Commentary on Jeremiah 3.28–3.55

[28] “For even the hind (or: hinds) in the field gave birth and left (or: abandoned) it, because there was no grass. And the wild asses stood on the crags; they snuffed up the wind like dragons; their eyes failed, because there was no grass (or: hay).” Great is the barrenness when even hinds give birth in the field and leave their young, because there is no grass or hay, so that the hinds, which by the scent of their nostrils draw serpents from their holes and kill venomous creatures, do not enjoy the food of grace. The wild asses too, of which it is written, “Who has let the wild ass go free in the wilderness?”, leaving the plains and level places, stand on the crags and cannot run, and draw in the wind like dragons, and their eyes fail and cannot see the clear light, rational food being withdrawn. This drought often happens in the churches, when both hinds and wild asses are found among the peoples and waste away from the lack of teachers: there are those who can learn, and there are none who can teach.

[29] “If our iniquities have answered (or: withstood) us, O Lord, act for your name's sake, for our turnings away (or: our sins) are many. Against you we have sinned, O hope of Israel, its saviour in the time of trouble.” If we doubt why rains do not come down upon the earth, why all things wither with drought, let us hear: “Our iniquities have withstood us. Therefore, O Lord, not according to our works but according to your holy name, overcome our many turnings away. For against you we have sinned, whom the secrets of the heart do not deceive; and we wait for you, who are the true hope and expectation of Israel and save it in the time of tribulation, according to what is written: In my distress I cried to the Lord, and he heard me.” Let us too say in a time of drought and want of water: “Against you we have sinned and done evil before you; we wait for your coming, who save Israel not by its merit but by your mercy.”

[30] “Why will you be like a sojourner in the land, like a traveller turning aside to lodge? Why will you be like a wandering man, or a mighty man who cannot save?” The Septuagint: “Why have you become like a stranger in the land, and like a native turning aside to lodge? Will you be like a man asleep, and like a man who cannot save?” The Jews understand this place thus: “Why do you separate yourself from your people, and like a traveller who, for an hour's refreshment, does not care what lodging he uses, but, about to pass on elsewhere, do not save your people and abandon your once glorious temple?” Our interpreters think it is said of the future dispensation of Christ: that he would be a pilgrim on earth and use the earth's lodging for a short time, and like a man passing through and strong, leaving Israel, would go to the multitude of the nations, so as to pass from place to place, from people to people, from temple to church. And what is said according to the Septuagint, “Will you be like a man asleep, and like a man who cannot save?”, sets a likeness, not the truth of the matter, according to what is written: “Arise, why do you sleep, O Lord?”; not that the Lord sleeps, of whom it is said, “He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep”, but that he seems to sleep to those whom he forsakes. In short, in what follows it is not written “a man asleep”, who cannot save, but “like a man”; in both it is anthropopathōs, in human terms.

[31] “But you, O Lord, are among us, and your name is called upon us; do not forsake us (or: do not forget us)!” “You who among the Jews will be like a stranger and traveller and wandering man, leaving your ancient dwelling, dwell in us, and your name is called upon us, so that we are called Christians; therefore do not forsake us or forget us, of whose future coming the mouths of all the prophets have sung.”

[32] “Thus says the Lord to this people: Because it has loved (or: they have loved) to move its feet and has not rested (or: they have not refrained), and has not pleased the Lord (or: and God has not been pleased with them), now he will remember their iniquities and punish their sins.” When the people says, “Why have you become like a stranger and traveller and wanderer, so as to leave your dwelling?”, the Lord answers his former people: “Do you wish to know the reason? Listen to what is said: because the people loved to move its feet and did not take them out of the fetters of sins, or did not rest and could not stand, therefore I too forsook it, and I have no pleasure in it.” He, then, who long put off and in patience would not punish sinners, because they persisted in crime, will remember their iniquities and, as of sick men who do not perceive God, will punish their sins, so that they may cease to sin any more. It should be noted in the holy Scriptures that the feet of sinners are always moving, while it is said to the saints, with Moses, “But you stand here with me”, and elsewhere it is written: “Praise the Lord, you servants, who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God!”

