He calls the people of Judah his beloved and most cherished, who set up idols in his temple and worshipped them, and thinks in that very thing to appease the wrath of God, if he immolate many victims, and glories in the multitude of sacrifices, which cannot take away the malice of sins. And he compares Jerusalem, or the whole people of the Jews, to a beautiful and fruitful olive tree, which, exalted through pride, by no means acted humbly nor understood its creator and ruler, but, puffed up with pride and speaking loftily, was set on fire by the fire of the Lord, so that its branches, or shoots, were burned up and reduced to nothing, that is, the whole people was destroyed by the sword of its adversaries. This same sense is in another place also, where it is said to Jerusalem:
'I planted thee a fruitful vine, wholly true; how art thou turned into the bitterness of a strange vine?' When its walls are pulled down, and the boar out of the wood lays it waste, and all the beasts devour its fruits, let us say this chapter to the princes of the churches: 'What is it, that my beloved has committed many crimes in my house?' Or certainly to the rich, who, when they plunder the goods of others and do not take away the malice of their heart, think that they earn the clemency of God: 'Shall holy flesh take away from thee thy malice, in which thou hast gloried?'
But now the names of those who make offerings are publicly recited, and the redemption of sins is changed into praise, and they do not remember that widow in the Gospel, who, by casting two mites into the treasury, surpassed the gifts of all the rich. And the Lord of hosts, who planted thee, has spoken evil against thee, on account of the evils of the house of Israel and the house of Judah, which they have done to themselves to provoke me, offering libations to the Baalim. 'A rich olive tree,' he says, 'beautiful, fruitful, thy Lord called thee and planted thee;'
'but because at the voice of a great speech of God a flame descended upon thee and consumed all thy branches, therefore he who had planted thee has now spoken evil against thee — not by injustice of sentence, nor by a sudden depravity of speech, but on account of the evils which the house of Israel and the house of Judah did to themselves, and which they zealously did, offering libations to the Baalim, that they might provoke me to anger.' And though God can do what he wills, he renders the causes, lest he should seem to act unjustly, according to that which is written: 'That thou mayest be justified in thy words, and mayest overcome when thou art judged.' But thou, O Lord, hast shown me, and I knew; then thou didst show me their pursuits.
And I was like a gentle lamb that is carried to the sacrifice, and I did not know that they had devised counsels against me, saying: Let us cast wood into his bread, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, and let his name be remembered no more! But thou, O Lord of hosts, who judgest justly and provest the reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance upon them! For to thee have I revealed my cause. This is the consensus of all the churches, that they understand these things to be said by Christ under the person of Jeremiah — that the Father showed him how he ought to speak, and disclosed to him the pursuits of the Jews, and that he himself, like a lamb led to the sacrifice, did not open his mouth and did not know — 'sin' is to be understood — according to that which is said by the apostle:
'He who knew no sin was made sin for us' — and that they said: 'Let us cast wood into his bread' — namely the cross into the body of the Savior; for he it is who says: 'I am the bread that came down from heaven' — 'and let us root out — or crush — him from the land of the living!' For this crime they devised in their mind, that they might blot out his name forever. But on the contrary, according to the mystery of the assumed body, the Son speaks to the Father and invokes his judgment, while he praises justice and calls upon God, the searcher of the reins and heart, that he himself may repay to the people what it deserves, and says: 'Let me see thy vengeance upon them' — namely upon those who persevere in crime, and not upon those who turn to repentance;
concerning the latter he says on the cross: 'Father, forgive them; for what they do, they know not' — and he reveals to the Father and lays open his cause, that he was crucified by no desert of his own, but by the crime of the people, saying: 'Behold, the prince of this world comes and finds in me nothing.' The Jews and our Judaizers understand these things to be said in the person of Jeremiah, and they affirm that on account of his prophecy of things to come and the impending evils of captivity he endured these things from the people. But I know not how they can prove that Jeremiah was crucified, since Scripture does not record this, unless perhaps they have thought it and not carried it out. Therefore thus says the Lord to the men of Anathoth, who seek thy life and say:
'Thou shalt not prophesy in the name of the Lord, and thou shalt not die at our hands' — therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Behold, I will visit upon them; the young men shall die by the sword, their sons and their daughters shall die by famine, and there shall be no remnant of them; for I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth, the year of their visitation. This seems to run contrary to the foregoing opinion, by which we wish to prove that the things which were said were said in the person of Christ, and not of Jeremiah, who properly dwelt in the village of Anathoth, which is three miles distant from Jerusalem.
