the son of Antipater a proselyte; and afterward, under Vespasian, the kingdom of this line—or rather the semblance of empire—was utterly destroyed. 'Woe to the shepherds who scatter and tear the flock of my pasture—or, O shepherds, who scatter and disperse the sheep of my pasture—says the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel to the shepherds who feed my people: You have scattered my flock, you have driven them away and have not visited them; behold, I will visit upon you the wickedness of your pursuits, says the Lord.'
'And I will gather the remnants of my flock from all the lands to which I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their own countryside—or, I will restore them to their own pastures—and they shall increase and multiply. And I will raise up shepherds over them and they shall feed them: they shall fear no more nor be dismayed, and none shall be missing from the number, says the Lord.' The prophetic discourse is to the shepherds, or concerning the shepherds; and since concerning Jechoniah—the second-to-last king of Judea, who was of the stock of David—we read written: 'Earth, earth, earth, hear the words of the Lord! Write this man down as renounced—or barren—and there shall not be of his seed a man who shall sit upon the throne of David,'
and all hope of the Jewish kingdom had been cut off, he passes to the princes of the Church; and, the synagogue with its shepherds being forsaken and condemned, the discourse turns to the apostles, of whom it is said: 'And I will raise up shepherds over them and they shall feed them; they shall fear no more nor be dismayed, and none shall be missing from the number, says the Lord.' For the apostles will feed the ecclesiastical flock confidently and without any fear, and the remnants of the people of Israel shall be saved out of all lands and shall be brought back to their own countryside or pastures, and shall increase and multiply. But upon the wicked shepherds, the scribes and Pharisees, the Lord will visit judgment because of the wickedness of their pursuits.
We can understand this, according to the tropological sense, also of the princes of the Church who nonetheless do not worthily rule the Lord's sheep: that, they being cast off and condemned, the people may be saved when handed to others who prove worthy, and the remnants may be saved. Shepherds ruin the sheep who teach heresy; they tear and disperse who make schisms; they drive them away who, against justice, separate people from the Church; they do not visit who withhold their hand from the penitent. Upon all of whom the Lord will have mercy, restoring to them their former pastures and taking away the wicked shepherds. 'Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will raise up for David a righteous branch—or a righteous dayspring—and a king shall reign and shall be wise—or shall understand—and shall execute judgment and justice in the land.'
'In those days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell in confidence, and this is the name by which they shall call him—or he shall call him: the Lord our righteous one, or our righteousness,' which in Hebrew is called 'sadecenu.' This, which was wrongly added in the Septuagint, 'among the prophets,' is to be cut out entirely; for another chapter follows, which was passed over by them, at whose end is the heading, 'to the prophets' or 'against the prophets,' of which we shall speak in its place. So then, the shepherds of the synagogue being cast off—namely, the scribes and Pharisees—and the remnants from Israel being saved, and the apostles of the gospel being set in the place of the former princes, there is brought in the Shepherd of shepherds and the Prince of princes and the King of kings and the Lord of lords,
namely Christ our Saviour, who properly is 'the righteous branch' or 'the righteous dayspring,' of whom we read: 'In his days righteousness shall arise,' and in another place: 'Behold a man, the Dayspring is his name, and beneath him he shall spring up and shall build a temple to the Lord'; so that, just as in Isaiah he is called 'Emmanuel,' that is, 'God with us,' so in Jeremiah he receives the name 'our righteousness'; whence the apostle also speaks: 'who was made for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.' To whom the Antichrist, and the devil who dwells in him, is opposite, called in Zechariah 'the foolish shepherd.' 'And he shall execute,' it says, 'judgment and justice in the land'; for the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.
In those days both the two tribes and the ten, Judah and Israel, shall alike be saved, and from the two rods, according to Ezekiel, one rod shall be made; and his name, if according to the Septuagint the Lord shall have called him, shall be named Josedec, that is, 'the Lord is righteous'; if according to the Hebrew, who said, 'they shall call his name,' it shall be said, 'the Lord our righteousness'; for this is what 'adonai sadecenu' means, for which Symmachus translated, 'Lord, justify us!' 'Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and they shall say no longer: As the Lord lives, who led the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but: As the Lord lives, who led forth and brought back the seed of the house of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands to which I had driven them, and they shall dwell in their own land.'
