Commentary on Jeremiah 2.93–3.7

[93] “My tent is destroyed, all my cords are broken (or: all my curtains are torn); my sons have gone out from me (or: my sheep), and they are not; there is no one to stretch out my tent any more (or: there is no more place for my tent) and to set up my curtains.” Jerusalem laments the overthrow of her city as so easy that you would think it not the uprooting of walls and all fortifications, but the taking down of a tabernacle and a tent. “My tabernacle,” she says, “that is, my dwelling, has been suddenly taken away; all my cords are broken” (he keeps the metaphor of the tabernacle), or “all my curtains are torn. My sons have gone out from me”, or “my flocks”, which the Septuagint added; it does not stand according to the history, for in a long siege how could sheep and cattle be taken out of Jerusalem, when, even if there had been any, famine would have consumed them? “And they do not remain”, she says, “or are not”; for they were not carried off into Chaldea, but a great part of them was slain and utterly destroyed. “There is no one to stretch out my tent any more, no one to restore me and lay the foundations of my walls, which have been thrown to the ground.”

[94] “For the shepherds have acted foolishly and have not sought the Lord; therefore they have not understood, and all their flock has been scattered.” By the metaphor of shepherds and sheep, the fault of the leaders and the scattering of the people are described. Because the leaders acted foolishly and did not seek the Lord, whom they ought to have sought with their whole heart, they therefore did not see the evils that were coming, or did not understand the Lord, and the whole multitude of Jerusalem was scattered here and there.

[95] “Behold, the sound of a report comes, and a great commotion from the land of the north, to make the cities of Judah a desolation and a dwelling of dragons” (or: a lair of ostriches, and, as Symmachus interpreted, of sirens), for which in the Hebrew “thannim” is put. The words of the prophet: “Behold,” he says, “the sound and roar of the coming Babylonian is heard, and a great commotion or earthquake from the land of the north, to reduce all the cities of Judea to a wilderness, their inhabitants slain, and to make dragons dwell there instead of men, and all venomous creatures, or ostriches”; for this animal too is at home in the wilderness and is born and reared in deserts; or certainly we can understand sirens, certain monsters and phantoms of demons. All these things, which both the previous and the present word have described, let us refer to the times of the church's persecution, when the tabernacles of the Lord are overthrown and every dwelling of the church is reduced to a wilderness. And the fault that all these things happen belongs to the shepherds, who acted foolishly and did not seek the Lord nor understand him; therefore the whole flock was scattered.

[96] “I know, O Lord, that a man's way is not his own, nor is it in a man to walk and direct his steps.” Let the new preachers blush who say that each one is ruled by his own choice, when this prophet too says, “a man's way is not his own”, and David sings in a lyric song: “The steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and he will greatly desire his way.” Or the sense is this: “What we suffer from the Babylonians is not due to their power to terrify, but to our desert and your indignation.”

[97] “Correct me, O Lord, but in judgment and not in your fury, lest perhaps you bring me to nothing. Pour out your indignation on the nations that have not known you, and on the provinces (or: generations) that have not called on your name; for they have devoured Jacob and consumed his place and scattered his glory (or: pastures), or: reduced it to a wilderness.” We read this place in the psalm: “O Lord, do not rebuke me in your fury, nor correct me in your anger!” And the sense is: “We indeed deserve all that we suffer, and we deserve much more than we endure. Yet I beg this, that you correct me as a father, not as an adversary, so that you may amend me as a son and not punish me as an enemy; for you scourge every son whom you receive, and through every pain and scourge you amend Jerusalem. But the nations which have not known you, and the provinces or regions which have not called on your name, ought to feel not your judgment but your indignation. For you handed us over to be amended, but they made their yoke heavy; they did not spare the old and afflicted the little ones. They have eaten us and devoured us completely, and reduced Jerusalem to such a wilderness that they have scattered all the public and private buildings and slain your people.” [98] “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: Hear the words of this covenant (or: testament), and speak to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel.” It is not stated in the title under what time, or under what king and in which year of his, this prophecy was made; but we understand either that it is to be joined to the former prophecy and time, or certainly that this word of the Lord came to the prophet after some interval of time following the former prophecy. It should be noted that Aquila and Symmachus always interpreted the word “berith” as “pact”, the Septuagint and Theodotion as “testament”. And now the word is properly directed to Jerusalem and to the men of the tribe of Judah.

