Commentary on Amos

(Verse 1.) The words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Thecua, which he saw concerning Israel. But the Seventy, wishing I know not what, translated it: The words of Amos, which came to pass in Accarim of Thecua, which he saw concerning Jerusalem. And it should be known that this prophet prophesied not concerning Jerusalem, which is not at all found in the Hebrew; but concerning Israel, that is, in the days of Ozias king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, concerning the ten tribes which are called Israel, and were in Samaria. This indeed both Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion likewise translated. The first prophet, Hosea, then, speaks to the ten tribes which are called Ephraim, Samaria, the house of Joseph, and Israel. The second, Joel, delivers his prophecy to Jerusalem and the two tribes which are called Judah and Jerusalem and Jacob, making no mention at all of Israel. The third, Amos, preaches by no means to Jerusalem, which was ruled by the tribe of Judah; but to Israel in Samaria.

This can be proved from his whole volume, and especially from what is written: Amasias the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying: Amos has rebelled against you in the midst of the house of Israel. And a little after Amasias said to Amos: You who see, go, flee to the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and there you shall prophesy, and in Bethel you shall no longer add to prophesy, because it is the sanctuary of the king and the house of the kingdom. To whom Amos answered: I was not a prophet, nor a prophet's son, but a herdsman plucking sycamore fruit: and the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and said to me: Go, prophesy to my people Israel: not indeed to Judah and Jerusalem, as is wrongly held among the Greeks and Latins, but to Israel, that is, the ten tribes, which on account of the multitude of the people had retained the ancient name.

But in that place where the Seventy translated "in Accarim," Theodotion set down the very Hebrew word: in NOCEDIM (נקדים), which Aquila translated ἐν ποιμνιοτρόφοις, that is, "among those who rear flocks": Symmachus and the fifth edition, ἐν τοῖς ποιμέσιν, that is, "among the shepherds." And I think that here too, on account of the similarity of the letters DALETH and RESH, they were deceived, and instead of NOCEDIM read as it were NOCERIM: and from this set down the word Accarim, although at the beginning of the name the letter NUN leaves no excuse for the error. But I have not read that Accarim exists in Hebrew up to the present. And those who interpret it as barrenness, that is, στείρωσιν, express rather the city ACCARON of the Philistines, than Accarim, which is nowhere read.

The words, then, of Amos, who was from the town of Thecua, of the number of shepherds—since that region too is pastoral—are contained in this volume, which he saw concerning Israel, not with the eyes of the flesh, but with the gaze of the mind; because prophets were called "seers"; otherwise, according to the letter, words are not seen, but heard. Whence also the people saw the voice of God, and Moses, though silent, was speaking to the Lord, when He said to him: Why do you cry to me? In the New Testament also we read: What we have seen and heard with our eyes, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life. For the Word of God, which is in itself invisible, the apostles see, and handle with their hands. Which Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. But he saw these words. Son of Joas king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.

At which time among the Assyrians and the cities of Cilicia Sardanapalus was reigning, of whom a distinguished orator says: More shameful, he says, in vices than in name. And among the Latins, Procas Silvius, whom Amulius, after expelling his brother Numitor, succeeded in the kingdom. When Amulius had been slain, a band of shepherds and robbers being gathered together, Romulus founded the city called by his own name. It is at this time that Ozias king of Judah, surnamed Azarias, lived, who, attempting to claim for himself a priesthood not owed to him, was struck with leprosy on his forehead, at which time the wrath of the Lord was shown not only by the punishment of him who had committed sacrilege, but also by an earthquake, which the Hebrews record as having occurred at that time. Jeroboam, however, is not the son of Nabath, who made Israel to sin, but the son of Joas the son of Joathan, the son of Jehu, great-grandson of that same Jehu, under whom Osee and Joel and Amos prophesied.

Now Ozias is interpreted κράτος Κυρίου, that is, the rule, or strength, of the Lord. Jeroboam, δικασμὸς λαοῦ, that is, the judgment, or cause, of the people, although some, reading with the Greek letter chi, suspect it means the division of the people. Joas, κυρίου χρόνισμα, that is, the Lord's delay, or temporal duration. Therefore the words of Amos, at the time when the people of Israel had been torn away from the Lord, and were serving golden calves, or torn away from the kingdom of the line of David, they sang with a clear voice like the sound of a trumpet, from Thecue, which is so interpreted. And they sang concerning Israel, which was once most upright before God, that is, εὐθύτατος Θεοῦ. In the days of Ozias king of Judah, in whom, because of the temple and the holy of holies, the strength of the Lord remained, and by his rule governed the people who confessed him.

But the name Jeroboam, who had been the cause of the division of the people, signifies that Israel remained for a long time in the error of idolatry before the full captivity shook them, which in two years showed the twofold distress of the ten tribes and of the two, so that, if they were willing to do penance, they would not thereafter feel the earthquake. These things, Pammachius, dearest to my soul, who by the interpretation of your own name—as by a certain prophecy of things to come—show that you wage war with every art of fighting against the devil and the opposing powers, I have gathered together in a long discourse as an argument and ὑπόθεσιν of the prophet Amos. This I briefly note: that I promised the explanation of this prophet, and of Osee and Zacharias, to other holy men indeed, but especially to your mother of holy and venerable memory, Paula, while she lived.

Nor do I think I err much from the good faith of my promise, if what I promised to the mother I render to the son. But now it is time that, setting forth the words of the Prophet himself, I explain what seems to me right in each particular. (Verse 2.) And he said: The Lord will roar from Sion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem. And the beautiful places of the shepherds have mourned, and the top of Carmel is withered. LXX: And he said: The Lord has spoken from Sion, and given his voice from Jerusalem, and the pastures of the shepherds have mourned, and the top of Carmel has been dried up. It is natural that all craftsmen speak in the examples of their own art, and that each one, in whatever pursuit he has spent his life, bring forth a likeness drawn from it: for example, one who is a sailor and helmsman compares his sadness to a storm; he calls loss, shipwreck; he calls his enemies, contrary winds.

Again he names prosperity and joy a most gentle breeze and favorable winds; calm seas and waters he likens to level plains. On the other hand, whatever a soldier says sounds of shield, sword, breastplate, helmet, lance, bow, arrow, death, wound, and victory. In the mouth of philosophers there are always Socrates and Plato, Xenophon and Theophrastus, Zeno and Aristotle, the Stoics and Peripatetics. Orators extol to the skies Lysias and Hyperides, Pericles and Demosthenes, the Gracchi, the Catos, the Tullys, and the Hortensii. Poets, if they are epic, frequently celebrate Homer and Virgil; if lyric, Pindar and Flaccus. Why have these things been said?

So that we may show that even the prophet Amos, who was a shepherd among shepherds, and a shepherd not in cultivated places planted with trees and vineyards, or amid woods and green meadows, but in the broad wasteland of the desert, where the fierceness of lions and the slaughter of flocks are found, made use of the practice of his own art in speech, so that he called the voice of the Lord, terrible and to be feared, the roaring and growling of lions. Comparing the overthrow of the cities of Israel to the solitude of the shepherds and the dryness of the mountains, he says: The Lord will roar from Sion, and give his voice from Jerusalem. "Will roar" is said in Hebrew JESAG (שאג).

And beautifully he says he will roar from Sion, and give his voice from Jerusalem, where the temple and the worship of God were, so as to teach that God dwells not in the cities of Israel, that is, in Bethel and Dan, where the golden calves were, nor in the capital Samaria and Jezrael, but in the true religion, which at that time was practiced in Sion and Jerusalem. And as he roars from Sion, and gives his voice from Jerusalem (for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem), all the beautiful places of the shepherds and kings of Israel have mourned, and the top of Carmel is dried up, which once abounded in joyful pastures. Carmel is called the same in Greek and Latin, but in Hebrew it is called CHERMEL: and there are two mountains called by this name. One, in which Nabal Carmelus, husband of Abigail, dwelt, toward the southern region.

The other near Ptolemais, which was formerly called Acho, overlooking the sea, where the prophet Elias, bending his knees, obtained rains. If therefore he speaks of the Chermel where Nabal dwelt, it fits better with flocks of shepherds, because it is near the wilderness. But if he speaks of that which is near the shore, it pertains to the kings and the pride of the kings of Israel, whom, with captivity impending, he says shall be laid waste like deserted mountains.

Otherwise: When the Lord, from Sion and Jerusalem, from the watchtower of the Church, which, being set upon a mountain, cannot be hidden, and in which is the vision of peace, shall give his voice through the Old and New Testament, and through the teachers of the Church, and shall sound it forth as with a clear trumpet, then all the beautiful things of the shepherds—that is, the doctrine of the heretics, which seemed composed of beautiful speech, and the knowledge of circumcision (for this is what CHERMEL means [כרמל]), by which they promise themselves the knowledge of true circumcision—shall mourn and be dried up, and the thousands of peoples, who because of their simplicity are called flocks, shall wither with sudden dryness. (Verse 3.) Thus says the Lord: For three crimes of Damascus, and for four, I will not convert him, because they have threshed Galaad with iron wagons.

LXX: And the Lord said: For three impieties of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away from them, because they cut with iron saws the pregnant women in Galaad. For "three," which in Hebrew is called ARSOTH (ארצות), and by Theodotion's translation are "iron wheels," which we have translated as "iron wagons," the Septuagint translated as "iron saws." Now there is a kind of wagon that is turned by wheels beneath, iron and toothed, so that, the grain having been threshed out, it grinds the straw on the threshing floors, and, because of the scarcity of hay, chops the chaff into feed for the beasts of burden. Again, where in the Hebrew there is BENADAD (בן הדד), which is a single name, the Septuagint translated "sons of Ader," mistaking the resemblance of the letters resh and daleth.

Likewise in that place where we said "from the house of pleasure," which in Hebrew is Mebbeth eden (מבית עדן), and all others translated it similarly, the Septuagint rendered it "from the men of Charran," mistaking the middle letter of the name, daleth, for resh, and, according to their custom, prefixing the Greek chi (χ) for the first Hebrew letter ayin. Cyrene too, which in Hebrew is called CIRA (קירה), they translated ἐπίκλητον, that is, "called" or "named," because of the resemblance of the word, since CARAE (קרא) can mean "calling," and they took as an appellative what was a proper name. We have briefly discussed the reasons for the various translations: now let us pass to the sense of what has been said.

First, the word of God is directed against Damascus, in which Azael reigned, who at the time when Amos was prophesying was severely oppressing Israel, that is, the ten tribes: to such a degree that, having overcome Achab king of Israel at Ramoth Galaad, he crushed and threshed, as with threshing sledges over grain on the threshing floors, the entire region called Galaad, which had fallen as inheritance to the half-tribe of Manasseh. This the prophet Elisha speaks of more fully in the book of Kings, where we read: And he stood with him, and was troubled even to the point of blushing his face: and the man of God wept. And Azael said to him: Why does my lord weep? And he answered: Because I know what evils you will do to the children of Israel. Their fortified cities you shall burn with fire, and their young men you shall kill with the sword, and their little ones you shall dash to pieces, and their pregnant women you shall rip open.

And Azael said: For what am I your servant, a dog, that I should do this great thing? And Elisha said: The Lord has shown me that you shall be king of Syria. Now what follows in the prophet ... (Verse 4.) And I will send a fire into the house of Azael, and it shall devour the houses of Benadad. And I will break the bar of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitants from the plain of the idol. LXX: And I will send a fire into the house of Azael, and it shall devour the foundations of the son of Ader, and I will break the bars of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitants from the plain of ὤν. This gives us to understand that Azael, when Ozias and Jeroboam were reigning, had already died in Syria, and that his son Benadad had succeeded him in the kingdom, from whom all the later kings of Aram, that is, of Syria and Damascus, took the name Benadad.

Whence he beautifully did not say, "I will send fire into Azael," but "into the house of Azael," that is, into his royal house, over which his son Benadad at that time presided. And I will break, he says, the bars of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitants from the plain of the idol—that is, all the strength of the Syrians, which, as by a certain wagon and bars, repelled the attacks of their adversaries. Now "plain of the idol," which in Hebrew is called AVEN (און), the Septuagint and Theodotion translated as ὤν; Symmachus and the fifth edition translated it "iniquity"; Aquila, ἀνωφελοῦς, that is, "unprofitable," in order to show that the idols' help was vain, when the people of Damascus, at the coming of the Assyrian, would be captured. For we read that Theglathphalasar king of the Assyrians, after slaying Rasin king of Damascus (of whom Isaias also speaks), transferred the whole people of Syria, which was called Aram, into Cyrene, and it is for this reason that this is now said.

Verse 5. Holding the sceptre from the house of pleasure, and the people of Syria shall be carried away to Cyrene, saith the Lord. The Septuagint: And I will cut off a tribe from the men of Charran, and the people of Syria, being named, shall be led captive, saith the Lord. So that it is understood: I will crush and destroy, and the people of Syria shall be carried away to the farthest borders of Egypt. And whereas it is said at the beginning: For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not convert him—and according to the Septuagint, I will not turn away from him—that is, from the people of Damascus, or Aram, that is, the Syrian, this can have this meaning according to the history: If he had persecuted my people once, or a second time, I would grant pardon; but now, since he has shown himself cruel a third and a fourth time, so as to crush the captive multitude with iron wagons, ought I not to correct him with blows?

Ought I not to turn away from him the countenance of my clemency? But according to the tropology we can say this: The first sin is to have thought evil things. The second, to have acquiesced in perverse thoughts. The third, to have carried out in deed what you had determined in mind. The fourth, after sinning, not to do penance, and to take pleasure in one’s own crime. All heretics do this, who not only think and do evil things, but by their teaching deceive all the simple, and after the manner of the Damascenes, who are interpreted as “drinking blood,” drink the blood of those whom they have deceived. Concerning sins of this kind, he says, the Lord: is it not fitting that I should correct them with blows, and turn my face away from them? So that those who do not see the truth of my doctrines may be overwhelmed with darkness by the turning away of my face. For they have crushed, or cut in pieces, with iron wagons the pregnant women of Galaad.

These are the pregnant women of whom the Lord speaks in the Gospel: Woe to them that are with child, and that give suck in those days. The pregnant are the souls of believers, who at the beginning of faith can say: From fear of thee, O Lord, we have conceived and brought forth; and if they have not been cut and shredded by wagons and iron and toothed wheels (of which the Psalmist says: The children of men, whose teeth are weapons and arrows, they can also say what follows: And we have brought forth, we will bring forth upon the earth the spirit of thy salvation. And at the same time consider that they cannot cut men of full age, but only those still in the womb, or those who cannot yet take solid food, and are still nourished with the milk of infancy.

Now these pregnant women are of Galaad, which is interpreted “the transferring,” or “the migration of the testimony.” For they have migrated from the Church into heresy, and have carried over the testimonies of God, which they had first received, into foreign territories. But the Lord will send fire into the house of Azael, whom they themselves call AZAEL (חזאל), that is, “the vision of God”: a fire that shall consume the wood and stubble in them, and devour the foundations of the son of Ader. For we ought also, according to the Septuagint, to say—lest we seem to have set them forth in vain—that Ader is interpreted εὐπρέπεια, which we may call “comeliness”: because every discourse of heretics, being polished and well-arranged, and having the beauty of worldly eloquence, more easily deceives its hearers. But by the bars of Damascus, as it were the strongest and firmest bolts, are to be understood those who are trained in the art of dialectic, and in the arguments of philosophers.

For example: he is called the door who conceived and brought forth a false doctrine, as Arius in Alexandria: his bars and his strongest bolts are Eutychius and Eunomius, who by syllogisms and enthymemes, or rather by sophisms, and by “the liars” and sorites, which have been badly devised by others, strive to strengthen it. And when the bars of Damascus have been crushed and broken, he will also destroy the inhabitants of the plain of Aven, which is interpreted “toil,” or “grief.” For all heretics have striven with excessive toil and grief to find some order and consistency for their heresy. And I will cut off a tribe from the men of Charran, which in our tongue is rendered “holes.” For they have no windows, through which the light of truth might enter to them; but certain holes and hidden passages, through which harmful and unclean creatures enter.

And Aram shall be led captive, a people lofty and exalted, who is puffed up with pride, and promises himself heavenly things, so that he may be taken for his own salvation: and according to the Hebrew he is carried away to Cyrene, where is the calling of God. (Verse 6 and following.) Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Gaza, and for four, I will not convert him, because he carried away a perfect captivity, to shut it up in Idumea, and I will send fire into the wall of Gaza, and it shall devour its houses, and I will destroy the inhabitant of Azotus, and him that holds the sceptre from Ascalon, and I will turn my hand against Accaron, and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish, saith the Lord.

The Septuagint: Thus saith the Lord: For three impieties of Gaza, and for four, I will not turn away from them, because they led captive the captivity of Solomon, to shut it up in Idumea; and I will send forth fire upon the walls of Gaza, and it shall devour its foundations, and I will destroy the inhabitants of Azotus, and the tribe shall be taken away from Ascalon, and I will bring my hand upon Accaron, and the remnant of the foreigners shall perish, saith the Lord. The Lord threatens in the Law that he will render the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation: not by an equality of judgment, so that some sin and others are punished, but by the greatness of his clemency, since he always waits for repentance: and what is committed in the first generation he does not correct and amend at once, until the third and fourth generation has come.

Something of this sort the apostle Paul also says to the Romans: Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and patience, and long-suffering; not knowing that the benignity of God leadeth thee to penance? But according to thy hardness and impenitent heart, thou treasurest up to thyself wrath, against the day of wrath, and revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his works. What he says, then, is this: I have waited a long time for them to do penance, and therefore I was unwilling to punish the sinners, so that, being converted at some time, they might recover soundness. But because they do the same things a third and fourth time, I am forced to change my sentence, and to correct the offenders with blows.

Let us see, then, what the Philistines and their cities have sinned, whom the Septuagint always renders as “foreigners”; for wherever in the Old Testament we read ἀλλοφύλους, that is, “foreigners,” it is not the common name of all foreign nations that is to be understood, but properly the Philistines, who are now called Palestinians. What did Gaza do, that it should provoke the Lord to anger and vengeance? It carried away a perfect captivity of the people of the Jews, and shut it up in Idumea, in order to sell to the Idumeans those whom it had taken from the Jews. Instead of “perfect captivity,” the Septuagint has interpreted “the captivity of Solomon”: taking the Hebrew word SALMA (שלמה), which means perfect and complete, for the name of Solomon. Accordingly Aquila translated ἀπαρτισμένην, and ἀναπεπληρωμένην; Symmachus and Theodotion, τελείαν, which signifies not Solomon, but perfect and complete: so that none of the captives remained who was not handed over to the Idumeans.

Hence he says that he will send fire into the walls and houses, or foundations, of Gaza, which shall devour and consume everything. And because we read of five cities of the Philistines, which were struck with plagues on account of the injury done to the ark, after Gaza he passes to Azotus, which is called ESDOD (אשדוד), and again to Ascalon, and with a terrible voice he threatens that he will destroy the inhabitants of Azotus, and him that holds the sceptre of Ascalon—namely, the royal power, or the tribe of Ascalon—so that none may remain there, not even men of the last age, who support their trembling limbs with a guiding staff. And again he turns his hand, to strike Accaron. And having enumerated four cities, he comprehends the rest of the cities of the Philistines in one phrase. And the remnant of the Philistines shall perish: by which we ought to understand either the city of Geth, or all the villages that lie subject to the aforesaid cities.

According to the tropology it seems it should be expounded to us thus: Gaza, which in Hebrew is called AZA (עזה), sounds like “strength” or “dominion”: Solomon, “peaceable”: Idumean, “bloody,” and “earthly”: Azotus, that is, Esdod, “the fire of the breast,” or “of the uncle”; though some, reading dor for dod incorrectly, think it means “the fire of generation”: Ascalon is interpreted “murderous fire,” or “weighed and suspended”: Accaron, στείρωσις, that is, “sterility,” and ἐκρίζωσις, which is interpreted “uprooting.” Therefore Gaza, which promises to itself the strength and dominion of its own knowledge, is accused in that it shut up in Idumea captives from the household of Solomon. These I think are the teachers of the Jews, and all who follow the killing letter, and refuse to receive the life-giving spirit; but whatever they interpret and understand they wish to be earthly, nor do they hear the Lord expounding parables to his disciples, and saying to them: He that hath ears to hear, let him hear: especially since the Apostle understands manifest history in the two Testaments.

One upon Mount Sinai, which is Agar, and is in bondage with her children; the other upon Jerusalem which is free, which is our mother. Therefore he says he will send fire into the walls of Gaza, and into all its arguments, with which it strives to surround and defend its lies. And when he has sent fire into the walls, its houses, or foundations, shall be devoured—whatever firmness it might have had, and whatever was built up by the art of dialectic. From Azotus also, which is likewise of the foreigners, he will take away the inhabitant: whose breasts, because it follows the letter, are full not of milk but of fire; and because it lies in saying it has the fire of an uncle, its whole generation is to be assigned to the fires (Hosea 9:14).

And he will take away the sceptre, or the tribe, from Ascalon, where the murderous fire is. For just as the fire of the Lord will save those whose hearts it has penetrated, so this fire which falls from heaven like lightning, which kindles the arrows of the devil, will kill whomever it has breathed upon. He will also turn his hand upon Accaron, where sterility and uprooting are. For whoever has not received spiritual understanding will hear through Hosea: Give them, O Lord. What wilt thou give them? Give them a barren womb, and dry breasts. And so that he might comprehend everything at once in one phrase, he says that he will destroy all the remnants of the Philistines—whether the city of Geth, in which is the devil’s winepress, or all the rest of the Philistines, who are interpreted as “falling by the cup.” For when they have become drunk, they will fall, and wallow in their own vomit.

Verse 9. Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Tyre, and for four, I will not convert him, because they shut up a perfect captivity in Idumea, and did not remember the covenant of brothers, and I will send fire into the wall of Tyre, and it shall devour its houses. The Septuagint: Thus saith the Lord: For three impieties of Tyre, and for four, I will not turn away from her, because they shut up the captivity of Solomon in Idumea, and did not remember the covenant of brothers. And I will send forth fire upon the walls of Tyre, and it shall devour its foundations. The same three and four impieties or crimes which he had imputed to Damascus, Gaza, and Azotus, and Ascalon, and Accaron, and the rest of the cities of the Philistines, he also brings against Tyre, and reproaches her for having shut up in Idumea a captivity accomplished and perfect, of which we have spoken above: And they did not remember the covenant of their brothers.

We ask how the Tyrians are brothers of the Jews. Here he calls “brothers” those who are friends and joined by close ties, because Hiram, prince of Tyre, had friendship with David and Solomon, to such a degree that he even had cedar wood brought by rafts as far as Joppa for the building of the Temple and the palace, and these gave the Tyrians grain and oil in return, and gave him twenty cities in Basan as a gift, which he, because they were full of grass, was unwilling to accept (Chron. 2). He says, therefore, that he will send fire into her walls, and will devour her houses or foundations, which the prophet Ezekiel, in his vision of Tyre, records that Nabuchodonosor, king of the Chaldeans, did, where he says: He shall surround thee with fortifications, and shall cast up a mound round about.

And again: Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon made his army serve a hard service against Tyre; every head was made bald, and every shoulder was made bare, and there was no reward given him, nor to his army, for Tyre, for the service that he served against it for me: because his army had carried the mound needed to take Tyre, which had formerly been an island. History relates that Alexander of Macedon did the same thing, that he made a peninsula out of the island, which the Greeks call χερρόνησος. Tyre is interpreted “tribulation,” or “that which curdles”: and all perverse doctrine strives to seize the truth and shut it up in earthly senses, and did not remember the covenant of its brothers, meaning that we ought to ascend from the letter to the spirit, from earthly things to heavenly ones; and it has been commanded us to write the sacred Scripture in our heart in a threefold manner. But God will send fire into all the fortifications of Tyre, which shall devour not only the walls but also its foundations.

Concerning the captivity of Solomon, for which in the Hebrew is found “consummated and perfect,” we have spoken above. (Verses 11 and following.) Thus saith the Lord: For three crimes of Edom, and for four, I will not convert him: because he pursued his brother with the sword, and violated his mercy toward him, and kept his fury, and reserved his indignation to the end: I will send a fire into Theman, and it shall devour the houses of Bosra. The Septuagint: Thus saith the Lord: For three impieties of Idumaea, and for four, I will not turn from them, because he pursued his brother with the sword, and violated the womb upon the earth, and seized his own horror as a witness, and kept his violence forever: and I will send forth a fire into Theman, and it shall devour the foundations of its walls.

Edom is the same as Esau, so called on account of the cooking of the red lentil, by whose food he lost his birthright: he is called by another name Seir, that is, hairy and shaggy. Whence the mountains of the Idumaeans are called the mountains of Seir, and from Edom in Greek speech it is called Idumaea.

This one pursued his brother with the sword, namely the sons of Jacob, concerning whom it is written more fully in the blessings of Isaac, by which he blessed first Jacob, and afterward Esau: so that the hatred of the brothers might be preserved in their descendants, and the nation of Idumaea might pursue its brothers to such a degree that, when they were going out of Egypt, it would not even grant them passage into the holy land; and not only did he pursue his brother with the sword, but he violated his mercy, or his womb, or, as Symmachus interpreted more plainly, his own bowels: so that he forgot brotherhood, and hardened the bowels of mercy, and did not know himself to be a brother, and despised the womb of Rebecca, who had brought forth twin infants in one birth. And what follows: And he kept his fury still further, and preserved his indignation to the end, shows an ancient hatred, in that they were never joined to each other in peace.

Whence He threatens punishment for their crimes, and says: I will send a fire into Theman, which is the region of the Idumaeans, and inclines toward the southern part, which is interpreted Theman: which province is called not only Theman, but also Daron and Nageb, because it faces the east wind and the south wind and the southwest wind. And what he says: It shall devour the houses of Bosra, does not signify, as some think, another city, but Idumaea itself, meaning "fortified" and "defended," according to that which we read in Isaiah: Who is this that comes from Edom, with garments dyed from Bosra: this one beautiful in his robe, walking in the greatness of his strength? Whatever we have said concerning Esau and Jacob, let us refer to the Jews and the Christian people.

For those earthly and bloodthirsty ones persecuted their brother Jacob, who supplanted them and took away their birthright, and they persecuted him with the sword, so that they made public the substance and possessions of believers, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles: and they violated mercy and the rights of nature, and forgot their mother Rebecca, who is interpreted "patience," and who begot them both together in Christ; and holding to their ancient fury and wrath, even to this day in their synagogues they blaspheme the Christian people under the name of Nazarenes: and provided that they may kill us, they are willing to be burned by fire themselves. But the Lord will send fire into Theman, into the deserted and dry places of Judaea (which are in no way watered by the rains of the prophets), and it shall devour all their fortifications, or the foundations of its walls, so that, with every sense of the letter falling down, the Church of Christ the Lord may be built upon its foundations.

For "mercy," the Septuagint translated "womb." And for "fury," "horror": and for "indignation," "violence," being led by the ambiguity of the words: because REHEM (רחם) signifies both "womb" and "mercy": APHO (אפו) signifies both "his fury" and "his horror": and EBRATH (עברה) is said to mean both "indignation" and "violence." Further, ARMANOTH (ארמנות), which we have interpreted as "houses," Aquila and Symmachus translated as βάρεις, that is, "dwellings"; Theodotion translated as "inhabitants": only the Septuagint, both here and above, said "foundations." (Verses 14, 15.) Thus saith the Lord: For three crimes of the sons of Ammon, and for four, I will not convert him: because he ripped open the pregnant women of Galaad, to enlarge his border; and I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabba, and it shall devour its houses with shouting in the day of battle, and with a whirlwind in the day of commotion: and Melchom shall go into captivity, he and his princes together, saith the Lord.

The Septuagint: Thus saith the Lord: For three impieties of the sons of Ammon, and for four, I will not turn from them, because he ripped open the pregnant women of the Galaadites, that he might enlarge his borders: and I will kindle a fire upon the walls of Rabba, and it shall devour its foundations with a cry in the day of battle, and it shall be shaken in the day of its consummation: and their kings shall go into captivity, their priests: and their princes together, saith the Lord. The divine word rebukes the sons of Ammon, who were begotten of the stock of Lot, and dwell in Arabia, where Philadelphia now is: as to why, under Saul, king of Judaea, Naas the Ammonite, their prince, laid waste Jabes Galaad, and ripped open her pregnant women, that he might enlarge his borders, and subject all Galaaditis to his rule.

Whence He threatens that He will kindle a fire in the walls of Rabba, which was the metropolis of the Ammonites, so that its houses might be devoured amid the shouting and wailing of the conquering army: in the day of commotion and whirlwind, when its captives shall be led away, Nabuchodonosor being victorious: and the idol of the Ammonites, which is called Melchom, that is, "their king," shall be carried off to the Assyrians: and its princes, that is, its priests, shall likewise be led away. "Priests" is not found in the Hebrew, but "princes." The Septuagint therefore added "priests," so that, if you wish to know who those princes were, you may hear "priests." But between the cruelty of Damascus and that of the sons of Ammon there is this difference: that the former crushed Galaad in iron wagons, or with iron saws crushed the pregnant women of Galaad: whereas these ripped open the pregnant women of Galaad, to enlarge their border.

In the Damascenes, who drink blood, are understood the heretics, who not only tore the people of God away from the Church, but also crushed them, and ground them with iron teeth, of whom it is written: Why do they devour my people, as they eat bread? In the sons of Ammon, which is interpreted "people of sorrow," or "my people," we understand the schismatics, who indeed separate the deceived multitude from the Church of God, and tear apart and divide untutored souls, which have but recently conceived the word of Christ; yet they do not do this with the cruelty by which heretics slaughter all whom they deceive, but, remaining in the same rule of faith, they desire to enlarge their borders, and to send their name of glory on to posterity.

And so the Lord threatens that He will set fire to the walls of Rabba, that is, of the multitude, in the day of wailing and war, of commotion and whirlwind, and that their king, the author of the schism, shall go into captivity, and that the princes of the Church shall bow their necks beneath the yoke.

(Verses 1 and following.) Thus saith the Lord: For three crimes of Moab, and for four I will not convert him: because he burned the bones of the king of Idumea even to ashes. And I will send fire into Moab, and it shall devour the houses of Carioth: and Moab shall die with the sound, with the clangor of the trumpet: and I will destroy the judge out of the midst thereof, and will slay all the princes thereof with him, saith the Lord.