This whole chapter is not found in the Septuagint; its sense is this: that the people of God is by no means freed from Egypt through Moses, but through Jesus Christ from the whole world into which it had been scattered. This is even now fulfilled in part in the world, and shall be fulfilled in full when from the east and the west, the north and the south they shall come and recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so that, after the fullness of the Gentiles has entered in, then all Israel shall be saved. 'To the prophets' or 'among the prophets' or 'against the prophets.' This heading, as we said above, is placed in the Septuagint edition at the end of the preceding chapter, where we read written: 'and this is the name by which the Lord shall call him, Josedec, among the prophets.'
Which many, not knowing, invent as various follies of interpretation; and it would have been far better simply to confess ignorance than to make others heirs of one's own inexperience. But the discourse is against the prophets—or rather the false prophets—of Jerusalem and Samaria, whom he now calls by the common and ordinary name 'prophets,' of whom it is written in what follows: 'and among the prophets of Samaria I saw iniquity,' and immediately: 'and among the prophets of Jerusalem I saw horrible things.' And when he sets the conjunction 'and,' he shows that what was said above about the prophets belongs to the Lord—prophets who themselves also proved like the false prophets. 'My heart is broken within me—or within me—, all my bones trembled—or were shaken;'
'I have become like a drunken man and like a man soaked—or overcome—with wine, before the face of the Lord and before the face of his holy words,' or 'and before the face of the beauty of his glory.' Having contemplated the countenance of Almighty God, that is, of the Father, and having contemplated the countenance of the Son—who, according to the apostle, is called 'the splendor of his glory' and 'the figure of the substance of God'—the prophet shudders both in soul and in body and understands that he is nothing, according to what is said in another place: 'I became like a beast of burden before you'; or he offers to God the victim of his conscience and humility, according to that which is written in the Psalms: 'a sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise.' But the bones,
which trembled or were shaken—let us understand those of which the same David sings: 'all my bones shall say: Lord, who is like you?' He became like a drunkard and like a man soaked—or overcome—with wine, having no understanding and no wisdom; for the Lord knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain. But if this is so, where are those who preach perfect righteousness in man? And if they should answer that they say this of the saints, not of themselves, surely I think none holier than Jeremiah, who—a virgin, a prophet, sanctified in the womb—by his very name prefigures the Lord Saviour. For 'Jeremiah' is interpreted 'the exalted of the Lord.'
'Because the land is filled with adulterers, because on account of a curse—or an oath—the land has mourned, the fields—or pastures—of the desert are dried up; their course has become evil and their strength unlike.' This, which we have set down from the Hebrew—'because the land is filled with adulterers'—is not found in the Septuagint, who said 'oath' for 'curse.' And he gives the reasons: that on account of adulteries and curses—or excessive swearing, or rather perjuries—a barrenness of crops has followed. Whatever you understand about the land of Judea according to the letter, refer to the congregation of believers, since on account of adulteries and lies—or perjuries—there is a barrenness of virtues and of the gifts of God in the churches.
'For both prophet and priest are polluted, and in my house I have found their evil, says the Lord. Therefore their way shall be like slippery ground in the darkness; they shall be driven on and shall fall in it, for I will bring—or inflict—upon them evils, the year of their visitation, says the Lord.' When in the Church of God, and especially among its princes, evils are found, let us know that this is fulfilled: 'prophet and priest are polluted; in my house I have found their evils, says the Lord.' Now the house of Christ is the Church, of which Paul too writes to Timothy: 'that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth.' In the prophet understand the teacher; in the priest, the dignity of the ministry;
who, if they consent with a corrupt mind, their way shall be onto slippery ground and into darkness, and they shall not have the Lord saying: 'I came as light into the world, that everyone who believes in me may not remain in darkness.' Whence the saint speaks, fleeing all darkness: 'The light of your countenance is sealed upon us, Lord; you have given gladness in my heart.' But when they are in darkness and on a slippery way—namely, by heretical error—at every impulse they shall be driven and shall fall. And the Lord brings evils upon them—not that they are evils, that the Lord should inflict evils, but they are evils to those who endure the punishments; otherwise the same things are both evil and good: evil in respect of those whom they torment, good in respect of those whom they amend.