[33] “And the Lord said to me: Do not pray for this people for good. When they fast, I will not hear their prayers; and if they offer burnt offerings and victims, I will not accept them; for I will consume them by sword and famine and pestilence.” It is foolish to pray for one who has sinned unto death, as John says: “There is a sin unto death; I do not say that one should pray for that. All iniquity is sin, and there is a sin not unto death.” Fasts and prayers and victims and burnt offerings profit when we withdraw from vices and weep for our former sins; but if, persisting in crimes, we think to buy God's ears with vows and sacrifices, we err greatly, thinking God unjust. For one who has once been destined to sword and famine and pestilence can be rescued by no prayers. Hence the prophet too is told not to ask in vain for what he cannot obtain.

[34] “And I said: Ah, ah, ah, Lord God (or: you who are Lord God), the prophets say to them: You will not see the sword, and there will be no famine among you, but he will give you true peace in this place. And the Lord said to me: The prophets prophesy falsely in my name; I did not send them, nor command them, nor speak to them; they prophesy to you a lying vision, and deceitful divination, and the deceit of their own heart.” Let the teachers hear this who promise prosperity to those who sin and persist in their vices, who say to the rich: “You will not see the sword of God's torments, and there will be no famine among you; for you will be filled with the words of God, and the Lord will give you most true peace in the place of the church, or of Jerusalem.” And as for his saying three times according to the Hebrew, “ah, ah, ah”, he answered the earlier words, where the Lord had threatened, saying, “I will consume them by sword and famine and pestilence.” Because the prophets, or rather the false prophets, promised false things, the Lord therefore spoke through Jeremiah: “Do not listen to the words of the false prophets, who were not sent by me but came of their own will! Hence they are not to be called prophets but diviners, who speak deceit to the people.” For it is much better to amend sins through fear of punishment than to fall under the divine sentence through hope of prosperity.

[35] “Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name, whom I did not send, who say: Sword and famine will not be in this land; by sword and famine those prophets will be consumed. And the peoples to whom they prophesy will be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of famine and sword, and there will be no one to bury them, they and their wives, their sons and their daughters; and I will pour out upon them their evil (or: their evils).” Let the false prophets beware, who trip up the people of God by promising prosperity, lest they too perish and the deceived people be destroyed by a like ruin, and they lie in the streets of Jerusalem and, trampling the Lord's commands, perish by famine and sword, and there be no one to bury them nor cover their disgrace with the dust of repentance. For the prophets themselves and the people, their wives and sons and daughters, and every generation, will be as dung, without anyone to prepare them for burial. How many lie in the streets of Jerusalem! How many we see unburied receiving their evils, which they suffer as the Lord pours them out!

[36] “And you shall say to them this word: Let my eyes run down with tears (or: let your eyes shed tears) night and day, and let them not be silent (or: not cease), for the virgin daughter of my people has been crushed with a great crushing, with a very grievous wound.” This place is understood in two ways: either God himself laments his people and his eyes do not cease to weep, or certainly he commands that the eyes of the peoples flow with tears; nor is what must be lamented a light thing, since the virgin daughter of his people has been struck with the greatest crushing and an intolerable wound. Others think this is said in the person of the prophet.

[37] “If I go out into the fields, behold, those slain by the sword; and if I enter the city, behold, those wasted by famine (or: the pain of famine)! Both prophet and priest have gone into a land which they did not know.” There is just cause for lament, that the virgin is crushed, the daughter struck and the people destroyed. “For if”, he says, “I wish to go outside, I shall see the slain; if I enter the city, I shall see them wasted and scarcely clinging to their bones from the necessity of famine.” And why is it surprising to say this of the common and ignoble crowd, when even the prophets and priests, who prophesied prosperity to others and ought to have opened the commands of the law, themselves went into a land which they did not know and suffered the evil of captivity? Let our prophets and priests hear this: that through their negligence there is no security either inside or outside; that they cause stumbling to those who are outside and let those who are inside perish from famine; and that those who were authors of sinning become companions of torments.