LXX: Thus saith the Lord: For three impieties of Moab and for four I will not turn away from them: because he burned the bones of the king of Idumea into ashes: and I will send forth fire into Moab, and it shall devour the foundations of its cities, and Moab shall die in weakness with a cry, and with the voice of the trumpet: and I will destroy the judge out of it, and will slay all its princes, saith the Lord. Not only the children of Ammon, but also Moab was begotten of the seed of Lot, who was the son of Abraham's brother. And that God might show Himself to be the Lord of all, and that all souls belong to His empire, He who is their creator, He avenges also the injury done to the king of the Idumeans, indeed the crime perpetrated against him by the Moabites, that they burned his bones even to ashes, and did not even end their cruelty and rage with death.

The Hebrews relate that the bones of the king of Idumea, already buried, who had gone up against Moab with Joram king of Israel and Josaphat king of Judah, were afterward, in revenge for grief, torn up and burned by the Moabites. For this cause, therefore, they say, God declares that He will send fire into Moab, either into the metropolis of the Moabites, from which the whole province took its name, or into the whole province, so that it may devour the houses of Carioth, which is the name of a city: although the Seventy have interpreted it as "of its cities," that is, of Moab: and it shall perish in the sound and in the wailing of the conquering army: of which in Hebrew the one is called SAON (שאון), the other THERUA (תרועה): and in the clangor of the trumpet or bugle, for this is what SOPHAR (שופר) signifies. And when Moab has perished, the counsel of the princes and judges alike will be vain, its cities and leaders alike being overthrown.

But just as it is not fitting to transfer the "perfect captivity," or that of Solomon, and confine it in Idumea, so that from lofty and heavenly things it may make humble and earthly things, which Gaza and Tyre are recorded to have done: so we ought not to burn the bones of the king of Idumea, and dissolve them into cinder and ash.

The Jews transfer the spiritual understanding into Idumean flesh: and the royal sense, which is contained in the letter, and is most solid and firm, they weaken and diminish by certain genealogies and superfluous traditions, and reduce it to dust; and not only do they do this, but all heretics do so, who wish, in the manner of a human likeness, that God sit upon a lofty and elevated throne, and place His feet upon the earth, lest they hang; that He have a nose, with which He might smell the odor of good fragrance; eyes, with which He might see; hands, through which He might work; feet, by which He might walk; ears, with which He might hear; a mouth, with which He might speak; teeth, with which He might grind food. He who reads that Judah went in to Thamar the harlot and begot two sons of her: if he follows the shamefulness of the letter, and does not ascend to the beauty of spiritual understanding, will burn the bones of the king of Idumea.

He who thinks that Hosea took a harlot wife (Hosea I), and perceives nothing more in the saying than is contained in the simple words, will burn the bones of the king of Idumea. And therefore the Lord will send fire into Moab, which is interpreted "from the father," because indeed he was born of God, but abandoned Him. And it will devour the cities, or towns, thereof, which is interpreted Carioth. Whence also Cariathiarim is translated into our language, "village of the woods." And Moab will die in no other way than with clamor, and sound, and wailing, and the blast of the bugle, so that they may be overwhelmed by lofty senses, which in the sacred books are compared to the blasts of the trumpet.

Then the divine word destroys the judges and princes also, and all who preside over earthly works, and commands the teachers of the Church: Go up upon a high mountain, thou that bringest good tidings to Sion, lift up thy voice, thou that preachest to Jerusalem. (Verses 4, 5.) Thus saith the Lord: For three crimes of Judah, and for four I will not convert him: because he has cast away the law of the Lord, and has not kept His commandments: for their idols, after which their fathers had gone, deceived them, and I will send fire into Judah, and it shall devour the houses of Jerusalem. LXX: Thus saith the Lord: For three impieties of the children of Judah, and for four I will not turn away from them: because they have cast away the law of the Lord, and have not kept His precepts, and were deceived by their vanities, which their fathers followed: and I will send forth fire into Judah, and it shall devour the foundations of Jerusalem.

To all the aforesaid cities and peoples—Damascus and Azotus, Ascalon, Gaza, Accaron, and the rest of the towns of the Philistines, Tyre also and Idumea, and the children of Ammon and Moab—He does not reproach them for having cast away the law of God and despised His commandments; for they did not have a written law, but a natural one. Hence He says that they violated their own bowels and the bowels of mercy, and crushed with iron wagons the pregnant women of Galaad, and transferred the captivity of Solomon, or the perfect one, and shut it up in Idumea, and did not remember the covenant of their fathers, and persecuted their brother with the sword: and broke forth into such—I do not say cruelty, but rage—that they burned the bones of the king of Idumea, and did not suffer death to be the utmost of all evils.

But Judah, in whom at that time, when these things were said, was the religion of God and the temple and the ceremonies, who had received the law, and the precepts, and the judgments, and the testimonies, and the commandments (concerning the difference of which it is discussed more fully in the eighteenth psalm, and in the hundred and eighteenth), is rebuked by the Lord and convicted, and is about to receive deserved punishments, because he cast away His law, and did not keep His commandments. Which because he cast away and despised, in order and by way their idols deceived him. For he could not have been deceived before by idols, unless he had first repelled the law of the Lord, and had not done His commandments. These are the idols after which their fathers went in Egypt, the Egyptians fashioning images of a calf, and worshipping Beelphegor, and cultivating Astaroth and Baalim.

Whence the Lord threatens that He will send fire also into Judah, which will devour the houses, and the foundations of Jerusalem: not of that Jerusalem in which the vision of peace abides, but of those which have arisen under the name of Jerusalem in various cities. Whatever we have said of Judah is referred to the Church, in which is true confession, and the peace of the Lord, and the vision of truth. And therefore it is charged that it has despised the law of God, and has not done His commandments, and that each one, worshipping his own vices and sins, has begun to have as god him by whom he has been conquered, as the apostle Peter says: For by whom a man is overcome, of the same also he is the servant (II Peter II, 19). The miser worships gold, the glutton his belly, the lustful man his member and Beelphegor: the wanton woman, who, though living in delights, is dead, worships venereal pleasures.

Whence the Lord will send fire into Judah, and it will devour the wicked houses, and the vicious foundations, which have lost the glory of Jerusalem; and at the same time we learn that the Creator of all has care not only for Judah and Israel, but for all the nations, and, according to the Apostle, that those who have sinned without the law shall perish without the law, and those who have committed sins in the law shall be judged by the law of the Lord. (Verse 6 and following) Thus says the Lord: For three crimes of Israel, and for four, I will not convert him: because he has sold the just man for silver, and the poor man for shoes, who grind the heads of the poor into the dust of the earth, and turn aside the way of the humble, and the son and his father went in unto the maid, to profane my holy name, and they lay upon garments taken in pledge beside every altar, and drank the wine of the condemned in the house of their God.

LXX: Thus says the Lord: For three impieties of Israel, and for four I will not turn away from them: because he has sold the just man for silver, and the poor man for shoes, who trample upon the dust of the earth: and struck with the fist the heads of the poor, and turned aside the way of the humble, and the son and his father went in unto the same maid, to defile the name of their God: and binding their garments with cords, they made awnings beside the altar, and drank wine gotten by extortion in the house of their God. He therefore places Israel last, that is, the ten tribes, since nearly all that follows we have already stated was written concerning them, so that the prophetic discourse might contain the order of the book under one continuous text.

Their first crime, then, or impiety, enumerated in three offenses, or four, is that they sold a man for money, and a just man too, who is the more admirable in this, that he was not so overcome by poverty as to do anything unjust: and if indeed they had sold the poor just man for a price, driven by the necessity of hunger, there would be some excuse for the crime: but as it is, for a most vile thing, shoes, with which they trample dust and dung, they sold the precious soul of a man. These, according to the Septuagint, strike the poor man on the head; according to the Hebrew, they grind the heads of the poor into the dust of the earth, and are raised to such pride that they refuse to walk with common men. And lest this crime should seem small, the son and the father went in to one maid, to violate the holy name of God.

Whatever, then, is done shamefully, is referred back as an injury to God, who says: Through you my name is blasphemed among the nations. This is also what the Apostle writes to the Corinthians: It is actually reported that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even found among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who did this deed might be removed from among you. It often happens that a father defiles his son's wife, or a father-in-law his daughter-in-law, both of which are forbidden in the Law: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, and you shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law. The letter, then, if it is observed, has great usefulness.

And because every shameful act, once it has passed the bounds of modesty, piles crime upon crime, and always advances toward worse things, the ten tribes also lay upon pledged garments beside every altar, which the Hebrews interpret thus: upon the garments of those who refused to go to idols, and which they had violently seized, they lay feasting in the idol's temple. But according to the Septuagint, so great was their contempt for God, that they stretched with cords beside the altar their own garments, in which they slept or committed fornication, and made παραπετάσματα, that is, veils or coverings, so that no one might see those fornicating in the Temple; and given over to drunkenness and lust, they even bought with extortion the very wine that they drank, not from their own labor: and this they did in the shrine of their god, so that those whom they thought to be gods they defiled with shame and debauchery. These things are said, and thus expounded, by those who follow the plain historical sense.

But we, who have taught in Hosea that under the name of Israel, and Samaria, and Ephraim, and the sons of Joseph (from which tribe Jeroboam came, who separated the people from the kingdom of David and Jerusalem and the temple of God), heretics are signified: let us understand also now, after Judah and Jerusalem, which is interpreted as the Church, that the prophetic discourse is directed to the heretics, who sell the holy and just man, but poor, for money. The poor and just man is the man of the Church, who does not have the knowledge of the Scriptures, but content with simplicity, does what is commanded, of whom it is written: The poor man endures not threats. And to the Galatians: Only that we should be mindful of the poor.

All the heretics do these things for the sake of riches, and for shoes, with which they trample the dust of the earth: for since they cannot stand with bare feet upon the holy ground (upon which Moses stood, and Joshua son of Nun: whence the apostles are commanded to walk with bare feet, lest they have anything of death and of skins, which refer to the flesh), therefore they strike the poor on the head. And the Savior commanded his disciples that if perhaps, since they were still living on earth, anything mortal had clung to their works, they should shake the dust off their feet. But the heretics strike the heads of the poor, although this is not read in the Hebrew: because they have turned aside the way of the humble. That way of the humble is he who says: I am the way, the life, and the truth, who calls us to walk in him, and says: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.

But all the leaders of heretics swell with pride, of whom the Apostle also speaks: Lest, being puffed up, he fall into the judgment of the devil, who says: I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven; I will be like the Most High. Whence also God resists proud heretics: but to the humble of the Church he gives grace. The son also and the father went in to one maid, to violate and defile the holy name of God. We often read that the people of the Jews is our father, Paul saying: I would not have you ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. And in another place: Ask your fathers, and they will tell you; your elders, and they will say to you. And again: Instead of your fathers, sons are born to you.

Whence also the Church of the Gentiles says: The sons of my mother have fought against me. We, then, are the sons, and the people of the Jews is the father. We sin and commit crime, when, along with the observance of the sabbath, the injury of circumcision, we enter, with our parent, into the ceremonies of the abolished law, to whom the Apostle says: Behold, I Paul say to you, that if you be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. And again: Those who are justified by the law have fallen from grace. He who enters the Church in such a way as to keep the Law within the Gospel, this man enters, with the father, unto the maid, and commits fornication, and violates the name of the Lord. Whence those who say that it does no harm to the Jews, after the coming of Christ, if they so believe in the Lord as also to keep the precepts of the Law, defile father and son in one act of fornication.

But also, binding their garments with cords, they make coverings beside the altar, putting forward the faith of Christ as a pretext. For as many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ, and they set their garments, which they have bound with the cords of sins, before the eyes of onlookers, so that their disgraceful deeds may not be seen; so that whoever looks upon the altar may not suspect fornication. All the heretics do this, fornicating under the Christian name, and covering their errors and lies with the testimonies of the Scriptures. Whence also the apostles spread their garments upon the colt of an ass, that the Lord might sit more softly, and might tread, from the Law and the Prophets, the road so spread.

On the contrary, the heretics do not spread their garments beneath the footsteps of the Savior; but bind them beside the altar, and use them as a cover for their sins, so that they may drink wine gotten by extortion, or of the condemned, who, by the very fact that they have gone out from the Church, are condemned. This wine is the wine of Sodom, the fury of dragons and asps, which, whoever drinks it, cannot be healed. But they drink this wine not in the house of God, where the temple is and Jerusalem; but in the house of their own god, whom they have fashioned for themselves by artful speech. (Verse 9 and following) But I destroyed the Amorite before their face, whose height was the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oak: and I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots beneath.

I am he who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you in the desert forty years, that you might possess the land of the Amorite: and I raised up prophets from among your sons, and Nazarites from among your young men. LXX likewise: But I took away the Amorite from before their face: whose loftiness was like the height of the cedar, and he was strong as the oak: and I dried up his fruit from above, and his roots beneath. I brought you out of the land of Egypt, and led you about in the desert forty years, that you might possess the land of the Amorites: and I took some of your sons for prophets, and some of your young men for sanctification.

You indeed sold the just man for silver, and the poor man for shoes, striking his head, or grinding the heads of the poor in the dust, and you turned aside the way of the humble, to such an extent that father and son went in to one maid, and violated or defiled my holy name, and you bound your garments, defiled by brothels and fornication, with the bonds of sins: so that in a holy place you committed adultery, and joining injustice to drunkenness, you drank another's wine, and did this in the house of your God. But I, on the contrary, in return for the evils you rendered me, bestowed good things upon you, so that as you went out of Egypt, I destroyed before your face Sihon, king of the Amorites, who was as lofty and strong as the cedar and the oak, and I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots beneath.

I brought you out of Egypt, and made you reach the holy land by a long circuit of forty years, that you might possess the land of the Amorite, of which we spoke above: which Moses divided among the sons of Reuben and Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh; and after such great benefits I added this also, that I took to myself prophets from among your sons, and from your young men, or chosen ones, I made Nazarites, whom the Septuagint interpreted as sanctified ones. Nor indeed, where the praises of God are spoken of, must the order of history be preserved; but it often happens that what was done first is spoken of last, and what is last is referred to first.

This the seventy-seventh psalm, and the hundred-and-fourth, where the power of signs, not their order, is described, can teach us, and the titles of the psalms, of which let us give only two examples, the third psalm, and the fifty-first, where things done earlier are narrated last, and things we read as last are referred to at the beginning. For we read first, in the book of Kings, of Doeg the Edomite, which is the title of the fifty-first psalm, before Absalom rose up against his father, which is noted in the title of the third psalm. So too the Amorite was destroyed, or blotted out, last, which is now told first, and that God made them go up out of the land of Egypt, and led them back into the wilderness for forty years, we read as happening first, which things are here told last, in reverse order.

Before, then, God led us out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace, he destroyed before our face the Amorite, who is called "bitter," or λαλητός, that is, "speaking," or "famous," and much spoken of in frequent report. This Amorite, and the king of the Amorites, is called Sihon, a fruitless and sterile tree, not because it bears no fruit, but because it bears bad fruit, of which it is said: Every tree that does not bring forth good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire. And of the false prophets we read: Who come in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves, you shall know them by their fruits: namely, by their bad fruits. Whether, then, it bears no fruit, or bears fruit but not good, it is called a fruitless tree.

This Sihon, of whom it is written: Now the axe is laid to the root of the trees, because he was a fruitless tree, was cut down by the striking of the Lord, whose height is compared to the height of cedars, of whom we read: I have seen the wicked exalted and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon: and I passed by, and lo, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found. And it beautifully says that he passed by, because from him who passes out of this world, and who can say: Passing by, I will see this great sight, the cedar is taken away, and the place of pride cannot be found. His strength also is like the oak, a tree most hard and strong. From whose name Philo, a most eloquent man among the Hebrews, thinks Esau is called δρύϊνον, that is, "oaken" and "of oak wood": though Esau can also be understood as ποίημα, that is, "a work" or "a made thing," so that it be referred to evil deeds.

Of this strong and robust one the Lord speaks in the Gospel: When a strong man armed keeps his court, all things which he possesses are in peace: but if a stronger than he shall come upon him and overcome him, he will take away all his armor wherein he trusted, and will distribute his spoils. And the Lord granted to us, that the fruit of this Amorite Sihon, whom we said is interpreted as the fruitless tree, since it was bad, he crushed from above and took away, lest anyone, thinking it good, should eat and perish. Its roots also he cut down and broke up, so that nothing of the evil tree might sprout afterward.

The Lord himself made us go out from the world, and through forty years—a number which always signifies affliction, and the mourning and sorrow of fasting—to arrive, through tribulations and hardships, into the holy land, so that we might first possess the land of the Amorite, and that his former kingdom might become our possession, and afterward he raised up from among our sons Prophets, all the holy men who received the prophetic spirit, of whom we read more fully in the first epistle to the Corinthians. And from among our young men, or chosen ones, he took Nazarites and sanctified ones, who, sacrificing their souls to God, do not touch the wine which can inebriate and overturn the state of the mind: that they might have the hair of Samson, in whose head (since the head of the man is Christ) strength and victory resided. Verse 12. Is it not so, sons of Israel, says the Lord, and you gave wine to the Nazarites to drink, and you commanded the prophets, saying: Do not prophesy. LXX likewise.

When I bestowed upon you such great benefits, that I destroyed your adversaries, and gave you their land, and chose prophets from among your sons and young men, and Nazarites, and consecrated them to my worship. Can you say that I have not done these things, and that I have denied you my mercy, by which you live? You who broke out into such madness that you made my Nazarites drunk with wine, to whom it is commanded by the law that they should not drink anything that can inebriate: and you commanded the prophets not to prophesy in my name. Which also Amasias the priest of Bethel commanded to the prophet Amos, whom we now have in hand: and it was commanded to Jeremiah by the king that he should not speak the words of the Lord to the people, to the extent that he even burned his words in the fire.

From this passage Tatian, the leader of the Encratites, strives to build his heresy, asserting that wine should not be drunk, since it is also commanded by the law that Nazarites should not drink wine, and now they are accused by the prophet who give wine to the Nazarites to drink. If they follow the letter in all things, and impose Jewish fables upon the Churches of Christ, then they ought also to grow their hair, and not eat dried or fresh grapes, and not go in to their dead mother or father; and if perchance they have done these things and have been overcome by human frailty or necessity, let them shave their heads, and let all the days of their consecration and labor be void.

But if they do not do these things, nor can they, in the manner of Jewish tavern-keepers, mix water with wine, let them understand the shadows as pointing to the truth, the necessity of the Law as pointing to the grace of the Gospel, and that drunkenness by which the vigor of the soul is inebriated and overwhelmed by worldly cares, and that they command the prophets, saying: Do not prophesy, who, overcome by envy, forbid learned men to teach what they know. To bring forth speech.

And though the Lord says: Go and tell this people, they on the contrary command, do not speak in the name of the Lord, especially if he who teaches provides not for base gain and glory and boasting, but for the profit of readers and hearers. (Verses 13 and following.) Behold, I will creak under you, as a cart laden with hay creaks, and flight shall perish swiftly, and the strong shall not obtain his strength, and the mighty shall not save his soul, and he that holdeth the bow shall not stand, and the swift of foot shall not be delivered, and the rider of the horse shall not save his soul, and he that is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day, saith the Lord.

The Septuagint: Wherefore behold, I will roll under you as a cart full of stubble is rolled, and flight shall perish from the runner, and the strong shall not obtain his strength, and the warrior shall not save his soul, and the archer shall not stand his ground, and the swift of foot shall not be able to be saved, and the horseman shall not save his soul, and his heart shall be found among the mighty, and he shall flee away naked in that day, saith the Lord. I, who bestowed benefits upon you, and brought you out of the land of Egypt, and slew the Amorite before your face, that you might possess his land, and raised up prophets from among your sons, and Nazarites from among your young men—you made my Nazarites drunk with wine, and said to the prophets: Prophesy not.

Therefore, as a cart heavily laden with a burden of stubble or hay wails aloud with creaking and noise, so I, no longer bearing your sins, and delivering you as stubble to the fire, will cry out and say: Flight shall perish from the swift one—whom the Hebrews understand to be Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had earlier fled into Egypt. But here let us take, not the princes themselves, but their houses and offspring. And the strong shall not obtain his strength: they interpret the strong one as Baasha, who was most ready for wars. And the mighty shall not save his soul: here they understand this of Omri. And he that holdeth the bow shall not stand, or shall not endure: this they think is said of Jehu the son of Nimshi, who struck Joram king of Israel with an arrow. And the swift of foot shall not be delivered: they understand this of Menahem, who, hastening in vain, sent gifts to the king of the Assyrians.

And the rider of the horse shall not save his soul: they interpret this of Pekah the son of Remaliah, who, joined with Aram, that is, the Syrian, under king Ahaz of Judah, laid waste many things. And he that is stout of heart, among the mighty, shall flee away naked in that day, saith the Lord. Only Hoshea, who was the last king of the ten tribes, and who strove to call back the erring people to the worship of God, shall go out, as it were, naked from the fire. He calls him naked because under him the ten tribes were taken captive. This is what the Hebrews suppose, and as it has been handed down to us by them, we have faithfully set it forth. But now let us return to our own exposition. God threatens that he will roll the cart under them, laden with hay or stubble, so that, since they have no wheat to be stored in barns, their hay and stubble may be burned up in fire.

This is the hay of which the prophet speaks: Let them be as the grass of the housetops, which withereth before it be plucked up. And: All flesh is grass. And that is the stubble over whose burning the prophet mournfully laments, saying: Woe is me! For I am become as one that gathereth stubble at the harvest, and as gleanings of grapes at the vintage, when there is no cluster to eat, no first-ripe fruit. Woe is me, my soul! For the godly man has perished from the earth, and there is none upright among men: all lie in wait for blood, and so on. This is the hay and stubble of which the Apostle also speaks: Wood, hay, stubble—the work of every man shall be made manifest: for it shall be revealed by fire in the day of the Lord. And the cart that is rolled is that of which we read in Isaiah: Moab shall be trodden down, as straw is trodden down for the dunghill, in a cart.

And in another place he says: I will make thee as a new sharp threshing wain having teeth like a saw, and thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat the hills small; and after you have crushed the mountains and hills, flight shall perish from the swift one, as Paul says: Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? And in another place: Ye did run well; who did hinder you, that ye should not obey the truth? Whence also, fearing for himself, he says: Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

All these things he did, lest flight should perish from the swift one; wherefore, when he had now reached the goal, and received the prize of victory, he said with confidence: I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me in that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. If we flee with quickened pace, sin will not be able to overtake us; but if malice binds our feet, we shall say with the prophet to God: Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy face? Of bad runners the Apostle speaks: It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. There follows: And the strong shall not obtain his strength: not because he is strong, but because he boasts himself to be strong.

Or he who trusts in his own strength, and not in the mercy of God, according to what is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent: not that true wisdom can perish, or the understanding of truth be brought to nothing, but that the wisdom perishes of those who seem to themselves to be wise, and trust in their own learning. The mighty also, or the warrior, who shall not save his soul, is he who by no means possesses the armor of the Apostle, having a shield, but not of faith; girded about the loins, but not in truth; clothed with a breastplate, but not of righteousness; bearing a sword, but not of salvation. Such a warrior does not sanctify the battle, nor can he wage the wars of the Lord, fighting against truth on behalf of falsehood. Such a warrior cannot say: Blessed be the Lord my God, who teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight. My mercy and my refuge.

The heretics also have their archers, who, bending the bow in vain, could not withstand the arrow of the Lord, who speaks through Isaiah: But I, as a chosen arrow in the quiver of the Lord. These are the archers of whom David also sings: Behold the sinners have bent their bow, they have prepared their arrows in the quiver, that they may shoot in the dark at the upright of heart. And he that is swift of foot, he says, shall not be delivered—he who, through sharpness of wit, runs through the testimonies of the Scriptures, and by the eloquence of orators or the sophisms of dialecticians strives to suppress the truth, and is entangled in it and shall fall, because he trusts not in God but in his own feet. Also the rider of the horse shall not save his soul, who does not know what is said through the prophet: A horse is a vain thing for safety. And he does not know that it is written: All they that ride upon horses have slumbered.

This one shall not save his soul; but perishing shall hear: Some in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. They are entangled and fallen: but we are risen, and stand upright. Also he that is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked. This passage can be explained in two ways: either he can escape for this reason, that he has stripped off the old man and the skin-tunics of sins, and is weighed down by no burden; or, on the contrary, he is naked because he has lost the garment of Christ, of which the Apostle says: Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. And in another place: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. His strength will profit him nothing; but in the day of battle and contest he will flee before his pursuers, and, unable to resist without the armor of the Apostle, he will turn his back to the enemy.

(Verses 1, 2.)

Hear the word that the Lord hath spoken concerning you, O children of Israel, concerning the whole family which I brought up out of the land of Egypt, saying: You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities.

The Septuagint: Hear this word, which the Lord hath spoken concerning you, O house of Israel, and against every tribe which I brought up out of the land of Egypt, saying: Nevertheless, you have I known of all the tribes of the earth: therefore will I take vengeance upon you for all your evil deeds. The prophetic word is directed to the children of Israel, and who these children of Israel are the following verse shows: Concerning the whole family, he says, which I brought up out of the land of Egypt—which we ought to take, not only of the ten tribes, but of all twelve, adding Judah and Benjamin. For he brought all of them out of the land of Egypt, and he says: Tantummodo, or, as Symmachus interpreted it: You alone have I known of all the families of the earth.

And because you alone have I known—I who am the Creator of all—and because I have had you as my peculiar people, therefore upon you alone will I restore all your sins: For the mighty shall be mightily tormented; but he who is least is worthy of mercy. And in Ezekiel we read: Begin at my sanctuary. And it is said that judgment of God begins at his own house. Let this be said meanwhile according to the historical sense.

Moreover, since hearing in the Holy Scriptures is understood not only of that which we receive with the ears of the flesh, but also of that of which the Lord says: He that hath ears to hear, let him hear—whence also all the people saw the voice of God—the word of the Lord is properly directed to those who see God with the understanding, whom he brought out of the land of Egypt and out of the power of Pharaoh (that they might in no way serve mud and bricks, building Egyptian cities), and whom he knew out of all the tribes of the earth, the Apostle saying: But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God. And in another place: If any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant. Therefore God does not know all, but those who are worthy of his knowledge, saying in the Gospel: Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity, I know you not.

For in that they are workers of iniquity, they are unknown to God: therefore he says: Because you alone have I known, and had as mine, I will visit upon you all your iniquities. Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. And he beautifully said: I will visit, and not: I will strike; because the plague of God is visitation and healing. And all, he says, your iniquities or sins will I visit, lest anything remain unstricken, lest anything fail to receive healing.

(Verses 3 and following.) Shall two walk together, except they be agreed? Will a lion roar in the forest, if he have no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing? Will the bird fall into the snare upon the earth, without a fowler? Shall the snare be taken up from the earth, before it hath caught something? Shall a trumpet be blown in a city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city which the Lord hath not done? For the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret to his servants the prophets. The lion shall roar, who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?

LXX: Shall two walk together at all, unless they have known one another? Shall a lion roar out of his forest, having no prey? Shall a lion's whelp give forth his voice from his den at all, unless he have caught something? Shall a bird fall upon the earth without a fowler? Shall a snare be set upon the ground, unless it have caught something? Shall a trumpet sound in a city, and the people not fear? Shall there be evil in a city which the Lord has not made: for the Lord God will do nothing, unless he shall have revealed his instruction to his servants the prophets. A lion will roar, and who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken, and who will not prophesy?

I have read in a certain man's Commentaries, one desiring to persuade of a difficult matter, that concerning eight crimes or impieties and sins—first of Damascus, second of Gaza and the other cities of Palestine, third of Tyre, fourth of Idumea, that is, Edom, fifth of the sons of Ammon, sixth of Moab, seventh of Judah, that is, the two tribes, eighth, which is last, of Israel, that is, the ten tribes—that as many threatenings are now rendered, and that the first corresponds to the first, that is, Damascus, the second to the second, that is, Gaza, and the rest to the rest. Whether this is true, let him who wrote it know.

But another thinks that from six examples proposed—of two walking together on a road, of a lion roaring in the forest, of a lion's whelp giving forth its voice when it has caught something, of a bird caught by a fowler, of a snare fixed in the ground to catch prey, and of a trumpet sounding in a city—a comparison is rendered by these examples, so that just as the foregoing things have a cause, and do not happen unless those have preceded, so no evil occurs in a city which was not done at the Lord's command. There are those who think that the first example contains a teaching, because two cannot walk together equally, unless they have first agreed among themselves in him who made both one, and destroyed the middle wall of partition, and founded the two into one new man, and made peace between them, and joined them with the bond of charity, so that when the two are together, they may ask of the Father, and obtain whatever they ask.

These are the two rods which are joined together in Ezekiel, and the two peoples of the circumcision and of the Gentiles, concerning whom the Lord speaks to Elijah: I have left me seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee before Baal. And in another place God says: I was found, he says, by those who did not seek me; I appeared to those who did not ask for me. But when the two shall have been brought together into one, they will cleave to the Lord, and become one spirit: for he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit. These two, therefore, who agree together and walk equally in the way of Christ, can fear the attack of no adversary. But if they be separated by discord, immediately the roaring lion will invade them, of whom the apostle Peter also says: Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour.

This roaring lion does not dwell in cultivated fields, not in vineyards, not in olive groves, nor among fruit-bearing trees, which praise God; but where there are forests and untilled ground, and where the beasts dwell. And they will be exposed not only to the bites of the lion, but the lion's whelp will seize them, and lead them to his den, fleeing the light, and going toward darkness. For everyone who sins loves darkness and hates the light, concerning whom we read in the psalm: You have appointed darkness, and it is night: in it all the beasts of the forest go about. The young lions roaring after their prey, and seeking their meat from God. For the lion's whelp seeks not that prey which he already possesses, which is in his power; but that he may snatch from the Church of Christ, of whom it is written in Habakkuk: His food is choice.

The third punishment is of those whom discord has separated, that they lose the wings by which they were formerly borne aloft, and fall from heaven to earth, and are caught by the fowler—who is better called ἰξευτής, because he catches with birdlime birds which are free, but which of their own will descend to earthly things. Of whom it is written in Proverbs: Nets are not spread in vain for birds. For the fall of sinners is just, who, though they had the wings of a dove, and ought to have flown through the air, were pressed down to earthly things by the weight of their sins, and by their own fault stuck to the birdlime. Of whom we read in the Apostle: He who cleaves to a harlot is made one body with her.

