Commentary on the Twelve Prophets 1 part 8/19

'They have sent thee away as far as the borders; all the men of thy covenant have set themselves against thee;

the men that were at peace with thee have prevailed against thee;

they that eat with thee have laid an ambush beneath thee.' They shall be joined, he says, to the enemies, even those who but yesterday and the day before were kindly disposed toward thee, being thy fellows at table and thine allies.

For this is what he meant by 'The men of thy covenant, and they that a short while ago feasted and made merry with thee': they shall drive thee not only out of the cities but out of the very borders of the land, both warring openly and employing ambushes;

and the cause of these evils to thee is thy folly.

For this he made plain when he said:

(vv. 8-9) 'In that day, saith the Lord, I will destroy the wise out of Idumaea, and understanding out of the mount of Esau.

And thy mighty men shall be dismayed, they that are of Thaeman, that man may be cut off from the mount of Esau.' All together—both those who exult in their valour, and those who plume themselves upon their wisdom, and those subject to these—I will deliver over to utter destruction.

And, showing the justice of the sentence, (v. 10)

'And shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.' He tells also the kinds of the wrong done against the brother.

'From the day that thou stoodest over against him, in the day that strangers carried away captive his army, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, thou also wast as one of them.' For that the foreigners should come and make war and enslave, though grievous, is the less grievous thing;

but for you who are of the same race, and derive your descent from Abraham, having dared such things against your kinsmen, there is left no pretext for pardon.

For, trampling upon the laws of kinship, ye made common cause with strangers, and warred against your own kindred.

'For thou too,' he says, 'wast as one of them.' Yet these things he foretells not as having happened, but as things to be, according to his own idiom;

'Look not upon the day of thy brother in the day of strangers.' By 'day' he means the season of punishment.

And the phrase 'Look not upon' he has taken from common usage;

for some are wont to say,

that is, 'I gloated over him as he wrestled with misfortunes.'

And this the ensuing words also interpret.

'And rejoice not over the sons of Judah in the day of their affliction.' Beholding their evils, be not high-minded, as though thou hadst remained untried by such evils.

'Neither enter into the gates of the peoples in the day of their toils.' Enter not together with the enemies who are laying waste the city of thy kinsmen.

'And look not thou also upon their assembly in the day of their destruction.' Do not, he says, like the strangers, gloat over them as they are being punished.

'Neither stand at the passes to destroy those of them that escape, nor shut up those of them that flee in the day of affliction.' Do not lie in wait for them upon the roads, setting an ambush, so that they cannot even by flight procure their safety, but fall into thy snares and be delivered into the hands of their foes.

Who could worthily celebrate the unspeakable goodness of the just Judge, who, knowing exactly that they will not be persuaded by the prophetic words, added also the foregoing threat, in order that by frightening on the one hand and soothing on the other, He might soften those brutish men? For He adds:

'For as thou hast done, so shall it be unto thee;

for thou reapest the fruits of what thou hast sown.'

'As thou hast drunk upon my holy mountain, so shall all the nations drink wine'—that is, the mystic wine;

'they shall drink, and shall swallow it down, and shall be as though they had not been.' For just as I will exact justice from thee for what thou hast dared against the places dedicated to me,

so also the nations that shared with thee in this lawlessness shall receive the fitting punishment.

For he called the punishment a drinking of wine;

and this the blessed Jeremiah plainly teaches us, when he was commanded to take the cup and to give all the nations to drink.

And from many quarters it is easy to discern this.

But you, O Idumaeans, shall pay the penalty for what ye have dared against your brethren.

'And in the mount Zion there shall be salvation, and it shall be holy.' For I will bring them back, who have become captives, and will raise up the holy temple.

He foretells at the same time the salvation wrought in Zion for all men, and the sanctification poured forth thence upon the whole world through the saving Cross.

'And the house of Jacob shall possess as their inheritance those that inherited them.' Upon their return I will grant them such vigour and power, and I will multiply them into so great a multitude, that they shall bring under themselves both your land and the land of the other neighbouring nations.

'And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, but the house of Esau for stubble;

and they shall be kindled against them, and shall devour them.' For ye shall be delivered over to such weakness, that ye shall be consumed by them after the manner of fire.

By Jacob and Joseph he named the same people, since he often called the ten tribes 'Ephraim' also (and this Ephraim was a son of Joseph).

'And there shall be no torch-bearer to the house of Esau, because the Lord hath spoken.' The 'torch-bearer' Symmachus rendered as 'a survivor';

but Aquila and Theodotion, as 'one left remaining.'

So then, in foreshowing their utter destruction, he made use of these words.

And the Seventy also set down 'torch-bearer' not without purpose;

but since all in common called Jacob 'a fire' and Joseph 'a flame' (and these names signify vigour and power), they wished to say that no power whatever shall be left to the Idumaeans.

'And they that are in Nageb shall possess the mount of Esau.' And this too the three translators have in agreement rendered as 'the south';

for thus is the south called in the Hebrew tongue.

He says, then, that those dwelling to the south of Jerusalem—that is, the neighbours of the Idumaeans—shall have the land of the Idumaeans as a kind of allotment and portion;

and those in the Shephelah (these being the near neighbours of the Philistines) shall bring under themselves the region now held by the Philistines.

And in common all those delivered from the captivity shall hold both the mount of Ephraim, and the plain lying beneath it, and the allotment of Benjamin, and all Gilead;

and they shall have as their borders those which the Canaanites of old had for borders, so that Sarepta shall be the boundary of the land held by Israel.

And Jerusalem shall hold also the city of Ephratha, and those still farther to the south of it;

for this he intimated when he said:

but they shall not be content even with these, but shall make even the mount of Esau their own, serving God as their King, and dedicating themselves to Him.

And it is to be known that with the conclusion of this prophecy there agrees also the conclusion of the prophecy of the blessed Ezekiel.

For there too he sketches out beforehand the division of the land, and foretells the return of the people, and the power and strength to be given them by God after the return.

May it be granted to us also to obtain this from the munificent God;

and we shall obtain it, if we flee the imitation of Esau and of his descendants, and learn, according to the apostolic ordinance, to rejoice with them that rejoice, and to weep with them that weep, and are willing to be of the same mind toward one another.

For by such a manner of life serving the Lord of all, we shall enjoy the gifts that come from Him, through the grace of our Saviour Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father be glory, together with the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

Having created all men, the God of all continually exercises His providence over all alike;

and if of old He appeared to care more for the Israelites, even this He did for the common benefit of all men.

For just as, in exercising the fitting care over Israel, He did not by conversing with each individual show what was to be done, but choosing out one, the best of all—now the great Moses, now Joshua the son of Nun, at another time Samuel, and at another season Elijah—and through each of the aforementioned, whether laying down laws, or displaying wonders, or offering exhortations, He guided them to salvation;

so, by setting apart the people of Israel from the other nations, through His care for them, and through His frequent manifestations and unspeakable wonder-workings, God pointed out also to the other nations the way to the knowledge of God.

For this He taught us also through the divinely-inspired Hosea.

'For Ephraim,' he says, 'is a watchman with God, a prophet.' For He set forth the people as a kind of watchman and prophet unto the benefit and salvation of the other nations.

So, through these things also, Egypt came to know the unspeakable power of the God of all.

And rumour, carrying the report of their destruction abroad to all men, prepared all to marvel at the justice of the divine providence.

Hence Rahab the harlot, having received the radiance of the knowledge of God, said to the spies:

'For we have heard how the Lord God dried up the Red Sea before you, and led you across, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and upon the earth below.' And long ages afterward, when the foreigners looked upon the ark, they cried out with dread and shuddering:

'This is the God who smote Egypt.' And by striking down those many thousands of the Assyrians before the walls of Jerusalem, and compelling Sennacherib to flee with only a few, He made His power manifest to all men;

and having built it up and restored Jerusalem to its former prosperity, He showed once more, not only to those near at hand but also to those dwelling far off, that He alone is able to provide for and protect whomever He wills.

And in the time of the Macedonians too He often revealed His own power; moreover, through the prophets who worked wonders and foretold things to come, He led many of the nations toward the truth.

Thus the nation of the Syrians feared the great Elisha, at one time receiving from him a cloud of blindness, and at another beholding the cleansing of Naaman.

For so great was the reverence they had for this prophet, that when the king fell into sickness he sent this Hazael to him to inquire whether he would recover;

and this same prophet himself anointed Hazael as king over the Syrians.

And the king of the Babylonians deemed the divinely-inspired Jeremiah worthy of such great honor that he gave him the choice of his dwelling place;

and while he led away all the others, both kings and rulers, as captives, to this one alone he granted the liberty to dwell wherever he wished.

So too did the God of all appoint the blessed Jonah as a prophet to the Ninevites.

Now this city was of old a very great one, and had received the royal residence of the king of the Assyrians.

For if He had exercised no providence over the nations before the Incarnation, the Jews would have supposed Him to be another God, as one acting contrary to Him who gave the Law;

for the one, they would say, cared only for the Jews;

but this one exercised His care over all men.

This is what the abominable Marcion suffered, when he declared this One to be a God other than that One, and this though he beheld His providence over all men even in the Old Testament.

But lest we prolong this beyond due measure, let us come to the interpretation of the prophet himself.

The blessed Jonah also uttered other prophecies;

but these are not contained in this book;

we have learned of them from the Fourth Book of Kingdoms.

For concerning Jeroboam, who as third in descent from Jehu reigned over the ten tribes, the Scripture teaches thus:

'He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the sea toward the west, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which He spoke by the hand of His servant Jonah, the son of Amathi, the prophet who was from Gethophra.'

And the prophecy bears the same designation of the father.

The God of all commanded this man to go to the city of Nineveh, and to foretell to them the utter destruction that was to come upon them on account of their great lawlessness.

'For the cry of their wickedness,' He says, 'has come up before Me.' That is to say, they had run aground into such great depravity as to overstep the bounds of His long-suffering.

But the prophet, having heard these words, preferred flight to obedience, and dared to run away to Tarshish.

As for Tarshish, some have supposed it to be Tarsus, on account of the kinship of the name, while others have said that India was so named;

not being willing to consider that the kingdom of the Assyrians borders on that of the Indians;

and it is the custom of those who flee to move from the east toward the west, and for those escaping from the south to run toward the north;

and besides, he went down to Joppa, a coastal city of Palestine, that he might set sail from there;

and it lies upon the sea that is situated toward the west.

For between our sea and the Indian sea there is a very great mainland, part of it inhabited, part of it wholly desert;

there is the gulf of the Red Sea, with which the Indian ocean is joined.

And lest anyone suppose that we are falsifying the truth by mere reasonings, I shall bring forward the divine Scripture as a witness that Tarshish is Carthage, which lies over against Africa.

For in Isaiah the prophet, where the Seventy have said, 'Wail, ships of Carthage, for your stronghold has perished,' Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion have put 'Tarshish' in place of 'Carthage.'

For this is the name that the Hebrew text also has.

So too, when the divinely-inspired Ezekiel made mention of the Carthaginians, we found 'Tarshish' both in the Hebrew and in the Syriac.

Guided by these things, we say that the blessed Jonah made his flight not to India, but to Carthage.

And he did this while knowing clearly, as being a prophet, that the Lord of all is present everywhere, and that no place is void of His providence;

yet supposing nonetheless that He made His manifestation in Jerusalem alone.

Now it was not sloth nor fear that occasioned his flight;

but knowing the fountains of mercy, which He who commanded the preaching employs in ordering all things, and knowing that if the Ninevites should make use of repentance, they would surely obtain the divine loving-kindness, he thought it unseemly that the prediction should be shown to be false, and that he should be called a liar instead of a prophet.

And this suspicion was implanted in him also by the very proclamation of the threatened punishment.

For he reasoned that He would not have forewarned them, if He had willed to punish;

but the threat of punishment is surely an exhortation to repentance.

In addition to this, he also supposed that the ready obedience of the Ninevites would become an accusation against the Jews, seeing that the former believed a man unknown and of a foreign nation, while the latter continually disobeyed their countless fellow-countrymen prophets who delivered their prophecy with the working of wonders, and received no benefit from them.

And so he made his flight by sea, thinking that he would most swiftly be freed from such a service.

And he even paid the fare of the voyage, since not even the loss thence incurred was able to restrain him.

But the Maker of earth and sea and the heavens raised up a tempest against the vessel, and cast the bonds of the waves about the ship; and while all the other ships were borne along with fair winds, it was about this ship alone that the storm of the sea arose and the surge seethed.

And the lot of the sailors teaches us this clearly;

for if the tempest had been common to all, they would not have undertaken to learn by lot the cause of the tempest;

but since they saw the others cleaving the surface of the sea without danger, while their own vessel was buffeted by the towering waves, they first turned to prayers, each entreating whom he supposed to be God;

and finding thence no means of deliverance, they woke Jonah, who was held fast in sleep.

For, pricked by his conscience, and stricken with despondency, and unable to bear the barbs of his thoughts, he had contrived for himself the solace afforded by sleep.

