'Daughter of My people, gird yourself with sackcloth and sprinkle yourself with ashes; make for yourself mourning as for an only son (or a beloved one), a bitter (or pitiable) lamentation, for suddenly shall the spoiler (or misery) come upon us (or upon you)!' Because He had said above: 'Go not out into the fields, and walk not in the way, for the sword of the enemy, terror is round about,' and had also forbidden flight, He teaches what they ought to do — namely, to turn to repentance and to hold this most firm and secure armor. Where we said: 'Make for yourself mourning as for an only son,' for 'only son' in the Hebrew is written 'iaid,' which sounds rather 'solitary' than 'only-begotten.'
For if it were 'beloved' or 'lovable,' as the LXX translated, 'ididia' would be put, which is also the name God imposed upon Solomon. And nothing is more grievous than to lose one's one and only son. And that which we translated: 'for suddenly shall the spoiler (or misery) come upon us,' the LXX put 'upon you,' though God spoke much more mercifully, that whatever is to come upon His people, He testifies to come upon Himself also. And 'spoiler' signifies properly either Nebuchadnezzar or the devil. 'I have appointed you a strong tester among My people, and you shall know and prove their way. All these princes turn aside (or are disobedient), walking fraudulently (or perversely); they are bronze and iron;'
'they are all corrupt. The bellows is failed in the fire' — which the Greeks more significantly call 'physeter' — 'the lead is consumed, the founder (or silversmith) has melted in vain: for their wickednesses are not consumed. Call them reprobate silver, for the Lord has rejected them!' A strong 'tester' is given to the unbelieving people — which in Hebrew is said 'mabsar,' which sounds either 'fortified' according to Aquila, or 'closed' and 'surrounded' according to Symmachus and the LXX, after the manner of a most firm city, so that he may fear no snares of the people; 'so that, when you have tested,' He says, 'and known the way of the erring people, then you may understand that silver mixed with bronze can by no means be purified.'
For just as lead is mixed with metals that are adulterated and debased, so that the foreign matter may be separated out — and if perchance it has not been purged, all the lead is consumed and reduced to nothing — so too every utterance of doctrine and every prophetic discourse perishes among those who scorn to hear. Let us speak also concerning those who, like deaf asps, stop up their ears lest they hear the voices of the charmers. For in vain has the silversmith, or the smelter, smelted; for their wickednesses have not been consumed. Hence they are called not 'silver' but 'reprobate silver,' because the Lord has cast them away. And the princes are those who depart from the Lord, or are disobedient, who walk perversely and fraudulently. The Word.
'The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: Stand in the gate of the house of the Lord, and there proclaim — or read — this word, and say: Hear the word of the Lord, all Judah, you who enter in through these gates to worship the Lord.' This is not found in the edition of the Seventy, but has been added from Theodotion out of the Hebrew. The prophet is commanded to stand in the gate of the Lord, through which the multitude of the people enters to pray to the Lord, so that by this occasion they might be able to hear what the Lord enjoins. By this we understand the hardness of the Jewish people, in that they held the prophets as it were for liars and madmen, since it was only through the occasion and the throng of the place that they were compelled to hear the words of the Lord, and not for the reason that they were the words of the Lord.
'Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Make good — or, direct — your ways and your endeavours — or, your devices — and I will dwell with you in this place, or, I will make you to dwell in this place.' The most merciful Physician desires to heal the wounded with every remedy. But when He says, 'Make good, or amend, your ways,' He shows that they are perverse and have nothing of good in themselves. And because it is natural that everyone should love only the soil of his birth and hold nothing sweeter than his native land, He promises rewards to the obedient. 'I will dwell,' He says, 'with you, that I may make you secure in your dwelling'; or, according to Symmachus, 'I will establish you yourselves in a firm habitation,' for he renders it: 'and I will confirm you in this place.'
'Do not trust in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord! For if you well direct — or direct — your ways and your endeavours, if you execute judgment between a man and his neighbour, if you do not wrong — or oppress — the stranger and the orphan and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place, nor walk after strange gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you — or make you to dwell — in this place, in the land which I gave to your fathers from age to age.' That which the Seventy added at the beginning of this chapter, 'in lying words, which shall by no means profit you,' is not found in the Hebrew.
