—of whom the blessed David had sung in praise of God, Who makes the solitary of one mind to dwell in a house (Ps. 67)—flourishing, that is, in a singular discipline, he made to dwell in the land of Promise.

This one, then, I say, who was free from human condemnation and subject only to divine commands, is now so angry and grieved that he thinks himself blessed if even an honorable servitude befalls him. They gave gifts to their lovers. And they hired nations for a price; now I will gather them. When the multitude of the ten tribes deserved to be chastised for its profanities, with the prophets declaring it, dominion by the Assyrians was promised to them. But the Jews, showing to the threats altogether the same disposition that the tribes also showed, proved contumacious in all things, and preferred to hire even the Egyptians for a price rather than be subjected to the Assyrians, to whom divine judgment was subjecting them. This, then, is what he says: that with the purpose of fornicating, as if they wished to try their lovers the Egyptians, they willingly sent gifts to them and promised that annual tributes would be brought, if by their aid the Assyrians should be driven off and the prophets' threat be overcome. He said accordingly that, since they hired nations for a price—that is, the Egyptians—now I will gather them into captivity, that is, I will drag them forth, and I will deliver them over to the announced dominion of the Assyrian people. I will gather them, he says, lest anyone seem to escape. And they shall rest a little while from the burden of the king and the princes. This seems to have been said in mockery, namely that he called "rest" that captivity which had been brought upon them.

That is, they will recognize how far they have advanced by their own counsels and pursuits, when they have been gathered together, when they have migrated as exiles into foreign fields, ceasing indeed either to furnish what the Assyrians commanded or to pay voluntary tribute to the Egyptians; with all their vines they will carry out the commands of their lords, so that they may confess that this—their having ceased to bring tribute—has redounded to their own increase.

Vers. 11–14. — Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning, they have become to him as snares for destruction. I will write for them the manifold things of my law, which have been reckoned as alien. Bring victims, bring, they shall slay flesh, and they shall eat: the Lord will not receive them; now he will remember their iniquities, and he will visit their sins: they themselves shall be turned back into Egypt. And Israel has forgotten his Maker and has built shrines. And Judah has multiplied fortified cities, and I will send fire into his cities, and it shall devour his houses. By this sequence he shows that they were to sin, having summoned the aid of the Egyptians: that is, by resisting the holy monitors in all things, so that just as they had despised the prophets who taught them, so also they would despise those who threatened: and not only despise, but even attack: and, as far as in them lay, convict of falsehood, if indeed, having hired the Egyptians, they had driven back the Assyrians. Now deservedly the blessed Hosea, enumerating the evils of the captivity to come, runs through both the punishments and the delights, and laments that the altars of Ephraim were multiplied to idols, and complains that the altars became a charge against him.

As if he were saying: for this reason, to be sure, the care of divine matters has been established, so that the altar might expiate those whom their crimes had polluted; but now they are so rolled about in misery by deadly things that it has never been worse for them than when it happened that they were defiled at the altar. I will write for them my manifold laws, which are reckoned as if they were foreign. By fleeing, he says, to the nations and by courting them so as to be mixed with their rites, the ungrateful people thought that they were to be absolved from the burden of our law. But since it is at hand for my judgment to wear away with bit and bridle the profane mouths of the stubborn, that contempt of the precepts is not unpunished for them, the outcome itself will reveal. For I will write for them my manifold laws, which are reckoned as if they were foreign. But the matter that he was going to do he expressed by the circuit of the judge, who is accustomed to read aloud a written sentence from a book. Therefore my laws, which were once promulgated and are contained especially in the volume of Deuteronomy, I will write manifoldly against them: that is, I will carry out and heap up. For you, then, so that we may mention a few out of many, the discourse is concluded in this manner: But if you are unwilling to hear the voice of the Lord your God, so as to keep and do all his commandments, and the ceremonies that I command you today, these curses will come upon you, and they will cling to you. Cursed will you be in the city, cursed in the field; cursed your barn, cursed your remnants, cursed the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land; the herds of your cattle and the flocks of your sheep.

Cursed shall you be in going in, and cursed in going out. Therefore, by profaning himself, he threatens that he will multiply these laws for the peoples. They bring victims, and they will sacrifice flesh, and they will eat: the Lord will not accept them: now he will remember their iniquity. Indeed the people of Samaria, that is, the ten Tribes, had despised no less the sacrifices that were being offered to the true God than his judgments and commandments. But the tribe of Judah, not yet defiled by sisterly impiety, had nevertheless cast off the care of victims.

Therefore, in the quality of their morals, the prophecy of Hosea continues to join them together, and under the accusation of Israel it passes to Judah, so that, as it has already done above, it may reproach them, because, thinking nothing of the justice of morals, they placed the hope of salvation in the offering of victims alone, and as if introducing the voice of those exhorting one another, that is, "bring, bring victims," it immediately responds: the Lord will not accept them, now he will remember their iniquities. Surely the seriousness of the judge must be considered: for he says that he was then especially brought to the remembrance of their iniquity, when they, with the consciousness of justice despised and neglected, thought that they were to be protected by offering victims, although gifts are then welcome when they have been offered not by the persons of enemies but of dear ones. Otherwise it is closer to insult, if to him whom you have exasperated by crimes, you grant the trifling of gifts as if by the solicitation not of one entreating but of one giving.

To you, therefore, that sentence will turn—how he himself is like a parricide—so that you may sacrifice flesh, and consume it yourselves, with the Lord not receiving it. Why not, since he prefers obedience to sacrifice, and justice to burnt offering? Now, therefore, above all, he says, he hastens vengeance, when you place the confidence of your deliverance in shedding the blood of cattle. Now he visits the sins of all who turn to Egypt, that is, both in mind and in price; for all Israel alike, that is, both Judah and Ephraim, have so forgotten their own Creator that, when they had made him most hostile to themselves, they cared nothing for amendment. But partly by restoring fortifications, partly by hiring nations, they would consume their wealth and their efforts, as if they did not know that it had been declared by the sacred song: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the one who guards it watches in vain. Their impiety, therefore, grew to such an extent that, when they had provoked the almighty judge to anger, they thought they would nevertheless be blessed through their own industry: namely, if they had built many fortifications against the eruptions of enemies, and so remained—not only with God not helping, but even fighting against them—happy. Therefore, he says, a worthy frustration will strike them through, so that, enclosed by their fortifications, they may seem rather to be shut in than defended; and may a raging flame consume all buildings of this kind.

Since these things are so—that is, since no difficulty hinders the justice of God, nor does any deceit mock it:

CHAPTER IX.

Ver. 1. — Do not rejoice, Israel, do not exult, because you have departed from the covenant of the law by sacrilegious pollution. That is, do not think that it will turn out unpunished for you that you have mingled yourself with the other nations. For such ambition of flight does not claim you for the vain liberty you had desired, but subjects you only to severe vengeance.

Vers. 2, 3. — You have loved the reward above all the threshing floors of wheat. The threshing floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the wine shall lie to them. They shall not dwell in the land of the Lord. Do not, I say, O our people, rejoice shamelessly; but know that you will change all your vows into their opposites: for you have shown yourself vile and intemperate not only in the duties of religion, but also in every action. For you have loved the reward above all the threshing floors of wheat: that is, you have judged nothing better, nothing more desirable than the fertility of the earth and the expenditures of the belly. Therefore the whole abundance of crops and fruits shall be taken from you; and, that your vows may disappoint you the more, the vintage that appears for a long time shall perish by sudden storms, so that, to your grief, they shall seem not only damaged but even false. But why do I recount lesser losses, when exile follows your want, and no opportunity is given you to cultivate your native soil? Yet you will not be able, as if complaining, to wonder at the greatness of this calamity.

For you have been convicted of having been a willing deserter of that land, insofar as it pertains to the pursuits of study: for you desired both the crimes and the aid of the Assyrians and the Egyptians. With what shamelessness, then, will you take hold of the fertility of that region whose distinguishing marks, both in rites and in customs, you have rejected? You will depart as a drink offering, driven out by that very thing by which you wished to be corrupted before them. And just as you set out for Egypt by your own desire, so too for the Assyrians by captivity, you will endure such want that you will eat polluted and defiled foods with grief.

Ver. 4. — They will not pour out wine to the Lord, and they will not be pleasing; their sacrifices are like the bread of mourners: all who eat it will be defiled, because their bread, their own souls, will not enter into the house of the Lord. He now sets forth the evils of captivity, and says that, since the abundance of things has been changed into extreme want, and no happiness or consolation comes to meet them, they will spend all their time in mourning: indeed, they are not permitted to offer sacrifice to God, nor to hope for anything from the expiation of their faults—through which offices, clearly, we reckon that we shall be pleasing to God. Therefore every offering of theirs, fit not for festivals but for funeral rites, will pollute rather than purify those who approach: because their bread, their own souls, will not enter into the house of the Lord. The meaning is the same as had been intended in the passages above, when the sacrifices rejected by God are said to belong to those who offered them.

Therefore even now, he says, I have rejected their offerings, those whom, because of the excess of their luxury, I was moved to demand even from their native soil: that bread which they do not deserve to bring into the house of God will yield to their funeral nourishment.

Vers. 5, 6. — What will you do in the day of solemnity, in the day of the Lord's festivity? For behold, they have advanced from devastation; Egypt has gathered them, Memphis will bury them: the desirable things of their silver the nettles will inherit, the burdock in their tabernacles. Although the intention of blessed Hosea is greater — to run through the deeds of the ten tribes, and to dwell on them either in exaggerating their crimes or in explaining their calamities — nevertheless, by the power of prophecy, he touches on what will befall the tribe of Judah as well. And since he knows that the Jerusalemites, though a little later, will undergo the like of the Samaritans in accordance with the equalizing of merits, he also makes mention of the Temple and of sacrifices, ascribing it to the whole people, as it were, because it agrees especially with the two tribes. Hence, when he said that they had lost the consolations of the offerings by which they reckoned themselves purified, he developed the fitting color. And because the polluted cessation of such offices grows especially fierce in those days in which the whole solemnity was being observed, he therefore says, What will you do in the day of the Lord's solemnity?

What darkness, what bitterness, what anguish of mind will fill you, when you, exiles and unwilling, pass in chains and barbarian slavery that day of the Lord's festivity which formerly the assembly of the people and their songs made distinguished and sweet for you? And since through the occasion of Ephraim he also signified what, as we have said, was to come upon Judah, it follows: For behold, they have gone forth from the devastation: Egypt shall gather them, Memphis shall bury them. When the hostile dominion had laid waste their region, he says, it will befall all the tribes, with punishment exacted for what they formerly perpetrated through sinful desire: so that just as a part was led into Assyria, so also Egypt may gather them as bread, and the land of Memphis may consume those it has received. But that this happened to those Jews whom the Babylonians had left as cultivators of the fields after the victory of Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed the Jerusalemites, both the blessed Jeremiah and the history of Kings narrates. But what he adds, The nettles shall inherit their desirable silver, happens from the experience of captivity—would that reading alone, and not also experience, had taught us. For it is certain that either houses built at great expense, when their inhabitants had perished, were covered over by forests, or very often even buried treasures of gold and silver, with those who had hidden them dead, passed into continual oblivion.