The fourth punishment of those in discord is that they be caught by a snare, which is set not in heaven, but on the earth: of which, having escaped it, the saint boasts and says: Our soul has been rescued like a sparrow from the snare of the hunters; the snare is broken, and we are delivered. This is the broken snare of which the Apostle speaks to believers: God will crush Satan under your feet shortly. And again we read in David: They have laid a stumbling block for me beside the path. For they cannot deceive any of the simple among believers, unless they put forward the name of Christ, so that while we think we are finding Christ, we go on to Antichrist.

The fifth punishment is of those who have abandoned the peace which surpasses all understanding, and which the Lord, going to the Father, left to the Apostles, saying: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you, so that, being established in the city of the Lord, they may be terrified by the sound of the trumpet. For whatever is said in the sacred Scriptures is a threatening trumpet, and pierces the ears of believers with a great voice. If we are just, we are called by the trumpet of Christ to blessedness; if sinners, we hear what torments we are to suffer. But the evil which the Lord does in a city is not contrary to virtue, but affliction and torment, of which we read: Sufficient for the day is its own evil, that is, tribulation and distress. And in the Prophet we read: I am God who made light and darkness, who make peace and create evils.

For as darkness is contrary to light and day, so war is contrary to peace, which is not evil in itself, but seems evil to those who endure it. And that we may know that in the sacred Scriptures "evil" is sometimes taken not as contrary to virtue, but as affliction, punishment, and distress, let us take yet one example from Jonah: And God saw their works, that they had turned from their most wicked ways, and he repented of the evil which he had spoken that he would do to them. The evil there is, of course, the overthrow of the Ninevites, which God had threatened through the prophet, and it is not contrary to virtue, which pertains to sin, for which he was threatening torments to sinners.

There follows: The Lord God will do nothing, unless he shall have revealed his secret, or his correction, to his servants the prophets: not that God reveals to the prophets all things which he does in heaven, or has already done; but those things which he is about to do on earth. He revealed to Noah his servant that he would bring the flood. He revealed to Abraham and Lot his servants that he would burn Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim. He revealed to Joseph the interpretation of the dream of the seven years of famine in Egypt, and to the prophet Jonah the overthrow of Nineveh: so that those who heard of the coming punishments might either do penance, and avoid the torments; or, despising it, be more justly punished. So also now the Lord reveals through Amos his servant and prophet what he is about to do to the ten tribes, so that if they should be converted to better things, and abandon idols, they might be freed from the imminent danger.

And note that the merciful and kind God always foretells the future, lest he be compelled to inflict punishments. And whereas heretics slander the Creator, as though he were severe and savage, cruel, and only a judge, because there is no evil in a city which he does not cause: this we refer to the greatness of his mercy, that he does not inflict punishments unless he has first foretold them. But he who foretells does not wish to punish sinners. A lion, he says, will roar, and who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken, who will not prophesy? "Who" in this place is taken not for impossibility, but for rarity. For he will not fear, and he will not prophesy, who because of his hardness has refused to hear the Lord. And the sense according to the history is: if at the voice of a lion all things tremble, and every nature of living beings is terrified, shall we, when God commands us to speak and announce to the people the coming punishments, not prophesy?

Shall we not speak? I know that a certain man has left it written in his Commentaries that the roaring lion is to be understood as the devil, roaring at those who are to perish; but that God, who speaks through the Prophets, is to be referred to the Lord Savior, so that just as those hear the roaring of the lion in a bad sense, and are caught unto death, so the saints may hear the Lord commanding in a good sense, and be saved. (Verses 9, 10.) Make it heard in the houses of Azotus, and in the houses of the land of Egypt, and say: Gather yourselves together upon the mountains of Samaria, and see the many acts of madness in the midst of her, and those suffering oppression in her inner chambers, and they have not known how to do what is right, says the Lord: treasuring up iniquity and rapine in their houses.

LXX: Announce it to the regions of the Assyrians, and to the regions of the land of Egypt, and say: Gather yourselves together upon the mountain of Samaria, and see the many wonders in the midst of her, and the oppression in her, and she has not known what things are to come upon her, says the Lord, who treasure up iniquity and misery in their regions.

We said above that Amos the prophet prophesies especially, indeed the greater part of the volume, to the ten tribes, which are called Israel and Ephraim and Samaria. And so even now he is commanded to announce to Azotus and to the land of Egypt the things that follow. Instead of Azotus, wishing I know not what, the Seventy put Assyrians, whereas Azotus is called in the Hebrew tongue ESDOD, and the Assyrians, ASSUR. Also for "houses," which are called ARMANOTH, they translated "regions," which are called SADOTH: and these have nothing in common in their wording. Say, he says, that all the nations which are nearby may be gathered together, and see the crimes of Israel, lest they think the judgment of God unjust. As if he were to say: First see what they do, and then approve my sentence.

And he well added: Upon the mountains of Samaria, either of the city, which is now called Sebaste, but was then called Samaria, or of the whole province, which is situated in the mountains: and see the many acts of madness in the midst of her, that they worship calves instead of God, and sacrifice their sons: and not content with this crime, they oppress the poor in their inner chambers, and altogether do not know how to do what is right, treasuring up for themselves not gold and money, which are sometimes sought by labor, but iniquities and rapines in their houses: so that because, having forsaken the worship of God, they worshipped idols, God delivers them up to a reprobate mind, that they may do the things which are not fitting.

And since once, according to the laws of tropology, Samaria is referred to the heretics, who falsely claim to be keepers of the commandments of God, the divine word commands that it be preached among the nations, who do not have knowledge of God, in whose teaching there is a burning fire and tribulation and distress: that they may consider the false Samaria, and ascend to the mountains of her pride, and see many acts of madness in the midst of the city, while each one invents what he wishes, and worships his own fiction: as Marcion invents a good and idle God; as Valentinus invents thirty αἰῶνας, and a last one whom he calls Christ, whom he names ἐκτρώμα, that is, an abortion; as Basilides, who calls the omnipotent God by the portentous name Ἀβράξας, and says that the same, according to the Greek letters and the number of the yearly course, is contained in the circle of the sun, which the pagans, under the same number of other letters, call Μείθρα. And the Iberian follies marvel at Balsamus and Barbelo.

Are not these madnesses, and many madnesses, each one inventing what has fallen into his mind? They also suffer oppression in her inner chambers, or the simple among believers are oppressed; while under the name of truth they worship a lie, and altogether do not know how to do what is right, because they have lost the path of truth, and do not believe in him who says: I am the truth: and they treasure up for themselves dogmas of iniquity, and snatch and shut up in their houses those whom they have been able to deceive by false error.

But if it should please us to read "Assyrians" (which, however, is not found in the Hebrew), let us say that these are those of whom it is written: I will bring upon them the great prince of the Assyrians, who said, By my own strength I will do it, and so on, so that the heretics may be caught by the Assyrian and held in the land of Egypt, from which those now coming to the Church have been set free.

Verse 11. Therefore thus saith the Lord God: The land shall be afflicted and shall be encompassed round about, and thy strength shall be taken away from thee, and thy houses shall be spoiled. The Septuagint: Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Tyre, and the land round about thee, shall be made desolate; and he shall take away thy strength from thee, and thy regions shall be spoiled.

Instead of Tyre, which in the Hebrew is written with two letters, SADE (צ) and RES (ר), and is called SOR (צר)—which both Aquila and the Septuagint likewise translated—the Hebrew who instructed me in the sacred Scriptures interpreted it as "tribulation," nor do we reject his opinion; for Symmachus also, who is not accustomed to follow a κακοζηλία of words but the order of the sense, says, "siege and encompassing of the land." Instead of "siege," which he calls πολιορκία, Theodotion has put "strength," who thought that one should read not SAR (צר) and SOR (צור), which means "tribulation" or "Tyre," but SUR—which properly refers to a very hard rock, called in Greek ἀπότομος, and which we in Latin can call "flint." Let us then speak of each in turn.

The Seventy said: "Tyre, and the land round about." And the sense seemed to hang unfinished; therefore they added of their own accord, "shall be made desolate": nor is this an error of the translators, since, on account of the ambiguity of the word, it can mean both "tribulation" and "Tyre." And the sense is: Upon the mountains of Samaria my people have committed many acts of madness, practicing calumny, and utterly ignorant of what is right, and treasuring up for themselves iniquity and rapine: therefore it shall be afflicted, or crushed, and their land shall be encompassed by the Assyrian army, and there shall be taken away from thee, O Samaria, O ten tribes, O once my people, thy strength; and thy houses shall be plundered, which thou hast gathered through calumny out of the tears of the wretched.

The heretics too either shall be afflicted on the day of judgment, and all their strength shall be weakened, and the things they had gotten by rapine shall be plundered, that the peoples whom they had deceived may be set free; or else they are daily afflicted by men of the Church, and are encompassed by the testimonies of the Scriptures, and the strength of their syllogisms is taken away from them, and the subtleties of words by which they had fortified their dogma. And their houses shall be plundered, so that those who had been carried off from the Church may return to the Church. Verse 12. Thus saith the Lord: As if a shepherd should snatch two legs, or the tip of an ear, out of the mouth of a lion, so shall the children of Israel be snatched away who dwell in Samaria in the corner of a bed and in the couch of Damascus.

The Septuagint: Thus saith the Lord: As if a shepherd should tear away two legs, or the tip of an ear, out of the mouth of a lion, so shall the children of Israel be torn away who dwell in Samaria, opposite the tribe, and in Damascus. At the beginning of Amos, where we discussed those verses: "The Lord will roar from Sion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem, and the beautiful places of the shepherds have mourned, and the top of Carmel is withered," we said that it was his customary manner of speech, that, because a shepherd of flocks knew nothing more terrible than a lion, he compared the wrath of the Lord to lions.

According to this sense, therefore, even now he takes his example from something he had often seen, and thus he tells how the small remnants of the ten tribes are to be snatched from the hands of the Assyrians: as if a shepherd, when all the limbs have been devoured, should snatch two legs or the tip of an ear from the jaws of a lion; and, having set forth this example of comparison, he says, thus shall the children of Israel be snatched away—namely, the ten tribes who dwell in Samaria—in the corner of a bed and in the couch of Damascus.

This seems to me to be explained as follows: we read in Isaiah that Rasin, king of Aram, that is, of the Syrians, who reigned in Damascus, and Phacee, son of Romelias, king of Israel, having entered into a league, came to fight against Judah: concerning whom the Lord commands Achaz, king of Judah and Jerusalem, not to fear the two half-burnt firebrands—when, as a sign of full deliverance, both the conception and the birth of the Virgin are shown to him. The children of Samaria, then, dwell in the region and corner of a bed, resting in the help of the Syrians, and promising themselves victory in the couch of Damascus: so that, just as a weary man is refreshed on a bed, so they thought to strengthen their broken powers by the aid of a neighboring nation.

Whence also in the same Isaiah it is said, by way of type of things to come, that a child is to be born who, before he knows how to call father and mother, shall take the spoils of Samaria and the might of Damascus—which were fighting, with joined forces, against Jerusalem. Instead of "the corner of a bed" and "the couch of Damascus," the Septuagint translated "opposite the tribe and in Damascus": so that, according to the tropology, we may refer "tribe" to Judah, and "Damascus" to the calling of the Gentiles: of whom one flock has been made for the Lord—whose sheep the ferocity of lions often mangles; from whose jaws scarcely two legs or the tip of an ear is rescued. In the leg is shown the way of the doctrines, in the ear the sacraments of the sayings. Whence also the apostles are bidden to walk with bare feet, without shoes and without any skin of a dead animal. And to believers it is said: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear".

In the Apocalypse of John too we read: "He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches". And it is made manifest through the prophet: "Lay up," he says, "your words in the ears of your heart." This path, both the heretics and their masters the demons, hasten to obstruct, and weave with nets, so that we may fall on the way which is Christ. But if the man of the Church comes, and the man of God, and Samson, whose name means "sun," kills the lion; and descending into the pit of hell, which cools the waters, in the time of snow, of tempest, and of winter, chokes the lion: so that with secure foot and safe ears we may be able to follow the Lord and to hear his words.

Verse 14. Hear, and testify in the house of Jacob, saith the Lord God of hosts, that in the day when I shall begin to visit the transgressions of Israel upon him, I will visit also upon the altars of Bethel: and the horns of the altar shall be cut off, and shall fall to the ground: and I will smite the winter house with the summer house, and the houses of ivory shall perish, and many houses shall be destroyed, saith the Lord. The Septuagint: Priests, hear: testify to the house of Jacob, saith the Lord God almighty: that in the day in which I shall avenge the iniquities of Israel upon him, I will avenge also upon the altars of Bethel: and the horns of the altar shall be dug down, and shall fall upon the ground. I will confound and smite the pinnacled house upon the summer house, and the houses of ivory shall perish, and many other houses shall be added, saith the Lord.

What is set down at the beginning of the chapter according to the Septuagint, "priests," is not found in the Hebrew; instead of this word one reads ARES (ארש), which Aquila interpreted "couch"; and I think the Seventy set down the Hebrew word itself, which some, not understanding, read as ιερεις, that is, "priests," instead of ARES. Now the prophetic word directs that first they hear, then that they testify in the house of Jacob, that is, among the ten tribes, what the Lord has said. When I shall begin, he says, to visit the transgressions, or impieties, of the house of Israel, and to render to it what it deserves, and the time of captivity shall arrive: then the altars of Bethel shall be destroyed, where the golden calves were, and the horns of the altar shall be cut off, which was also broken when Jeroboam stretched forth his hand; and they shall fall to the ground, broken by the devastating Assyrian.

And I will smite, he says, the winter house with the summer house—which we can take simply according to the letter: that they were of such great wealth that they had double houses, winter ones and summer ones, some turned toward the north, others toward the south, so that, according to the variation of the seasons, of cold and heat, they might provide for the temperature of the air. We can call the winter house the kingdom of Israel, in which there was a coldness of religion and of the worship of God, and various whirlwinds of winds, and a fierce storm; and the summer house, Judah and Jerusalem, in which was the temple, and holocausts were offered morning and evening, and the warmth of religion flourished. And the houses of ivory, he says, shall perish: which can also stand according to the history. For we read that Achab, king of Israel, flowed with such great luxuries that he made himself an ivory house. Instead of "ivory," we find in the Hebrew "houses of tooth," that is, of elephant.

Of these it is also written in the forty-fourth psalm: "Out of the ivory houses, from which the daughters of kings have delighted thee, in thy honor." When the Lord shall begin to visit the transgressions of Israel, who once beheld God with his mind, he will visit also upon the altars of Bethel: not the one altar which the Church has, but the many altars of the heretics. For they have as many altars as schisms. He will cut off also the horns of the altar, which through pride they boast that they alone possess. And their horns, that is, their arrogance, shall fall to the ground; and he will smite the winter house—those heretics who labor with continence and fastings, dry diets, and sleeping on the ground, of whom are Tatian and Manichaeus. And the summer house, such as the Nicolaitans and the Eunomians, and the new followers of an old heresy, who, on account of the gluttony of the belly, admit every pleasure.

And the houses of ivory shall perish, which were built with artificial tooth and with the splendor of rhetorical polish. And many houses shall be destroyed, which are scattered throughout the whole world. For when one truth arises, many falsehoods are destroyed. Instead of "winter house," the Septuagint translated οικον τον περιπτερον, which we have rendered "pinnacled," because it has little doors through windows, and, as it were, wings for repelling the greatness of the cold.

263-264 I have read in a certain controversy: The weakness of the body drags with it also the strength of the mind. On the contrary, the apostle Paul says: "When I am weak, then am I strong"; and: "Virtue is made perfect in weakness". For the spirit is against the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit; these are opposed to one another, lest we do the things that we would. Whence it is also said in the Gospel: "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak". Old age brings with it many things both good and bad. Good, because it frees us from the most shameless masters, the pleasures; it sets a limit to gluttony, breaks the assaults of lust, increases wisdom, gives riper counsels; and, as the body grows cold, sleeps with the perpetual virgin of Sunam; and, despising luxury with Berzellai, hands it over to the young son Chamaam, and does not wish to cross the Jordan, or to go out from its own borders, that is, its own regions, into foreign territory.

But these are what are thought to be the evils of old age: frequent infirmities, a most troublesome phlegm, which some of the Greeks call κορυζαν, others φλεγμα, dimming eyes, food turning sour, a hand sometimes trembling, teeth bare of gums and falling out amid the food. Besides these, it is often tormented with gripings and pangs of the stomach, and with the pains of gout and chiragra, so that it cannot even hold a stylus or a pen; so that it cannot walk on its own feet, and seems to be cut off from a great part of life, and half-dead in many of its members. Since these things are so, in the comparison of evils I shall more tolerably bear diseases, provided only that I be free from that one and heaviest mistress, lust. Old age indeed sometimes suffers incitements to vice: and no one, according to the holy martyr Cyprian, is long safe who is near to danger. But it is one thing to be tickled, another to be overwhelmed by pleasures.

There, with the apostle, youth speaks, which knows the necessities of the flourishing body: "For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do"; and: "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Here, however, a spark rarely gleaming among the dying ashes struggles to revive, and yet cannot kindle a blaze. Wherefore, Pammachius, now with a head grown gray along with mine, obtain for me from the Lord that I may be found worthy to have wisdom as my companion, of whom it is written: "Love her, and she will keep thee; honor her, and she will embrace thee": that, with her aiding and accompanying me, I may complete the work begun on Amos, and that the second book may take its beginning from the cows of Basan: so that, as I treated at full length in the prophet Osee concerning the cows or calves of Bethaven, now too I may be able to discourse concerning the very fat cows.

(Verses 1 seq.) Hear this word, ye fat cows, that are in the mountain of Samaria: which oppress the poor, and crush the needy: which say to your lords, Bring, and we will drink. The Lord God hath sworn by his holy one: for behold the days shall come upon you, and they shall lift you up on hooks, and your remnant in fishing pots: and you shall go out through the breaches, one against the other, and you shall be cast out into Armon, saith the Lord. LXX: Hear this word, ye cows of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, and trample down the needy, which say to your lords: Give us that we may drink. The Lord sweareth by his saints, for behold the days shall come upon you, and they shall take you up with weapons, and those that are with you in pots, pestilent merchants, and you shall be cast out naked one against another, and you shall be cast forth upon mount Remman, saith the Lord.

Instead of "fat cows," the Seventy have put "of Bashan": Aquila and Theodotion, the Hebrew word itself, BASAN (בשן); we, following the interpretation of Symmachus, who says αἱ βόες εὔτροφοι, that is, "well-fed oxen," have interpreted "fat cows." Now he speaks to the princes of Israel and all the nobles of the ten tribes, who gave themselves to luxuries and rapine, that they may hear the word of God, and know that they are not oxen for ploughing, but fat cows of the herd, or such as are fed in the pastures of Bashan, which are places most fertile in grasses: and by this he signifies that they are prepared, not for agriculture, but for slaughter and eating. You are fat cows in the mountain of Samaria, and you crush every lowly person, and you say to your lords, that is, to the shepherds, by whom we understand the kings, Give us, and we will drink, that is, only command, and we will lay waste all things.

Now from the fact that he put, "give us, and we will drink," and did not say, "give, and we will eat," he signifies their drunkenness in wine and luxury, which overturn the state of the mind. The Lord God therefore hath sworn by his holy one, either by himself, or by the Son, or by the Temple, or by everyone who is holy and is called the temple of God, that a day shall come, not far off nor after many ages, but already imminent, the day of captivity and distress, in which the cows shall be lifted up on hooks, and their remnants in boiling pots, for which also in the Hebrew and in Aquila it is written "in kettles of little fishes." Instead of "hooks" also, which in Hebrew are called SANNOTH (צנות), Aquila interpreted "shields": Symmachus and the LXX, "weapons"; Theodotion alone, δόρατα, whom we have followed, interpreting them as hooks or spears.

Now this signifies that they are captured in battle, and are carried off and taken away by right of victory: yet keeping the metaphor of the cows begun, so that those whom he had said were fat cows, he now relates that their flesh is to be carried on hooks or shields. And just as a most boiling kettle involves small fishes together indiscriminately: so also the cows of Bashan are to be crushed by the miseries of captivity without any order. And what follows: "And you shall go out through the breaches, one against the other," can be explained thus: The way of captivity is opened to you, and when your kettles shall have been burned out, you shall go out one against another, according to the Hebrew idiom, which uses "woman and woman," that is, "one against another," for what we would say "mutually" or "in turn." And you shall be cast forth, he says, into places of Armenia, which are called Armona (ההרונה).

Finally Symmachus interpreted thus: And you shall be cast forth into Armenia, for which the Seventy have "mount Remman," Aquila "mount Armona," Theodotion "mount Mona": but the fifth edition rendered "the lofty mountain." Now the word of the Lord which the cows of Bashan are bidden to hear, according to the tropology we have begun, commands the heretics, who, serving the belly and the throat, are rightly called most fat cows, or ignominious cows: for this is what Bashan means, that is, αἰσχύνη, which if we wished to call "confusion," we would interpret it as Babylon rather than Bashan. These fat cows, or ignominious and parched ones, for this too is understood by Bashan, are in the mountain of Samaria, to which also it is said in Hosea: Take away thy calf, O Samaria. And again in the same: For thy calf hath caused thee to go astray, O Samaria: and therefore in the mountain of Samaria, because they always raise themselves up in pride, and promise themselves lofty things.

Samaria also is called "watch," not because they keep the words of the Lord, but because they boast themselves to be keepers of his precepts. Which oppress the poor, and crush the needy. Understand by the poor and needy man the man of the Church, who, content with the simplicity of truth, does not seek the furnishings of the heretics, and the brilliance of eloquence, and the riches of arguments. These cows say to their lords: Bring, and we will drink. We can call their lords or princes of perverse dogmas, Valentinus, and Marcion, and Arius, and Eunomius; or those who through many books strengthen the evil inventions of others. To these the cows of Bashan say: Bring us, and we will drink. For unless those give, these have nothing to devour, or rather nothing to drink so as to be made drunk.

Now that we may know that waters and cups signify doctrine, the Lord speaks to the Samaritan woman: Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but he that shall drink of the water that I shall give him, shall not thirst for ever. Therefore they who drink of the waters of the Samaritan woman, that is, of the heretics, shall always thirst, and shall not be able to cool the burning of their parched throats, Isaiah crying aloud concerning this same thing: As he that is thirsty dreameth, and drinketh as it were, and after he awaketh, is still thirsty, and his soul is empty: so shall be all the nations that fight against Jerusalem. For truly he who drinks of the waters of the heretics, and fights against Jerusalem, the Church of God, drinks in dreams, and his soul is mocked by vain images. And when he thinks himself satisfied, then he shall have the beginning of thirst.

Whence also it is said to the man of the Church: Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and out of the springs of thine own wells, and let them be only thine own. And the Lord thy God sweareth by his holy one against the fattened cows, serving their bellies and feasts, or sweareth by his saints, that days shall come upon them, days of judgment and punishment, so that they shall carry them off on their weapons, and those who are with them they shall put in kettles, or carry off: and either the cows themselves shall be pestilent merchants, or those who come to carry them off, and they shall be cast out naked, seeing one another; and they shall be cast forth upon mount Remman, saith the Lord God. For we ought also, according to the LXX, to speak, lest we seem to have proposed them in vain.

When the day of judgment and vengeance shall come against the heretics, then they shall be taken away in weapons, that is, with their weapons, with which they fought against the Church: or, conquered by the armor of God, and overcome by his warriors, they shall be sent into kettles, that they may be burned and boiled out, who were formerly pestilent merchants; for they did business for this, that they might hand over to death those whom they had deceived. These are they of whom it is said: The sons of Eli, sons of pestilence, who sat in the seat of pestilence. And when they shall have been boiled out and burned, they shall go out naked, having nothing of what they had before presumed for themselves. And they shall see their own shame, and shall be cast forth upon mount Remman, which is interpreted "loftiness," that they may be crushed in their pride. Some interpret Remman as "the vision of someone," that is, ὅρασιν τινος.

For they could not see all things; but they promised themselves the knowledge of some part, so that they may be cast forth, because they believed themselves to know. We can, according to the letter, understand, when the days of captivity shall come upon the cows of Samaria, that their enemies overcome them in battle, and crush them with their weapons, and in the encounter drive the conquered into fortified cities, which are compared to boiling kettles: so that just as Jerusalem, having its people shut in and besieged, is likened to a kettle boiling and full of flesh; so also the cities of Samaria are compared to boiling kettles, which by famine and pestilence compel the shut-in peoples to go out, and to go into captivity seeing one another mutually, and to be carried away into Armon, the mountains of Armenia, which border on the Medes and Persians. (Verses 4 seq.) Come to Bethel, and do impiously: to Galgal, and multiply transgression, and bring your victims in the morning, your tithes in three days.

And offer a sacrifice of praise with leaven, and call for freewill offerings, and proclaim it. For so you have desired, ye children of Israel, saith the Lord God. Whence I also have given you dullness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: and you have not returned to me, saith the Lord. LXX: You entered into Bethel, and did unjustly, in Galgal you multiplied doing impiously: and you brought in your victims in the morning, on the third day your tithes. And they read the law abroad, and called for confessions. Proclaim it, for these things have the children of Israel loved, saith the Lord God. And I will give you dullness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places, and you have not returned to me, saith the Lord.

First let us lay down the foundations of the history: O wretched Israel, captivity is already near thee, already the Assyrian army presses on: do what thou wilt, act impiously: fornicate freely with idols, so that the more shameless thou shalt have been, the more just my sentence upon thy torments may seem. Come, he says, into Bethel, in which you set up the golden calf, and act impiously against God. Come to Galgal, the place of idolatry, of which I have spoken through Hosea: All their malice is in Gilgal. And again in the same: In vain were they sacrificing oxen in Gilgal. And when you shall have come to Galgal: multiply transgression.

For whatever you have done there is transgression against God, to whom you have preferred idols. And bring your victims in the morning; let there be no delay in wickedness. Your tithes on the third day: or, as Symmachus interpreted it, on the third day your tithes. The explanation of this passage seems to us to be this: in the law of Leviticus it was commanded that certain victims not be kept over to the next day, and that others not remain until the third day: for if they remained, they were to be unclean. The sense therefore is: Slay unclean victims daily, and offer contaminated sacrifices; and sacrifice praise of leaven, which according to the precepts of Moses is by no means offered to God at all. For "praise," Aquila interpreted εὐχαριστίαν, that is, thanksgiving, which in Hebrew is called THODA (תודה). And call, he says, the voluntary oblations, which the Hebrews call NADABOTH (נדבות), that is, spontaneous offerings. Now the voluntary sacrifice pertains to rejoicing: which in Latin we may call a feast.

And when you have done this, proclaim your impiety to all: so that you may appear not only to have done it, but also to have taught others. Now I command these things, and I speak in the imperative mood, that I may satisfy your will, because thus you have acted and thus you have willed, O children of Israel, says the Lord God. Wherefore I also gave you dullness of teeth, as the Septuagint translated it, whom in this place we have followed for the simplicity of the word: or cleanness of teeth, as Aquila and Symmachus interpreted it, so that through clean teeth they might show the greatness of the famine. And I made a want of bread, not in one city, but in all your cities; nor in one place, but in all your places. And when I had done this, not punishing, but affording occasion for repentance: even so you did not return to me, says the Lord.

These things we have said according to the Hebrew: let us pass over to the Seventy interpreters, and let us briefly discuss what seems to us according to the anagogical sense in each point; for the size of the book does not allow us to say both things according to both editions. You entered into Bethel, that is, into the house of God, which is understood as the Church: and you have acted impiously against the Lord, trampling upon his precepts. But in Gilgal, which is interpreted as "revelation," or "a wallowing-place," you have multiplied impieties, claiming for yourselves the knowledge of the sacred Scriptures: and while you are lifted up in pride, you are rolled down into the depths of the mire. You also brought in your victims in the morning, your tithes on the third day, having been transfigured into an angel of light: and compressing the threefold understanding of Scripture (concerning which we are commanded to inscribe it threefold in our hearts) into the reckoning of a single day.

For we ought to understand holy Scripture, first according to the letter, doing whatever precepts are given in the ethical sense. Second, according to allegory, that is, spiritual understanding. Third, according to the blessedness of things to come. But you, he says, despising the first and second day, compose for yourselves certain spiritual fictions without foundation, placing a roof upon walls from above. Nor are these heretics, of whom, and to whom this is said, content with the mere end of impiety: but they have read the law of God outside, withdrawing from the Church, and have tried to join confessions and testimonies to each of their own dogmas, which they have feigned with a perverse heart: or they have sacrificed of leaven, concerning which it is said in the Gospel: Beware of the leaven, that is, the doctrine of the Pharisees. And they did these things not by error, but by design: not by chance will, but out of the fullest devotion of their forebears.

Whence the Lord threatens vengeance upon them: I will give, he says, you dullness of teeth, which in Greek is called γομφιασμός. For if anyone, according to Ezekiel, has eaten a sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge: so that those who wrongly abuse the testimonies of the sacred Scriptures, eating them unripe and without their sweetness, may lose the strength of their teeth, so that they cannot grind hard things, and send to the belly what would profit the whole body. This dullness of teeth and scarcity of food I will give also in all your cities, and in all your places, that you may suffer hunger for the word of God, and for that bread which came down from heaven, and of which it is written in the Psalms: Man ate the bread of angels.

All these things I have done, not out of cruelty and savagery, as the heretics slanderously claim, of a fierce and gloomy judgment, but that you might be converted to me, according to what is written: In vain have I struck your children, you have not received discipline. (Verse 7. Seq.) I also withheld the rain from you: when there were still three months remaining until the harvest. And I rained upon one city: and upon another city I did not rain. One part was watered: and the part upon which I did not rain, withered. And two or three cities came to one city, that they might drink water, and were not satisfied: and you did not return to me, says the Lord. The Seventy: And I withheld rain from you before three months of the vintage: and I will rain upon one city, and upon one city I will not rain. One part shall be watered; and the part upon which I shall not rain shall be dried up.