He gives command then to the people of the Jews, and today to us who seem to be established in the Church: that we should not place our confidence in the splendour of buildings, in gilded ceilings, and in walls faced with slabs of marble, and say: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord. For that is the temple of the Lord in which dwell true faith, holy conduct, and the choir of all the virtues. Finally He adds:
'If you make your ways straight, and your thought does not go astray after error, and you follow after righteousness and do no evil, nor shed innocent blood, scandalising the simple; and if you do not walk after strange gods, adoring perverse doctrines which you have feigned out of your own heart to your own hurt: then either I will dwell with you in this place which you call the temple of God, and in the land which I gave to your fathers — namely to the apostles and to apostolic men — or assuredly I will make you to dwell in a firm station from the beginning even unto the end.'
This can also apply to those virgins who vaunt their purity and with shameless face parade their chastity, while their conscience holds something otherwise, and who know not that definition of the apostle concerning virginity — that she be holy in body and in spirit. For what does bodily chastity profit, when the mind is defiled, if she has not the other virtues which the prophetic word has described? 'Behold, you trust in yourselves in words of falsehood — or lying words — which shall not profit you: to steal, to kill, to commit adultery, to swear falsely, to offer libations to the Baals, and to go after strange gods whom you do not know. And you came and stood before me in this house, in which my name is invoked, and you said:
We are delivered — or, we have ceased — in that we have done all these abominations.' The sins that follow show that they trust in vain in the temple. For what does it profit boldly to cross the threshold of the house of God, to stand with neck erect, and to have not only the heart but also the hands polluted with theft, murder, adultery, perjury, sacrilege, and the worship of those gods which you know not? That these things come to pass spiritually in the Church no one doubts, when men, considering the felicity of the present time, do not reckon up their own sins and suppose that God does not see, because vengeance does not follow at once; nay rather, they burst forth into such madness that they think themselves delivered — because, after their evil works, they have even withdrawn from the worship of the Lord.
'Is this house — or, my house — in which my name is invoked, become a den of robbers in your eyes? I, even I, am He, I have seen it, says the Lord.' From this passage I think was taken what is in the Gospel; it is written: My father's house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers — or, as it is written in another Gospel, a house of merchandise. The Church of God is turned into a den of robbers, when thefts, murders, adulteries, perjuries, sacrilege, the invention of heresy, and all crimes are practised in it; when the princes burn with the torches of avarice, and a cheap — or by no means cheap — little cloak possesses what were once the riches of kings. Whence He adds: 'I, even I am He, I have seen, says the Lord;
my eyes have beheld what you think hidden. The darkness of your treasuries does not escape my conscience.' He who, though He was rich, became poor for our sakes, now blushes at our riches and says: Woe to you rich, who have your consolation! 'Go to my place in Shiloh, where my name dwelt from the beginning, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel.' From the past He teaches the present, and to those who say: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, and who rejoice in the splendour of a costly house, He recalls the history of Shiloh, where the tabernacle of God first was. Of it is written in the psalm:
And He rejected the tabernacle of Shiloh — so that, just as that place fell into ruins and ashes, so also the temple should collapse, since it had become the dwelling of like sinners. As therefore Shiloh is a figure of the temple, so the temple is a figure for us, when the time of that testimony shall come: Thinkest thou that, when the Son of Man comes, He shall find faith upon the earth?
'And now, because you have done all these works, says the Lord, and I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking, and you did not hear, and I called you and you did not answer: I will do to this house, in which my name is invoked and in which you place your trust, and to the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh; and I will cast you out from my presence, as I cast out all your brethren, the whole seed of Ephraim.' That which we have set down, 'rising up early and speaking,' is not found in the Seventy.
God 'rises up early' — not that any time exists for Him apart from the dawn, but because after the quiet of night, when the powers of the body are renewed, the soul of men is more vigorous and, by no means occupied with pleasures and the desire of food, is able to hear and to do the things that are said. Whence we read also that in the psalm: In the morning thou shalt hear my voice; in the morning I will stand before thee and will see. And in Isaiah: From the night — or, at dawn — my spirit shall rise to thee, O God, because thy precepts are a light upon the earth. Whence the apostle Paul calls us sons of the light, and not of the night nor of darkness, nor sleepers, as the rest also have slept, who perceive not the commandments of God.
