Commentary on Leviticus 7.26

Verses 1–2. "You shall not make for yourselves an idol or a carved image, nor set up pillars, nor place a conspicuous stone in your land, to worship it; for I am the Lord your God. Keep my Sabbaths and fear my sanctuary. I am the Lord."

The law commands not only how we may have freedom when we sin, so that we may not need the teaching or exhortation of others, in order that the prophetic word might be fulfilled in us: "And each will not teach his brother, saying: Know the Lord; for all will know me, from the least to the greatest of them, because I will be merciful to their iniquities and will remember their sins no more." But how could this be, unless we abstain not only from the open worship of idols, which the letter of the law forbids, but also from the hidden one, of which Paul said, "The root of all evils is greed," which is idolatry? Just so the spirit of the law now commands us to abstain. And we shall not make for ourselves an idol or a carved image, or, as the Seventy, "a thing made by hand," by building houses and possessing certain fields, nor shape a carved image in them, in a way altering our mind by love of them. Nor let us set up pillars, or a statue, in them, wishing through it to show our memory to future generations; nor let us erect a conspicuous stone, for example a heap of gold or silver, or of stones that seem to be precious; for these too are of the earth, equal to white stones, even if the eyes of the greedy are led astray by them as the eyes of the pagans are by idols; for this reason it is also called a conspicuous stone. But let nothing of the kind happen to us, nor let riches become a conspicuous stone to us, so that we live according to their intention (according to the sense of the Seventy translators), and do whatever they command, and serve their desires, and worship them, and tend them by keeping them. But let us keep the Sabbaths too, striving for abstinence and rest from every other evil, and acting so that we may be free of the works of the present world and rest from them. For this is the intelligible and true Sabbath, which is not that of an ungrateful people but of God himself, as he said in Isaiah: "Blessed is the man who has done this, and the son of man who has laid hold of it, keeping the Sabbath so as not to profane it." Hence he wanted to distinguish it from those of whom he said at the beginning of the prophecy: "New moons and Sabbath and other festivals I will not endure." What the Sabbath of God is, or how one may avoid profaning it, he adds: "Cease to act perversely." So to abstain from evils is to fulfil the Sabbath. And let us fear his sanctuary, striving for holiness, that is, chastity and modesty; for this is the chief point, or sum, of a perfect and complete life. For this reason he also put it last, and then God says to us: "I am the Lord your God," who am holy and also rest in the saints, killing and destroying all who defile my tabernacle and violate my temple with the defilements of pleasures; Paul testifies to this, saying: "If anyone violates the temple of God, God will destroy him." For this reason let us fear his sanctuary, so that we neither defile our body nor approach rashly the body of Christ, in which is all sanctification (for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead), without careful examination of ourselves; but let us first examine ourselves, remembering him who said: "Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup." What examination does he mean? That one should partake of the holy things with a clean heart and conscience, attending to repentance for what he once did wrong, for the washing away of his sins.

Verses 3–13. "If you walk in my precepts and keep my commandments and do them, I will give you rain in its seasons, and the land will yield its fruit, and the trees will be filled with fruit; the threshing of the harvests will reach the vintage, and the vintage will reach the sowing; and you will eat your bread to the full and dwell without fear in your land. I will give peace in your borders; you will sleep, and there will be no one to frighten you. I will take away evil beasts, and the sword will not pass through your borders. You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall before you. Five of you will pursue a hundred foreigners, and a hundred of you ten thousand. Your enemies will fall before you by the sword. I will look on you and make you grow; you will be multiplied, and I will confirm my covenant with you. You will eat the oldest of the old, and you will throw out the old when the new come. I will set my tabernacle in your midst, and my soul will not cast you off. I will walk among you and will be your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of the Egyptians, so that you would not serve them, and who broke the chains of your necks, so that you might walk upright."