And two and three cities shall be gathered together into one city, to drink water, and shall not be satisfied: and you have not returned to me, says the Lord. Not only did I give dullness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places; but I withheld from you the rain, while there still remained three months until the harvest, which is called the latter rain, and is most especially necessary for the thirsting fields and plains of Palestine: so that when the grass would swell toward harvest and the wheat would be forming, it would wither from excessive dryness. Now he signifies the spring season of the end of the month of April, from which to the wheat harvest three months remain: May, June, July. For "harvest," the Seventy, according to their custom, translated "vintage," which, if we accept it, is altogether unusual and impossible according to all the regions of the East.

For we have never seen rains at the end of the month of June, or in the month of July, in these provinces, and especially in Judea. Indeed, in the books of Kings, as a great sign and portent, in the days of summer and harvest, at Samuel's prayer, rains were stirred up. And it would have been superfluous now to threaten the dryness of the month of July, in which it never gave rain. But he withheld the rain, that they might endure not only want of bread, but also the burning of thirst and scarcity of drink. For in these places in which we now dwell, apart from small springs, all the waters are from cisterns, and if divine wrath should suspend the rains, the danger of thirst is greater than that of hunger: which Scripture also records as having happened in the days of Elijah the prophet, for three years and six months.

And lest perhaps they should think this had happened to cities and peoples by the law of nature, and the course of the stars, and the variety of the seasons, he says that he rains upon one city and its fields, and withholds rain from another: so that two and three cities proceed to another city, and yet are not satisfied with drinks of water. And when he has done this, not for punishment, but as medicine, he rebukes those persisting in wickedness: and even so you did not return to me, says the Lord. The Lord also forbids or represses from heretics the spiritual rains, and all the dew of divine wisdom; and he commands his clouds not to rain upon them a shower before three months of the harvest, or vintage, so that they may not be able to arrive at the fruits of the mystery of the Trinity.

And just as this sun which we behold completes its yearly course, until it returns to its former point, in twelve months, each of which revolves in thirty days, and the moon, which in Hebrew is called JARE (ירח), in Greek μήνη, according to both languages gave its name from itself to the months, and is illumined by the sun's rays from that part which is near to it, receiving light more or less according to the variety of the seasons: so also the Church, adorned with the splendor of the true Sun, fulfills the number of the twelve apostles. Whence also there are twelve tribes called in Israel, and, in testimony of eternal memory, twelve stones are taken from the bed of the Jordan, to be placed in the place of the second circumcision. Now the Lord rains upon one city, the Church of the true confession, and upon the other he does not rain, which is in the assemblies of the heretics.

And while that one receives everlasting rain, this one is dried up by continual drought: so that those who thirst, compelled by want, may come to the city of the Lord, from which goes forth a most abundant fountain, which waters the torrent of thorns. Now this is the fountain which says through Jeremiah: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns, which cannot hold water. There the fountain, proceeding from one source, flows in a threefold union: which fountains of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit the Psalmist sighs after in the manner of the thirsting hart, saying: As the hart longs for the fountains of waters: so my soul longs for you, O God. And when two and three cities have proceeded to one city, in which the waters are abundant—of hope, of faith, of charity—they shall not be satisfied, because they came to seek divine grace not by will, but by necessity.

Verse 9. I struck you with a burning wind, and with mildew. The multitude of your gardens, and your vineyards, your olive groves and your fig groves, the caterpillar devoured, and you did not return to me, says the Lord. The Seventy: I struck you with burning heat and with mildew. You multiplied your gardens, your vineyards, and your fig trees, and the caterpillar devoured your olive groves, and even so you were not converted to me, says the Lord. Not only did I do the former things, that I might correct you; but whatever remained after the drought, I struck with burning wind and with mildew. For "burning wind," Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion interpreted ἀνεμοφθορίαν; the Seventy, πύρωσιν, which we can call "burning up." As for "mildew," all interpreted it alike as ἴκτερος, except Theodotion, who alone interpreted it as ὠχρίασις, which signifies pallor.

And when, against the wrath of the Lord, they multiplied gardens and vineyards and fig groves and olive groves, the caterpillar consumed everything, concerning which it is spoken more fully in Joel. And not even by these plagues and the weight of evils did they wish to come to God. By this saying let the heretics be confounded, who interpret the Creator's discipline, and, so to speak, medicine, as cruelty. Now the Lord strikes the heretics spiritually with that burning of which the apostle Paul says: It is better, he says, to marry than to burn. And the prince of the apostles: Beloved, do not be strangers to the burning heat which comes upon you for a trial: and with the mildew which, with bile spread abroad, changes the redness of blood into pallor, and permits nothing sound to remain in the body, to such a degree that even the sweetest honey seems bitter.

And they who once heard in the Church: Taste and see that the Lord is sweet: and who themselves said: How sweet are your words to my palate, above honey to my mouth! Let them be called παραπικραίνοντες, and let their waters and rains not drip sweetness: nor let them be of the land of promise, which we read flows with milk and honey: but let them be called Marah, that is, bitterness. These have multiplied gardens for themselves, for the sake of which, lest his own vineyard be exchanged, Naboth chose to die. For he who is weak, let him eat vegetables.

And because heretics, always swelling with pride, and falling into the judgment of the devil, promise themselves great things, and feign images of good things, so as to mix poisons with honey: they even boast of having vineyards and olive groves and fig groves; but their vineyard is the vineyard of Sodom; their olive groves are not of the good olives, but of wild olives, which the Apostle prescribes to be grafted onto the roots of good olive trees. They likewise have fig groves of such a kind as would fill a basket of the worst figs, which Jeremiah testifies cannot be eaten for their bitterness. When the Lord comes to these, he curses them with eternal barrenness, that they may never bear fruit, lest they deceive passersby with the greenness of their leaves.

And that we may understand that the gardens of the heretics and their vineyards and olive groves and fig groves are to be referred to the bad sense, he added to each phrase, "your": to show that these are not God's, but the heretics': your gardens, your vineyards, your olive groves, and your fig groves: all of which the caterpillar has laid waste, the extreme of all punishments: which does not fly away like the locust, and running here and there leave things half-eaten; but remains upon the perishing crops, and with slow crawling and sluggish bites consumes everything entirely. And when they had suffered these things, not even so did they wish to return to the Lord. (Verse 10.) I sent death upon you by the way of Egypt, I killed your young men with the sword, together with the captivity of your horses. And I made the stench of your camps to go up into your nostrils, and you did not return to me, says the Lord.

LXX: I sent death upon you in the way of Egypt, and I killed your young men with the sword, together with the captivity of your horses. And I brought up your camps in fire in my wrath, and not even so did you return to me, says the Lord. By every scourge and torment Israel is disciplined: hence also at the time when they were seeking aid from the Egyptians, death is sent upon them, and their young men are struck down with the sword, and the horses which they had multiplied for themselves against God's command are shut up by fierce captivity, so that the putrefaction of the camp and the stench of the dying army fill the nostrils of the living. And when he had done these things too, in order to correct the transgressors and amend those who erred, not even so did they return to him, says the Lord.

He who not only at that time, but daily sends death upon the way of Egypt, so that whoever has trodden the Egyptian path may, in dying, hear the Apostle teaching: For in that I died, I died to sin; but in that I live, I live to God. And in another place: If we have died with Christ, we shall also live together with him. And again: I always carry about in my body the dying of Jesus. And again: I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me.

By this death the Lord wishes to give us life, so that, dying to sin, we may live to God. But we die to sin when we put to death our members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, luxury, idolatry, and the rest. We read in Isaiah, at least according to the Septuagint translators—otherwise it is contained differently in the Hebrew: I sent death upon Jacob, and it came upon Israel. Jacob is the name of the body at its birth; Israel is the name of blessing. For because he wrestled all night and prevailed in the contest, and at the rising of the morning star could say with the Apostle: The night is far spent, the day is at hand, for this reason he obtained the name Israel, "one who sees God." Death, therefore, is first sent upon Jacob, that we may mortify our members which are upon the earth, and through the mortification of the bodily members we may come to the death of Israel, so that all the incitements of disturbances within us may die.

God strikes down whatever is strong in evils, and the perverse growth of youth is cut off, lest it come even to old age, and he hands the horses over to captivity, lest they slip down the precipices of hell: and he makes the putrefaction of the camp rise up into their nostrils, so that they may recognize their sins and perceive that they stink, and say with David: My scars have putrefied and become corrupt because of my foolishness. And when he had done these things out of a desire to heal, not even so did they return to him, says the Lord. (Verse 11.) I overthrew you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a brand snatched from the burning, and you did not return to me, says the Lord. LXX: I overthrew you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a brand plucked out of the fire, and not even so did you turn back to me, says the Lord.

This is the final medicine, both for the ten tribes, and for heretics, and for all sinners: that after he has sent death by the way of Egypt, and struck down their young men with the sword, and consumed their horses, and made the putrefaction of the camp rise up into their nostrils, and not even so have they returned to him, he overthrows them as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah: and when they have been overthrown, on account of the likeness of their crimes to those of Sodom and Gomorrah, and when the divine fire has burned up the worst of their edifices, they themselves are set free, as it were, like a brand snatched from the burning.

And just as Lot, when Sodom perished, was preserved, losing his substance and part of his own body, which we understand to be his wife: so may all these, losing the riches of the Sodomites, escape naked, according to what we read in the Apostle: If any man's work abides which he has built thereon, he shall receive a reward: but if any man's work is burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire. He, then, who is saved through fire, is snatched, as it were, like a brand from the burning. And to men of this sort, whom the Savior in the Gospel rebuked, saying: If you were the sons of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham, John the Baptist says: Offspring of vipers, who has shown you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance, and do not wish to say within yourselves, We have Abraham as our father.

For I say to you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Therefore both Israel and all heretics, because they had the works of Sodom and Gomorrah, are overthrown as Sodom and Gomorrah were: that they may be freed like a brand snatched from the burning. And this is what we read in the prophet: Sodom shall be restored to her former state: that he who by his own vice has become a Sodomite, after the works of Sodom have been burned away in him, may be restored to his former condition. (Verses 12, 13.) Wherefore I will do this to thee, Israel: but after I shall have done this to thee, prepare to meet thy God, Israel, for behold, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth his word unto man, that maketh the morning mist, and walketh upon the high places of the earth, the Lord God of hosts is his name.

The LXX: Therefore thus will I do to thee, Israel: nevertheless because I will do thus to thee, prepare to call upon thy God, Israel. For behold he that strengtheneth the thunder, and createth the spirit, and announceth his Christ among men, that maketh the morning, and the mist, and ascendeth upon the high places of the earth: the Lord God almighty is his name. As to what we have translated, "afterward," in the Hebrew it is written ECEB (עקב), and Aquila rendered it ὕστερον, that is, afterward, and Theodotion, "at the last," and the Septuagint, "nevertheless"; in the Hebrew it can be read thus: Wherefore I will do this to thee, Israel, afterward, that is, a long time after, and in the last of days, so that the verse again begins from another starting point: But when I shall have done this to thee, prepare to meet thy God, Israel.

Again, in the place where the Septuagint translated, "prepare to call upon thy God," and we, following Theodotion, have put, "prepare to meet thy God," Symmachus and the Fifth Edition translated, "prepare to oppose thy God": which in Hebrew is said Hechin lacerath eloica (הכין לקראת אלהיך). For "mountains" also, which in Hebrew are called ARIM (הרים), the Septuagint alone rendered βροντήν, that is, thunder. But why they said "spirit" and we "wind," for the word which in Hebrew is called RUA (רוח), the reason is plain, because by this word both wind and spirit are called. And what follows, "declaring to man his word," all interpreters render as we have translated it, but the Septuagint alone translated, "announcing among men his Christ": being deceived by the similarity and ambiguity of the word. For if we read "his Christ," which in Hebrew is called MESSIO (משיחו), it is written by these letters MEM, SIN, IOD, HETH, and VAU, which the LXX supposed.

But if, as it is in the Hebrew, according to Aquila τὴν ὁμιλίαν αὐτοῦ; according to Symmachus τὸ φώνημα αὐτοῦ; according to Theodotion τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ; according to the fifth edition τὴν ἀδολεσχίαν αὐτοῦ, all of which mean that it is his utterance, it is written with these letters: MEM, HE, which reads MA (מה), that is, "that," or "what." Then SIN, IOD, HETH, which we read SIA (שיח), that is, "utterance." And the O, which is written by the single letter VAU, αὐτοῦ, that is, "his," signifies; and read together it is MASIO (מהשיחו), having one more letter than the preceding word HE. Of the variety of interpretation we have spoken, which will be troublesome to the negligent, pleasing to the studious: now let us pass to the sense of what is written. I have given a stupor to your teeth, and you have not returned to me, saith the Lord. I withheld the rain from you, and I rained upon one city, and upon another I rained not, and two and three cities came to one to drink water, and were not satisfied: and yet you did not return to me, saith the Lord.

I struck you with the burning wind, and with mildew your gardens and your vineyards and your olive groves and your fig groves, and you did not return to me, saith the Lord. I sent death among you along the way of Egypt, and I struck your young men with the sword, and I caused the stench of your camps to rise up into your nostrils, and you did not return to me, saith the Lord. I overthrew you as the Lord overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a firebrand snatched from the burning, and you did not return to me, saith the Lord. Therefore I will do this to thee, O Israel, so that thou who hast despised the past, mayest at least be corrected by what I am about to bring upon thee.

And when he says, "I will do this to thee," he keeps silent as to what he will do, so that while Israel hangs in uncertainty as to each kind of punishment (which are the more terrible because all are suspected), he may do penance: lest God bring upon him what he threatens. But after I shall have done to thee what I testify I will do, prepare to call upon the Lord thy God. For everyone who shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Or, prepare to meet thy God, so that thou mayest receive with all eagerness the Lord coming to thee. This is he who strengthens the thunder, or strengthens the mountains, at whose voice the hinges of the heavens and the foundations of the earth are shaken.

This is he who creates the spirit, which in this place we understand not as the Holy Spirit, as the heretics suppose; but as the wind, or the spirit of man: because no one knows the things that are in man, except the spirit that is in him; and the spirit itself intercedes for us with unspeakable groanings. Or certainly we ought to take "spirit" as "soul," according to what is written: Thou shalt take away their spirit, and they shall fail, and return into their dust. And: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, and saying this he breathed his last. And when he has created the spirit, he announces to men his word, or announces to man his word, he who knows the secrets of thoughts, and understands what the hidden mind deals with in silent speech, according to what we read in Jeremiah according to the Hebrew: The heart of man is small and unsearchable, who shall know it? I the Lord who searcheth the heart, and proveth the reins.

Which also Scripture testifies in the hundred and thirty-eighth psalm: Thine eyes did see my imperfect being. And the sense is: Before I was formed, before I was shaped into members, while I was still contained in seed, thine eyes saw me. And Jeremiah hears from the Lord: Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee, and before thou camest forth from the womb, I sanctified thee, and I made thee a prophet unto the nations. And the evangelist says: The Lord, seeing their thoughts. But if we read, "announcing to man his word," it must be taken according to what was said above, where he says: The Lord God will not do a thing, unless he reveal his secret to his servants the prophets (above, 3:7). But he who announces the thoughts of man, and his word, or his own, is he who makes the dawn and the daybreak, and fills all things with clouds, and walks upon the high places of the earth; whose name is the Lord God almighty.

For which in the Septuagint is read: "Announcing among men his Christ": on which occasion the heretics wish the Holy Spirit to be created, following this order: "creating the spirit, and announcing among men his Christ": so that the one is created, the other is announced among the peoples. To whom we shall answer according to their own sense, and the Vulgate edition: He who is the creator of all things, and strengthens the thunder, or forms the mountains, consequently brings forth the winds from his treasuries, and as the founder of the universe, promises his Son Christ to men. But after Christ has been announced, then the light of truth is opened to us, not to perfection; because now we see in part, and know in part, and through a mirror and an image we contemplate the things that are to come. Whence follows: making the morning and the mist, and ascending upon the high places of the earth.

For the Lord is exalted on high, and does not dwell among the lowly, he who is exalted; but the creator of the mountains ascends into the mountains, into those who have their citizenship in the heavens, and who, walking in the flesh, do not live according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. But if we read according to Symmachus and Aquila: "I will do this to thee, Israel, afterward, and when I shall have done this to thee, prepare thyself to be adverse to thy God," it must be understood thus: I have done what I might correct thee, which the preceding discourse has described, and because thou wouldst not return to me, I will do to thee what is contained in my secret counsel.

Thou hast slain the servants whom I sent to thee: I will send at last my Son: but thou, according to thy custom, by which thou hast always resisted the will of the Lord, prepare thyself to contradict and be adverse to thy God: according to what is written: Behold, this one is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many, and for a sign which shall be contradicted. And he says this, not as commanding what ought to be done; but he foretells beforehand what he will do of his own accord, as it were rebuking and reproving, so that at least being corrected he may not do what has been foretold.

(Verses 1, 2.). Hear ye this word, which I take up as a lamentation over you. The house of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise. The virgin of Israel is cast down upon her land, there is none to raise her up. The LXX: Hear ye this word, which I take up as a lamentation over you.

The house of Israel is fallen, she shall no more rise again. As far as pertains to the order of the letter and the historical truth begun, the ten tribes, which are called Israel, having been led into captivity, never afterward returned to their own land. And the people of Israel is called a virgin: not because she remained in the purity of virginity, but because she was once joined to the Lord after the manner of a virgin. Whence also the prophet is bidden to take up a lamentation over her, because she shall in no way be restored to her former state. But as to the spiritual understanding: the prophet takes up a lamentation over all Israel, who beheld God with the mind, and afterward ceased to serve him, according to what is commanded to Ezekiel, that he devour the book, in which within and without was written lamentation, and song, and woe. By "within" understand the following Song of Solomon, who says: The king brought me into his chamber.

And the forty-fourth psalm, in which it is written: All the glory of the king's daughter is from within. But "without" is whatever is read in the letter, and is seen in the bark, and is not held in the marrow of the spirit. And so both according to the letter and according to the tropology, in all the books of the prophets is written a lamentation over those who do penance after sins: a song over those who, stained by no filth of sins, are worthy of song and praise: a woe over those who do not do penance, but according to the hardness of their heart treasure up to themselves wrath in the day of wrath. But if, as we have said, the lamentation is over those who do penance; and penance restores the health of the wound: how then according to the Septuagint is it said, The house of Israel is fallen, she shall no more rise. The virgin of Israel has erred in her land, there is none to raise her up?

This can be resolved thus: After the house of Israel has fallen by its own will, it shall by no means recover its former dignity: after the virgin of Israel has erred in her land, she shall no longer be able to find one to raise her up. And consider the propriety of the words. He who is of the house, and is numbered among the crowd, is said to fall. But he who is of the number of virgins, if he errs, even for a slight sin, cannot be raised up: not because he is not raised up, but because the virgin of Israel is by no means raised up in the same way, nor does the Lord of Israel rise again in the same way. For the glory is not the same for him who has always followed the Lord, and for him who has strayed from the flock, and afterward is carried back on the shoulders of the good shepherd.

Whence also through another prophet the Lord says: I prefer the repentance of the sinner rather than his death. Repentance, when compared not to the purest holiness and to the Church of Christ (which has neither wrinkle nor spot), but to death and to the netherworld, becomes better. We say these things, not that, following Novatus, we take away the hope of repentance, but that we may make more timid, and therefore more anxious, those who, the door of repentance being open, while they hope for what is to come, lose what is present; and who, though they might have remained without a wound, incautiously receive a wound, so that afterward they are tormented with grief. There are many mansions with my Father, and star differs from star in glory: so also is the resurrection of the dead: the saints shining as the sun and the moon, the evening star and the morning star. But those who after sin have done penance shall, according to the diversity of their merits, be made equal to other stars.

Verse 3. For thus saith the Lord God: The city from which there went out a thousand, there shall be left in it a hundred; and that from which there went out a hundred, there shall be left in it ten, in the house of Israel. The Septuagint likewise. The divine discourse renders the reasons why the house of Israel, having fallen, does not rise again, and the virgin of Israel, wandering, or cast down upon the earth, has none to raise her up: The city, it says, from which there went out a thousand, there shall be left in it a hundred; and that from which there went out a hundred, there shall be left in it ten, in the house of Israel: so that where formerly there had been a multitude, on account of the exceeding devastation, scarcely a tenth part remains. And lest, clinging altogether to the letter, we leave the mysteries of the numbers untouched: that the number seven is holy, even the sabbath proves, on which God rested from all his works.

And he commands that no servile work be done on it, save only those things that pertain to the soul; and that we bear no burdens on it. Whence also he who had gathered wood on the sabbath day in the wilderness, wood that was to be burned, is condemned by the sentence of the Lord. And seven weeks complete the number of the holy Pentecost; and the Jubilee year of remission and of the sounding trumpets is woven with this number. In the seventh month also the tabernacles are fixed, and the Hebrew, when he has served six years, shall be freed in the seventh year.

Secular philosophy too knows this, and the books of physicians, of whom Galen, most eloquent and most learned, wrote three books περὶ κρίσεων καὶ τῶν κρισίμων ἡμερῶν [on crises and critical days], in which, showing the power of the number seven, he says that the most burning fevers are resolved on the seventh day; or if the magnitude of the noxious humor and phlegm be so great that it is by no means consumed by the fervor of the first week, then the last day of the second week is awaited, that is, the fourteenth. But if the disease (νόσος), to speak according to Hippocrates, has conquered this day, they pass on to the twenty-first day, that is, to the end of the third week: so that, from the beginning of the world, with the days established, all labors and troubles come to rest by the number seven. Finally, the captivity of the people of Israel, and the overthrow of the temple, was completed in the seventieth year of desolation, and the seven stars are called wandering, according to the number of the days.

Concerning the mysteries of this number, Tully speaks more fully in the Dream of Scipio; and the most obscure book of Plato, the Timaeus, is a book that is not made plainer even by the golden mouth of Cicero. As therefore the number seven has its own mystery, so the number that is sanctified and perfect, and, so to speak, true, is that which is held together by unity, and is enclosed by the majesty of the one God. Whence the Son says: I am in the Father, and the Father in me; and wishing that all should be one with the Father, he speaks to him: Father, grant that as I and thou are one, so also these may be one in us. The first beatitude, therefore, is to be in the first number, which is one and true; the second, to be in the second, that is, in the decade; the third, in the third, that is, in the hecatontad.

For as the decad is completed by the tenth unity, so the hecatontad is built up out of ten decads. The fourth number, which is contained in the millenary, consists of ten hecatontads. When, therefore, one has done penance, he scarcely returns from the millenary and fourth number to the hundredfold and third number.

Again, he who is in the hundredfold scarcely returns to the second number of the first decad, and thus, as the house of Israel which had fallen cannot rise again, and the virgin of Israel who had wandered has none in the land to raise her up: because he who has once departed from unity, and has lost that glory of purest virginity (of which the Apostle says: For I am jealous over you with the jealousy of God; for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you a chaste virgin to Christ, in whom there is no spot nor wrinkle), will not be able to recover his former state and the blessedness of unity: and it will scarcely be granted him that he return from a thousand to a hundred, and from a hundred to ten. These things I have briefly stated, lest, on account of the difficulty of the numbers, I should seem altogether to have fled from tropology in this chapter.

Verse 4. For thus saith the Lord to the house of Israel: Seek me, and you shall live: And seek not Bethel, and go not into Galgal, and pass not over to Bersabee: for Galgal shall go into captivity, and Bethel shall be unprofitable. The Septuagint: For thus saith the Lord to the house of Israel: Seek me, and you shall live; and seek not Bethel, and go not into Galgal, and pass not over the well of the oath, because Galgal shall be led captive, and Bethel shall be as if it were not. It is the custom of the Scriptures always to append happy things to adverse ones, and, after God has threatened sorrowful things, to summon to repentance those whom he has terrified, according to that which we read in Isaiah: Woe to a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a wicked seed, ungracious children.

And when he had said, your land is desolate, your cities burned with fire, strangers devour your country before your face, he speaks to them, promising better things: Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices from my eyes: learn to do well: seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless, defend the widow. And come, and let us plead together, saith the Lord. As therefore in Isaiah, those whom he had terrified with a severe voice he sustains with soothing speech: so also in this prophet, those to whom he had said: The house of Israel has fallen, it shall no more rise: the virgin of Israel has wandered upon her land, there is none to raise her up: he does not speak against them, but says: House of Israel, that is, the ten tribes, seek me and you shall live: for in that you do not seek me, you are dead. And when you shall have sought, you shall find; and when you shall have found, you shall live.

And seek not Bethel, in which was the golden calf, and Galgal, the place of idolatry, of which I have already said above: All their wickedness is in Galgal (Osee 9:15). And you shall not pass over to Bersabee. Beautifully he says, in Bersabee, that is, at the well of the oath, you shall not pass over: where, if ever the tribe of Judah went astray, it was accustomed to worship idols. Israel indeed raged so greatly in the worship of images, that, not content at all with its own idols, it passed over to those of others. Finally, Galgal, he says, shall be led captive, and Bethel shall be unprofitable, or utterly non-subsisting, when the idols in it shall have been overthrown. Of Bersabee he says nothing at all; because, the ten tribes having been conquered, the city named Bersabee, which was at that time in the tribe of Judah, was neither taken nor destroyed.

And it must be noted at the same time, that the Seventy interpreters, in the present passage, have translated the name Bersabee, saying, the well of the oath, but in later passages have set down the name itself: As thy God liveth, O Dan, and the way of Bersabee liveth. They put "the way of Bersabee," because the men of Israel went by a long journey to the farthest borders of Judah, which were in Gerara, and joined the Egyptian wilderness, in order to worship idols. Now it is the place in which Abraham dwelt; and from the fact that he and Abimelech, seven ewe lambs having been given, swore a mutual covenant, it was called the well of the oath, or the well of the seventh, on account of the number of the seven lambs: for SABE (שבע) signifies both.

Now, according to the laws of allegory, he commands the house of Israel, that is, those who promise themselves the knowledge of God, that they seek not Bethel, and enter not into Galgal, and pass not over, or go up, to the well of the oath; but rather seek God, and live in him. Now they seek Bethel, which is interpreted "house of God," who say: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord; and trust in buildings, of which the Lord spoke to his disciples: The days will come, in which there shall not be left a stone upon a stone that shall not be thrown down. And they enter into Galgal, who, after the coming of Christ, again desire to be circumcised. For in Galgal the people was circumcised a second time. Whence also that very place received its name: because the Lord took away from them the reproach of Egypt.

And in Bersabee, he says, or to the well of the oath, you shall not pass over: lest you should think those to be the borders of Judea, which of old, according to the letter, Scripture had promised, from Dan even to Bersabee: nor should you say any longer with the prophet: In Judea God is known, in Israel his name is great; but hear rather with the apostles: Their sound has gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world: because Galgal, that is, the circumcision of the flesh, shall be led captive by the true circumcision of the heart: and Bethel, which you think the house of God, shall not stand, or, as I judge better, shall be unprofitable, that is, AVEN (און): so that it be called no longer the house of God, but be called the house of the unprofitable, or of the idol.

Otherwise: he seeks Bethel who follows only the killing letter, and does not seek the sense, which is God, in the words: and he enters into Galgal who strives after greater revelations, promising himself the knowledge of heavenly things, and passes over, or goes up, to the well, of which the Samaritan woman, desiring to draw waters that could not satisfy her thirst, did not know him, from whose belly flow rivers of living water springing up into life everlasting. Verse 6. Seek ye the Lord, and live: lest the house of Joseph be burnt as fire: and it shall devour, and there shall be none to quench Bethel. The Septuagint: Seek the Lord, and live: lest the house of Joseph be kindled as fire, and it devour it, and there be none to quench the house of Israel. As it is said in the person of God: Seek me, and you shall live; so the prophet speaks of the Lord, that they may seek him and live.

For in that they seek the Lord, they begin to live; but if they shall not have sought him, and therefore shall not have lived, straightway the house of Joseph shall be kindled as fire—which house, on account of Jeroboam, who was of the tribe of Ephraim and of the house of Joseph, we must understand as the ten tribes, which were called Israel, and, by reason of the greater part of the people, possessed the ancient name. But the two tribes which were ruled by the stock of David, who was of the tribe of Judah, were called Judah, and possessed Jerusalem, in which was the temple of God. And when the house of Joseph shall have been set on fire, it shall devour and consume Bethel, of which I have said above: Seek not Bethel; and there shall be none to quench it, when it shall have been set on fire by its own kings.

Instead of Bethel, in the Septuagint is read "the house of Israel," those who interpret the sense rather than the word, so that, Jeroboam succeeding as king, and all the kings thereafter who succeeded to his rule, the ten tribes, which are called Israel, may burn. This is the fire that is kindled, or that flashes forth and inflames the house of Joseph, so that Bethel is consumed, of which it is said elsewhere: Walk in the light of your fire, and in the flame which you have kindled.

And because we have often referred the house of Joseph (on account of Jeroboam, who separated the people of God from the stock of David, and made golden calves in Dan and in Bethel, and said, We have no part in David, nor any inheritance in the son of Jesse) to the person of heretics, who with composed speech have fashioned graceful and comely, and, so to speak, golden images, and worship the works of their own hands, and, under the figure of calves, promise themselves an image of agriculture, it is said to them: Seek the Lord, and live, him who says: I am the way, the truth, and the life: that, after they shall have walked in him and found the truth, they may then begin to live who before were dead.

And unless they do this, they shall be burned with the fires of the devil; nor shall there be found any of their princes, who themselves are also kindled with heretical fire, who is able to quench the flame that devours all things, and especially Bethel, which assumes for itself the false name of the house of God. (Verses 8 and following) You who turn judgment into wormwood, and leave justice in the earth, who makes Arcturus and Orion, and turns darkness into morning, and changes day into night. Who calls the waters of the sea, and pours them out upon the face of the earth: the Lord is his name. Who smiles ruin upon the strong, and brings depopulation upon the powerful. The LXX: Who executes judgment on high and has placed justice in the earth: who makes all things, and transforms and turns the shadow of death into morning, and darkens the day into night.

Who calls the water of the sea, and pours it out upon the face of the earth: the Lord God omnipotent is his name. Who divides destruction over strength, and brings misery over a fortification. In this passage the Vulgate edition differs greatly from the Hebrew truth, as the prudent reader will at once understand from what we have set forth, without any warning from us. And so let us first expound it according to the Hebrews, and afterward, if we have deserved it, let us say, with Christ opening the way, what seems right to us concerning the translation of the LXX. The house of Joseph, that is, the house of Ephraim, and thereby the kingdom, and Bethel, or, as the LXX translated, the house of Israel, that is, both kings and peoples, and worshippers and idols alike, will be overthrown, who by unjust judgment provoked God to wrath. And they turned the sweetness of judgment into the bitterness of wormwood, which is a kind of most bitter herb, taking up iniquity, and abandoning justice.