Verse 7. — The days of visitation have come, the days of retribution have come. Know, Israel, that you are a foolish prophet, a mad spiritual man, because of the multitude of your iniquities, and the multitude of your madness. It was fitting, indeed, that reason rather than calamity should have taught you to discern. But since, as though wholly without a share in reason, you have provoked lashes and goads, now at last, when the time of your visitation, that is, of your damnation, has arrived, awake, so that you may understand what you deserve. And confess that such harsh wages are owed to your pursuits, which you perceive you have gathered precisely through contempt of spiritual teachers. For you had burst forth to such a degree of frenzy that you said of the prophets, who spoke at the will of the Holy Spirit and announced by the zeal of the fathers the things that awaited you (if perhaps the fear foretold might act, lest vengeance find those to punish)—you said of them that they not only foresaw nothing beyond other men, but were even deprived of human reason, and were moved by madness rather than by revelation. Moreover, that at that time prophets were customarily called by this name, through the abundance of profanity, the history of Kings also discloses. For when, at Ramoth Gilead, by the sending of blessed Elisha, a certain prophet had come to anoint Jehu as king, the nobles sitting around say to Jehu, What does this fanatic want? (4 Kings 8). So, then, among them the authority of the divine word had grown so worthless that they judged the precepts of the virtues to be no longer beggarly, but insane.

Shuddering at the magnitude of this crime, the one who pardons cries out, as it were, in judgment: Because of the multitude of your iniquity, and the multitude of your madness. As if he were saying: this is not some simple error, but a multiplied dementia — namely, that spiritual teachers and those abounding in prophetic splendor should, especially at that time, be despised as fools and madmen, when they themselves were enduring a fine poverty of prudence, so that they esteemed as gods the things they had fashioned.

Verse 8. — Ephraim the watchman with my God, the prophet has become a snare of ruin upon all his ways, madness in the house of his God. Some have thought that by the name Ephraim Jeroboam was signified, who, it is agreed, both came from the tribe of Ephraim and was zealous for the cult of the temple, and for this reason fell into offense against Solomon; but after he obtained the rule over the tribes, he went forth also as the author of profanities, drawing the hearts of his subjects to the worship of calves. Therefore they think that by the name Ephraim Jeroboam is called, who is said for this reason to have watched with God, because he had formerly both taken care for religion and diligently observed the things that were right. But he who once, I say, was a prophet, so suddenly fell away to depraved things, that he was made a ruin and a snare to his own followers. And why not, when in the house of his God, whom he had chosen, how great madness was he engaged in?

But this passage can be explained more briefly in this way: we say that, from the complaint he has taken up concerning the insults of the prophets, he added the following in the same strain, as if he were saying: O people, subjected to profane rites, to the sum of your iniquity you have added the insults of spiritual teachers, so that you called the prophets of God insane and the spiritual teachers foolish; which madness burst forth from the magnitude of your wickedness. You dared, indeed, at times to enter into a certain contest with their promises, and to say: Behold, let us both equally cast lots for the office of watching, and let us see whether all those things come which these men announce to us as about to come. And you added that the prophets ought to be reckoned as nothing other than a hostile snare, fashioned for the ruin of wretched citizens. And so, joining blasphemy to insults, you were saying that madness was in the house of God and of the prophets. The invective that follows convicts this opinion of being, to be sure, of the greatest sacrilege.

Verse 9. — For he cried out: They have sinned deeply as in the days of Gabaa. He will remember their iniquity, and he will visit their sins. There is, he says, no deed of such a kind that the judgment of the judge himself can forget it. And because he had made mention of the old history, he says, He will remember their iniquity: and he will avenge, he says, the present insult to the prophets: not later than if he were bringing to examination that crime which they committed before the age of the kings, while the Judges were ruling the Jewish people. At that time, indeed, a certain Levite, when he was returning to the place of his own dwelling, came into a city of the tribe of Benjamin, whose name was Gabaa, when the day was already drawing toward evening. And when he had found no host there in public, he sat down with his own wife, but the lost youth of that city, not content with the refusal of lodging, seized the priest's wife for the use of their shamefulness, and exercised such great and most insolent foulness that the abused woman, just as she had lost her chastity, was deprived also of life. But on the following day the Levite rose, placed the corpse of his dead wife on his beast of burden, and cutting it into pieces, sent it throughout all the tribes of that people, so that, once the cause of so cruel a spectacle was known, they might take up a common vengeance.

Thus he brought war upon the Gibeonites, declaring it only if they would not hand over the guilty, and after they had been scarcely overcome, he destroyed them in conflict, so that from the whole tribe of Benjamin no more than five hundred men are reported to have survived (Judg. 19). The prophet therefore joined the present sin to that crime, which they were evidently committing, by calling spiritual men foolish and insane. But the comparison of their guilt commends the reverence due to the prophets, whose honor, violated by reckless speech, he shows to carry no less guilt than that which the once public obscenity, and the same bloody and incestuous deed, had contracted.

Verse 10. — Like grapes in the desert I found Israel, like the first fruits of the fig tree at its top I saw their fathers; but they went in to Beelfegor, and were estranged in confusion, and became abominable like the things that they loved. He gathers into one what was done at different times, so as to equate, as we have said, the guilt of violated religion and of insult to the prophet. But he made an excess in praise of the parents, through which, as the sons degenerated, envy might grow, and it might appear from what height of holiness they descended into the depths of crimes.

When, he says, the nature of mortals was squalid and covered with the dense briars of impiety, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob furnished the judgments of noble lineage; and so it shunned the confession owed to God, as vines or fig trees bearing fruit, whose faith and virtue I did not despise for their small number, but judged worthy of so much greater honor and grace, insofar as they scorned the more examples of the profane nations. Therefore, just as a vine sprouting in a vast wilderness, just as early-ripening figs, toward the desire for which both their sweetness and their earliness would stir one, so I gathered them into my bosom with due diligence, lest anything of their fruits or their praises should perish. But when I, who was lord of all things, had chosen to be called their God, I also proceeded to multiply their offspring, but the degenerate people, forgetful alike of their evils and of their founder, entered into the worship of those idols, which alone that obscene one had consecrated: namely, to Beelphegor, which figure they said Priapus held. The history of the book of Numbers commends this, that is, that according to the counsel of Balaam, the women of the Midianites, arrayed, advanced to meet the Israelite army in harlot's attire and bearing, so that when they had stirred them to desire by their looks, they would not grant the opportunity of fornication before they had defiled them with the sacrifice of their idol Beelphegor.

Finally, such a plague rose up against the people that twenty-three thousand perished together in a single day. Confusion therefore seized the filthy, so that they became no less abominable to God than the idols themselves, in the pursuit of which they had sinned. It is not, then, that the people of that age, whom the prophet Hosea addresses, are said to have sinned in Beelphegor; but because the recollection of antiquity has been introduced, and the nobility of the holy fathers has been praised, the things which their descendants committed in various ages are explained, so that it may appear whom those who are reproved in the present passage resemble, as if it were said to them: Behold, from what an illustrious stock these disgraceful deeds have flowed. Behold, for whom such was the inheritance of paternal dignity, that when their ancestors had deserved to be chosen for salvation, by an everlasting gift, these their successors, contending in folly and filthiness, venerated Priapus and calves.

Verses 11–12. Ephraim has flown away like a bird; their glory is from birth, from the womb, and from conception. Even if they should rear their sons, I will make them childless among men. But woe to them when I have withdrawn from them. Ephraim, he says, has flown away like a bird. He had already said above: Ephraim has become like a deceived dove without a heart. They were calling upon Egypt; they will go to the Assyrians. Therefore this people, which refused to distinguish between the pious and the impious, but became abominable like the idols themselves, will deservedly be carried off into captivity with such speed that it will seem not so much to have walked as to have flown. Nor will it suffer only the blows of exile, but the preceding calamity of want and diseases will consume the swarms of their children, so that childlessness may punish the hearts of those whom fertility previously bore. Their glory, he says, is from birth, from the womb, and from conception. Even if they rear their sons, I will make them childless among men. That is, although by their crimes they had embittered the eternal Judge, caring nothing for appeasing him, they nevertheless eagerly desired numerous families, reckoning it their happiness and glory if they might join in marriage, and watch and hear their offspring being born.

There, then, I will strike them where they were rejoicing most, so that it may not be permitted them to rear the sons they have received, or if it should happen that they rear them, they may perish, until the long-desired offspring is brought by loss to the squalor of desolation, and thus they may feel that, since it cannot go well with those whom I desert, it is far worse for those against whom I fight.

Verses 13–14. — Ephraim, as I saw, was Tyre founded in beauty, and Ephraim shall bring forth his sons to the slayer. Give them, Lord: what will you give, Lord? Give them a womb without sons, and dry breasts. Indeed, we read also in other prophets of the pleasantness and populousness of the city of Tyre as described, so that the Song of the blessed Ezekiel called her a harlot, namely because of the multitude of songs with which the whole city resounded through the night in luxury. Since, therefore, he had here threatened the people with the change of Samaria, in order to increase the sense of grief, he marvels at her beauty, which was in her prosperity, as if he were saying: The magnitude of this calamity, by which the Jews departed from her borders when their offspring was consumed, no one understands well unless he considers the former things; for then he will perceive how great a change was made for the worse, when he has thought on how greatly they had once flourished in the flower of joy. Ephraim, he says, as I saw [or

Tyre was a people seething with heat, abounding in resources, resounding with amusements, and echoing with songs, so that its very situation smiled upon those coming both from the shore and from the mainland, so that it could be said that its very foundations were established in a certain beauty. But to this city, I say—flowing with delights, yet procuring for itself no protection from justice and religion—he commanded that it should bring forth its sons to slaughter, and suffer the judgments of raging enemies, because it had trampled on the precepts of our law. But with times changed toward decline, those things which are still to come under Nebuchadnezzar he recounts as though they had already happened. Ephraim, therefore, that is, Samaria and the multitude of the remaining tribes, was crushed by such great terror of the avenger that it was preparing to offer its own offspring almost to those who would kill them. This, to be sure, it is said to have fulfilled not by doing but by deserving. It comes about, moreover, from the custom of the Scriptures, as it were by a figure of one who doubts, and under the form of a question, announcing what is to come: Give them, Lord: what will you give them? A womb, he says, without children, and dry breasts. By that blow, he says, let them be condemned, and let them know that they are to be destroyed by utter slaughter. For above he had said that if they had brought in sons, they would immediately endure the loss of them; now, however, he has added dry breasts, and that such a prodigal barrenness is to be inflicted on the women, so that even the preparation of the peoples whom the captivity has devoured is despaired of.