And this is to be noted: that the year of the Lord's visitation is called the correction of sinners and their chastisement, according to what is written: 'I will visit their iniquities with a rod and their sins with stripes; but my mercy I will not scatter from him.' 'And among the prophets of Samaria I saw folly—or iniquity—; they prophesied in Baal and deceived my people Israel.' I think the prophets of Samaria, according to the mystical understanding, are properly called heretics, and all who boast of a knowledge falsely so named. And just as the prophets of Samaria, whatever they spoke, prophesied in Baal—an idol, namely, consecrated to demons—so the heretics, whatever they speak in the Church or outside the Church,
in order to supplant the people of Israel—who formerly beheld God—they speak in demons; whence he says pointedly: 'and among the prophets of Samaria I saw folly'; for they do not have him of whom it is said, 'Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.' 'And among the prophets of Jerusalem I saw a likeness—or horrible things—, adultery and the path of falsehood; and they strengthened the hands of the wicked, so that no one turned from his malice—or from his most evil way—; all became to me as Sodom, and its inhabitants as Gomorrah.' 'Not only,' he says, 'have these things been found in the assemblies of the heretics,
but among the prophets of Jerusalem too—that is, the teachers of the Church—I saw like, or horrible, things: of those who adulterate the word of God and walk by the way of falsehood, so as to acquiesce in the deceits of the heretics and strengthen the hands of the wicked and join their evils to their own crimes, and lead into destruction those whom they ought to have corrected. Let those who have done this not think themselves unpunished! For both they and those whom they favor shall be as Sodom, and all who dwell with them and do not withdraw from such things shall be as Gomorrah.' Let the most wicked teaching, therefore, exult as much as it will, and let the prophets of Jerusalem glory that they have prevailed through falsehood and strengthened the hands of the wicked—their end shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah.
'Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets: Behold, I will feed them with wormwood—or with sorrows, and according to Symmachus with bitterness—and I will give them gall to drink—or bitter water—, because from the prophets of Jerusalem pollution has gone forth into all the land.' Let us use this testimony against those who send out into the world letters full of lies and deceit and perjury, so as both to pollute the ears of hearers and to injure the reputation of the simple, so that this may be fulfilled in them which is written: 'from the prophets of Jerusalem pollution has gone forth into all the land';
for it does not suffice them to devour their own iniquity and injure their neighbors, but those whom they once hate they try to defame throughout the whole world and everywhere to sow blasphemies. 'Thus says the Lord of hosts: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you and deceive you! They speak a vision of their own heart and not from the mouth of the Lord. They say to those who blaspheme me—or reject my word—: The Lord has spoken: peace shall be to you; and to everyone who walks in the depravity of his heart they said: No evils shall come upon you.'
Lest the people should think itself free from fault if it acquiesced in perverse teachers, 'do not,' he says, 'listen to the words of the prophets, who prophesy to you a lie and deceive you'—for the penalty will be equal for both master and disciple—'they do not speak from the mouth of the Lord, but the things which they have feigned in their own heart. They say to those who blaspheme me'—namely, to heretics and perverse men—'or who reject my word. What do they say?: The Lord has spoken: peace shall be to you; do not fear harsh punishments nor be terrified by empty threats; peace shall be to you and tranquility, and whatever we say and announce to you, the Lord has spoken:
and no evil shall come upon you which you fear because of a bad conscience, but the good which the Lord has spoken to you.' 'For who has stood in the counsel of the Lord and seen and heard his word? Who has considered his word and heard it?' Where we have translated 'in the counsel of the Lord,' and in the Hebrew it is written 'bassod,' Aquila rendered 'secret,' Symmachus 'word,' the Septuagint and Theodotion 'substance' or 'subsistence.' And the sense is: 'Do not believe, O unlearned crowd, the prophets who announce falsehoods to you, who say this: The Lord has spoken: peace shall be to you; no evil shall come upon you! For whence can they know the secrets of God, or by whose announcement have they learned the counsel of the Lord?