What this justice is, the following verse shows: Who makes Arcturus and Orion, and turns darkness into morning, and changes day into night. Of whom he had said above: Forming the mountains, and creating the wind, and declaring to man his speech, making the morning cloud, and walking upon the high places of the earth: the Lord God of hosts is his name; he himself is the Creator of Arcturus, which in Hebrew is called CHIMA (כימה), and is translated by Symmachus and Theodotion as εἰς πλειάδα, which is commonly called Bootes; and what follows, Orion, which in Hebrew is called CHASIL (כסיל), Symmachus simply rendered as "stars," Theodotion interpreted as "evening"; but the Hebrew who instructed us in the sacred Scriptures thinks that CHASIL means "splendor," and signifies generally the shining stars. But when we hear of Arcturus and Orion, we ought not to follow the fables of the poets, and their ridiculous and monstrous lies, by which they even try to defame heaven, and to place the reward of debauchery among the stars, saying (Aeneid, books I and III):

Arcturus, and the rainy Hyades, and the twin Bears:
And Orion armed with gold he beholds all around:

But we ought to know that Hebrew names, which are called otherwise among them, have been translated into our language with the vocabulary of the fables of the nations, since we are not able to understand what is said except through those words which we have learned by usage and drunk in by error. Whence also in the book of Kings the Hebrew RAPHAIM (רפאים) the Greeks translated as "Titans": which among the pagans is a most celebrated fable, from which they write, in praise of the gods, γιγαντομαχίας (battles of the giants), and the Typhoean weapons, and Mount Etna placed upon Enceladus, by whose movement Trinacria trembles.

But this God, the creator of all things, who makes Arcturus and Orion, changes night into day and day into night, and distills the most bitter waters of the sea, suspended by the heat of the ether, and refines them into the sweet taste of rains, after the manner of a medicinal cupping-glass, which by the heat of the upper circle draws up moisture and blood: from which we learn whence come the rains. And what follows: Who smiles ruin upon the strong, returns to the present time, and the order is: He who is the Creator of all things also threatens captivity upon Samaria, and brings depopulation upon the powerful: because he turns judgment into wormwood, and has left justice in the earth. Where we have said "who smiles," Aquila translated ὁ μειδιῶν. Properly μείδιαμα is said of what we can call "a smile," when someone is angry, and, with lips slightly parted, pretends to smile, in order to show the greatness of his wrath. Let us also speak according to the LXX.

God executes judgment on high, when he judges the truth, and renders to each according to his work: and everyone who desires to be his imitator and son, and to be perfect, as his Father is perfect, who dwells in heaven, executes judgment on high, and does not imitate that judge who neither feared God nor respected man, and by the perversity of his judgment did not raise his sentence to heaven, but dragged it down to base things. And what follows: and has placed justice in the earth, we ought to take according to this, that he has given us Christ as his justice, and has not cast it away, but has set it down upon the earth, so that, all iniquity being overcome, he might make us, out of earthly beings, heavenly ones. I think that even the pagan poet stole from this passage, who, discoursing on the simplicity and blessedness of country folk, added:

Justice, departing from the lands, left her last
footprints among them.

But what they say, "making all things and transforming," they comprehend in one word Arcturus and Orion, neglecting to render the proper meaning of the names into the Greek tongue. But God transforms all things, when he makes heavenly things out of earthly ones, and endows men with the likeness of angels: when the moon shall glow red with the brightness of the sun, and the sun shall have a sevenfold light, when the animal, weak and corruptible man is transformed into a spiritual, strong, and incorruptible one, changing his glory, not his nature: when the intelligent shall shine like the splendor of the firmament, and it shall be fulfilled what is written: One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, another the glory of the stars. For star differs from star in brightness: so also is the resurrection of the dead. When every creature shall be freed from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God.

This God who transforms all things also changes the shadow of death into light: when those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death saw a great light, and those who were sons of night and darkness became sons of light and sons of the day. This is the God who also turns day into darkness: the day of those who said, Crucify, crucify him, take such a one away from the earth: when, from the sixth hour, in a type of Jewish blindness, day was turned into night. And not only according to the letter, but also according to a deeper understanding, the light which was rising for them in the Law and the Prophets was turned into darkness, since they did not know what they were reading, what they were hearing, so that what is written of them might be fulfilled: Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see: and bow down their back always.

This God calls to himself the water of the sea, and pours it out upon the face of the earth, making the just out of sinners. To explain this, for the sake of brevity, let us set forth only one example. Paul the apostle, like a violent whirlwind and a fierce storm, and the surge of the swelling sea, was persecuting and striving to oppress the Church of God. He, being called by the Lord, was poured out upon the face of the whole earth, that he might preach the Gospel from Jerusalem even unto Illyricum, and build not upon another's foundation, where it had already been preached; but might extend even to Spain, and run from the Red Sea, nay, from the Ocean even to the Ocean, imitating his Lord and the Sun of justice, of whom we read: His going forth is from the end of heaven, and his circuit even to the end thereof, so that the earth would fail him sooner than his zeal for preaching.

This God also divides destruction over strength, that he may make weak those who are wickedly strong, and that they may be able to imitate the Apostle saying: When I am weak, then am I strong. For the children of this age are more prudent than the children of light in their generation. Strength of body is weakness of soul: and again, strength of soul is weakness of body. Therefore the Lord, who dispenses all things by reason, and does all things with true judgment, divides destruction over the strong enemy, that he may bring misery upon the fortification which raises itself up against the knowledge of God. Of which we also read in Proverbs: The wise man has gone up into strong cities, and has thrown down the fortification in which the wicked trusted. This applies indeed to all worldly strength; but he does it especially against heretics, who, by arguments and sophisms and the art of dialectic, strive to fortify the falsity of their doctrines.

But the wise man, aided by God's help, destroys it, and shows every fortification to be utterly vain, so that he may bring misery upon it, and, pride being bowed down, may say with the Apostle: Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Verse 10.) They have hated in the gate him who reproves, and have utterly abhorred him who speaks perfectly. The LXX: They have hated in the gates him who reproves, and have abhorred the holy word. These, upon whom God smiles ruin, and against whom he brings depopulation, who are strong in evil, and powerful for oppression, have hated in the gate, that is, in judgment, him who reproves—whether myself or the other prophets who were sent to them—and him who speaks perfectly, or the immaculate word, as Symmachus interpreted it, or the holy speech, as Theodotion and the LXX translated it.

That the judgments of the people were held in the gate, according to the ancient custom of the Jews, we have both read often and often interpreted, so that neither the farmer coming to a case would be frightened by the crowding of the city and an unfamiliar sight, nor the city-dweller would have to hurry far from the city and seek transport by beasts of burden. This we have said according to the letter. But it is a great sin to hate the one who reproves, especially if he reproves you not out of hatred but out of love: if alone to alone, if with one brother brought along, if afterward in the presence of the Church, so that the offense may seem to be brought forward not from a desire to slander, but for your correction.

We often read in the Scriptures of double gates, of death and of life, of vices and of virtues, as that in the Psalms: Who lift me up from the gates of death, that I may declare all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Sion; no doubt this signifies the Church, the exalted mountain of Sion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the multitude of angels: and the Church of the firstborn, who are written in the heavens. He who has been exalted in the gates of Sion will not be able to fear the gates of death, of which the Lord spoke to Peter: Upon this rock I will build my Church: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. We plainly learn of the gates of virtue in another psalm: Open to me the gates of justice: I will go in to them, and give praise to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord: the just shall enter into it.

Finally, Wisdom too, trusting in the gates of the city, said: As long as the innocent hold justice, they shall not be confounded. I think that the gates of the city, that is, of the soul believing in Christ, are the virtues, through which Christ enters to those who believe. And because it is not written in which gates they hated the one who reproves, whether in evil ones or in good ones, let us refer it to both. The prophet reproves the sinners standing in the gates of vices, and therefore he is held in detestation by them. Or certainly the prophet himself stands in the gates and beginnings of the virtues, and is hated by those whom he reproves, and it is not enough for sinners to hate in the gates him who argues or reproves, unless they also abhor the holy word that is uttered from his mouth. For he who does not receive a prophet does not receive him who sent him.

But if they have abhorred the holy word, or him who spoke perfectly (moreover the holy word is the Lord Jesus, of whom it is said: You will not allow your holy one to see corruption), all the Jews, saying "Anathema to Jesus," abhor the word of God, which is both perfect and holy and immaculate. For piety is an abomination to the sinner. But whatever we have said concerning the Jews can be applied both to the pagans and to the heretics, of whom some abhor all the sacred Scriptures, in which is the word of God; others, while they perversely understand what they read, place abomination in the House of God. (Verse 11 and following.) Therefore, because you plundered the poor man, and took choice spoil from him: you shall build houses of squared stone, and you shall not dwell in them.

You shall plant most delightful vineyards, and you shall not drink their wine; for I have known your many crimes, and your mighty sins, enemies of the just man, taking bribes, and oppressing the poor in the gate: therefore the prudent man in that time will be silent, because it is an evil time. The Septuagint: Therefore because you struck the poor with the fist, and took choice bribes from them, you have built houses of hewn stones, and you shall not dwell in them. You have planted desirable vineyards, and you shall not drink their wine; for I have known your many impieties, and your mighty sins: trampling upon the just man, taking exchanges, and turning aside the poor in the gates: therefore he who understands shall be silent in that time, because it is an evil time. Lest perhaps Israel should suppose that it was for idolatry alone that they were being handed over to the enemy for punishment, he adds also the other things which, once the true religion had been lost, they committed.

You plundered, he says, the poor man in order to take from him what he scarcely had for necessary sustenance, and whatever you saw that was precious and beautiful you turned to your own use. Whence also from the price of the things which you seized and took from the poor man, you built houses of squared stone, so that, having despoiled men, you might clothe your walls with marble; which houses, because you built them from plunder, and prepared not only for dwelling and shelter, which human frailty requires, but for beauty and luxury, you shall not dwell in them, being carried off by sudden captivity or death. You also planted vineyards most cherished, providing for future drinking, and you shall not drink wine from them, because I have known all your crimes and sins, and mighty sins, which have provoked my wrath. You who are enemies of justice, or of every just man, and take bribes, and oppress the poor in judgment.

Therefore he who is poor and prudent, when he sees the judge corrupted by bribes, will be silent in that time, because it is an evil time. Or certainly it must be understood thus: what profit is there now, with your captivity near at hand, in enumerating sins, when there is now no remedy, and the hostile army already surrounds the walls of your cities? We can say this same thing also of heretics, who plunder the poor man, or strike his head with a clenched hand, for this is what the Greek κατεκονδύλιζον signifies, according to what we read above, striking the poor man on the head. For heretics strike no one but the poor man, who cannot withstand their menace: and not in other members, but in the principal part, the heart, and in the truth of faith. I think that the poor are those who, content with simple faith, are not able to respond to the malice of heretics.

But whatever good work they have prepared as gifts to God, unless they resist their adversaries, they will lose it in the time of battle and conflict: and these adversaries build themselves houses by the composition and structure of their words, so that they may remain safe and secure. But they will not dwell in them, when they have been destroyed and overthrown by men of the Church. And they not only build houses, but also plant most cherished and desirable vineyards, so that they may falsely represent the mysteries of Christ; but they will not drink wine from them, except that which is the incurable fury of dragons. For the Lord waited for these vineyards to bring forth fruit, and they brought forth no grape, but thorns or wild grapes: not judgment, but a clamor, with which they blaspheme against their God with an insane mouth. Therefore they will not dwell in their houses, nor will they drink the wine of those vineyards which they planted, because the Lord has known their many impieties.

Here "knowledge" is not to be understood according to what we read elsewhere: The Lord knows those who are his, but that nothing escapes God, and he knows all the secrets of sinners. I have known, he says, many impieties: which are not only many, but also mighty, and oppressing, or trampling upon justice itself, or upon him who is just. And you take, he says, an exchange: for which all translators alike rendered ἐξίλασμα, that is, propitiation; we have said "bribe": but ἄλλαγμα, according to the idiom of Scripture, is called "price," which we read also in the Gospel: But what exchange shall a man give for his soul? They also turned aside the poor in the gates: or, as Symmachus interpreted, oppressed them, so that, contrary to the truth of judgment, they might sell a verdict for a price, falling into that which is written: Bribes blind the eyes even of the wise.

These things heretics receive, so that they may turn the austerity of the Scriptures, which announce torments to sinners, into blessedness: and while they promise all manner of prosperous things to the rich, they are harsh and severe only toward the poor. When, therefore, a man of the Church, prudent and understanding, shall have known that there are many impieties in that which is called the house of God, and not only many, but also mighty ones, and such as can oppress justice, and that the madness of the teachers has proceeded so far that they take a price in judgment, and do everything for bribes, and also avoid the poor in the gates, and disdain to hear them: let him be silent at that time, lest he give what is holy to dogs, and cast pearls before swine, who, turning, would trample them underfoot, and let him imitate Jeremiah saying: I sat alone: because I was filled with bitterness.

And that in the Psalms: I am alone until I pass over. (Verses 14, 15.) Seek good, and not evil, that you may live, and the Lord God of hosts will be with you as you have said: Hate evil, and love good, and establish judgment in the gate, if perhaps the Lord God of hosts will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph. The Septuagint: Seek good, and not evil, that you may live, and thus the Lord God almighty will be with you, as you have said: We have hated evil, and loved good, and restore judgment in the gates, that the Lord God may have mercy on those who remain of Joseph. You say that God is with you, because you are the sons of Abraham; hear what follows: If you are the sons of Abraham, do the works of your father. What are the works of your father Abraham? Love good, and not evil. It is a great sin not only to do evil, but also to love it.

Many sin, and once the ardor of pleasure is spent, are bitten by their own conscience, and repent of their sin. But he who not only does not grieve that he has done what is evil, but glories in his own wickedness, fulfills that which is written: The sinner, when he has come into the depth of impiety, becomes contemptuous. Seek therefore good, and not evil. For if you seek good, in the very fact that you seek good, you immediately repel evil. But you would never seek good unless you first repelled evil, fulfilling the words of the Psalmist who says: Turn away from evil, and do good. And when you have sought good, and avoided evil, then you will live in him who says: I am the life. He seeks good who believes in him who speaks in the Gospel: I am the good shepherd. He repels evil who flees him of whom it is written: The whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

And in the Lord's Prayer he says: Deliver us from evil. And when you have sought, he says, good, and not evil, and have lived, then the Lord God of hosts will be with you, as you had said he was with you because you were born of Abraham. Nor is it enough to seek good, and not to seek evil, unless you have an addition [ἐπίκτησιν] in both, so that first you hate evil, then you love good. He hates evil who is not only not conquered by pleasure, but hates the works of pleasure: and he loves good who does what is good not unwillingly, or by necessity, or from fear of the laws; but because it is good, so that he may have as reward of the good work his own conscience, and the love which he possesses toward the good. Whence also the Apostle says: God loves a cheerful giver. For not every almsgiving is pleasing to God, unless it is offered with cheerfulness.

And when you have hated evil, and loved good, establish judgment in the gates, of which it was spoken above, so that, iniquity being expelled, truth may return. And if you do this, perhaps the Lord God almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph, from the tribe of Ephraim and from the ten tribes, and they will be able to escape captivity. All these things can also be applied to heretics, that, having abandoned the error which they invented, they may return to the Church, and hate their former doctrines, and love the truth in the Church of the Lord, and exercise true judgment in the gates of vices and virtues, leaving the former and passing over to the latter, and may hope for mercy, those who are able to escape from the jaws of the devil.

But according to the Septuagint, with the order changed, the reading of the present chapter can be rendered thus more clearly: As you have said, we have hated evils, and loved good things, so seek good and not evil, that you may live, and as the Lord God almighty is with you, and restore judgment in the gates, that the Lord God almighty may have mercy on the remnant of Joseph. (Verses 16, 17.) Therefore thus says the Lord God of hosts, the ruler: In all the streets there will be lamentation, and in all the places which are outside it shall be said, woe, woe. And they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and to lamentation those who know how to mourn. And in all the vineyards there shall be lamentation: for I will pass through the midst of you, says the Lord. The Septuagint: Therefore thus says the Lord God almighty: In all the streets, lamentation: and in all the ways it shall be said, woe, woe.

The husbandman shall be called to mourning, and to lamentation those who know how to wail, and in all the ways lamentation: for I will pass through the midst of you, says the Lord. I commanded that you seek good, and not evil, that you might live, and that the Lord might be with you. And again I added (lest you should say you were warned only once): Hate evil, and love good, and restore judgment in the gates, you who hated in the gate him who reproved, that the Lord might have mercy on the remnant of Joseph: and because you were unwilling to do it, trampling my commands underfoot, and turning your shoulder away from me in retreat: therefore thus says the Lord God almighty, who is the Lord of hosts: everywhere lamentation, everywhere sorrow.

Husbandmen shall be called to mourning, and those who know how, according to the custom of the province, to chant beforehand so as to stir up tears shall be called, so that lamentation and mourning may be, not in all the streets as was said above, but in the vineyards; where once was the occasion of joy, there may be the source of tears. And all these things will happen, because I will pass through, he says, in the midst of you. The Hebrew word, "I will pass through," which in their language is called EEBOR (עבר), whenever it is placed in the Sacred Scriptures in the person of God, is to be taken as referring to punishment, meaning that he by no means remains among them; but passes through and leaves them.

Whence also in other places, according to the interpretation of Aquila, when God is angry, he calls his fury and wrath ἀνυπερθεσίαν, all of which things can be referred to heretics, so that, because they were unwilling to do those things which are just, there is lamentation in all their streets. For broad and spacious is the way that leads to death: and each of the heretics and gentiles has streets in his own sands and figments, to which it consequently follows: And in all the places which are outside it shall be said, woe, woe. For those who are within the Church will not hear "woe," which is the ultimate of punishments; but if perhaps they have sinned, lamentation will be taken up over them.

Therefore, outside, or in all the ways, it shall be said, woe, woe: because they do not have one way which leads to life, and which is the royal way, but crooked and perverse ways, turning aside to the right and to the left, since they do not hear the Lord saying: Do not be excessively just. And: Perverse are the ways which are on the left. And they fall into a double woe, of flesh and of spirit, of the present age and of the future. Whereas, on the contrary, those of the Church hear: Rejoice, again I say, rejoice.

But the husbandman also is called to mourning (for heretics have their own husbandmen, in whose fields thistles and thorns grow), and those are called to lamentation who know how to mourn, whether their own or others' sins; although we can also take this in a good sense, that the man of the Church, powerful to call to repentance, may imitate his Lord saying: We mourned, and you did not lament, and may mourn over heretics, just as Samuel once mourned over Saul, king of Israel. And the Apostle says he grieves over those who did not do penance. In all the vineyards also there shall be lamentation, because their vineyards are the vineyards of Sodom. And instead of the wine of gladness, which gladdens the heart of man, they have brought forth the wine of dragons and the incurable fury of asps. And they will suffer all these things; because the Lord will pass through the midst of them, so that he will not dwell among them, nor say: I will dwell in them, and walk among them.

And: Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.

Verse 18-20. Woe to them that desire the day of the Lord, to what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light: as if a man should flee from the face of a lion, and a bear should meet him, and he should go into a house, and lean his hand upon the wall, and a serpent should bite him. Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? Gloom, and no brightness in it? The Septuagint: Woe to them that desire the day of the Lord, to what end is this day of the Lord for you? For it is darkness, and not light. As if a man should flee from the face of a lion, and a bear should fall upon him, and he should go into a house, and lean his hands upon the wall, and a serpent should bite him. And gloom, and it has no brightness.

Lest the Thecuite prophet, being of the tribe of Judah, should seem to neglect entirely the men of his own tribe, and to direct his discourse only to the ten tribes, he now directs the word of his prophecy to both kingdoms, that is, to Judah and to Israel—which can be understood from many other passages, but especially from what follows: Woe to you that are wealthy in Sion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria. Woe therefore to Judah and Israel, saying: Let the day come, let the foretold captivity come, provided only that what is promised through the prophets—namely, the time of restoration also—should follow.

For there is not so much evil in the injury of captivity as there is good in the things which the Lord promises after the captivity: to whom the prophet answers, that it is in vain that they look forward to what is to happen a long time hence, at the coming of the Son of God after the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity, since devastation and poverty and countless miseries will follow. For, he says, to those fleeing from the face of Nabuchodonosor the lion, Assuerus will meet them, under whom the history of Esther is related; or, the empire of the Assyrians and Chaldeans having been destroyed, the Medes and Persians will rise up.

And when, Cyrus reigning, you shall have returned, and, at the command of Darius, shall have begun to build the house of the Lord, and shall have placed all your confidence in the temple, so that you rest in it, and lean your weary hands upon the walls: then Alexander king of the Macedonians will come, or Antiochus surnamed Epiphanes, who will dwell in the temple, and bite you like a serpent, not indeed abroad in Babylon or in Susa, but within the borders of the holy land. By these things it is proved that the day which you desire is not one of light and joy, but of darkness and sadness. These things we have said briefly according to the historical sense, lest we should leave the opinion of the Jews entirely untouched.

But there is no doubt among any of our own writers that all understand the day of darkness to be the day of judgment, of which Sophonias also writes: Near is the great day of the Lord, near and exceeding swift: the voice of the day of the Lord is bitter and hard. And Isaiah: Behold the day of the Lord shall come, incurable, of wrath and indignation, to lay the world desolate, and to destroy the sinners out of it. At the same time the confidence of the proud is shaken, who, in order to appear righteous before men, are wont to look forward to the day of judgment, and to say: Would that the Lord might come, would that it were granted us to be dissolved and to be with Christ, imitating the Pharisee who spoke in the Gospel: God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week: I give tithes of all that I possess.

For by this very fact, that they desire the day of the Lord and do not fear it, they are judged worthy of punishment, because no man is without sin, and the stars are not clean in his sight. And he hath concluded all under sin, that he might have mercy on all. Since therefore no one can judge concerning the judgment of God, and we shall have to render an account even of an idle word: and Job daily offered sacrifices for his sons, lest perhaps they should have thought anything perverse against the Lord—what rashness it is to hear with the Corinthians: Without us you reign: and I would to God you did reign, that we also might reign with you. Certainly, if their own conscience did not even reproach them, they ought to imitate Paul saying: Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire?

And to be anxious for all, lest, as lovers of themselves, so that they alone might reign, they should desire the torments of others: just as if someone should wish that his own fatherland and city be captured and overthrown, so that he alone might enjoy the friendship of the victors. We are wont, in straits and tribulations, to say: would that it were granted me to depart from the body, and to be freed from the miseries of this world, not knowing that as long as we dwell in this flesh, we have a place for repentance: but if we shall have departed, we shall hear that saying of the Prophet: But in hell who shall confess to thee?

This is the sorrow of the world, which leads to death, by which the Apostle would not have him perish who had committed fornication with his father's wife, by which also the unhappy Judas perished, who, being swallowed up by an overabundant sorrow, joined homicide to betrayal, and a homicide worse than all homicides: so that where he thought there was a remedy, and death by hanging the end of his evils, there he found the lion and the bear and the serpent. By these names it seems to me are signified either the various punishments, or the devil himself, who is rightly called both lion and bear and serpent.

And when we think we hear Isaiah saying: Go, my people, enter into thy chambers: shut thy doors, hide thyself a little while, until the wrath of the Lord passes over, and we suppose ourselves to be as it were in our own house, as it were resting in hell: then the serpent will bite us, which in the present passage is called Nahas, and in Job is called Leviathan. Concerning whose nature and manifold terror we learn more fully in that very book. But in the gloom and darkness, which are contrary to light and brightness, the diversity of torments is explained. Verse 21. I hate and have cast away your feast days, and I will not receive the savour of your assemblies. And if you offer me your holocausts and gifts, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the vows of your fat beasts. The Septuagint: I have hated and rejected your feast days, and I will not smell in your assemblies.

And if you offer me holocausts and sacrifices, I will not accept them, and I will not regard the peace-offering of your presence. This is properly said against the tribe of Judah, and against those who, coming out of Israel to the ceremonies of God, nevertheless did not withdraw from the high places, and worshipped idols, and polluted the sacrifices of God by the magnitude of their sins. For I never think that he spoke of the offerings of calves, which they offered in Dan and Bethel, when he said: if you offer me holocausts and your gifts, I will not accept them. But God hates, and not only hates, but also casts away the feast days of those who flee the lion and run into the bear, and enter into the house, and are bitten by the serpent, because they do not celebrate the feast days of God, but their own feast days, the Lord saying: I hate and have cast away your feast days.

And he does not accept the assembly and savour of men of this sort, nor does he hold it for an odour of sweet fragrance, and he detests all their gifts, and does not regard their fattest vows. This indeed shall befall not only the men of that time, but also us, if we commit similar offences, and think that we offer to God things gained by rapine and perjuries and crimes, and that we redeem our sins thereby, when we read that Zacchaeus restored fourfold whatever he had taken by fraud, and offered half his substance out of that which he had honestly acquired. For he could not offer to the treasuries of God what had been wickedly acquired, unless he first restored it to its owners, and afterward fulfilled what is written: Honour the Lord with thy just labours; and: The ransom of a man's life are his own riches: for God does not accept vows made from the wages of a harlot.

On the contrary, the just man can say: Let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight. Which prayer was turned into sin for Judas the betrayer: for he did not have a good odour; but he spoke by his deed: My sores are putrefied and corrupted, because of my foolishness. All these things we can also say of the heretics, who, while fleeing the lion, run into the bear, and having entered the house, which they think is the Church of God, lean upon the walls which they themselves have made, and are bitten by the serpent, whose light and day the darkness and gloom snatch away, so that the darkness be palpable, and their firstborn be slain. Of these God hates the sacrifices, and casts them from himself, and as often as they are gathered together under the name of the Lord, he detests their stench, and closes his nostrils.

Now to hate, and to cast away, and not to smell, he speaks by human comparison, that we may know the affection of God by our own words. And if they offer holocausts, or seem to fast, to give alms, to promise chastity—which are the true holocausts—the Lord does not accept them, nor deigns to look upon their fattest victims. For he judges not the magnitude of the sacrifices, but the merits and motives of those who offer. Whence also the widow, who in the Gospel cast two mites into the treasury, is preferred by the Saviour above all who believed they were offering the fattest vows and marrow-rich victims, giving little out of much: whereas she offered the whole that she had.

More manifestly and more truly are these things said, after the coming of the Lord, of the people of the Jews, who, the temple and altar having been destroyed, believe that they offer victims: whose feast days God hates and casts away, and does not accept the savour of their assembly, when, gathered together, they say: Crucify, crucify such a one; and: His blood be upon us and upon our children. And if they offer holocausts in the synagogues, and gifts in the councils of satan, and the fattest vows, the Lord does not regard them, just as he did not regard the gifts of Cain. Who indeed rightly worship one God, and offer rightly; but in this they are not regarded, because they do not divide the confession into Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit. But our gifts, that is, those of the Church, which we offer from our firstfruits, God regards, just as he once regarded the sacrifices of Abel.

Verse 23. Take away from me the tumult of thy songs, and the canticles of thy lyre I will not hear. The Septuagint: Take away from me the sound of thy songs, and the psalm of thy instruments I will not hear. The beautiful songs of the Levites, by which they praised God, he calls a tumult, and a confused sound; because praise is not beautiful in the mouth of a sinner, and these same songs they had also been accustomed to offer to idols. The prayer likewise of the Jews and the psalms which they sing in the synagogues, and the composed praise of the heretics, is a tumult to the Lord, and, so to speak, the grunting of swine and the braying of asses, to which the works of Israel are more fittingly compared.

But understand the psalm and songs, the lyre and instruments, either according to the letter, in the people of Israel, which things were once done as a figure of things to come; or according to the spirit, in us and in the heretics—which, if we direct them by good works, are heard by the Lord: if by evil works, he closes his ears, and does not deign to hear the songs of the impious.

Verse 24. And judgment shall be revealed as water, and justice as a mighty torrent. The Septuagint: And judgment shall roll on like water, and justice like a torrent that cannot be passed. As water, when it flows downward, lays bare what it had before covered, and makes it plain to the eyes of all: so the judgment of God and his justice, which he once exercised upon his own people, shall be made plain to all, and shall be borne along like a most mighty torrent. Whatsoever it seizes, it drags with it, and does not suffer to withstand it. But according to the Septuagint, the judgment of the wicked rolls like water; because it does not stand in one opinion, but is carried about by every wind of doctrine, disapproving what it had approved, and thinking to be worth nothing what it had before praised.

Their justifications are compared not to rivers and most pure fountains, but to turbid and muddy torrents, which do not have their own waters, but waters gathered from rocks and crags and thorn-bushes. Whoever wishes to cross these will at once be swept headlong, and, his feet overturned, he will not be able to say: He hath set my feet upon a rock: for he treads upon sands, which have no foundation, and when he is in peril, he will speak according to the Hebrews: The torrent has passed over my soul. On the contrary, we read of the just, whose judgment does not roll like water, and whose justice is not borne along like an impassable torrent: The thoughts of the just are judgments. (Verses 25, and following.) Did you offer to me victims and sacrifice in the desert forty years, O house of Israel? And you carried the tabernacle of your Moloch, and the image of your idols, the star of your god, which you made for yourselves.

And I will cause you to migrate beyond Damascus, says the Lord: God of hosts is his name. LXX: Did you offer to me victims and sacrifices in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel, and did you take up the tabernacle of Melchom, and the star of your god Rephan, the figures of them which you made for yourselves. And I will transfer you beyond Damascus, says the Lord: God almighty is his name. From this passage we learn that all the victims and sacrifices which Israel offered in the desert were offered not to God, but to Moloch, their king, whose tabernacles they carried, and whose image of idols and statues they venerated. And what that image or idol is, he shows in the following statement: The star of your god, which in Hebrew is called CHOCAB, כוכב, that is, of Lucifer, whom the Saracens venerate to this day.

For which cause the Lord made them migrate beyond Damascus, that is, among the Assyrians and Chaldeans: whose omnipotence is shown from the fact that he is the Lord God of hosts. We ask how they did not offer victims and sacrifice to God in the desert, but to their king, whom they call Lucifer? From the time when they transformed gold into the head of a calf, saying, These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, it is shown that everything they did, they did not for God, but for idols. And that afterward we read they offered certain things to the Lord, they did this not from will, but from fear of punishment, and from the slaying of those who fell on account of idols: but the Lord regards not the things which are offered, but the will of those who offer.

