The Twelve Prophets

About this volume

Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Twelve, verse by verse

The Commentary on Ezekiel is dedicated to Eustochium and was begun after the news of Rome’s fall in 410 AD reached Bethlehem; several of its prefaces speak of the refugees arriving from Italy and the interruptions they caused. Fourteen books carry the prophet from the vision of the four living creatures to the measurements of the new temple and the division of the land, each chapter printed with the Vulgate lemma, the Septuagint set beside it, and a historical and then a spiritual reading.

The Commentary on Daniel, dedicated to Pammachius and Marcella in 407 AD, is shorter and more argumentative. Porphyry had claimed that Daniel was written under Antiochus Epiphanes and prophesied nothing; Jerome answers him at length, chapter by chapter, and treats the seventy weeks, the four kingdoms, and the Greek additions of Susanna and Bel. The twelve commentaries on the Minor Prophets were written in three campaigns: Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Haggai for Paula, Eustochium, and Chromatius in 392 AD; Jonah and Obadiah in 396 AD; and Hosea, Joel, Amos, Zechariah, and Malachi in 406 AD for Pammachius, Exsuperius of Toulouse, and the monks Minervius and Alexander.

Origen’s homilies on Jeremiah and Ezekiel close the volume in the translation Jerome made in his early years; the Ezekiel homilies survive only in this Latin. As across the whole project, we translate the original works only, in fresh English, and give them away free to read.