The people of the Jews took these things in the sense of the body, as having little hope of the future and not being sufficiently hung on intelligible goods. For it was wholly intent on the belly and on fleshly ease, so that in the present life it chose the things that pertained to pleasure, even if they were very contemptible and very small, over those that were somewhat laborious but much greater; and therefore it sought the cucumbers, onions, and garlic of Egypt, because they were ready at hand to satisfy them and were there without labour. But we, if we attend to the commandments of God, saying with David, "Show me the way of your righteous ordinances," and again, "Lead me in the path of your commandments," and keep his commandments, corrupting none of them, and acting not according to our own intention but according to his and what is his (for this is properly to keep his commandments), let us expect each of the things just mentioned in an intelligible sense. For we shall find that these were in no way fulfilled according to the letter for the Jews: for many prophets of God who kept his commandments and walked in his precepts were placed in great affliction and did not eat their bread to the full but in want, like Ezekiel, to whom this was commanded by God himself. And Paul too, describing those who were justified in the law and the prophets, said: "They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, humbled, afflicted, of whom the world was not worthy." But in what has been said one must attend more to this: that in the present law he set thirty blessings for those who keep God's commandments. For so you will find them in number, distinguishing each blessing from the next by the conjunction in the edition of the Seventy; because the Lord, being of so many years (of whom Paul says, "until we all attain to the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ"), came to baptism, so that by the age at which he was baptized he might announce and show the perfection of the gift; and so, having become perfect according to time, he began to preach the gospel, in which is the fullness of all life and gift, of way of life and of recompense. This is what he signified here; for he says: "And I will give you rain in its seasons." He means the word of God, as descending from the heaven of grace, of which Moses spoke thus: "Give heed, O heaven, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth; let my speech be awaited like the rain." It is no ordinary good to receive this in its season, but a manifest showing of God's goodness, as not to receive it is a sign of his turning away. For this reason God, angry with the people of the Jews, threatened through the prophet Isaiah, saying: "And I will abandon my vineyard, and it will not be pruned or dug, and thorns will come up in it as in an uncultivated field; and I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it." For what profit does it bring us to receive rain in its season? "And the land will yield its fruit," that is, our body; for the fruits of this gift are chastity, sobriety, abstinence. "And the trees will be filled with fruit," or, as the Seventy: "The trees of the plain will give their fruit." The trees of the plain are the movements of the soul, as being higher than the movements of our intelligible land, namely … Their fruits, then, are truth, righteousness, gentleness, compassion, and the like; for this reason, joining it on fittingly, he added: "The threshing of the harvests will reach the vintage, and the vintage will reach the sowing." For since the threshing of the land gathers its fruits, and the vintage those of the trees, we rightly say that the fruits of the body reach, or overtake, the fruits of the soul, because this belongs to the greatest blessing: to possess at one and the same time a body that is steady and fruitful and a soul fruitful in virtues. The vintage reaches, or overtakes, the sowing; for the soul, gathering its virtues, at once desires others, until it reaches those riches to which Paul hastened, and therefore said: "Brothers, I do not count myself to have laid hold of it; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and stretching out to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward calling of Christ." For this reason a good seed follows, full of saving actions, so that what follows fits well: "And you will eat your bread to the full." For if our bread is virtue, of which the Lord said, "Work not for the food that perishes, but for that which endures to eternal life," he eats it to the full, that is, works it, who has a perpetual appetite for it. "And you will dwell without fear in your land. I will give peace in your borders," or according to the Seventy, "and war will not pass through the land," which our translation says a little later: "The sword will not pass into your borders, and I will give peace in your land." For if the body is steady and the soul bears fruit, we shall dwell secure in our land, because "the flesh does not desire against the Spirit"; hence war will not pass through the land either. For in the resurrection there will be no time for the desires of which James says: "Where do wars and quarrels among you come from? Is it not from your desires, which war in your members?" When these are destroyed, peace is won in your land, restrained by the law of God. "And you will sleep," he says. … Sacred Scripture set this too in the form of recompense; for the death of the saints is called sleep, as a rest; but with the wicked it is not so, as Ecclesiastes testifies: "The fullness of the rich man does not let him sleep." For this reason he now fittingly added: "And there is no one to frighten you." For one who lives as was said above will have no one to frighten him at the time of death, which for us is sleep, because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead. He will have no one to frighten him, being conscious of nothing in himself to be frightened about. "I will take away evil beasts," namely the demons. For they are beasts in their like malice: first as lying hidden, then as having an unbearable and deadly poison. "You will pursue your enemies," for they cannot stand before the face of those who live according to the law. "And they will fall before you." By what death? By the one, surely, that comes through fasting and prayer. For in this way our intelligible enemies, the demons, are killed, so that they can never again come back to life against us. Hence the Lord too, when the apostles asked why they had been quite unable to cast out the dumb and deaf demon, answered: "For this kind is not cast out except by fasting and prayer." "Five of you will pursue a hundred foreigners," or as the Seventy: "Fifty will drive out a hundred and fifty." We say that this is the spiritual man, because on the day of Pentecost the Spirit came down from heaven. What that spiritual man is like Paul said: "But the spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged by no one"; that is, one who has perfect knowledge for the fine discernment of what must be done can overcome and conquer even a strong demon, for example one who is over a hundred of them and is called Legion because of the multitude of evil spirits obeying and cooperating with him. "And a hundred of you ten thousand." For one who has not only fine knowledge but also a perfect and complete life is in a way doubly spiritual, and therefore is to be honoured with the number one hundred, as bearing a double and perfect fruit in the Spirit; Christ does not name a greater one, but often, hinting at the good land, he said: "It bears fruit thirtyfold, and sixtyfold, and a hundredfold." This one, then, can subject thousands of enemies, namely all the opposing powers, since he has the perfection of the virtues. How does he subject them? By the word of God, surely; for he says: "And your enemies will fall before you by the sword," meaning that sword which Paul set out when he wrote thus. For having first spoken of the thousands of enemies, that is, "For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places," he adds: "Therefore take up the armour of God," and listing it piece by piece he says: "And the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." "I will look on you." For what is better than to be looked on by God, whose look is salvation, and whose turning away is death? "And I will make you grow, and you will be multiplied." He increases us when he makes the small good things we do appear very great; he multiplies us when he makes a few grow into many. Did he not say, as he enlarged and magnified our virtues: "As you did it to one of these least, you did it to me"? And multiplying again, he made Paul write: "For you shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not covet, and any other commandment, is summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbour as yourself," making this one commandment many commandments, so that by attaining it we may become rich. Very fitting, then, is what follows: "I will confirm my covenant with you." These are the things just mentioned; he confirms it by recompenses, as what follows makes plain: "You will eat the oldest of the old," or as the Seventy, "the old of the old," that is, what was promised you through the law and the prophets, and what he promised through the patriarchs in their blessings. "And you will throw out the old when the new come." What are the new? The gospels, namely; for though the things promised through the patriarchs, the law, and the prophets are very great, yet what has been promised through the gospel is greater, so that in comparison with these the others are judged superfluous by us. See, then, he brings in the chief point that confirms the whole blessing, that is, the things accomplished and fulfilled through the grace of the gospel: "I will set my tabernacle in your midst," or as the Seventy: "I will establish my covenant with you." What is this, in which he promised new things? The prophet Jeremiah makes mention of it thus: "And I will establish with you a new covenant, not according to the covenant which I made with your fathers." With these, above all, what follows is joined: "And my soul will not abhor you. I will walk among you and will be your God, and you will be my people." These too were written openly by the prophet just mentioned, as the edition of the Seventy holds: "This is your God; no other will be reckoned beside him. Afterwards he was seen on earth and lived among men." He would not have done this if he had turned away from us. So he did not abhor us, but even wished to walk in us through the flesh and to become our God, though he was so before, but unknown, because we were joined to error. From the time he bought us with his own blood he became our God and made us his people. And who is it that did this? "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so that you would not serve them." If you wish to know this, examine the words of Exodus by the order of the gospel. "The Lord said to Moses: I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt; I have heard their cry because of the harshness of those over their works; and knowing their pain, I have come down to free them from the hands of the Egyptians, and to bring them out of that land into a good and beautiful land, flowing with milk and honey." And who is it that brings them into the land of promise? God himself, who showed this to Moses: "Behold, I send my Angel to go before you and guard you on the way and bring you to the place I have prepared." He calls the Son the Angel, because he announced the Father's will to us; of him Isaiah says: "A child is born to us, a son is given to us, whose government is on his shoulders, and his name will be called Angel of great counsel, wonderful, counsellor, mighty God." For how, when God had promised by what was said above to bring the people into the land, could an angel do this, and not he who promised? And who it is that came down he himself shows us, saying to Nicodemus: "No one has ascended into heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven." And yet he had not yet ascended into heaven with the flesh, for he had not yet been taken up; but he speaks of his former descent and ascent, of which, as we said, he spoke to Moses: "I have seen the affliction of my people, and I have come down to free them from the hands of the Egyptians." This one, then, gave us what follows too: "who broke the chains of your necks," both of sin and of the letter of the law, "so that you might walk upright," that is, with confidence, because he has given us to work the virtues without any hesitation.