how has the word of the divine dispensation reached them?' Some of our people think that in this passage they have found where the substance of God is written. 'Behold, a whirlwind—or a tempest and commotion—of the Lord's indignation goes forth, and a bursting tempest shall come upon the head of the wicked, and the fury of the Lord shall not turn back until he does and until he fulfills the thought of his heart; in the last days you shall understand his counsel.' He who had said above, 'the Lord has spoken to us: peace shall be to you,' and those whom he had rebuked because they could not know things to come nor know the sentence of God—now he shows, by contraries, that they know nothing at all:
namely, that instead of peace and security the Babylonian tempest is coming—and coming not upon just anyone, but upon the heads of the wicked, whether of the whole people or of those who announced falsehoods to the people—and that the wrath and fury of God is not to be appeased as in past times, but, as he foretold and very often threatened, is to be fulfilled in deed, and his thought and the sentence upon the wicked to be confirmed by their punishments. 'When,' he says, 'the final time of captivity has arrived and an exulting victor has taken you and bound your hands with the clashing of chains, then you shall understand his counsel, which you now vainly boast that you know.' 'I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.'
'If they had stood in my counsel and had made my words known to my people, I would surely have turned them from their evil way and from their most wicked thoughts.' This sense the apostle too explains to the Romans: 'and just as they did not approve of having God in their knowledge, God handed them over to a reprobate mind, to do the things which are not fitting, filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, wickedness, avarice,' and the rest. For when false teachers have once given themselves over to lies and perjuries and to the deaths of those they deceive, they run not step by step nor with considered pace, but headlong to destruction—both their own and that of those whom they have deceived; nor does the Lord speak to them, but they themselves speak as if from the mouth of the Lord, of whom it is also said:
'If they had stood in my counsel' — that is: if they had been willing to submit to my will — 'and had made my words known to my people,' not flattering them and ruining them with adulation so as to say: you have no sins, you possess perfect righteousness; holiness and chastity and justice are found in you alone, then I would not have handed them over to uncleanness and disgrace, so that they should do the things which are not fitting and follow their own most wicked thoughts.' Let us consider the heretics, how, once they have despaired of salvation, they give themselves over to gluttony and to pleasures and feed on flesh. They frequent the baths, they reek of musk; anointed with various perfumes, they seek the beauty of their bodies.
For they do not hope for things to come nor believe in the resurrection. And though they do not make this plain in speech, they display it by their works; for if they believed, they would not do these things. And in this passage, where it is written 'If they had stood in my counsel,' Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion and the Seventy translated similarly as above. 'Am I a God near at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off? If a man hides himself in secret places, shall I not see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord.' The Seventy: 'I am a God drawing near, says the Lord, and not a God afar off. If a man hides himself in secret places, shall I not see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord.'
Aquila and Symmachus interpreted similarly: 'Am I a God at hand — or near — and not a God afar off?' But the Seventy and Theodotion rendered it in the contrary sense, so as to say: 'I am a God drawing near, says the Lord, and not a God afar off,' namely because the former assert that God knows not only what is near but also what is far off, and beholds not present things only but things to come; whereas these latter reckon that God is everywhere present and that there is no place where God is not. For God draws near to all, and especially to the saints, just as a garment clings to the skin; but sinners, withdrawing far from him, shall perish. This same meaning we read in the Psalms also: 'Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy face?'
'If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I descend into hell, thou art present; if I take my wings at dawn and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.' Amos also agrees with these words, saying: 'Though they go down even to hell, thence shall my hand bring them up; and though they climb up even to heaven, thence will I bring them down; and though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, thence searching them out will I take them away; and though they conceal themselves from my eyes in the depths of the sea, there will I command the serpent, and it shall bite them.' And again in the earlier psalm: 'For the darkness,' he says, 'shall not be dark from thee, and the night shall be light as the day; as its darkness, so also its light.'
But as for what is frequently said among the prophets: 'Thus says the Lord,' it is always inserted for this reason, lest their words be despised as if they were merely the words of prophets, but rather that men be continually admonished that what they speak are the words of God. 'I have heard what the prophets said, who prophesy a lie in my name, saying: I have dreamed, I have dreamed — or, I have seen a dream. How long is this in the heart of the prophets who prophesy a lie, and who prophesy the deceptions — without the will — of their own heart? who wish — or, who devise — to make my people forget my name because of their dreams, which every one tells to his neighbour, just as their fathers forgot my name because of Baal, or, in Baal.'
