Let our prophets and priests hear this: that neither within nor without, through their negligence, is there any security; that they cause scandal both to those who are without, and let those who are within perish by famine; and that those who were the authors of sinning become the companions of torments. Have you utterly cast away Judah? Or has your soul abhorred Zion? Why then have you struck us, so that there is no health? We awaited peace, and there is no good; and a time of healing, and behold, trouble! The prophet marvels that the Lord so suddenly cast off Judah and Jerusalem — the kingdom, namely, of two tribes, in which was the religion of God and the ceremonies of the temple — and struck them with so great a plague that no medicine could be applied.
'We awaited,' he says, 'peace and a time of healing, and there is no good, but, on the contrary, trouble, so that where before there had been the worship of God and tranquility, there all things are filled with seditions and hostile uproar.' If ever, then, our Zion and our Judah is cast off, and the soul of God abhors it, let us by no means marvel, but rather let us say what follows: We have known, O Lord, our impieties, the iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against you. 'Both we,' he says, 'and our fathers have, by the same madness, neglected the precepts of God, and the measure of our elders has been filled up in us, so that whatever had been lacking to them might be completed by our own heaping.' Whence also it is said of Judah:
let the iniquity of his fathers come into remembrance in the sight of the Lord, and let the sin of his mother not be blotted out! Let it be always before the Lord, and let their memory perish from the earth! Do not give us up to reproach for your name's sake, nor do us dishonor upon the throne of your glory! Remember; do not make void your covenant with us! Let us think that the throne of God's glory is not only the temple of Judaea, which was often destroyed, but every holy one, in whom — according to that which is written: you have dashed his throne to the ground — it is then dashed down and destroyed, when by a multitude of sins one has offended God;
but nevertheless, he who has perished by his own fault is sustained by the Lord's clemency, which is changed by the severity of the sentence, should the Lord make void his pact, by which he has promised that we shall be saved. Are there among the graven images of the nations any that give rain, or can the heavens give showers? Are you not he, O Lord our God, whom we have awaited? For you have made all these things. After many and various discourses, he returns to the title of the prophecy, in which it is written: the word of the Lord which came to Jeremiah concerning the matters of the drought. Therefore what he says is this:
'Because the images of demons cannot give rain, nor can the heavens of themselves give their shower, therefore you, O Lord our God, whom we have always awaited, upon whom we have turned our hopes and our vows — do you give your rain! For all things are yours, and whatever good there is cannot be given without you, whose it is.' Let us say this also against the heretics, who cannot bestow the rain of doctrines; who, though they promise themselves to be heavens and glory in what is written of them — the heavens declare the glory of God — yet cannot bestow the showers of doctrine. For it is God alone who instructs his own people and bestows the diversities of grace upon those who await him. And the Lord said to me:
if Moses and Samuel stood before me — or, against me — my soul would not be toward this people. For we read that these withstood the wrath of the Lord for the people, and turned aside the sentence already impending. 'Even if,' he says, 'they stood either in my sight or against me' — to one of whom God said: let me alone, that I may strike this people — 'yet I would not hear, for the crimes of the offending people are consummated.' Cast out — or, send forth — them from my face, and let them go forth! Sinners depart from God not by place but by will, although we read that both Adam and Cain were cast out from the face of God. But if they say to you: where shall we go forth?, you shall say to them: thus says the Lord:
he who is for death, to death; and he who is for the sword, to the sword; and he who is for famine, to famine; and he who is for captivity, to captivity! And I will visit upon them four kinds, says the Lord: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth to devour and to destroy. The four plagues by which the people of the Jews was delivered up, the prophecy of Ezekiel also shows: the sword, pestilence from famine, beasts, captivity. And among the beasts, understand also dogs and birds, to whom they were delivered up, to tear and devour and scatter their bodies. For it could not be that, the Creator being neglected, the whole creation should not rise up against sinners.
And I will give them over to fever — or, commotion and distress — to all the kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for all that he did in Jerusalem. We read in the book of Chronicles that Manasseh, after captivity and penitence, returned to Jerusalem and reigned; but just as the merits of the saints descend to their posterity — as of David and of the rest — so the crimes of sinners, if their children and grandchildren do like deeds, come down to posterity. But what he says —
'I will give them over to fever, or commotion and distress, of the whole earth' — this was in part fulfilled under the Babylonians and is now fulfilled in whole, when the impious people imitated the worst king who had filled Jerusalem from gate to gate with the blood of the just. From which we learn that by the crime of kings and princes and rulers the peoples are for the most part destroyed. For who will have pity on you, Jerusalem? Or who will grieve for you? Or who will go to entreat for your peace? For no one, when God is offended, can entreat for the misdeeds of sinners, because a creature cannot be so merciful as the Creator, nor is any so alien toward strangers as the Lord is toward sparing his own. You have forsaken me, says the Lord, you have gone backward.