Verses 15–17. All their wickedness is in Gilgal, for there I hated them; because of the malice of their devices. I will cast them out of my house, I will no longer love them; all their princes are departing. Ephraim is struck down, their root is dried up: they shall bear no fruit. Even if they bear children, I will kill the most beloved of their wombs. My God will cast them off: they have not heard him, and they shall be wanderers among the nations. They are reported to have worshipped idols especially in Gilgal, and therefore he declares that all their wickednesses were gathered there, on account of which he testifies that he hated them. Some have thought that the prophet remembered this place also on account of Saul. For in Gilgal he received the leadership of that people; and because that people had sinned, with Jeroboam as author, who consecrated the calves, therefore, on the occasion of the present guilt, he also accuses that origin of error, since, having grown weary of the rule of the priests, it desired to be under kings in the likeness of the neighboring nations. Thus, then, he says, All their wickedness is in Gilgal. As if he were saying: these things which impiety has now devoured had their causes from there, and took their beginning there, where they transferred the state from priestly to royal rule.

But this sense might seem too subtle; that other, however, is clearer and stronger, following the tenor of the established discourse: he accuses them of the worship of idols in Gilgal and in other places, and on account of the error of this worship the just judge threatens that he will cast them out of his house, and to that sentence he adds another that stings more sharply, namely: I will no longer continue to love them. And this the daughter named Without Mercy signified at the beginning as about to come. But he announces that the tribes are to be cast out of his house, that is, out of the land of Promise, because as far as the Temple is concerned, they had long since departed from it through the deadly devices of king Jeroboam. He therefore promises that the severity by which the profane are cast out from their own borders will remain fixed upon them, so that it may be seen that it is to be tempered by no succeeding mercy. And since this taught the heavy weight of punishment, he immediately subjoined the cause, which was great. For all, he says, their princes are departing. He set this down not to signify that only the nobles had fallen into sins, but so that no doubt might remain concerning the iniquities of the common people, since there was no one even among the princes who had not departed from the worship of God. In truth, these verses repeat the sentence sent a little before, that is, by which he had threatened them equally with bereavement and barrenness. Ephraim is struck: their root is dried up, and they will bear no fruit. And if they should beget, I will kill the most beloved of their womb.

My God will cast them off, because they have not hearkened unto him, and they shall be wanderers among the nations. Captivity, he says, shall drain them dry, but their offspring, than which nothing is sweeter to parents, manifold and varied calamity shall consume.

CHAPTER X.

Verses 1–3. — Israel is a leafy vine, its fruit was made equal to it; according to the multitude of its fruit it multiplied altars. According to the richness of its land it overflowed with its likeness; their heart is divided, now they shall be convicted. He himself will break their images in pieces, he will lay waste their altars, because now they shall say, There is no king for us, for we do not fear the Lord, and what shall a king do for us? One and the same material is that through which the prophet's discourse runs, that is, to exaggerate the crimes of that people, to denounce their punishments, and for this reason for the most part similar, and it rehandles the same colors; yet, as far as it can, mixing in something by which they may be moved; therefore, naming Israel a leafy vine, he declares that its fruit was made equal to it. But this vineyard, when, having been transplanted from Egypt, it had filled the land of Promise, stood, he says, glad with spreading branches, and produced so great a richness of fruits, that is, of sons and grandsons, that the narrow spaces of the lands which it had received were made straitened.

But what profit was there in the increase of offspring having come to them, when they strove to burst forth into the opposite, so that against my reproaches—I who had been the author of so great a gift—they were armed in proportion to the multitude of their numbers, and contended, as it were, to match their forces to their crimes: publicly and privately fashioning for themselves gods to worship? And so that vile vine, which had been planted from the stock of the chosen fathers, was turned into a cluster of bitterness and into a branch of Sodom, so that both the common people and the princes rejoiced not only to have neglected justice but even to have attacked it. Therefore their heart is divided, now they shall perish. That is, by their whole intention they have been separated from me, and with a settled judgment they have departed from the worship of the law. What remains, except that, once destruction is fixed, they waste away, and understand the vanity of their own opinion, by which they had accustomed themselves to console themselves, so as to say that their condition was to be reckoned better even under captivity than when they were governed by holy men or by pontiffs or kings? Therefore, he says, they will speak among themselves through shamelessness, since then they will enjoy, as it were, a certain license, by which they are compelled to obey neither the law nor the king; inasmuch as the enemy has led away their prince, and they have cast off the yoke of religion with their ancient profaneness. In these crimes, then, he says, exulting, they think it happiness that they are not called to the daily duties of their kings, but dwelling far off they pay annual tribute to the victors.

For just as there, concerning those of whom the Apostle says, “Despairing, they handed themselves over to impurity in the working of every uncleanness and greed” (Eph. 4), or as those whom the prophet indicates, because they said, “We will magnify our tongue; our lips are our own; who is our lord?” (Ps. 11), so also blessed Hosea pronounces concerning these men, to what point of profanity they have burst forth against God, so that they may be seen either to have said or to be able to say, “There is no king for us, for we do not fear the Lord, and what will a king do for us?” that is, we have been absolved from the annoyances of divine fear, and we have no law that can avenge this license of speech.

And because this, when well considered, has stirred up a grave horror, he rebukes and exclaims, [Verse 4] “You speak words of a useless vision, and you strike a covenant, and judgment will spring up like bitterness upon the furrows of the boar”—namely, for those whose heart it is, in such great madness, to have entered into a covenant with extreme calamities, you will feel it, and to such a degree will all your regions be filled with diverse disasters, that in those very lands we may seem to teem forth with perils rather than with shoots. Fittingly, moreover, because he had marked them as having sinned not through negligence but through zeal and the work that follows, he named them as impressed upon the fields, in which the bitterness of judgment, that is, the severity of vengeance, would be born. And therefore they should know that they were going to reap what they had sown.

BOOK THREE.

CHAPTER X (continued).

Verses 5–6. — The inhabitants of Samaria have worshipped the calves of Bethaven, because their people has mourned over him, and his temple-keepers have exulted over him in his glory, because he has migrated from them. Indeed he too has been carried off to Assur, a gift to the avenging king. Ephraim shall be seized by confusion, and Israel shall be confounded in his own will. Jewish tradition has been accustomed to expound this passage as follows: namely, in those times when the Israelites had not yet been transferred to the fields of the Medes, but were still standing in their own region and paying tribute to the Assyrians, their treasury having been drained, the calves which they worshipped had been sent as tribute to the Assyrian. Yet when Jeroboam had fashioned these as golden [calves], they had been changed by his temple-keepers, to whom their custody had been entrusted, from the reality. So when necessity had dried up, so that even the calves were sent to supplement the tributes, the peoples indeed mourned, who reckoned that they had lost their deities; but the keepers, conscious of the fraud, exulted, because when the images had been transferred elsewhere, they ceased thereafter to fear any inquiry into the fraud. Although the reading seems to have provided an occasion for this meaning, nevertheless it can also be clear under the tenor of the explanation established from the beginning, namely that after the threatening authority had declared that through the furrows of the field bitter vengeance would spring up for the wretched, it immediately, in its own manner, subjoined the cause of the indignation.

The calves of Bethaven, that is, the inhabitants of Samaria, the royal city, worshipped them—those who ought rather to have recalled others from error were running about to petty towns to adore the images of the calves. After which, by hyperbaton, the order of the following verse is changed, and the distinction becomes this: because the people of Samaria shall be confounded, when through the vileness and uselessness of their gods they have laid bare adversities. For when poverty presses, even they themselves will serve to make up the taxes, evidently having no more weight than the reckoning of metal requires. So that the unhappy people therefore follows them with tears, whom a little before it had consecrated with honor—nay, even with the joys of the soothsayers. Confusion shall seize Ephraim, and Israel shall be confounded in his own will, whose deformity, so great indeed, and whose so bitter a rejection he will recognize.

Verses 7–8. — Samaria has made her king pass by like foam upon the face of the waters. The high places of the idol, the sin of Israel, shall be scattered; the burdock and the thistle shall come up over their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us, and to the hills, Fall upon us. As far as divine piety and clemency is concerned, he says, I had wished that a long and secure possession of their land should be theirs, but their grievous sacrileges stood in the way, and I have driven their king, that is, their kingdom, swiftly [Ant.

They had driven them, to be destroyed utterly: so that, like foam of water floating on the currents, both the profanity of the nation would be drunk and its dignity. Therefore, with all the shrines whose frequenting had accustomed me to provoke, consumed by hostile fire, the thickets will clothe their altars, so that whoever remains may desire to hide himself, whether from shame or from the impulse of fear, if it is not granted otherwise, at least beneath the threats of certain mountains. But it must be noted that the Lord also took up this verse in the Gospel (Luke 23:30), so as to seal the vows of those who fear, and that it descends from the custom of the Scriptures that sentences brought forward for some cause are fittingly taken up for similar matters.

Verse 9. — From the days of Gabaa, Israel has sinned: there they stood: battle has seized them in Gabaa against the sons of iniquity. Already above he had made mention of that time, where he said that those to whom the words of the prophets were a mockery had so sinned, like that youth of the Gibeonites which had polluted the wife of the Levite even to destruction. But lest the repetition be bare, those whom he had there compared, he here sets forth, saying that the crime of those who had sinned with incestuous obscenity, and of those who judged spiritual men foolish and insane, appears indeed similar. And therefore captivity would rage in likeness to that disaster which had nearly destroyed Benjamin by slaughter. Now therefore, as if suspending even the moments of punishments as too little for examination, he pronounces this later vengeance to be the heavier.

Not without reason, but because there the contest wavered between the ranks of the ten and one Tribes, and the Gibeonites, though few in number, were yet overcome with great labor. But here all the wealth of the Samaritans, calamities and destructions preceding the final overthrow, so consumed them that there was no one who had confidence to resist. Therefore from the days of Gibeah he pronounces that Israel sinned; but at that time they stood firm for a while, and gave proofs of their strength in the most grievous conflicts. For only at the third battle, imploring God's help with tears, did all the Israelites together win the victory. But now, since not only did no one go out to battle against the Assyrians, but they were unwilling even to defend their own walls, therefore the prophet says: From the heap of miseries the magnitude of iniquity also ought to be understood. For at that time, he says, the Benjamites resisted so stoutly that for a while they did not even seem to be caught in battle. But these peoples of the ten tribes, with their kings and princes, because they had offended me, did not stand.

Therefore, since sentence must be pronounced against the guilty without any true contest, [Verse 10] I will correct them according to my desire. This seems to have been said quite in accordance with our own custom, we who, when we are moved by some indignation, say that we desire vengeance and to feel pleasure from the affliction of the guilty. And so now they are promised to be corrected according to his desire. For it follows: peoples will be gathered together against them—that is, as if for ready prey, a multitude of plunderers will assemble, so that these may receive the punishments of a twofold iniquity. For thus he says, they will be corrected for their two iniquities. Yet just as he indicated their number, so I have not noted their kinds. We could accordingly say that those iniquities which he did not distinguish, another prophet marked out—that is, that they abandoned God, the fountain of living water, and hewed out for themselves broken cisterns (Jer. 2:13), namely idols, from which they can feel no refreshment. But since the best rule of exposition is the one taken from the sequence of the reading, let us judge that he called only two iniquities, namely those which he charges in the present passage: that is, that they not only covered the true prophets with insults and disasters, but also honored false prophets and servants of demons with offices and gifts from the region. By which indeed.

they were taught, not to slip through error, but through zeal, who with equal eagerness did both—honoring pernicious teachers and detesting salutary ones. For by contrast, walking in this way, each holy man is described thus: Lord, who shall dwell in your tabernacle, or who shall rest on your holy mountain? He who walks without stain and works justice. He who speaks truth in his heart, and has not acted deceitfully with his tongue, nor done evil to his neighbor, and has not taken up reproach against his neighbor. The malignant one is brought to nothing in his sight, but he magnifies those who fear the Lord (Ps. 14). Therefore, on account of these two iniquities, I will consume the impious by affliction, which is less pleasant to me.