But if we understand the etymology of the town of Anathoth, which is interpreted as 'obedience,' it will be plainly shown that the men of Anathoth, who once obeyed the commandments of the Lord, all signify the Jews, and above all the inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem, upon whom the final sentence came, that they should perish by the evils of siege, by sword and famine and pestilence. And that we may free ourselves from all the burden of interpretation, let us follow this rule: that all the prophets performed most things as a type of the Lord the Saviour, and that whatever was fulfilled in Jeremiah with respect to the present time, this is prophesied for the future concerning the Lord.
The fables relate that the Lernaean serpent sprouted many snakes from its severed central head, and that Scylla, the monster of the Sicilian strait, though of maidenly face yet girt about with dogs, tore apart the shipwrecks of wretched men—joined on the same shore by the deadly song of the Sirens. That he might avoid these, Homer's Ulysses is said to have stopped his ears and by prudent counsel to have shunned the insuperable evil. When I too desired to do this and to turn aside the madness of the heretics, singing to myself and my own after the manner of the poet Ismenius, and pondered again that word of the prophet, 'when the sinner stood against me':
'I was dumb and kept silence even from good'—the devil did not suffer me, content with the longed-for quiet, to persist in the exposition of the Holy Scriptures and to hand on to men the Hebrew and Greek learning of my tongue; but he works day and night, both openly and by ambush, mingling false with true—nay, smearing all his lies with treacherous honey, so that whoever hears the sweetness of the words may not dread the poison of the breast. He promises peace, that he may wage heavier wars; he laughs, that he may bite; he offers his hand, that he may unexpectedly slay the guileless Abner. Doubtless this is that which the Apostle also spoke: 'For we are not ignorant of his devices.'
Here he keeps silence, elsewhere he brings accusations; he sends throughout the whole world epistles of papyrus, once gold-bearing, now full of curses, and he interprets our patience—which comes from the humility of Christ—as a sign of an evil conscience. And he himself, though mute, barks through an Alpine dog, huge and corpulent, one who can rage more with his heels than with his teeth. For he has his origin from the Scottish race, from the neighbourhood of the Britons, who, according to the fables of the poets, must like Cerberus be struck with a spiritual club, that with his master Pluto he may fall silent in eternal silence. But these things another time. Now I shall take up the third book on Jeremiah, in which I shall try, brother Eusebius, to confine the very broad fields of exposition within the narrow path of a commentary.
'You indeed are just, O Lord, if I dispute with you—or rather, since I would give you satisfaction—; yet I will speak my pleas to you: What is it that the way of the wicked prospers, and it is well with all who deal treacherously and act unjustly? You have planted them and they have taken root; they thrive—or, they have begotten sons—and bear fruit; you are near to their mouth and far from their reins.' This disputation is indeed against all who act unjustly, and the sense of the seventy-second Psalm is briefly comprised in it, in which the prophet says: 'How good is the God of Israel to those who are of an upright heart! But my feet were almost moved, my steps had well-nigh slipped, because I was jealous of sinners, seeing the peace of sinners,' and the rest.
But properly it is spoken against the heretics, who, though they are impious, their way prospers, and they beget as sons those whom they have deceived into heresy; and they deal treacherously and act unjustly, so that they despoil the Church. And while they persist in the depravity of their opinion, they boast that they have been planted by God and have sent forth a root, have begotten sons and produced fruit—men who, though they often repeat the name of Christ, do not have God dwelling in them, according to that word of Isaiah: 'This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.' 'And you, O Lord, know me, you have seen me and tested my heart with you. Gather them like a flock for the sacrifice and sanctify them for the day of slaughter!'
'It is no scandal,' he says, 'that the impious, or all the heretics, flourish for a time; for you, O Lord, know me and have seen me and tested my heart with you.' Whom does God the Father so know as his own Son? For 'no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him.' 'Although,' he says, 'the heretics thrive, although they beget sons and bear fruit, and although you are near to their mouth and far from their reins'—that is, their conscience—'yet there is no small consolation, that they are fattened, as it were, like cattle for the sacrifice.'