The cause is given why no one may pity Jerusalem, nor grieve for her, nor beseech for her peace: that whereas, according to the Apostle, forgetting the things that are behind she ought to have stretched forward to the things that are before, on the contrary she has been turned backward and has desired the fleshpots of Egypt. And I will stretch out my hand upon you and destroy you; I labored in being entreated — or, in entreating — for which the Septuagint translated: I will no longer let them go. The stretched-out hand is a sign of one who strikes: the slaying of sinners signifies wrath consummated. But what he added — I labored in being entreated, or in entreating — has a double sense: that God has now grown weary in frequently pardoning them, and is wearied in continually provoking them to salvation.
And I will scatter them with a winnowing-fan in the gates of the earth — or, of my people; I have slain and destroyed my people, and yet from their ways they have not returned. 'What does it profit that I am entreated more often, when from their most evil ways they do not turn back nor do penance? For I have scattered them as with a winnowing-fan, to cleanse my threshing-floor, and I scattered them in the gates of the earth, that they might, in a manner, tread the thresholds of hell; and I have slain and destroyed my people, that, compelled by the necessity of evils, they might avoid the impending evils.' Her widows are multiplied to me above the sand of the sea; I have brought upon them, upon the mother of the young man, a spoiler at midday; I have sent upon the cities a sudden terror.
With various medicines God desires to save sinners, so that those who despised him when he coaxed may fear him when he threatens. The widows are multiplied above the sand of the sea, the husbands being slain; mothers, their children lost, have felt the ravager not in the night and by ambushes, but in clear light, that he might show the open force of a stronger adversary. 'I have sent,' he says, 'upon the cities' — no doubt upon Judah and the sinful people — 'a sudden terror, that, by how much the evil was sudden, by so much the escape might be the more difficult.' She is enfeebled — or, she cast off, or was made empty — who bore seven — or, many; her soul failed; her sun set while it was yet day — or, midday; she was confounded and put to shame.
And their remnant I will give to the sword in the sight of their enemies, says the Lord. We have often said that the Hebrew word 'saba' sounds either 'seven', or 'oath', or 'many'. Whence there is a diverse interpretation, Aquila, the Septuagint, and Theodotion translating 'seven', Symmachus 'many'. She therefore who was rich in children was suddenly made bereft, and in clear light perished, and was confounded in her own desolation. 'But the remaining people,' he says, 'I will deliver to the sword, that none may escape death and the wrath of God.' Others refer it to the synagogue, which was enfeebled that the multitude of the Church might grow, according to that which is written: the barren bore seven — or, many — and she who had many children was enfeebled.
Wherefore for him the Sun of Righteousness has set, in whose wings is health; and therefore she has been covered with everlasting confusion, destroying her people with the spiritual sword. 'Woe is me, my mother, why hast thou borne me a man of strife' — that is, of judgment — 'a man of discord' — that is, one who is judged — 'in the whole earth?' This can be understood synecdochically of Jeremiah, since he was judged not throughout the whole world, but in the land of Judaea. But it truly befits the Lord and Saviour, who says in the Gospel: 'For judgment am I come into this world, that they who see not may see, and they who see may become blind'; of whom it is written: 'Behold, this one is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against.'
For which of the philosophers, which of the gentiles, which of the heretics does not pass judgment on Christ, laying down for him laws concerning his birth and passion and resurrection and substance? Nor is it strange that Christ should say, according to the truth of the body he assumed, 'Woe is me, my mother,' since in another place too it plainly befits his person, where it is said: 'Woe is me, for I am become as one who gathers stubble in the harvest, and as a gleaning in the vintage that has no cluster to eat of the first-fruits!' And lest we suppose that this baseness of groanings is to be referred to the Word of God—who is this that laments?—there immediately follows: 'Woe is me, my soul, for the reverent one has perished from the land!'