Therefore, because God called them, rising up in the night, that He might deliver them too from darkness, He threatens that He will do to the temple in Jerusalem the like of what He did to the place of Shiloh, where the tabernacle first was, so that like sins may be smitten with a like sentence. And just as the Lord cast out the seed of Ephraim, that is, the ten tribes which were called Israel and had their own princes, because of Jeroboam the son of Nabat of the tribe of Ephraim — which same tribe was also called the tribe of Joseph — so also He testifies that He will cast away Jerusalem and the tribe of Judah together with Benjamin. He cast off Shiloh, and would cast off the temple; He cast off the ten tribes, and would cast off the two. Whatever is said to that people, let us understand it of ourselves also, if we do the like.
'Therefore do not thou pray for this people, nor take up on their behalf praise and prayer — or, do not entreat that they may obtain mercy — and do not withstand me, for I will not hear thee.' Lest the prophet should seem, in praying, not to obtain what he asks, God commands that he should not entreat on behalf of a sinful people that does no penance. And in that He says, 'and do not resist me,' He shows this: that the prayers of the saints can withstand the wrath of God. Whence the Lord also says to Moses: Let me alone, that I may smite this people, and I will make thee into a great nation. And in the Psalms it is written: And Phinehas stood up and made atonement, and the plague ceased, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.
Aaron also, having seized the censer, stood in the midst between the fire and the burning people, and the wrath of God ceased. And lest we should suppose cruelty in God, who does not even permit Himself to be entreated, He renders the reasons why He does not hear, saying: Dost thou not see what these do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The sons gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women sprinkle fat to make cakes — or chauonas — for the queen — or the host — of heaven, and to pour libations to strange gods and to provoke me to anger. Do they provoke me to anger? says the Lord; is it not rather themselves, to the confusion of their own face? 'Wilt thou hear, O prophet,' He says, 'why I have told thee: Do not pray for this people? These are the things they do, which follow:
Both within and without, in the streets and at the outlets of Jerusalem, the sons carry wood and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women sprinkle fat with flour to make chauonim' — which we have rendered 'cakes,' or 'preparations,' so that He may show every kind of sacrifice to the queen of heaven, which we ought to take as the moon, or assuredly to the host of heaven, that we may understand all the stars — 'and after these things they pour libations to strange gods,' not that they exist, but that under their names they burn incense to demons, 'and provoke me to anger by doing these things.'
Nor do the wretched understand that this contention does not wound me, whom anger never changes, but wounds themselves, to the confusion of their own face and to everlasting ignominy. Whatever therefore we do, we do not wound God, who can never be wounded, but we prepare destruction for ourselves, treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath. And therefore He set down the diverse offices of sons and fathers and mothers, or wives, that there might be no age which had dissented from impiety. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, my fury and my indignation is kindled — or, has trickled down — upon this place, upon men and upon beasts and upon the wood of the region and upon the fruits of the earth; and it shall be kindled, and shall not be extinguished. He who had said above:
Do they provoke me to anger? — how does He now say: Behold, my fury and my indignation has trickled down upon this place? And the sense is: 'I indeed by nature am not angry, but they so act as to provoke me to anger and to make me seem to change my nature. Let them therefore feel me angry, since so far as in them lies they strive to make me so.' And beautifully He does not say, 'my fury is poured out upon this place,' but 'it has trickled down,' to signify a measured punishment. But if in a single drop of fury there is such great severity, what shall come to pass if the whole shower be poured out? And 'kindling' can also be understood thus: that what He long refused to do, He is compelled by the multitude of sins to do.
But when God has been angered, both men and the things that are men's shall feel a like destruction. 'And it shall be kindled,' He says — there is no doubt but that it is the fury of the Lord — 'and shall not be extinguished, because the people does not do the things by which it might be extinguished.' Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your holocausts to your victims and eat the flesh; for I did not speak with your fathers, nor command them in the day when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning the matter of holocausts and victims; but this word I commanded them, saying: Hear my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in all the way which I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.