'You gather them into the city of Jerusalem, or into their own assemblies, that like victims they may be slain unto death and then be sanctified, when they have been butchered by the ecclesiastical sword; for the slaying of the heretics is the salvation of those who had been deceived.' 'How long shall the land mourn, and the herb of every region be dried up because of the wickedness of those who dwell in it? The beast is consumed and the birds, because they said: He shall not see our latter end—or, God shall not see our ways.' Whatever happens in the world, whether of good or of evil, does not happen apart from providence and by chance, but by the judgment of God. The land is now barren, the herb is dried up: do you wish to know the reason?
The wickedness of its inhabitants brings this about, so that both the animals upon the earth and the birds of heaven are consumed, since all these things were created for the uses of men—men who have risen to such blasphemy that they say God is ignorant of their ways and does not know what each one is going to suffer. And what it says, 'how long,' signifies that the wrath of God abides, because the mind of sinners is not changed. 'If you have grown weary running with the footmen, how will you be able to contend with horses? And if in the land of peace you were confident, what will you do in the pride—or the raging—of the Jordan?'
'If,' he says, 'the frequent captivity of the neighbouring nations has wearied you—of the Moabites and Ammonites, of the Philistines and Edomites—what will you do at the long captivity which shall lead you all the way to Chaldaea?' And he compares footmen to horsemen, because in truth and according to history all Persia and all Chaldaea and the army of those regions rejoices in cavalry. But those nations which I mentioned above, because of the difficulty of their terrain, are not so much fit for battle as for brigandage. And he preserves the metaphor, saying: 'If you have failed from weariness while running with footmen, what will you do if you wish to match your course with horses?
And if in your own land you had any confidence, what will you do when you have crossed the Jordan and endured its whirlpools?' 'For even your brothers and the house of your father, even they have fought against you and have cried out after you with full voice; do not believe them, when they speak good things to you!' 'To such a degree,' he says, 'shall you be overwhelmed by the most grievous floods of the Jordan, and the multitude of horsemen coming from afar shall lay you waste, that even your brothers, the Edomites, and the house of your father—those begotten from the stock of Lot, Moab and Ammon—even they in the time of necessity and distress shall fight against you and insult you. Wherefore beware lest you be willing to trust them and to have hope in kinship, through which they rage against you with greater hatred than enemies.'
This can also be understood of the Saviour: that his brothers and the house of his father fought against him and cried out with full voice, saying: 'Crucify, crucify him; we have no king but Caesar.' 'I have forsaken my house, I have abandoned my inheritance, I have given my beloved soul into the hand of its enemies. My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest; it has given forth its voice against me, therefore I have hated it.' He who in the Gospel said, 'Rise, let us go hence,' and again, 'Your house shall be left to you desolate,' here too in the prophet threatens the same things, and what he is going to do, he says that he has done. For the inheritance of the Lord is Israel, and the cord of his inheritance. But as for what he says:
'I have given my beloved soul into the hand of its enemies,' this is: 'I have power to lay down my soul and I have power to take it up again.' But the people of the Jews, once the inheritance of the Lord, became against him like a lion in the forest, when in the Passion it cried out against him with equal voice. And because it gave forth its voice against him, therefore he held it in hatred and cast it away; and she who was once beloved and most dear is now called hateful. 'Is my inheritance to me a bird of varied colour? Is it a bird dyed throughout? Come, gather yourselves, all beasts of the earth, hasten to devour!' LXX: 'Is my inheritance to me the cave of a hyena? Or is there a cave round about it, over it?'
'Go, gather all the beasts of the field and let them come, that they may eat it.' According to the letter he calls it a bird of varied colour and dyed throughout, that is, a peacock. 'So great,' he says, 'was the beauty which Israel had, and with such virtues was Jerusalem adorned, that there was no good thing which was not seen in her. Since therefore that which was once my inheritance, namely the people of Israel, has become to me like a lion in the forest and has given forth its voice against me, and I have detested it with every hatred, therefore come and gather yourselves against her, all beasts of the earth, the multitude of the various nations, and devour her who did not know her Lord!' But if, as the LXX and the other translators rendered it, one reads:
'Is my inheritance to me the cave of a hyena?'—let us refer it to the uncleanness of that nocturnal beast, which lives on the corpses of the dead and is wont to dig bodies out of tombs, and there is nothing so unclean that it does not feed upon it. Such is Israel, offending its Lord and handed over to the bites of all the beasts. 'Many shepherds have demolished—or corrupted—my vineyard, they have trampled—or defiled—my portion, they have given my desirable portion into a desert of solitude—or a trackless waste—; they have made it—or it has been made—into a devastation, and it has mourned over me—or it has perished.'