Finally, wherever there was opportunity, they always turned back in heart to Egypt, longing for the garlic and onions, and cucumbers and Egyptian meats, and despising the manna which was given from heaven. That we may understand it thus, Stephen, the first martyr of the Gospel, worthy of his name, relates in the history of the Apostles: And they made a calf in those days, and offered a sacrifice to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their hands. But God turned, and gave them up to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the Prophets: Did you offer to me victims or sacrifices forty years in the desert, O house of Israel? And you took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Rephan, the figures which you made to worship them, and I will transfer you beyond Babylon. Nor should we think that the first martyr erred, who, in place of what is written in the prophet, beyond Damascus, said, beyond Babylon.

For he set down the sense rather than the word, because beyond Damascus they were led into Babylon, or beyond Babylon. Now in the place where Luke put Μολὸχ, and in the Hebrew is written MELCHECHEM (מלככם): Aquila and the LXX translated Μολχὸμ: Symmachus and Theodotion, "your king." Also, in place of what is read in the Septuagint as Rephan; Aquila and Symmachus, translating the Hebrew itself, put CHION (כיון), Theodotion ἀμαύρωσιν, that is, obscurity. Again, in place of SOCHOTH (סכות), Aquila has συσκιασμοὺς, that is, tabernacles: Symmachus and the Septuagint, tabernacle: Theodotion translated it as vision. And this is to be observed in all the sacred Scriptures, that the apostles and apostolic men, in setting forth testimonies from the Old Testament, consider not the words but the sense: nor do they tread the same footsteps of the words, so long as they do not depart from the meaning.

Whatever, however, is said according to the letter against the people of the Jews, refer all of this to those who under the name of Christ venerate idols, and, fashioning for themselves depraved doctrines, carry the tabernacle of their king the devil, and the image of their statues and idols. For they do not worship one idol; but according to the variety of doctrine they adore different gods, and the star of their god. Who, since he is an angel of Satan, transforms himself into an angel of light, and falls from heaven like lightning, and Antichrist imitates Christ. And he beautifully added, which you made for yourselves. For they did not receive these things from God; but fashioned them from their own mind. Whence the Lord will make them migrate beyond Damascus, that they may not drink the blood of the Lord; but pass over into Babylon, and hear through the prophet: Babylon a golden cup, making all nations drunk.

For Damascus, as we have often said, is interpreted "drinking blood," or "the blood of sackcloth," that through penance we may be provoked to drink the blood of the Lord.

(Verse 1.) Woe to you who are wealthy in Sion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria, the great men, heads of the peoples, who go in pompously to the house of Israel. LXX: Woe to those who despise Sion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria: they have gathered the vintage of the firstfruits of the nations, and have entered in for themselves.

To Sion, as we said above, and to the mountain of Samaria, that is, to the two tribes which were called Judah, and to the ten which were called by the name of Israel, the word of the prophet is directed, especially to those who among both peoples are the great men and princes, and who give themselves to luxury after the example of that rich man clothed in purple, who feasted sumptuously, and was raised to such pride that he disdained even to look upon Lazarus, full of sores, before his gate, and would not even grant him what was going to perish from his table. These are the heads of the peoples, who trust in riches, and are wealthy in Sion, and have confidence in the mountain of Samaria, and go in pompously to the house of Israel, so that the body displays the swelling of the mind, and they may seem like the litters of processions.

But according to the rules of tropology and the Septuagint translators, Sion is referred to the Church, of which we read it is written: Who exalts me from the gates of death, that I may declare all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Sion. But the mountain of Samaria, on account of the pride and boasting of the keeping of God's commandments, is understood as referring to the heretics, who despise the Church; because God has chosen the weak things of the world, that he may confound the strong, and the foolish things, that he may destroy the wisdom of the wise, and reject the understanding of the prudent. These have gathered the vintage of the firstfruits of the nations, that under the Christian name they might bring them into their own winepresses, where the grape is not trodden, but destroyed: where must is not pressed out, but poison. And they have entered in for themselves. He beautifully said, for themselves: for they did not enter in for God, but entered in for themselves.

Otherwise, they have rather gone out from God, in departing from the Church. And what follows, House of Israel, according to the Septuagint, is to be read at the beginning of the following chapter; according to the Hebrews, at the end of this one, which we have expounded.

309-310 In preposterous and confused order have we both begun and, with Christ helping, shall we complete the work of the twelve prophets. For not from the first to the last, according to the order in which they are read, but as we were able, and as we were asked, have we thus discussed them. Nahum, Micah, Zephaniah, and Haggai, I first addressed to the most diligent Paula and her daughter Eustochium; secondly, I entrusted two books on Habakkuk to Chromatius, bishop of Aquileia; thirdly, after a silence of long time, I expounded Obadiah and Jonah for you (Pammachius) at your bidding; in the present year, which bears in the fasti the name of the sixth consulship of Arcadius Augustus and of Anicius Probus, I interpreted Zechariah for Exsuperius, bishop of the church of Toulouse, and Malachi the prophet for Minervius and Alexander, monks of the same city.

And straightway returning to the beginning of the volume, I could not refuse you Hosea and Joel and Amos. And after a most severe illness of the body, I have shown my rashness by the speed of dictation: so that what others, often turning their pen, do not dare to write, I have committed to chance, which always follows those who dictate, and puts talent and learning to the risk of boldness: since, as I have often testified, I am not able to bear the labor of writing with my own hand—in the exposition of the holy Scriptures, what is sought is not composed words adorned with rhetorical flowers, but erudition and the simplicity of truth.

(Verses 2 following.) Pass over into Calneh, and see: and go from there into Emath the great, and go down into Geth of the Philistines: to all the best kingdoms of these, whether their border is wider than your border. You who are set apart for the evil day, and draw near to the throne of iniquity.

You who sleep upon beds of ivory, and are wanton on your couches: who eat the lamb from the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the herd: who sing to the sound of the psaltery. Like David they thought they possessed instruments of song, drinking wine in bowls, and are anointed with the best ointment, and suffered nothing over the affliction of Joseph. The Septuagint: House of Israel, pass over all, and see into Calanem, and pass over from there into Emath Rabba, and go down into Geth of the foreigners, the best of all these kingdoms, whether their borders are wider than your borders, you who come to the evil day, who draw near and touch the lying sabbaths.

You who sleep upon beds of ivory, and abound in delights on your couches, and eat kids from the flocks, and suckling calves out of the midst of the herds, who clang to the sound of instruments: they thought them as things standing still, and not as fleeting; who drink strained wine, and are anointed with the finest ointments, and suffered nothing over the affliction of Joseph. Pass over all into Calane, which is now called Ctesiphon, and pass over all. Who are all these? Both those of whom he had said above: The nobles, the heads of the peoples, and you who are wealthy in Sion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria. You therefore pass over into the city of Persia, and attend diligently, and from there proceed into Emath the great, which is now called Antioch. He calls it "great" to distinguish it from the lesser Emath, which is called Epiphania.

Whence even to this day the first stopping place for those journeying to Mesopotamia is called Emmas, the name indeed corrupted, but retaining traces of the former name, whose region is called Reblatha, in which, in the presence of Nebuchadnezzar, the sons of Sedecias king of Judea (or Judah) were slain, and his eyes were put out. And go down, he says, into Geth of the Philistines. You who dwell on Mount Sion, and on the mountain of Samaria, go down to the Philistines, who dwell in the plains, and to all the best kingdoms of these, which lie subject to various cities, to Gaza and Ascalon, Azotus, Accaron, and Geth, and see whether their border is wider than your border, whether you or they possess the greater provinces: you, I say, you of the people of Israel, who are set apart for the evil day, namely the day of captivity, and draw near to the throne of iniquity, going to the unjust judge, the king of Babylon.

Though you are to suffer these things, you now sleep on beds of ivory, and are wanton on soft couches, so as to join lust to sleep. You who eat not to repel hunger and to sustain the human body, but for delights and luxury, so that whatever among the flocks and herds is tender and fat you prepare for your gullet: for whom the lust of the loins and the throat and the seething belly does not suffice, unless you also soothe your ears with the songs of flutes and psaltery and lyre, so that what David did for the worship of God, establishing the orders of the Levites and the varieties of instruments, you turn to pleasure and luxury. And you drink wine in bowls, not to quench thirst, but to oppress the mind. And you are anointed, not with purest oil to soothe the labors of the body, but with the most precious ointments.

And while you abound in these things, if you see any of the people perishing, you are moved by no mercy over their slaughter, but despise them as brute animals, and as beasts perishing in their own blood. This same meaning the prophet Ezekiel also sets forth under the example of shepherds: Who eat the milk from the sheep, and are clothed with the wool, and devour whatever is first, and do not heal the wounded, do not bind up the broken, do not seek out the perishing. Let us now transfer all that we have said according to the truth of the history, following the Septuagint interpreters, into the cloud of allegory. House of Israel, who have departed from me, who trust in the mountain of Samaria, who have gathered the firstfruits of the nations, pass over, and see, and go to the very many walls—for this is what Emath Rabba means—and from there gently go down into the winepress of those who fall while drinking: for Geth and the Philistines resound with this.

And behold all things, especially the best (or all) kingdoms, or the best cities of all kingdoms: and consider whether their borders are more numerous than yours. For if we wish to consider in mind, and discuss the philosophy of all nations, of the Egyptians, Indians, and Persians, we shall find their borders narrower than the borders of the holy Scriptures: For their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.

Those to whom he had said above: House of Israel, pass over all, and see, the following discourse describes from what vices they are ordered to pass over to better things: Who come to the evil day, preparing for themselves by their own vice an evil day: not that any day is evil; but that each one prepares evil for himself, according to what we read in Ecclesiastes: Say not, the former days were better than these: for you do not ask this in wisdom; for it is foolish to attribute this to the times, since it is in our power to make for ourselves either a good day or an evil one. These are they who draw near and touch the lying sabbaths.

For just as circumcision of the flesh and circumcision of the heart are both called by the same name, and there are Jews openly and Jews secretly, of which the one is rejected and the other approved: so there are sabbaths of the Lord, holy and grounded in truth, and other sabbaths not holy but lying, which follow the idleness of the killing letter. And what follows: who sleep upon beds of ivory, we can interpret thus: He who is an athlete of the Lord, and is trained for the wrestling match, and prepares himself against the adversary powers, sleeps on the bare ground, imitating Jacob; and places for himself a stone at his head, which the builders rejected, and it has become the head of the corner.

But those who devote themselves to delights and luxury, and do all things for the sake of the belly, sleep on the beds of ivory of a dead animal, and cling to unclean bones; and because vices seem beautiful, and delight with their present sheen, they rest in their little beds, and are weighed down by the heaviest sleep. These do not eat solid, athletic food, from which the strength of wrestlers is fortified, but soft and tender and belonging to the left-handed parts: such as kids from the flocks and fattened calves, tender, indeed still nursing on milk—for this is what μοσχάρια γαλαθηνά signifies. They also clap with their hands to the sound and noise of instruments, so that they may look to pleasure in all their works: and they do nothing except what they procure for the belly and for lust. And let not the prudent reader at once object to us, how it is written: Let the rivers clap their hands. And: All you nations, clap your hands. And: Sing joyfully to God our helper.

For there they are not said to clap to the sound of instruments; but to have one accord in the praise of God. After the sound of the instruments he added: they thought them as things standing still, and not as fleeting. For the things of the age, and all bodies, according to Epicurus, flow and pass away moment by moment, and nothing remains in its own state, but all things either grow or diminish, and slip headlong in the manner of rushing torrents. Whence also in secular literature we read (Virgil, Georgics 3):

But meanwhile it flees, irretrievable time flees.

And in another place (Horace, Odes 2.14):

Alas, the fleeting years, Postumus, Postumus,
Are gliding away.

For nothing is more fleeting than the age and the things of the age. While we hold it, we lose it, and through infancy, childhood, youth, and manhood and advancing and mature age, and the final spans of old age, into which seven ages Philo describes human life as divided, we change, and we run, and unknowing we arrive at the boundaries of death. And what follows: Who drink strained wine, can properly be referred to the heretics, who approve certain scriptures, and reject others, wishing to drink strained wines: whereas in the sacred Scriptures there is nothing turbid and muddy, but all is purest from the higher spring. These are anointed with the finest ointments, who, having no skill in the perfumer's art, without any knowledge of the Scriptures, and of the traditions and teaching of the apostles, claim for themselves the dignity of the priesthood, and say that they are the anointed of the Lord: and they contaminate the purest oil of their own sense with dregs.

And while they do these things unto the destruction of those whom they have deceived, they are tormented by no grief; but rejoice in the deaths of others, and delight in the blood of the wretched. That most beautiful sense in which it is said: they thought them as things standing still, and not as fleeting, is not found in the Hebrew; but instead there is written: like David they thought they possessed instruments of song. Whence it seems to me to have been added by the interpreters, who, in describing luxury, brought forth a sentence against vices and pleasures of this kind, so that they did not translate what was written, but added from their own judgment what seemed fitting to them, indeed changed it. (Verses 7 following.) Wherefore now they shall go into captivity at the head of them that go into captivity, and the faction of them that revel shall be taken away.

The Lord God has sworn by his own soul, says the Lord God of hosts: I detest the pride of Jacob, and I hate his houses, and I will deliver up the city with its inhabitants: for if there remain ten men in one house, they also shall die; and a kinsman of his shall take him up, and shall burn him, that he may carry the bones out of the house; and he shall say to him that is in the inner chambers of the house: Is there yet any with you? And he shall answer, It is the end; and he shall say to him: Hold your peace, and do not mention the name of the Lord.

The Septuagint: Therefore now they shall be captives from the beginning of the mighty ones, and the neighing of horses shall be taken away from Ephraim; because the Lord has sworn by himself, says the Lord God of hosts: because I will abominate all the contumely of Jacob, and I hate his regions, and I will take away the city with all its inhabitants. And it shall be, if there remain ten men in one house, and they shall have died; and his household shall take them up, and shall attempt to carry their bones out of the house; and they shall say to those who are set over the house: Is there yet any with you? And he shall say, By no means; and he shall say, Hold your peace, and do not name the name of the Lord.

Because of the aforesaid causes which the prophetic discourse describes (of those who sleep on beds of ivory, and are wanton on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the midst of the herd, and sing to the sound of the psaltery and drink from bowls, and are anointed with the best ointment, and moreover suffer nothing over the affliction of his people, who is descended from the stock of Joseph), now the Lord threatens, and says: Because they have done this and that, now they shall go into captivity at the head of them that go into captivity. And the meaning is: The punishment is by no means deferred to the future, nor is it prophesied of long ages after: what now presses in, what is now about to come, my word foretells, that they are to go at the head of the captives, namely the princes and the powerful, to whom he had said above: Hear this word, you fat cows, who are on the mountain of Samaria (above, 4:1).

And again: Woe to you who are wealthy in Sion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria: nobles, heads of the peoples, entering the house of Israel with pomp. You who are first in riches, shall first sustain the yoke of captivity, according to that which is written in Ezekiel: Begin at my sanctuary. Not from the saints, as many suppose; but from the overthrow of the temple, which was holy. For the mighty shall be mightily tormented (Wisdom 6), and of him to whom more is entrusted, more shall be required. And the faction of them that revel shall be taken away, he says, who had one accord in seizing pleasures, and practiced feastings and clubs of revelry: these together shall be taken away, so that as their luxury was one, their punishment may be one. In place of this the Septuagint translated: the neighing of the horse shall be taken away from Ephraim: which is not in the Hebrew, and in Greek is ἵππων.

This will be discussed by us from superfluity, when we shall have begun to weave the tropology. The Lord swore by himself, or as we read in the Hebrew, by his soul, according to what is written in Isaiah: Your new moons and sabbaths, and your festival days, my soul hates: not because God has a soul, but because he speaks according to human affections. Nor is it strange if he is said to have a soul, since he testifies that he has other members also, which are baser than the soul—feet, hands, and belly, and other limbs. But if those who deny that Christ had a human soul, but hold that God was in a human body in place of a soul, should object to us this, let them hear that in Christ the substance of the soul is demonstrated: just as the members of his body also had substance.

But in God the Father, head and feet and the other things that are named are not members, but through their names a diversity of operations is indicated: so also the soul is not something substantial, but the affection of the inner mind, and the seat of thoughts, through which God signifies his will. The Lord therefore swore, the God of hosts, that is, Sabaoth (for which the Seventy translated “of virtues”), that he detests the pride of Jacob, and hates his houses. This Jacob, according to the preceding chapter, where it is written: And they suffered nothing over the affliction of Joseph, is to be taken either as the ten tribes, or certainly the whole house of the twelve tribes. And that he will hand over the city with its inhabitants; either Samaria, or certainly Jerusalem, or both in common.

This we can refer to the time of the Lord Savior; after whose coming and passion God detested all the pride, or the injury, of Jacob, whereby they cried out against him as the carpenter’s son, and a Samaritan, and one having a demon: for this reason Jerusalem was handed over with its inhabitants to the Roman armies. And the wrath of God so raged against them, that even if ten men remained in one house, they too should die, and a kinsman, or neighbor, should burn the corpses of the dead, in order to carry the bones out of his house; because, owing to the crowds of the dying, whole bodies could not be carried out.

And when he is already weary from carrying them out, he asks him who is in the innermost part of the house, whether there remain any whom he ought to hand over to him, and he answers: It is the end, I no longer have anyone to hand over to you for burial; and before he swears that he has none, the one who had asked, and who was outside, and had not known that there was none, commands him, and says: Be silent, and do not make mention of the name of the Lord. Now he records this in order to show that men, even when compelled by the weight and necessity of evils, are unwilling to confess the name of the Lord, and that the name of God had come into such oblivion among Israel, that they did not even deign to let his name be heard in a simple oath. We have drawn the slender lines of the history, now let us set our hand to the allegory.

The princes of the heretics, who for the sake of their own delights devoured my people, and suffered nothing over the affliction of Joseph, shall be led first to punishment, and the neighing of the horse shall be taken away from Ephraim: which in the sacred Scriptures is understood in two ways, either as the pride and power of those who neigh, or as the greatness of lust. As pride and consent to evils, as here: These in chariots, and these in horses. And: A horse is a vain hope for safety. And the kings of Israel are commanded not to multiply horses for themselves. And in the book of Job, the voice of the horse is compared to the blast of a trumpet. In Zechariah also we read, what is confirmed by the testimony of the Gospel, and is referred to the presence of the Savior: Rejoice greatly, daughter of Sion: proclaim, daughter of Jerusalem.

Behold your king comes to you, just and a savior: he is meek, and riding upon an ass and a colt the foal of an ass: and he will destroy the chariots from Ephraim, and the horses from Jerusalem. But as the greatness of lust, and the unbridled desire of intercourse, as in Jeremiah, who, describing the luxurious and adulterous, added: Each one neighed after his neighbor’s wife. Such horses the coming of Christ, and the wrath of God, hamstring. And the Lord swears by himself (because he has no one greater by whom to swear) that he detests all the insolences of the heretics, and hates all their regions. For whatever they speak is injury, and worthy of the hatred of God.

And that he will take away the city and their assemblies together with those who dwell in them, namely both the people and the teachers, even if ten men should remain (who, had they been in Sodom and Gomorrah, by no means would fire have descended upon those cities on their account), all shall die that death which leads to Tartarus, of which Ezekiel writes: The soul that sins, it shall die. Their bones are buried by their kinsmen and household, of whom it is said: Let the dead bury their dead. And he who is outside, and does not enter the house of the dead; but rather casts the dead outside, commands him who burns the dead, and dissolves them into ashes, and crushes their bones, to be silent: and not to defile the most pure name of God with a dead mouth. For to the sinner God says: Why do you declare my righteousness, and take my covenant into your mouth?

Whence we too ought to take care, lest we, being dead, bury the dead; but rather that we, being alive, bring forth to life those who are dead. But if we do not do this, it is commanded us and said: Be silent, because we are judged unworthy of the name of God. (Verse 12 and following) For behold, the Lord will command, and he will strike the greater house with ruins, and the lesser house with cleavings: can horses run upon the rocks, or can one plow with buffaloes? Because you have turned judgment into bitterness, and the fruit of justice into wormwood. You who rejoice in nothing, who say: Have we not by our own strength taken to ourselves horns? For behold, I will raise up against you, O house of Israel, says the Lord the God of hosts, a nation, and they shall crush you from the entrance of Emath even to the torrent of the desert.

The Septuagint: Therefore behold the Lord will command, and he will strike the great house with ruins, and the small house with cleavings. Shall horses run upon the rocks: shall they be silent toward females? Because you have turned judgment into fury, and the fruit of justice into bitterness. You who rejoice over no good word, who say: Have we not had horns by our own strength? For behold I will raise up against you, house of Israel, says the Lord God of hosts, a nation, and they shall crush you: not so that you may enter into Emath, and as far as the torrent of the West. Because you have leapt forth into such madness that even at the time of death, and with evils imminent, you have refused to name the name of the Lord: therefore the Lord will command, and he will strike the greater house with ruins, and the lesser house with cleavings. If he commands, how does he strike? If he strikes, how does he command?

But in that he commands and orders his ministers, he himself seems to strike. Just as, when the Father commands and the Son does, he himself who commanded does it, that verse being fulfilled: He himself spoke, and they were made: he himself commanded and they were created. For all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. And in Egypt, where the firstborn who are recorded as slain by the destroyer, the Lord testifies that he himself killed them. So too in the present passage the Lord commands, and he himself through his ministers strikes the greater house with ruins, that is, the ten tribes which were called Israel, and the lesser house with cleavings, the two tribes which were ruled by the stock of the house of David. And note the properties of each. Israel, because it had sinned more greatly, is struck with ruins, and is handed over to eternal captivity.

But the house of Judah, in which was the temple, and which had sinned only in part, is held in a captivity of seventy years, and is not struck with ruins, but with cleavings. For a cleft house can be mended: ruins require not so much restoration as building anew. The ruins and cleavings of both these houses he compares to horses and buffaloes, of which the former cannot run upon rocks, the latter are so untamed that they will not accept the yoke upon their necks, and, being wild oxen, refuse out of fierceness to cleave the earth with the plow. But you, though horses and buffaloes cannot change their nature, have changed the nature of God, so as to make the sweet bitter, and to turn the fruit of his justice into wormwood, which is a most bitter herb.

You who rejoice in nothing, or in idols and golden calves, which are nothing, as Esther says to the Lord: Do not give your scepter to those who are not (Esther XIV, 11), or in nothing and in a lie. You who think that by your own strength you have taken up horns and kings and power, with which you might winnow your enemies. Because therefore you have done these things, behold I will raise up against you, O great house and lesser house, who are to be struck with ruins and cleavings, that is, O house of Israel and all twelve tribes, a most savage nation of Assyrians and Chaldeans, which shall crush and overturn you from beginning to end, from head to tail, from the borders of your land, which look toward the sun, even to the torrent of the desert, or of the West, as the Seventy translated, that is, from Emath, to Rhinocorura, between which and Pelusium the stream of the Nile, or a torrent coming from the wilderness, enters the sea.

We have said above that Emath is Epiphania, which took its name from Antiochus who was surnamed Ἐπιφανὴς. But those who think that "house of Israel" here signifies the ten tribes will not be able to explain how, in this threat against the ten tribes, it is said that they shall be crushed from Epiphania even to the borders of Egypt: within which borders, not only the ten tribes, but all twelve are enclosed, among whom were also Judah and Benjamin. Some, according to the anagogical sense, think that the great house and the lesser house signify the Jewish people, and the Church gathered from the nations. For they are called great on account of the fathers, and the law, and the prophets: we the lesser, because we were without the Testament and the commandments of God, concerning whom we also read in the Song: My sister is little, and has no breasts.

This house, great and small, gathered into one family of God, if it has not discipline, and has not done the commandments of God, shall be struck with ruins and cleavings. As often, therefore, as the house of God, which is the Church, either in persecutions, or in heresies and schisms, collapses and is torn apart, it shows the hand of God striking: which if we wish to escape, let us hear and follow the example of the comparison. Horses cannot pursue upon the rocks. The rock is Christ, who granted to his apostles that they too should be called rocks: You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church. Whoever shall be upon these rocks, the adverse powers, which are called horses, of which we spoke above, will not be able to pursue him, their courses being hindered, and stumbling upon each single rock.

Let us come also to another comparison, following our custom, discussing the edition of the Seventy interpreters, lest, if we cling wholly to the Hebrew, we should seem to have mocked the diligence of the reader, and, by being silent about the Vulgate edition, to have set it forth in vain. "Or shall they be silent," it says, "toward the females"—doubtless meaning the horses, of which he had spoken above: "Shall horses run upon the rocks." These horses, the contrary powers, go mad after females when they see a manly spirit, strengthened by the strength of God, and dare not approach it. But when they see an effeminate mind, enervated by ointments and delights, and turned into womanly softness, at once they go mad, and cannot restrain themselves, and rage after lust. There follows: Because you have turned judgment into fury. He turns judgment into fury who judges in anger, and—the Lord saying: You shall not accept a person in judgment.

And in another place: You shall not have pity on the poor in judgment; for it is the judgment of God—he who descends to judgment with an angry mind, indeed, when he does not know the case, nor knows the truth of the judgment, prejudges beforehand what sentence he ought to pronounce: and he also turns into bitterness the fruit of justice, which is most sweet. What we have said of one virtue, let us understand also of the rest, prudence, fortitude, temperance, of which he who has been angry will not be able to gather the fruit, and when he has gathered it, it will be bitter. Whence it is said in Isaiah: Woe to those who call sweet bitter, and bitter sweet. But this is said by those who, in judging, consider not the causes but the persons, and turn into bitterness the fruit of Christ's justice, which is most sweet.

Whoever therefore, either by kinship or by friendship, or on the contrary, by hostile hatred, or by enmities, is led in judging, perverts the judgment of Christ, who is justice; and turns its fruit into bitterness. Those who do this rejoice in no good word, or in vain, as Symmachus translated, that is, ἀλόγως, and, lifted up in pride, say: Have we not had horns by our own strength? Whereas, on the contrary, the just man glories in the Lord, and says: In you we will winnow our enemies with the horn. And in another place: For I will not hope in my bow, and my sword shall not save me. Whence also in Exodus, according to the Hebrew, and the edition of Aquila, we read: And Moses did not know that the appearance of his face was horned, who could truly say: In you I winnow my enemies with the horn.

We read also elsewhere: And he shall exalt the horn of his people: And: He shall exalt the horn of his Christ, and the horn of the altar, and clean and horned animals, which alone are offered to God, the interpretation of which is not for this time. On account of these so great sins, and the utmost pride, which speaks iniquity against God, and sets its mouth on high, the Lord God Almighty says that he will raise up a most savage nation, which shall crush and afflict them, indeed forbid them to enter into Emath, and as far as the torrent of the West. Emath is interpreted "wall," or "walled."

They shall therefore be forbidden by this most savage nation, to which the punishments have been assigned, to flee to the fortified city, which is the heavenly Jerusalem, lest they enter and be saved: after the manner of that chapter which we read in Genesis, where God set Cherubim and a flaming sword, which was turned to guard the way of the tree of life, so that he who had been cast out of paradise might by no means enter there unworthy. And that which follows, "even to the torrent of the West," we shall interpret from the sixty-seventh Psalm, in which it is written: Sing to the Lord, sing a psalm to his name: make a way for him who ascends over the sunset: the Lord is his name. For unless evil works have died in us, Christ will not ascend over us.

And when they have died, and we have had Christ as our charioteer: then, as we advance and go on to better things, it shall be commanded in the same psalm: Sing to God, sing praise to the Lord who ascends over the heaven of heavens toward the East. Whence also in the mysteries, we first renounce him who is in the West, and dies for us with our sins, and thus, turned to the East, we enter into a pact with the sun of justice, and promise that we will serve him.

Instead of "the torrent of the West," Symmachus interpreted "the level valley": Theodotion, "the torrent of Arabia": Aquila, "the torrent which is in the plain." By these words it is shown that sins can by no means die in those who are shut out from the walled city, nor can they arrive at the level and plain torrent, or of the desert, which is called the torrent of pleasure, according to that which we read: You shall give them to drink of the torrent of your pleasure.

(Verse 1-3.) The Lord God showed me this: And behold, a former of the locust in the beginning of the growth of the latter rain, and behold, after the latter rain, the shearer (or shearing) of the king. And it came to pass, when it had finished eating up the grass of the land, that I said: Lord God, be propitious, I beseech you: who shall raise up Jacob, for he is small? The Lord had mercy concerning this: It shall not be, said the Lord.

The Septuagint: Thus the Lord showed me: and behold, a brood of locusts was coming in the morning: and behold, one locust, Gog the king. And it shall be, if it shall have finished devouring the hay of the land, that I said: Lord God, be propitious: who shall raise up Jacob, since he is small? Repent, O Lord, concerning this: and this shall not be, says the Lord. The prophetic word foretells not only things that are to be many ages hence, but also things near at hand, and things which follow immediately upon the prophecy. For we men are wont to think much more of ourselves than of our descendants, as Hezekiah says: Let there be peace in my days.

That those who have seen the things fulfilled which were before foretold, may turn to the worship of God, in whose prophets is the truth of divination. The Lord therefore shows that Sennacherib king of the Assyrians, with an infinite multitude of army, mowing all things after the manner of a locust, would come at the beginning of the latter rain, when Israel was in need of the utmost mercy of the almighty God: but of this locust the maker and creator is the Lord. This locust comes at the beginning of the latter rain, when all things are green and every field is bringing forth, and the flowers of the various trees are bursting into the fruit of their kind. And that I may indicate in one word what I mean, the abundance of all things, the flowers of the trees, and the herbage promise the harvests.

But these locusts, which were flying about in early spring, an innumerable bruchus followed, which came after the latter rain, and was called the shearer or the shearing of the king, because it laid waste everything, and left nothing at all of the green herb in the land. This shearer, or shearing, Isaiah calls a sharp razor, which shaved all the hairs and locks of the body of Israel. And when, he says, I doubted what this razor might be, he immediately added, the king of the Assyrians. The razor therefore and the shearer of the king is the army of the Chaldeans, which, in the manner of the bruchus, laid waste everything, and consumed not only the crops, but the wood, the hay, and the stubble. And it came to pass, when the bruchus which had come after the locust had finished eating the herb of the land, and the prophet understood what he saw, he turns to prayers, and says: O Lord God, be propitious, I beseech thee.

