Commentary on Jeremiah 3.8–3.27

[8] “Is my inheritance to me a speckled bird? Is it a bird dyed all over? Come, gather, all you beasts of the earth, hasten to devour!” The Septuagint: “Is my inheritance to me a hyena's den? Or a den round about it, upon it? Go, gather all the beasts of the field, and let them come to devour it!” According to the letter he calls the peacock a speckled bird dyed all over. “Such beauty”, he says, “did Israel have, and with so many virtues was Jerusalem adorned, that there was nothing good that was not seen in her. Because, then, my former inheritance, that is, the people of Israel, became to me like a lion in the forest and gave its voice against me, and I detested it with all hatred, therefore come and gather against her, all you beasts of the earth, the multitude of the various nations, and devour her who did not know her Lord!” But if, as the Septuagint and the other translators rendered it, we read, “Is my inheritance to me a hyena's den?”, let us refer it to the uncleanness of that nocturnal beast, which lives on the corpses of the dead, is used to digging bodies out of tombs, and feeds on every uncleanness. Such is Israel, offending its Lord and handed over to the bites of all the beasts.

[9] “Many shepherds have destroyed (or: spoiled) my vineyard, they have trampled (or: defiled) my portion; they have made my desirable portion a desolate wilderness (or: pathless). They have made it (or: it has been made) a scattering, and it has mourned over me (or: perished).” Let those hear this who wish to be leaders of peoples and will render account on the day of judgment not only for themselves but for the flocks entrusted to them: for because of them the Lord's portion is trampled and defiled, so that where once was God's lodging, there is the dwelling of beasts. Others understand not the leaders of the people and the priests, but the princes of the enemies, who scattered Jerusalem, that is, the Lord's vineyard.

[10] “And it has mourned over me; the whole land is made desolate with desolation, because there is no one who considers in his heart. Over all the ways of the desert the destroyers have come, for the sword of the Lord has devoured from one end of the land to the other end of it; there is no peace for all flesh.” The Septuagint: “Because of me the land is scattered with scattering”, and the rest. What we put, “and it has mourned over me”, according to the Hebrew is joined to the preceding verse, so that it reads: “They have made it a scattering”, that is, my inheritance, “and it has mourned over me”, deprived of my help. But according to the Septuagint God says that because of him the land is scattered and reduced to a wilderness, because there is no one who considers in his heart, and no peace for all flesh. For the flesh cannot receive the peace of God; for the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Further, according to the Hebrew, all Judea is desolate for this reason, that there is no one who considers God in his heart, nor any remnant able to escape. For the destroyers, that is, the enemy army, had come over all the ways of the wilderness, and the sword of the Lord devoured from border to border, and there was no rest for those fleeing from the city. Hence it is said: “There is no peace for all flesh.”

[11] “They have sown wheat and reaped thorns; they have received an inheritance, and it will not profit them.” The Septuagint: “You have sown wheat and reaped thorns; their lots (or: clergy) will not profit them.” “They expected better things”, he says, “and the worst came; they hoped for prosperity and suffered adversity; they received from the Lord an abundance of all things, which will not profit them.” But according to the Septuagint all the heretics sow as if wheat and reap thorns, while the Lord expects them to bear fruit; and they did not do justice, but a cry. This is said also to men of the church who destroy the Lord's words and teaching by evil conduct, of whom it is added: “their clergy will not profit them.” For what can the name of bishop and presbyter, or the rest of the church's ranks, help them, since they are rather weighed down by their dignities, and the mighty suffer torments mightily, and the more has been entrusted to them, the more is required of them?