Vers. 11, 12. — Ephraim is a heifer taught to love the threshing floor, and I have passed over the beauty of her neck; I will go up upon Ephraim, Judah shall plow, let Jacob break up his fallow ground for himself. Sow for yourselves in justice, and reap in the mouth of mercy: renew for yourselves a new field; but it is time to seek the Lord, when he who will teach you justice shall come. He made public the feeling of his indignation with mocking words, so as to call that nation, which was liable to fruits, a heifer fit and worthy for treading out grain. Indeed he marked her weakness by both sex and age: for he placed her, when compared with the Gibeonites, behind in every respect.

Therefore, by way of mockery, he calls her a heifer and a beautiful one, and one mindful of those oppressions which she earned by her evil pursuits; not that, being afflicted, she could love her own hardships, but that she might be worn down by the judgment in such a way as those hearts inflamed with love are accustomed to be joined to themselves. A neck, then, deserving to be subjected to torments, and heat and breezes are promised to go abroad, so that, mocking her with laughter, he may threaten her, and pronounce her both desirous and skilled in those evils of which she is most worthy. Ephraim, he says, is a heifer taught to love the threshing floor, and I have passed over the beauty of her neck; I will go up upon Ephraim, Judah shall plow, Jacob shall break up furrows for himself. I, he says, will for now break the proud necks of Ephraim, so that the one whom she despised as teaching and indulgent she may at last feel as avenging. Nor indeed will the desired usefulness fail my censure: for although he subjects these to exile, he will heal others by their example. For Ephraim, who was unwilling to be leaven, nor was filled with the marrow of piety, but wholly vanished into chaff by the levity of his mind, will endure the burning labor of the threshing floors. But Judah will succeed to the yoke of fear in a happier condition, for with the plowshare of the precepts fixed in place, he will discern between good and evil; and taming the clod of his own heart by the pursuits of religion, he will establish the sowing of knowledge together with the work of justice and mercy, and that in renewed fallow fields, from which, namely, he will have exacted the woodland?

the shoots, it will grow together, so that a fertility commensurate with so great a work may respond. This seems to have been fulfilled at that time when the help sent from heaven freed Hezekiah and the whole city from the hands of Sennacherib. Then it follows: But it is the time of seeking the Lord, when he who will teach you justice shall come. For that blessed Hezekiah had so commendable a zeal for religion that he fulfilled the office of both prince and teacher, as the sacred Annals declare. For not content to recall the inhabitants of his own tribe to the worship of God, he also sent messengers and edicts throughout neighboring regions, in which some of Israel had remained after the captivity and deportation, so that, rejecting the errors of idols, they might return to the worship of the true God. This, therefore, is what he says: that the people of Jerusalem would reap mercy, when the devotion of the prince also teaching them justice stirred them to seek God. And although this work and office may seem to have been briefly accomplished under Hezekiah, nevertheless it is more fully shown to have been accomplished by our Lord, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, through whom the light of piety has been shown not to one tribe or region but to all lands and nations, and the discipline of virtues has been handed down. For this reason the Apostle also says: Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation, giving no offense in anything, so that the ministry may not be blemished.

For then the opportune time for seeking the Lord appeared, when the Word was made flesh, that he might dwell among us: and we saw his glory, glory as of the Only-Begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1). But let us also consider the impiety.

Vers. 13–15. — You have plowed impiety, you have reaped iniquity, you have eaten the fruit of falsehood: because you trusted in your ways, in the multitude of your strong men. A tumult shall rise up among your people, and all your fortifications shall be laid waste, as Salmana was laid waste by the house of him who judged Baal in the day of battle, the mother dashed against her sons. Thus Bethel has done to you because of the face of the wickedness of your evils. By occasion of Ephraim, whose sins he heaps up through almost the whole volume, mention of Judah had been introduced, in which it had appeared what devotion and faith had merited in time of dangers. Having briefly noted this digression of commemoration, being content, he returns to the order of the undertaking, and insists on the crimes of Israel being reproved. But you, he says, O people of Samaria, a town often situated otherwise than Judah and Benjamin, when you had come to the extremes of crises, you by no means trusted in God, but in your own counsels and the strength of your hosts.

You will therefore receive a fitting fruit, so that hostile tumult may destroy and overturn your people and your strongholds, and, like the most impious leader whose name was Salmana, you may be consumed: whom, as we read in the book of Judges, Gideon, having obtained the victory, destroyed, and either together with those very kinsfolk whom he indicates by the name of a wretched parent, or together with the very city in which he had reigned, which can be seen to have been called the mother, he consumed (Judges 4 and 8). Just as, then, he says, Gideon, who had destroyed the idol of Baal, wiped out Salmana with slaughter, so too Bethel has done to you: in which city, namely, you established the idols which, as a deserter of your God, you might worship. Moreover, according to the custom of the Scriptures, in order to express the height of profanity, he repeated the same words, saying: Thus Bethel has done to you, from the face of the malice of your wickednesses. Therefore the face of malice, composed of manifold iniquity, desires to show nothing other than that they received a worthy wage, namely captivity, for their own ways.

CHAPTER XI

Verse 1. — As the morning passes [others read: has passed], the king of Israel has passed away, because Israel was a child, and I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. He had already said above, He made the king of Samaria pass by like foam upon the face of the water. And now therefore he has taken care to repeat the same thing, saying: As the morning passes, the king of Israel has passed away — that is, the kingdom of your nation, which you desired by sinning, you also destroyed by sinning, and all the pomp of your arrogance has grown old, because the royal power that you coveted after the likeness of the neighboring nations prepared no defense for you without my help. For this reason the prophet also warned you, saying, Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. Their spirit shall go forth, and they shall return to their own land; in that day all their thoughts shall perish. So then neither did their insignia profit you, nor your support profit them. For all that they seemed able to do, or to live, was consumed with such swiftness that it appeared no longer than the morning twilight, which is bounded, that is, by the departure of night and the rising of day, according to what we read in a similar case in the blessed David: When the sinners have sprung up like grass, and all who work iniquity have appeared, so that they may perish forever and ever.

Thus, then, the principate of Israel too, as vengeance pressed close upon its crimes, collapsed, so that it seemed not so much to have flourished as to have appeared only in a fleeting moment. Because Israel was a child, and I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The blessed Matthew, writer of the Gospel, took the last part of this verse as referring to the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, declaring that it was done by divine dispensation, so that, to avoid the fury of Herod, who was persecuting the infancy of our Redeemer, Joseph and Mary went into Egypt. For it was necessary that what the prophet had proclaimed should be fulfilled: Out of Egypt I called my son. That this was said of the people, the text of the prophecy shows; that it can also be transferred to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the authority of the Apostle demonstrates, through whom indeed the marks of piety that had been given to the Jews were both more abundantly conferred upon us and given as graces. But the weaving of the explanation shows the force of the censor, who for this reason introduces mention of their past nobility, in order to wound them gravely, since he laments that they have degenerated. Having therefore enumerated their crimes and denounced their punishments, he suddenly brought in the memory of their former dignity, as if to say: Behold grief! Behold tears! And what kind of people is this, that is reckoned of such great worthlessness? After these things, as if a response had been taken up, he proclaims: Because Israel was a child, and I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

This is the one, he says, whom I lamented as having sown a seed of impiety and reaped a harvest of grief, whom I declared, like Salmana at the hands of Gideon, must be destroyed. This, I say, is the one who caused his kingdom to be abolished, so that it passed away as quickly as the time of dawn can be. This, I say, is the one who, descending from the stock of the saints, had been consecrated to me in his very beginnings, and among so many nations scattered throughout the whole world, was chosen as the one people called Israel; whose merits, proceeding from affection, I named my child—my own, I say, my son—and I laid upon him such great honor, while he was still being led out of Egypt, that he was in a manner revealed both by words and by deeds, because there prevailed between this people and the Egyptian multitude, in my sight, as great a distinction as there customarily is between the most favored of sons and the worst of slaves. Since, then, even at that time, beyond all the miracles of deliverance and the sweetness of that freedom, he had received from me this mark of honor, that he should be called my son: so far has he now sunk to the depths of profanities that, forgetful alike of me and of himself, he obeyed only the worshippers of demons.

For to prove how utterly devoid of religion and reason the mind of that people was, they did not bring forward elaborate fictions by which they might be seduced, but as though they were cattle readied for slaughter, so they called them, and by an easy signal they drew them wherever they wished. [Verse 2.] They sacrificed to the Baalim, and offered sacrifice to idols, that is, to the worship of various idols, which they were going to serve with diverse rites; calling themselves [his], they followed with such ease that they were convicted of having had a desire for an occasion of this kind.

Verse 3. — And I was like a foster father to Ephraim, I carried them in my arms, and they did not know that I was caring for them. The two verses inserted between have broken the continuity of the simple narrative and by this have presented a difficulty for understanding. Otherwise, what he says, Like a foster father to Ephraim I carried them in my arms, corresponds to the sentence that was set before: that is, O child Israel, and I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But after these things, what crimes they committed! inserting this, he returns to the order of recounting their fickleness: which indeed seems to avail for testifying to the surges of indignation: so that, namely, the speech does not run on in one tenor once begun, but even at the time when the things that were done long ago are recalled, the force of the present questioning bursts forth, as though intolerant even of a brief dissimulation.

Therefore, when he had set out to touch upon the ancient marks of distinction, so as to heighten the guilt of the people that had degenerated—namely, that he had loved them with a spontaneous tenderness, and had adorned them with the name of sons—he suddenly cried out that their ears had remained deaf to the ministers of demons, and that they had followed them so swiftly that they created no difficulty in consenting. If you set aside for a little while what, as we have said, is uncertain concerning the force of the complaint, the things that follow will be clear in their connection with what precedes: that is, "Because Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son, and I was like a foster father to Ephraim, I carried them in my arms, and they did not know that I cared for them"—as if he were saying: This people's profanity is not new, because from its very beginnings it showed me the signs of an ungrateful mind. For when I had called him son, I also added caresses to my benefits, and like a most indulgent foster father I exercised care for my little one. Why would I not, when I did not allow him to feel the hardships of the vast wilderness, nor to be vexed by the labor of a new and long journey?

Verse 4. — As it were his cord, that is, his allotment, when indeed he had fallen from happiness together with the sin of Adam, that is, of the first man, who had been made a cultivator and inhabitant of paradise, so that he might feed on the fruits of his labors: so too this people received food and drink incomparable to those of men and comparable only to miracles, and thus I bound them with the cords of love alone and with the reins of my precepts. For this reason alone, that they might walk safely, I composed their mouths, showing that I had turned aside for their rest, so that they might enjoy timely rest and pleasure: inasmuch as they would not feel a power pressing them down, but in that necessity, as I walked with them through desolate places, they would have their yoke lifted up, that is, removed, as we see happen with chariots, in which the yokes, when they are loosed, are raised up. Yet that people, paying no heed to my providence or to the indulgence by which they were both to be instructed and healed, always presented to me the mind of one rebounding against me, until by stubborn shamelessness they arrived at the state in which they now are.