[38] “Have you utterly rejected Judah, or has your soul loathed Zion? Why then have you struck us, so that there is no healing? We looked for peace, and there is no good; and for a time of healing, and behold, trouble!” The prophet marvels that the Lord so suddenly cast off Judah and Jerusalem, the kingdom of the two tribes, in which were the religion of God and the ceremonies of the temple, and struck them with so great a wound that no medicine can be applied. “We looked”, he says, “for peace and a time of healing, and there is no good, but on the contrary trouble, so that where formerly there were the worship of God and tranquillity, there everything is filled with seditions and the roar of the enemy.” If ever, then, our Zion and our Judah are cast off and God's soul loathes them, let us not marvel, but rather say what follows: “We have neglected the commands, and the measure of our elders has been filled up in us, so that whatever was lacking in them has been completed by our heap.” Hence it is also said of Judas: “Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord, and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out! Let them be before the Lord always, and let their memory perish from the earth!”

[40] “Do not give us over to reproach for your name's sake, and do not do us the outrage of the throne of your glory! Remember; do not make void your covenant with us!” Let us think the throne of God's glory to be not only the temple of Judea, which has often been destroyed, but every holy man, in whom, according to what is written, “You have cast his throne to the ground”, it is dashed and destroyed when by the multitude of sins he has offended God; but yet one who perished by his own fault is upheld by the Lord's mercy, which is changed by the severity of the sentence, if the Lord should make void his covenant by which he promised that we would be saved.

[41] “Are there any among the carved images of the nations that give rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are you not the Lord God, whom we have waited for? For you have made all these things.” After many and various discourses he returns to the title of the prophecy, in which it is written: “The word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the words of the drought.” What he says, then, is this: “Because the images of demons cannot rain, nor can the heavens of themselves give their rain, therefore you, O Lord our God, whom we have always waited for, to whom we have turned our hopes and prayers, give your rain! For all things are yours, and whatever good there is cannot be given without you, whose it is.” Let us say this also against the heretics, who cannot give the rain of doctrines, and, though they promise that they are heavens and boast that it is written of them, “The heavens tell the glory of God”, yet they cannot give the showers of doctrine. For God alone instructs his people and gives the diversities of grace to those who wait for him.

[42] “And the Lord said to me: If Moses and Samuel stood before me (or: against me), my soul is not toward this people.” For we read that these withstood the anger of the Lord for the people and turned away the sentence already hanging over them. “Even if”, he says, “they stood either in my sight or against me” (to one of whom God said, “Let me alone, and I will strike this people”), “yet I will not hear, because the crimes of the sinning people are complete.”

[43] “Cast (or: send) them out from my face, and let them go out!” Sinners withdraw from God not in place but in will; although we read that both Adam and Cain were cast out from the face of God.

[44] “And if they say to you: Where shall we go out? you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord: Those for death, to death; and those for the sword, to the sword; and those for famine, to famine; and those for captivity, to captivity! And I will appoint over them four kinds, says the Lord: the sword to slay, and dogs to tear, and the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy.” The prophecy of Ezekiel too shows the four plagues to which the people of the Jews was handed over: sword, pestilence from famine, beasts, captivity. Among the beasts understand also the dogs and birds, to which they were handed over to tear and devour and destroy their bodies. For it could not be that, when the Creator was neglected, the whole creation should not rise up against sinners.