Verses 14–17. "But if you do not listen to me, nor do my commandments, if you spurn my laws and despise my judgments, so as not to do what I have established, and make my covenant void, I too will do these things to you. I will visit you swiftly with want and with burning, which will waste your eyes and consume your souls. In vain you will sow seed, which will be devoured by your enemies. I will set my face against you, and you will fall before your enemies and be subjected to those who hate you. You will flee when no one pursues."

The law has said sufficiently above what good things await those who obey God's commandments. What is threatened to happen to transgressors the things now ordained show. When we examine them one by one according to the letter, we find that the people of the Jews suffered some of them according to the letter, but all of them according to the spirit. "But if you do not listen to me, nor do my commandments, if you spurn my laws and despise my judgments, so as not to do what I have established, and make my covenant void." Who do not listen to God's commandment, and who despise his judgments, if not those who, attending to the traditions of the elders and transgressing the lawgiver's intention, expounded the law as it seemed good to them, who said, as the Lord says: "Whoever says to father or mother, Whatever you would have gained from me is a gift, need not honour his father and his mother"? That is, whoever says to his parents, "What I have is vowed to God, for I have offered it to him as a gift and offering," is not obliged to honour those who begot him. Who are those who do not do all his commandments, if not those who tithe dill and cumin and mint, but leave aside judgment and mercy and faith, though God says to them through the prophet: "I will declare to you, O man, what the Lord seeks from you: surely to do judgment, and love mercy, and walk carefully with your God"? For this reason the Lord said to them, as men who did not fulfil all the precepts of the law but left its weighty things and did the least: "These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others." They properly transgress God's commandments and are above all disobedient to them, because they keep their outward face and not God's intention. Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus are found to have rendered it more plainly: the one says, "If you reject my statutes"; the others, "If you refuse my subtleties," that is, the way of the field. They transgress the doctrines of God and the subtlety that lay in the spiritual understanding of the commandments, because it agrees with the New Testament, wishing by this to weaken the grace of the gospel; rebuking them for this he says: "And make my covenant void." What did he threaten in return for this? The penalty is very like their transgression: "I too will do these things to you." How? "I will visit you swiftly with want." For the Lord made them very needy through his word, so much that they said to one another: "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" As, then, they willingly transgressed the understanding of the law, so as to make void the gospel covenant, which had its beginning from it, so he too spoke obscure words to them and made the grasp of his doctrines difficult. But now learn what follows: "And with burning, which will waste your eyes," or according to the Seventy: "I will set upon you scab and jaundice, which consume your eyes." Scab is a disease of the body, but a visible one, running over the surface of the flesh and its skin. Jaundice (ikteros) comes from inflammation; it too is visible, running over the surface of the flesh and skin, and much more settling in the eyes. Neither disease can be hidden. Such were the diseases of the souls of the Jews: visible and evil, and no longer hidden at all. For, jealous of the Lord's words and miracles, they could no longer hide their diseases, but cried out openly and proclaimed: "What shall we do, for this man does many signs? If we let him go on thus, the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." So it was not because he taught things contrary to the law or the prophets (for he taught what agreed with them entirely), but for the sake of their self-love and their own interest that they did not obey his words. Struck with this disease, then, they wasted their eyes and consumed their souls, not only blazing with fury and corrupted by envy, but, having once grown sick in mind and having thoughts not at all sound for discerning deeds and words, they wasted their inner eyes and consumed their soul at his words and miracles, so that they cried out to him: "How long will you take away our soul? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly." This was because they were subject to the consumption of the soul of unbelief. John too says this of them: "Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah says: Blind the heart of this people and make their ears heavy, lest at any time they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart." You see that as they did, so Christ did to them. For since they strove to make his covenant, or testament, void, he rightly blinded their eyes and heart, and gave them the burning, or jaundice, that wastes their eyes and consumes their souls.

But what did he add to these? "In vain you will sow seed, which will be devoured by your enemies." For in vain do they bring out the seeds of the prophets and the law and sow from them the words of teaching, since they do not have a land fertile for the fruit of intelligible doctrines; hence they do not enjoy their food either, but their adversaries devour it, those who believe in Christ, whom they have made their opponents through unbelief and envy. "And I will set my face against you," according to that prophetic word: "But the face of the Lord is upon those who do evil, to destroy their memory from the earth." "And you will fall before your enemies." For the gentiles, whom they judge to be their enemies, fall before them, stumbling at their salvation. Hence Symmachus says "you will stumble" for "you will fall" "before your enemies." And what else did he add? "Those who hate you will pursue you, and you will flee when no one pursues." What is said here seems in a way contradictory. For if they suffer persecution from their enemies, how do they flee when no one pursues? But the lawgiver took "they will pursue you" not of driving out, but because they would press on them by running, hastening to their salvation. Hence for "they will pursue you" Symmachus gave "they will reduce you to service," and Theodotion "they will instruct you." Paul too shows us such a pursuit: "I press on to lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of." So the gentiles, even if they say, as David said of the Jews, "Did I not hate those who hated you, O God?", yet press on toward their salvation, hasten and pray; for they know that their acceptance, as Paul says, is life from the dead, and their fullness the salvation of the world. But they flee when no one pursues. For we do not begrudge their salvation as they begrudge ours; hence we neither persecute them nor, when they turn away from us, turn away from them, but fulfil what the prophet Isaiah said: "Say to your brothers who hate and abhor you, that the name of the Lord may be glorified and be seen in their joy, and they will be ashamed."

Verses 18–26. "But if even so you do not obey me, I will add to your chastisements sevenfold for your sins, and I will crush the hardness of your pride, and I will make the heaven above you like iron and the earth like bronze. Your labour will be spent in vain; the land will not bring forth its produce, nor will the trees give fruit. If you walk contrary to me and will not listen to me, I will add to your plagues up to sevenfold for your sins, and I will send among you the evil beasts of the field, to consume you and your cattle and reduce all to fewness, and your ways will become desolate. But if even so you will not accept discipline, but walk contrary to me, I too will walk against you and strike you seven times for your sins, and I will bring upon you a sword that avenges the covenant. And when you flee to the cities, I will send pestilence in your midst, and you will be given into the hands of your enemies, after I have broken the staff of your bread, so that ten women will bake bread in one oven and give it back by weight, and you will eat and not be satisfied."

Not without reason did the lawgiver use such distinctions. For now he says, "But if even so you do not obey me"; then, listing certain chastisements, he adds, "If you walk contrary to me"; and again, setting out other plagues, he adds, "But if even so you will not accept discipline, but walk contrary to me." He used these distinctions, as we have said, because Christ often wished to receive the people of the Jews, but they did not obey, so that he cried out to them: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you, how often I wished to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing!" Let us attend above all to this in what has been said: having threatened seven chastisements, he added them thus: he threatened the crushing of the hardness of their pride, the giving of an iron heaven and a bronze earth, the vain spending of their labour, that the land would not bring forth produce, and that the trees would not give fruit. These are six, not seven; and you will find the same if you run through the other chastisements too. By this, then, it is plain that the number seven is the figure and sign of the whole present life, which revolves through the number seven; and that by bringing seven chastisements, or punishments, or plagues upon them, he threatened complete punishment and whole vengeance, as on men sinning in ways neither pardonable nor worthy of repentance, so that in them that prophetic word reached its end: "What do you devise against the Lord? He himself will make an end; a double tribulation will not arise; for as thorns entwine one another, so their feast, of men equally powerful, will be consumed like stubble full of dryness. From you will come out one who devises evil against the Lord, pondering transgression in his mind." From whom did the thought against the Lord go out, thinking evil and contrary to his precepts, if not from the people of the Jews? Of them Isaiah said: "Woe to them, because they devise evil counsel against themselves, saying: Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is useless to us. Therefore they will eat the fruits of their labours."

Attend, then, to the order the lawgiver uses in his threat: "But if even so you do not obey me, I will add to your chastisements sevenfold for your sins." The Seventy gave: "If up to this you do not listen to me," up to this point which the preceding words showed, where he spoke of want and burning; how these must be taken we explained in what went before. If, then, they are disobedient up to this, so as not to be corrected even by what has been said, he said they would be chastised seven times, that is, a perfect chastisement would come upon them in their sins. In what sins he does not say, so that we may understand their sins from what was said before, from the very fact that they were not corrected. And what did he add? "And I will crush the hardness of your pride." They would not receive the freedom of Christ, saying: "We are the seed of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone." This hardness of their pride he crushed, making them serve the nations. "I will make the heaven above you like iron." So they have received no visitation at all from it. "And the earth like bronze." For the earth they possess, the divine Scripture, is unfruitful for them; since it is not understood by them in the way it ought to be, he says it is bronze. To show this he added: "Your labour will be spent in vain." For the labour they show in the divine Scriptures, bent over the tradition of the letter, is spent in vain, since they cannot fully use the law according to the letter, the place having been taken away in which the letter shut up all the divine worship of the law. What follows fits very well: "The land will not give its produce, nor will the trees give fruit." For neither does their outer man, which is called the land, bear fruit, because they live in gluttony, and of them it is said, "whose god is the belly, and their glory in their shame"; nor do their minds, which are the trees of the field, grafted as it were on the body yet higher than it, give God fruits; for he wants us to bud in godliness. "If you walk contrary to me." For they do not walk to God with an upright heart; they pervert his way, overturning the sense of the law and the prophets, so as to cultivate by this their disobedience and transgression. For this reason he adds: "And if you will not listen to me, I will add your plagues to you up to sevenfold for your sins." No longer chastisements, but plagues, setting out now a heavier punishment than the preceding one, equal to their iniquities. "And I will send among you the evil beasts of the field, to consume you and your cattle and reduce all to fewness, and your ways will become desolate." Since they have thrust themselves away from the way of God, the beasts of the field, the demons, are rightly sent upon them, permitted to rule over them, and they consume them. For whatever righteousness they seem to do God does not credit to himself; Paul shows this when he says: "Seeking to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to the righteousness of God." And again: "But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, did not attain to the law of righteousness." It is necessary, then, that the demons eat them, who consume their cattle, that is, men like cattle, namely the depraved and unlearned people, since there is no understanding in them; they are not accustomed to think anything worthy of the service of God, but like beasts of burden, as with a bridle, by the foolish traditions of their leaders are led about; for this reason they are the food of demons, and they are reduced to fewness both in number and in dignity. And their ways become desolate, which have neither the water of life nor the intelligible reception, or hospitality, nor anyone to lead them forward or bring them as it were by the hand, or to guard them.

"But if even so you will not accept discipline, but walk contrary to me, I too will walk against you." I will use a contrary punishment, as your transgression is contrary to the law: for though you seem to meditate on it, you do not keep its intention; so I too will bring on you a contrary punishment, not chastising you with those things with which I scourged you before, when I brought on you deadly serpents and fire and the opening of the earth and the like, but with others. What these are we shall know by reading what follows. "And I will strike you seven times for your sins." First I will chastise, then I will strike; for the punishment, as it proceeds against the disobedient, becomes stronger. "And I will bring upon you a sword that avenges my covenant." We have often said that the sword of the Spirit is the word of God. This word, on the tongues of the church's teachers, avenges the judgment of the covenant, or gospel testament. For it convicts those who transgress the new that they cannot keep the old either; and the gospel is avenged when those who transgress the grace of the gospel are shown to be enemies of the law. Be amazed at the wisdom of the lawgiver, how fittingly he added: "And when you flee to the cities, I will send pestilence in your midst." The intelligible cities are the prophets. It is plain from what God said to Jeremiah: "For I have made you today a fortified city." As, then, one who flees into walled cities is saved if he is a friend, but if he is an enemy is more easily killed, surrounded within their walls, so in the prophetic books and their testimonies the friends of the faith who take refuge find a fortress and salvation, but the enemies and unbelievers are quickly captured and perish. For this reason, when the Jews flee to the prophets, turning away from the spiritual sword that is in learned men, he says he will send pestilence in their midst. For there they die even with no one refuting them, unable to resist all the prophecies about Christ, which are so plain. "And you will be given into the hands of your enemies," namely the intelligible ones, "after I have broken the staff of your bread." For among them the bread of teaching, the most saving, withers. How? Hear what follows: "So that ten women will bake bread in one oven and give it back by weight, and you will eat and not be satisfied." The Jews have nothing that gives their teaching the power to nourish, except the ten commandments, because they flee the true exposition of the prophets, since it agrees with the dispensation of our Saviour. The rest of the law they will not take in an intelligible sense, nor receive spiritually, but according to the letter alone, which cannot stand: first, because the place has been destroyed in which there were the sacrifices, cleansings, offerings, and the rest that belongs to the service of the letter; then, because there were many things in them worthy not so much of study as of laughter, such as those about leprosy of walls, beams, and garments, not ploughing with an ox and an ass, and the like, which are contained in the legal traditions. But the letter of the ten commandments is clear, worthy to be kept and done. Nor is the commandment of the Sabbath an objection: for though it is inserted among the ten commandments, it is not one of them. For if we set as a special commandment, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery," we shall find the complete number of ten commandments. Besides, it plainly signifies the intelligible rest, in which we may do no work of this world. These alone, then, make bread for the people of the Jews, in one oven, namely that of the law, and they give back the loaves just mentioned by weight, that is, by a strictness of the senses. For they do not enlarge the teaching as the gospel does, nor do they show the teaching on adultery so as to guard against even looking at a woman, nor that on murder so as to guard against anger. Hence those who are nourished by the loaves of the Jews are not satisfied by them, taking a scanty teaching that has nothing of richness or spiritual bounty.

Verses 27–45. "But if even by these you do not listen to me, but walk against me, I too will walk against you in my contrary fury, and I will chastise you with seven plagues for your sins, so that you will eat the flesh of your sons and of your daughters. I will destroy your high places and break your images. You will fall among the ruins of your idols, and my soul will abhor you, so that I will make your cities a wilderness and make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will no longer accept your most pleasing fragrance; and I will lay waste your land, and your enemies will be astonished at it when they are its inhabitants. But you I will scatter among the nations, and I will draw the sword after you, and your land will be desolate and your cities ruined. Then the land will enjoy its Sabbaths all the days of its desolation, while you are in the land of the enemy. It will keep Sabbath and rest in the Sabbaths of its desolation, because it did not rest on your Sabbaths when you lived in it. And those of you who remain, I will put fear in their hearts; in the lands of their enemies the sound of a flying leaf will frighten you, and they will flee as from a sword. They will fall when no one pursues, and they will fall each one upon his brothers, as though fleeing from wars. None of you will dare to resist your enemies. You will perish among the nations, and the hostile land will consume you. And if some of these remain, they will waste away in their iniquities in the land of their enemies, and they will be afflicted for the sins of their fathers and their own, until they confess their iniquities and those of their forefathers, by which they transgressed against me and walked contrary to me. So I too will walk against them and bring them into a hostile land, until their uncircumcised mind is ashamed. Then they will pray for their impieties, and I will remember my covenant which I made with Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham; I will remember the land too, which, when it has been left by them, will be pleased with its Sabbaths, enduring desolation because of them. And they will plead for their sins, because they rejected my judgments and despised my laws. Yet when they were in the hostile land, I did not utterly reject them, nor despise them so that they were consumed and I made my covenant with them void. For I am the Lord their God, and I will remember my former covenant, because I brought them out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, to be their God. I am the Lord God."

That Moses was not only a lawgiver but also a prophet he himself showed, prophesying specially of Christ in these words: "The Lord will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers, like me." Well he kept the likeness of Christ in himself, who, besides the other things in which he bore his likeness, just as the Lord spoke of the end of the world, so he too wrote down in the present law the things that were to come upon the people of the Jews. They had experienced many captivities and endured many scourges; but what he now tells part by part belongs to that captivity which befell them at the hands of the Romans who laid them waste, because of the iniquity committed against Christ. If you wish to know more precisely what befell them, you learn it from the history of Josephus, in which he described how they even ate their children and endured the rest of the present threats; most of these lie even now before our eyes to see: their land desolate, their cities plundered by enemies, the province laid waste, and they themselves sojourning among their gentile enemies in continual fear. Yet, as they suffered this not only according to the letter but also in the consideration of the Spirit (for sinning doubly, in the transgression of the law and in the blasphemy of the lawgiver, they rightly suffer double punishments too), learn it in this way. They walked contrary to Christ, overturning his miracles and disparaging his teaching; when through envy they were plotting against him, they falsely asserted that the teacher of divine love was acting against God. And he too used contrariness against them in anger in this way: for the judgment and punishment of the iniquity committed against him was the captivity they suffered. Yet he did not make the Romans bring it on them for this reason (for they were not yet avenging his glory), but as men who resisted their rule, though they had formerly been their tributaries, obedient to their taxes, laws, and magistrates. God, exercising contrary fury against them, brought anger upon them, so that he was avenged through the Roman empire as though it had been his herald; and he chastised them with seven plagues according to their sins, multiplying their punishments. And he did not avenge in one way, because they did not sin in one way either. And they eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, that is, their disciples, whom they take as sons, devouring them into the same teaching with cunning words that overturn the soul. And he brought their high places to desolation and broke their images. Their high places are their rulers and teachers, to whom they should have looked as to men set on high, or, as the Seventy, statues, and so ordered their lives. But since these had nothing sound or strong, but all weak and corruptible forms of virtue and imitation, which are spoiled by time and rot (hence in the Seventy too they were called "wooden things made by hand"), he laid them waste, exposing their hypocrisy before all, and with them the common people who looked to them. And he set their corpses among the ruins of their idols, that is, the members of the people, heaping their actions on the actions of their idols, the Pharisees and scribes, whom they used as idols, abandoning God and attending to the seductions of idols. For this reason he says: "My soul will abhor you." Which soul? The one he laid down for us, so that he might [free] us from the slavery of sins … and he turns away from them for ever, because, as far as concerned them, they made his work void, refusing the gift granted through it. For this reason he made their cities a wilderness and made their sanctuaries desolate; for they find no fruit from the prophetic books and cannot strive for any holiness. Nor does he accept the most pleasing fragrance, nor receive their prayer; and he lays waste their land, the whole Old Testament: not that he stripped it altogether, but he made it desolate and pathless for them. He made the nations dwell in it; for this reason he says: "Your enemies will be astonished at it when they are its inhabitants." For the nations are enemies of the Jews, because those chose to be at enmity with God and with those whom Paul calls enemies of the cross of Christ. They dwell in the land of the Jews, in the Old Testament, and as they dwell there they are astonished at him who spoke such things in the law and the prophets, who laid the foundations of life there. Further he says: "But you I will scatter among the nations," not only by this dispersion of the senses but also by an intelligible one. Learn what this is: "And I will draw the sword after you, and your land will be desolate and your cities ruined." For the word of God, which is the sword of the Spirit, running everywhere among the nations and surrounding the whole earth, consumes the sons of the Jews and destroys them from the holy things of God, showing that they have no communion with them; hence the land and the cities are found desolate, they having been driven out of their dwelling. "Then the land will enjoy its Sabbaths all the days of its desolation, while you are in the land of the enemy; it will keep Sabbath and rest in the Sabbaths of its desolation, because it did not rest on your Sabbaths when you lived in it." We have often shown that the land is the intelligible Scripture of God and the way of life that is in it: for the Jews, the Old Testament; for the nations, who are hostile to the Jews, the New. Since, then, the Sabbath signifies rest, the lawgiver now hints at this very plainly to the Jews: that they will now find nothing in the law and the prophets that they want to do, but almost the whole surface of the letter has been destroyed for them. For this reason they have come to be in the land of their enemies, that is, in the gospel testament; and they have come to be there, if not willingly, yet of necessity. For against their will he made the sacrifices, the purifications of unleavened bread, the festivals of tabernacles, and the rest cease; suffering this difficulty, they depart into meditation on it. And sacred Scripture accepted this rest from them in place of a Sabbath, and it pleases it even more than the rest of the former Sabbaths. Why? Because "praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner."

And so: "And those of you who remain, I will put fear in their hearts; in the lands of their enemies the sound of a flying leaf will frighten them." … those who remain, still studying the sacred Scripture, are afraid in the land of their enemies, in the New Testament, as we have said; for they fear out of foolishness and a blinded heart at mingling with it, and this is fulfilled: "There they trembled with fear where there was no fear." "The sound of a flying leaf will frighten them." He calls the letter of the law a leaf; for its sound pursues them and announces fear of us to them, because, for example, they hear that the Sabbath day is to be kept, and they see that we hold nothing contemptible about this commandment, nothing earthly, not rest from cultivating the land, but learning rest from evil action; they take offence at us and flee from mingling with us. The letter of the law is rightly taken as a leaf, because, as the fruit of trees is covered by leaves, so the spirit is hidden under the letter of the law. For this reason we, of whom it was said, "If grape gatherers had come into you, they would at least have left you a cluster," strip off the leaf of the letter so that we may find the fruit of the Spirit. But those who do not know this regard us as enemies and flee from us as one flees a sword. "And they will fall when no one pursues." For we do not persecute them; they suffer persecution from the hardness of their own heart. Now see what he added: "And they will fall each one upon his brothers, as though fleeing from wars." For when we speak with them and bring forward against them the testimonies of the law and the prophets concerning Christ and the mysteries of the gospel, hard pressed, some say this and others that, and each falls upon his brother. For they all say weak things, and for this reason they cannot stand together in their answers to one another, and they are thrown into confusion as though fleeing from wars, with no one pursuing. We do not persecute them, nor do we dispute with them to harm them, but to help and gain them. What, then, do they suffer from this? "None of you will dare to resist your enemies; you will perish among the nations, and the hostile land will consume you." For the gospel testament consumes them, crushing the substance of their whole error. Hence they do not resist their enemies, who can be saved through faith; but they perish among the nations, stumbling on the cornerstone, and not even willing to look at the letter of the law, since they have no confidence in it. "And if some of these remain, they will waste away in their iniquities in the land of their enemies." For whoever of them who have been converted remain, persisting in the study of the law, these perish because of their sins in the land of their enemies, that is, in the gospel testament, as we have said, because of their transgression of it; for these are in every way the sins committed against it. "And because of their own sins and because of the sins of their fathers, by which they transgressed and despised me": for they ascribe what has now befallen them to the sins of their fathers. For this reason they will also waste away in them, … not with a good mind, but doing evil, so as to soften the punishment that came on them because of the iniquity they committed against Christ. For he adds: "And they walked contrary to me. So I too will walk against them and bring them into a hostile land." For as they think to outwit God, walking contrary to him and saying other things in place of the interpretations of the law and the prophets that confirm the mystery of Christ, which is the mark of adversaries, so he too walked against them and will bring them into a hostile land, that is, into the gospel, which he gave to the nations. By this they perish in two ways: first, because it destroys the righteousness of the Jews; then, because it is among the nations, of whom they are jealous, and with a contentious mind against them they do not wish to be saved, so that God said through Moses, "I will provoke you to jealousy with a no-nation," and Paul, "As regards the gospel they are enemies for your sake," and again, "For as you, when you were enemies, were reconciled to God, so they too have now not believed, in your mercy." "Then their uncircumcised mind will be ashamed, and then they will pray for their iniquities," or as the Seventy, "they will be pleased with their sins," that is, with the punishments they suffer for their sins; for so we have understood what is said in Hosea: "They will eat the sins of my people." What this is he made plain in what follows: "And they will lift up their souls to their iniquity." So to eat the sins of the people is to bear punishments for them, and they say that they suffer what is worthy of their sins, even if they confess some of their sins and hide others, those they committed against Christ.

"And I will remember my covenant which I made with Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham." Why did he begin not with Abraham, according to the order of time and generation, but with Jacob? Or why do the Seventy say not "the covenant of Jacob and Isaac and Abraham," but "the covenant of Jacob, and the covenant of Isaac, and the covenant of Abraham"? Hinting, as it were, at three covenants, so as to commend the gospel by the law and the prophets; of these the law is the oldest, the prophets in the second place, and they wished to show the gospel as the newest. Because the gospel, though the newest, is set first by God in grace, and therefore he mentions it first, he mentions first Jacob, who is last in time and order. He joined them in the same way as things having kinship among themselves. And in the places where he mentions the law and the prophets, in these he says he mentions the gospel as well. What follows confirms this strongly: "I will remember the land too, which, when it has been left by them," or as the Seventy, "is left by them." Since the land is above all a blessing from God, God, loving the intelligible land, that is, his Scriptures, wants it to be held in memory, and the memory of them … they did not meditate well, they did them injury: first by saying and not doing, then by interpreting contemptibly and covering the excellent spiritual understanding that was in them. Hence he fittingly added: "It will be pleased with its Sabbaths," that is, while it remains desolate of them. For the law of God rejoices, enjoying the desolation of the Jews, which they brought upon themselves. For this reason he also said that it endures that desolation because of them. "And they will plead for their sins, because they rejected my judgments and despised my laws." Double goods, he says, have come to the sacred Scriptures from the people of the Jews being driven out: they are not insulted by them, and for this reason they rejoice at not being read by them; for they do not read them as before, being scattered and lacking all presumption. And they themselves have also become conscious of their sins and of their transgression of the divine law.

What he added as the conclusion and crown of the whole ordinance is also to be admired; and it is to be understood that plainly the one who spoke in Moses also spoke in Paul and in all the apostles: "Yet when they were in the hostile land, I did not utterly reject them, nor despise them so that they were consumed and I made my covenant with them void. For I am the Lord their God, and I will remember my former covenant, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, to be their God. I am the Lord." If you wish to know this point by point, read Paul: how God did not despise them in the hostile land, that is, in the gospel testament, nor consume them so as to make his former covenant void. For he did not bring it to nothing altogether, but left the hope of salvation, not to all, but to a remnant, as Paul says, bringing forward the testimony of the prophet Isaiah: "If the number of the sons of Israel is as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved." "I say, then, has God rejected his people? By no means." He will also remember his former covenant, when he brought the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt. And in what will he remember it? That he may be their God in the sight of the nations. For a plain demonstration of this, these words of the wisdom of the apostle are enough for you: "For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own sight: that blindness in part has befallen Israel, until the fullness of the gentiles comes in, and so all Israel will be saved." Well, then, at the conclusion of the whole discourse, the Lord said: "I am the Lord," who will the salvation of all, and therefore also of the Jews, and who will save a remnant, though after so many iniquities.

Verse 46. "These are the precepts and judgments and laws which the Lord gave between himself and the sons of Israel on Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses."

… for the lawgiver added to his words a conclusion by which he made it plain beyond any doubt that he wants the letter of the law to be firm until a certain time, and he stopped the mouth of the Jews, who try to keep this law even now, when they have no time for it, since he has already come who sought the letter of the law for the Jews, as for the weak, in place of milk, and who, commanding Moses to minister to it, himself on coming brought them to what is more perfect. So, as we said once, he properly called "judgments" the things said when God gave judgment on certain points about which they asked in ignorance; "precepts," those which the lawgiver ordained not in this way but of himself, with no one asking. Then, wishing to embrace briefly the dispensation of the whole ordinance, he added: "And the laws which the Lord gave between himself and the sons of Israel." For this reason the other translators too, except the Seventy, gave "laws," wishing to show by this word the difference of the law … And what is it that he said "between," if not, without doubt, until he comes of whom Isaiah says, "He himself will come and save us; then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will hear," and whatever else is contained in that prophecy? Then the law must no longer be kept according to the surface of the letter, but as he himself has expounded it, carried over to the grace of the gospel and to a more perfect way of life: not so as to be made void, but so as to be drawn to a wise interpretation and a spiritual sense. Why did he also indicate the place, for he says "on Mount Sinai," if not so that, since David says, "The God of gods will be seen in Zion," and "Suddenly the Lord whom you seek will come to his temple," and again David, "Out of Zion, the perfection of his beauty, God will come manifestly, our God, and he will not keep silence," we should not think that this dispensation of his spoken of was accomplished in the time of the law? Hence he mentioned here both the place and the ministering Moses, so that we might learn from this that the prophets promised us another coming of his, which took place neither on Sinai nor through a mediator, but openly.