Verses 5–7. He shall not return to the land of Egypt, and Assur himself shall be his king, because they refused to be converted. The sword has begun in his city, and it shall consume his chosen ones, and shall devour their heads. And my people shall hang upon my return; but a yoke shall be laid upon them together, which shall not be taken away. Above he had said, They called them: so they went away from before them; but now, he says, they refused to be converted—that is, those who lent ready obedience to those who turned them away from piety now did not, even when compelled by various affliction, return from evil things to better ones. For when, having lost their wealth, they strove over a change of servitude, so as to be subjected to the Egyptians rather than to the Assyrians, they did not even deserve to obtain this, because the sentence that went forth from our mouth is immovable: namely, that those men would serve no other masters in the meantime than the Assyrians. Hence the vengeance begun shall advance into its work, so that the sword may break through the cities, and the iron together with flame may lay waste all their nobility, and the enemies may plunder all the things that are wont to be dear to the rich. Thus this people, once mine, deprived of all strength and of every consolation, shall hang upon my return in slow expectation, asking with late prayers, that is, and ungrateful groans, that I deign to become their helper. But a yoke shall be laid upon them together, which shall not be taken away.

He will prove by events that his tears were ineffective, because I did not revoke that sentence which, compelled by his many crimes, I finally ordered to be carried into effect, and because he had said that the decree stood and that they would straightway submit to the yoke of Assyrian captivity. He also assumes the guise of one deliberating—namely, with what vengeance he should consume the guilty—and sets before them examples of cities which the fire sent down from heaven destroyed.

Verses 8–9. How shall I give thee up as Adama, and set thee as Seboim? My heart is turned within me, my repentance is alike troubled. I will not execute the fury of my wrath, and I will not turn to destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not man: the Holy One in the midst of thee, and I will not enter into the city. By recalling what was once done, he shows that the Israelites no less than the Sodomites either could or deserved to be consumed; yet he, mindful of the benefits which, for the honor of the holy fathers, he had bestowed even on their unworthy children, does not wish matters to be carried so far as to consume them in utterly poured-out slaughter. And therefore he declares that he has been moved and shaken as it were by fatherly affection, and has taken on a certain repentance, because he had threatened the destruction of the Sodomites against Israel, even under the appearance of deliberation. And he immediately adds: I will not execute the fury of my wrath, and I will not turn to destroy Ephraim. That is, I will not so far change my clemency by indignation as to permit none of the Israelites to survive.

Because I am God, and not man: whose benevolence, namely, flowing forth with abundant veins, the offense could not drain dry (the offense straightway under the... even deliberating), or whose disposition, to say it once, rejoicing in firmness, the guilt of the ungrateful does not change. The Teacher of the Gentiles also briefly indicated this, saying: For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance (Rom. 11:29). For I say, he says, has God cast away his people, namely, whom he foreknew (Ibid. 1)? He will never suffer that people to be destroyed after the manner of the impious nations. And now therefore, when he had announced the plagues due to the polluted hosts, they warn that he nevertheless has regard for those among whom he is to divide. In the midst of thee, he says, is the Holy One, and I will not enter the city. When Jerome wished to expound this verse, he proceeded to enumerate those who are read to have founded cities, and said that Cain first procured for himself the protection of a city, and afterwards that certain men distinguished by crimes were also founders of cities. And therefore, he says, God, commending properly the reverence of holiness, said, Because he would beware of entering a city: and in this manner he proceeded to assert that all the saints, and those who devote their life to philosophy, decline the crowdedness of cities and love the secret places of the mountains. But who could consider such a color of explanation without mockery?

For our God here, by saying that he would not enter the city, did not declare in general that cities are to be shunned, concerning whom we read it said: The Lord loves the gates of Zion above all the tabernacles of Jacob. And: God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved: God shall help her with his countenance. But because he had brought in the mention of the Sodomites and the neighboring cities, which, as we read in the book of Genesis, he entered in order to destroy, and had said: How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah, and set thee as Zeboim? and had straightway added: that I will not execute the fierceness of my wrath, and I will not return to destroy Ephraim, he consequently added: Because I am God, and not man: the Holy One in the midst of thee, and I will not enter the city: that is, I chose you out of all peoples, over whom I might preside with a peculiar divinity, and this I decreed and promised in honor of your fathers, who had lived most acceptable to me; so that even if by the violation of the sacred law you had deserved my offense, I would visit your iniquities, but I would not utterly take away my mercy, so as surely to allow you to be consumed by slaughter and the memory of your name to be wholly blotted out. And because I am God, and not man: whose decree, namely, no change overturns: therefore I dwell in the midst of thee, conspicuous indeed with eternal holiness, through which into thy sins.

I rise up as an avenger, and the covenants that were struck with your fathers I do not disregard; yet I will by no means enter your cities as I entered the gates of Sodom when it was to be destroyed. And since he had brought forward a word concerning the part of the prosperous, he was not content to have said that the Israelites would by no means perish like the other nations, but he mercifully runs through what else he had also ordained concerning them, and he made mention of that time when, their captivity being dissolved, they were to be brought back to their native soil.

Vers. 10, 11. — They shall walk after the Lord: he shall roar as a lion, because he himself shall roar, and the sons of the sea shall be afraid. And they shall fly as a bird from Egypt, and as a dove from the land of the Assyrians: and I will place them in their own houses, says the Lord. What, he says, is it indeed strange if our piety moderates vengeance when it is then most hot, when at this very time I give the form of the joy of the liberation to be conferred, and I would not have it hidden how great is the majesty with which I dispose to free them from barbarian servitude and to recall them to the land of their fathers? The time will come, I say, when, while I undertake the work of vengeance, the sons of the sea, that is, the crowd of hostile nations, shall be terrified and flee no less lightly than the surges of the Red Sea were divided when Israel passed through: by the same power of command they flowed back upon the prince of the Egyptians, by which they had shortly before been held suspended for the salvation of the pious.

So then, both from Egypt, to which the Israelites had fled after the Babylonian triumph, and from the region of the Assyrians, to which Sennacherib had led them away, returning like flocks of doves, they will fill their former nests—that is, the ancestral regions—with a settled dwelling.

Vers. 12. — Ephraim has surrounded me in (??) negotiation, and the house of Israel in deceit. But Judah has gone down as a witness with God, and with the holy ones, faithful. [Here begins CHAPTER XII. — Vers. 1. —] Ephraim feeds on the wind, and follows after the heat. All day long he multiplies lying and devastation, and he has made a covenant with the Assyrians, and was carrying oil into Egypt. Since amid the roarings of threats, which the condition of that time demanded, the joys of deliverance had come about through a brief digression, returning to the sequence of the action undertaken, he sets forth the pursuits of Ephraim, either as if incestuous, or as if indignant: carefully taking care, as I have often noted, to weave beneath the announced punishments the appearances and magnitudes of the faults, which leave nothing to the stirring of his envy, and show that those punishments were brought forth not from fault but from judgment. Thus, then, the things that have been inserted by way of height will easily make the connection of the present verse to the preceding ones: that is, A yoke will be imposed on them, which will not be taken away.

When therefore Ephraim surrounded me in his trading, and the house of Israel in deceit—that is, like some wicked merchant, the people rejoiced in the fraud they had brought upon me, and thought that when they prayed they were mocking me; nor was it because he knew my folly that he came to the aid of the afflicted, and in the time of plagues confessed his own error; but because his heart was not right with me, nor did he faithfully promise amendment, after the likeness of that Pharaoh, who, as soon as he had breathed again from calamities, rushed back to his shameful deeds. Or certainly, as the prophet reproached in the very volume of the book, because gold and silver and the rest, whether pertaining to food or to worship, which they had received from God, they handed over to the worship of idols: this too he now wished to be understood, that Ephraim traded to his own insult, by complaining—namely, when he lied that he had obtained from idols all that he had received from God. But when the ten tribes under the kings who are set forth in the title had become foul with these iniquities which we have mentioned, Judah still descended somewhat unlike his brother, with God as witness, and faithful with the saints. That is, following the religious leader Hezekiah, he strove to show forth the majesty of divine protection and the faithfulness of the promise, and in his strength he placed the confidence of his salvation, even amid the utmost miseries.

And thus, having deserved to be freed by a wondrous defense, he showed that neither had his fathers been deceived, who had worshipped this one God with their whole mind, nor could he himself be overwhelmed by the flood of captivity, since he rejoiced in a true protection. Therefore each people reached its proper ends, so that Judah, having followed the true God, might come forth as a witness of the holy fathers and of miracles. But the Samaritans, just as they abandoned the truth and worshipped false gods, so are they shown to be fed on winds, having followed after heat—that is, vanities and destruction. For having abandoned the protection of God, which was to be obtained by merits, not by price, they then bought aid both from the Assyrians and from the Egyptians, sending money, namely, to the Assyrians and oil to the Egyptians—that is, gifts fruitful only of the soil—for by one kind he signified many things. Let us therefore hear what followed.

Verse 2. — The judgment of God is with Judah, and visitation upon Jacob. According to his ways, and according to his devices, he will render to him. By the name Jacob he indicated the peoples of the ten tribes. The diversity of their pursuits, he says, demanded also a diversity of punishment, so that the judgment of the Lord might stand for the salvation of Judah, while severe visitation might strike the Samaritans.

Verses 3–6. — In the womb he supplanted his brother, and in his strength he was directed with the Angel. And he prevailed with the Angel, and was strengthened, and wept, and entreated him: in Bethel he found him, and there he spoke with us. And you shall turn to the Lord your God: keep mercy and judgment, and hope in your God always. He remembers, as he began above, the nobility of old, so that whatever honors the chosen stock deserved, or whatever virtue it showed, may profit for the rebuking of the worthlessness of later generations. As if he were saying: Behold, from what a parent they were begotten, and to what mockeries they have come, and how far they have degenerated from the virtues of their forebears. For Jacob was so eager for glory that before he came forth from his mother's womb into this light, he entered into a prophetic contest with his brother (Gen. 35), and—what nature itself would scarcely permit to be believed—he seized the heel of his twin, whose birthright also he was to snatch away not by deceit but by merits. He therefore took up the auspice of light together with the testimony of dignity, clearly showing that he prevailed in a nobility pleasing to God, because the fruit of the virtue that was to follow had already, before the time of feeling, touched and given promise.