Whose temple He reproved, consequently He reproves also their sacrifices, and He obliquely accuses them that they immolate victims not out of reverence for Him but out of desire for feasting. But in that He says, 'I did not speak with your fathers, nor command them in the day when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning the matter of holocaust and victims,' it is manifestly understood that first He gave the decalogue, written on tablets of stone by the finger of God, and after the offence of idolatry and the head of the calf, He afterwards commanded that sacrifice should be made rather to Himself than to demons, taking away the pure religion of the commandments of God and conceding the blood of victims and the desire of flesh. And they did not hear, nor incline their ear;
but they went in their own wills — or desires — and in the depravity of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward, from the day their fathers went out from the land of Egypt even unto this day. 'When I said, Hear my voice, and I will be your God, and the rest, they did not hear, nor incline their ear, but did the desires of their own heart, and, contrary to the sentence of the apostle who forgot the things behind and reached out to the things before, they did the contrary, so as to covet the things past and despise the things to come.' And in that He says, 'from the day their fathers went out from the land of Egypt even unto this day,' He says that they had passed the whole intervening time in offending the Lord.
Whence also the grace of the Gospel was necessary, which preserved them not by their own merit but by the mercy of the Lord. And I sent to you my servants, the prophets, rising up early through the day and sending them; and they did not duly hear, nor incline their ear, but hardened their neck and did worse than their fathers. Just, therefore, is the wrath of the Lord, which is kindled and has trickled down upon a scornful and stiff-necked people, unwilling to hear the words of God. But how God sends prophets whether by night or at dawn or in the day, we have said above. And thou shalt speak to them all these words, and they will not hear thee; and thou shalt call them, and they will not answer thee. And thou shalt say to them:
This is the nation which did not hear the voice of the Lord its God, nor receive discipline; faith has perished and is taken away from their mouth. 'Do not doubt,' He says, 'that they have hardened their neck and done worse than their fathers; behold, I give place for repentance, and I speak not that these things should come to pass, but because they are to be, therefore do I foretell them. Speak now at least to them my words, and yet they will not hear thee; and thou shalt call them, and they will not answer thee; for so great shall be their pride that, when thou hast called them to hear, none will deign to answer. And thou shalt say to them: This is the nation which did not hear the voice of the Lord its God, nor receive discipline.' Beautifully, as I have already said before, He calls them by no means his own people, but a nation.
Although this came to pass in part even in the time of the prophets, and went before in shadow and in image, yet it is more fully accomplished in Christ, when they were unwilling to receive discipline and despised the voice of their own Lord. Whence it is elegantly added: faith has perished — which properly belongs to Christians — and is taken away from their mouth, namely every confession of the Son of God and of faith. 'Shear thy hair and cast it away, and take up straightway — or, upon thy lips — a lamentation, because the Lord has cast off and forsaken the generation of his fury.' We read also that Job, on hearing of the death of his sons and daughters, shore off his hair; and among the ancients this was the custom of all mourners, to shear the locks; but now, on the contrary, to let the hair grow long is a sign of grief.
But every prophetic lamentation and mourning is taken up for this reason, because the Lord has cast off and forsaken the generation of his fury: there is no doubt but that it signifies the people of the Jews. And properly this is to be referred to the times of Christ, when faith perished and was taken away from the mouth of a people blaspheming the Lord. Because the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord; they have set up their stumbling-blocks in the house in which my name is invoked, to defile it; and they have built the high places — or the altar — of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Ennom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I did not command, nor did it come into my heart. That the sons of Judah set up the statue of Baal in the temple of God, we learn at the beginning of Ezekiel.
But the 'high places,' which in Hebrew are called 'bamoth,' or the 'altar' of Topheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Ennom, signifies that place which is watered by the fountains of Siloam and is pleasant and wooded, and to this day affords the delights of gardens. Here the error of the gentiles seized all the provinces, so that they immolated victims at the sources of fountains and in the most delightful groves, and every religion of depraved superstition was kept. 'Topheth' in the Hebrew tongue is interpreted 'breadth'; and it is written in the book of Joshua the son of Nun concerning this place, which is in the valley of the sons of Ennom and is in Hebrew called 'gehennom'; for 'ge' means a ravine, that is, a 'valley,' and 'hennom' sounds either a man's name or 'grace.'