Let those hear these things who desire to be princes of the peoples, and who must render an account in the day of judgment not only for themselves but also for the flocks committed to them; for on their account the portion of the Lord is trampled and defiled, so that where once was the dwelling of God, there is now the habitation of beasts. But others understand by 'princes' not the rulers of the people and the priests, but the princes of the enemies, who scattered Jerusalem, that is, the vineyard of the Lord. 'And it has mourned over me; with desolation is all the land made desolate, because there is none who considers in his heart. Over all the ways of the desert the devastators have come, because the sword of the Lord has devoured from one end of the land to the other end of it; there is no peace for all flesh.' LXX:
'For my sake the land is destroyed with destruction,' and the rest. This which we have set down, 'and it has mourned over me,' according to the Hebrew is joined to the preceding verse, so that it reads: 'They have made it into a devastation'—that is, my inheritance—'and it has mourned over me, deprived of my help.' But according to the LXX it is God who speaks, saying that for his sake the land has been destroyed and reduced to solitude, because there is none who considers in his heart, nor any peace for all flesh. For flesh cannot receive the peace of God: for 'the wisdom of the flesh is enmity against God, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.' Furthermore, according to the Hebrew, all Judaea is therefore desolate, because there is none who considers God in his heart, nor any remnant who might be able to escape.
For through all the ways of the wilderness the devastators have come, that is, the hostile army, and the sword of the Lord has devoured from one border to the other, nor was there any rest for those fleeing from the city. Whence it is said: 'There is no peace for all flesh.' 'They have sown wheat and have reaped thorns; they have received an inheritance and it will not profit them.' LXX: 'You have sown wheat and have reaped thorns; their portions will not profit them.' 'They looked,' he says, 'for better things and the worst came; they hoped for prosperity and suffered adversity; they received from the Lord an abundance of all things, which will not profit them.' But according to the LXX all heretics, as it were, sow wheat and reap thorns, while the Lord waits for them to bear fruit;
and they did not do judgment, but made an outcry. And this is said also to churchmen, who by their evil conduct waste the words of the Lord and his teaching; concerning whom it is added: 'their portions will not profit them.' For what will the name of bishop or presbyter, or the rest of the ecclesiastical order, be able to help them, when they are the more burdened by their own dignities, and 'the mighty shall mightily suffer torments,' and 'the more that has been entrusted to them, the more shall be required of them'? 'Be confounded because of your fruits—or because of your boasting—on account of the wrath of the fury of the Lord—or on account of the reproach in the sight of the Lord—.' Thus says the Lord against all my worst neighbours who touch the inheritance which I have distributed to my people Israel:
'Behold, I will pluck them out of their land, and the house of Judah I will pluck out—or cast out—from among them. And when I have plucked them out, I will turn back—or return—and have mercy on them, and I will bring them back—or make them dwell—each man in his inheritance and each man in his land.' It is said to those to whom their portions and the ecclesiastical order will not profit, that they should be confounded because of their boasting and because of the reproach before the Lord. And as for what he adds, 'against all my worst neighbours,' according to the letter the neighbours of the Holy Land are the Edomites, the Philistines, Moab and Ammon. But according to the tropological sense, they are all the heretics, who are reckoned under the name of Christ and are neighbours rather than inhabitants of the Holy Land, who touch the inheritance of God and lay it waste;
and it is said of them that they shall be taken away from the midst of the land and the house of Judah shall be removed from among them. Those who, when they have been plucked out and freed from the jaws of the heretics, shall obtain the mercy of God and be led back into their inheritance and into their own land. 'And it shall come to pass, if the instructed have truly learned the ways of my people, so that they swear by my name, 'The Lord lives,' as they taught my people to swear by Baal, they shall be built up in the midst of my people; but if they will not hear, I will pluck up that nation with plucking up and with destruction, says the Lord.' If, having been transferred from heresy into the Church, they have learned the ways of the people of God and have sworn by the name of the Lord and not by the name of the idols which they fashioned from their own heart, they shall be built up by the Lord and shall be part of his people.
But if, having been transferred into the Church, they retain the relics of perverse doctrines and do not hear the words of the Lord, that nation shall be plucked up from the midst of the people of God with plucking up and with perpetual destruction, so that no place of repentance whatever is left to them. These things we behold daily and prove by facts: that the heretics for this reason feign the truth of the faith, that they may deceive all the simple, and not that they themselves may be converted to the faith, but that they may draw the faithful into unbelief. 'Thus says the Lord to me: Go and get yourself a linen loincloth—or girdle—and you shall put it upon your loins and you shall not put it into water—or, it shall not pass through water!' And I got the loincloth according to the word of the Lord and put it about my loins.