And so thereafter, when he had come to youthful age and, having already received the blessing of the firstborn, was conspicuous, and was being sought after by his brother's savage plots, he undertook a long exile, following the counsel of his holy mother; and relying on no human resources but only on God's help—to whom at Bethel, appearing to him, he had vowed tithes—he prospered, and he came to know the greatness of his own virtues and powers, which he had not known before by experience. For when after a long span of time he was returning, enriched, to his father's dwelling, and had suddenly been terrified at his brother's approach, an Angel met him in the likeness of a man, and deigned to wrestle with him as he feared—in such a way, certainly, that he did not overwhelm him with majesty displayed, but contended as it were an equal with his rival, or even as an inferior. When the blessed Jacob, as happy in strength so also clear-sighted in prudence, saw this—namely, that his Lord was submitting himself to him in great loving-kindness for this reason, to indicate what he had arranged concerning the exaltation of his servant, that is, that he was to be exalted with him as protector, with whom as wrestler he had come off the better, and would be made fit to understand that no mortal man so violated him as that even a superior nature could not do the same—therefore, when the patriarch had perceived so profound a counsel, he immediately assumed a spirit of humility, not of elation, and with tearful supplications he earnestly sought to be blessed by him whom he seemed to have prevailed over.

Nor was he deceived by that feigning of his wrestler, so as to think himself as it were stronger; but just as he was great-souled for enduring adversity, so too, solicitous for discerning hidden things, he understood that it was he himself who deigned to clothe himself in comprehensible images, whom he had seen at Bethel, leaning on the horns of the ladder reaching from earth to heaven. There, then, by a brief address he deserved to learn both how great was the divinity of the one appearing and what is the office of a faithful servant, without which one cannot please God at all—namely, that he believe and confess the omnipotence of the author, and trust in him with his whole mind through every age of his life. The Lord God of hosts, the Lord is his memorial. That is, you ought so to be mindful of God as always to confess him as your champion and lord. But this looks to doctrine; on the side of morals, however, keep guard over the pursuit of justice and mercy. Hope in your God always, so that either you may stand with him in continual virtue, or, if devotion has been interrupted, you may run back to him, having undertaken amendment. These rules of virtue, leading by a sure tenor to the summit of blessedness, he both happily practiced and left to his descendants to be guarded. Hence also from a small place he ascended to such great dignity that the land of Promise was handed down to his descendants.

Verse 7, 8.—Canaan, in his hand is a deceitful balance, he loved calumny. And Ephraim said, Yet I have become rich, I have found an idol for myself; all my labors shall not find in me iniquity, when I sinned. When he was recounting the noble deeds of blessed Jacob, from whom he complains that his descendants have degenerated, he suddenly introduced mention of Canaan, not in order to shift his discourse to another people, but, after the manner of the prophets, through excessive indignation, he called the descendants of Israel themselves Canaan, to whom doubtless they had shown themselves more similar in their ways. But this kind of invective we find also in others, but especially in blessed Isaiah, and Ezekiel, and in Daniel, when he convicted the adulterous elders. Therefore, by the tenor of this censure, in the present passage too the mention of Canaan, that is, of a profane people, has been introduced, so that the sense might be as follows: But why do I unroll the various marks of my father's nobility, from which this crowd, which I lament, is convicted to have slipped away over so great a span, that it is not undeservedly called the offspring of Canaan? In his hand, therefore, calumny stands with a careful balance, but far too deceitful: which is to say that I may show that he sins not by error, but rather by zeal and deliberate judgment. For where such a disposition of the soul is at work that one commits abominable deeds not by impulse or negligence, but with deliberation, as though with weights suspended on either side, he is said to have sinned under the scale.

In this sense we also read that passage in blessed David: But truly the sons of men are liars in the balances, that they may deceive; they themselves are vanity together. Since, then, this is the chief gift of human intelligence—to weigh by the plumb line of reason and the moments of comparison what one ought to obey and what to avoid—the profaned people, holding truth in falsehood, did indeed apply the balance to their affairs, but a deceitful one: preferring, that is, worse things to better, and reposing rather in harmful things than in useful ones. But what he says, He loved calumny, can also be referred to that which he accused in the earlier passages: namely, that the ungrateful people had put on such shamelessness, like a filthy woman, that it lied that all things which the unique creator of things had conferred on it, whether for worship or for vice, it obtained from its own lovers. On account of this the angry Lord promised that he would take away both the wool and the flax, which had covered its shame, so that the deformity and nakedness that followed might convict the crimes of the ungrateful. But these calumnies are also noted in blessed Jeremiah. For when Jerusalem had perished, with disasters announced through many prophets, and the whole nation of the Jews had been transferred to Babylonia, and few had been left to cultivate the fields, they published such great stubbornness of mind in sinning that they did not fear to say that from the time when they had ceased to worship the queen of heaven and the other idols of the neighboring nations, from that time also all adversities had followed them.

Therefore by opinions of this kind they stirred up, as it were, a false accusation against the true and most merciful God, proclaiming most falsely that they had enjoyed happy days when they departed from him, and miserable ones when they returned to him. Accordingly, the deceitful balance of their mind caused them to be called descendants of Canaan rather than of Israel, sinning not from a momentary impulse, as we said, but with an impiety that had been thoroughly tested; and therefore, having no weights of true judgment, they placed the confidence of their salvation and prosperity in the most fleeting things, which slip away like shadows. All my labors, he says, shall not find in me the iniquity that I have sinned. That is, when they were pressed by the crimes they had committed, they nevertheless supposed that they would be safe through the wealth they had labored to acquire, saying that they had gathered a splendid store of opulence, so that hardship could not reach them. Thus they were mocked by the deceits of their own balance, when, with God on high coming forth to judge their works, they thought that their varied household goods or hoarded money would protect the guilty.

Verse 9. — And I am the Lord your God, from the land of Egypt; I will yet make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the festival. Therefore you will know the frauds of that balance of yours—that is, of your deliberation—with the outcome of events bearing witness, so that what you refused by reason you may confess in anguish: that I am your only God, who from the time of the Egyptian liberation deigned to take you for myself as a peculiar people. And you will be able to remove his visitation by no defenses or riches, so that not only must you undergo the yoke of the announced servitude, but you will remain under it in such times of safety that, when these at last have run their course, you will taste the joys of freedom at the very end. Therefore in this sense, amid the roarings of threatening, something of prosperity seems to have been introduced, so that it might serve to confirm the captivity that was to come before, lest anyone doubt that the miseries to be inflicted, which he had learned, were to be ended by succeeding prosperity. But we could also bring forward this point, that it would surely come from the usage of the Scriptures that the declaration of sad things or of glad things be mingled together, so that neither continuous joys relax the mind nor continuous sorrows weaken it. But the context seems to support the former sense of the passage. Finally, he proceeds with severe speech, as he had begun.

Verse 10. — I have spoken from on high through the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and I was made like in the hand of the prophets. That is, I never laid aside the care of healing, but through my prophets I resisted both by speaking and by acting, so that those whom I was providing for with such great indulgence might understand and confess my providence—to such a degree that I did not disdain to assume, in the hands of the prophets, forms not sufficiently worthy of my majesty, in which I might converse more closely with them. I, the same, in my works, in the eyes of the prophets, did not disdain to be made like to these forms or persons, which, although they befitted clemency (as is that which I said a little earlier, that in order to drive fear from the heart of Israel I assumed the person of a weak wrestler; as in the time of blessed Moses I chose to be transfigured into the fire by which the bush was not consumed; or as I fortified the doorways of the Israelites with the blood of a lamb, and many other things which we read were done in this manner at various times), so that, clearly, our God might appear in those images which the dispensation he had undertaken demanded, not those which befitted his majesty. But let us see the rest.

Verse 11. — If Galgal is an idol, yet they were sacrificing to oxen in Galgal in vain. After the recollection of what he had mercifully done, the complaint is brought back to the point from which it began, in his own sense, as follows: Behold what I experience from an ungrateful people after so many benefits of mine, after so many gifts and so many miracles; they pour out open errors in contempt of me, and, not deceived by any subtlety of arguments, they are subjugated to confessed madness! If Galgal is an idol, yet those sacrificing to oxen in Galgal were doing so in vain. Concerning this place he also said above: All their wickedness is in Galgal. Therefore by the causal conjunction, that is, If, he introduced the sentence of one who convicts. That is, since no one doubts that only images of brute cattle were set up in those very places, in which, even if they had set up the cattle themselves, they could not profit those who supplicate: but now, since the more worthless images of worthless things, and things devoid of feeling, are seen there, destined to give no benefit either to themselves or to others, yet those sacrificing to oxen in Galgal were doing so in vain: as if he were saying, Could it have been believed, before it happened, that this could be committed, that a people once distinguished by virtues would follow open folly and profanity, containing in itself nothing more than final guilt?

and after those rites, venerable in their majesty, he descended to the base institutions of the fanatics, and deemed idols, despised even by those of moderate wisdom, to be worshipped in vain—that is, without any benefit, even of brief advantage? But though the folly was clearer than day, if men thought that supplication should be made to cattle, there would still be crowds who would reckon that happiness could be conferred upon them by the images of oxen. For even their altars are like heaps upon the furrows of the field. And consequently, the very cheapness of their observances convicts their profane rites, so that they build altars without any choice of places, and venerate shameful gods with makeshift altars. Therefore, as it were with a groan and admiration, the utterance we have expounded was brought forth: If Galgal is an idol, yet they were sacrificing to oxen in Galgal in vain; for even their altars are like heaps upon the furrows of the field. But let us hear what he adds next.

Verses 12–13. — Jacob fled into the region of Syria, and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he served. But in the prophet the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, and in the prophet he was saved. Because he did not introduce the remembrance of the ancients in the manner of a historical narrative, but, under the impulse and grief of rebuking degenerate descendants, he recalled the deeds of their forefathers; therefore his speech proceeds as if wavering, so that reproach and praise may follow one upon the other, and to the weight of censure he may join the proclamation of ancient nobility. Hence, as he had begun, he enumerates the labors of blessed Jacob, who was also called Israel, and his successes. By whose name, of course, the whole nation is signified. For which reason he made mention especially of him, and, as we had begun to say, that Jacob from whose stock they descend, obeying the counsels of his holy mother, placing his hope and confidence of future prosperity in his God alone, left the land of his fathers, and entered the borders of Mesopotamia alone and destitute, having no help of companionship except from his noble disposition. At whose arrival his uncle Laban immediately desired his company. And so that the labor of the noble young man might not be without reward, he pledged the marriage of the beloved virgin in return for enduring seven years' servitude: in which time, when his faithfulness and diligence had been greatly displayed, the doubled condition of servitude and marriage both.

For this is what he says, "he served for a wife," that is, he performed the office of a shepherd in order to obtain a marriage, as the history recounts. But what he says, "And he served for a wife," means that with the proposed marriage covenant, he guarded his father-in-law's flock. But in the prophet he was led out, because the Lord led Israel out of Egypt, and in the prophet he was saved. From very small beginnings, and so small that he pastured flocks by hired labor, he reached such greatness of cup and of riches that now all Egypt could not in a manner contain him, and just as at first it had envied his heel, so afterward Pharaoh with his armies perished, and that glory of crushed Egypt, not by human strength but as much for declaring the merits of the fathers as for establishing sacred rites, it recognized that it had obtained. In no warlike leader, however, but in the prophet was he saved; namely the blessed Moses, who vindicated him by those famous miracles which we read of. What lamentation, then, will be sufficient, that a people which was once distinguished by so illustrious a lineage is now notable for folly, and performs only infamous crimes?