And though so great an uproar was arising against the vessel, the waves breaking upon it from without and the sailors thrown into confusion within, he himself was sleeping neither lightly nor moderately, but held fast in deep slumber and even snoring, as he himself has taught by his own writing.

But the pilot, rousing him, first compelled him to offer prayers to his own God, not knowing that his flight had taken away such boldness of speech.

And since the perils received no loosening from any quarter, they were able by lot to learn the cause of the tempest, knowing, as was fitting (for they possessed natural knowledge), that there is a penalty laid up for those who sin, and that we pay fitting recompense for the wrongs we commit.

And since the lot became the prophet's accuser and witness, he is brought to trial, and the sailors act the part of judges, and demand from Jonah an accounting of his conduct.

Wherefore they bid him tell not only whence he had set out, and whither he was going, but also from what nation he traced his descent, that from the common pursuits of the nation they might also learn the man's manner of life.

In answer, then, to these questions the blessed Jonah said:

of necessity the blessed prophet reveals Him to those who knew Him not;

'What is this you have done?' 'You who know these things,' they say, 'and are entrusted to teach others also, how could you endure to flee from the God who is present everywhere?' So great is the shame that the not yielding to God brings;

for indeed the prophet, the teacher of others, received the sentence of reproach from those held in ignorance.

But nevertheless, though they had heard his words, and blamed him greatly, and were indignant with him, they did not bring themselves to pronounce the sentence of death;

but they waited for him, as a prophet, to declare what must be done.

'For what shall we do to you,' they say, 'that the sea may cease from us?' For the tempest had grown more violent even after the lot.

Then at last the blessed prophet, recognizing the divine wrath, pronounces upon himself the sentence of death.

'For take me up,' he says, 'and cast me into the sea, and the sea shall cease from you; for I know that it is because of me that this great tempest is upon you.' But even when they had heard these words, the sailors did not straightway do what was bidden, but waited, expecting some abatement of the evils to come, and using the oars they endeavored to bring the ship to land.

But when the violence of the sea hindered them from doing even this, having first appeased God by prayer, they thus delivered Jonah to the sea.

'By no means, O Lord,' they say, 'let us not perish for the sake of the life of this man, and do not lay upon us innocent blood.'

'For You, O Lord, have done as You willed.' And having clearly learned from God that the sentence against him had been pronounced, they beseech Him not to exact punishment upon those who serve the sentence.

But Jonah, by a divine sign (for this is what he meant when he said, 'God commanded'), was received by a very great sea-monster, which did him no injury with its teeth; and the belly of the monster became a dwelling for the prophet for three days and as many nights, while the digestive power of the stomach was prevented from acting.

And the prophet passed his time in such spaciousness that he was even able to offer up a prayer to God.

'For I cried,' he says, 'in my affliction to the Lord my God, and He heard me; out of the belly of hell was my cry.' For I, he says, who once thought that He appeared to the prophets in Jerusalem alone, found Him present even in the belly of the monster, and having offered up supplication, I enjoyed His loving-kindness.

He called the belly of the monster the belly of hell, since the beast is deadly, and by the nature of the events he was as good as dead, and lived only by grace.

With good reason, then, he says that he had come to be in the belly of hell.

And the most paradoxical thing of all is that He who truly tasted death said that He would be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights;

whereas he who was under the shadow of death calls the belly of the monster the belly of hell.

For life was not in Jonah's own power;

for this reason, there, where hell and death are, it is called the heart of the earth;

but here the belly of the monster is named hell.

'You heard my voice,' he says; for otherwise I would not have continued living until the present.

'You cast me into the depths of the heart of the sea, and the floods encompassed me.' Again the mention of 'the heart' shows that the shadow resembles the truth;

and by 'floods' he means the assaults of the waves.

'All Your surges and Your waves passed over me.'

'I am cast out from Your sight.' Held fast by the untimely season of evils, once borne aloft by the waves, but now confined in the belly of the monster as in a prison, I have learned that I have been stripped of Your providence, and for this reason I endure each of these things.

'Shall I again look toward Your holy temple?' 'Water was poured around me even to my soul; the lowest abyss encompassed me.' For being encircled by the very abyss, and set in the midst of such great waters, I am in doubt, and I fear that I may be utterly deprived of the sight of Your temple, which is so beloved to me.

'My head sank down into the clefts of the mountains; I went down into the land whose bars are everlasting barriers.' For I see myself encircled by certain very great mountains, and hemmed in on every side by unbreakable bars.

By these words he hints not only at the size of the monster, but also at the inescapable nature of the evils that held him;

and it is likely that he also calls 'mountains' those things hidden beneath the waters of the sea, on which vessels sometimes strike and are destroyed—things which sailors, knowing them well, strive to avoid, these submerged rocks.

'And let my life come up from corruption to You, O Lord my God.'

'Those who observe vain and false things have forsaken their own mercy.' Those, he says, who have been taught false and vain things, being persuaded by the lot, mercilessly delivered me to the sea.

'But I, with the voice of praise and thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You; whatever I have vowed I will pay to You, the Lord, for my salvation.' For being delivered from the terrors that held me, I will offer to You the sacrifices of salvation, recounting both the greatness of Your benefaction and the loss occasioned by my flight.

Having promised these things, the blessed Jonah also fulfilled them, and committed all to writing, so that not only the people of that time, but also those born afterward, might learn what had befallen him.

Thus the admirable Jonah handed down to history his flight, the punishment brought upon him, and the salvation granted to him.

But again, immediately He commanded him to do those things which he had heard before, and to reach that great city, and to deliver the proclamation of the fearful threat;

he makes his journey as he was commanded, and reaches Nineveh.

Let no one foolishly meddle to inquire how the monster vomited him forth;

for all things are possible when God wills;

nor yet by what shore He brought him out;

for this too is among things utterly superfluous.

Let every pious person be content with the teaching of the Spirit.

'Now Nineveh,' he says, 'was a great city to God, of about three days' journey.' God, he says, made much of its salvation, inasmuch as He had fashioned many people in it.

As to the phrase 'about three days' journey,' some have understood it of the region belonging to the city, as being three days' journey both in length and in breadth;

but others, as meaning that the herald could traverse the whole city in three days.

Whether one accepts this or that, it will do no harm to the truth;

nevertheless, it seems to me that the second is the truer;

and what follows compels me to prefer this.

'For Jonah began,' he says, 'to enter into the city about a day's journey.' Not going straight through the city, but wandering about the markets, streets, and lanes, and proclaiming, 'Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.'

But Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion said 'forty' days; and with these agree also the Syrian and the Hebrew;

and this number also has probability on its side.

For indeed within three days Jonah at one time went about the whole city, at another time the Ninevites, having offered to God that laborious repentance, enjoyed the salvation that came from Him;

and at another time, sitting before the gates, he awaited the outcome of the prophecy.

It is likely that the Seventy also set down the number in agreement with the others;

and that those who first copied it out erred in this respect, and thus the edition of the copies came to all in this form.

Now the Ninevites, seeing an unknown and foreign man making a jarring proclamation, not only were not displeased, nor made light of it, but believing the prediction, clothing themselves in sackcloth, offered supplications to God—both those who abounded in wealth and those who lived in poverty;

'from the least of them even to the greatest.' And when the king himself heard these words, he left his throne wrought of gold and set with precious stones, and put off his purple robe as useless, and received instead the covering of sackcloth;

and he commanded that not only all the men and women should give themselves to fasting, but that even the kinds of irrational beasts should partake of no food, so that, being pressed by hunger, and with some lowing and others bleating, and each using its own voice, the people might offer up warmer tears, and might open the fountains of God's mercy.

And not only using sackcloth and fasting did they offer their supplications to God, but 'each turned back from his evil way, and from the injustice that was in their hands, saying:'

'Who knows if God will turn and be entreated, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?' For this is the mark of true repentance.

'For turn aside,' He says, 'from evil, and do good.' And again:

'Cease from your wickednesses, learn to do good.' And so the Ninevites, ceasing from their former sin, and receiving the change of their manner of life for the better, enjoyed the divine favor.

'For God saw,' he says, 'their works, that they had turned from their evil ways, and God repented of the evil which He had said He would do to them, and did it not.' It was not to the fasting that He attended, but to the abstaining from evils;

wherefore He grants repentance for repentance, not repenting as we do (for God does not will now this and now that), but He called the change of the threat 'repentance';

for it was for this very reason that He threatened;

for had He willed to punish, He would not have offered a threat, but would have brought on the punishment itself.

for the sake of salvation He threatens grievous things, in order not to bring on the grievous things.

He called the threat 'evil,' not as being evil by nature;

for how could that be evil which brought in the cessation of vice, and the acquisition of virtue and good order? But the divine Scripture, using the names current among us, called the threat of punishment 'evil,' as being able to harm and to grieve.