[45] “And I will make them a horror (or: a disturbance and distress) to all the kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for all that he did in Jerusalem.” We read in the book of Chronicles that Manasseh, after captivity and repentance, returned to Jerusalem and reigned; but as the merits of the saints come down to their descendants, as of David and others, so the crimes of sinners come down to their descendants, if their children and grandchildren do the like. And when he says, “I will make them a horror”, or a disturbance and distress “to the whole earth”, this was partly fulfilled under the Babylonians, and is now completely fulfilled, when an impious people has imitated the worst king, who filled Jerusalem from gate to gate with the blood of the righteous. From this we learn that peoples are very often destroyed by the crime of kings and princes and those set over them.

[46] “For who will have pity on you, Jerusalem? Or who will grieve for you? Or who will go to ask for your peace?” For when God is offended, no one can intercede for the outrages of sinners; because no creature can be as merciful as the Creator, nor so estranged from outsiders as the Lord is in sparing his own.

[47] “You have forsaken me, says the Lord; you have gone backward.” The reason is given why no one has pity on Jerusalem, or grieves for her, or prays for her peace: because, when, according to the apostle, she ought to have forgotten what lies behind and stretched out to what lies ahead, on the contrary she turned back and longed for the flesh of Egypt. [48] “And I will stretch out my hand against you and destroy you; I am weary of being asked (or: of asking)”; for which the Septuagint translated: “I will no longer forgive them.” The outstretched hand is the sign of one who strikes; the slaying of sinners signifies wrath brought to completion. And what he added, “I am weary of being asked” or “asking”, has a double sense: that God has now grown faint from often forgiving them, and is weary of always calling them to salvation.

[49] “And I will scatter them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land (or: of my people); I have slain and destroyed my people, and yet they have not turned back from their ways.” “What use is it for me to be often asked, when they do not turn back from their most evil ways nor do penance? For I scattered them as with a winnowing fork, to cleanse my threshing floor, and scattered them in the gates of the land, so that in a way they trod the threshold of hell; and I slew and destroyed my people, so that, compelled by the necessity of evils, they might avoid the evils hanging over them.” [50] “Their widows have been multiplied to me above the sand of the sea; I brought upon them, upon the mother of the young man, a destroyer at noonday; I sent terror suddenly upon the cities.” God wishes to save sinners by various remedies, so that those who despised him when he coaxed may fear him when he threatens. The widows were multiplied above the sand of the sea when the men were slain; mothers, having lost their children, felt the destroyer, not by night and by ambush, but in clear daylight, to show the open force of a stronger enemy. “I sent”, he says, “upon the cities” (no doubt of Judah and of the sinful people) “terror suddenly, so that, the more sudden the evil, the harder the escape.” [51] “She who bore seven (or: many) has languished (or: has been cast down, or: made empty); her soul has fainted; her sun has gone down while it was still day (or: midday); she has been confounded and has blushed. And the rest of them I will give to the sword before their enemies, says the Lord.” We have often said that the Hebrew word “saba” means either “seven” or “oath” or “many”. Hence the interpretation differs, Aquila, the Septuagint and Theodotion translating “seven”, Symmachus “many”. She, then, who was rich in children was suddenly made childless and perished in broad daylight and was confounded in her solitude. “And the rest of the people”, he says, “I will hand over to the sword, so that no one may escape death and the wrath of God.” Others refer it to the synagogue, which languished so that the multitude of the church might grow, according to what is written: “The barren woman has borne seven” (or “many”), “and she who had many children has languished.” Hence the sun of righteousness, in whose wings is healing, went down for her, and therefore she is covered with everlasting confusion, losing her people by the spiritual sword.