Verse 14. — Ephraim provoked me to anger with his bitter deeds, and his blood shall come upon him, and his Lord shall repay his reproach. The remembrance of the fathers rendered the crime of the sons more horrifying, and the exclamation of the censor that follows indicates this, who testifies that he was driven to bitterness and indignation, which would go forth against anyone worse. And therefore, rising up with the force of one pronouncing judgment, he nevertheless repels from himself the envy of that vengeance, and declares that Ephraim has perished by elaborate punishments, who, a deserter of saving disciplines, by his own doing entirely, both degenerated and fell.

CHAPTER XIII.

Verses 1–2. — When Ephraim spoke, horror invaded Israel, and he sinned in Baal, and died. And now they have added to sinning, and they made for themselves a molten image of their silver, like a likeness of idols; the work of craftsmen is the whole of it, these very men say to them: Sacrifice, O men, worshiping calves. He introduced mention of the things which they had committed from the time of the divided tribes, but in that order which indignation rather than narration demanded. For Ephraim in the present passage he calls Jeroboam, the leader of the division, who decreed that the people should venerate the images of calves. Afterwards, however, Ahab with Jezebel took up the worship of the idol Baal, which profanity Jehu is read to have avenged with fitting severity. Accordingly, this consecration of idols both began first among the people, and in the last time came to rest.

But since this order of the narrative has been silent here, which we have mentioned, now the invective has changed its part. For when Ephraim spoke, that is, when Jeroboam summoned them to the worship of demons, horror seized Israel. For indeed it immediately assumed the fear of superstition, and trembled before it as if it were a true divinity; or certainly it took up the practice of worshipping him, through whom it deserved to be a burden to the eternal judge. Nor was he content to have perpetrated this, but he also submitted his neck to other sacrileges, and having embraced the institutions of Baal, he even experienced calamities, and assuming no zeal for amendment, from the ruins of those who had fallen by various incursions of enemies, or when, with Jehu avenging, the idol itself was destroyed with its worshippers; yet no one, he says, could be stirred to the affection of correction among these. But now, he says, they have added to sinning, and have made for themselves a molten image of their silver, as it were a likeness of idols: not indeed that after the times of Ahab they began to venerate the images of calves, but that those things which they did not leave even after chastisement are said to have been added. For that profanity itself, unless it were increased by rebellious zeal, could not be continuous. The work, he says, of craftsmen is the whole: these themselves say. Sacrifice men, worshipping calves.

He repeated this not without reason, though it had already been discussed throughout the whole volume, but so that the meaning might become something of this sort: novelty, being unguarded, may indeed win people over to the worship of things, yet when delay examines them, they truly grow cheap, nor is continuous veneration shown except to those things that are distinguished by sure marks. But here, since both reason and long lapse of time have exposed the cheapness and vanity of the work—that is, that there is in the deities of the nations, I do not say power, but not even any form, except when the hand of craftsmen skilled in fashioning has granted it—the profane people nevertheless willingly listens to the voices of soothsayers, undoubtedly commanding them that men, serving with the offering of prayers and victims, should supplicate calves devoid of reason and sense.

Verse 3. — Therefore they shall be like morning clouds, and like the morning dew passing away, like dust seized by a whirlwind, and like smoke from a chimney. Above he had said that his blood would be upon his own head, and that his reproach would be returned upon himself, and now he has repeated the same, or piled it up by way of execration, because since they had subjected themselves to the utmost folly—namely, by transferring the honor of God to the images of cattle—they themselves would perish as cheaply as smoke, as dust, as dew, as morning mists are consumed by the rays of the sun.

Verse 4. — But I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt: and you shall not know a god besides me, and there is no savior but me. These verses are joined to the preceding, so that the sense may be as follows: When I shook the yoke of domination from your necks, and happily, while you were held in bondage, made my majesty known to you by those illustrious miracles, I also established this with express voice: that the people, always intent upon my worship, should never be subjected to any other as though to a god, because you would find no other who could grant you salvation, since at that time you appeared to have been bound to the elements in servitude.

Verse 5. — I knew you in the desert, in a land of solitude. But what now, he says, am I to do in the face of your sacrileges, as though I were stirred by something new, when even in that very time of your deliverance I always found you such as you are now revealed to be, that is, ungrateful and insolent? And in that he took care to add, in a land of solitude, he certainly wished this to be understood: that examples did not always corrupt them, since they also sinned in those places in which they had no one whom they might imitate.

Verse 6. — They were filled according to their pastures, and they were satisfied, and they lifted up their heart, and they forgot me. With my benefits, he says, the whole nation strove, not with devotion but with wickedness; and so that this might easily be made clear, he joins these things also to those times, and by the course of his invective he returns to the present age, from which he had begun, yet with a brief passage of speech, bringing in also a mention of that sentence which had been uttered in the Canticle of Deuteronomy, with blessed Moses declaring it, that is, The beloved grew fat, and grew thick, and kicked, so as to make for himself new gods, like barley bread, whom their fathers did not know (Deut. 32). For according to their pastures, he says, they were filled, and they were satisfied, and they lifted up their heart, and they forgot me. And this sequence of sins he set forth beforehand for this reason, that he might show the vengeance which he was about to bring in was not stirred up by passion, but fortified by justice and reason. For there follows,

Verses 7–8. And I will be to them like a lioness, like a leopard in the way of the Assyrians. I will meet them like a bear robbed of her cubs, and I will burst open the inner parts of their liver, and I will consume them there, like a lion. The beast of the field shall tear them apart. He teaches that those calamities which the barbarian savagery of the enemy was going to bring upon them are, at his command, both existing and coming to pass; nor does he disdain to set forth his warning by means of the images of wild beasts, which he knows to be fitting—not, to be sure, to the nature of his own judgment, but to the misery of the condemned. And fittingly, when among the gaping jaws of lions he had also placed the bear, he sharpened its ferocity by the goads of bereavement, so that the comparison he introduced might nowhere fall short: Like a bear, he says, robbed of her cubs. And I will burst open the inner parts of their liver—of those, namely, who afflicted me with like losses. For when I was forming this people for myself as sons with great diligence, and was composing their hearts as it were by licking them, they bereaved me, not only of the offspring I desired but even of those I had labored to produce, by perpetrating those crimes which would demand the destruction of the whole nation.

Verses 9–11. Your destruction, Israel: only in me is your help. Where is your king? Let him now above all save you in all your cities: and your judges, of whom you said, Give me a king and princes. I will give you a king in my fury, and I will take him away in my indignation. A sentence suited to the question, and one that only the rule of piety resolves. For it is spoken in the person of God: Your destruction, Israel, only in me is your help. And indeed then is the defense of the faithful sure, when the confidence of deliverance is placed in God. And this is what the prophet accuses throughout the whole volume amid the corrupted morals of the people: that they trusted not in God, but in the defense of their own factions. How then now, as if the order were changed, does he announce to Israel that manifest destruction is imminent, because their salvation would consist in the power of God alone? Therefore that distinction must be noted, which illumines what was thought ambiguous; for he does not here mock the faith of the people, who place the hope of their joy in the power of God alone (which assuredly, if they had not done it, they had offended), but he declared only that plagues were imminent, such that help could be brought by no one except by divine power alone. Therefore, he says, your destruction, Israel, is imminent: only in me is your help. But if you consider it diligently, you will see that it is brought forward not only not absurdly, but even morally and according to the usage of human speech.

For this is why, if at any time we wish to speak of someone oppressed by severe illness or by hopeless calamity, we say that his hope is in God: we are indicating not so much the duty of the mind as the weight of the disaster that presses him down. Certain, then, he says, is the destruction that will seize you, and such that none but the Almighty can rescue you from it; and since by your crimes you have made him hostile to you, it remains that you be snatched away by devouring destruction. To make this meaning clear, he added: Where is your king? Let him now above all save you in all your cities: and your judges, of whom you said, Give me a king and princes. According to the prophetic custom, he also reproaches the people with that error which they held when they withdrew from the priestly commonwealth in their desire for a king. Since they had contracted it from emulation of the neighboring nations, when their affairs fall into ruin, the counsels they had formerly followed are also brought under accusation, as if he were saying: This folly is old in you, namely, that you think you can consult better for yourself than I can for you; and from the beginning of this opinion you demanded that princes be given you in the likeness of the other nations. Now, therefore, let the fruit of your counsel appear, and let the diligence of kings protect you against my indignation. Surely they ought to have taught you what profit those powers, sought by your ambitions, bring you. But let us pass to the rest. I will give you a king in my fury, and I will take him away in my indignation.

Certain people have understood the king given in fury to be Jeroboam, who was the author of the separation of the tribes; but the one taken away in indignation they have understood to be Hoshea, under whom Israel was captured. This indeed, although it can be admitted, nevertheless, since it is pronounced with reference to a future time, signified both things—that is, "I will give you a king," and "I will take away"—can be understood by a more suitable summary in this sense: that the Israelite prince who is to be taken away is proclaimed as excessive, while the Assyrian is proclaimed as the one to be given.

Finally, according to the prophetic custom, after the burden of condemnation, which had been its cause, he added: The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up, his sin is hidden: that is, the crimes which he committed over many periods of time, so that they were not interspersed with any virtues, but heaped up in a deadly course, as if kept under some seal, stood recorded in the memory of the judge; by the recompense of these, I say, it was brought about that, having lost the fires of liberty, they were subjected to the most deep servitude, and felt those pains and agonies which women are accustomed to experience in childbirth.

Verse 13. — He himself is an unwise son; for now he will not stand in the crushing of the children. Already above too he argued under the same colors, that he marked the exposed foolishness of Israel by the testimony of adversaries, and that the deformity of merits, which had lain hidden for a time under prosperity, was at last laid bare by the afflictions that convicted them. Therefore that you are a son, and not a wise one, is proved by weighty testimony, because in that time when the enemy burst in, you by no means deserved to stand. And since by the name of foolishness he was marking out profanity, to which the ten Tribes, as he argues from the beginning of the volume, devoted themselves with all zeal, and on account of that foolishness the storm of captivity seized them, he opportunely passes over to Judah, and reveals him not only by name but also by the judgment of his deeds, so as to show at once what outcome held the wise sons, just as he had also exposed him who had remained foolish. To the more prosperous things, therefore, which were bestowed under King Hezekiah with great miracles, the prophetic discourse migrates, and says:

Verses 14–15. — From the hand of death I will deliver them, from death I will redeem them. I will be your death, O death; I will be your sting, O hell. Consolation is hidden from my eyes, because he himself divides among brothers. The Lord will bring a burning wind rising from the desert, and it will dry up his veins, and lay waste his fountain; and he himself snatches away the treasure of every desirable vessel. First, as is his custom, by promising prosperity he announces the joys of deliverance; afterward, however, with that same pleasure, he heaps up vengeance. Therefore, From the hand of death I will deliver them: that is, when they have come into such great difficulty that death, having laid on its hand, seems to have seized and held them, then I will come as deliverer. This the speech of blessed Hezekiah especially expressed, saying that days of ... and reproach had come, since children had come even to the birth, and there was no strength to bring forth. So then, when they were hard pressed by the wealth of the Assyrians, and the enemy had shut up the city in siege, destruction will threaten so closely that it would seem already about to devour the wretched. But because they obtained divine aid by righteous prayers, he brought forth that great miracle, and when one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the Assyrians had been destroyed by the striking of an angel, the deliverance longed for by the pious shone forth: according to that which the holy songs had sung beforehand: This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and delivered him out of all his tribulations: the Lord will send his angels round about those who fear him, and will deliver them (Ps. 33).