[12] “Be ashamed of your fruits (or: of your boasting) because of the fierce anger of the Lord (or: from reproach before the Lord). Thus says the Lord against all my evil neighbours who touch the inheritance which I distributed to my people Israel: Behold, I will pluck them up from their land, and I will pluck up (or: cast out) the house of Judah from the midst of them. And after I have plucked them up, I will turn (or: return) and have mercy on them, and bring them back (or: make them dwell), each to his inheritance and each to his land.” It is said to those whom their clergy and the church's order will not profit, that they should be ashamed of their boasting and of reproach before the Lord. And as for what he adds, “against all my evil neighbours”: according to the letter, the neighbours of the holy land are the Idumeans, Philistines, Moab and Ammon; but according to the figurative sense, all the heretics, who are counted under the name of Christ and are neighbours rather than inhabitants of the holy land, who touch God's inheritance and lay it waste. And it is said of them that they will be removed from the midst of the land, and the house of Judah taken from their midst; who, when they have been plucked out and freed from the jaws of the heretics, will obtain God's mercy and be brought back to their inheritance and their land. [13] “And it will be, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name, The Lord lives, as they taught my people to swear by Baal, they will be built up in the midst of my people; but if they will not listen, I will pluck up that nation with plucking up and destruction, says the Lord.” If those who have passed over from heresy into the church learn the ways of God's people and swear in the name of the Lord, and not in the name of the idols which they fashioned from their own heart, they will be built up by the Lord and be part of his people. But if, having passed over into the church, they keep the remnants of perverse doctrines and do not hear the words of the Lord, that nation will be plucked out of the midst of God's people with everlasting plucking up and destruction, so that no room for repentance is left to them. We see this daily and prove it by facts: that heretics feign the truth of the faith in order to deceive all the simple, and not to be converted to the faith themselves, but to draw the faithful to unbelief.

[14] “Thus says the Lord to me: Go and get yourself a linen loincloth (or: girdle), and put it on your loins, and do not put it in water (or: it will not pass through water). And I got the loincloth according to the word of the Lord and put it around my loins. And the word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying: Take the loincloth (or: girdle) which you got, which is around your loins, and arise, go to the Euphrates and hide it there in a cleft of the rock! And I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord had commanded me. And it came to pass after many days that the Lord said to me: Arise, go to the Euphrates and take from there the loincloth (or: girdle) which I commanded you to hide there! And I went to the Euphrates and dug and took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it; and behold, the loincloth (or: girdle) had rotted, so that it was fit for no use. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Thus says the Lord: So will I make to rot the pride (or: insolence) of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem, and this most evil people, who refuse to hear my words and walk in the depravity (or: the direction) of their most evil heart, and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them; and they will be like this loincloth, which is fit for no use. For as the loincloth clings to the loins of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, that they might be to me for a people and for a name and for praise and for glory; and they did not listen.” The girdle or loincloth which is joined to God's loins is the people of Israel, which, taken up from the earth like flax and unwashed, had neither softness nor whiteness, and yet by his mercy clung to God. And when it had sinned (for such is the rational flax and loincloth), it was led beyond the Euphrates, that is, to the Assyrians, and is hidden there, that is, in a way swallowed up by the multitude of great and innumerable nations and reckoned as nothing. After a long time the prophet himself, as a type of God, frees the people from captivity; which nonetheless did not keep God's commands even after its return, but followed other gods and at last laid hands even on the Son of God and wasted away in everlasting ruin. Every holy man too is God's loincloth, who, taken up from the earth and the clay of the earth, is joined to God's fellowship, and in a way covers and surrounds with greater care the things in his church that seem unseemly, so that they may not lie open to the bites of pagans and heretics. If this loincloth touches water and crosses the streams of the Euphrates, so as to be soaked in the moisture of the Assyrian region, it loses its former strength and rots and falls apart; and although it returns to God's use, it cannot have its former beauty, not through God's harshness but through its own fault, because they will not hear his words and walk in the depravity of their heart, or do what seems right to themselves. And the divine word itself explains why it set this comparison, saying: “For as the loincloth clings to the loins of a man, so I glued and made to cling to me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah” (namely, the ten and the two tribes), “that they might be to me a people of renown, for praise and glory; and in return for all these things they did not hear me, but followed their own vices.” Let him beware, then, who can say, “But for me it is good to cling to God”, lest perhaps through negligence he be separated from his loins and cross the Euphrates and be given into the power of the Assyrian king, and be lodged not in the most solid rock but in a cleft of a rotten and corrupted rock, that is, in the filth and vices of the heretics, and come to such rottenness that he can no longer return to the use of the Lord and to be his girdle.

[15] “You shall say to them (or: to the people) this word: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Every jar (or: wineskin) will be filled with wine. And they will say to you: Do we not know that every jar (or: wineskin) is filled with wine? And you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, and the kings who sit of the stock (or: sons) of David upon his throne, and the priests and the prophets and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with drunkenness, and I will scatter them, a man from his brother, and fathers and sons together, says the Lord; I will not spare (or: I will not long for them), and I will not yield nor have mercy, so as not to destroy them.” The Hebrew word “nebel” the first edition of Aquila interpreted “jar”, the second “nebel” itself, Symmachus “mixing-bowl”, the Septuagint “wineskin”, Theodotion “vessel”: which is all filled not with oil, nor water, nor honey, nor milk, nor any other liquid substance, but with wine and drunkenness, showing that we are a fragile vessel, as the apostle says, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels”, and that it cannot be that there should not be fulfilled in us what is written: “For good does not dwell in my flesh”, and again, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want, that I do”, and then: “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” With this drunkenness, by which we forget God's commands, and with vices and sins, the whole human condition is filled, as the prophet says: “No one living shall be justified in your sight” (not in comparison with God, as the old and new heretics and the patrons of heretics would have it, but before his knowledge; for man sees the face, God the heart), and what sometimes seems clean to us is found filthy in his eyes. Not only the common, base and cheap people, but the kings of the churches, “of the stock” or “sons of David”, who sit leaning back with neck erect and paunch thrust out upon his throne; the priests too, the second rank in the church's honour; and the prophets, who seem to have knowledge of the Scriptures; and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem are filled according to the variety of their sins, or “Judah”, as the Septuagint added. And when they are drunk, they are scattered from their fellowship, and fathers are separated from sons and sons from fathers, so that they are defiled by various heresies and, under the name of Christ, fight among themselves and battle against their mother, the church, which bore them. Hence he says: “I will not long for them, but will hold them in everlasting hatred; I will not spare, nor yield, nor have mercy, not by cruelty of sentence but by the truth of judgment. For those who slaughtered my peoples will themselves perish for ever.” This can also be taken simply according to the history: that the kings and priests and prophets and all the people of Jerusalem were to be made drunk with the Babylonian cup and overwhelmed with the evils of captivity.

[16] “Hear and give ear; do not be lifted up, for the Lord has spoken!” Because he had said above, “every wineskin will be filled with wine”, so that even the kings and priests and prophets and every inhabitant of Jerusalem would be filled with drunkenness, he therefore adds and says, “Hear and give ear”, both outwardly and inwardly, in mind as in body, “and do not be lifted up by pride”, considering your frailty and that there is no one who, according to the quality of his sin, is free of this drunkenness. Hence he who lifts himself up against God through pride is scattered and corrupted and unworthy of God's mercy.

[17] “Give glory to the Lord our God before it grows dark and before your feet stumble on the dusky (or: dark) mountains; you will look for light, and there will be the shadow of death, and they will be placed in darkness (or, according to the Hebrew: and he will make it the shadow of death and darkness). But if you will not listen, my (or: your) soul will weep in secret before the face of pride (or: injury).” To those to whom the divine word had said, “Hear and give ear and do not be lifted up”, it now calls to repentance, that before they are led to Babylon and their feet stumble on the dark or dusky mountains, they may give glory to God. Hence sinners too are often told: “Give glory to God!” That Babylon and the whole region of the Chaldeans is called dusky or dark mountains we read at the beginning of Isaiah, against Babylon, where it is written: “Lift up a signal on the dusky mountain”, which in Hebrew is called “nispheh”. So he commands this: that before they are led into captivity and feel the evils of slavery, they should do penance, and that, when they look for light, they are going to sit in darkness. “But if”, he says, “you will not hear me, in secret” (according to Aquila, “in darkness”) “my soul” (or, according to the Septuagint, “your soul”) “will weep before the face of pride, so that not even groaning and weeping are free, lest the eyes of the victors be offended.” We can also interpret this place thus. The Saviour says: “Work while it is day; the night will come, when no one can work any longer.” Of this time there is also the prophecy of Isaiah: “For the stars of heaven and Orion and all the array of heaven will not give their light, and the sun will be darkened at its rising, and the moon will not give its light.” Zephaniah too agrees in the same words, saying: “A day of tribulation and distress, a day of misery and destruction, a day of darkness and whirlwind, a day of cloud and gloom.” Before, then, the time of judgment comes and our feet stumble on the dark mountains, namely the hostile powers set over torments and tortures, let us do penance, lest, looking for light, we be wrapped in the darkness of night. And let us know that, unless we do this, the soul either of God or of the prophet will weep before the face of our pride, as we refuse to hear God's words. Hence the prophet himself says:

[18] “Weeping, it will weep (or: Jerusalem will weep), and my eye will run down with tears, because the flock of the Lord has been taken captive.” “I cannot hide my grief with silent groans”; and the whole cause of the torments is that the flock of the Lord has been taken captive. Let us say to the Jews and to our judaizers, who follow only the simple history, the letter that kills: “Unless you listen in secret”, that is, in mystery, or in the darkness which God made his hiding place, and, according to Solomon, so as to understand a parable and a dark saying, the soul of the prophet, or their own, will weep before the face of pride, while they resist God through obstinacy. Hence the weeping will be continual and the tears unceasing, because by the true Nebuchadnezzar … taken captive …

[19] “Say to the king and to the queen mother (or: say to the king and to the mighty): Humble yourselves, sit down, for the crown of your glory has come down (or: been taken away) from your head! The cities of the south are shut, and there is no one to open them; all Judah has been carried away (or: all Judah is carried away) with a complete deportation (or: captivity).” The prophet is commanded to speak to King Jeconiah and to his mother, whom he calls lady and mistress or queen, that they should humble themselves and sit in the dust; for they have lost the royal dignity and are to be handed over to the Babylonian king. The cities of the south are shut, that is, of the tribe of Judah and Jerusalem, which faces south toward the wilderness, and there is no one to open them, surrounded by siege. All Judea, or all Judah, has been carried away with a complete deportation, or “has received what it deserved, and it is fulfilled in her”; for so the Septuagint translated. He is raving in this place who understands the king as Christ and the mighty as angels or apostles, as though they took a body of humility and sat in the dust and lost, either king or mighty, the crown and glory of strength from their head; and who interprets the shut cities of the south as hell, which are opened to no one, and says that all the glory of Judah was carried away when there was fulfilled in the passion: “All have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, not even one.” The Hebrew word “gebira” Aquila and Symmachus interpreted as “mistress” and “lady”, which the Septuagint thought was “geburoth” and so said “mighty ones”.

[20] “Lift up your eyes and see those who come (or: who are coming) from the north! Where is the flock that was given to you, your glorious flock? What will you say when he punishes you? For you have taught them against you and instructed them to your own head.” The inhabitants of Jerusalem are commanded to raise their eyes and see the Chaldeans coming from the north; and the city itself is questioned and told: “Where is the flock that was given to you, your glorious flock? Where is your people, which you had received from God? Where is that great and glorious multitude, …, when the Lord has punished you with his rod and handed you over to the Babylonian enemies, whom you yourself taught against you, or against your head, or from the beginning, so that you fled to their help and followed their idols, they who, under pretext of your friendship, learned by what road they should come against you?” Let the negligent church hear this: that it itself teaches its adversaries how they can seize it in spiritual captivity and tear its flock with the cruelty of beasts.

[21] “Will not pains seize you like a woman in labour? And if you say in your heart: Why have these things come upon me? Because of the multitude of your iniquity your shame has been uncovered, your soles (or: your heels) have been defiled (or: dishonoured).” “While you do not know it, sudden captivity will seize you like sudden childbirth a woman. And if you wish to make excuses and ask why you were handed over to the enemies, hear plainly that the multitude of your iniquity has done this to you, so that, like a harlot whose clothes are taken off, your disgrace has been uncovered and your fornications publicly shown.” Through these words we learn that as long as sins are smaller, God acts patiently and waits for our repentance; but if we choose to join offences to offences and make a heap of sins, our shame will be uncovered and our soles shown to all, either in this age or in the age to come. For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, when that word of Daniel is fulfilled: “These will rise to eternal life, and those to reproach and everlasting shame.”

[22] “If the Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots, then you too can do good, when you have learned evil.” Those who wish to assert different natures use this testimony against the church, and say that the blackness or the spottedness of sins is so great that they cannot pass into whiteness and the beauty of one colour, not attending to what follows: “then you too can do good, when you have learned evil.” For whatever is learned is not of nature but of study and one's own will, which by excessive habit and love of sinning is in a way turned into nature. But what is impossible with men is possible with God: not that the Ethiopian and the leopard seem to change their nature, but he who works in the Ethiopian and the leopard, as the apostle says: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me, Christ.” Hence in another place he says, “I laboured more than all of them; yet not I, but the grace of God which is in me”, and, “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” And again we read it written: “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” For these reasons let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the strong in his strength, nor the rich in his riches, nor the chaste in his chastity, knowing that in all these is the power of Christ, not of those who glory in their own virtues.

[23] “And I will scatter them like stubble that is carried off by the wind in the desert. This is your lot and the portion of your measure from me, says the Lord” (or: and the portion of your disobedience against me). “Because by excessive habit of evil they could not change their nature, not through the fault of the Creator but through the zeal of ingrained crime, therefore I will scatter them like stubble carried off by the wind into the wilderness, according to what is written elsewhere: like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth.” And he turns to address Jerusalem herself: that this is her lot and this the portion which she herself chose, a measure heaped up, full and running over, or the portion of her disobedience, by which she would not yield to the Lord; for with the measure with which she measured it will be measured back to her.

[24] “Because you have forgotten me and trusted (or: hoped) in falsehood, therefore I too have stripped (or: will strip and uncover) your thighs (or: hinder parts) before your face, and your shame will appear: your adulteries and your neighing, the crime (or: estrangement) of your fornication.” The cause of the scattering of Jerusalem is that she forgot God and trusted or hoped in lies. He who, apart from God, trusts in the things of the world forgets God. Hence her thighs or hinder parts are uncovered, so that she may see her shame, and the things that ought to be behind may be in front, and she herself may see what she has done, and her shame may appear not only to herself but to all. “Your adulteries”, he says, “and your neighing” shows not only lust but the madness of lust, after the manner of mares that are eager for coupling, as in that line of Virgil: “the hippomanes, as the shepherds call it by its true name, a sticky poison dripping from the groin.” Let us ask Jesus not to uncover our thighs and hinder parts either in the present or in the age to come, but to blot out our iniquities and not let all our crimes appear.

[25] “On the hills in the field I have seen your abominations. Woe to you, Jerusalem! You will not be made clean (or: you have not been made clean) after me; how long yet?” “Not only in the middle of the city of Jerusalem, but on every hill and in all regions I have seen your idols”; hence it is said to her: “Woe to you, Jerusalem, for you have not been made clean after me, so that, though you boasted that you followed my footsteps and brandished the confession of my name, yet you were never purified, because you forgot me and hoped in lies.” Hence he rebukes her and says, “How long yet?” And the sense is: “How long shall I wait for you? How long shall I bear it? How long will you forget me to the end and despise my commands?” He commits fornication on the hills and in the fields and is never cleansed who, with neck raised up in pride, does not humble himself under the mighty hand of God, but trusts in his crimes and vices.

[26] “The word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the words of the drought.” All things agree with the anger of God: hence the sun too sets at noon upon sinners, and the moon and the other stars do not give their light; and it must be thought that in the time of the siege there were no rains, so that the besieged suffered a scarcity of water too. For the city uses only one spring, Siloam, and that not perpetual; and to this day the lack of rain causes not only a scarcity of crops but also a want of drinking water.

[27] “Judea (or: Judah) has mourned, and its gates have fallen (or: been emptied) and are darkened (or: overcast) upon the land, and the cry of Jerusalem has gone up. Its nobles have sent their little ones (or: younger ones) for water; they came to draw (or: to the wells) and found no water; they brought back their vessels empty; they were confounded and afflicted (or: they blushed) and covered their heads. Because of the desolation of the land (or: and the works of the land, for they have failed), because no rain came (or: there was no rain) upon the land, the farmers were confounded; they covered their heads.” In the time of drought, when it suffers famine of hearing and learning the word of God, Judea mourns, which once boasted that it had the worship of God and the confession of true faith; and its gates are either emptied or fall, which we should refer to the senses, through which discipline is conceived by the soul. Then all things are darkened and wrapped in darkness, and reason and the word of doctrine no longer reign in Jerusalem, but clamour and confusion. The elders too, who ought themselves to go to draw water, send the younger, in whom there is not the grey hair of wisdom; and therefore they come to the wells and find no waters, which history relates the patriarchs found. They bring back their vessels empty, the younger ones namely, not because there were no waters, but because they could not find them. They were confounded and afflicted, or blushed, and covered their heads, because they could not say with the apostle, “But we all with unveiled face behold the glory of the Lord”, because of the desolation of the land, or because the works of the land, by which we go on to the knowledge of God, have failed. And the cause is plain: because no rain came upon the land; for the clouds were commanded not to rain rain upon it. The farmers too, one of whom says, “You are God's field, God's building”, and, “We are God's fellow workers”, cover their heads and are confounded, understanding that without God's grace and help they strive in vain.