Because the foregoing heading is against the prophets — or, to the prophets — whom we plainly understand to be false prophets (for there are many kinds of prophesying, one of which is by dreams, such as was in Daniel) — therefore the prophetic word is also directed to those who trust in dreams and think that everything they see is a divine revelation, which properly is opened to the saints and to the servants of God. But if we read that Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar, impious kings, saw dreams which proved true, this was not by the merit of those who saw them, but that through the occasion of them the holy men Joseph and Daniel might become renowned, and that the hard and untameable hearts of the tyrants might feel by their own conscience the majesty of the Lord.
There are still today dreamers in the Church, and especially in our own flock, who boast of their errors as the Lord's prophecy and continually thrust it forward: I have dreamed, I have dreamed; whom the Lord rebukes, saying: 'How long is this in the heart of the prophets who prophesy a lie and who prophesy the deceptions of their own heart? And they do this, that, just as the ancient people who came out of Egypt forgot the name of God, so also their descendants may forget me.' But this kind of prophesying is not in the name of the Lord, but in the name of Baal, which properly is the idol of the Sidonians or of Babylon, and by a similar name is called Bel.
'The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that has my word, let him speak my word truly! What is the chaff to the wheat? says the Lord. Are not my words as fire, says the Lord, and as a hammer — or an axe — that breaks the rock in pieces?' It belongs to those who deserve to have the word of God to expound a dream and to say: 'Thus says the Lord,' to those to whom the Lord has spoken, in whom there is truth and no fraudulent falsehood. What have the chaff of the heretics to do with the wheat of the Church? Of which John the Baptist speaks more fully.
For Christ purges his threshing floor, and with his winnowing fan leaves the chaff to be scattered by the blasts of the winds and to be burned with fire, but the wheat he gathers into the barns, that he may store up the heavenly bread, and that every believer may say: 'Taste and see that the Lord is good!' And beautifully is perverse doctrine compared to chaff, which has no marrow and cannot nourish the peoples of believers, but is ground down from empty stalks. And because heretics are always wont to promise prosperity and to open the kingdom of heaven to sinners, so as to say: 'the kingdoms of heaven are prepared for you, you can imitate the majesty of God, so as to be without sin;'
'for you have received the power of free will and the knowledge of the law, whereby you may attain whatever you wish' — and they deceive with flatteries the wretched, and especially silly women laden with sins, who are carried about with every wind of doctrine, ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth, and they deceive all their hearers with adulation. Therefore the Lord, comparing his words to the chaff of the heretics, says: 'Are not my words as fire, says the Lord, and as a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? For my word,' he says, 'announces future punishments, that it may deter men from sinning.'
And to the chaff of sinners he threatens burning, that the hearts of the heretics, hard and untameable like flint, may be broken in pieces by the hammer of his word; he will take away the heart of stone, that he may put in its place a heart of flesh — soft, that is, and able to receive and perceive the precepts of God. Something similar the Lord speaks also through Ezekiel, that the false prophets daub the wall with their flatteries without tempering, which afterwards is overthrown by a violent shower and the truth of judgement; and that the false prophetesses sew pillows under every elbow of the hand, to make sinners rest and by no means to soften the wrath of God with tears. For 'hammer' the Seventy translated 'axe,' namely that of which John the Baptist speaks:
'Now the axe is laid to the roots of the trees.' This axe cuts down the unfruitful trees, and this hammer shatters the hardest stones. Whence also the prophet Nahum speaks: 'His fury — doubtless God's — shall consume the principalities, and the rocks shall be broken in pieces by him.' This is against the heretics. But concerning the men of the Church it is written, that the hammer and the axe were not heard in the house of God. 'Behold, therefore, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who steal my words every one from his neighbour; behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who take their tongues and say: He says — or, who slumber a slumber —;'
'Behold, I am against the prophets that dream a lie, says the Lord, who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and by their marvels — or, by their portents and terrors — when I did not send them nor command them, who have been of no profit at all to this people, says the Lord.' Falsehood always imitates truth, and unless it has some semblance of what is right, it cannot deceive the innocent. Just as, then, in the former people the prophets lied and said: 'Thus says the Lord' and: 'I have seen the Lord' and: 'The word of the Lord that came to such and such a one'—