Death, therefore, and hell, the Assyrian king, and his whole army are called his; and the divine sentence promises that he will be destroyed. And after the crash of vengeance has been sent before, he adds, in his custom, the cause that stirred that indignation. Consolation, he says, is hidden from my eyes, because he himself divides among brothers. He has assumed the bearing and words of one mourning, so as to magnify the crime of the Assyrian; and as though in the person of Judah—concerned more for the brothers, that is, the Israelites, whom Sennacherib had led into captivity, than for his own calamity—he says that his eyes had so flowed with tears that they could not receive consolation, because their king, savage and fierce, had wrought a grievous separation among brothers, namely by transferring the ten tribes into captivity to the region of Media. Here indeed the diligent reader can inquire why this affection is ascribed to the tribe of Judah, which mourns the departure of its brother, when above, speaking of the same matter, the prophet reproached it with the impiety of its rejoicings. For when he had said, Ephraim was in desolation, he says: In the day of desolation I showed faithfulness among the tribes of Israel; the princes of Judah have become like those who remove a boundary; upon them I will pour out my wrath like water. Since there they are said to have rejoiced over the expulsion of their brothers, in that they thought the boundaries of their fields had been extended, how are they now introduced as mourning the expulsion of their brother without any consolation?

This will be able to be resolved by a twofold exposition: for since, as I said, the discourse is often not about individual persons but about whole armies, therefore in that multitude we understand that there were also diverse dispositions, whence some things are brought forth from the persons of the pious and others from the impious. Consequently, then, we gather that there were some there whom the expulsion of their brothers grieved, but more whom the extension of their borders delighted. But let us now also consider the second mode of explanation, which will surely be of such value to the judge that it seems to be fitted to causes rather than to persons. And let this be the voice of kinship, which the prophet sets near the end of the book—namely, that he grieves over the calamity of an expelled brother and calls down the vengeance owed to the enemies; but that which also created pleasure for certain people should be seen as a charge against the parricides: so that the sense may be of this kind, that there were some in whom profanity had confounded not only the laws but even the rights of nature, so that in the captivity of their brothers, where they ought to have suffered with them, they preferred to glory. The Lord will bring a burning wind rising from the desert, and will dry up its veins, and will lay waste its fountains, and he himself will plunder the treasures of every desirable vessel. He calls the burning wind from the desert an angel, who will destroy the Assyrian army in one night; not that angels are believed to dwell in the desert, whom the authority of the Gospel commends as seeing the face of the Father (Matt.

But because of the swiftness of the vengeance—for indeed a hundred and eighty-five thousand are reported to have been slain in a single night—it has taken on the likeness of fire, and for this reason it has introduced mention of the desert, so that that whole column might seem to have been consumed by a blast rather than by any working. For so also blessed David had said: Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire. (Ps. 103.) Therefore he has signified that this burning is now summoned from the places made uninhabitable by the heat of the sun, which would destroy the Assyrians as tinder and their veins, that is, the king with his army and offspring. And he himself will plunder the treasure, etc. If you consider the custom of the prophets, who do not observe the declensions of times with sufficient care and diligence, he seems to have denoted the wealth gathered by King Sennacherib from his triumphs: evidently he was consumed by the aforesaid inflammation for this reason, because he had acted cruelly in many things, and his avarice had not been satisfied by what he had plundered; and now for this reason he is compelled to vomit forth whatever he had previously devoured through iniquity.

CHAPTER XIV.

Verse 1. — Let Samaria perish, because she has provoked her Lord to bitterness, etc. A little earlier he had said: Consolation is hidden from my eyes, because he himself divides among the brothers, and he had shown the effect by which he has mercy on the battles; but now, with the slaughter of the Assyrians described, he has grown hot again against Samaria. And this he did not do out of inconsistency, but out of the weightiness of his judgment. For after he had shown both the piety and the power of the true God, who had consumed the proud king as if with no effort, and that he was so ready for the defense of the pious as to bestow the avenging of them upon the joys of great nations, he rightly wished, as if inflamed, that Samaria perish, since by her own crimes she had brought it about that this Lord, so good, should exist not as her protector but as her adversary: as if he were saying: When I behold the benefits of our ruler, who is eternal, all the more do I shudder at the crime of Israel, who surely have labored to be deprived of such a protection.

Verse 2. — Return, Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have fallen in your iniquity. The speech proceeds with a remarkable connection. For he had cried out what was capable of aggravating Samaria's sin, but since he had done this out of mercy rather than execration, he brings at least secondary remedies to heal the wound; and because they were unwilling to embrace the protections of continual devotion, let them take up the aids of penitence and amendment. If, then, either dangers make you better, O Israel, return to the Lord your God, from whom you ought never to have turned away; and having execrated that very thing in which you had fallen in your iniquity, take up the offerings of confession. For this is what he says:

Verse 3. — Take words with you, and return to the Lord, and say to him: Take away all iniquity, and accept what is good: for you alone can remove the guilt by which we are pressed. But what the good is that he was beseeching him to accept, the following verse shows, And we will render the calves of our lips. For the sacred songs have also taught thus, that we should offer to God a sacrifice of praise (Ps. 50), because the praise offered to him from a pure heart is more pleasing than a new calf producing hooves and horns. Speak out, therefore, O Israel, against yourself to the Lord your injustices, for whose remission you desire to be worthy. But let us hear what he adds to these.

Verse 4. — Assur will not save us; we will not mount horses, nor will we say any more, "Our gods," the works of our hands: for in you the orphan finds mercy. What he says, "Assur will not satisfy us," seems to be taken from the example of Judah. For the history of the kings narrates that when Rabshakeh, the commander of the Assyrian king Sennacherib, had been sent to compel and terrify those who had been shut up in Jerusalem, among the other things which he boastfully and arrogantly proclaimed about the Assyrians, he added that Sennacherib was prepared to bring out two thousand horses, whose riders the whole army of Judah could not furnish; and [he asked] with what madness they provoked against themselves the forces of so great a prince. If they would therefore consult their own safety, they should surrender to his authority, who would show himself no less generous to the submissive than severe to the defiant. But the inhabitants of Jerusalem, placing their confidence in the power of God alone, silently despised the boasting of the enemy's threats. Therefore, to the example of Judah's confidence, the speech now also admonishes Israel, so that it, corrected by long servitude, may now begin to imitate the devotion of its brother, which he showed at the time of the Assyrian siege. And he says, "We will not say any more, 'Our gods,' the works of our hands.

That is, we shall cease to venerate the images made by the hand of craftsmen, once we have also known, by your testimony, that you, the good judge, do not cease to have mercy on the people who remain in your worship. But receive what is answered by our God to this offering of your confession.

Verses 5–8. — I will heal their contritions, I will love them freely: for my anger is turned away from them. I will be as the dew to Israel, he shall blossom as the lily, and his root shall burst forth as that of Lebanon. They shall return and sit in his shadow, they shall live on wheat, and they shall bud as the vine, his memorial shall be like the wine of Lebanon. By various comparisons he describes both the sweetness of his deliverance and the marks of freedom, and the pleasantness of the cultivated fields, which, just as surely in the time when the enemy exults they are clothed in the greatest squalor, so when the calm of peace exercises the industry of the cultivators, both abundance and beauty are seen everywhere. So then, Israel, when the prosperous things promised to you have driven away your captivity, the beauty of freedom and the sweetness of gladness shall so fill and clothe you that the meadows, dripping with dew, shall be seen to bear not any common sprouts, but lilies and roses: for my clemency and my grace flow upon you like a countryside, so that, with all foulness laid aside, you may receive the ornaments of your calling. And that you may not doubt that this can come to pass for you, in proportion to its greatness, it goes forth in his brother, that is, in Judah, by being freed from the hands of the Assyrians.

What glory, then, will that longed-for yet scarcely hoped-for freedom confer upon them? Such a freedom will await you as well, if only you show yourself worthy to receive it. For you shall live by grain, and you shall bud forth like a vine which, transplanted from Egypt, had occupied Palestine with its broad borders, and your memorial shall be like the wine of Lebanon—that is, your glory shall have as great a fragrance as that of the best wine produced on Mount Lebanon.

Verse 9. — Ephraim, what have I to do any more with idols? I will hear and direct him, like a green fir tree; from me your fruit is found. Since these things are so, he says, as our discussion has thoroughly taught—that is, that this is the one way of salvation which the worship and religion of our God has opened—at least put an end to your profanity, whose beginning you ought never to have felt; and cleave with whole faith and devotion to the one Lord, who is true; and do not think that his truth is to be held in a lie, so as to ascribe the incommunicable name to idols. But know, what you have learned not only from precepts but from the very voice of events, that I am one, whose worshippers attain eternal felicity, while those who desert him are overwhelmed with eternal miseries.

For I am the one who hears those who plead, who can and customarily do heal the broken, straighten the twisted, make the barren fruitful, find the lost, raise the dead, and exalt to that height those whom I have revived, so that they may seem to have advanced from palms or brambles into firs and cypresses.

Verse 10. — Who is wise, and will understand these things? and the understanding man, and he shall know them? for the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall stumble in them. Worthily did he conclude his book with admiration, whose usefulness he had shown both by precepts and by examples. At the same time, to teach that the whole cause of sins and miseries has come from folly, he praised the wise man, who, weighing all that has been discussed, would recognize the usefulness and the end of the sacred ways: namely, that the just pass through them with severity, while all the transgressors stumble, that is, by committing sacrilege and enduring exile. It must indeed be noted that even these passages, which I have expounded according to the aforementioned history of the prophet, as far as our understanding allowed, can also be valid for the signification of greater things. For that which was said concerning Sennacherib, I will be your death, O death, I will be your sting, O hell, can also be understood of a larger matter, according to what the teacher of the Gentiles showed. For when he spoke to the Corinthians about the resurrection to be made manifest: Where is, he says, O death, your sting? where is, O death, your victory?

But thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. For he is said to have ascended from the desert like a burning wind, inasmuch as he came to cast fire upon the earth, because from the womb of the Virgin, to whom according to the laws of nature a man had come as a cultivator, he sprouted forth: and he made the veins of death and its fountain dry up, so that it would have no right to reclaim a second time those whom the Redeemer had once raised up into eternal joys. Indeed, by the sacrament of his Incarnation, the dew of grace descended upon the fields of the Churches, so that everywhere, fruitful through various virtues, the lowly lilies might spring forth, and there might come to be such a gladness of multiplication of the faithful, as great as that of a field full of crops, fruits, and flowers, glorying in them. And so those who sit in his shadow will be converted, that is, the various nations will desire to rest under the protection of the Church, so that they may obtain the nourishment of both bodily and spiritual strength in wine and grain. Therefore that deliverance which took place under Hezekiah is both more abundantly and more gratefully set forth from the freedom that Christ handed down. Who is wise, and will understand these things? And understanding, will he know them?