Commentariorum In Naum Prophetam Liber Unus

The Book of Commentaries on the Prophet Nahum by Saint Eusebius Jerome, Presbyter of Stridon.

Prologue.

According to the Seventy interpreters, in the order of the twelve prophets Nahum is placed after Jonah, because they appear to prophesy concerning the same city. For it is written in Jonah: The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying: Arise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it (Jonah 1:1). In Nahum, however, the beginning is this: The burden of Nineveh; the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. Therefore both weave their prophecy concerning Nineveh, the metropolis of the Assyrians, which is now called Ninus. Furthermore, in the Hebrew, after Jonah comes Micah, and after Micah follows Nahum, which is interpreted as comforter. For already the ten tribes had been led away into captivity by the Assyrians under Hezekiah, king of Judah, under whom also now, for the consolation of the people who had been carried away, a vision is seen against Nineveh. Nor was it a small consolation, both for those who were already serving the Assyrians and for the rest, who under Hezekiah from the tribe of Judah and Benjamin were being besieged by the same enemies, that they should hear that the Assyrians too were to be captured by the Chaldeans, as will be shown in the subsequent parts of this book. But it must be known (since Nineveh in our language, from the Hebrew, sounds as "beautiful"; and this world is called beautiful: whence also among the Greeks it received its name from ornament) that whatever is now said against Nineveh is figuratively proclaimed concerning the world.

For this reason the term that the Seventy translate as "assumption," and Aquila rendered as "assumption," is given among the Hebrews as MASSA, that is, a heavy burden—because it presses down upon that against which it is directed and does not allow it to lift up its head. Furthermore, as for the addition "Nahum the Elkoshite," some think that Elkosh was the father of Nahum and, according to Hebrew tradition, that he was himself a prophet as well, since Elkosh is to this day a small village in Galilee—small indeed and barely showing traces of ancient buildings by their ruins, yet nonetheless known to the Jews and shown to me also by my guide. At the same time this too must be noted: that this very assumption, or burden, or weight, is the prophet's vision. For he does not speak "in" [the Spirit], as Montanus and Prisca and Maximilla rave; but what he prophesies is a book of vision belonging to one who understands all that he speaks, and who makes the burden of the enemies a vision for his own people. And so, Paula and Eustochium, this prophecy is woven concerning the consummation of the world, for the consolation of the saints: that whatever they see in the world they may despise as passing and falling away, and may prepare themselves for the day of judgment, when the Lord will be the avenger against the true Assyrians.

THE BOOK BEGINS.

(Chapter 1, Verse 1.) «God is jealous, and the Lord revenges.» The voice of the prophet praising God, because he has avenged the injury of his people upon the Assyrians. Or, according to a higher understanding, because he hears the groaning of his saints, and at the consummation of the world makes their adversaries feel punishments. That zeal is taken in a good sense, the apostle Paul also shows, saying: Be zealous for the greater gifts (1 Cor 12:31). And in another place: For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God (2 Cor 11:2). And the Lord himself in the psalm: The zeal of your house has consumed me (Ps 68:10). And Elijah: With zeal, he says, I have been zealous for the Lord God of hosts of Israel (3 Kgs 19:10). We also read of the zeal of Phinehas, and of Mattathias (Num 25:11; 1 Macc 2 ff.). And of Simon the Zealot, apostle of Jesus Christ, whom Mark the evangelist calls Simon the Canaanite (Acts 1:13; Mk 3:18). But the Lord is zealous for the salvation of those for whom he is zealous; so that those whom his clemency could not save, his jealousy may save. Whence also to Jerusalem, which because of her excessive sins did not deserve the visitation of his zeal and fury, God speaks in Ezekiel: My zeal has departed from you, and I will be angry with you no more (Ezek 16:42). As long therefore as the world was doing penance, its consummation was not taking place: but after iniquity multiplied and the love of many grew cold, so that even the elect of God are tested (Mt

XXIV): then the Lord, jealous, comes in vengeance: not that he himself is hostile and an avenger, which is said of the devil; but that his vengeance is hostile, and, like fire, consumes wood, hay, and stubble, so that pure gold and silver may remain.

«The Lord avenges, and has fury: the Lord avenges against his enemies, and is angry with his adversaries.» The Septuagint: «The Lord avenges with fury: the Lord avenges against his adversaries, and takes away his enemies.» According to either understanding, because the Lord loves whom he corrects (Prov. 3), and chastises every son whom he receives, therefore he is angry; so that he may take away what is hostile and inimical to him, and, once hostile and contrary thoughts are broken and words are removed, they may return to their former state. Finally, in what follows he says: The Lord is patient, and his long-suffering is great. But since we have once undertaken also to expound the history, let us understand the enemies and foes of God as the Assyrians, against whom, when he has been patient for a long time, he will afterward arise as an avenger with fury and anger.

(Verse 2.) “The Lord is patient and great in strength, and cleansing, he will not acquit the innocent.” What is expressed more significantly in Greek is: [Al. ). And the sense is: For a long time indeed he was patient with the wickedness of the Assyrians, and by the strength of his magnanimity he endured their iniquities, provoking them to repentance; but because, having despised the goodness of God, according to an impenitent heart they stored up for themselves wrath on the day of wrath (Rom. 2), he who was previously patient will by no means allow them to go unpunished as though they were clean and innocent. Or certainly it is thus (since we wish to take what is said in a good sense as well): he is patient who sustains all who fall and raises up those who are cast down (Ps. 145); who heals the troubled in heart and binds up their contrition; and his power is great, dissolving enmity in the flesh, and he does not make the guilty innocent: since even one who applauds himself too much will be convicted, because he was saved not by his own merit but by the mercy of God. For although he may say: “Behold, I have served you for so many years, and I have never transgressed your command” (Luke 15:29), yet because the Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all his works (Ps. 145:9), and all have sinned and need the glory of God (Rom. 3:23), having been justified freely by him he will hear: “Is your eye evil because I am good?” (Matt. 20:15). And so it will come about that in the very act by which he accuses and forgives, he allows no one to go away guiltless.

(Verse 3.) “The Lord is in the storm and in the whirlwind of his life, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.” For “storm” and “whirlwind,” the Septuagint translated “consummation” and “commotion”—although where we have “in the storm,” and in Hebrew it is written BASUPHA, it can also be understood as “in commotion.” This, however, signifies that at the end of the world all things will be moved, according to what is written in Haggai: “Yet once more, and I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and the dry land” (Haggai 2:7); and when all things have been shaken—so that they may believe in the way of the Lord, who says in the Gospel: “I am the way, and the life, and the truth” (John 14:6); and: “When the Son of Man comes in the clouds” (Mark 13:26), to which clouds it is commanded in Isaiah (chapter 5) that they not rain rain upon the vineyard, and to which the truth of God reaches, as the Psalmist says (Psalm 35:6): “Your truth reaches even to the clouds”—then even those very clouds, namely the prophets and the souls of the saints, which were previously weighed down by union with the flesh, having been raised on high, will become of a finer substance, and, brought under the footstool of God’s feet, they will minister in the lowest offices among the angels. For the former and ancient things, which pertain to the head, they will not be able to know.

But another will take “clouds” in the opposite sense: that they always disturb things that are calm, and strive to obscure the light of the sun and stars with their own darkness, and that once subjected afterward to the Lord’s power they are reduced to dust and to nothing, and the earth is dissolved in them—the earth that is rich.

(Verse 4.) “Rebuking the sea, and drying it up, and leading all the rivers to the desert.” According to the letter, the power of God is described, who will avenge Israel on its adversaries, since it is no great thing for him to destroy the Assyrians, whose majesty it is even to change the elements. Or certainly, since we have said once that the prophecy concerns the consummation of the world, accept this also simply: when the consummation of the world has come, and heaven and earth have passed away, the sea too and the rivers will be dried up. But to me, reading that in the Psalms: “This sea is great and spacious; there are creeping things whose number is not known, small animals with great; there the ships walk about. That dragon whom you formed to mock him” (Ps. 103:25–26), it seems worthy of God’s goodness and mercy to destroy all the bitterness and saltiness of the sea by his threat, and to humble the dragon that reigns in the waters, and to dry up the whirlpools of malice in which swim the small creeping things whose number is not known; for those things that consort with the dragon are not worthy of number.

Leading rivers also to the desert, every knowledge falsely so called, which exalting itself against God uses the river of eloquence, and the rolling of words, and whirling up swelling whirlpools, is borne headlong amid the wonder of onlookers. See Plato, behold Demosthenes, Tully too, philosopher equally and orator, and look upon the leaders of the heretics, of whom were Valentinus, Marcion, Bardesanes, Tatian, and you will not doubt concerning the rivers. But all these the Lord Jesus will consume with the spirit of his mouth, and will destroy with the brightness of his coming (2 Thess. 2), and will lead them to the deserts. And at the same time observe that according to the title which is inscribed, The Assumption of Nineveh; the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite, rightly both in Nineveh the world is understood figuratively, and its sea, the rivers of eloquence, are dried up at the consummation.

«Bashan is weakened and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon has languished.» The Septuagint: «Bashanitis is diminished and Carmel, and the things that flourished in Lebanon have failed.» Through Bashan and Carmel and Lebanon, a fertile region, and planted mountains, the devastation of the Assyrian is shown: that he who was once powerful and flourishing and ruling over very many nations, with the Lord angered, is to be laid waste. But we can also understand this of the consummation of the world, that each of the powerful and noble, and abounding in excessive riches, perishes suddenly, and it is said to him: Fool, this night your soul shall be taken from you; and the things you have prepared, whose shall they be (Luke 12:20)?

Furthermore, according to the interpretation of the names, since Basan means confusion and disgrace, we assert that at the consummation of the world all things that are worthy of disgrace and shame are weakened when the Lord comes, and not only are sins reduced to nothing, but Carmel also—which is interpreted as the knowledge of circumcision—and those who seem to themselves rich and flourishing in good works, tremble when Christ comes, and that saying in the Gospel is fulfilled: When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on the earth (Luke 18:8)? For as iniquity increases, the love of many will grow cold, on account of which the wrath of God will come.

(Verse 5.) The mountains were moved by him, and the hills were made desolate, and the earth trembled at his face, and the world, and all who dwell in it. The Septuagint: The mountains were moved by him, and the hills were shaken, and the earth was drawn together at his face, the whole and all who dwell in it. It can also be understood simply that at the consummation of the world, when the Savior comes in his majesty, both mountains and hills, and the world and the earth, and all things will be moved. For if at his passion the sun fled, the rocks were split, the earth trembled (Matthew 27; Luke 23), much more at his brightness will all things be thrown into confusion. But figuratively too, mountains and hills are to be understood as the lofty and the powerful, who at the Lord's coming will be laid low to the ground, and, deposed from their throne, will cling to the floor.

For the face of the Lord is upon those who do evil, to destroy their memory from the earth. Then also the earth will tremble, and the world and the whole universe will dread the face of the Lord: this they will count as the utmost torment and punishment, that they will not dare to look upon his countenance.

(Verse 6.) "Before the face of his indignation who will stand, and who will resist in the wrath of his fury?" The Septuagint: "From the face of his wrath who will endure, and who will resist in the wrath of his fury?" In place of what we have rendered, "And who will resist in the wrath of his fury?" Symmachus has translated more plainly: "And who will endure the wrath of his fury?" Either rarely, then, or never can one be found who is not deserving when wrath rebukes. Nor will there be any soul that does not tremble at the judgment of God, since even the stars are not clean in his sight. Furthermore, the Hebrew word JACCUM, which both Aquila and the Septuagint have translated as "he will resist," let us refer to that understanding which is spoken of in the second book of Kings and in the first of Chronicles concerning the wrath of God, in the masculine gender. And there is no doubt that there the wrath of God is understood as the devil and the most wicked angels, who are sent to punish those who are worthy of wrath. It will therefore be difficult to find, at the consummation of the world, one who, spotless and pure, would dare to say: "Behold, the prince of this world has come, and has found nothing in me," and stand with a free brow against him.

But against the Assyrians it must be understood thus: when the Lord has come in storm and whirlwind, drying up the empire of Babylon—which is interpreted as the sea—and overthrowing all its kingdoms, which are understood as the rivers, and bringing its power and abundance to nothing—which are called Basan and Carmel and the flower of Lebanon, and the mountains and hills—and shaking the breadth of its empire, which is called the threshing floors of the earth: then no power will be able to resist God when he is angry and avenges his people.