Not that we divide the persons, as the impious do, but that one and the same Son of God speaks now according to the flesh, now according to the Word of God. 'I have not lent on usury, nor has any man lent to me; all curse me.' For which the Septuagint has: 'I have not profited, nor has any man profited me'; Theodotion: 'I have owed nothing, nor has any man owed me.' The sense of all these, spoken from the person of Christ, is this: 'No one has offered himself who might worthily receive my treasure, nor has any man lent to me in the cherishing of my saints and poor, making me his debtor. Or: I have not profited, nor has any man profited me; for no one has been willing to receive as much as I desired to bestow. Nor has any man profited me; for the salvation of the creature is the gain of the Creator.'
Or certainly: 'I have owed nothing, nor has any man owed me; no one has given me as much as I desired to receive, nor has he made me in any way his debtor.' And what he adds, 'nor has any man owed me,' has this sense: 'For how could he owe me interest, who did not deign to accept the loan?' 'All,' he says, 'curse me'; for which of the heretics and those who go astray does not curse Christ by believing perversely and blaspheming yet more perversely? The Lord says: 'If thy remnant be not for good, if I have not met thee in the time of affliction and in the time of tribulation — and of anguish — against the enemy.'
These things can also be taken from the person of Jeremiah, who was compelled to prophesy in a most evil time, with captivity already imminent, and to endure harsh things from an unbelieving people. To that which he had said above—'Woe is me, my mother, why hast thou borne me a man who is judged and disputed with by all the earth?' and the rest—the Lord answers: 'Consider not present things, but future ones; for thy remnant and thy latter days shall be for good. And indeed even at present, when thy enemies desired to oppress thee, I was near to thee, and thou wast protected by my aid.' This, moreover, can be referred both to Jeremiah and, according to the dispensation of the assumed flesh, to the Saviour. In place of what we have translated according to the Hebrew:
'All curse me,' down to the place where it is written: 'in the time of tribulation against the enemy'—in the Vulgate edition I found it written thus: 'My strength has failed among those who curse me. Let it be so, O Lord, as they direct it, if I have not stood by thee in the time of their affliction and in the time of their tribulation for good against the enemy!' And the sense is: 'My strength has failed among these who curse me; for they do not understand my power, which is made perfect in weakness, and the more they curse me, the more my strength fails among them.' And the prophet, or the Lord, joins to this, saying: 'Let it be so, O Lord, as they direct it!' That is:
'Let the curses which the enemies speak come upon me, and let them be loved for good, if I did not, in the time of their tribulation and anguish, when the enemy was laying them waste and hastening to capture them, stand in thy sight and entreat thee for them and say: Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.' But we also often find Jeremiah in this book praying for the people. 'Shall iron be joined to iron from the north, and bronze?' Symmachus: 'Shall iron harm iron from the north, and bronze?' The Septuagint and Theodotion: 'Shall he know iron, and a covering of bronze?' The reason for the variation is plain;
for the word 'iare,' which is written in the present passage, on account of the ambiguity of its expression sounds both 'friendship' and 'malice'; and if it be read 'daleth' in place of the letter 'resh'—which is similar to the letter 'daleth'—it signifies 'knowledge' and 'acquaintance.' But what is said is to be understood thus: 'Grieve not that the people is thine enemy; for since thou art announcing harsh things, he who is hard cannot love thee.' Or: 'The Babylonians, who come from the north and are the hardest iron, cannot be joined in friendship to this harder people, untamed and like unto bronze.' Or: 'the hardest iron'—that is, the people of Israel—'is unworthy of the knowledge of God, having come to such malice that it is encircled with a harder metal, bronze.'
'Thy riches and thy treasures I will give for plunder freely—or without price—for all thy sins in all thy borders. And I will bring thy enemies'—or: I will make thee serve thy enemies—'from a land which thou knowest not. For a fire is kindled in my fury; it shall burn upon you.' 'All thy substance,' he says, 'I will hand over to thy enemies without any price, on account of the sins which thou hast committed in all thy borders. Therefore I will bring thy enemies'—or: I will make thee serve—'in the land of the Chaldeans, for my fire, which once has been kindled in my fury, shall burn upon thee and shall not be able to be extinguished;'
'for thou thyself hast supplied the material for thy burning, so that my fire consumes thy wood, which is in thee, and hay and stubble.' And through this, the cause of the burning is not in the Lord, but in those who have furnished fuel for the fire. 'Thou knowest, O Lord; remember me and visit me, and deliver thou me from those who persecute me! Take me not away in thy long-suffering; know that for thy sake I have borne reproach! Thy words were found, and I ate them'—or: from those who reprove thy words; consume them—'and thy word became to me'—or: shall be to me—'the joy and gladness of my heart, for thy name has been invoked upon me, O Lord God of hosts!' This which we have said, 'Thou knowest,' is not found in the Septuagint.