And the Hebrews hand down that from this place it was called 'gehenna,' because forsooth all the people of the Jews perished there offending God, in which place they even consecrated their sons in the fire to idols, or offered them as a holocaust — things which He had not commanded them, nor enjoined by any sanction of the law. But if Jephthah offered his virgin daughter to God, it is not the sacrifice that pleases, but the mind of the offerer; for neither, if a dog or an ass or any unclean animal whatsoever had first met the father returning from the slaughter of the enemy, ought he to have offered that to God. Therefore, behold, the days come, says the Lord, and it shall no more be called Topheth and the valley of the son of Ennom, but the valley of slaughter; and they shall bury in Topheth, because there is no place elsewhere.
And the carcasses of this people shall be food for the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth, and there shall be none to drive them away. It signifies the time of the siege, which they endured from the ninth year of King Zedekiah unto the eleventh; and that the valley itself should by no means be called 'gehennom,' that is, 'the valley of Hennom,' or 'of the sons of Ennom,' but, because of the slaying of very many, 'the valley of slaughter.' And so great shall be the carnage that in the place formerly of religion there shall be innumerable sepulchres, and those whom they could not bury shall be torn by the birds and devoured by the beasts, and there shall be none to drive them away, fearing the like and the duties of burying and living. The manifest things we run through, that, wherever there is room, we may tarry over the obscure.
For the very magnitude of the book can produce weariness in readers: how much more, if it be discoursed upon more at length by us! And I will cause to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of gladness and the voice of joy, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride; for the land shall be a desolation. When the place of idolatry has been turned into sepulchres, so that where they had offended God, there their unburied corpses lie, from the city that once was Jerusalem and from the other cities which were under its dominion all gladness shall be taken away, and all things shall be filled with mourning and groaning and desolation.
In that time, says the Lord, they shall cast out the bones of the king of Judah and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of those who dwelt in Jerusalem, out of their sepulchres; and they shall spread them out to the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they loved and which they served and after which they walked and which they sought and adored; they shall not be gathered, nor buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth. And all who remain of this most wicked kindred shall choose death rather than life in all the places which are left, to which I have driven them out, says the Lord of hosts. All the things which the prophetic word describes,
we perceive to have come to pass in our own time, not to Jerusalem alone, which suffered these things at the hands of the Chaldeans and the Romans, but to the whole world, so that tears have dried up and all things have been filled with the bones of the dead. And because, according to the ancient custom, they were wont to lay up gold and certain ornaments, whether of women or of men, in the sepulchres, avarice also broke these open and dug them up, that it might expose them to the heaven and the light.
And therefore first the bones of the kings of Judah and of its princes, of the priests too and of the prophets and of all the people who had been in Jerusalem, were brought forth from the tombs, lying open to the sun and the moon and to the aspect of all the stars, so that they to whom they had served, forsaking God, might lie open to their gaze, and, consumed, be dissolved into dung and ashes. But if anyone of the multitude could have escaped, to whatever places he came, he would prefer death to life and reckon destruction the remedy of his unhappy soul. And thou shalt say to them: Thus says the Lord: Shall not he who falls rise again? and he who is turned away, shall he not return — or, shall he not turn back? After such great evils He calls to repentance those who could remain, or before they should come.
The things He threatened, He exhorts to conversion and gives place for repentance. But that which is written according to the Hebrew, 'and he who is turned away, shall he not turn back,' signifies this: that he who has turned away from God, if he will be willing to be converted to better things, can also turn the fury of God to better things, and withstand it as it comes, and by his prayers avoid its strokes. Why then has this people gone forth in Jerusalem in contentious apostasy? They have laid hold of a lie and refused to return. 'By as much as I have called to repentance,' He says, 'by so much the more have they withdrawn from me, not so much from zeal for sinning as from a desire to overcome me.'
For they have laid hold strongly of a lie, or of idols, or of whatever perverse things are contrary to truth and righteousness, and they refused to return — He did not say 'they could not,' but 'with all zeal they followed after iniquitous things.' I attended and hearkened; no one speaks what is good, there is none who does penance over his sins, saying: What have I done? All are turned to their own course, like a horse rushing headlong into battle. Recalled to repentance, they scorn to hear; nor does it suffice them to have offended against the Lord and to have spoken blasphemy, but all, like horses rushing with fervid course into battle, do not reconsider their sin, nor say: What have I done?