His indignation is poured out like fire, and the rocks are dissolved by him. The Septuagint has: His fury consumes principalities, and the rocks are crushed by him. For what we have rendered is poured out, Aquila translated as, that is, is melted together; Symmachus and Theodotion, that is, has dripped. Whether, then, the indignation of God is melted together like fire, or his fury has dripped like a burning flame, so that the hard hearts of men, which are called rocks, might be crushed and dissolved, the indignation of God is useful—it which, long bearing with our sins through patience, has at last, with difficulty, been melted together, and yet does not wholly burst forth into punishment, but will drip upon us with a moderate heat. But if a drop of his indignation consumes the principalities against which our wrestling and struggle is, what would happen if the whole wrath of God were poured out upon us?

May Jesus grant that the heart of stone be taken away and the heart of flesh be changed in us, and that our hardness being softened, it may be able to receive in itself the commandments of the Lord which are written: For a sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart, O God, you will not despise (Ps. 50:19). And so that you may know that what has been said resounds with the clemency of God, not his severity, learn from what follows.

(Verse 7.) "Good is the Lord, and strengthening in the day of tribulation, and knowing those who hope in him." The Septuagint: "Sweet is the Lord to those who wait for him in the day of tribulation, and knowing those who fear him." When he begins to be angry with the nations and to lay waste kingdoms once most powerful, he will know those who are his, and he will not overwhelm those who sail with a single storm. But let us understand the day of tribulation as the second day, the day of judgment, of which Isaiah wrote: Behold, the incurable day of the Lord comes, of fury and wrath, to lay the world in desolation and to destroy sinners from it (Isa. 13:9). Let us hope in the Lord, and through his patience let us await his coming, so that when he comes we may perceive him as good, not as judge, and he may know either those who hope in him or those who fear him. For the Lord knows those who are his (2 Tim. 2).

(Verse 8.) “And in a passing flood he will make a consummation of his place, and darkness shall pursue his enemies.” The Septuagint: “And in a flood that passes by he will make a consummation; those rising up and his enemies darkness shall pursue.” The Lord is patient and of great mercy, and he will not be angry forever, nor will he be indignant for eternity; but when wickedness has grown upon the earth, and all flesh has corrupted its way, he will bring in a flood that passes by, not one that remains forever. But he will make a consummation, or an end, of his place, that is, of the flood, so that just as it is said of the impious man: “And I passed by, and his place was not found” (Ps. 36:36); and: “The way of the impious shall perish” (Ps. 1:6); so the way of the flood may perish after the wrath of the Lord, with only his clemency appearing. This can indeed also be understood according to the historical sense, because when he has laid waste Israel, and as it were flooded the land of promise with a deluge, he will make an end of the captivity, recalling him to his former seats. But on the contrary, darkness shall pursue his enemies, the Assyrians, who led the people into captivity.

But what we have said concerning Israel and the Assyrians can be understood of the consummation of the world, and of the saints and of the persecutors, or of the opposing powers: that the God of the saints has mercy after wrath; but that the persecutors and their enemies, who have chosen darkness and not light, may be seized by the very darkness which they have chosen; for they shall be sent into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 8 and 22). The word MACOMA, which we have translated as “his place,” all have divided into two parts of speech, so that they turned the UA into the preposition “from,” that is, they interpreted COMA as “those rising up.” Finally Aquila says, that is, “from those rising up”; the Septuagint, “those rising up”; Theodotion, “to those rising up against him”; the fifth edition, “from those rising up against him.” Symmachus alone, agreeing with our interpretation, says: “And in a passing flood he will make a consummation of his place.” Some of our own [interpret] “those rising up and the enemies.” We interpret the dwelling-place as also all the old heretics, who dispute against the Creator.

(Verse 9.) "What do you devise against the Lord? He himself will make a consummation: a double tribulation shall not arise." The Septuagint: "What do you devise against the Lord? He himself will make a consummation; he has not avenged twice for the same thing in tribulation." Symmachus more plainly: "They shall not endure the onset of a second distress." Theodotion: "A second tribulation shall not arise." Now he speaks, in the tropological sense, against Marcion, of whom we have spoken above, and against all the ancient heretics, who, attaching themselves to some good God or other, say that he will make the consummation of the world, and accuse the God of the law of cruelty, because he punishes many and inflicts torments for sins. "What therefore," he says, "do you devise against the Lord? He who created the world will also make its consummation." But if he seems to you cruel, rigid, and bloody, because in the flood he destroyed the human race (Gen. 7), rained fire and sulfur upon Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19), submerged the Egyptians in the waves (Exod. 14), and laid low the corpses of the Israelites in the wilderness (Num. 32): know that he therefore rendered punishments for the present, lest he punish forever. Certainly either what the prophets say is true, or it is false. If what they seem to say about his severity is true, they themselves have said: "The Lord will not avenge twice for the same thing in tribulation." But if it is false, and this is false which is said—"A double tribulation shall not arise"—then his cruelty, which is described in the law, is also false.

But if it is true, as they cannot deny, that the prophet says, "The Lord will not take vengeance twice on the same in tribulation," then those who have been punished will not be punished afterward. But if they are punished afterward, Scripture lies, which it is impious to say. Therefore both those who perished in the flood, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and the Israelites in the wilderness, received their evils in their lifetime. Here someone may ask: if a believer is caught in adultery and beheaded, what becomes of him afterward? For either he will be punished, and what is said is false—"The Lord will not take vengeance twice on the same in tribulation"—or he will not be punished, and adulterers should wish that by a brief and speedy punishment in the present they might escape eternal torments. To this we shall answer that God knows the measures of all things, and of punishments too, and is not forestalled by the sentence of the judge, nor is the power of exercising further punishment against a sinner taken from him, and a great sin is washed away by great and long-lasting torments. But if anyone has been punished, like the man in the law who cursed the Israelites (Leviticus 24), and the one who gathered wood on the Sabbath (Numbers 15), such persons are not punished afterward, because a light fault has been compensated by present punishment. The Hebrew expounded this passage thus: What do you think, O Assyrians, who devise iniquity against the Lord, that he himself will consume the people of Israel, that is, the twelve tribes, even to destruction?

A double tribulation will not arise, that is, he will not deliver Judah and Israel to you, as he delivered the ten tribes and Samaria.

(Verse 10.) "For just as thorns entwine one another, so their banquet of those drinking together will be consumed like stubble full of dryness." The Septuagint: "For they will be brought down to their foundations into briars, and like a bindweed gathered up it will be eaten, and like stubble full of dryness." The three differences that the Lord set forth in the parable of the seed (Matthew 13), apart from the good soil, which brings forth thirty and sixty and a hundredfold fruit, the prophet seems to me to repeat: one which fell beside the road, another which fell among the rocks, and a third which fell among thorns—which indeed the Apostle also hints at concerning those who do not build well upon the foundation of Christ (1 Corinthians 3), that certain ones build with wood, hay, stubble. Therefore let us refer the wood to what is now said: "For they will be brought down to their foundations into briars." But the hay to what follows: "And like the bindweed which is surrounded, it will be eaten." Further, the stubble is manifestly referred to the stubble, of which it is now said: "And like stubble full of dryness." For this reason, then, the Lord will not take vengeance twice on the same, because the malice which had arisen in the authors of heresy will be consumed down to its foundation and its roots.

But even if anyone among them seemed to have a display of words—that is, empty leaves, pleasing only to the sight, like the volvola, as it is called in Greek—it will be devoured and consumed to nothing. Now the volvola is a plant similar to ivy, which is accustomed to be wrapped around vines and shrubs and to creep far. Whatever in them also seems to have the display of a crop, but does not have ears and grains of wheat, will be handed over to the fire like stubble full of dryness. This is according to the Septuagint. But according to the Hebrew, truly the alliances and ties of heretics are like thorns embracing one another, and their banquet and mysteries—since they too claim to have the Lord's table—are a covenant of thorns, of those eating together and drinking together. For when, drunk from the vineyard of Sodom, they blaspheme against the Creator with a rabid mouth, is it not a banquet of thorns? Yet this will be consumed together with its authors, like stubble full of dryness.

(Verse 11.) "For from you shall come a thought against the Lord, devising malice, pondering transgression in the mind." The LXX: "From you shall come a thought against the Lord, thinking the worst things, contriving contrary things." Truly from the heretics shall come a thought hostile against the Lord. Does it not seem to be malice and transgression against God, to say what Valentinus says—that the Creator was, as it were, the abortive offspring, the last product of erring Wisdom? Is not the shamelessness of Basilides a thought against God, and that monstrous name which is set before the Lord the Creator? Further, since we who have been taught by the Hebrews wish to follow their tradition as well, and to set forth for our own people, that is, for Christians, the explanation of the history, it must be said: A double tribulation shall not arise, that is, two tribes shall not be captured by the Assyrians, as the ten were captured. For while the Assyrians are still in the land of Judah, and, as it were, thorns entwine one another, rejoicing and exulting, they shall be consumed by the angel, when in one night one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the enemy were slain (IV Kings XIX). Beautifully too did he compare the multitude of their army to the banquet of drunkards, saying that the banquet itself was not of roses, not of lilies, not of flowers, but like thorns entwining one another, which are always handed over to the fire, and like stubble full of dryness, they are burned up by a light flame.

But what follows: "From you shall come one thinking malice against the Lord, pondering transgression in the mind," they wish to be understood of Rabshakeh, because he went out from the Assyrians, blasphemed the Lord, and sought to persuade the people that, despairing of the Lord's help, they should hand themselves over to the Assyrians, to serve not God but idols (2 Kings 18; Isa. 36).

(Verses 11, 13.) "Thus says the Lord: If they be perfect, and so many: even so shall they be shorn and pass away: I have afflicted you, and I will afflict you no more: and now I will break his rod from off your back, and I will burst your bonds." The LXX: "Thus says the Lord who reigns over many waters, and so shall they be divided, and the hearing of the mouse shall no more be heard, and now I will break his rod from you; and I will burst his bonds." According to the letter the sense is plain: Although, he says, the Assyrians be strong, and their strength be increased by the number of all nations; even so, with the angel laying waste, they shall be shorn. For just as the number of hairs does not resist sharp shears, so too the number of God's adversaries shall be removed by an easy cutting-off, and Assur shall pass away, or cease to be, or, his army laid waste, he shall return to his own land, leaving you safe. And again the word is directed to Judah and Jerusalem: I have afflicted you, and I will afflict you no more: not that he promises perpetual security, but only for that time, and from those enemies by whom they were then besieged.

Then he adds: "And now I will break his rod, that is, the Assyrian's, from off your back, and I will burst your bonds"—either signifying his power by metaphor, or certainly the rod with which he was attempting to strike, and the bonds which he was preparing for captives; although the siege of an enclosed multitude can also be taken for bonds. But according to the LXX the sense is much different. For he still seems to be speaking against those to whom he had said above: "Why do you think against the Lord?" And: "From you shall go forth a wicked thought against the Lord, pondering contrary things." These things, therefore, the Lord says, who rules over many waters, or over the powers which are called the waters above the heavens; and it is commanded them that they praise the Lord—or certainly over the understandings and the wisdom and the teachings of God. For just as rivers shall flow from the belly of the righteous, and abundant fountains unto eternal life, through the manifold and varied meanings over which the word of the Lord presides, so too the heresiarchs have their own waters, over which they preside and which flowed first from their own fountain. But what follows: "And so shall they be divided," can be understood either of the heavenly powers which serve God in the heights above—that each one is in its own office and ministry—or of the manifold variety of wisdom. Lest, because he had said, "who rules over many waters," the number of meanings should be thought confused and undivided; but rather that each meaning has its senses divided among themselves and separate, and its own proper matters.

For in that it is said, "Your report shall no longer be heard," it is a rebuke against those who had devised things contrary to God, because, once the sophisms and deceits by which the people of God were ensnared have been exposed, their speech shall no longer run on nor be received by the peoples. But also this which he adds: "And now I will break his rod from off you, and I will burst your bonds," is said on behalf of those very ones against whom the threat is made, that they may no longer be struck down by the devil and be subject to him, at whose instigation they had devised and fabricated splendid lies. Therefore his dominion shall be broken over them, and the bonds by which the souls of sinners were bound shall be burst by the word of God, saying to those who are in bonds, "Come out."

(Verse 14.) "And the Lord will give command concerning you: your name shall no longer be sown: out of the house of your God I will destroy the graven image and the molten image: I will set your grave: because you are dishonored." The Septuagint: "And the Lord will give command concerning you: your name shall no longer be sown: out of the house of your God I will scatter the graven images and the molten images: I will set your grave: because they are swift; behold upon the mountains the feet of one evangelizing and announcing peace." Therefore I have set down more from the Seventy interpreters, since the second [reading] could not be separated from the first. For in that which is said, "Because you are dishonored," in place of which the Fifth Edition has put [something else], the Seventy have translated, "because they are swift," which in Hebrew is read CHI CALLOTH. But "swift," unless you refer it to the feet of the inner chapter, the sentence hangs incomplete.

Therefore, according to my custom, I will first examine the history, and afterward the meaning of the Vulgate edition. "He will give command," it says, "against you, O Assur, that what you are about to suffer may not come by chance and without any judge, but that you may suffer it with God pronouncing it. No longer shall anything be sown from your name": for immediately upon his return to Nineveh, Sennacherib was killed by his sons. Read Isaiah, and he was killed in the house of his god, which he had entered to worship. For this is what it says, "From the house of your god I will kill you" (Isa. 37); from that source you will be punished, from which you hoped for help. Your graven image and molten image shall be your tomb, so that among the altars and couches of one worshiping idols, wicked blood may be poured out. But according to the Seventy translators, join what follows to the preceding: "No longer," it says, "shall anything be sown from your name." In no way, O heretics, will the souls of the deceived receive names from your doctrines, which they had previously invoked over their lands, as is sung figuratively in the forty-eighth psalm. And this very cessation of sowing will profit you, which previously was accustomed to kill first the soul of the sower, and then that of the one in whom he sowed. Therefore the dogmas of errors will die for you; but you also, who previously seemed to yourself to live, will die to error, and dead to your own good, you will have the idols you worshiped as your tomb. And thus it will come about that from your reader—what was formerly before the temple of your god, which you had feigned—all errors will be taken away.

But these things will happen to you who once were devising things contrary to the Lord, when the word of God, which always ascends into the mountains—that is, into lofty and exalted souls—has come swiftly to you, and when the waves of former errors have been trampled down and brought to calm, it will restore to you the peace of faith and of understanding. Forgive my prolixity, for I cannot, while following both the history and the tropology, briefly comprehend each; especially since I am tormented by the variety of interpretation, and am compelled at times, against my own conscience, to weave together the sequence of the Vulgate edition.

(Verse 15.) "Behold, upon the mountains are the feet of one evangelizing and announcing peace. Celebrate, O Judah, your festivals, and pay your vows: because Belial will no longer pass through you: he has wholly perished." I will defer the Septuagint translators a little while, because these very chapters are confused among them by the variety of interpretation. And when I have briefly set out the history, I will temper their edition with my own eloquence. It is written in the book of Paralipomenon that, when Sennacherib was besieging Jerusalem, they could not celebrate the Passover in the first month (2 Paralipomenon 32). But when his army had been struck down by an angel, and his flight and death had been announced, in the second month they celebrated the day of Passover with the greatest festivity. What he says, therefore, is this: O Judah, you who reign in Jerusalem, do not be anxious, since your enemy has been slain in the temple of his own god.

Behold, the messenger comes to you, running across mountains and hills, and as if from a lofty watchtower announcing from afar that Sennacherib is dead and his city freed from his dominion. Celebrate the festivals, pay your vows to God for the death of the enemy, which you promised: the transgressor shall no longer pass through you—for this is what Belial means. All has perished, that is, the army and the king and the empire of the Assyrians have utterly fallen. And this indeed according to the letter. But otherwise it is said to the Church, it is said to the souls confessing the Lord, because the devil, who formerly laid you waste and pressed you down with a most grievous yoke, has perished in the idols and with the idols which he had fashioned; celebrate your festivals, and pay your vows to God, singing continually with the angels: for Belial shall no longer pass through you, of whom the Apostle also says, What fellowship has Christ with Belial? (2 Cor. 6:15), because, with Nineveh overthrown, all has perished. If at any time there has been a most grievous persecution, such as under Valerian, and Decius, and Maximian, and the Lord's vengeance has appeared upon his adversaries, let us say to the Church: Celebrate, Judah, your festivals, and pay your vows, etc.

LXX: "Celebrate, Judah, your festivals, pay your vows, because they will no longer oppose you so as to pass over into old age: it is completed, it is consummated: he has ascended, breathing upon your face, delivering you from tribulation." I have said once that, according to the variety of interpretation, the chapters themselves are also defined differently, and that the sense of the Hebrew interpretation cannot agree with these chapters. And so what is now said is of this kind: O Ecclesiastical one, because from the name of your adversaries there will no longer be seed, and their rod has been crushed, and their chains have been scattered, and he has come who would announce peace to you, celebrate your festivals, not in wine and feasting, as carnal Jews suppose, but in spiritual delights and the pleasure of the torrent. O Judah, pay your vows: because the enemies will no longer pass over who lead you into old age, that is, who wish you to bear the image of the old man. For what is old grows senile, and what grows senile is near to destruction: the world is completed, the adversary is consumed: Christ has come to you who had first breathed upon your face when he formed you from the mud: and after the resurrection also, breathing upon the face of the apostles, he said: Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22), he is the one who delivers you from tribulation. For with Nineveh laid waste, and the world passing away, tribulation too will pass away.

(Chapter II—Verses 1, 2.) "He has ascended who will scatter before your face, keeping the siege; look upon the way, strengthen your loins, make your strength very strong; for as the Lord has repaid the pride of Jacob, so will he repay the pride of Israel: because the destroyers have scattered them, and their branches have been corrupted." I am compelled by necessity, as it were between salt and rocks, with shipwreck imminent, to bend the course of my speech between history and allegory, and to take care lest it suddenly strike. Indeed, according to the fables of the poets: if we flee the rocks, we run into the deep; if we avoid the twisting whirlpools, we are carried onto the rocks. The Lord is my witness that all the things I discuss according to the Hebrew, I do not speak from my own sense—which is charged against the false prophets—but I follow the exposition of the Hebrews, by whom I was instructed for no small time, and I ought simply to indicate to my own people what I have learned. Certainly it will be in the reader's judgment, when he has run through both, to decide which he ought rather to follow. To Nineveh, therefore, the speech is now directed (and from this especially the prophets are obscure, that suddenly, while one thing is being treated, the person is changed to others), and it is said to her: Nebuchadnezzar has ascended against you, who will besiege you, who will lay waste the fields before your face, pursue the farmers, ravage the countryside, who will also hold you yourself shut in. Since, therefore, war threatens you, behold, I as a rejoicing prophet now foretell: look carefully and observe, and consider what will happen to you.

Strengthen your loins, that is, gird yourself; make your strength very strong, that is, gather your armies; because just as the Lord avenged Judah for the pride of Sennacherib, when his army was slain in Judea and he himself was also killed by his sons, so will he avenge Israel, that is, the ten tribes who are held by Nineveh. For the Assyrians both laid waste and overthrew Judah and Israel, and under the metaphor of the vine they ruined the branches of both.

On the right Scylla, on the left implacable Charybdis besets:

The Septuagint: "Contemplate the way, hold your loin, be strengthened with might exceedingly, for the Lord has turned away the reproach of Jacob, as the reproach of Israel: because those who pluck have plucked them out, and have demolished their branches." Three things are commanded to Judah. First, that he contemplate the way, and diligently look upon the path by which he is about to walk, according to that which is written in Jeremiah: "Stand in the ways, and ask for the eternal paths, and see which is the good way; and walk in it" (Jer. VI, 16): so that when we have stood in many ways, we may come to that way which says: "I am the way" (John XIV, 6). Then it is said to him, that he hold his loin, that is, that after the choice of life he mortify his body and subject it to servitude, lest, as a king and master preaching to others, he himself be found reprobate (I Cor. IX).

It would take long now to explain that the devil's strength lies especially in the loins, and that the promise is made to David: Of the fruit of your loins I will set upon your throne (Ps. 131:11). And that saying of the Apostle: For while he was still in the loins of his father Abraham, Levi was there when he went out to meet Abraham with Melchizedek (Heb. 7:10). And that John is girded with a leather belt (Matt. 3), and that the Savior commands his disciples: Let your loins be girded (Luke 12:35). And the Apostle to the Ephesians: Stand therefore, having your loins girded in truth (Eph. 6:14). For although continence of life contributes greatly to the mortification of the loins, yet nothing mortifies them so much as the knowledge of the truth. Hence it is said: Gird your loins in truth. For if the truth is Christ, whoever has believed with his whole mind in Christ has mortified his loins in Christ. Thirdly it is commanded: Be strengthened with strength exceedingly. You have chosen, he says, the way, you have held fast the loin; assume strength, that you may be able to fight against your enemies. And lest perhaps you despair, a reason is given you for hoping: The Lord, he says, has turned away the reproach of Jacob, as the reproach of Israel, which is ambiguous; for either he has turned away the reproach of Jacob himself, by which he was doing injury to others, or the Lord has turned away the reproach which Jacob was enduring from others. But to me it seems better that the reproach which Jacob was accustomed to inflict on others has been turned away by the Lord.

For it is not a mark of great virtue to endure an injury done by others; it is a mark of the Lord's great grace to be unable to do injury—to be gentle, lowly, and tranquil. The question is asked how the injury of Jacob was turned away, as the injury of Israel had also been turned away. After Jacob wrestled with the angel, he deserved to receive the name of Israel (Gen. 32), and because he saw God, he ceased to do injury. Therefore, just as Israel—meaning "mind" or "the man who sees God," and always thinking on God—knows not how to do injury, so all insolence and contumely was turned away from Jacob, that is, from the supplanter, from him who, still placed in the struggle, supplants his enemies. But that we may know how "injury" is taken in a bad sense, Solomon is witness: You will say: Haughty eyes, an unjust tongue (Prov. 6:17). And how injury was turned away from Jacob according to both understandings—the injury that had previously been turned away from Israel—the following discourse declares: Because those who shook them off have shaken them off, and they have demolished, or corrupted, their scourges. The angels, he says, of each individual, who daily see the face of the Father (Matt. 18:10), shook off whatever dust had clung to Jacob and Israel. Whence also Peter's feet are washed (John 13). And through the prophet it is said: Shake off the dust, and arise, Jerusalem (Isa. 52:2). To the disciples also it is commanded by the Savior: Shake off the dust of your feet (Matt. 10:14).

And in the Psalms it is written: "As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of those who have been shaken out" (Ps. 126:4). The mind, therefore, prone to insult, has been turned away from the true Jacob and from the true Israel, because whatever in them was earthly and congealed from the lower dregs—this was shaken out and cleansed by the ministering angels, or by those who admonish and teach, who not only shook them out but also scattered the vices that for the moment merely soothe the senses with pleasure, and that are like branches and shoots full of leaves without fruit, as the Lord says: "Every branch that remains in me and bears fruit, my Father cleanses, that it may bear more fruit; but what does not remain in me and does not bear fruit, my Father will cut off and cast into the fire" (Matt. 15).

(Verses following.) "The shield of his mighty men is aflame, the men of the army are in scarlet: fiery reins of the chariot on the day of his preparation: and the drivers are lulled to sleep, they are thrown into confusion in the streets, the four-horse chariots are dashed together in the squares. Their appearance is like lamps, like flashing lightning. He will remember his mighty men, they shall rush in his paths, they shall swiftly set fire to his walls, and a shelter shall be prepared. The gates of the rivers are opened, and the temple is razed to the ground, and the soldier is led away captive, and his maidservants were driven forth, groaning like doves, murmuring in their hearts.

The Septuagint: "The weapons of his power are from men, mighty men mocking in the fire, the reins of their chariots in the day of his preparation, and the horsemen shall be afraid in the goings out: and the chariots shall be confounded, and shall be dashed together in the streets. Their appearance is like lamps of fire, and like flashing lightning, and their nobles shall be remembered, and they shall flee in the days, and shall grow weak in their journey, and they shall hasten to the walls, and shall prepare their bulwarks: the gates of the cities are opened, and the royal palaces have fallen, and the substance is revealed; and she herself was going up, and her handmaids were led like doves speaking in their hearts." According to the historical sense, the order follows against Nineveh, and the army of the Babylonians coming against her is described. But what he says—"fiery reins of chariots"—signifies the speed of those preparing, in burning thongs, and the pomp of those preparing themselves for battle is narrated. And in a mingled way the Scripture is now woven together, now concerning Israel what she once suffered, now concerning the Assyrian what he did, now concerning the Babylonians what they practice against the Assyrians. It is not, therefore, he says, a wonder if they come so swiftly to lay waste, since both the drivers and the strong men—whether of Israel before, or afterward of the Assyrians—have been brought low. And returning again to the order of the description: So great, he says, is the multitude of those coming, that the column is mingled on the march, and cannot be distinguished.