But happy is that conscience which bears reproach for God's sake. Wherefore he says: 'Thy words were found, which thou wast speaking by my mouth, and I ate them'—that is: they were turned into food for me; or, according to Symmachus: 'I received them, that they might be turned into gladness for me, which formerly had been for reproach.' Wherefore even the Babylonians confess that the things fulfilled which Jeremiah had foretold as future. Or the sense is this: 'I felt the anguish, I endured the miseries of the persecuting people, but nevertheless I rejoiced that I had obeyed thy precepts, and for thy name's sake I have suffered harsh things.' 'I sat not in the council of those who make sport, and I gloried'—or: I feared—'from before thy hand I sat alone, for thou hast filled me with bitterness.'
'Why has my pain become perpetual—or: why are those who grieve me strengthened—and my wound past hope, refusing to be cured'—or: my wound is strong, whence shall I be cured? 'It has become to me like the deceit of faithless waters'—or: like deceitful water having no faith. These things the Hebrews suppose to be spoken from the person of Jerusalem, because she alone has sat and has been filled with bitterness, and her pain has become perpetual, and, just as waters pass by, so the words of the prophets, by which they promised her prosperous things, have deceitfully passed away.
But it is better that we take these words as spoken from the person of the prophet, by the discourse of the holy man, who did not sit in the council—or the secret—of those who make sport, because he feared the hand of God hanging over him, or rather gloried that he had no fellowship with the wicked. 'Alone,' he says, 'I sat,' according to that which is written: 'I have not sat with the council of vanity, and with those who work iniquity I will not go in. I have hated the assembly of evildoers, and with the impious I will not sit'; and in another place: 'I am solitary until I pass over.' 'From before thy hand,' he says, 'I sat alone, while I fear thee, while I ever await thy hand hanging over me. I would not sit in the council of those who make sport, but I devoured my bitterness, that I might prepare joy for myself in the time to come.'
'Nor did I have intervals in my pain, but I was pressed down by continual misery, so that I looked for no remedies. For those who grieved me prevailed, and my wound became grievous. But in this I had consolation, that it was as deceitful and passing water. For just as passing waters, while they flow, are seen and glide away, so also every assault of the enemies has passed away with thy help.' Would that the Lord might grant to us also not to sit in the council of those who make sport and of those who take no thought of things to come, nor to yield to adversities, but ever to dread the sentence of God and to say with the prophet: 'Alone I sat, for I am filled with bitterness!'
'Let it therefore in no way rejoice in the present time—the council of the wise, but the hidden and secret gathering of those who make sport; for me let it be good to cleave to God, to place my hope in the Lord, to be filled with reproaches and to await the sentence of my Judge, which, when the end has come, shall show by deed that all sadness and bitterness has receded like flowing waters.' 'Therefore thus says the Lord: If thou wilt turn, I will turn thee, and thou shalt stand before my face; and if thou wilt separate the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth. They themselves shall turn to thee, and thou shalt not turn to them. And I will give thee to this people for a wall of bronze, strong; and they shall fight against thee and shall not prevail, for I am with thee, to save thee and to deliver thee, says the Lord.'
'And I will free thee from the hand of the wicked and redeem thee from the hand of the strong'—or: of the pestilent. It is plain that the foregoing words were spoken in no way by Jerusalem, but by the prophet, to whom the Lord answers: 'If thou wilt turn the people from their sins, I too will turn thee from tribulation into gladness, and thou shalt stand before my face, as the angels stand in the sight of God, daily seeing his face; and if thou wilt separate the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth. Nor think,' he says, 'that there is no reward for good work; if by thy words thou wilt separate any of my saints from the number of sinners, thou shalt be as my mouth and shalt be joined to my precepts. For they ought to be imitators of thee, and not thou of them. And do not fear and say:'
'Why has my pain become perpetual and my wound grievous—or: past hope, so that I despair of being able to be cured? For I will give thee as a wall of bronze and most strong, that thou mayest resist the adversary with all thy strength and have me as thy helper, and that I may free thee from the hand of the wicked—or: the pestilent—and redeem thee either by my blood or by my aid at present.' Let us consider how great a reward the discourse of a teacher has, if it has availed to free anyone from error and to lead him out of the number of sinners! 'And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:'
'Take not a wife, and let there be to thee no sons nor daughters in this place. For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bore them, and concerning their fathers of whose stock they are born in this land: they shall die by the deaths of diseases; they shall not be mourned nor buried; they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth, and shall be consumed by sword and famine, and their corpses shall be for food to the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth.'