And the word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying: 'Take the loincloth—or girdle—which you got, which is about your loins, and arise, go to the Euphrates and hide it there in a hole of the rock!' And I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord had commanded me. And it came to pass after many days that the Lord said to me: 'Arise, go to the Euphrates and take from there the loincloth—or girdle—which I commanded you to hide there!' And I went to the Euphrates and dug and took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it; and behold, the loincloth—or girdle—had rotted, so that it was fit for no use. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Thus says the Lord:
'So will I make the pride—or the injury—of Judah rot, and the great pride of Jerusalem, and this most wicked people, who refuse to hear my words and walk in the depravity—or in the straightness—of their most wicked heart, and have gone after strange gods to serve them and to worship them; and they shall be like this loincloth, which is fit for no use. For as the loincloth clings to the loins of a man, so I bound to myself the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah,' says the Lord, 'that they might be to me for a people and for a name and for praise and for glory; and they did not hear.'
The girdle or loincloth, which is joined to the reins of God, is the people of Israel, which, taken up in the likeness of flax from the earth and unwashed, had neither softness nor whiteness, and yet through his mercy clung to God. And when it had sinned—for such flax and such a loincloth is indeed rational—it was led beyond the Euphrates, that is, into the land of the Assyrians, and there it is hidden, that is, in a certain manner absorbed by the multitude of great and innumerable nations and reckoned as nothing. But after a long time the prophet himself, as a type of God, frees the people from captivity—who nonetheless, even after their return, did not keep the precepts of God, but, following strange gods, at the last even laid hands upon the Son of God and wasted away in eternal perdition.
Every holy man too is the loincloth of God, who, taken up from the earth and from the mire of the earth, is joined to the fellowship of God, and in a certain way covers and surrounds with greater diligence those things which seem shameful in his church, lest they lie open to the bites of the pagans and the heretics. And this loincloth, if it touches water and crosses the streams of the Euphrates, so as to be steeped in the moistures of the Assyrian region, loses its former strength and rots and dissolves; and although it returns to the use of God, yet it cannot have its former beauty—not through the hardness of God, but through its own fault, because 'they refuse to hear his words and walk in the depravity of their heart,' or, they do what seems right to themselves.
But the divine word itself also explains why it set forth this likeness, saying: 'For as the loincloth clings to the loins of a man, so I bound and made to cling to me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah'—that is, the ten tribes and the two—'that it might be to me for a named people and for praise and for glory; and for all these things they did not hear me, but followed their own vices.' Let him therefore beware, who is able to say:
'But for me it is good to cling to God'—lest perchance through negligence he be separated from his reins and cross the Euphrates and be given into the power of the king of Assyria, and be lodged not in the most solid rock but in the hole of a corrupted and vitiated rock, that is, in the filth and vices of the heretics, and come into such rottenness that he can no longer return to the use and to the girdle of the Lord. 'You shall therefore say to them—or to the people—this word: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Every flask—or wineskin—shall be filled with wine. And they shall say to you: Do we not know that every flask—or wineskin—is filled with wine? And you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord:
Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, and the kings who sit of the stock—or the sons—of David upon his throne, and the priests and the prophets and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunkenness; and I will scatter them, each man from his brother, both fathers and sons together, says the Lord; I will not spare—or I will not desire—and I will not grant, nor will I have mercy, so as not to destroy them.' The Hebrew word 'nebel' the first edition of Aquila interpreted as 'flask,' the second as 'nebel' itself, Symmachus as 'crater,' the LXX as 'wineskin,' Theodotion as 'vessel';
which is filled not with oil, not with water, not with honey, not with milk, not with any other matter of a liquid element, but with wine and drunkenness—showing that we are a fragile vessel, according to the Apostle who says: 'But we have this treasure in earthen vessels,' and that it cannot but be that there is fulfilled in us what is written: 'For in my flesh there dwells no good thing,' and again: 'For the good that I will, this I do not, but the evil that I will not, this I do,' and then: 'Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' And with this drunkenness, by which we forget the precepts of God, and with vices and sins, the whole human condition is filled, the prophet saying: