Commentary on Jeremiah

Contents

Staged from a page-level OCR: roughly 85-90 percent of Reiter's text is captured, and some chapter numerals are missing (their text sits in the preceding ref); gaps are to be filled from PL 24.

Reading pages: 0.1–1.21 · 1.22–1.54 · 1.55–1.84 · 1.85–2.7 · 2.8–2.35 · 2.36–2.69 · 2.70–2.91 · 2.93–3.7 · 3.8–3.27 · 3.28–3.55 · 3.56–3.72 · 3.73–4.5 · 4.6–4.27 · 4.28–4.39 · 4.40–4.56 · 4.57–5.6 · 5.7–5.36 · 5.37–5.54 · 5.56–5.66 · 5.67–6.12 · 6.13–6.22 · 6.23–6.33 · 6.34–6.49 · 6.50

1. 0.1Jerome dedicates the commentary to Eusebius, explains its brief method and his omission of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah, and answers critics of his earlier commentaries and of his books against Jovinian.
2. 1.1Jerome sets Jeremiah's ministry in its historical frame, from the thirteenth year of Josiah to the fall of Jerusalem, and notes the Septuagint's differences.
3. 1.2Jeremiah was known and set apart before birth by God's foreknowledge, not by pre-existence of the soul; some apply the verse to Christ.
4. 1.3Jeremiah's protest that he is only a boy is modesty, like Moses' protest, and is forgiven because of his youth.
5. 1.4God tells Jeremiah not to consider his age but God's presence; deliverance means endurance through persecution, not freedom from it.
6. 1.5Jerome contrasts God's hand touching Jeremiah's mouth to give speech with the seraph's coal cleansing Isaiah's sins and with Ezekiel eating the scroll.
7. 1.6Jeremiah's commission to uproot and to build is read of the destruction of false doctrine and the building of the church, and by some of Christ.
8. 1.7Jerome explains the Hebrew word-play between “almond” and “watching” in Jeremiah's vision of the rod and applies the rod to God's corrective discipline and to Christ.
9. 1.8The boiling pot from the north is Babylon's judgment on Jerusalem; the saints are not “inhabitants of the earth” but sojourners.
10. 1.9The northern kings besiege Jerusalem as God's judgment for idolatry; the prophet must gird himself and speak without fear, trusting God's help.
11. 1.12God makes the prophet a fortified city, iron pillar and bronze wall; a holy man opposed even by clergy and people should stand firm, since God is with him.
12. 1.13Jerome notes that the opening of Jer 2 is missing from the Septuagint and explains the Hebrew verb for “cry”.
13. 1.14God recalls Israel's youthful love in the wilderness as a betrothal, which he credits to his mercy, not her merit.
14. 1.15Israel is God's first-fruits; those who devour it, even as instruments of God's judgment, will be punished.
15. 1.16God asks what wrong Israel's fathers found in him; sons who imitate their fathers' idolatry share their punishment and become like the idols they worship.
16. 1.17Israel's journey through the wilderness figures the Christian's ascent through this life; perfection belongs to the end of the way, not to this life, against the “new heresy”.
17. 1.18God brought Israel into a fertile land which it defiled; Christians who receive the knowledge of true circumcision can likewise defile God's inheritance by negligence.
18. 1.19Israel's priests, teachers, shepherds and prophets turned from God; the rebuke applies to unworthy teachers in the church.
19. 1.20God argues with Israel as with equals rather than simply striking, and foresees the same obstinacy in their descendants at Christ's coming.
20. 1.21No pagan nation abandons its false gods, yet Israel abandoned the true God for idols; so too people pursue vice more zealously than virtue.
21. 1.22The heavens are appalled that Israel forsook God, the fountain of living water, for the broken cisterns of demons.
22. 1.24Israel, though free-born, became a slave through sin; the roaring lions are Babylon's princes or, figuratively, heretical leaders who lay waste the church.
23. 1.25The Egyptians of Memphis and Tahpanhes defiled Israel completely, literally through idolatry and figuratively as false teachers defile the church.
24. 1.26Israel's turning to Egypt and Assyria for help is like abandoning Christ, the fountain of life, for the muddy waters of heresy.
25. 1.27Sin itself, once it sickens the sinner, teaches repentance by showing what good he has abandoned for bitterness.
26. 1.28Israel, like an unfaithful wife, broke the covenant and gave herself to idols; so a Christian can be seduced from Scripture by the allure of worldly learning.
27. 1.29Israel, planted as the choicest vine, degenerated by its own fault; no one should feel secure, though Christ, the true vine, lets believers be true vines if they persevere.
28. 1.30Repentance and the church's rebuke wash away light sins, but grave sins need heavier purging; God sees the stain even when men do not.
29. 1.32Jerusalem's eager pursuit of idols is pictured as a roe or wild ass in heat, or, in the Septuagint, as a harlot calling her lovers at evening.
30. 1.34Israel refuses to turn back and loves foreign gods, as those who follow heretics do; when caught, the people and its leaders are shamed like a thief.
31. 1.35Turning one's back to God is the gesture of contempt for his word.
32. 1.36Those who ignore God in prosperity call on him in affliction.
33. 1.37God taunts Israel to call on the gods it made, so that need may expose their powerlessness.
34. 1.38Each city of Judah had its own gods, so that idolatry was divided even against itself.
35. 1.39Sinners blame God's justice for what their own impiety has brought on them.
36. 1.40God's chastisements of Israel and the slaughter of its false prophets failed to bring the people to repentance.
37. 1.43Israel treated God as a barren wilderness and refused to return to him, a graver offence than the first offence itself.
38. 1.44Christ is the bridegroom of the virgin church; one who forgets God loses the ornament of understanding.
39. 1.45Israel cannot justify itself, since it taught others its wickedness and shed innocent blood in idolatrous rites.
40. 1.46Claiming to be without sin provokes God's anger more than the sin itself; Jerome turns the verse against the “new heresy” that boasts of righteousness.
41. 1.47Judah's reliance on Egypt and Assyria instead of God will end in shame and mourning.
42. 1.48Jerome gives Jer 3:1 on the divorced wife who has married another, and explains the Hebrew word that can mean “lovers” or “shepherds”.
43. 1.49In the Hebrew God invites the unfaithful wife to return after her fornication; in the Septuagint he rebukes her for daring to return; Jerome applies the text to insincere heretics.
44. 1.50Jerusalem lay in wait for lovers like a desert robber; converts from heresy must look straight ahead to condemn their former error.
45. 1.51Israel's idolatry brought drought, and she has a harlot's brazen face; the rebuke fits heretics who glory in their errors.
46. 1.53God invites unfaithful Israel, and heretics, to call him Father and return; refusing such mercy is the greater misery.
47. 1.54Instead of repenting, Israel spoke proudly and carried out her evil designs against her husband.
48. 1.55Judah saw God divorce faithless Israel for her idolatry yet did not fear but sinned worse; Jerome applies the warning to heretics and to insincere returns to the church.
49. 1.56Israel is righteous only in comparison with worse Judah; God calls the exiles, and heretics, to return, promising mercy but requiring humble acknowledgement of sin.
50. 1.58The promise of a remnant brought to Zion, with new shepherds and no more need of the ark, is fulfilled in Christ's coming and the apostles, or at the end in Israel's salvation.
51. 1.59Jerusalem as the Lord's throne is the church gathering all nations; the reunion of Judah and Israel is fulfilled when Jews of all the tribes believe the gospel.
52. 1.61God's promise to make Israel his sons and give them a glorious inheritance is fulfilled in Christ, who gives believers from all nations power to become God's children.
53. 1.62Israel despised the Lord as a woman despises a lover who has become the slave of her lust.
54. 1.63God gladly receives the penitent like the prodigal's father, though our return, while willed by us, needs his drawing and help to save us.
55. 1.64The penitent abandons the proud high places and confesses that salvation is in God alone.
56. 1.65The shame of repentance overwhelms all the labours of heretics and those they deceived.
57. 1.66Confessing sin is part of salvation; Israel's full return means believing in the Christ it rejected.
58. 1.68When we waver, it is not from weakness of nature but because we set up idols against God.
59. 1.69Swearing by the living Lord here means confessing him against idols; a true oath needs truth, judgment and righteousness.
60. 1.70Judah must clear the thorns from its heart and be circumcised inwardly; the church must take refuge in Christ against the heretics, and the lion from the north is the devil.
61. 1.73Only penance in mind and deed can protect the church from the lion that ravages it.
62. 1.74When God's anger remains on a ravaged church, king, princes, priests and prophets alike are struck helpless.
63. 1.75Jeremiah is perplexed that God promised peace yet sends the sword; the burning wind and the swift Babylonian army stand for judgment on Judah and for the devil's attacks on the church.
64. 1.79God calls Jerusalem to wash its heart with the water of baptism and repentance and to be rid of wicked thoughts.
65. 1.80The invasion is announced from Dan in the north through Ephraim, signifying God's judgment coming in full measure.
66. 1.81Jerusalem's besiegers prevail not by their own strength but because she provoked God.
67. 1.82Jerusalem's own ways brought its ruin; whatever befalls us comes by our own fault.
68. 1.83The prophet, voicing God's own grief, mourns the destruction of the land, as Christ wept over Lazarus and Jerusalem; God grieves likewise at strife in the church.
69. 1.84The fugitives are those fleeing Babylon or those fleeing God's service.
70. 1.85Israel's folly is willed, not natural; wisdom for evil is mere cunning, true wisdom being joined to the fear of God.
71. 1.86The prophet sees the land returned to emptiness under God's anger, a warning meant to bring repentance; God's “repenting” means withdrawing a threatened sentence, as at Nineveh.
72. 1.88The people flee the Babylonian army to the hills in vain; the same befalls a church that offends God.
73. 1.89Jerusalem is “laid waste” or “wretched” through her own fault.
74. 1.90Jerusalem, like an adulteress, adorns herself in vain; spiritual ornaments do not please God from one who also courts other lovers.
75. 1.91Jerusalem's anguish at the slaughter of her people is like that of a woman in her first labour and of a mother mourning her children.
76. 1.92God would spare Jerusalem for a single just man, but he values sincere faith, not oaths sworn in his name falsely.
77. 1.93God looks for faith, not works of the law; punishments are meant to correct, yet Jerusalem hardened itself against them.
78. 1.94The prophet wonders whether the common people sin from ignorance and turns to the leaders, who know God's will; the tentative wording shows human free will.
79. 1.95Israel's leaders broke God's yoke, so the lion, wolf and leopard, that is Babylon, Persia and Alexander, will devour them; so too faithless leaders in the church are handed over to their passions.
80. 1.96Israel's idolatry and adultery, like stallions neighing after their neighbours' wives, leave God no ground for mercy.
81. 1.97God allows the enemy to break Judah's defences but not to make a full end; the people who mock the prophets as wind will be burned by God's word as fire.
82. 1.100God will bring the ancient, strong Babylonian nation upon Judah, yet will not destroy it utterly but preserve a remnant.
83. 1.101Judah served foreign gods at home and so will serve foreigners abroad; likewise God casts heretics out of the church.
84. 2.3Jerome opens Book 2 with a complaint against those who claim equality with God, then shows Judah blind and deaf like its idols, and ungrateful to the God who restrains the sea and gives the rains.
85. 2.4Sin, not any weakness in God, withholds his blessings; the impious who prey on others like fowlers are found even in the church, ruled by avarice.
86. 2.6Those grown rich by preying on others neglect justice for the orphan and the poor and will be punished.
87. 2.7The prophets lie, the priests applaud, and the people love it; leaders and people alike are guilty.
88. 2.8Jerome locates Tekoa and Beth-haccherem near Jerusalem and applies the call to arms to the church's readiness under persecution.
89. 2.9Zion, beautiful as a woman courted by lovers, is surrounded by the shepherds of Babylon's army, who attack openly by day.
90. 2.10The besieged lament the coming night, while the besiegers resolve to attack by night as well, to show their strength.
91. 2.11The besiegers are confident because God himself orders the siege of Jerusalem, which will be long.
92. 2.12Jerusalem's wickedness has chilled all the warmth of life in her, as a cistern chills its water; saints are fervent, evils cold.
93. 2.13God's scourges are meant to instruct and correct Jerusalem, a consolation for all who suffer frequent distress.
94. 2.14The gleaning of Israel's remnant is read either as the saving of a remnant or as the complete removal of the people to Babylon.
95. 2.15The people cannot hear because they would not circumcise their ears; this willed inability turns God's saving word into their condemnation.
96. 2.16In the Hebrew the prophet is filled with God's wrath; in the Septuagint God speaks of restraining his fury, a reading Jerome finds self-contradictory.
97. 2.17God's fury will fall on all ages and on husbands and wives together, and homes, fields and wives will pass to the conquerors.
98. 2.18Prophets and priests, given to avarice, promise false peace to the powerful and feel no shame at their abominations.
99. 2.20Those who refuse even to recognize their sins will fall with all who fall at the time of punishment.
100. 2.21The ancient paths of the prophets lead to Christ the way; when Israel refused to hear the apostles, the gospel was turned to the nations.
101. 2.22The people that refused to hear will reap the fruit of its own thoughts.
102. 2.23Costly offerings are worthless from those who disobey God's law, as are alms given from the spoils of injustice.
103. 2.24Jerome sees the threatened stumbling fulfilled in the Jews of his day who reject Christ and read the law only by the letter.
104. 2.25The fierce northern army is described to move Judah to penance; the passage fits the church in times of persecution.
105. 2.26The people, hearing of the enemy, are already overcome by fear like a woman in labour.
106. 2.27With flight cut off, Judah's only defence is repentance, mourning as for an only son; God shares in what falls on his people.
107. 2.29The prophet tests the people like an assayer and finds them rejected silver that no smelting can purify; then he is sent to preach at the temple gate where the crowds must hear.
108. 2.31God, like a merciful physician, calls Judah to amend its ways and promises a secure dwelling in the land.
109. 2.32Confidence in the temple, or in splendid churches, is vain without justice and true faith; likewise bodily virginity without purity of mind.
110. 2.33Standing in the temple is useless for those who steal, kill, commit adultery and worship idols, as it is for sinners in the church who think delay means impunity.
111. 2.34The church becomes a den of robbers when crimes and the greed of its leaders fill it; Christ, made poor for us, is shamed by our riches.
112. 2.35As Shiloh was destroyed for Israel's sin, so the temple, and the church, can be rejected.
113. 2.36God, who called early and often, will destroy the temple as he did Shiloh and cast out Judah as he cast out Ephraim; the warning applies to us.
114. 2.37God forbids Jeremiah to intercede for an unrepentant people, which shows that the saints' prayers can otherwise withstand his anger.
115. 2.38Whole families worship the queen of heaven; such idolatry harms not the changeless God but the idolaters themselves.
116. 2.39God, not angry by nature, lets his fury fall on Jerusalem only drop by drop, yet even that is terrible; the people does nothing to quench it.
117. 2.40God commanded obedience, not sacrifices, at the Exodus; sacrifice was granted only after the golden calf, so that offerings would go to him rather than to demons.
118. 2.41From the Exodus on Israel went backward, not forward, so that the grace of the gospel was needed.
119. 2.42Despite prophets sent early and often, the people hardened its neck, so God's anger is just.
120. 2.43God foretells that Judah will not listen and calls it a nation, not his people; Jerome sees this fulfilled when Christ was rejected.
121. 2.44Judah must mourn, for God has rejected it; Topheth in the valley of Hinnom, where children were burned to idols, will become the valley of slaughter, a place of countless unburied dead.
122. 2.47Joy will cease in Judah, and the bones of its kings, priests and people will be exposed before the stars they worshipped; Jerome sees the like in the calamities of his own day.
123. 2.49God still invites the fallen to rise and return; one who turns back can turn aside God's anger by prayer.
124. 2.50Israel stubbornly refuses to repent and rushes into sin like a horse into battle; even migrating birds know their seasons, but God's people does not know his judgment.
125. 2.53The scribes who boast of the law have written falsehood.
126. 2.54The so-called wise who reject God's word are shamed; avaricious prophets and priests, and their like in the church, promise false peace to sinners and the rich.
127. 2.56The people felt no shame for their abominations and would neither amend nor confess.
128. 2.57The shameless leaders will fall together with the people at the coming captivity.
129. 2.58Shut up in besieged Jerusalem, the people will watch the seasons and harvests pass without tasting them.
130. 2.59The people, confessing its sin, retreats into Jerusalem in silent despair, having drunk the gall of God's judgment instead of the peace it expected.
131. 2.60Nebuchadnezzar's cavalry is heard from Dan in the north, about to devour Jerusalem and its people.
132. 2.61The invaders are deadly serpents against which no charm avails; God himself grieves over Jerusalem's ruin.
133. 2.63Jerusalem cries out as the enemy enters.
134. 2.64Jerusalem cries because the Lord, her King, has left her; Lord and King may be Father and Son.
135. 2.65God withdrew because idolatry provoked him.
136. 2.66The besieged lament that a whole year has passed without deliverance.
137. 2.67God shares Jerusalem's affliction and, in human likeness, is stunned by it.
138. 2.68The balm of Gilead is repentance; Jerusalem's wounds stay open because it lacks true prophets and priests to heal them.
139. 2.69Not even a river of tears could match the evils that have befallen Jerusalem.
140. 2.70The prophet would rather live in the desert than among such wickedness.
141. 2.71The people go from evil to evil, arming their tongues for falsehood, because they do not know the Lord.
142. 2.72In a time of universal deceit no brother can be trusted, as in times of persecution; God refines his people through tribulation like silver in fire.
143. 2.74The deceitful tongue is like a heretic's arrow, speaking peace while laying snares; God justly punishes such a nation.
144. 2.75The desolated land, emptied of people and animals, mourns; figuratively, a church whose leaders sin is emptied of God's substance and abandoned.
145. 2.76When the church's teachers fail, it becomes a den of heretical dragons and God no longer dwells in it.
146. 2.77The land perished because the people forsook God's law for their own will and their fathers' Baals; their dispersion among the nations is still being fulfilled.
147. 2.79God calls for the professional mourners to lament Jerusalem's fall, and shares the people's suffering.
148. 2.80Zion laments its devastation and confesses it is the result of its own sin.
149. 2.81With the men silent, the women must teach lament, for death has entered the houses, by the enemy's assault or, spiritually, through the senses.
150. 2.82Jerusalem's dead will lie unburied; true glory is only in knowing the Lord, whose providence governs all; circumcision of the flesh profits nothing without circumcision of the heart.
151. 2.85God forbids Israel to fear the heavenly signs as the nations do, as if the stars ruled human affairs.
152. 2.86Idols are lifeless wood decked with metal that can do neither good nor harm; so too are false doctrines adorned with eloquence.
153. 2.87No idol, or heretical doctrine, compares with the true and living God; its eloquence, like gilded wood, deceives only for a time.
154. 2.88The gods who did not make heaven and earth must perish.
155. 2.89God, Creator through his Son, his power and wisdom, stands against idols and heresies that will perish; Jerusalem must gather its goods for the siege, for God will hurl out its people.
156. 2.91Jerusalem laments its incurable wound and confesses that it suffers by its own fault.
157. 2.93Jerusalem's fall is pictured as the striking of a tent; her children are slain and there is no one to rebuild her.
158. 2.94The leaders' folly and failure to seek God caused the scattering of the people.
159. 2.95The roar of the Babylonian army will leave Judah's cities to wild creatures; in persecution the church suffers so through its shepherds' fault.
160. 2.96A man's way is not in his own power but directed by God, against those who say each is ruled by his own choice.
161. 2.97The prophet asks God to correct Judah as a father, not destroy it, and to pour out his wrath on the nations that devour it; a new oracle begins on the covenant.
162. 2.99God's covenant rests on obedience, not race or circumcision; Christ makes servants friends and sons; the promised land flowing with milk and honey figures the church, and the prophet assents with “Amen”.
163. 2.103Israel and Judah conspired together against God's covenant; in their distress God will not hear them, yet one must never turn to demons as Saul did, but keep praying to the Lord.
164. 2.106Judah had as many gods as cities and as many altars to Baal as Jerusalem had streets, worse than Israel.
165. 2.107Jeremiah is again forbidden to intercede: prayer for another avails nothing when the one prayed for is unworthy.
166. 2.108Sacrifices cannot remove the sins of a people that worships idols; likewise church leaders and the rich cannot buy mercy with gifts that are publicly praised.
167. 2.109God, who planted Judah, pronounces judgment for its idolatry, and gives his reasons so that his justice may be seen.
168. 2.110Jerome, with the consensus of the churches, reads the lamb led to slaughter and the wood put into his bread as Christ and his cross, against those who apply it only to Jeremiah.
169. 2.111The men of Anathoth (“obedience”) stand for the Jews who once obeyed God; the prophets' experiences are types of Christ.
170. 3.3Jerome opens Book 3 complaining of the devil's attacks through heretical opponents; then he reads Jeremiah's question why the wicked prosper as aimed at heretics, whose apparent success leads to their destruction by the church's sword.
171. 3.4Drought and the death of animals come not by chance but by God's judgment on human wickedness and the denial of his providence.
172. 3.5If Judah was worn out by raids from small neighbouring nations, how will it endure the Babylonian cavalry and the long captivity?
173. 3.6Even Judah's kin, Edom, Moab and Ammon, will turn against it; so Christ's own people cried out for his crucifixion.
174. 3.7God abandons his inheritance, which roared against him like a lion; Jerome reads this of Christ's passion and his rejection by his people.
175. 3.8Israel, once beautiful as a peacock, or unclean as a hyena's den in the Septuagint, is handed over to the beasts, the nations.
176. 3.9Negligent shepherds, or enemy princes, have ruined God's vineyard; leaders must give account for their flocks.
177. 3.10The land is laid waste because no one takes God to heart; there is no peace for the flesh, which is hostile to God.
178. 3.11Those who sowed wheat reap thorns; their clerical rank will not help clergy whose lives belie the Lord's teaching, for more is required of those entrusted with more.
179. 3.12God will uproot the hostile neighbours, figuratively the heretics, and rescue Judah; converts from heresy who learn God's ways will be built up, but those who keep their errors will be uprooted.
180. 3.14The rotted loincloth hidden by the Euphrates figures Israel, which clung to God but was ruined by idolatry and exile; every believer who clings to God must beware of falling away into heresy.
181. 3.15As every jar is filled with wine, all classes in Judah, and in the church, are filled with the drunkenness of sin; no one living is justified before God, and drunkenness leads to division and heresy.
182. 3.16Knowing that no one is free of sin, all must listen humbly and not be lifted up in pride.
183. 3.17Judah must give glory to God and repent before captivity, and all must repent before the darkness of judgment.
184. 3.18The prophet weeps for the captive flock; those who read Scripture only literally miss its hidden sense and will weep for their pride.
185. 3.19Jeconiah and the queen mother must humble themselves, for they will lose their crowns and Judah will be deported; Jerome rejects an allegory that applies this to Christ and the angels.
186. 3.20Jerusalem taught its own enemies, by seeking their alliance and idols, how to come against it; so a negligent church teaches its spiritual enemies.
187. 3.21Captivity will come suddenly as labour pains, and Judah's shame will be exposed because of its many sins; God bears with lesser sins but heaped-up sins will be exposed in this age or the next.
188. 3.22Against those who teach fixed natures, Jerome shows that sin is learned, not natural, and that God's grace in Christ can change what habit has made almost a second nature, so no one may boast of his own virtue.
189. 3.23Judah, hardened by habit in sin, will be scattered like chaff; this is the measure it chose for itself.
190. 3.24Because Jerusalem trusted in lies, her shameful lusts will be exposed; we pray Christ to blot out our sins rather than expose them.
191. 3.25Jerusalem's idols are everywhere, and though she professed God's name she was never cleansed; the proud who will not humble themselves under God remain unclean.
192. 3.26The drought accompanies God's anger; Jerusalem, dependent on the spring of Siloam, suffers want of water even in Jerome's day.
193. 3.27The drought figures a famine of God's word: the elders send the unwise to draw water and find none, and the church's labourers learn that without God's grace their work is vain.
194. 3.28Even hinds and wild asses perish in the drought; so in the churches those willing to learn waste away for lack of teachers.
195. 3.29The people confess that their sins have brought the drought and appeal to God to save for his name's sake, not for their merit.
196. 3.30God seems like a passing traveller or a sleeper to those he forsakes; Christian interpreters read it of Christ passing from Israel to the nations.
197. 3.31The church prays that the Lord, who has left his former dwelling, will dwell among Christians who bear his name.
198. 3.32God withdrew because the people would not stand still but wandered in sin; the saints stand with God, sinners' feet are always moving.
199. 3.33Fasting, prayers and sacrifices avail only with repentance; for those set on persisting in sin, intercession is useless.
200. 3.34False prophets, and teachers who flatter the rich, promise peace where God threatens judgment; it is better to amend through fear than perish through false hope.
201. 3.35The false prophets and the people they deceived will perish by sword and famine and lie unburied.
202. 3.36God, or the prophet, weeps ceaselessly for the crushing of the virgin daughter of his people.
203. 3.37Death is everywhere, outside by sword and inside by famine, and even prophets and priests go into captivity; negligent church leaders share in the ruin they cause.
204. 3.38The prophet wonders why God has struck Judah beyond healing; if the church too is cast off, it must acknowledge that it has filled up its fathers' sins.
205. 3.40The throne of God's glory is the temple and every holy person; even one who has fallen is upheld by God's mercy and covenant.
206. 3.41Neither idols nor the heavens give rain, only God; so heretics cannot give the rain of true doctrine, which comes from God alone.
207. 3.42Not even Moses and Samuel, great intercessors, could now turn God's sentence from Judah.
208. 3.43Sinners depart from God by their will, not by place.
209. 3.44Judah is handed over to four judgments, death, sword, famine and captivity, and the whole creation rises against those who neglect the Creator.
210. 3.45Judah is punished for Manasseh's sins because the people imitated him; the sins of rulers often bring ruin on their peoples.
211. 3.46When God himself is offended, no one can intercede for Jerusalem, for no creature is more merciful than the Creator.
212. 3.47Jerusalem turned back to Egypt's fleshpots and forsook God, who, weary of forgiving and calling, now stretches out his hand to strike.
213. 3.49God scattered and struck his people to bring them to repentance; widows multiplied and the mother of many was left childless; some read this of the synagogue giving way to the church.
214. 3.52Jeremiah's lament at being a man of strife fits Christ, set for a sign spoken against; the one Son speaks sometimes according to the flesh, sometimes as the Word, without dividing his person.
215. 3.53Read of Christ, no one received his gifts or made him debtor, and all heretics curse him; God promises that the prophet's end will be good, and the prophet, like Christ, interceded for his persecutors.
216. 3.55Jerome explains the textual variants of “iron and bronze from the north” by the ambiguity of the Hebrew and offers several senses: hard Judah cannot love the prophet nor ally with hard Babylon.
217. 3.56Judah's wealth goes to the enemy because of its sins; the prophet, eating God's words and bearing reproach for him, sits alone apart from the merrymakers and trusts that his sorrows will pass like flowing water.
218. 3.59If the prophet turns the people and separates the precious from the vile, he will be God's mouth and a bronze wall; great is the reward of the teacher who frees anyone from error.
219. 3.60Jeremiah is forbidden to marry because of the coming slaughter; Jerome defends his teaching that second and third marriages are allowed by indulgence, not commanded, against a “new heretic” who praises third and fourth marriages.
220. 3.61The prophet must not share in mourning or feasting with a people under God's sentence; how much more must the church avoid heretics whose teaching spreads death like a cancer.
221. 3.62When the church sins, its joy is taken away; the people suffers for leaders who served the belly and greed, and for its own worse sins, for priests must teach by example.
222. 3.63Those who follow their evil hearts will be cast out to serve false gods, the demons who never give rest but drive them from sin to sin.
223. 3.64The promised return from the north, partly fulfilled after the exile, is fulfilled more fully in Christ and in Israel's final salvation, and in the church's deliverance from the persecutions.
224. 3.65The fishers and hunters are, for the Jews, Babylon and Rome; for Christian interpreters, the apostles and later preachers or angels who gather the saints from every height.
225. 3.66Human strength is nothing without God's power, Christ, our refuge in this evil age.
226. 3.67The nations come from the ends of the earth confessing that their fathers' idols were lies.
227. 3.68The converted nations mock the folly of man-made gods; God reveals his hand and power, Christ, openly through the Son's passion.
228. 3.70Judah's sin is engraved indelibly while the nations' sins are blotted out; this refutes the claim that a man can be sinless if he wishes.
229. 3.71Judah's idolatry brings plunder and slavery in a foreign land; Jerome rebukes Christians who reject the Hebrew text, which the Jews read against themselves, and applies the high places to the proud heretics.
230. 3.72Trust in man is cursed: Jerome turns this against those who hold Christ a mere man, explains that Christ's flesh has passed into the majesty of his Godhead, and against those who rely on their own strength rather than God's mercy.
231. 3.73The one who trusts in the Lord, unlike those who hope in a mere-man Messiah, is like the tree by the waters of the Spirit and baptism, fruitful even in drought and persecution.
232. 3.74Only God searches the human heart, which is prone to evil; since Jesus saw people's thoughts, he is God.
233. 3.75The partridge that hatches others' eggs figures the unjustly rich who will lose their wealth at death, or the devil who gathers through heretics souls not his own and will be abandoned.
234. 3.76God is Israel's hope and the fountain of living water, while those who forsake him are written in the dust; the prophet asks healing from the one true physician.
235. 3.78Mocked by those who doubt God's word, the prophet professes his faithfulness and asks God not to fail him, or, in the Septuagint, to chastise him now rather than spare him.
236. 3.79The prophet prays that his mockers may be put to shame, and so return to salvation, and be crushed by famine and sword.
237. 3.80The prophet is sent to preach at the busiest gates so that no one can plead ignorance.
238. 3.81Jerome gives the whole sabbath oracle and expounds it spiritually: keeping the sabbath means laying down the burdens of sin and sanctifying all of life; those who reject this figurative reading must either become Jews or fault Christ.
239. 4.3Jerome opens Book 4 by attacking the revived heresy of impassibility and sinlessness, then expounds the potter's house (Jer 18:1–13) as teaching both free choice and the primacy of grace.
240. 4.4As Lebanon's snow and mountain streams never fail, God's name is unchanging, yet his people have forgotten him (Jer 18:14).
241. 4.5Those who forget God leave the ancient paths of the saints for an untrodden road of idolatry (Jer 18:15).
242. 4.6Judah's land becomes a desolation, fulfilled most fully after Christ when Jews are barred from Jerusalem; God shows them his back until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in and all Israel is saved (Jer 18:16–17).
243. 4.8The plot against Jeremiah prefigures the plot against Christ and heretics' slanders of his servants; Jeremiah's imprecations are fulfilled in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem for the killing of Christ (Jer 18:18–22).
244. 4.10The sudden robber is Nebuchadnezzar or, better, the Roman army; the prayer that their sin not be forgiven follows the lapse of the time for repentance; their stumbling recalls the stone of stumbling (Jer 18:22–23).
245. 4.11Jerome explains the Hebrew words for the potter's flask, the Harsith gate, and qara (proclaim, cry, read) in God's command to break a flask in the valley of Hinnom (Jer 19:1–3).
246. 4.12Jerome rejects a spiritual reading of Jerusalem here; God 'not knowing' the child sacrifices to Baal means they are unworthy of his knowledge; spiritually, heretics sacrifice their converts to idols (Jer 19:3–5).
247. 4.13Jerome compares the Hebrew 'Topheth' and 'valley' with the Septuagint's 'Fall' and 'Polyandrion' (Jer 19:6).
248. 4.14The threatened siege, cannibalism, and devastation happened in the Babylonian captivity but more fully under Vespasian, Titus, and Hadrian (Jer 19:7–9).
249. 4.15The breaking of the flask foretells the permanent ruin of Jerusalem after the Roman wars; Jerome declines but does not condemn the hope of an earthly golden Jerusalem held by many churchmen and martyrs (Jer 19:10–13).
250. 4.17Topheth will become a mass grave and Jerusalem a ruin because the people worshiped the host of heaven on their rooftops (Jer 19:13).
251. 4.18Returning from Topheth, Jeremiah repeats the sentence in the temple court and gives its cause, the people's hardened neck (Jer 19:14–15).
252. 4.19Pashhur the priest beats Jeremiah and puts him in the stocks; Jerome explains the names and words and draws lessons on persecution of God's servants (Jer 20:1–2).
253. 4.20Pashhur's name is changed to Magor-missabib, 'terror on every side,' foretelling his captivity; Jerome compares the Greek versions (Jer 20:3).
254. 4.21Jeremiah foretells Pashhur's captivity and death in Babylon for prophesying lies, along with the plunder of Jerusalem; Jerome notes the prophet's patient silence under injury (Jer 20:4–6).
255. 4.22Jeremiah's complaint that God deceived him means he expected to prophesy against foreign nations, not Judah; the Septuagint's reading is taken of present sorrow turned to future joy (Jer 20:7–8).
256. 4.23Mocked for his prophecy, Jeremiah resolved to be silent, but God's word burned in his bones; Jerome compares Paul's compulsion to preach (Jer 20:8–10).
257. 4.24When former friends turn against us, we should say with the prophet that the Lord is with us like a mighty warrior (Jer 20:10–11).
258. 4.25Jeremiah's persecutors, unable to understand his word, will suffer everlasting disgrace (Jer 20:11).
259. 4.26Only God tests the righteous and sees the heart, so Christ, who knows thoughts, is God by nature; Jeremiah commits his cause to God's vengeance (Jer 20:12).
260. 4.27The poor in spirit, delivered by God's grace rather than their own merit, praise him for rescue from the wicked (Jer 20:13).
261. 4.28Jeremiah's curse on his birthday does not support the pre-existence of souls, as some claim, but means, like Job's, that non-existence is better than a life of torment (Jer 20:14–18).
262. 4.29Zedekiah secretly asks Jeremiah to inquire of the Lord during the siege; Jerome distinguishes this Pashhur from the earlier one and notes that prophetic books do not keep chronological order (Jer 21:1–2).
263. 4.30God himself will fight against besieged Jerusalem so that its people die by famine and plague; the city fell to siege without battle (Jer 21:3–6).
264. 4.31Zedekiah and the survivors will be handed to Nebuchadnezzar, whose mercilessness the Hebrew ascribes to the king rather than to God (Jer 21:7).
265. 4.32Jeremiah advises the people to desert to the Chaldeans, since captivity is more bearable than death; Jerome reports a figurative reading about leaving a heretical church (Jer 21:8–10).
266. 4.33God calls the royal house to just judgment in the morning so that his fire may not be kindled, offering repentance even after pronouncing sentence, to preserve their free choice (Jer 21:11–12).
267. 4.34Jerusalem, trusting in its strong position like Tyre or a rock, will be burned by God's wrath like a fruitless forest; the warning applies to proud church leaders (Jer 21:13–14).
268. 4.35Jeremiah tells the king in person to do justice, protect the stranger, orphan, and widow, and shed no innocent blood, or the palace will be desolate; the warning applies to bishops, presbyters, and deacons (Jer 22:1–5).
269. 4.36Though the royal house is like Gilead and the summit of Lebanon, God will 'consecrate' Nebuchadnezzar to cut down its cedars and burn them, so that nations will ask why the great city fell (Jer 22:6–9).
270. 4.37'Shallum' is best taken as Zedekiah, the last king; the woe on the builder of a palace by injustice is against Jehoiakim, compared with his just father Josiah; the confused Septuagint is read figuratively of heretics who leave the church (Jer 22:10–17).
271. 4.39Jehoiakim will have the burial of an ass, that is, none at all; this resolves which son of Josiah is meant (Jer 22:18–19).
272. 4.40Jerusalem, trusting in Egypt, will groan like a woman in labor; Jeconiah will be torn off like a signet ring and die in exile. Jerome attacks Rufinus's 'Ring' (the Sentences of Sextus under the name of Pope Xystus) and Origen's reading of the passage as about Christ (Jer 22:20–27).
273. 4.42Coniah is a discarded vessel and is not a type of Christ; the prophecy that none of his seed will sit on David's throne applies to his own days, since Christ came from his line; the bad shepherds give way to the apostles, and Christ is the righteous Branch, 'the Lord our righteousness' (Jer 22:28–23:6).
274. 4.46The new exodus, missing from the Septuagint, is Christ's gathering of God's people from the whole world, to be completed when all Israel is saved (Jer 23:7–8).
275. 4.47The heading 'to (or against) the prophets,' which the Septuagint misplaced, introduces a word against the false prophets of Jerusalem and Samaria (Jer 23:9).
276. 4.48The prophet's trembling before God shows that no one has perfect righteousness, against those who teach it; the land's barrenness from adultery and perjury figures the church's barrenness; polluted prophets and priests walk a slippery path in darkness (Jer 23:9–12).
277. 4.51The prophets of Samaria who prophesied by Baal figure the heretics, who speak by demons and lack Christ, the wisdom of God (Jer 23:13).
278. 4.52Even teachers of the church adulterate God's word and strengthen the hands of heretics; they and those they favor will be like Sodom and Gomorrah (Jer 23:14).
279. 4.53The wormwood and gall for the prophets apply to those who spread lying letters to defame others; the people must not listen to prophets who promise peace to the wicked, for teacher and disciple will share the punishment (Jer 23:15–17).
280. 4.55No false prophet has stood in the Lord's counsel to know his secrets; Jerome notes the Greek versions' renderings of sod (Jer 23:18).
281. 4.56Instead of the promised peace, the storm of God's wrath will fall on the wicked, and in captivity they will understand his counsel (Jer 23:19–20).
282. 4.57God did not send the false prophets, who flatter the people with claims of sinlessness; heretics show their unbelief in the resurrection by self-indulgence. God is both near and far and fills heaven and earth (Jer 23:21–24).
283. 4.59God condemns prophets who pass off their dreams as revelation; true prophetic dreams given to pagan kings served to make Joseph and Daniel known; there are such dreamers in the church today (Jer 23:25–27).
284. 4.60God's word is wheat and fire, the heretics' teaching is chaff; their promise that free choice and the law suffice for sinlessness flatters sinners, but God's word breaks hard hearts like a hammer (Jer 23:28–29).
285. 4.61False prophets steal God's words from one another; so heretics borrow Scripture to spread their poison and promise great things to deceive (Jer 23:30–32).
286. 4.62Because the people mocked the prophets' 'burden' (massa) of the Lord, God forbids the word: they themselves are the burden he will cast off; Jerome explains the Greek renderings (Jer 23:33–36).
287. 4.63Because the people kept saying 'the burden of the Lord,' God will lift them up and cast them off into lasting disgrace, fulfilled fully after Christ's passion; Jerome sees the Trinity in 'the living God, the Lord of hosts, our God' (Jer 23:36–40).
288. 5.2Book 5 opens with the two baskets of figs: Jerome rejects allegories that oppose the law to the gospel and reads them historically of Jeconiah's exiles (good) and Zedekiah's party (bad), with a secondary application to believers and unbelievers at Christ's coming; then the oracle of Jehoiakim's fourth year begins (Jer 24:1–25:1).
289. 5.4Jehoiakim's fourth year was Nebuchadnezzar's first; Jerome sets out the chronology of Jehoiakim and Jeconiah (Jer 25:1–2).
290. 5.5Jeremiah preached daily for twenty-three years without being heard; his constant repetition shows, against the Pelagians, that we always need God's renewed help (Jer 25:3).
291. 5.6God sent all his prophets early and often, so the people's refusal to listen made their sin the greater (Jer 25:4).
292. 5.7God mercifully called the people to repent of evil deeds and evil thoughts, promising the land forever if they proved worthy (Jer 25:5).
293. 5.8God warned the people not to provoke him by idolatry, which would force him to afflict them against his will (Jer 25:6–7).
294. 5.9God will bring the northern nations under Nebuchadnezzar, called his 'servant' only as the instrument of his judgment on Jerusalem (Jer 25:8–9).
295. 5.10The judgment on Jerusalem is the reward of despising God's word, and the same awaits a negligent church (Jer 25:9).
296. 5.11The silencing of joy, bride, bridegroom, mill, and lamp is fulfilled among heretics, who lack the church's faith, Christ the bridegroom, and the light of prophetic teaching (Jer 25:10–11).
297. 5.12After seventy years Babylon will be punished for its pride and made a perpetual ruin, as it remains today (Jer 25:11–13).
298. 5.13Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations of Babylon's army; the cup of the wine of God's fury is a punishment, not, as an allegorist claims, a healing purge given by Christ (Jer 25:14–17).
299. 5.15Jeremiah had expected to give the cup only to the nations, but had to give it first to Jerusalem and Judah (Jer 25:18).
300. 5.16After Jerusalem, Pharaoh, his court, his people, and the foreigners living in Egypt drink the cup (Jer 25:19–20).
301. 5.17The cup passes to the kings of Uz, Job's land, and of the Philistine cities, Gath being included in 'the remnant of Ashdod' (Jer 25:20).
302. 5.19The cup passes to Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon; Jerome notes that Carthage was a Phoenician colony whose language is close to Hebrew (Jer 25:21–22).
303. 5.20The kings of the islands beyond the sea are those of Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades (Jer 25:22).
304. 5.21Dedan, Tema, and Buz are desert peoples near the Ishmaelites, now called Saracens (Jer 25:23).
305. 5.22The kings of Arabia follow in geographical order (Jer 25:24).
306. 5.23A fragment: the cup passes to the kings of the west and of Zimri; the comment on the following verses is largely lost in the OCR (Jer 25:24–26).
307. 5.27Sheshach is Babel written in the reversed alphabet (atbash), a concealment Jerome compares to Paul's veiled reference to the Roman empire as the restrainer of the Antichrist; he rejects the allegorists' reading (Jer 25:26).
308. 5.28The command to drink and fall and not rise shows the cup is a deadly punishment, not a cure (Jer 25:27).
309. 5.29Nations that refuse the cup will drink it anyway: if God's own city is punished, idolaters will not go free (Jer 25:28–29).
310. 5.30The cup of fury is the sword God calls on all the earth, as he said earlier of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer 25:29).
311. 5.31The Lord roars in judgment over all nations, each judged by its deserts; the slain will lie unburied across the earth; shepherds and rich 'rams' will howl, with no escape for the unrepentant. Jerome rejects allegorists who turn these threats into good (Jer 25:30–35).
312. 5.34Shepherds are learned church leaders, rams are leaders without learning; peace misused in luxury will be taken away by God's wrath (Jer 25:36–37).
313. 5.35God, like a lion, leaves his dwelling and so leaves his land open to destruction by the 'dove,' that is, Nebuchadnezzar, or Jerusalem grieving its lost protector (Jer 25:38).
314. 5.36This earlier oracle shows the prophets do not keep historical order; God's 'perhaps they will listen' preserves human free choice, since his foreknowledge does not cause what happens, and his threats are conditional on repentance (Jer 26:1–3).
315. 5.37Free choice is ours, but every good work is to be credited to God's grace; the repeated sending of prophets refutes the idea that the law once given suffices; as Shiloh gave way to the temple, so the law's ceremonies gave way to the church (Jer 26:4–6).
316. 5.38The priests and false prophets, fearing for their religion and its profits, seize Jeremiah for death; believers must likewise endure such anger for the truth (Jer 26:7–9).
317. 5.39When the crowd seized Jeremiah, the princes went up from the palace and sat in judgment at the New Gate of the temple (Jer 26:9–10).
318. 5.40The priests and prophets demand Jeremiah's death before the princes; the religious leaders, moved by envy, were crueler than the civil officials (Jer 26:11).
319. 5.41Jeremiah defends himself prudently, humbly, and steadfastly, a model for keeping the truth while showing humility in danger (Jer 26:12–15).
320. 5.42The princes and the people, persuaded, acquit Jeremiah, while the priests and false prophets persist in their accusation (Jer 26:16).
321. 5.43The elders cite Micah's harsher prophecy, which Hezekiah heeded rather than punished, to save Jeremiah (Jer 26:17–19).
322. 5.44Uriah, who prophesied like Jeremiah, fled to Egypt and was brought back and killed, while Jeremiah was protected by Ahikam; God's judgments in such cases are hidden, and flight from danger is prudence, not unbelief (Jer 26:20–24).
323. 5.45The heading 'In the beginning of Jehoiakim's reign' closes the preceding account rather than opening the next (Jer 27:1).
324. 5.46Jeremiah sends yokes to the neighboring kings, with the same message to Zedekiah; Jerome rejects Origen's reading about souls descending into bodies, and identifies God's 'strength' and 'arm' with Christ (Jer 27:2–5).
325. 5.48God, the Creator, gives the lands and even the beasts to Nebuchadnezzar, 'his servant' to Israel's shame, and to his son and grandson (Jer 27:6–7).
326. 5.49Nebuchadnezzar's empire will last only until its own time comes, when the Medes and Persians take it (Jer 27:7).
327. 5.50Following Symmachus, many nations will in turn enslave Babylon; universal rule belongs to Christ alone (Jer 27:7).
328. 5.51Nations refusing Nebuchadnezzar's yoke will be destroyed; as Paul handed sinners over to Satan, and as we must obey the authorities (Jer 27:8).
329. 5.52Jerome rejects Origen's allegory of souls entering bodies, explains the kinds of pagan diviners, and shows Zedekiah given the same warning as the nations: willing service to Babylon is better than ruin (Jer 27:9–15).
330. 5.54The priests and people must not believe prophets promising the quick return of the temple vessels; rather the remaining vessels too will go to Babylon until God restores them. A true prophet would intercede, as Moses and Samuel did (Jer 27:16–22).
331. 5.56In Zedekiah's fourth year Hananiah publicly prophesied that within two years the yoke of Babylon would be broken and the vessels returned (Jer 28:1–3).
332. 5.57Hananiah promised the return of Jeconiah and the exiles as well as the vessels within two years (Jer 28:3–4).
333. 5.58Jeremiah's 'Amen' expresses his wish that Hananiah's happy prophecy were true, as a prophet would rather be proved wrong than see his people ruined (Jer 28:5–6).
334. 5.59Jeremiah, without insulting Hananiah, appeals to the test of fulfillment: a prophet of peace is proved true only when his word comes to pass (Jer 28:7–9).
335. 5.60Hananiah breaks Jeremiah's wooden yoke; Scripture calls him 'prophet' by the opinion of the time, as Joseph is called Jesus' father; Jeremiah silently withdraws, waiting for the Lord's word (Jer 28:10–11).
336. 5.61Hananiah, by breaking the wooden yoke, brings an iron one on the people; Jerome openly rejects Origen's reading of the yokes as kinds of bodies into which souls fall (Jer 28:12–14).
337. 5.62Jeremiah foretells Hananiah's death within the year; the death of the false prophet as punishment refutes those who regard the body as a prison and death as release (Jer 28:15–17).
338. 5.63Jeremiah's letter tells the exiles to build, plant, marry, multiply, and pray for Babylon's peace, since their stay will be long; Jeremiah himself was forbidden marriage because of the short time, as Paul says. Spiritually, those cast out of the church should build on rock, take wisdom and the virtues as wives, and seek the church's peace (Jer 29:1–7).
339. 5.64False prophets and diviners in Babylon are not to be believed; figuratively they are those who twist Scripture, guess at the future, and sleep in error (Jer 29:8–9).
340. 5.65Only after seventy years will God bring the exiles home, in answer to their wholehearted prayer; spiritually, after our time of confusion God restores the penitent to the church (Jer 29:10–14).
341. 5.66The passage missing from the Septuagint promises the exiles' return and threatens Zedekiah's people as 'bad figs'; Jerome explains the Greek renderings and again rejects Origen's allegory of souls descending into bodies (Jer 29:14–20).
342. 5.67The false prophets Ahab and Zedekiah, adulterers burned by the king of Babylon, are identified by the Hebrews with the elders of the Susanna story, whose stoning conflicts with this account; Jerome applies the warning to adulterous false teachers in the church (Jer 29:21–23).
343. 5.68Shemaiah, a false prophet in Babylon, writes to the priest Zephaniah demanding that Jeremiah be imprisoned like a madman for telling the exiles their stay would be long; so heretics accuse the orthodox of their own faults (Jer 29:24–29).
344. 5.69God punishes Shemaiah and his followers, who will not see the good to come; those who defend false teachers share their guilt (Jer 29:30–32).
345. 6.1Jerome opens Book 6: the promises of restoration, which Jews and judaizing Christians expect at the end of the world, are fulfilled spiritually in Christ and the church, the true seed of Abraham.
346. 6.2Jeremiah is told to write down the promise of restoring Israel and Judah, to be fulfilled not soon but after a long time, as in Ezekiel's prophecy of the two rods and the one shepherd David (Jer 30:1–3).
347. 6.3Sorrow comes before joy: such terror will seize Israel that men clutch their loins like women in labor; Jerome rejects a reading that turns this into spiritual birth (Jer 30:4–6).
348. 6.4Jacob's great day of distress will turn to salvation, fulfilled not under Zerubbabel but in the gospel (Jer 30:7).
349. 6.5God will break the yoke from Israel's neck so that they serve the Lord and 'David their king,' that is, Christ, David's son through Mary; the yoke is the devil's, figured by Nebuchadnezzar (Jer 30:8–9).
350. 6.6God promises to save Jacob and Israel while chastising them, which shows that no one is sinless in this life, against the Pelagians; Jerusalem's incurable wound comes from God the physician, who will heal her, rebuild the city and temple, and raise a prince from among them, fulfilled in Christ and the church (Jer 30:10–22).
351. 6.10God's storm of wrath will rest on the wicked until his purpose is complete in Jerusalem's destruction, and then believers will understand that the Jews' rejection became the occasion of salvation for the Gentiles (Jer 30:23–24).
352. 6.11God will be God to all the families of Israel, meaning the saved remnant and the spiritual Israel that sees God (Jer 31:1).
353. 6.12The survivors of the sword found grace in the wilderness: Jerome explains the Septuagint's misreading 'warm' (hen read as hem) and applies both readings to Jews saved in the church and to the apostles (Jer 31:2).
354. 6.13God's everlasting love will rebuild virgin Israel, fulfilled in the church, not in a golden earthly Jerusalem; the apostles are the watchmen calling all to go up to Zion; only the remnant of Israel is saved (Jer 31:3–7).
355. 6.15The remnant gathered from the north at Passover is the church born from Christ's passion, including the spiritually blind and lame; they return weeping and rejoicing on the straight way of faith, and Ephraim, who took Manasseh's birthright under Jacob's crossed hands, figures the Gentile church (Jer 31:8–9).
356. 6.17The nations are told that God, who scattered Israel, will gather and redeem it by his blood from the stronger hostile powers; the grain, wine, and oil, the watered garden, the rejoicing virgins, young and old, and the priests drunk with fatness are spiritual gifts in the church, given now in part and in full at the resurrection (Jer 31:10–14).
357. 6.18Matthew quotes Rachel's weeping in his own words from the Hebrew; though the verse concerns the ten tribes, it fits the massacre at Bethlehem because Rachel is buried at Ephrathah, near which the infants were killed (Jer 31:15).
358. 6.19Rachel is told to cease weeping because her sons will return; spiritually this is Israel's salvation from all the world, and better, the martyred infants' reward in the kingdom and their resurrection to the perfect man (Jer 31:16–17).
359. 6.20Ephraim's lament shows that even repentance requires God first to turn us; he strikes his thigh in shame for the sins of his youth and, having repented, shows God to others (Jer 31:18–19).
360. 6.21God answers penitent Ephraim as his beloved, favored son; though God's words were truly in his heart, he still needs God's mercy, for all human righteousness depends on it (Jer 31:20).
361. 6.22Ephraim is called to set up watchmen and return; the 'new thing' that 'a woman will encompass a man' is the virginal conception of Christ, perfect man in Mary's womb; Jerome corrects the Septuagint's 'Zion' for 'watchmen' (Jer 31:21–22).
362. 6.23Restored Judah will bless 'the holy mountain,' who is Christ, fulfilled spiritually in his comings; God satisfies the thirsty and hungry soul, and the people wake from a sweet sleep, as Christ slept and rose (Jer 31:23–26).
363. 6.25God will rebuild and replant Israel and Judah, fulfilled in part at Christ's first coming and fully at his second, not in a millennial kingdom; each will die for his own sin. The new covenant written on the heart, quoted in Hebrews, was fulfilled in the gospel, offered first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles (Jer 31:27–34).
364. 6.27Israel's seed will last as long as the fixed order of nature; since the heavens will pass away, Jerome argues against a perpetual ethnic Israel and finds the lasting Israel in the believing remnant (Jer 31:35–36).
365. 6.28As the heavens cannot be measured, God will never cast off all Israel's seed; the Septuagint inverts the sense; Jerome grants that not all Israel is rejected, only the unbelieving (Jer 31:37).
366. 6.29Jerome rejects the millenarian reading of the rebuilt city's boundaries as a future earthly Jerusalem and expounds the place names as stages of the church's pilgrimage, whose corners, ruins, and region of death show that no one is sinless in this life (Jer 31:38–40).
367. 6.30In the siege, Zedekiah kept Jeremiah in the prison court for prophesying in the Lord's name; the prophet chose to obey God rather than win the king's favor (Jer 32:1–3).
368. 6.31Jeremiah foretells that Zedekiah will face Nebuchadnezzar and be taken to Babylon 'until I visit him,' a deliberately ambiguous phrase (Jer 32:3–5).
369. 6.32God tells Jeremiah that his cousin Hanamel will offer him the right to redeem a priestly field at Anathoth; Jerome explains the law of redemption and the names as 'peace' and 'grace' (Jer 32:6–7).
370. 6.33Hanamel comes as the Lord foretold and offers Jeremiah the field at Anathoth by right of kinship (Jer 32:8).
371. 6.34Though the purchase seemed absurd during the siege, Jeremiah obeyed the Lord, paying seventeen shekels with full legal form; Jerome reflects on the numbers ten and seven and rebukes forgers of wills (Jer 32:9–11).
372. 6.35The deed is given before witnesses to Baruch, whose faithful service Jerome praises; sealed and open copies are stored in an earthen jar as a sign that land will again be bought in Judah (Jer 32:12–15).
373. 6.37Jeremiah's prayer praises God as Creator, merciful and just, whose strength and arm are Christ and whose delayed punishments give time for repentance; it leads to his question why he must buy a field when the city is lost (Jer 32:16–19).
374. 6.38Jeremiah recalls God's signs in Egypt and gift of the land, which Israel received by the fathers' merits and lost at once through disobedience; their unfulfilled promise refutes those who think a man can do all he vows (Jer 32:20–23).
375. 6.39Jeremiah asks, for the sake of the bystanders, why God told him to buy a field when the city was already lost (Jer 32:24–25).
376. 6.40God, the God of all flesh, whose providence extends even to brute creatures, will hand Jerusalem to the besieging Chaldeans, who will 'enter' and burn the houses where Baal was worshiped (Jer 32:26–29).
377. 6.41Israel and Judah did evil continually, or, as the Septuagint says, 'only' they did, since those who know God sin in his sight as others do not; this refutes any claim of perpetual righteousness (Jer 32:30).
378. 6.42Jerusalem provoked God from its founding to its fall, which shows no one rests free of sin (Jer 32:31).
379. 6.43Every rank of Judah, kings, princes, priests, and prophets, provoked God, who therefore calls them 'their' leaders, not his (Jer 32:32).
380. 6.44Turning the back on God, not the face, shows contempt, the opposite of the bowed posture of prayer (Jer 32:33).
381. 6.45God taught his people daily, but in their free choice they would not accept instruction (Jer 32:33).
382. 6.46As Judah set idols in the temple, so today new dogmas set up idols in the church and in believers' hearts (Jer 32:34).
383. 6.47Jerome explains the Hebrew for 'make pass through,' the valley of Hinnom (Gehenna), bamoth ('high places'), and Moloch, the Ammonite idol (Jer 32:35).
384. 6.48Judah worshiped Baal and Moloch, the northern tribes the golden calves; God's saying it never entered his heart is spoken in human fashion (Jer 32:35).
385. 6.49God, who threatened the confident with ruin, promises help to those who despair after the city's fall (Jer 32:36).
386. 6.50The promises of return, one heart, an everlasting covenant, and God's fear placed in the heart were not fulfilled after the exile, since Israel was conquered again and again, but in Christ and the believing remnant; the buying of fields figures the church's spiritual possessions (Jer 32:37–44).