I do not wish my words to be fulfilled in the overthrow of my people: I do not wish myself, chosen from the number of shepherds for this, to announce the ruin of the ten tribes. For who will be able to raise up Jacob, but thou alone? For when he dashes down, there is none to raise him up. Jacob is small, and has been destroyed by frequent incursion of enemies. And while he was praying, and shedding the tears of the inner man, the Lord had mercy on this, and answered: I will not destroy the whole race of Israel; the remnant shall be safe. Or certainly it is to be understood thus: he beheld two things about to happen equally. First the locust, then the bruchus. He entreated the Lord for both, and is heard only in the one, that the bruchus should not lay waste all things unto utter destruction. But the flying locust devours some things, and leaves some untouched.

It seems to me that the Seventy interpreters understood the Hebrew word GOZI (גזי), which is interpreted "shearer," or "shearing," as GOG, thinking the letter ZAI to be VAU, and compared the innumerable multitude of the bruchus to the most savage nation Gog, which is described as about to lay waste the land of Judea. But what Aquila meant to say: "Behold the latter rain after the king of Gaza," since Gaza is called by the Hebrew word AZA (עזה), I do not sufficiently understand, unless perhaps he set down the very word GOZI (גזי), and it was gradually corrupted by error into Gaza.

Let us also say something spiritually: those who, after works of righteousness (concerning which it is said in the prophet: Sow for yourselves in righteousness, and break up for yourselves new ground, and sow not upon thorns), have committed grave sins, upon them is brought a brood, or generation of locusts coming in the morning, when, as the darkness of night passes away, they begin to know their sins, and because they have not done penance, the bruchus is brought in, who is called Gog the king: but Gog is translated into our tongue as "roof," a certain proud and arrogant strength. And when he has consumed the hay and the stubble of our land, whoever are holy among the people will beg for pardon, and will say: O Lord God, be propitious. For who else will be able to raise up Jacob? Who among physicians can heal the woman with the issue of blood, but thou alone, at whose touch of the hem, health returns at once?

For Jacob is little, or of small number, because scarcely any, or few, traces of virtues remain in them. Repent, O Lord, of this, which thou hast threatened to do to thy people. But the repentance of God in the Scriptures we ought to understand as we understand sleep and wrath: not that God repents, or changes his sentence, he who speaks through the prophet: I am God, and I change not. And to whom we say: But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail; but that, when we have turned to better things, he himself also repents of his sentence, so that he neither renders to the just the rewards which he promised, if he should turn aside to iniquity, nor the penalties to the sinner, which he threatened, if he should be converted to salvation. It is said to him who is about to do penance: Give not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids, that thou mayest be delivered as a doe from the nets, and as a bird from the snares.

And if he has first despised the commands of the Lord, and afterward, placed in straits, begins to awaken, he rouses the Lord who sleeps for him, and says: Arise, why sleepest thou, O Lord? On the contrary, he who has treasured up wrath for himself against the day of wrath, will feel God angry. But if he does penance, wrath will be turned into mercy, and with our disturbances and virtues, the Lord will be changed to either side, of punishments or of clemency. (Verses 4 and following) This the Lord God showed me, and behold, the Lord God called judgment to fire: and it devoured the great deep, and did eat up a part likewise. And I said: O Lord God, cease, I beseech thee: who shall raise up Jacob, for he is small? The Lord had mercy on this: but this also shall not be, saith the Lord God.

LXX: Thus the Lord God showed me, and behold, the Lord God called judgment in fire, and it devoured the great deep, and ate up a part, and I said: O Lord God, cease, who shall raise up Jacob, since he is small? Repent, O Lord, of this, and this shall not be, saith the Lord God. First the Lord showed the prophet the maker of the locusts at the beginning of the sprouting of the latter rain, and after the latter rain, the shearer, king, or of the king, and, to express word for word, the shearing of king Sennacherib, by which he shore and laid waste everything of the ten tribes. Now the same Lord shows Nebuchadnezzar, nay rather calls him and commands him to come against Judah and Jerusalem. He calls him, moreover, that he may set fire to the temple and Jerusalem, and execute judgment by fire, upon him who was once his people.

And when the fire had come for judgment, to fulfill the Lord's command, it devoured the great deep, and ate up a part likewise, all the cities of Judea, and the part of the Lord which was called his temple. And when the prophet had seen this, he said to the Lord, not as above, be propitious, I beseech thee: but cease, or desist; that what he had already seen begun, he might obtain by prayers to have stopped: especially since there is none other who is able to raise up Jacob, lying, and small, and humbled, except the Lord who is able to bring back the captives, transferred into Chaldea, into the land of Judah.

But because once, according to the prophet Hosea and the Psalmist saying: The children of Ephraim, bending and shooting with the bow, turned back in the day of battle, we have referred the ten tribes to the character of heretics, who were called Israel, and the two, over whom Judah presided, to the Church and to the sinners of the Church, who indeed confess the right faith, but because of the filth of their vices need the purifying flames: therefore the Lord now shows himself calling judgment to fire: that fire may prove the work of each man, of what sort it is, and that what is written may be fulfilled: Walk in the light of your fire, and in the flame which you have kindled. Whence also it is said to Babylon: Thou hast coals of fire, thou shalt sit upon them; these shall be for a help to thee.

And in the psalm, the deceitful tongue, full of lies, is said to be purified by the fire of coals: What shall be given unto thee, or what shall be added unto thee, for the deceitful tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with desolating coals. From these coals of the altar, the desolating coal of the two Testaments is taken with tongs, and purges the unclean lips of Isaiah, that he may be able to prophesy the word of the Lord. But the fire, called to judgment, devours first the deep, that is, all kinds of sins, wood, hay, stubble, and afterward eats up a part likewise, that is, it reaches to his saints, who are reckoned as the peculiar possession of the Lord and as his part; for it is time that judgment should begin at the house of the Lord. And in Ezekiel it is commanded to those who are about to inflict punishments: Begin at my sanctuary.

And in the Apostle we read: If any man's work shall burn, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved: yet so as by fire. And when we shall all have been in sin, and shall have lain under the truth of the sentence, the Lord will have mercy on us, and because we are small, he will raise us up at the time of resurrection, or will raise up by virtues those of us who lay in vices, the Lord promising this, and saying: But this also shall not be. He said beautifully, but also: because he had already said above: this shall not be. For he will not always be angry, neither will he threaten forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our iniquities from us.

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has had compassion on them that fear him. (Verses 7 and following) This he showed me: And behold, the Lord stood upon a plastered wall, and in his hand a mason's trowel. And the Lord said to me: What seest thou, Amos? And I said: A mason's trowel. And the Lord said: Behold, I will set a trowel in the midst of my people Israel. I will not again add to pass over him further, and the high places of the idol shall be pulled down, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise up against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. LXX: Thus the Lord showed me: And behold, a man stood upon an adamantine wall, and in his hand an adamant. And I said: An adamant. And the Lord said to me: Behold, I will cast an adamant in the midst of my people Israel.

I will no more add to pass over him, and the altars of laughter shall be scattered, and the sacrifices of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise up against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. Before we discuss the adamant, which Symmachus and the LXX, for what is written in the Hebrew as ENACH (אנך), have translated, it must be briefly said, that this word Aquila has interpreted as γάνωσιν (a tin-coating), Theodotion as τηκόμενον (something melting): of which the one signifies a tinning, the other something wasting away; as that frying-pan (which we read of in Ezekiel [Ch.

4], in which is signified the frying of the peoples hemmed in by siege), is also shown, in the ten tribes and in the kingdom of Jeroboam (who was the grandson of Jehu, under whom this prophecy is seen), by the word "tinning." The Lord therefore is seen standing upon a wall tinned or plastered, and in his hand a tinning or a mason's trowel, with which walls are wont to be plastered over, and to receive not only beauty, but also strength against the injury of rains and frequent storms. We read in Ezekiel, the Lord threatening, that when a storm and hail should arise, he would by no means plaster nor clothe the wall of Israel, but would allow it to be dissolved by the rains.

Whence also now he says, he of whom it is written: He shall be called the builder of the wall, he himself the corner stone, the builder of the house, that he lays down the trowel in the midst of his people Israel, and makes it cease and grow idle, so that he no longer applies it further, and clothes and protects with his help. And when the Lord has withdrawn his protection, and, so to speak, the covering of the wall, the trowel ceasing, then the high places of idols, which in Hebrew are called BAMOTH (במות), shall be demolished, and the sanctified places of the ten tribes shall be laid waste, so that Dan and Bethel be destroyed, in which the golden calves were worshipped.

We have said, as we could, what has been handed down to us by the Hebrews according to the truth of history: let us pass to the anagogical sense, taking from Xenocrates, who writes concerning the natures of stones and gems, setting down a few words: "The adamant is a stone of its own name, which in Latin we can call the untamed one: because it yields to no material, not even to iron. For if it be placed upon an anvil, and struck with a heavy blow of the hammer, the anvil and hammer receive a wound before the adamant is worn away. And though fire tames all things, and consumes all metals, it renders the adamant harder, so that not even the smallest corner of it is blunted by the force of excessive heat.

I have also seen an adamant in gold, of the size of a millet-seed: and while the neighboring gold is consumed by long use and excessive age, the adamant alone is not worn away, and cannot be diminished by any file: but on the contrary wears away the file, and furrows with lines whatever it touches. This hardest and untamable stone is dissolved only by the blood of goats, and when placed in warm blood, loses its strength. It is, however, small and unadorned, having a rust-colored hue, and the brightness of crystal. Four kinds of adamant are described. The first is Indian: the second Arabian: the third Macedonian: the fourth Cyprian, possessing more or less hardness according to the quality of the regions.

It is also said, in the likeness of amber, to detect poisons, and to resist the arts of sorcerers." Such is the Lord and Savior: who, though he was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man: he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Of whom Isaiah writes: He has no form nor comeliness: we have seen him, and there was no beauty in him: despised and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with bearing infirmity. This one stands upon the adamantine wall, that is, upon his saints and apostles, to whom he granted that they too should be called adamants, and that, overcome by none, they might say: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?

And again: I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Peter also, who was a most strong adamant, the gates of hell did not prevail against him. This man and Lord, who stands upon the adamantine wall, holds in his hand an adamant, which, unless it be held by the hand of God, and fortified by his help, loses all its strength, the Lord saying in the Gospel: No one can snatch out of my Father's hand. And it is so strong that it is said to it: If you pass through the fire, the flame shall not burn you: and the more it is struck by temptations, the stronger it becomes, and for the name of the Savior it rejoices amid scourges.

And though it can be overcome by none, it is dissolved only by the heat of deadly lust. For this is said to be the nature of the blood of goats and of the goat itself, that it is most hot for lust, and that which fire cannot subdue, only its blood dissolves. The Lord therefore places an adamant of this kind in the midst of his people Israel, and does not pass by him any further, nor allows the altars, which are worthy of laughter and mockery, to be scattered, but strikes with the sword and overturns all the mysteries of the heretics and the house of Jeroboam, who first separated the people of God. (Verse 10 and following) And Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying: Amos has rebelled against you in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus says Amos: Jeroboam shall die by the sword: and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his own land.

And Amaziah said to Amos: You who see, go, flee into the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and there you shall prophesy: and in Bethel you shall not prophesy any more, because it is the king's sanctuary, and the house of the kingdom. LXX: And Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying: Amos makes gatherings against you in the midst of the house of Israel: the land will not be able to bear all his words. For thus says Amos: Jeroboam shall die by the sword: and Israel shall be led away captive out of his own land. And Amaziah said to Amos: You who see, go out, withdraw into the land of Judah, and live there, and there you shall prophesy: but in Bethel you shall no longer prophesy, for it is the sanctuary of the king, and the house of the kingdom.

It is a proverb of Solomon, indeed a command: Do not rebuke evil men, lest they hate you: And on the contrary he commands concerning the good: Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you. In another place too: He who rebukes, he says, a man's ways shall have more favor than he who speaks pleasing things. Thus Amos too spoke to the people out of a desire for their correction, and from the words of God threatened terrible things, so that, doing penance, they might return to God and forsake idols. Then the priest of Bethel, in which was the golden calf which Jeroboam son of Nebat had set up, and others who had succeeded him in the kingdom, sends to Jeroboam grandson of Jehu, that he might announce to him, saying: Amos has warred against you, or makes gatherings and assemblies in the midst of your kingdom, Israel, and speaks such things that the land of your kingdom cannot bear his words.

But he dares to send to the king of Israel as if a pontiff: fearing lest, if the people be converted to the worship of God, he lose the glory of the priesthood. And when he has heard two things, that the high places of idols, or the altars of laughter, and the sanctified places, or the ceremonies of Israel shall be laid waste, and that I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword, because the idols are utterly destroyed, over which Amaziah the priest presided, and God rises against Jeroboam with the sword, unless he do penance: he does not report the injury done to himself, so that he seems to grieve only over the insult to the king. For thus, he says, says Amos. You lie, slanderer. For in all his words the prophet does not speak as if from himself, but always sets in the title: Thus says the Lord. Therefore what the Lord had spoken, he mentions that Amos the prophet said, that he might the more provoke the king to vengeance.

What are the things which Amos says? Jeroboam shall die by the sword. And in this you lie: for he did not say, he shall die; for if he had said this, he would have seemed not to allow for repentance; but, the Lord shall rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword: threatening punishment, not inflicting it. Nor did he say: Jeroboam shall die by the sword: but, I will rise up with the sword against the house of Jeroboam. Jeroboam indeed did not die by the sword, but his house, that is, his son Zechariah, was blotted out, God striking him. And Israel, he says, shall go captive out of his own land: add also the rest, if he do not repent. Furthermore Jeroboam, despising the most vain messages of Amaziah, wished to make no reply to what he had commanded: whence he himself assumes to himself the authority of priestly dignity, and speaks to Amos: You who see, go, flee into the land of Judah.

Prophets, as we have often said, were formerly called seers, because they beheld with the eyes of the heart the things that were to come. Let the prudent reader ask why he calls him a seer and by the name of prophet, whom he compels to depart from the land of Israel? To this it must be answered: either that he says it in mockery, by way of antiphrasis, because he lies about everything: or because he saw that there were many in the people who gladly heard him: for which reason he also reported to the king, He makes gatherings against you, Amos: he does not dare openly to do injury, lest he seem to harm those who hear him.

Go, he says, into the land of Judah, in which you were born, where the mad are gladly heard: and eat your bread there, or live there, or at least practice your trade by which you may find food for yourself, and prophesy there, since you have many whom you have been accustomed to seduce: but in Bethel, in which I am priest, you shall no longer prophesy, because it is the king's sanctuary, and the house of the kingdom. And this he speaks as a false priest, flattering the royal dignity, so as not to say: it is the sanctuary of our God, and the house of an idol; but the king's sanctuary, and the house of the kingdom: all who worship false gods having this custom, that they attribute their own pride to kings, and that what they themselves do, the king seems to have done.

All the things which we have interpreted concerning Amaziah, and Jeroboam, and Israel, and Amos, are to be referred tropologically to heretics: whose priest Amaziah is accustomed sometimes to send to Jeroboam the heretical king, and patron of heretics, and to accuse the holy men and heralds of the faith before him, and to command the teachers not to preach in Israel, lest they act against the will of the king; because Bethel, that is, the house of God, and the false Church, is the sanctuary of the king, and the house of the kingdom. For they are accustomed to say: The emperor communes with us, and if anyone resists them, they immediately slander him: Do you then act against the emperor? Do you despise the commands of the Augustus? And yet let us consider that many Christian kings who persecuted the Church of God, and tried to establish Arian impiety throughout the whole world, surpass in crime Jeroboam king of Israel. For he despised the messages of the false priest, and would make no reply to his suggestion.

But these men, with many Amaziahs their priests, have killed Amos the prophet and the priests of the Lord by famine and want, by prisons and exiles. (Verse 14 and following) And Amos answered, and said to Amaziah: I am not a prophet, and I am not the son of a prophet, but I am a herdsman plucking sycamores, and the Lord took me while I was following the flock, and said to me: Go, prophesy to my people Israel, and now hear the word of the Lord: you say, You shall not prophesy against Israel, and you shall not drop words against the house of the idol. Therefore thus says the Lord: Your wife shall be a harlot in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be measured out by a line, and you shall die in a polluted land, and Israel shall surely go captive out of his own land.

LXX: And Amos answered, and said to Amaziah: I was not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but a shepherd plucking sycamore fruit, and the Lord took me from the sheep, and the Lord said to me: Go, and prophesy against my people Israel, and now hear the word of the Lord: you say, Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not gather hearers against the house of Jacob. Therefore thus says the Lord: Your wife shall be a harlot in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by a line, and you shall die in an unclean land; but Israel shall be led captive out of his own land.

This which Scripture records the blessed apostles to have done, when the Scribes and Pharisees charged them not to teach in the name of Jesus; and they answered, saying: We ought to obey God rather than men, we recognize that Amos the prophet also did, who, at the command of the pontiff of idols not to prophesy, in Bethel, not only prophesies, and shows that he fears God who sends him more than him who forbids; but boldly and freely denounces punishments to him who tried to forbid, and to hinder the word of God. Not only, he says, am I not a prophet, or was I not (of which the one belongs to humility, the other to truth) nor the son of a prophet, nor descending from prophetic stock; but when I was a herdsman and was gathering the delay of brambles, the Lord took me as I followed the flocks. For "herdsman," which in Hebrew is called bocer (בקר), Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion, and the fifth edition translated βουκόλον, one who feeds cattle, not sheep.

Only the Septuagint said αἰπόλον: which is properly called the shepherd of goats, from αἰπόλιον, which indeed is interpreted "flock," which dwells in higher places: so as to show that flocks of goats always climb rocks and rough crags and higher places. But since he adds: And the Lord took me ἐκ τῶν προβάτων, that is, from the flocks, it seems rather to signify sheep than goats: though at the beginning of Leviticus we read that both sheep and goats are indicated by the name of flocks. For thus the Lord speaks. If he shall offer ἀπὸ τῶν προβάτων, that is, from the flocks, to the Lord a lamb, or a kid, and a sheep, or a goat. Furthermore, as to what he says, plucking sycamore fruit, which Aquila interpreted, examining sycamores, and Symmachus, having sycamores, certain interpreters explain it thus, that they wish sycamores to be called a kind of tree, which grow in Palestine in the plains, and bear wild figs, which, if not plucked, produce the most bitter little dried figs, and are corrupted by gnats.

But to us (since the wilderness in which Amos dwelt produces no tree of this kind) it seems rather to mean brambles, which bear mulberries, and comfort the hunger and want of shepherds. However the reader wishes to take it, this must be said, that the Lord took up a humble and rustic shepherd, and sent him to his people Israel, and commanded him, going out from his own land, to go to Samaria: and there to prophesy the things that were to come. Since therefore, he says, at the Lord's command that I speak, you, Amaziah, say to me: Do not prophesy against Israel, and you shall not drop words against the house of the idol: hear what the Lord threatens against you. Instead of "house of the idol," in the Hebrew it is written Beth isaac (בית יצחק), that is, house of laughter (for Isaac is interpreted "laughter"), which the LXX translated as house of Jacob, understanding one name instead of another, and not the meaning.

Again, where we have put, "you shall not drop words": Symmachus interpreted, you shall not rebuke. Now, that prophets "drip," is an idiom of Scripture: because they do not bring the whole wrath of God at once, but announce small drops by way of threat. Since therefore you have said to me, do not prophesy, your wife shall be a harlot in the city, which Symmachus better interpreted, πορνευθήσεται: not that she herself commits fornication, but that, in the passive sense, she endures fornication, being defiled by others. Now great is the grief, and incredible the shame, when a husband in the midst of the city, in the presence of all, cannot prevent the injury done to his wife. Your sons too, he says, and your daughters shall fall by the sword. There is not so great a grief in a defiled daughter, as in a polluted wife, nor so great a grief in a slain wife, as in slaughtered children. For a husband more willingly hears that his wife is killed, than that she is defiled.

Nor is this enough for the injury, unless his land too be divided by the enemy with a line, and receive new occupants. Amaziah himself too, who now glories in the power of the priesthood, shall by no means die in his own land, but, led into captivity, shall die in a land which is polluted with idols, and shall not die before he sees the people whom he had deceived, serving and captive. According to tropology, Amaziah the priest is interpreted "strong and stiff," because, rebellious and fierce, he forbids the churchman and true prophet to utter the words and teaching of God, and prevents him from correcting the erring people.

His wife is the false Church, which shall lie open to the fornication of all: and his sons and daughters, whom he wickedly begot in error, shall be struck by the sword of the Lord: his land too and all his possession shall be the portion of demons, and he himself shall die in a polluted land, which has not God for its inhabitant, but is contaminated by the many errors of a perverse religion, and all the people who assume to themselves the false name of Israel, shall go captive out of their own land, so that they do not serve God, but bow their necks under the yoke of heretics and demons.

(Verse 1.) The Lord God showed me this: And behold, a hook of fruits, and he said: What do you see, Amos? And I said: A hook of fruits.

And the Lord said to me: The end has come upon my people Israel, I will no longer pass by him again, and the hinges of the temple shall shriek in that day, says the Lord God. Many shall die, in every place silence shall be cast. LXX: Thus the Lord God showed me: And behold, a fowler's basket. And he said: What do you see, Amos? And I said, A fowler's basket. And the Lord said to me: The end has come upon my people Israel: I will no longer add to pass by him; and the ceilings of the temple shall wail in that day, says the Lord God. Many shall be falling: in every place I will cast silence.

What Jeremiah beholds under the figure of the rod of watching, or of the almond, because he watched over the sins of his people, lest, as it were with closed and connived eyes, he should not see their offenses: this now Amos likewise beholds against Judah and Israel under the figure of a hook, which in Hebrew is called CHELUB (כלוב) and by the LXX is rendered "fowler's vessel": whereas the fowler is properly called MOCES (מוקש), as we read above in this same prophet: Shall a bird fall upon the earth without a fowler? And the sense is: As with a hook the branches of trees are drawn down to pluck the fruit: so I have drawn near the near time of captivity. And that we may know this to be what we say, God himself interprets what the vision which he had shown the prophet signifies. The end has come upon my people Israel.

And what follows: I will no longer add to pass by him, signifies this, that he will no longer pass by, nor neglect, the iniquities of his people, nor allow crimes to pass unpunished. And lest he seem to speak only of the ten tribes, he added: The hinges of the temple shall shriek, or the ceilings, in that day, says the Lord. This is to be understood hyperbolically, that so grave a weight of evils presses down, that even the hinges of the gates themselves and the lofty ceilings wail, and feel the incredible devastation: when many shall die, and, the inhabitants being captured or slain, in every place silence shall be cast.

But if we prefer to read "fowler's vessel" instead of "hook of fruits," this must be said, that just as fowlers with birdlime or nets draw down to the earth birds flying through the air and ranging on high, so God, through Sennacherib or Nebuchadnezzar, whom we now understand as the fowlers, seized his people, formerly free and exalted by observance of the Law, bound them, transported them, put them to death. For nets are not spread unjustly for birds. And this is to be referred not only to the time of the Babylonian captivity, but also to the coming of the Lord the Savior, when they said: Away with such a one from the earth: crucify him, crucify him, and they lost the wings of the dove. And the end came upon them, and the final captivity, and the Lord no longer spared them. And the hinges of the temple, or the ceilings of the temple, wailed, falling upon the slain people.

And in every place silence was cast, the Jews having Moses and the Prophets, and not having the Word of God: reading the letter, and losing the spirit, when their table became a snare, and a retribution, and a ruin, and their eyes were blinded, that they might not see, and their ears were stopped, that they might not hear: and their back was bent, lest they look up to heaven; but, like that woman of the Gospel, who had a spirit of infirmity, they always bent down to the earth. And the wrath of God was poured out upon them, and the fury of his wrath seized them, so that their habitation became desolate, and there was no inhabitant in their tents: when that was fulfilled: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will send a famine upon the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord (below, v.

11): concerning which, if we reach the end, we must discuss more fully in what follows. We therefore, seeing that God did not spare the natural branches, let us fear to suffer the same things, and avoid the snares of the fowler, and let us say to the Lord: Do not be silent, nor restrain yourself, O God, and do not be silent toward me, lest I become like those who go down into the pit. In the whole world the silence of the Jews has been cast.

Wherever they are, they mutter rather than speak, and though their blasphemy against the Lord Savior reaches even to heaven, every interpretation of the Scriptures is mute and silent for them, and does not penetrate the ears of the hearers. (Verse 4 and following) Hear this, you who trample upon the poor, and cause the needy of the land to fail, saying: When will the month pass, that we may sell our wares, and the sabbath, that we may open the grain, that we may diminish the measure, and increase the shekel: and set forth deceitful scales, that we may possess the needy for silver, and the poor for shoes, and sell the refuse of the grain.

LXX: Hear this, you who from morning trample the poor, and oppress the needy of the land, who say: When will the month pass, that we may trade: and the sabbaths, that we may open the storehouse, that we may make the measure smaller and the weight greater: and make a false balance, that we may possess the poor for money, and the needy for shoes, and trade in every kind of sale. Lest the hook of fruits, and the fowler's vessel, seem to have been shown in vain, and through these the nearness of impending captivity, the causes of God's offense are briefly described. O you, Judah, O you, Israel, hear what crimes you have committed, rising by night, instead of prayer and hymns to God: you have zeal for oppressing, or contending with, the poor, so that, worn out by hunger and want, they may be removed from the land.

You who await the calends, that you may trade, and increase usury upon usury, and the sabbaths, that you may open the storehouses, and give out grain to receive back more, and turn the solemnities of God, for the sake of base gain, to your own profit: who make a smaller measure in selling wares, and greater weights in receiving them, and a false balance, that you may possess the poor for money, and hold men so cheap, that you fulfill what I said above concerning you: Because you sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for shoes (above, II, 6): you have rushed into such a madness of gain, that you sell to the poor not grain, by the eating of which men's bodies are sustained, but the refuse and sweepings of grain, mixing dust and chaff with the wheat.

This indeed we see done sometimes even by perverse teachers and prelates, who without the fear of God lord it over the clergy, of whom Jeremiah speaks: Their clergy shall not profit them, who think that piety is a means of gain, and, sitting like money-changers in the temple, offer doves, not in cages, but in chairs like teachers, selling the gifts of the Holy Spirit: who make a smaller measure and a greater one, so that to the poor they give little or nothing: but to the rich, and those from whom they seek gains, they speak, in the manner of preachers, with the longest of sermons: and for the sake of money they crush and trample the heads of the poor, and thrust into their eager mouths not the grain of the Lord, which strengthens the heart of man, but refuse and the vilest dust: selling even these things which are of no value, though the Lord commanded the apostles: Freely you have received, freely give.

Verse 7. The Lord hath sworn against the pride of Jacob, If I forget even unto the end all their works. Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein: and it shall rise up wholly as a river, and shall be cast out, and shall flow down as the river of Egypt. Septuagint: The Lord hath sworn against the pride of Jacob, If he shall forget unto the end all your works. And shall not the land be troubled for these things, and every one that dwelleth therein mourn: and shall not the consummation thereof rise up as a river, and go down as the river of Egypt? Scripture often describes God as swearing.

First in Genesis: the Angel of the Lord called unto Abraham a second time out of heaven, saying: By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not spared thy dearly beloved son, in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thee as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is on the shore of the sea. And in the hundred and ninth psalm: The Lord hath sworn, and he will not repent: Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech. Concerning which, whoever it was who wrote the epistle to the Hebrews, discoursing, says: For because he had no one greater by whom he might swear, he swore by himself (above, iv, 2). And in this same prophet we have read above: The Lord hath sworn by his holy one, or by his holy ones: for behold, the days shall come upon you, and they shall take you away with weapons, or with poles, and so forth.

He, therefore, who had first sworn by his holy one, or by his holy ones, now swears against the pride of Jacob: so that if they do not believe him when he threatens, they may believe him when he swears, according to human likeness; for men take an oath then, when their simple words are not believed. Nor is it strange if God is said to swear, since he sleeps with those who sleep, and watches with those who watch, and is said to be angered against those who have treasured up wrath for themselves against the day of wrath. But he swears that he will not forget, even unto the end, their works; for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble; but he keeps in memory whatsoever they have sinned, and brings it forward even to the end and the time of judgment.

Whence the penitent pray: Remember not our former iniquities: especially since, against the proud, the very land is moved, or is troubled and mourns—not the tenant or the sojourner, but the inhabitant thereof: and the consummation shall rise up like a river, and go down like the river of Egypt: so that he who does penance may rise with the ascending river; but he who perseveres in sin may go down like the river of Egypt, and, entering the sea, be swallowed up. And by this he shows that the pride of Jacob, against which the Lord swears, is to be devoured by everlasting punishments.

Verse 9. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord: I will make the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the day of light: and I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation: and I will bring up sackcloth upon every back of yours, and baldness upon every head: and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day. Septuagint: And it shall be in that day, saith the Lord God: the sun shall go down at noon, and I will darken the light upon the earth in the day: and I will turn your solemn feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation: and I will bring sackcloth upon every loin, and baldness upon every head: and I will make it as the mourning of a beloved one: and those who are with him, as a day of sorrow.

That day signifies the day of captivity, when both peoples shall be led away into Assyria and Chaldea, for whom, because of the greatness of their sorrow, the sun shall set at noon: and while the light shines clear for all others, darkness shall fill everything for them: when their feasts and all their songs shall be turned into mourning and lamentation. And upon every back, or loins, they were girded with sackcloth, and, according to the custom of the ancients in mourning, they had baldness upon their heads: which we read that Job also did at the death of his children. And so great shall be the magnitude of the mourning and sorrow, that it shall surpass the grief of a mother for an only son who dies and is most dear to her: and all things shall be filled with lamentation and bitterness.