The chariots themselves too, when they find no way through, collide with one another in the streets because of the multitude. The appearance of the Babylonians is like lamps, like flashing lightning, so that they may terrify their adversaries by sight before they lay them low with the sword. Then Assur will remember his strong men, and he will seek those who have fallen on the roads, and he will climb swiftly the walls of Nineveh, and because of the very long siege he will prepare shelters to ward off the heat. But what does it profit to build a house, unless the Lord has built it? What does it avail to shut gates that the Lord opens? The gates of Nineveh are opened—she who had a multitude of citizens like rivers—and her temple, that is, her kingdom, is destroyed, and the soldier is led away captive, that is, all were led into Babylon. But by a metaphor understand the maidservants of Nineveh as the lesser cities and villages and strongholds. Or certainly the captive women will threaten before the faces of the victors; and so great will be the terror that grief will not even burst forth into sobs and wailing, but they will groan silently within themselves, and with a dark murmur they will swallow their tears like moaning doves. These things according to the Hebrew tradition. Now let us come to the translators of the Septuagint.

Shaking them off—those who shook Jacob and Israel and scattered their scourges—they also shattered the weapons that, when they were insolent, they had been accustomed to hold, and with which they had oppressed the weak. And this they did not only do, but they also destroyed in fire the strong men who mocked. Consider whether you can call "strong men who mock in fire" the opposing powers that minister to the devil's burning darts—powers that, once strong and mocking in the fire of Jacob and Israel, had chariots and horses by which they were carried in fury to war on the day of their preparation. Therefore the reins of these chariots and their riders will be thrown into confusion in the ways and dashed together in the streets, when, with the illumination of the Lord of Jacob and Israel having shone forth, both the demons and those who serve their will are overthrown by the Lord. We can understand these things of his first coming, when the strong men and the drivers of chariots and the riders said: What have we to do with you, son of David? Have you come to torment us before the time? But since we have once received the prophecy against Nineveh as concerning the consummation of the world, it is better that we say that the weapons of the devil's power are then taken away from men, and his strong ministers, who mocked men in fire—for all their hearts are like an oven, all who commit adultery—and also the chains by which captives were led into vices, and the riders of the chariots, are loosened.

For the horsemen will be afraid at the exits, that is, at the consummation of the world, and the chariots will be confounded and will crash together in the streets; for although the way that leads to death is broad and spacious, nevertheless, in the pressing straits of the time, they will not be able to find the straight path, but will crash into one another and nonetheless will breathe out their old fury and, like lightning, will run to and fro. I saw, says the Lord, Satan falling like lightning from heaven. When the devil and all his princes have understood this, they will remember the consummation that was foretold long ago, and they will flee in the days. For in no way will they dwell in the nights, but as the day brightens, the darkness will be put to flight, and they will grow weak on the journey, neither advancing nor completing their efforts, and they will hasten to the walls. For such terror of the coming Lord will invade them, and they will be so feeble for resistance, that they will flee to the ends of the world, by which the world is enclosed and surrounded as by walls, and they will prepare themselves to resist. It is as if someone flees from an enemy, not daring to resist him, and when he comes to a desolate place, if perhaps the enemy follows, he is compelled by necessity to fight back. But while they are thinking these things, all that had been obtained and possessed by them will be brought out into the open, and the gates that they had closed will be opened, and their kingdoms will fall, and their substance, that is, their riches, will be revealed.

But the very substance of the world and all its handmaids, after they have subjected themselves to Christ and begun to serve him, will be led joyful and rejoicing, and believing from the inmost heart of confession, so that they are compared to the purity of doves, they will murmur or speak in their hearts. And then will be fulfilled what is said in the sixty-seventh Psalm concerning the victory of the Savior: Ascending on high, he led captivity captive.

(Vers. 8, 9.) "And Nineveh is like a pool of waters: her waters. But they themselves have fled. Stand, stand, and there is none that returns: plunder the silver, plunder the gold; and there is no end of riches from all the desirable vessels." The Septuagint: "And Nineveh is like a pool of waters: her waters. And they fleeing stood not: and there was none that looked back: they plundered silver, they plundered gold, and there was no end of her ornament: she is weighed down above all the vessels of her desire." It is clear that, when the cities of Nineveh (which Scripture names her daughters) have been led into captivity, Nineveh herself, who had nourished so many peoples that she was compared to the waters of pools, has a useless multitude: since there is no one who resists and bears the onslaught of the rushing Babylonians.

For it had peoples who merely fled, and though their mother cried out: "Stand, stand, shut the gates, climb the walls, fight back against the enemy," there was no one who would return, no one who would look back to his mother; but all turning their backs, they abandoned the city as plunder for their enemies. Hence it is said to the Babylonians, because they fled: "Plunder the silver, and seize by sudden devastation the wealth gathered over so long a time." For there is no end to the riches, the furnishings, and the vessels that have been stored up in Nineveh; nor can you seize as much as she offers herself to be plundered. But since we have once said that Nineveh the beautiful is the world, let us see what the pool of the world is. Scripture does not say that the waters of Nineveh are like the waters of the sea, nor like the waters of rivers, nor like the waters of springs, nor like the waters of wells, but like the waters of a pool: so that, just as in Jeremiah the people is rebuked who abandoned the fountain of living water and dug for themselves broken cisterns that cannot hold water, so also in Nineveh all those waters are waters that have fallen from heaven and, leaving their ancient height, have slipped down to the depths. All the teachings of this world, which are outside the fountain of the Church and the enclosed garden, cannot say: "The rush of the river gladdens the city of God"; nor are they among those waters that praise the name of the Lord above the heavens; although they seem great, yet they are small and confined within a narrow boundary.

Nor should anyone be disturbed that we take "pool" in a bad sense, since that pool is taken in a good sense to which Isaiah, son of Amos the prophet, is commanded to go up. For there it is said with an addition: "the pool of the conduit," and "the fuller's pool" (Isa. 7 and 36), which is accustomed to wash away filth and to cleanse the stains of garments. And because it is situated on high ground, therefore the prophet is commanded to go up to it, and to promise victory in the encounter with the king from the two smoldering firebrands. It follows: "The fugitives did not stand," namely the inhabitants of Nineveh. First, indeed, they ought not to have fled from God; then, even if they had fled, they ought at some point to have stood. For there is a great difference between one who has fled and stood, and one who, fleeing, never stood. For he who stands has ceased to flee; he who does not stand has always advanced in flight. In so great a crowd of fugitives, therefore, there was no one who would look back, and act the part of the penitent, and hear the Lord speaking: "Return to me, my sons, you who return, and I will heal your contritions" (Jer. 3:22). Whence also the holy one speaks in the Psalms: "Flight has perished from me" (Ps. 141:5). This very thing, I think, is also signified by the mystery of leprosy, concerning which it is said in Leviticus (Lev. 13 and 14): When the leper has been separated by the priest outside, if the leprosy has stood, the man is clean, and he who had been cast out as if a leper is cleansed, and returns to the camp, and dwells among the people.

But if, he says, the leprosy has spread—that is, it has not stood still but has grown, and has made progress in evil, and has changed its color from its former soundness—then the leprosy is most manifestly proven by him who has the knowledge of inspecting and cleansing leprosy. But we too are instructed by the true Solomon to dwell in Jerusalem and never to go out from it. But if what had previously been subject to us flees from us and goes to the Allophyloi, let us not go out beyond the walls of our city, nor follow the footsteps of fugitives, lest while we wish to save those who flee, we ourselves perish; rather let us let them go, that the dead may bury their own dead (Matthew 8), and let us, while it is permitted, pluck out and cut off from ourselves the eye, hand, and foot that causes scandal (Mark 9). But what is said: They were plundering silver, they were plundering gold, and there was no end to its ornament; it has been weighed down beyond all the vessels of its desire—this is said of the waters of Nineveh, and of the fugitives who had fled and did not stand still, and there was no one who looked back; and those who were not content merely to have fled and not looked back, but moreover were plundering silver—whatever in the world seemed to belong to eloquence; they were plundering gold—whatever was distinguished in the sentences of the teaching of this world, so as to adorn Nineveh, so as to compose their doctrines with every flower of senses and words.

Therefore Nineveh has been weighed down beyond all the vessels of her desire; for the more she possessed an abundance of gold and silver and varied furnishings, which were heavy, the more she herself was weighed down, since she loved heavy things. Hence also in Zechariah iniquity sits upon a talent of lead (Zech. V); and the Egyptians, who were heavy with sins, were sunk in the sea like lead (Exod. XIV). And in the person of the sinner it is said in the Psalm: Like a heavy burden they have weighed heavily upon me (Psal. XXXVII, 6). And Peter, who before walked upon the waves with a light and balanced step: after he was weighed down by faithlessness and was being swallowed by the waves, is lifted up by the hand of the Lord (Matth. XIV).

(Vers. 10.) «She is scattered and torn and rent asunder, and the heart melting away, and the loosening of the knees, and faintness in all the reins, and the faces of all like the blackness of a pot.» The LXX: «A shaking out, a shaking again, and a boiling over, and the breaking of the heart, and the loosening of the knees, and pains upon every loin, and the faces of all like the burning of a pot.» Under the metaphor of a captive woman, Nineveh is described as scattered, torn, and rent asunder: with her heart wasting away, her knees loosened, and her reins broken, and because the faces of all her inhabitants, from terror of the enemy and the greatness of fear, appear like pots—scorched, wasting, and disfigured by pallor. But according to the LXX it must be understood more deeply, what "shaking out" and "shaking again" signify.

What is said of the people of God, who has at some time sinned like a man and returns to his former state, is said to him as to Jerusalem: Shake off the dust from your feet, and arise, Jerusalem (Isa. 52:2). And he who is such that, after he has been shaken off, he deserves to pass into the arrows of God and to be bent by the Lord against his enemies, it is sung of him: As arrows in the hand of the mighty, so are the children of those who have been shaken out (Ps. 126:4). And when his footprints, as of one walking upon the earth, have been sprinkled with dust, he will hear from the Savior: Shake off the dust from your feet for a testimony to them (Mark 6:11); there is no doubt that he means those who refused to receive the preachers. But he who is of Nineveh, which has been weighed down beyond all the vessels of her desire, is shaken out not once but frequently. And after he has again been shaken out and his surface cleansed (lest any filth remain within), there comes upon him also an ebullition, which in Greek is expressed more significantly; for it is properly used in matters of this kind, when what was hidden within bursts forth into the face. Hence also the pustules that arise on the lips after sickness are called by this name, and it seems to be an indication of health that the disease has burst forth onto the surface.

But this remedy is applied to Nineveh not only so that it may be shaken out repeatedly and the sickness lurking in its vital parts be forced to come out; but also the breaking of the heart and the loosening of the knees are proclaimed, so that just as Pharaoh's hard and stony heart was broken—which, as long as he had it, he did not let God's people go (Exod. 12 and following)—so too Nineveh's broken heart may be softened and changed into a heart of flesh, and its stiff knees, which previously did not bow to God, may be loosened and bent to God; from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named, and at the name of Jesus every knee bows, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth (Phil. 2:10). So that after they have come to know their Creator, they may hear: Be strong, you loose hands; and strengthen the feeble knees (Isa. 35:3). And pains, he says, upon every loin. We have already said above that intercourse is signified in the loin, and that all works which pertain to union are indicated by the name of the kidneys.

Great, therefore, will be the pains in the kidneys at the consummation, because all the dragon's strength is in his loins (Job 40:11), and in return for all those things that preceded—the shaking out, the shaking out again, the boiling up, the breaking of the heart, the loosening of the knees, the pains of the kidneys—the face of all will be like the scorching of a pot, so that it is either close to fire and burning heat, or, losing the sheen of oil, it grows black like charcoal and is covered with confusion by the darkness, from which the holy man is far off when he says: The light of your countenance is signed upon us, O Lord (Ps. 4:7). For with face unveiled he contemplates the glory of God (2 Cor. 3). And I think that, just as the glory of the sun is one thing, the glory of the moon another, the glory of the stars another, and star differs from star in brightness (1 Cor. 15), so in the resurrection of the dead there will be a great difference both in brightness among the saints and in blackness among sinners.

(Verse 11.) "Where is the dwelling place of lions, and the pastures of the lion's cubs, to which the lion went so that the lion's cub might enter there, and there is no one to terrify them? The lion took enough for his cubs, and killed for his lionesses, and filled his caves with prey, and his den with plunder." For "caves" and "lionesses," the Seventy translated "nests" and "cubs"; in the rest the sense is the same.

Yet further it is said of Nineveh that it was a dwelling-place of kings and a hall of nobles, to which the lion, the king of Babylon, that is, Nebuchadnezzar, went, and the lion's whelp, and his sub-kings also, and there was none who resisted them. The lion seized enough for his whelps, and slew for his lionesses. The same Nebuchadnezzar, namely, possessed all things by right of victory, and handed over captives into slavery to his children and cities, or certainly to his wives, and filled his caves with prey—or, as it is had in the Hebrew, his pits—and his couch with plunder, filling both his treasuries and his cities with gold, silver, garments, and every ornament, so that what Nineveh had had and Babylon had conquered, he might possess. But since, both in Jonah and in this prophet, we have interpreted Nineveh as this world, and according to John: The whole world is set in the evil one (1 John 5:19); after the world has passed away—the dwelling-place of beasts, and that in which the lions used to feed—then, marveling and exulting, we shall say: Where is the dwelling-place of the lions, to which the lion the devil went, of whom Peter also speaks: Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). And the lion's whelp is Antichrist, and all perverse doctrines, and speech contrary to them. You have heard, says John, that Antichrist will come; now there are many Antichrists (1 John 2). For there are as many Antichrists as there are false dogmas.

And before the coming of Christ there was no one who terrified; but after our Lord came into the world and entered Nineveh, he saw Satan falling from heaven like lightning (Luke 10), and Lucifer, who rose in the morning, fell from heaven (Isa. 14). For the true Samson came to the Philistines, and while he was going to Timnah, which is interpreted as his consummation, so that he might take the poor little Dalila from the nations, he killed the lion for whom the consummation had come, and when it was dead, he ate honeycombs of sweetness. But also the true David, guarding his father's sheep, seized the lion and killed it (1 Kings 17), and Benaiah, which is interpreted as the builder Lord, descended into the lake of this world, which has been accustomed to cool the hot waters, and killed the lion (1 Chron. 11). And in the vision of Isaiah which is seen against the four-footed beasts, it is first said of the distress of these beasts: In tribulation and distress the lion and the lion's whelp (Isa. 31). This lion, before he was killed by Christ, captured very many as prey for his whelps, and slew them for his little lions, that is, his attendants, the demons. Look at the assemblies of heretics, and you will not ask how many have been captured by the lion. Consider the dead who have abandoned life, and you will not call their churches the sheepfold of the shepherd, but the dens of the lion, which he has filled with corpses and the blood of the dead. You have placed (says David) darkness, and night was made: in it all the beasts of the forest will pass through.

The cubs of lions seize and seek food for themselves from God (Ps. 103:20-21). The lion is hard to find by day, but always prowls at night, to snatch from the Church of Christ, to be filled with the elect as its food, according to Habakkuk (Hab. 1). In short, Judas was from the sheepfold of Christ, and, seized by the lion, he was choked by hanging (Matt. 27). But also that prophet whom the Lord had commanded not to eat bread in that region where the golden calves were, and where religion was a lie—because he ate, he was struck by a lion (3 Kings 13). Jeremiah also says of sinners: A lion from the forest has struck them, and a wolf has scattered them as far as their houses; and a leopard has kept watch over their cities. All who go out from them will be captured (Jer. 5:6). In this observe that no one is captured unless he has gone out from the cities of God. In the fourth book of Kings as well (ch. 17), those dwelling in the cities of Samaria and ignorant of the judgment of the God of the land were killed by lions, until they learned to worship God and were freed from the lions. For this reason I think it is that whatever has been captured by beasts is not offered in God's sacrifices (Lev. 22:8), and that the prophet says: What is unclean and captured by a beast has not entered my mouth (Ezek. 4:14). The lion, then, has been killed, and false doctrines refuted, and out of the eater came food, and out of the strong came something sweet (Judg. 14).

(Verse 15.) «Behold, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts: and I will set your chariots on fire until they become smoke; and the sword shall devour your cubs: and I will destroy your prey from the earth: and the voice of your messengers shall be heard no more,» The Septuagint has: «Behold, I am against you, says the Lord almighty: and I will burn up your multitude into smoke, and the sword shall devour your lions, and I will take away your prey from the earth, and your works shall be heard no more.» O Nineveh, you shall suffer all that has been spoken, with me as its author. I, the Lord, will set your chariots on fire until they become smoke and consumption, and I will make the sword devour all your nobles and sub-kings. No longer shall you lay waste lands, nor exact tribute, nor shall your envoys be heard throughout your provinces: or rather, I will no longer hear the angels who are your governors, pleading thereafter on your behalf. But these same things are also said to the world, in which there is a multitude that travels by the broad and spacious way to death (Matt. 7), which the Lord threatens, once set on fire, to be choked with the smoke of its own malice from its excessive vanity. The sword shall also devour the lions—the living and sharp word of God, sharpened on every side; and he promises to take away its prey from the earth, so that no one may be caught from there in Nineveh, and as one who is merciful he removes evil works and suppresses them, so that their voice and sound can be heard no more. Hence he says: And your works shall be heard no more.

(Woe, city of bloods, wholly full of the tearing apart of lies: plunder shall not depart from you; the sound of the whip, and the sound of the rushing of the wheel, and of the neighing horse, and of the burning chariot, and of the mounting horseman, and of the flashing sword, and of the gleaming spear, and of the multitude slain, and of the heavy ruin, and there is no end to the corpses: and they shall fall upon their own bodies, because of the multitude of the fornications of the beautiful and pleasing harlot, and of her who has sorceries, who sold nations in her fornications, and families in her sorceries.) The Septuagint: «O city of bloods, wholly lying, full of iniquity, the prey shall not be handled: the sound of whips, and the sound of the commotion of wheels, and of the pursuing horse, and of the burning chariot, of the mounting horseman, and of the shining sword, and of the gleaming arms, and of the multitude of the wounded, and of the heavy ruin, and there shall be no end to her nations, and they shall grow weak in their bodies from the multitude of fornication. The harlot beautiful and pleasing, the leader of sorceries, who sells nations in her fornication, and tribes in her sorceries.» Where we have put "full of tearing apart," in the Hebrew is found PHEREC MALEA, which Aquila translated as, that is, "full of sifting out": Symmachus however; which we can call "full of cruelty or severity." In his other edition I found, that is, "of cuttings of flesh and of pieces torn apart through the limbs": and indeed he immediately added, where there is unceasing prey.

Moreover, the Hebrew word PHENEC ( ) he translated not as "scattering," which we find in the edition of Aquila [manuscripts], but as "helm," that is, as "governor," so as to show that the city was also royal, and that it held the helm, as it were, over a ship of all nations. For the power of that city, that is, of Nineveh, is described, and under the guise of lamentation it is accused of cruelty. Woe, city of bloods, in which there is no truth but every lie, full of plunder and the tearing apart of spoils. The sound of the cruel whip and of ever-raging dominion, and the sound of the rushing of the wheel. Let us take "voice" for "sound": the burning wheel, its running to and fro through various places, and the neighing horse, and the burning chariots—in all of these "voice" is to be understood. Moreover, according to the Hebrew, the description of an army preparing itself for battle is so beautiful and so like a painting that all my speech is too paltry for it. For what it says: And heavy with ruin, and there is no end of corpses, let us understand of the adversaries who were slain by them. And they shall fall in their own bodies, or they shall fall from their multitude, being pressed hard against one another; or they shall fall among the corpses of the slain: for "their own" and "of them" both signify the same. Because of the multitude, it says, of the fornications of the harlot: because she fornicated with many nations, and worshipped the idols of the whole world that she had subjected to herself.

Beautiful and pleasing, and possessing sorceries" signifies magicians: she who sold nations in her fornications, and families in her sorceries, that is, who held power over all nations. These things were said of Nineveh in the simple sense. But if, reasonably, on account of the name of beauty, we have understood Nineveh as the world, then rightly the world, which is placed in evil, on account of the multitude of archers and of those who kill men with their tongues as if with swords, is called a city of bloods. Hence also, consequently, it is wholly lying, which refers to the perversity of doctrines, since the word of God has nowhere in it to lay its head, while perverse dogmas possess it entirely. "There is none who understands or seeks God: all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one" (Ps. XIII, 2, 3). Although these things are also done in part now, yet they are more fully accomplished at the consummation: when, with iniquity multiplied, the charity of many has grown cold (Matth. XXIV). How many are captured by Nimrod the giant, and the most savage hunter, because, exalting himself against God, he has entangled many from his forest in his snares; his prey, or his hunting, will not be touched by many. For he has many attendants, and hunters together with him, who rejoice in his hunting, and stand by him like captives. But the voice of whips is also heard in the world, because the tribulations of the just are many (Ps.

by which those who are scourged cry out and bear witness to the greatness of their pain with a tearful voice; when one is seized by a demon, another by what is akin to frenzy, another by lust, hatred, envy, or pride, the whip of the Assyrian king resounds in them. But also in bodily afflictions we understand the whip of the devil, of which it is said to the righteous man: And the whip shall not come near your tabernacle (Ps. 90:10): when we have seen one man rotted away with the royal disease and surviving his own corpse; another swollen with dropsy and swimming with a bloated body, while as his limbs grow the form of his former self diminishes, which we recently saw in a snake; another discharging certain purulent matter and the damage of a wounded lung; another, his fluid dried into stones, feeling the bitterness of urine and the torments of the bladder—we should not hesitate to say that the voice of the whips is Nineveh: although some suspect that these things happen either from corrupted air or from the diversity of foods and bodies. We who have read both that the fever was rebuked (Luke 4) and that the woman who for eighteen years had been bound by the devil (ibid. 13) was healed by the Lord as physician, should know that all these things are the whips of Nineveh. Whence it follows: And the voice of the commotion of the wheels; while the human race is snatched hither and thither, and amid uncertain wanderings through all things, we do not know where danger is, where safety is: of which wheel also at the beginning of Ezekiel it is written (Ezek.

We read in the seventy-sixth psalm: The voice of thy thunder is in the wheel. Now Nineveh also has a pursuing horse, whose neighing, whose hoof digging into the earth, whose breast seething, always desires wars, the Lord speaking against the devil: From afar he smells battle, when with leap and shout he spares not those who flee, nor allows those who turn their backs to depart; but he pursues to cast them down, to kill, to trample, to dash them against. There is also in Nineveh the voice of a burning chariot, such as I think Pharaoh had, which were submerged by the Lord. To this chariot four horses are yoked, namely four perturbations, about which even the philosophers dispute, and Maro does not keep silent, saying: With these horses and this chariot Nineveh throws all things into confusion. But also the voice of the mounting horseman resounds in her, who, prepared for war by a certain art and circling, advances not without danger to the one fighting against him. This horseman has the sword of speech, sharpened on the whetstone of dialectic and smoothed with the oil of the art of rhetoric; he has flashing arms, Satan transforming himself into an angel of light, which arms are contrary to the apostolic armor. Nor is it surprising if in Nineveh there is a multitude of the wounded, since there is a multitude of arrows. And how the four with which we fight and are read are the shields of the virtues: prudence, justice.

temperance, fortitude; so, by contrast, there are four vices—folly, iniquity, luxury, and fear—by which we are struck by the enemy. Each of these has within itself its own swarming offspring and manifold kinds of arrows by which wounds are inflicted; and unless medicine heals them at once, the fall becomes severe. And would that in Nineveh there were as many who fall lightly and are lightly wounded as there are, in proportion to the weight of the ruin, sunk down even to hell. And there is no end to her nations; her malice has no end; and as many kinds of sins as there are, so many are the nations of Nineveh, which shall be weakened in their bodies by the multitude of her fornication. Although this can also be understood of those who, on account of venereal matters, are weakened even in body, and along with the loss of the soul break the flesh also, which they serve; nevertheless these nations, of which we have spoken, do not fall, according to the Hebrew, except in their bodies, and do not stumble (as Symmachus translated) except among the corpses of the dead, which have been laid low by the multiplication of fornication. In this place the Seventy interpreters, when we have set down according to the Hebrew, on account of the multitude of the fornications of the harlot, wished the beginning to be, as it were, something else, so that they would say: Because of the multitude of fornication; and when the sentence had ended up to this point, they would then begin, a harlot comely and pleasing, a leader of evil deeds. Instead of a leader of evil deeds, Aquila and Symmachus translated, having evil deeds.

Nor will he wonder that Nineveh is now most pleasing to harlots, who has seen so great a multitude of people fornicating with her, and drawn almost all to her love by her sorceries and certain incantations. She has sold nations in her fornications, who take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot; and tribes in her sorceries. For she makes them love what they ought to hate, and detest what they ought to love, so that when they have been deceived, according to what is written: Evil communications corrupt good manners (1 Cor. 15:33), they may also trip up others by their sorcerous art. I have read in the Holy Scriptures that sorcerers are also taken in a good sense: And of the sorcerer who enchants wisely (Ps. 57:6). But such a sorcerer enchants to this end, that those bound by love of the harlot Nineveh he may draw back to soundness of mind.

.... These desire, and fear, and grieve, and rejoice....

(Verses 5, 6.) «Behold, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will reveal your shameful parts in your face, and I will show your nakedness to the nations, and your ignominy to the kingdoms: and I will cast abominations upon you, and I will afflict you with insults, and I will make you an example.» The Septuagint has: «Behold, I am against you, says the Lord almighty, and I will uncover your hind parts upon your face, and I will show your confusion to the nations, and your ignominy to the kingdoms, and I will cast abomination upon you according to your uncleannesses, and I will make you an example.» Because you have sold, O Nineveh, the nations in your fornications, and families in your sorceries, and like a public brothel you have made your feet beautiful for all: therefore I myself will come to you to overthrow you; I will not send an angel, I will not entrust your judgment to others. I will uncover your shameful parts in your face, so that what you formerly saw as one who knew them may be set before your sight. I will show your nakedness to the nations, and your ignominy to the kingdoms, so that those who fornicated with you may themselves despise you, mock you, and afflict you with insults: and you will be an example to all who see you. But all these things are narrated under the metaphor of an adulterous woman, who, when she has been caught, is brought out into the midst and is stripped bare before the eyes of all. This indeed, by way of transference, the prophetic discourse in Ezekiel describes most fully even concerning Jerusalem.

More truly, however, and more usefully, these things are said to the world, to cut and also to cure which the true physician came from heaven. Behold, I am against you, says the Lord almighty: because I am almighty, I can heal all diseases, and what is impossible for others is possible for me. I will reveal your posterior parts in your face, that is, my virtues, my precepts and my words, which you have cast behind your back; although you do not deserve it, I will make you see them. For I had commanded you concerning my words, that they should always be moved before your eyes, bound and hanging there. But you, despising the command of the one who ordered it, have left them behind your footsteps, so that not only did you not do them, but you did not even deign to see what I had commanded. Or certainly I will make you see and understand your errors, which before, when you were being carried along blind and headlong, you thought were virtues. After these things, also to the nations, which you sold in your fornication, I will show your nakedness, so that they may no longer be captivated by love of you, but seeing the filthy and shameful body within, by whose surface they were first led, they may cease to fornicate with you. To the kingdoms also, which are greater than the nations, I will show your ignominy, which you yourself made so as to have it. And I will cast abomination upon you according to your uncleannesses, so that just as you are unclean, so you may appear unclean; and you may not deceive the many who, clinging to you before, were made one body with you (I Cor 6).

And I will make you an example, so that the likeness of a dreaded punishment may forbid the likeness of sinning.

(Verse 7.) "And it shall be, everyone who sees you will recoil from you, and will say: Nineveh is laid waste: who will shake his head over you? Where shall I seek a comforter for you?" In the Hebrew the word "head" is not found, but we have added it so that the sense might be clearer. Accordingly Symmachus translated it thus: "And everyone who sees you will depart from you, and will say: Nineveh is scattered: who will mourn with her?" I set down the Septuagint: "And it shall be, everyone who sees you will go down from you and will say: Wretched Nineveh, who will lament her? Where shall I seek a consolation for her that fits the string?" He who has seen the ruins of Nineveh, and her set as an example for all, will be terrified and will marvel, and will say: "Nineveh is scattered, who will shake his head over you?" that is, who will grieve over you, who can be your comforter? For as long as you were powerful, like a cruel mistress, you did not pity the old man nor regard the little child, nor did you prepare a companion for your mourning, you who were unwilling to have a partner in reigning. But he who despises these earthly things, and has looked down upon the sorceries of the witch Nineveh, and has not been ensnared by her false beauty, when he has seen all her foulness from within and has begun to hate what others love, will flee and recoil from her, or, as the Septuagint says, will go down.

For as long as we honor earthly things and think them sublime, we are as it were on a certain summit of pride, and we marvel at the beauty of Nineveh. But when we have considered its nature and have despised all bodily goods as lowly, subjecting ourselves to the power of God's hand, then we shall pity the Ninevites; and we shall judge all earthly goods worthy of lamentation, and we shall say: Wretched Nineveh, how many have been ensnared by your snares, how many do you hold bound in your chains! Who, do you think, will recoil from you, and descend from your pride, and judge you wretched? But as for what it says, "who," we ought to take it not so much for something difficult as for something rare, as we have often said: "Who, do you think, is the faithful and prudent steward?" And: "Who is wise, and will understand these things?" And: "Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord?" Who, then, will groan over Nineveh? Who can be found who, weighed down by this tabernacle, may say with Paul: "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?" We see daily that if death has come near to someone, and he has understood that by fever, or wound, or any kind of disease he is being taken away from this world, he fears, he trembles, and trembling in his whole body he clings to Nineveh in its embraces, and is scarcely torn away from the body of the beautiful harlot. But what follows: "Whence shall I seek consolation, or a comforter for you, who may fit the string?

Still, this is said in the person of him who will leap back or descend from Nineveh, and will say: Wretched Nineveh, who will lament for her? He is arguing about the confused manner of life of this world, in which nothing can please anyone forever, but what has pleased displeases, and what had displeased pleases again. Who, then, can be found to be such a comforter—and, so to speak, a lyric poet and cithara-player—as to be able to draw her dissonant strings together into one harmony and make a vocal concord to the praises of God? What we have expounded as “he who fits the string,” or “fitting the string,” and is said in Greek, we have found neither in the Hebrew nor in the other translators, but in its place the beginning of another utterance: Are you better than Amon, who dwells among the rivers? Hence it seems to me rather to be joined with the following verses.

(Verses following.) Are you better than Amon, who dwells among the rivers? Water is round about her, whose riches are the sea, whose walls are waters; Ethiopia is her strength and Egypt, and there is no end; Africa and the Libyans were in your aid. But she too is led away into transmigration, into captivity; her little ones will be dashed against the head of all the ways, and they will cast lots upon her nobles, and all her chief men will be bound in fetters. And so you too will be made drunk and will be despised, and you will seek your aid from the enemy; all your fortifications are like a fig tree with its early figs: if they are shaken, they will fall into the mouth of the one who eats.

The Septuagint: "Fit the chord, part of Ammon, you who dwell among the rivers, whose waters are round about her, whose beginning is the sea, and water is her wall. Ethiopia is her strength, and Egypt, and there is no end to your flight. Put and the Libyans became her helpers, and she herself will go into transmigration as a captive, and her little ones will be dashed in pieces at the beginning of her ways, and over all her glorious things they will cast lots, and all her nobles will be bound in fetters; and you will be made drunk, and you will be despised, and you will seek there where you may stand against your enemies; all your fortifications are like fig trees that have winter figs: if they are shaken, they will fall into the mouth of the eater." In place of what is read in the Septuagint, "Fit the chord, part of Ammon," the other translators rendered: "Are you not better than Amon?" The Hebrew who instructed me in the Scriptures asserted that it could be read thus: "Are you not better than No, Amon?" And he said that in Hebrew No is the name for Alexandria; but AMON means multitude, or peoples, and that the order of the reading is: "Are you not better than populous Alexandria, or Alexandria of the peoples, which dwells among the rivers, with water round about her?" Not that it was called Alexandria at that time, since it received that name long afterward from Alexander the Great of Macedon, but because under its earlier name, that is, No, it was always the metropolis of Egypt and most abundant in peoples. Indeed, those also who committed the deeds of Alexander to memory judge that it was the chief city of Egypt.

But the prophet Jeremiah also, understanding Amon, or No, as Alexandria, in the vision against Egypt, to which he says: "Egypt is a beautiful heifer, a gadfly from the north shall come upon her" (Jer. 46:20), adds these things more plainly: "The daughter of Egypt is confounded, she is delivered into the hand of the people of the north, says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. Behold, I will visit upon AMON MENNO," that is, upon the tumult of Alexandria (Ibid. and following); for AMON, as we have said, means peoples; MEN signifies the preposition "from"; but No means Alexandria. And I will visit, he says, upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt, and upon her gods, and upon her kings, and upon Pharaoh, and upon those who hope in him, and I will give them into the hands of those who seek their lives, and into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and into the hand of his servants. It is said therefore to Nineveh: Are you more populous, or more powerful than Alexandria? And the site of Alexandria is described, which, situated upon the Nile and the sea, is surrounded on both sides by waters and rivers. Water is round about her, whose riches are the sea; waters are her walls: for on one side she is encircled by the stream of the Nile, on another by the Mareotic lake, and on another part by the sea. But that Ethiopia and Egypt, and Africa—for which PHUT is placed in the Hebrew—and the Libyans are in her defense, the very site of the provinces and of the city shows. And these things therefore, says the prophet, which my discourse describes, shall be captured by the king of Babylon, and the same shall be your destroyer and his.

Josephus also, the writer of Jewish history, reports these things in his books. Her little ones shall be dashed in pieces at the crossroads, her nobles shall be divided by the lot of the victors, and her mightiest princes shall be led captive in chains. Since, therefore, Alexandria is to suffer these things, you also, O Nineveh, shall drink from the same cup, and you shall be made drunk, and lying asleep you shall be despised, and you shall come into such great necessity that you shall beg help from the Babylonians, or against the Babylonians, from your enemies. All your fortifications and walls raised on high, and the heights of your towers, which you now think impregnable, and your strong men and warriors, shall be compared to early figs, which, if they are shaken with a light touch, will fall into the mouth of the one devouring them. For what is read in the Septuagint: "Fit together, or compose the string," is still said to Nineveh. And the sense is: Make fit, Nineveh, your disordered and disarranged state, and one that disagrees in different directions, in the likeness of strings, because your appearance and greatness, which you believe you possess as your chief qualities, will profit you nothing unless you make yourself fit for singing. For consider every part of the lot of the children of Ammon, and whatever goods they think they possess, how they did not defend them from going into captivity, and from their little ones being dashed in pieces in the streets. What did the rivers profit it, beside which the city of Ammon is situated? What, apart from the rivers, did such a multitude of wells and springs profit it, beginning from the Dead Sea and encircling its region?

What protection did Ethiopia and Egypt, once her allies, provide for her? In the same way, then, that the help of her allies did not save her, so neither will there be an end to your fleeing, O Nineveh, but you will be laid waste in every direction. Why should I speak of the Ethiopians and the Egyptians, who were rulers over the children of Ammon, when even the Libyans were her allies? Therefore she too shall be led into captivity, and her little ones, because they cannot walk, shall be killed in the streets, struck down before the faces of their parents, and all her wealth will perhaps be divided among the victors. Nor shall any of her princes escape, because they will be bound with iron and chains. And you therefore, O Nineveh, shall be drunk, and you who were once rich and beautiful, who had so many lovers, shall be despised by all, and by your pursuing enemies; you shall seek rest, and you shall not find it. All your warriors and all your auxiliaries shall become plunder for the enemy, and they shall be captured without any effort, like figs from a fig tree, which, when shaken, fall not to the ground—so that there is not even a little labor for those gathering them—but fall straight into the mouth of the one devouring them. These things have been said according to the Seventy interpreters; for it has once been our purpose also to follow the Vulgate edition, lest we seem to have given any occasion for criticizing the Hydra and Sardanapalus. But otherwise the example of the destruction of Nineveh does not seem to me to agree well enough with the sons of Lot, who are called Ammon. For first it is called Ammon (Gen.

and not Amman; then Ammana, which is now called Philadelphia, is not situated upon rivers, nor are its riches gathered from the sea, since it is inland, nor are its waters its walls, nor does it have Ethiopia and Egypt and Africa and the Libyans as allies, when all these things, both according to power and according to example and according to the description of the place and region and of the allied nations, are to be fitted rather to Alexandria; and never would the most powerful city of Nineveh, compared to the lesser Philadelphia, hear from the prophet: Are you better? But to whom it is said: Are you better? it is shown that she is lesser than the one to whom she is compared, and that she ought not to take it ill if she has been captured, when a greater and stronger and more powerful city, both by the nature of its site and by brave men, has been overcome by the same enemy. But because we have interpreted Nineveh as this world, she is commanded to fit and arrange her strings, and to prepare herself for a mournful song; for the portion of the children of Ammon which had been much better than Nineveh, and had dwelt upon the rivers, because it was caught in error, paid the penalties of its crime. And first, according to history, it must be said of Alexandria, that Ammon is interpreted as peoples, and let the sense be according to the laws of allegory: Consider the peoples of the Church which dwells upon the rivers of the prophets, and has teachers round about her, from whose belly flow rivers, whose beginning is the sea.

For from the reading of the law, which without the wood of Christ is bitter, one comes in the likeness of Marah to its mystery, which has Ethiopia in its strength; for Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to God (Ps. LXVII); and Egypt, into which the Lord came upon a light cloud; and the Libyans who formerly dwelt in arid places, and afterward became a help to him. And so if she does not attend to herself and guard her heart with all diligence, she will be led captive and will bewail her sons. Her little ones too, who are still at the beginnings of the ways and have not reached the middle of the journey, will be dashed in pieces at their very beginnings; and the most savage enemies will hasten to divide for themselves all her splendid things by lot, and the nobles, whom we may understand as princes and overseers, bound with chains and shackled with the heaviest weight of fetters, they will drag into captivity. And you therefore, Nineveh, that is, unbelieving men, men wholly clinging to the world, will feel the punishments and will be lulled to sleep by my cup, when those also have drunk who were of my party and fell by their own fault.

And you will be despised by me: you will seek an end among the vices and disturbances that press upon you, and nevertheless you will not be able to find a standing-place and an end of evils; but also all your desires and pleasures, and secular powers, and the doctrines that you seemed to hold most firmly, will be devoured by the one who devours, of whom Samson says in a parable: Out of the eater came food, and out of the strong came sweetness (Judg. 14:14). For then all your strong things, and those which promised sweet fruits to the eyes of onlookers, will rush at the first shaking of the tree into the mouth of the devouring devil, by whom Nineveh had always been tempted and possessed. Furthermore, what we have passed over: And there is no end to your flight, because it is said to Nineveh, and among those things which are written concerning Ammon, and it seems extraordinarily inserted into a foreign place, let us refer it, as it were, back to Nineveh, so that the order may be: And you will be made drunk, and there is no end to your flight, and you will be despised, and the rest which are said to Nineveh. And we shall interpret that there is no end to Nineveh's flight from God: because she always has progress in fleeing, and never wishes to stand still, according to that which we said above: And they themselves, fleeing, did not stand, and there was no one who looked back.

And we shall say that Holy Scripture is woven together with these difficulties, and especially the prophets, who are full of enigmas, so that the difficulty of the meaning may be wrapped in difficulty of speech as well, so that the Holy may not lie open to dogs, nor pearls to swine, nor the Holy of Holies to the profane. But if we wish Ammon to be interpreted as concerning the sons of Lot, let us say that Lot had two sons by two daughters, Moab and Ammon, of whom the elder, Moab, is interpreted as "from the father," or "paternal water"; the younger, however, Ammon, as either "son of my kindred" or "our people" (Gen. 19). And I think that just as he who was born of Judah is called, on account of sin, "seed of Canaan, and not of Judah" (Dan. 13:56), and in Ezekiel, to the sinful Jerusalem: "Your root and your generation are from the land of Canaan, your father is the Amorite, and your mother the Hittite" (Ezek. 16:3), so all those who were of the former people, that is, of the Jews, and of the younger, that is, of ours, are figuratively called Moabites and Ammonites. And because they turned aside from their father (for Lot is interpreted as "turning aside"), they are to be subjected to punishments and to suffer all the things we have set forth above. But if God's severity begins with those who were once holy, and she who dwelt among the rivers is to be purged by the fire of Gehenna, how much more shall Nineveh, which previously had no law nor received the yoke of God's commandments, on account of her pride fall at the last into the mouth of the devourer!

(Verses and following.) «Behold, your people are women in your midst: to your enemies the gates of your land shall be opened wide: fire shall devour your bars. Draw water for yourself because of the siege: build up your fortifications, enter into the mud, and tread it down: subduing, hold the brick. There fire shall devour you: you shall perish by the sword, it shall devour you like the locust: gather therefore like the locust: multiply like the grasshopper. You have made your traffickings more numerous than the stars of heaven are: the locust has spread out and flown away. Your watchmen are like the grasshopper, and your little ones like the grasshoppers of grasshoppers, which settle in the hedges on the day of cold. The sun has risen, and they have flown away, and their place where they were is not known.» The LXX: «Behold, your people are as women in you, to your enemies the gates of your land shall be opened with opening: fire has devoured your bars. Draw for yourself the water of siege, hold your fortifications: enter the mud and tread it down in the chaff, hold fast upon the brick. There fire shall devour you, the sword shall scatter you, and it shall devour you like a locust; you shall be burdened like the grasshopper, to multiply like the grasshopper: you have multiplied your traffickings like the stars of heaven.» Still against Nineveh the utterance of the speaker is woven: It is no wonder if your strong men and warriors, in the likeness of gross figs, fall at once into the mouth of the devourer, since your people is effeminate and cannot resist.

Therefore your gates shall be opened wide, and the city shall lie open to the enemy; the strongest bars with which the gates are shut, fire shall consume. Draw water, then, and take care that drink not fail the besieged stronghold; make bricks, that you may rebuild the broken parts of the walls, for the siege is near. And when you have done all these things, as the ground is devoured by the bruchus, so shall you be devoured by the sword. But even when you have been multiplied as the bruchus, and gathered together into one as the locust, and have gathered your riches like the stars of heaven, like the locust and the bruchus, and the small offspring of locusts which are called attelabi, when the sun grows hot, they fly away and are found no more: so shall you be scattered and flee. For this is the nature of locusts, that in the cold they lie torpid, but through warmth they fly. Furthermore the attelabus, which Aquila translated more significantly as the devourer, is a small locust between the locust and the bruchus, creeping rather than flying on tiny wings, and ever leaping up; and for this reason, wherever it has arisen, it consumes all things even to the dust, because until its wings grow it cannot depart. These things, according to the Hebrew, for the reader's easier understanding, I have explained more plainly, treading in the very footsteps of Scripture.

I shall speak also following the Septuagint's version as begun, first briefly, that is, as if in summary, and afterwards more fully discussing each point: Your people, O Nineveh—that is, worldly men, who are properly called the people of the city of Assyria—have been so enervated by passions and grown so weak in vices that they are compared to the weakness of women; for they possess nothing strong in their souls, nothing robust and manly. Hence their enemies, prevailing against them, have opened all their senses, and have entered in through the bodily gates. And pointedly the senses of bodies are called the gates of the land of Nineveh. Moreover, even those who have enslaved themselves to vices have, from God's first creation, the occasion of knowing God, as it were the strongest bars, with which they may block and shut the gates of the senses. But fire shall consume even these, fire winged with burning arrows; wherefore it is said to Nineveh: Draw water for yourself, and sprinkle yourself with speech and reason, and use the occasions of understanding God and of exercising the virtues that are implanted in you for waging war. But you, with hands dissolved—that is, by works of pleasure—have lost whatever strength you had in you; wherefore turn, and do penance, and again secure your fortifications.

And because you have once entered into the mud, and are enclosed in the body (which is compacted, as it were, of earth and chaff and water, so of flesh, blood, veins, sinews, and bones), endure the injury and necessities of the body: and be trodden down by enemies, and suffer all things that serve to wear out the flesh, which are worthy of repentance. For once having taken up mud, and being wrapped in the chaff and empty business of this world, you ought willingly to be trampled by injury, and yet do not despair of salvation utterly; be confident, and reduce your body, that is, your brick, to servitude like water, on account of the word you have taken up, and subject it to yourself, that you may rule over your brick; otherwise, unless you do this, a devouring flame will afterward consume you, either for punishment through Gehenna, or roused by the burning darts of the enemy: and you will not only be laid waste by fire, but the sword also will devour you like a locust devours the green things of the earth. And you will suffer this if you have not been set over your brick, and, weighed down by your own weight and losing all power of flight, you are dragged wholly down to the earth, as the bruchus suddenly falls to the earth when, its flight exhausted, it can go no further. Have therefore virtues as innumerable as the bruchus, lest by your weight you be dragged down to the earth as the bruchus is. All these things you have suffered because you multiplied for yourself riches and the traffickings of diverse doctrines, thinking them brighter than the stars and to shine more than the constellations of heaven.

These things, as I said, have been briefly stated by us in order to grasp the sense; now, returning to the beginning of the chapter, let us explain each point as best we can. Who would not say that beautiful Nineveh—the soul beautiful by nature, softened by the luxury and pleasures of this world—has come to womanly delicacies, and, having lost her manliness, has grown effeminate into a woman? For if the soul of the righteous, coming into a perfect man and preserving the rigor of its condition, and cleaving to God, becomes one spirit with him, why should not, on the contrary, the soul that loves the world become one with the world, and, reduced to womanly softness, lose its manly rigor? I think it is for this reason that in Exodus Pharaoh commands that every male that is born to the Hebrews be cast into the river, and that every female be kept alive (Exod. 1). For the king of Egypt, who says elsewhere, "The rivers are mine, and I made them" (Exod. 29:9), could not command anything other than this: that whatever is of the Hebrews—that is, of those who pass through this age—and is perhaps manly, be cast into the waters and carried by their streams into the sea. And on the contrary, whatever seemed womanly and soft and beautiful in this world, let this be kept alive, grow up, and generate.

At the same time consider that the Egyptian ruler could not kill the men of the Hebrews, nor those who have already passed beyond infancy, but those whose age is still tender, whose body is soft, and whose growth is just beginning: he knows that women cannot be reared unless the males have been killed. And so he wishes to drown in the flood of his own river whatever in the Hebrews is strong and manly, so that those of the female sex may grow up alone more freely. But what follows, To your enemies with an opening the gates of your land shall be opened, you will be able to understand by taking up the testimony from Jeremiah, in which it is written: Death has come up through your windows (Jer. 9:21). And what is shown through Jeremiah as windows, here as the panels of a gate, and these too you will refer to the senses. For the divine word, knowing that there are twofold senses, for the distinction of evil senses, says in Proverbs: You will find a divine sense. But here do not take "sense" for the soul and mind, which in Greek is called nous, but for that from which the five senses are also named: sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing. So let the gates of the land of Nineveh be understood as the bodily senses; but the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, every divine sense and that which comes from above. These gates of Nineveh his people open through sight and hearing and all the remaining senses, as it were through the broad and spacious way that leads to death (Matt.

…seeking to capture bodily pleasures, by which they shut the gates of the men of God, blocking their ears lest they hear the judgment of blood, closing their eyes lest they see iniquity, stopping their nostrils lest they take in the first perfumes to the effeminacy of their soul by their scent, closing the mouth of the gullet and the greedy belly, and drawing back their hands from soft touch, lest the belly, seething toward lust, drive the burning soul into womanly embraces. But those who are men of God open their senses, that is, the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, so that the word of God may enter into them. Of the evil gates there is this example: “You who lift me up from the gates of death.” Of the good gates this: “That I may proclaim all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion.” When you see a lover of pleasures rather than a lover of God, and given over to luxury, say at once concerning him: “He has opened the gates of his land to his enemies”; for they open the gates of the land of Nineveh not to the friends of their soul, but to its enemies. But if those also who are thought to be leaders among the people have done the same, concerning them too you will not fear to say: “The leaders of my people have been cast out from the house of their delights.

But if you see them entangled in pleasures and hemmed in on every side by surrounding luxury, having no mercy on the poor, and not caring for the people of God, you will apply to them what follows: Who sleep upon beds of ivory, and luxuriate on their couches; who eat the kids from the flocks, and the suckling calves from the herds; who drink strained wine, and are anointed with the finest ointments; and they did not grieve over the affliction of Joseph (Amos 6:4-6). Furthermore, what is said—The fire has devoured your bars—is of this kind: if any good by nature seemed to be in your soul, which, like bars, could block and repel the enemies who were trying to burst in through the gates of your senses, this has been set ablaze by the fire of Babylon. Moreover, Draw water for the siege, it is said of the word of God, so that the soul may surround itself as with a most solid wall with the teaching and reasoning of the Scriptures, lest the enemy be able to break into its inner parts. Hold fast, it says, your strongholds. Whatever good you have in you by nature, and whatever the most excellent Creator preserves in you as a beginning, keep this, unhappy soul of Nineveh, for your defense, and do not allow it to flow out from the principal ( ) of the heart. But what is added after this—Walk in the mire, and be trampled in the chaff—someone else perhaps may think is said of the soul which, fixed in the mire of the body and the chaff of this world—empty and fleeting things, that is—turning itself wholly about in them, is trampled by demons.

But to me it seems that this is said to her: Endure the temptations and injuries to which you have been handed over, the punishments which you suffer by your own desert; because if you walk over the empty and fragile affairs of this world, know that you endure them as a remedy, if only you gain the mastery over the brick, and subject the flesh to the dominion of the soul. Then it follows: There the fire will devour you. If you have not been over the brick, and have not held dominion over the flesh, but have remained in the brick, and have loved the chaff, and have lived in the flesh according to the flesh, not only will the burning darts of the enemy devour you, but his sword will also kill you, and like locusts he will consume with greedy tooth whatever in you seemed green and sprang up of its own accord by the good of nature; and like the bruchus with its flight lost and weighed down by its own weight, so you too, weighed down by the burden of sins, will be dragged down to the earth. Therefore, lest you suffer such and so great things, multiply as the bruchus, and as many in number as it has, so many virtues do you have. For since you have multiplied your trading, and by every kind, as though you desired to possess heavenly things, you have gathered for yourself perishing riches through right and wrong, you ought to equal the multitude of sins with a multitude of virtues. Above, according to the Hebrew, I had come as far as that place where it is said: The sun has risen, and they have flown away: and their place where they were is not known. And what seemed to me in the context of that very discourse, I have said.

Now, because the Septuagint seems to have the beginning of its own meaning, having set out their testimony, I will follow the order of the explanation begun.

LXX: "The locust rushed in and flew away; it leaped forth like the mixed beetle, like the locust that climbed upon the hedge on a day of frost; the sun rose and it leaped forth, and it did not know its place." Woe to them. The multitude of Nineveh without a ruler, without order, mixed together here and there, and rushing wherever the impulse carried it, seems to me to be compared to a locust, a small and innumerable animal, and one that seems to lift itself only a little from the ground. But also the beetle, which is called in Greek and translated into Latin as "mixed," we can understand as the ignoble crowd, and a people gathered from diverse nations here and there, that is, not citizens but foreigners. Whence also the people of Israel that went out from Egypt is said to have had this, that is, from the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians, and various nations. And here therefore, so to speak, the "mixed" multitude of Nineveh is compared to the leaping beetle and to the locust, which on a day of cold, because it cannot fly away, sits upon the hedge, and afterward, when the sun has risen and it is warmed by its heat, leaps forth, and flying away to other regions, by no means remembers the hedge in which it had sat in the time of cold. These things have been said so that the prophet's own discourse may be more easily understood.

But you will not be able to doubt that the multitude of men which, traveling along the broad way, is occupied in the world, is called the locust, when you have seen them wholly given over to the earth, running about hither and thither with the levity of their judgment, and unable to fly to higher things. Consider Rome and Constantinople, with the former name exchanging its former want. See Alexandria, the head of Egypt, and when either through scarcity of grain, or (which is a matter of shame and blushing) on account of charioteers and mimes and actors, a sedition has been stirred up, the people rushing together in the likeness of the locust, and wholly clinging to vices, flitting hither and thither by their own levity and by a change of judgment from moment to moment; then truly you will be able to say: The locust departed in a rush and flew away. Furthermore, what follows: The attelabus leaped forth, and your misticus as it were a locust, I think the misticus differs from the locust in this, that the locust is compared to the unskilled and innumerable multitude; but the misticus is gathered from all nations on every side.

And just as some are citizens in cities, others foreigners who are pleased to dwell in a city not their own, so I think that in the mystical sense those who dwell in Nineveh are those who, according to their own opinion, seem to themselves to follow some doctrines of truth, and are better than the bruchus in this respect, that the bruchus does nothing else but always remain on the ground, and without wings, is enslaved to food and the belly; whereas the attelabus at least takes up modest little wings, and though it cannot fly to another place, yet strives to leap up from the ground; and at last arriving at the locust, it does indeed fly, but its flight is not perpetual, for when its little wings fail and are contracted by the cold, even the locust settles down, and it settles not on a fruit-bearing tree and on green leaves, but on a hedge woven of briars and thickets, or on a dry-stone wall composed here and there of chance stones. Let us consider the wise men of Greece, and the gymnosophists of the Egyptians and Persians and Indians, and the Samaritans, and the various opinions among them; and the Jews and their Pharisees and Sadducees, and the manifold heresies of the Church, and we shall see the attelabus lifting itself a little from the ground, and the locust indeed flying, but not at full speed; and because it does not have the warmth of the sun of righteousness, charity toward God being cold, it sits in thorny hedges. For all their doctrines, since they are cold and cannot fly, find a seat and rest for themselves among the thorn-bushes of Aristotle and Chrysippus.

Hence Eunomius brings forth: What was born was not before it was born. Hence Manichaeus, in order to free God from the creation of evils, introduces another author of evil. Hence Novatus withdraws forgiveness, in order to take away repentance. And to sum up all things at once in a brief discourse, from those fountains all the doctrines of their arguments draw their streams, so that they have even inscribed the very passages from which they take their arguments. This locust, therefore, which now sits in the hedges, when the time of judgment has come and the world has grown warm at the rising of the sun, will leave its seat and the places in which it clung during the time of cold; and, turned to better things, it will not remember its former seat. But what we have said generally about the time of judgment can now also be understood in part, so that through learned and instructed men the light of the sun of righteousness may rise upon locusts of this kind; and, leaving behind their thorns, they may pass over into pure and free flight.

(And the following verses.) «Your shepherds have slumbered, O king of Assur; your princes shall be buried; your people is scattered upon the mountains, and there is none to gather them; your contrition is not hidden, your plague is most grievous. All who have heard your report have clapped their hand over you: because upon whom has your malice not always passed?» The Septuagint: «Your shepherds have slumbered; the king of Assur has put your strong men to sleep; your people has gone away upon the mountains, and there was none to receive them, and there is no healing for your contrition; your plague swells. All who have heard your message shall clap their hands over you, because upon whom has your malice not always rushed?» It is no wonder if your shepherds have slumbered, O king of Assur, you who ruled in Nineveh, and if your princes are buried, or wander, namely the petty kings and the hard men of all the nations who previously served you: since your people were women in the midst of your city; and its gates were opened to your enemies, and all the multitude sitting upon the wall was compared to a locust, which, as when the sun grows hot, thus fled from the battlements at the arrival of Nebuchadnezzar, and turned its back to the enemies, and its place was not found. And so, with God angered because you had laid waste his people, O Assur, and had raised your nest even to heaven, whence also you are called great in understanding, your city has been destroyed.

And with all the princes who could resist the adversaries slain, your remaining people, unwarlike and base-born, has been scattered on the mountains, and no one of the leaders can be found to gather them and from the gathered to muster an army again. Your wound is not hidden, nor is it such a blow as can be healed by the hand of a physician. All who shall have heard that Nineveh is overthrown and the Assyrian king defeated—both the most powerful city and the king, once lord of the city, wounded and lying half-dead and rolling in his own blood—will either be stunned at the magnitude of the event and the unexpected news, and will press their hands together, or certainly, in the greatness of their joy, insulting you they will clap their hands and make a kind of din of rejoicing. For there is no one who can grieve over you and give tears to your overthrow and your wound, because there is no one over whom your malice has not always passed. And rightly has it passed; for the malice of the king of Assyria cannot remain continually in his bones. Let the text of the history follow its order up to this point.

But we ought also, according to the Hebrew, before we discuss the edition of the Seventy (for in those the sense is far different and diverse), to ascend a little from history to the sublime, and to teach that in the last prophecy of Nahum it is spoken to the devil, understood as the great prince of the Assyrians, who once in boastful pride had said: With strength I will cast down, and with the wisdom of understanding I will take away the boundaries of the nations, and I will feed on their strength, and I will shake the cities that are inhabited (Isa. 10:13), and it is said to him: O Lucifer, who rose in the morning, who sent your little fires to all the nations: how have you fallen to the earth, and been crushed (Isa. 14:12-13)? Destroyed is Nineveh, your city, beautiful and powerful, in which you presumed so great an empire for yourself that you even dared to say to the Son of God: All these things have been handed over to me: if falling down you worship me, I will give them to you (Matt. 4:9). Your shepherds and your princes have slumbered, who did not feed men unto salvation, but nourished them for your slaughter, so that you might devour them as fatter victims. All your people and the multitude of peoples, which once worshiped you, has abandoned you and your city, and has fled to the mountains, and has placed itself in the hiding places of Christ's apostles and teachers, and meanwhile there is none of your leaders to recall your multitude to himself.

Your plague and your wound have resounded through the whole world; all have insulted you, who were once deceived by your overthrowing—for there is either no one, or scarcely anyone, whom you have not at some time deceived, and through whom your malice has not passed. And it must be noted that wherever the devil's malice has stood, it cannot insult his ruin and wound, since it belongs to the shepherds and people of the king of Assyria; but where it has passed through, that one may insult him, and with good and upright works, as it were, clap his hands over him. And fittingly, according to the Hebrew, up to this point indeed it has been said of the ruin of the world; lastly also of the devil himself, who was the prince of the world—for the world is placed in the evil one (1 John 5:19)—his plague and wound are proclaimed. But in the Seventy, it is still spoken to, that is, to the mystic [sense] of the world, that its shepherds have slept, and that they were lulled to sleep by the king of Assyria; and so it comes about that, while among them it is described what the Assyrian has done among others, and not what he himself suffers, there is silence concerning the devil's wound and plague and slaughter. Woe therefore to those who are the teachers of perverse doctrines in Nineveh. And fittingly it is said to them: Your shepherds have slumbered—for they had given sleep to their eyes, and slumber to their eyelids (Psalm 132). And therefore they did not find a place for the Lord, nor a tabernacle for the God of Jacob. Nor did they hear of Ephrata, that is, the fruitful Church; nor did they find it in the dense thickets of the forests.

But not only have the shepherds of this mystic flock, and the locust that, when the frost threatens, sits in the hedges, fallen asleep; they have also been lulled to slumber by the king of the Assyrians. For the Assyrian knows that he cannot deceive the sheep unless he has first put the shepherds to sleep. It is always the devil's endeavor to lull watchful souls to sleep. Indeed, even in the passion of the Lord he weighs down the eyes of the apostles with heavy slumber, whom the Savior, rousing them, says: Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation (Mark 14:38). And again: What I say to you, I say to all: watch (Mark 13:37). And because he never ceases to lull the watchful to sleep, and whomever he has deceived and, as it were, enticed to sleep by the sweet and pernicious song of the Sirens, the divine word awakens and says: Rise, you who sleep, and arise, and Christ will enlighten you (Ephesians 5:14). Therefore at the coming of Christ and of the word of God and of ecclesiastical teaching, and at the consummation of Nineveh, once the most beautiful harlot, the people who had before been lulled to sleep under their teachers will be raised up and will hasten, and will go to the mountains of the Scriptures, and there will find the mountains Moses and Joshua the son of Nun; the mountains the prophets; the mountains of the New Testament the apostles and evangelists; and when he has fled to such mountains and has been occupied in the reading of mountains of this kind, if he has not found one to teach him—for the harvest is indeed plentiful, but the laborers are few (Matthew

and then his zeal will be approved, because he has fled to the mountains, and the sloth of the teachers will be convicted; for he adds, and there was none who would receive. It follows: There is no healing for your contrition, your wound swells. Therefore, in the mystical sense, Nineveh cannot be healed, because she does not lay aside her pride, and her wound is always fresh, and daily she is struck by the devil's blow. And after all these things there is no healing for her contrition; for although she may seem to herself to be sound, yet her soul is broken and crushed, struck from above by the hammer of the whole earth, and she is not healed, because she is always lifted up. But if she is humbled and submits herself to Christ: A contrite and humbled heart, O God, you will not despise (Ps. 50:19); and: A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit (Ibid.). At the end he says: All who have heard your report will clap their hands over you. For upon whom has your malice not always rushed? When she begins to endure punishments, all who have heard the report will insult you with a resounding and vocal clapping, and (so to speak) with the sound and concert of their works, and they will rejoice. For there is no one, or certainly rare, upon whom your malice has not always rushed or come. For if the city of Nineveh has shepherds both strong, and all false doctrine and lying opinion of knowledge comes from a mixed source, it is to be feared lest perhaps there be no one upon whom malice has not come.

And observe carefully that he did not say, "Into whom your malice did not enter," but "into whom it did not come upon." For often the darts of false doctrines come upon us and desire, as it were, to enter into the secret place of the soul; but when we shut the doors, it indeed comes upon us and, as far as lies in its power, rushes in, and always does this; but with Christ the Lord helping us and our heart keeping all watch (Prov. IV), it indeed rushes in, but it cannot enter.