[52] “Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me a man of strife (or: of judgment), a man of contention (or: who is judged) to the whole land!” This can be understood hyperbolically of Jeremiah, since he was judged not in the whole world but in the land of Judea. But it truly fits the Lord the Saviour, who says in the gospel, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind”, of whom it is written: “Behold, this one is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against.” For which of the philosophers, which of the pagans, which of the heretics does not judge Christ, laying down laws for his birth and passion and resurrection and substance? Nor is it surprising that Christ, according to the truth of the body he assumed, should say, “Woe is me, my mother”, since in another place too what is said clearly fits his person: “Woe is me, for I have become like one who gathers stubble in the harvest and like a grape-cluster in the vintage, having no ear of grain to eat, the first-fruits!” And lest we think the lowliness of the groaning refers to the Word of God, it follows at once who it is that laments: “Woe is me, O soul, for the reverent man has perished from the earth!”; not that we divide the persons, as the impious do, but that one and the same Son of God speaks now according to the flesh, now according to the Word of God.

[53] “I have not lent at interest, nor has anyone lent to me; all curse me”; for which the Septuagint: “I have not profited, nor has anyone profited me”; Theodotion: “I have not owed, nor has anyone owed me.” Of all these the sense, in the person of Christ, is this: “No one has shown himself to receive my money worthily, nor has anyone lent to me by cherishing saints and the poor, making me his debtor. Or, I have not profited, nor has anyone profited me: for no one was willing to receive as much as I desired to give. Nor has anyone profited me; for the salvation of the creature is the gain of the Creator. Or certainly, I have not owed, nor has anyone owed me: no one has given me as much as I desired to receive, nor made me his debtor in anything.” And what he adds, “nor has anyone owed me”, has this sense: “For how could anyone owe me interest who did not deign to accept the loan?” “All”, he says, “curse me”: for which of the heretics and the erring does not curse Christ, by believing perversely and blaspheming more perversely? [54] “The Lord says: Surely your remnant will be for good; surely I met you in the time of affliction and in the time of trouble (and distress) against the enemy.” These words can also be taken in the person of Jeremiah, who was compelled to prophesy in the worst time, with captivity already at hand, and to suffer hard things from an unbelieving people. To what he had said above, “Woe is me, mother, why did you bear me a man to be judged and set apart in the whole land?”, and the rest, the Lord answers: “Do not consider the present but the future; for your remnant and your last end will be for good. In short, even now, when the enemies wished to crush you, I was with you and you were protected by my help.” This can be referred both to Jeremiah and, according to the dispensation of the flesh he assumed, to the Saviour. For what we interpreted according to the Hebrew, from “all curse me” up to the place where it is written, “in the time of trouble against the enemy”, I found it written thus in the common edition: “My strength has failed among those who curse me. So be it, O Lord, for those who direct, if I did not stand by you in the time of their affliction and in the time of their trouble, for good against the enemy!” And the sense is: “My strength has failed among those who curse me; for they do not understand my power, which is made perfect in weakness; and the more they curse me, the more my strength fails in them.” And either the prophet or the Lord adds: “So be it, O Lord, for those who direct”, that is: “Let the curses which the enemies speak come upon me, and let them be directed to good, if I did not, in the time of their trouble and distress, when the enemy was laying them waste and hastening to capture them, stand in your sight and ask you for them and say: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” And indeed we often find Jeremiah in this volume praying for the people.

[55] “Will iron be allied with iron from the north, and bronze?” Symmachus: “Will iron harm iron from the north, and bronze?” The Septuagint and Theodotion: “Will iron know, and a covering of bronze?” The cause of the difference is plain: for the word “iare”, which is written in this place, by the ambiguity of its pronunciation sounds both “friendship” and “wickedness”, and if for the letter “resh”, which is like the letter “daleth”, “iadeth” is read, it signifies “knowledge and understanding”. What is said is to be understood thus: “Do not grieve that the people is your enemy; for while you announce harsh things, one who is hard cannot love you.” Or: the Babylonians, who come from the north and are the hardest iron, will not be able to be joined in friendship to this people, harder and untamed like bronze. Or: the hardest iron, that is, the people of Israel, is unworthy of the knowledge of God, having come to such wickedness that it is surrounded by a harder metal, bronze.