If, in the time of imminent captivity, the prophet is forbidden to take a wife, lest he have tribulation of the flesh and, over and above his own pain, be tormented also by the miseries of wife and children, how much more does the Apostle command—because the time is shortened and the consummation is at hand—that even those who have wives should be as though they had none! Whence superfluous is the reproach of the new heretic, by which we taught that second and third marriages descend not from the law, but from indulgence. For it is one thing to do what is good in itself, another for a thing to be conceded lest thou do worse. For he himself gives the reasons why he would have young widows marry, adding: 'For some of them have already turned aside after Satan.'
And at the same time, the preacher of continence and perpetual chastity, and one who blasphemously makes himself equal to God, praises third and fourth marriages, which I would call not so much marriages as solaces of miseries and the last plank of the shipwrecked—unless perhaps he grants indulgence to his Amazons, that even into decrepit old age they may make trial of the wars of lust. But why the prophet is forbidden to take a wife, the reason is plain: because with the siege near, all perish by pestilence and sword and famine, and so great is the number of the dying that the office of burial is overwhelmed, but their corpses lie like dung, to be torn by birds and beasts. And this is to be noted, that to waste away with diseases and long infirmity is the wrath of God.
Whence also Joram, son of Jehoshaphat, is consumed by infirmity, and the Apostle teaches that those who have violated holy things grow sick and waste away and die. 'For thus says the Lord: Enter not the house of feasting, nor go to mourn, nor console them, for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the Lord—my mercy and compassions. And great and small shall die in this land; they shall not be buried nor mourned, and men shall not cut themselves nor make baldness for them. And they shall not break bread among the mourning to comfort over the dead, nor shall they give them the cup of consolation to drink over their father and mother. And thou shalt not enter the house of feasting, to sit with them and eat and drink.'
The Apostle commands that with those who turn away from God not even food is to be taken; and further: 'Do not even bid such a one good-day!' And the Saviour forbids the apostles to greet anyone on the way; whence also Elisha forbade the greeting of Gehazi as he went to heal the boy. Now it is the custom to bring food to those who mourn and to prepare a banquet, which the Greeks call perideipna and which by our people are commonly called 'parentalia,' because the funeral rites are celebrated for the departed. Divine Scripture also says elsewhere: 'Give wine to those who are in grief,' that they may, of course, forget their pain.
The prophet is therefore commanded not to console anyone of the people, not to mingle himself in the banquets of the enemies of God, not to celebrate the funeral rites over the corpses of the dead. For it is one thing to die by the common law of nature, another to have been slain by the sentence of God. 'I have taken away,' he says, 'my peace from this people, and they are unworthy of mercy, and I will spare no age, but great and small alike shall perish, so that they shall lack even burial.' 'Nor shall they cut themselves,' he says, 'nor shall baldness be made for them.' This was a custom among the ancients, and remains to this day among certain of the Jews, that in mourning they cut their arms and make baldness; which we read that Job also did.
Whence also it is said to the prophet that he should not break bread among them, nor enter to console over the dead, nor give drink, nor enter the house of feasting, nor mingle himself with those who are prepared for the sentence of God. But if this is said concerning mourners, what shall become of the heretics, whose word creeps like a cancer and who daily lay low in the Church the corpses of the deceived? 'For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will take away from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. And when thou shalt announce to this people all these words, and they say to thee: Why has the Lord spoken against us all this great evil?'
'What is our iniquity, and what is our sin which we have sinned against the Lord our God?—thou shalt say to them: Because your fathers forsook me, says the Lord, and went after strange gods and served them and worshipped them, and forsook me and did not keep my law. But you also have wrought worse than your fathers.' When the Church has sinned, all joy and all gladness is taken away from her, concerning which the Apostle says: 'Rejoice, again I say, rejoice'; 'the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride,' concerning whom it is written: 'He who has the bride is the bridegroom.' 'But if,' he says, 'the people ask thee why it suffers these things and inquires the causes of its miseries, thou shalt answer them:'