We may also understand this passage of the Lord's passion, when the sun at the sixth hour withdrew its rays, and dared not look upon its Lord hanging on the cross: when, darkness filling all things, their feasts and songs, with Vespasian and Titus conquering, were changed into lamentation and mourning: when all things were filled with tears and penitence and sackcloth, and their heads had baldness, which before, adorned with the hair of the Nazarites, nourished their locks for the Lord. Then the firstborn son of God, the people of Israel, who had laid hands upon the Only-begotten and truly the Son of God, was given over to everlasting mourning: and its last things, or those who were with it, were filled with bitterness. Now, therefore, while they have darkness, who repelled the Sun of righteousness: we who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, have seen a great light, and all their festival has been transferred to the Church as a mystery, so that, while they weep, we sing praises to the Lord.

They are girded, instead of a girdle, with ropes and sackcloth: to us it is said, with the apostles: Let your loins be girded, and your lamps burning in your hands. We are girded with the truth of Christ, fulfilling that which is written: Stand, having your loins girt about with truth. But they, instead of truth, are surrounded with the lie of the devil. Our head, of which the Saviour speaks: But the very hairs of your head are numbered, has perpetual hair, and in our head, who is Christ, we possess strength, so that we may slay the lion. But they slept upon the knees of the harlot synagogue (Judges xvi), and, shaven by the devil's clipping, lost the strength of their head, losing along with their strength their eyes, of which it is written in Ecclesiastes: A wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness.

Their companions dwell in mourning, our comrades are clothed with the garment of gladness. (Verses 11, 12.) Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, and I will send famine upon the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord. And they shall be moved from sea to sea, and from the North even to the East they shall go about seeking the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. In that day the fair virgins and the young men shall faint for thirst: they that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy God liveth, O Dan, and the way of Bersabee liveth: and they shall fall, and shall rise no more. LXX: Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, and I will send famine upon the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord.

And the waters shall be moved from sea to sea, and from the North even to the East they shall go about seeking the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. In that day the fair virgins and the young men shall faint for thirst: they that swear by the propitiation of Samaria, who say, Thy God liveth, O Dan, and thy god liveth, O Bersabee: and they shall fall, and shall rise no more. In the Hebrew there is no "waters," and "propitiation," which we have rendered "sin," is called by the Hebrews ASAMATH (אשמת), signifying an idol: which is the beginning of sins. Ancient history relates, both Latin and Greek, and that of all barbarous nations, that nothing is harsher than famine, which often compels the besieged to feed on human flesh, and to rage against their own nature: so that parents do not spare their little children, and a husband's affection tears apart the limbs of a wife once beloved. If bodily famine does this, what must be said of the famine of souls?

Which in the day of the resurrection of the Lord oppressed the people of the Jews, and joined to famine the most burning thirst, of those who have not the bread which came down from heaven, and those waters which flowed from the belly of Jesus. The Law has been taken from them, and the Prophets have fallen silent in eternal silence: they are moved from sea to sea, and from the British ocean even to the Atlantic ocean, that is, from the West to the South, and from the North even to the East, wanderers over the whole world, they are not able to find the word of God. At this point we shall ask the Jews what day they think is signified, in which they endure famine of hearing the word of God: especially since they read the Scriptures, and follow the humility of the letter? To them we urge that the famine foretold is one of spiritual understanding, in which Christ is discerned, the Passion of the Lord and the resurrection are found.

They go about the world, and seek the word of the Lord, and do not find it: because they have denied the Word of the Lord, which was made known through the hands of all the prophets, which in the beginning was with the Father, which was made flesh and dwelt among us. In that time the fair virgins fainted, and the young men, or the chosen ones, and teachers (for this is what BAURIM (בחורים) signifies), fainted for thirst. They interpret the fair virgins as the synagogues, and the chosen ones as the teachers of the people. And when these have failed, they teach that the curses of Deuteronomy have been fulfilled in the Jewish people.

Those chosen ones and teachers swore by the idol of Samaria, that is, by the golden calves, and said: Thy God liveth, O Dan, at the borders of the land of Judea, where Paneas now is, and at that time the golden calf was worshipped: and the way of Bersabee liveth, because by a long and rare journey they traveled there, on account of the kings of Judah, righteous and unrighteous alike. And because they did this, they shall fall, and shall not rise again, that is, they shall not receive again the state which they had before.

But the Lord sends famine upon the land upon those who savor earthly things: and a famine not of bread, and a thirst not of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord, when because of the sins of the people teaching fails in the Churches: and from sea to sea, that is, from salty and most bitter waves they come to the sea: not meeting rivers, not sweetest and varied springs, but running again to bitter waters: and from the North even to the East, desiring to leave the North (which is the harshest wind, and by the ignorant is called the right hand) and to arrive at the East, which they will not be able to find: because they do not proceed by a straight path, but go about by devious paths: and not holding to the royal road, they are led by crooked windings.

In that time the virgin souls shall faint, whom the Apostle calls uncorrupted: and desires to possess eternal chastity, writing to the Corinthians: For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest as the serpent seduced Eve by his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted, and fall away from the simplicity that is in Christ. And if all virgins were fair or good, he would never have said, the good virgins shall faint: but he placed "good" as a distinction from bad virgins, who are holy in body and spirit. The bad virgins are the five foolish ones, who did not prepare oil for their lamps. The good and comely virgins are those who had the light of virtues, and entered the bridal chamber of the bridegroom. But the virgins shall faint, because they shall not find the word of the Lord.

From which we understand that, when teaching is absent in the Church, chastity perishes, purity dies, all virtues depart: because they have not eaten the word of the Lord, which whoever eats, being nourished by its food, shall hear through Solomon: The righteous man eating satisfies his soul: but the souls of the wicked shall hunger. And David, who had come to old age, freely sang: I was young, and now am old; and I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread. How many martyrs perished of hunger in persecutions, and lacked grain and these bodily nourishments. Therefore he speaks of that bread which came down from heaven, which whoever eats can neither hunger nor thirst. But when the virgins fail, the young men also shall fail, who had before conquered the world; and therefore they shall fail, because they swear by the idol of Samaria, which we always understand in the person of the heretics, this same prophet saying: Woe to them that despise Sion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria (above 6:1).

For heretics despise the Church of God, and trust in the falsity of their own dogmas, raising themselves against the knowledge of God, the people being split, saying: We have no portion in David, nor inheritance in the son of Jesse. If anyone therefore swears by the sin of Samaria, and says: Thy God liveth, O Dan, the way of Bersabee liveth; he shall fall and shall not be able to rise again. The tribe of Dan could not find a possession in the utmost borders of the Jews, as is written in the Book of Judges, and it is interpreted as "judgment." But Bersabee, according to the variety of accents, is translated into our language as "well of the oath," or "well of satiety," and of "the seventh." And so the heretics also thirst at the extreme borders of the holy Scriptures, despising the judgment of God, and desiring the way of Bersabee, which was in the tribe of Judah: and wishing to imitate many sacraments of the Church, they say that they are satisfied and filled.

To whom the apostle Paul reproaches: Now ye are full, now ye are become rich, and they swear in the name of the Lord, who, having once fallen, because they consider the gods of idols to be their own god, shall rise no more. But those who wish to do penance, and shall not say: Thy God liveth, O Dan, and the way of Bersabee liveth, shall hear through Jeremiah: Shall not he that falleth arise again? Or he that is turned away, shall he not turn back?

(Verse 1.) I saw the Lord standing upon the altar, and he said: Strike the hinge, and let the lintels be shaken: for there is covetousness in the head of them all, and I will slay the last of them with the sword. There shall be no flight for them: he that fleeth of them shall not be saved.

LXX: I saw the Lord standing upon the altar, and he said: Strike upon the mercy-seat, and let the vestibules be shaken: and scatter it upon the heads of them all, and I will slay the rest of them with the sword. There shall be no flight for him that fleeth of them: and he that hath been saved again shall not be saved. He who, like Ezekiel and John the Baptist, shall have seen the heavens opened, and the veil, which was placed before the face of Moses, shall have been taken away from his eyes, so that what is written may be fulfilled in him: The commandment of the Lord is lightsome, enlightening the eyes; he shall see the Lord standing upon the altar, and commanding the prophet, or, as many think, the angel, who is entrusted with rendering the punishments of sins, to strike the hinges of the temple, or the mercy-seat, and let its lintels, or vestibules, be shaken.

And when, he says, the temple shall have been laid waste and destroyed because of the wickedness of men, and my wrath shall have begun from my sanctuary, let each one know that he cannot escape, covetousness possessing all things, and that their end is death, and that no defenses can help to escape the sentence of God: and according to what we read in the LXX, that he might scatter it upon the heads of all, the heads of those are beautifully divided who, of their own accord, have been divided from him who is the head of all, and have said: We have no king but Caesar, who cried with an impious voice: Crucify, crucify such a one. And: His blood be upon us, and upon our children. All of which we can also refer to the heretics, whose altar is struck, and all whose initiations and sacrilegious sacraments are shaken, who had covetousness in their heads, the partridge crying through them, and gathering what she did not hatch, and making riches without judgment.

Whence also the Lord will slay their last, or remnants, that the chapter begun may be completed, and their last end shall be foolish. But when the Lord shall have struck the hinges, and brought the sword upon them, there shall be none who can escape, and avoid the impending sword of the Lord. And this too must be noted, that, the Lord standing upon the altar, first the mercy-seat, or the hinges of the temple, is struck, then the vestibules are shaken, thirdly the heads of all are divided, fourthly those who remain are slain by the sword. For unless the Lord shall have trodden underfoot with his foot the pride of the heretics, and struck with the spiritual sword their perverse and wicked doctrine, and divided among themselves their teachers, who are understood as "heads," and slain them for a good purpose, the disciples cannot be brought to life, according to what is written: I will kill, and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal.

The teachers are killed and struck down, that the disciples may be given life: the heads are divided, that the rest of the members may be healed. (Verses 2 and following) If they shall descend even unto hell, thence shall my hand bring them out: and if they shall ascend up to heaven, thence will I bring them down: and if they shall be hidden in the top of Carmel, thence will I search and take them out: and if they shall hide themselves from my eyes in the depth of the sea, there will I command the serpent, and it shall bite them: and if they shall go into captivity before their enemies, there will I command the sword, and it shall slay them, and I will set my eyes upon them for evil, and not for good. And the Lord God of hosts, who touches the earth, and it melts away, and all that dwell therein shall mourn, and it shall rise up wholly like a river, and shall flow away like the river of Egypt.

LXX: If they be buried in hell, thence shall my hand pluck them out: and if they ascend into heaven, thence will I bring them down: if they be hidden in the top of Carmel, thence will I search and take them away: and if they plunge themselves out of my sight in the depth of the sea, there will I command the dragon, and it shall bite them: and if they go into captivity before the face of their enemies, there will I command the sword, and it shall kill them, and I will fix my eyes upon them for evils, and not for good. And the Lord God Almighty who touches the earth, and shakes it, and all its inhabitants shall mourn, and their consummation shall rise like a river, and shall go down like the river of Egypt.

He who had said above, there shall be no flight for them: he that fleeth shall not be saved who fleeth, now divides that very flight into parts, and by hyperbole testifies that even if they do this and that, they cannot escape. If they descend, he says, even to hell, thence shall my hand bring them out: not that anyone is drawn back from the dead before the day of resurrection; but that even those placed in hell are in his power. Which we know to have been fulfilled concerning Dathan and Abiram, whom the gaping earth swallowed alive. And if they ascend, he says, even to heaven, thence will I bring them down: because both Enoch and Elijah, though caught up with their bodies into heaven, are governed by God's will. And observe the proprieties: one descends to hell, one ascends to heaven: we are brought out from hell, we are brought down from heaven. In the one is utmost despair, in the other the greatness of pride.

If they be hidden in the top of Carmel, either near the borders of Phoenicia in the northern region, or toward the south on account of the vastness of the desert, where once dwelt Nabal the Carmelite, thence, he says, searching will I take them out: and if in the depth of the sea, and, to speak as the prophet does, in Tarshish, they attempt to escape the eyes of God, there will I command the serpent, which in this place signifies Leviathan, or the whale, so as to preserve the metaphor, and through the serpent and the whale he comes to the enemies. And it shall bite them, that is, devour them with its jaws. And lest perhaps through what he said above we should understand captivity by enemies as something else, Scripture, according to its custom, opens up what it had first said under enigmas.

And if they go into captivity before their enemies, there will I command the sword, and it shall slay them, lest they should reckon servitude as the utmost of their evils; but even those captured let the hostile blade pierce: and those who could survive and escape death, let them not escape the sight of God; but let him set his eyes upon them for evil, and not for good, that he may always visit them, and drive them to repentance through torments. And he says that Almighty God will do these things, at whose touch and nod the foundations of the earth are shaken, or waste away, and every inhabitant of it is occupied with lamentation and mourning. He speaks these things to show the greatness of divine power, lest perhaps he might indeed wish to do what he threatens; but the powers do not fulfill the will.

But if the earth wastes away, or is shaken, and even insensible nature perceives its Creator: how much more man, a fragile animal, whose soul's treasure is enclosed in vessels of clay and body? And as the river of Egypt runs down into the sea and is swallowed up: so also the land of Israel, of which he had said above: He who touches the earth, and it melts away, shall go into captivity, and be devoured by enemies: μετωνυμικῶς [by metonymy], from that which has, that which is had, the divine word signifying. And these things, indeed, following the order of the history, we have interpreted as best we could: if indeed in some things our understanding has not failed. But David explains the whole scope of this passage, saying: Lord, thou hast proved me, and known me. And he immediately adds: Whither shall I go from thy spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy face? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there: if I descend into hell, thou art there.

If I take my wings early in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. In Deuteronomy also we read something similar: This commandment, which I command thee today, is not above thee: nor placed far off, nor set in heaven, that thou shouldst say: Who among us is able to go up to heaven, to bring it down to us, that we may hear and fulfill it in deed? Nor is it placed beyond the sea, that thou shouldst make excuse and say: Who of us can cross the sea, and bring it back to us, that we may hear and do what is commanded? But the word is very near thee in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

For when the soul, loosed from the bonds of the body, shall have freedom to fly wherever it will, or wherever it is driven to go, on account of the fineness of its substance, it will either be led to the infernal regions (of which it is written: Let sinners be turned into hell, all nations that forget God. And: In hell who shall confess to thee? And: Thy glory has gone down into hell. Or else it will be lifted up to the heavenly regions, where are the spiritual wickednesses in the heavenly places, and if it wish to claim for itself the knowledge of true circumcision—for this is what Carmel means—and, having despised humility, to dwell in the mountains, even there it will not be able to escape the searching hand of God.

But if, despairing of salvation, it attempts to avoid the eyes of the Lord, and to reach the farthest limits of false waves, even there the Lord will command the twisted and ancient serpent, who is the enemy and avenger, and it shall bite it. Being also captured by vices and sins, it shall be punished by the sword of the Lord, and he will set his eyes upon it for evil, and not for good, that through torments and punishments it may return to the Lord. And when Almighty God shall have touched their land and shaken it, and made all earthly things waste away, they, understanding their crimes, shall be turned to mourning, and the Lord himself will ascend and descend in a twofold manner. He will ascend upon the saints like the river of its consummation, that is, of the earth, so that he may consume their earthly works.

He will descend upon sinners like the river of Egypt, that they may be thrust down by the onrush of the Lord into the bitterness of torments. (Verse 6.) He who builds his ascent in heaven, and has founded his bundle upon the earth: who calls the waters of the sea, and pours them out upon the face of the earth: the Lord is his name. LXX: He who builds his ascent in heaven, and founds his promise upon the earth: who calls the water of the sea, and pours it out upon the face of the earth: the Lord Almighty is his name. The Lord God Almighty, who looks upon, or touches, the earth, and shakes it, is himself the one who daily builds his ascent in heaven, and says in the Gospel: My Father works even until now, and I work.

And not only did he once build Eve from the rib of Adam as a type of the Church, but he daily builds believers, members of his body also, and lifts them from earth to heaven, that he himself may ascend in them. The Lord ascended into heaven with Enoch, he ascended with Elijah, he ascended with Moses, whose burial place, because he had ascended into heaven, could not be found on earth. He ascended with Paul, who, a vessel of election, was changed from a persecutor into an apostle, and was caught up from lowly things into the sublime, so that he ascended even to the third heaven, and through the Holy Spirit and the Son arrived at the Father, and heard unspeakable words, of the mystery of the Trinity, which it is not lawful for men to hear. This one, then, who daily ascends in the saints, has founded his bundle upon the earth, of which he speaks in the Gospel: Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased my Father to dwell in thee.

This bundle is bound together by one religion of the Lord. Whence also religion itself takes its name from binding back (religando), and from being bound into the Lord's bundle. Further, according to the Septuagint, he founds his promise upon the earth, so that all his promises, which the holy prophets sang with their own mouths, may not have an empty sound, and be mere names of tropology alone; but may be founded in the earth.

And when they have had foundations of history, then let them receive the height of spiritual understanding: that Christ was truly born of a Virgin, truly raised Lazarus from the dead, truly the woman with the issue of blood was healed at his touch, truly at the Lord's coming the blind saw, the lame ran, withered hands were stretched forth, leprosy was cleansed; although according to tropology, daily from the virginal soul the divine word is born, daily those dead in sin, and bound by the ropes of vices, are bidden to come forth from the tomb of their crimes, daily the works of blood are restrained, the blind behold the light in the faith of Christ, those who limped before in faith now run in the way of the Lord, and the withered hands of avarice are stretched out to almsgiving, and the leprosy of Miriam, which contaminates whatever it touches, receives back its former purity.

This Lord also calls even the most bitter waters of the sea, and pours them out upon those who have turned their face to the Lord. And he calls the bitter waters for this reason, that he may make them sweet, and he brings forth winds from his treasuries, and the waters heavy with brine he suspends on high by his own command, and refining them, and boiling them down by ethereal heat, dispenses them into rains, and sends them forth upon the face of the earth, that whatever is parched may be watered by showers, and where sin abounded, grace may more abound. (Verses 7, 8.) Are you not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel, saith the Lord? Have I not brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Cappadocia, and the Syrians from Cyrene?

Behold the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; nevertheless, in destroying I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. The Septuagint: Are you not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel, saith the Lord? Have I not brought Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the foreigners from Cappadocia, and the Syrians from the pit? Behold the eyes of the Lord God are upon the kingdom of sinners, and I will take it away from off the face of the earth. Nevertheless I will not utterly take away the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. Instead of "Cyrene," Aquila and the fifth edition set down the very Hebrew word CIR (קיר), the Septuagint "pit," that is, βόθρον, Theodotion "wall," Symmachus "Cyrene," whom also we have followed in this place.

I will bring together in a brief discourse the whole understanding of this passage which I have set forth, and of all the things contained in this chapter, up to that place where it is written: "Who say, Evil shall not draw near, nor come upon us," that we may be able to know what is said: I, the Lord God almighty, whom nothing can conceal, who touch the earth, and it shall be moved: who build my ascent in heaven: who call the waters of the sea, and pour them out upon the face of the earth: whose name is the Lord, who am the creator of all things: I have fashioned all nations of the same clay, and have begotten them by equal lot. In short, I have joined together, by the law of mortality, the Ethiopians, the Philistines, the Syrians, and the Jews, distant in places and in bodies, and at my own will I change my servants hither and thither, and transfer them into all provinces.

Lest you be lifted up in pride, because I brought you out of Egypt, and did not allow you, as my peculiar people, to serve Pharaoh: I have done this very thing also for the Philistines, whom the Septuagint rendered as "foreigners," * who in Hebrew are called CAPHTHORIM (כפתרים), so that I might transfer them from Cappadocia, and settle them in the regions of Palestine: the Syrians also, that is, ARAM (ארם), I have transferred from Cyrene: from which, since they have been made of equal condition, they will be punished by an equal sentence of my judgment, and I will overturn all impious kingdoms without any distinction of persons. But you, O children of Israel, of whom I have said: "Israel is my firstborn son".

And: "Out of Egypt have I called my son" (Hosea xi, 1), I will strike with a rod, and I will visit your sins; but I will not utterly destroy you, nor will I take away my mercy from you, and, as though shaken and tossed in a sieve, I will cleanse and choose, so that whoever shall be a little stone, and strengthened by penitence, may not fall out of my sieve: but whoever shall have fallen to the earth like dust, shall be struck with the sword, that the sinners of my people may die: not because they sinned beforehand, but because they persevered in sins even unto death.

But everyone who is Israel, and who first beheld God with the mind, and was brought out of Egypt, if, longing for the vices of Egypt and the pleasures of the world, he should turn back not only into Egypt but into Ethiopia—in which, whoever has been there, according to Jeremiah, cannot change his skin—he is saved by the coming of Christ, and there is fulfilled in him what is written: "Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God". And when he shall have worshipped him, it shall be said of him: "The Ethiopians shall fall down before him". And when they shall have fallen down, and shall have brought sacrifices to the Lord from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, they will be able to say: "I am black, but comely, because the sun hath discolored me".

For bodies grown weak with shade and idleness cannot bear the temptations and the heats of the world: but those which are prepared for wrestling and for contests, dried by the sun, overcome the injuries of the world, and obtain the blessing of the Holy Spirit, who says to the just man: "The sun shall not burn thee by day, nor the moon by night". Therefore the Ethiopians are turned into sons of God, if they do penance; and the sons of God pass over into Ethiopians, if they come into the depth of sins. For the very Creator of all things, God, turned Cappadocians into Philistines, and made those who were dwelling in the cold of faith, and lay subject to the harshest north wind, to fall drunken, and, laying aside pride, to feel the judgment of the Lord.

The Syrians also, that is, the lofty and exalted, who are called ARAM ארם, he transferred from Cyrene—a weak wall, or one which overhung the most bitter sea, and was near the Syrtes, and, according to the LXX, was held in a pit—he changed for the better, so as to make them exalted. For the eyes of the Lord are upon all the sinning kingdoms, which the devil showed to the Lord, and of which the Apostle says: "Let not sin reign in your mortal body, to obey the desires thereof".

Nevertheless, though he visit sinners with the rod, and crush and strike them who remain in sin: those souls which are called the house of Jacob, and which trip up sin, and overcome in the contest, and seize the heel of the bloodstained brother, he does not allow to perish forever. (Verses 9, 10.) For behold, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all the nations, as it is sifted in a sieve, and there shall not a little stone fall upon the earth. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say: Evil shall not draw near, nor come upon us. The Septuagint: For behold I command, and I will winnow the house of Israel among all the nations, as it is winnowed with a winnowing-fan, and no crushing shall fall upon the earth.

God, who has measured the waters with his hand, and the heaven with his palm, and encloses the whole earth in his fist, he himself, by reason of his greatness, holding the borders of the earth beyond with his hand, will shake it hither and thither like a sieve: so that, the chaff and the filth of sinners falling to the earth, the pure grain may remain, to be stored in barns: or, as the LXX rendered it, he will hold the winnowing-fan in his hand, and will cleanse his threshing-floor, and will store the wheat in barns, but will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire; concerning which he speaks through Jeremiah: "What is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord"?

Concerning this same thing, under the figure of another parable, that net shows, which is cast into the sea of this world, and draws out fish of every kind, and, the bad fish being thrown away, only the good are kept: so also the Lord has scattered the wretched house of Israel throughout the whole world, and has shaken it in a sieve and winnowed it with a shovel: and since the little stones and pebbles do not fall upon the earth, they will die by the sword, who because of filth and dust are named sinners of the people. And this they will suffer because they do not believe the prophecies of the prophets, nor think that the things which the Lord threatens through them will come to pass.

And while they promise themselves prosperity, they will afterward endure evils, whereas, on the other hand, the holy who fear and do not sin, and therefore by no means die by the sword, because they said: Evils will draw near to us, and punishments will come upon us, which our sins have deserved, concerning which God speaks more fully in Jeremiah: "I will take up, and speak against a nation and a kingdom, to root it up and to destroy it; if that nation turn from its evils, I also will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto it". Therefore God is not changed, who is always unchangeable; but we change him by our own conversion. He rages, he grows angry, he threatens, and says that he will bring punishments: if we do penance, he too will repent of his own sentence. Again, according to the same Jeremiah, he promises prosperous things: if we grow slack through negligence, he too will repent of his promise, and will change what was promised.

Of this matter we can have as an example the Ninevites and Jerusalem, of whom some were freed from threatening punishments, while others lost what had been promised to their fathers. (Verse 11 and following.) In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David which is fallen, and will close up the breaches of the walls thereof, and I will repair what had fallen down, and I will rebuild it as in the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the nations, because my name has been invoked upon them, saith the Lord who does these things. The Septuagint: In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David which had fallen, and will rebuild the things that had fallen down, and I will raise up what has been undermined, and will restore it as in the days of old, that the remnant of men may seek me, and all the nations upon whom my name has been invoked, saith the Lord who does all these things.

Where the authority of the apostles goes before—especially of Peter and James, whom the Vessel of election calls the pillars of the Church—there every suspicion of a differing explanation must be removed, and what is expounded by such great men is that which is to be followed.

In the Acts of the Apostles, when a question had arisen among the apostles as to why Paul and Barnabas had received men from among the Gentiles without circumcision and the observance of the sabbath, Peter answered as he ought; and James, approving his opinion, spoke thus: "Men, brethren, hear me: Simon has related how God first visited to take from among the Gentiles a people for his name, and to this the words of the prophets agree, as it is written: After these things I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen down, and I will rebuild the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: that the rest of men may seek the Lord, and all the nations upon whom my name has been invoked, saith the Lord who does these things: known to the Lord from eternity is his work".

This tabernacle of David, then, which had fallen (it had fallen, moreover, in those who say, Evil shall not draw near, nor come upon us: whom the Lord had shaken with his sieve and had tested, and whose threshing-floor of majesty he had cleansed with his winnowing-fan, and whoever had been sinners he slew with the sword)—now, according to the custom of the Scriptures, after torments, after punishments, promising prosperous and joyful things, he says he will raise up, and that in the resurrection of the Lord all things have been restored, so that what had fallen in the synagogues may rise up in the Churches, and that believers may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the nations, so that whatever remnant there may be of the bloody and earthly kingdom, it may be changed into heavenly kingdoms, and that all the nations which have forgotten the Lord may be converted and turn back to him.

But if we should wish to read according to the LXX, "that the remnant of men may seek me, and all the nations upon whom my name has been invoked," we ought to understand by "the remnant of men" those who believed from the Jewish people, and who, like a little stone, did not fall from the sieve, nor were cast out with the dust and chaff and filth. For the remnant will be saved at the beginning of the faith, and at the end of the world, so that when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then all Israel will be saved. Now the name of the Lord which is invoked upon the remnant and upon all the nations is that of which the Savior says: "Father, I have revealed thy name to men".

And lest I delay too long with a long discourse the rule of the promises, both in this prophet and in the others, whatever things are foretold concerning the building of Jerusalem and the temple, and the blessedness of all things, the Jews promise to themselves in vain expectation for the last time, and recall them as to be fulfilled carnally. But we, who follow not the killing letter but the life-giving spirit, already prove them fulfilled in the Church, and daily fulfilled in individuals, who, falling through sin, are rebuilt through penitence. (Verses 14, 15.) Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, and the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed. And the mountains shall drop sweetness, and all the hills shall be tilled. And I will bring back the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them, and shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine of them, and shall make gardens, and eat the fruits of them.

And I will plant them upon their own land, and I will no more pluck them out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God. LXX: Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, and the threshing shall overtake the vintage, and the grape shall vary in colour in the seed-time. And the mountains shall drop sweetness, and all the hills shall be planted. And I will bring back the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the scattered cities, and inhabit them, and shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine of them, and shall make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And they shall be planted upon their own land, and shall not be plucked up any more out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord God Almighty.

The tabernacle of David that had fallen having been raised up, and those things which had collapsed and been overturned having been rebuilt, an abundance of all things is described, in the manner of those who once going forth, went and wept, carrying their seeds, but coming shall come with exultation, bearing their sheaves: so that the threshing of the sheaves may overtake the vintage, or the plowman the reaper, and the grape take on varied colour, taking its hue at the time of sowing: or, as is more true, the treader of the grape may overtake the sowing, and thus all things succeed one another in turn, so that no day is without grain, wine, and joy.

In that time, with the winepresses full, the grape shall be trodden, and from the blood of Christ and of the martyrs reddening new wine shall be poured forth, and such a treader of the grape shall be the sower of the word of God, so that their blood may cry out in the world more than the blood of righteous Abel cried out. But whoever, by the merit of his virtues, shall have climbed up into the mountains, shall sweat honey, nay rather shall drop the sweetness of the word of God, of whom it is written: Taste and see how sweet the Lord is; and, How sweet are thy words unto my throat, above honey and the honeycomb to my mouth. And those who are beneath the mountains, or rather are second to the mountains, whom the bridegroom leaps over in the Canticle of Canticles, and calls hills, shall be planted and shall imitate the paradise of God, so that all the fruits of doctrines may hang upon them.

Then if any be a captive through unbelief, and has not yet believed in the name of the Lord, and is of the remnant of his once people Israel, he shall return to the faith of Christ, so that he may hold in the Gospel what he had heard in the Prophets. But these mountains which shall drop sweetness, and the hills which shall have been planted, after the Lord shall have turned back the captivity of his people Israel, shall build the cities that were formerly desolate, and shall dwell in them: so that each city, once built, may say: I am a strong city, a city that is besieged (Prov. According to the LXX), and of which the Lord speaks in the Gospel: A city set upon a mountain cannot be hidden. And in the Psalms it is said: The rush of the river makes glad the city of God.

They shall also plant vineyards with Noah, and shall drink the wine thereof, and shall be made drunk, and shall hear from the Lord the Saviour: Drink, my friends, and be inebriated. And they shall drink the wine which he promised he would drink new with his apostles in the kingdom of the Father. This is the vine of Sorec, whose wine we drink daily in the mysteries. And not content with the felicity of these things, for the sake of delight they shall make gardens, and shall water them, so that no kinds of virtues may be lacking in them, and they shall eat the fruits thereof; for he who has planted and watered shall himself also eat.

And when the mountains and hills shall have done all these things, dropping sweetness, and building cities, and dwelling in them, planting vineyards, and drinking the wine thereof, making gardens, and eating the fruits thereof: then the Lord shall plant these very planters upon their own land, of which it is said: I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living. And in the Gospel: Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land. But after he shall have planted them, and made their root firm and strong on high, he shall no more pluck them out of the land which he had given them. From which we understand that the Church, even unto the end of the world, is indeed shaken by persecutions, but can in no wise be overturned; tempted, but not overcome. And this shall come to pass, because the Lord God Almighty, or the Lord his God, that is, of the Church, has promised that he himself will bring it about: whose promise is the law of nature.