[99] “Cursed is the man who will not hear the words of this covenant, which I commanded your fathers on the day when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying: Hear my voice and do all that I command you, and you will be my people, and I will be your God.” Not because of the privileges of race, not because of the injury of circumcision and the idleness of the sabbath, but because of obedience, God becomes the God of the people of Israel and Israel his people. And here he speaks as to servants, so that they may please God; but in the gospel the Lord says to the disciples: “You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master does; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” And when they have become friends, from friends they pass to sons: “For as many as received him, he gave them power to become sons of God.” Hence he commands friends and sons: “Be perfect, as your Father is perfect”, commanding likeness, not equality. There obedience to the commandments is required, here likeness to God. And when he says, “on the day when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace”, he gives us to understand that the kiln and the iron, heated furnace signifies the greatness of tribulation and punishment, not some place of punishment prepared from the material iron. [100] “That I may confirm the oath which I swore to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day.” The fathers seem to receive when the sons receive, and the promise to Abraham is fulfilled in his descendants. The land flowing with milk and honey we ought to take hyperbolically, for the abundance of all things, as in “let honey flow for them, and the rough bramble bear spice”, and again, “and he checked the wine running everywhere in streams”; or certainly, figuratively, let us take the land flowing with milk and honey as the church of Christ, in which as little ones and sucklings we are nourished by faith, so that we may be able to take solid food. [101] “And I answered and said: Amen, O Lord”; for which the Septuagint translated “So be it, O Lord”, for this is what “amen” signifies. The Lord had said: “I swore to your fathers to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as is proved this day by the facts themselves.” The prophet, loving his people, takes up the Lord's word and wishes that what has been given may be true and remain for ever. Hence he says: “Truly, O Lord, you have fulfilled what you promised; or, So be it, O Lord, that is: may what you have given always remain!” [102] “And the Lord said to me: Cry out (or: read) all these words in the cities of Judah and outside Jerusalem, saying: Hear the words of this covenant and do them!” The most merciful God often foretells what is to come, so that at last the mind hard to believe may be softened. And he foretells it both in the city of Jerusalem and outside in the country, so that those whose danger is shared may have the same repentance.

[103] “For I solemnly warned your fathers on the day when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, until this day, rising early I warned them and said: Hear my voice! And they did not hear nor incline their ear, but each went away in the depravity of his evil heart; and I brought upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do.” Up to this point it is not in the Septuagint; and what follows, “and they did not do them”, they put and joined to the end of the preceding chapter, in which it is written: “Hear the words of this covenant and do them”, “and they did not do them.” What it means for God to rise early and press his words on them frequently through the prophets, and to bring them out of Egypt and admonish them often, saying, “Hear my voice”, and that they went after the depravity of their heart, and that afterwards he repaid them what they deserved to receive, we have said before. [104] “And the Lord said to me: A conspiracy has been found among the men of Judah and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They have turned back to the iniquities of their former fathers, who refused to hear my words; and these too have gone after other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers.” For “conspiracy”, which we interpreted following Symmachus, Aquila, the Septuagint and Theodotion translated syndesmon, which we can call “binding together”. Hence Athaliah too, when she discovered that a plot was being prepared against her in the temple, spoke with the same word: “Conspiracy, conspiracy.” Scripture uses this word properly when sin is pursued not by a sudden and chance fall but by prepared snares and conspiracy, and they act with one mind and one zeal to despise God's commandments. And he says that fathers and sons, with one mind and like opinion, neglected God and venerated idols, both Israel and the house of Judah, that is, both the ten tribes and the two whose rule was in Jerusalem, so that those who had one zeal in contempt of God might have an equal punishment in bearing captivity. [105] “Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I will bring upon them evils from which they will not be able to escape; and they will cry to me, and I will not hear them. And the cities of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem will go and cry to the gods to whom they pour libations, and they will not save them in the time of their affliction.” God does not hear in the time of need and distress, because they too would not hear the Lord's voice. Saul too suffered this: for when, dreading the ranks of the Philistines, he did not deserve to receive the word of the Lord, he turned to the woman with a spirit, to learn from idols what he ought to have wrung from the Lord by the urgency of prayer and tears. Through this we learn that, even if the Lord does not hear, we must by no means stop, nor flee to demons, who cannot help their worshippers, but to the help of the Lord, who, though angry, is quickly moved and changes his sentence if those with whom he was angry are changed. All that is now said concerns the tribe of Judah and the city of Jerusalem, on which captivity presses.

[106] “For according to the number of your cities were your gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem you have set up altars of shame, altars to burn incense to the Baals.” Let us read the books of Kings and Chronicles, and we shall find that Judah and Jerusalem did much worse than Israel: so that as many cities as they had, so many kinds of idols they had, and as many streets and crossroads as there were in the city of Jerusalem, so many altars they had to their confusion, on which they sacrificed victims to the idols of the Baals.

[107] “You, therefore, do not pray for this people, nor lift up praise and prayer for them; for I will not hear in the time of their crying to me, in the time of their affliction!” Jeremiah is commanded not to wish to entreat the Lord for those on whom the sentence is already completed, lest his prayer seem weak and not be heard because of their own crimes. “Do not pray for them”, he says, “nor lift up praise, so as to try to change my sentence by recounting the mercy of the old history, by which I always had pity on them, and by praising me. For even if you do this, I will not hear them, who are compelled to ask me in the time of need.” From this we learn that it is in vain for anyone to ask for another when the one for whom God is asked does not deserve to receive.

[108] “What is it that my beloved has done many crimes in my house? Will holy flesh take away from you your wickednesses, in which you have gloried? A rich olive tree, beautiful, fruitful, fair, the Lord called your name; at the sound of a great word a fire has blazed up in it, and its branches are burned.” He calls beloved and most dear the people of Judah, which set up and venerated idols in his temple, and thinks to appease God's anger by sacrificing many victims, and glories in the multitude of sacrifices, which cannot take away the wickednesses of sins. He compares Jerusalem, or the whole people of the Jews, to a beautiful and fruitful olive, which, exalted by pride, did not act humbly nor understand its creator and ruler, but, lifted up by pride and speaking great things, was set on fire by the Lord, so that its branches or boughs were burned and reduced to nothing, that is, the whole people was destroyed by the sword of the enemies. This sense is also in another place, where it is said to Jerusalem: “I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true; how have you turned into the bitterness of a strange vine?”, when its walls are pulled down and the boar from the forest ravages it and all the beasts devour its fruit. Let us say this chapter to the leaders of the churches: “What is it that my beloved has done many crimes in my house?” Or certainly to the rich, who, while they plunder others' goods and do not take away the wickednesses of their heart, think they deserve God's mercy: “Will holy flesh take away from you your wickednesses, in which you have gloried?” But now the names of those who offer are publicly read out, and the redemption of sins is changed into praise, and they do not remember that widow in the gospel who, by putting two coins into the treasury, surpassed the gifts of all the rich.

[109] “And the Lord of hosts, who planted you, has pronounced evil against you, for the evils of the house of Israel and the house of Judah, which they did for themselves to provoke me, pouring libations to the Baals.” “A rich, beautiful, fruitful olive”, he says, “your Lord called you and planted you; but because, at the sound of the great word of God, a flame came down upon you and consumed all your branches, therefore he who had planted you has now pronounced evil against you, not by an unjust sentence nor by a sudden perversity of speech, but for the evils which the house of Israel and the house of Judah did for themselves and zealously carried out, pouring libations to the Baals, so as to provoke me to anger.” Although God can do what he wills, he gives reasons, so as not to seem to act unjustly, according to what is written: “that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged.”

[110] “But you, O Lord, have shown me, and I knew; then you showed me their doings. And I was like a gentle lamb that is carried to be a victim, and I did not know that they had devised plans against me: Let us put wood into his bread and crush him from the land of the living, and let his name be remembered no more. But you, O Lord of hosts, who judge justly and test the reins and the heart, let me see your vengeance on them; for to you I have revealed my cause.” The consensus of all the churches is this: they understand these things as said by Christ under the person of Jeremiah: that the Father showed him how he must speak, and showed him the doings of the Jews, and he himself, like a lamb led to the slaughter, did not open his mouth, and did not know (understood: sin, according to what the apostle says, “who, though he knew no sin, was made sin for us”); and that they said, “Let us put wood into his bread”, namely the cross into the Saviour's body (for it is he who says, “I am the bread that came down from heaven”), “and let us root out” or “crush him from the land of the living!” For they planned this crime in their mind, to blot out his name for ever. But on the contrary, according to the mystery of the body he assumed, the Son speaks to the Father and invokes his judgment, while he praises his justice and calls on God, the searcher of reins and heart, to repay the people what it deserves; and he says, “let me see your vengeance on them”, namely on those who persevere in crime, and not on those who turn to repentance; of these he says on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” And he reveals to the Father and opens his cause: that he was crucified for no fault of his own but by the crime of the people, saying: “Behold, the prince of this world comes and finds nothing in me.” The Jews and our judaizers understand these things as said in the person of Jeremiah, who, they affirm, suffered these things from the people because of his prophecy of the future and the evils of captivity that were rushing on. But I do not know how they can prove that Jeremiah was crucified, since Scripture does not record it; unless perhaps they planned it and did not do it.

[111] “Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the men of Anathoth, who seek your life and say: You shall not prophesy in the name of the Lord, and you shall not die by our hands. Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Behold, I will punish them; the young men will die by the sword, their sons and their daughters will die by famine, and there will be no remnant of them; for I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth, the year of their visitation.” This seems to contradict the preceding opinion, by which we wished to prove that what was said was said in the person of Christ and not of Jeremiah, who properly lived in the village of Anathoth, three miles from Jerusalem. But if we understand the etymology of the town Anathoth, which is interpreted “obedience”, it will clearly be shown that the men of Anathoth, who once obeyed the Lord's commandments, means all the Jews, and especially the inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem, upon whom came the final sentence, to perish by the evils of the siege, by sword, famine and pestilence. But to free ourselves from all trouble of interpretation, let us follow this rule: that all the prophets did most things as a type of the Lord the Saviour, and whatever was fulfilled in Jeremiah according to the present time is prophesied of the Lord for the future.

[Book 3, preface] Fables tell that the Lernaean serpent sprouted many snakes from the middle of its head, and that Scylla, the monster of the Sicilian strait, with a maiden's face but girt about with dogs, tore apart the shipwrecks of the wretched, while on the same shore was joined the deadly song of the Sirens, which Homer's Ulysses is said to have avoided by stopping his ears, escaping an insuperable evil by prudent counsel. When I wished to do this, and to avoid the rage of the heretics, and, like Ismenias, singing to myself and the Muses, to ponder that prophetic word, “When the sinner stood against me, I was dumb and kept silent from good things”, the devil did not allow me, content with the rest I longed for, to apply myself to the explanation of the holy Scriptures and to hand on to the men of my language the learning of the Hebrews and Greeks; but he works at this day and night, openly and by snares, mixing falsehood with truth, or rather smearing all lies with treacherous honey, so that one who hears the sweetness of the words does not dread the poison of the heart. He promises peace in order to wage worse wars; he smiles in order to bite; he offers his hand in order to kill the simple Abner unexpectedly. This, no doubt, is what the apostle too said: “For we are not ignorant of his wiles.” Here he is silent, elsewhere he accuses; he sends letters of papyrus throughout the whole world, once gold-bearing, now abusive, and interprets our patience, which comes from Christ's humility, as the sign of a bad conscience. And he, dumb himself, barks through an Alpine dog, huge and fat, who can rage more with his heels than with his teeth. For he has his descent from the Scottish race, from the neighbourhood of the Britons, and, like Cerberus in the poets' fables, he must be struck with a spiritual club, so that he may fall silent in eternal silence with his master Pluto. But more of this elsewhere. Now I shall begin the third book on Jeremiah, in which, brother Eusebius, I shall try to confine the broadest fields of explanation to the narrow path of commentaries. [2] “You are just, O Lord, if I dispute with you (or: for I will satisfy you); yet I will speak judgments to you: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why is it well with all who transgress and act wickedly? You have planted them, and they have taken root; they prosper (or: they beget sons) and bear fruit; you are near in their mouth and far from their reins.” This dispute is against all who act wickedly, and the meaning of the seventy-second psalm is briefly summed up in it, in which the prophet says: “How good is the God of Israel to those who are upright in heart! But my feet were almost moved, my steps had well nigh slipped, for I was envious of sinners, seeing the peace of sinners”, and the rest. But it is said properly against the heretics, whose way prospers though they are impious, and who beget as sons those whom they have deceived in heresy, and transgress and act wickedly so as to despoil the church, and, while persevering in the perversity of their opinion, boast that they have been planted by God and have taken root, begotten sons and borne fruit; who, though they repeat the name of Christ often, do not have God dwelling in them, according to that saying of Isaiah: “This people honours me with its lips, but its heart is far from me.” [3] “And you, O Lord, know me; you have seen me and tested my heart with you. Gather them like a flock for the slaughter, and sanctify them for the day of killing.” “It is no stumbling-block”, he says, “that the wicked, or all the heretics, flourish for a time: for you, O Lord, know me, have seen me and tested my heart with you.” Whom does God the Father know so as he knows his Son? “For no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” “Although”, he says, “the heretics prosper, beget sons and bear fruit, and you are near in their mouth and far from their reins, that is, their conscience, yet it is no small consolation that they are fattened like cattle for the slaughter. You gather them into the city of Jerusalem, or into their own assemblies, so that they may be slain like victims for death, and then be sanctified, when they have been slaughtered by the sword of the church; for the killing of the heretics is the salvation of those who had been deceived.”

[4] “How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field wither because of the wickedness of those who dwell in it? Beast and bird are consumed, because they said: He will not see our last end (or: God will not see our ways).” Whatever happens in the world, whether good or evil, happens not without providence and by chance, but by the judgment of God. The land is now barren, the grass withers: do you wish to know the reason? The wickedness of its inhabitants does this, so that even the animals on the earth and the birds of the sky are consumed, because all these things were created for the use of men; who rose up to such blasphemy as to say that God does not know their ways and does not know what each will suffer. And when he says “how long”, it signifies that God's anger remains because the mind of sinners is not changed.

[5] “If you have run with footmen and been wearied, how will you be able to contend with horses? And if you have trusted in a land of peace, what will you do in the pride (or: the roaring) of the Jordan?” “If”, he says, “the frequent captivity of the neighbouring nations has wearied you, of the Moabites and Ammonites, Philistines and Idumeans, what will you do in the long captivity which will lead you all the way to Chaldea?” And he compares footmen with horsemen, because indeed, according to history, all Persia and all Chaldea and the army of those regions rejoices in cavalry; while the nations I mentioned above, because of the difficulty of the terrain, are suited not so much to battle as to brigandage. And he keeps the metaphor and says: “If running with footmen you have failed from weariness, what will you do if you wish to match your course with horses? And if you had some confidence in your own land, what will you do when you have crossed the Jordan and endured its torrents?”

[6] “For even your brothers and the house of your father, even they have fought against you and cried after you with a full voice; do not believe them when they speak good things to you!” “So greatly”, he says, “will you be covered by the heaviest waves of the Jordan, and the multitude of horsemen coming from afar will lay you waste, that even your brothers, the Idumeans, and the house of your father, who were born of the stock of Lot, Moab and Ammon, will themselves fight against you in the time of need and distress and insult you. So beware of wishing to believe them and having hope in kinship, because of which they will rage against you with greater hatred than enemies.” This can also be taken of the Saviour: that his brothers and his father's house fought against him and cried out with a full voice, saying: “Crucify, crucify him; we have no king but Caesar.”

[7] “I have forsaken my house, I have abandoned my inheritance; I have given my beloved soul into the hand of her enemies. My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest; it has given its voice against me; therefore I have hated it.” He who said in the gospel, “Arise, let us go hence”, and again, “Your house will be left to you desolate”, threatens the same here too in the prophet, and says that he has done what he is going to do. For Israel is the Lord's inheritance and the cord of his inheritance. And when he says, “I have given my beloved soul into the hand of her enemies”, this is: “I have power to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it up again.” The people of the Jews, once the Lord's inheritance, became against him like a lion in the forest when in the passion it cried out against him with one voice. And because it gave its voice against him, he therefore held it in hatred and cast it off, and she who was once beloved and most dear is now called hateful.