Commentary on Jeremiah 4.6–4.27

[6] "That their land might become a desolation and an everlasting hissing; everyone who passes by it will be astonished and shake his head." "And because they abandoned," he says, "the worship of God and followed the crooked paths of idolatry, therefore their land has been reduced to a wilderness and to a wonder and hissing for all, so that those who once saw a most flourishing land and city collapsed into desert and ashes marvel and are astonished and show the confusion of their soul by a gesture of the body"; for this is to shake the head and to show the mind's astonishment by a hiss. We understand this to have been fulfilled more fully and more rightly after the Lord's coming, when no Jew is permitted by law to enter the land and the once holy city, but when they come to lament, they marvel and weep at the oracles of the prophets fulfilled in fact. [7] "Like a burning wind I will scatter them before the enemy (or: enemies); I will show them my back and not my face in the day of their destruction." To this day the sentence of God remains on the Jews: they are scattered over the whole world before the enemy, the devil, or the hostile demons; and while day and night they invoke the name of God in the synagogues of Satan, God shows them his back and not his face, so that they may understand that he is always departing and never coming to them. The day of the Jews' destruction is the whole time after the Savior's passion until the end of the age, so that, after the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then all Israel may be saved.

[8] "And they said: Come, let us devise plans against Jeremiah! For the law will not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, let us strike him with the tongue, and let us not heed all his words." This was the plan of the Jews then against Jeremiah, or the Lord and Savior, and it is today the plan of heretics against his servants: to build up slanders and forestall holy men by accusation, not considering what truth they speak, but what lies they themselves construct. For they boast that the law of God, counsel, and speech remain among their priests and wise men and false prophets, although Scripture says: "Wisdom will not enter a perverse soul." [9] "Attend to me, Lord, and hear the voice of my adversaries! Is evil repaid for good, that they have dug a pit for my soul? Remember that I stood in your sight to speak good for them and to turn your indignation away from them. Therefore give their sons to famine and lead them into the hands of the sword; let their wives be childless and widows, and let their husbands be slain by death; let their young men be stabbed with the sword in battle; let a cry be heard from their houses." Jeremiah suffers all these things from the Jewish people as a type of the Savior, and they are afterwards laid waste when the Babylonian comes; but they are fulfilled more fully and perfectly in Christ. And when the city was overthrown they were slaughtered by the Roman sword, not for idolatry, which did not exist at that time, but for the killing of the Son of God, when the whole people cried out together: "Away, away with such a one! We have no king but Caesar!" And their imprecation was fulfilled in eternal damnation: "His blood be on us and on our children!" For they had dug a pit for Christ and had said: "Let us take him away from the land of the living!" He had such mercy toward them and stood in the Father's sight to speak good for them and turn his indignation away from them, so that even on the cross he said: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." We pass over what is plain, to linger on what is more obscure, in no way following the ravings of certain people who interpret this as the captivity of the heavenly Jerusalem, but pursuing the clear history and the most manifest prophecy with all confidence in the words and their sense.

[10] "For you will bring a robber upon them suddenly, because they have dug a pit to catch me and hidden snares for my feet. But you, Lord, know all their counsel against me for death; do not pardon their iniquity, and let their sin not be blotted out from your sight; let them be falling (or: stumbling) in your sight; in the time of your fury deal with them (or: act against them)." If we understand this of Jeremiah, let us refer the sudden robber to Nebuchadnezzar; if of the Savior, which is truer and better, to the Roman army. And so that God's sentence may not seem unjust, he sets out what they did against Christ, the Son of God, and what they suffered. As for what he adds, "do not pardon their iniquity, and let their sin not be blotted out from your sight," this is in no way contrary to the earlier sentence in which he intercedes with the Father for the people; but after the time given for repentance had passed and they persevered in their crime, they are punished not so much for their own sake as for others', lest an unpunished sin harm the rest by its example. And what he adds, "let them be stumbling (or: falling) in your sight," is like the words of Isaiah and the apostle Peter: "and you will not stumble as on a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense"; which the prophet also mentions in the Psalms: "The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was done by the Lord."

[11] "Thus says the Lord: Go and take a potter's earthen flask, and some of the elders of the people and of the elders of the priests, and go out to the valley of the son of Ennom, which is by the entrance of the earthenware gate (or: Charsith), and proclaim (or: cry out, or read) there the words that I shall speak to you. And you shall say: Hear the word of the Lord, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem!" For "a potter's flask," which in Hebrew is called bocboc, the Seventy translated "a little jar"; and for "the earthenware gate" Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion put the Hebrew word itself, Harsith, for which the Seventy, by their custom, added the Greek chi for the aspiration of the letter heth, so as to say Charsith for Harsith, just as Chebron for Hebron and Hiericho for Jericho. Divine Scripture wants the people to be taught not only by the ears but also by the eyes; for, as we have already said, what reaches the mind by sight is retained more than what reaches it by hearing. "Take," he says, "a flask (or: an earthen little jar) and some of the elders of the people and of the priests, and go out to the valley of the son of Ennom," of which we spoke above, where there was the shrine of Baal and the grove and wood watered by the springs of Siloam. "That valley," he says, "is beside the gate" which in the Hebrew tongue is called Harsith, that is, "earthenware." "And you shall proclaim (or: read) there the words that I shall speak with you, so that what I am about to say may be heard there." And, as we have already said, "proclaim," "cry out," and "read" are all given because the Hebrew word carath means all three. And he wants the kings of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that is, both the royal line and the whole people, to hear what he is about to say, so that those who refuse to hear may be without excuse.

[12] "Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring affliction (or: evils) upon this place, so that the ears of everyone who hears it (or: them) will ring, because they have forsaken me and made this place strange and have sacrificed in it to strange gods, whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah knew; and they filled this place with the blood of the innocent, and built the high places of Baal to burn their sons with fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command (or: think) nor speak, nor did they come into my heart." Some foolishly refer this place too to the heavenly Jerusalem; so that I need not always warn about it, let it suffice to have said this once: such an explanation, or rather heresy, which overturns what is plain and tries to bring certain conjuring tricks into the churches of Christ, must be avoided. No one doubts that they set up the idol of Baal in the temple of God or in the shrine that was in the valley of the son of Ennom, where there was also the grove of Baal and his altar, on which they sacrificed and burned their sons. The Lord neither thought nor spoke these things, nor did they come into his heart: not that God did not know the future, but that he says he does not know things unworthy of his knowledge, as in the Gospel saying: "Depart from me, workers of iniquity, I do not know you!" For the Lord knows those who are his, and he who does not know will not be known. Or certainly these things too must be taken of God anthropopathōs (in human fashion), like others. Every heretic forsakes God and makes strange the place of God's dwelling, which he has polluted by his fraud, and sacrifices to strange gods whom neither he nor his fathers knew, that is, the apostles and apostolic men; and the kings of Judah, that is, the patriarchs of the heretics, fill the once holy place of God with the blood of the deceived and innocent (for unless a man is foolish and simple, he is not quickly overturned), and build the high places of Baal when they say that they discourse on lofty things, and burn to the idol their sons whom they have begotten in heresy. All these things the Lord says he does not know and that they never came into his thought.

[13] "Therefore, behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and this place will no longer be called Topheth and the valley of the son of Ennom, but the valley of slaughter." The Septuagint: "Therefore, behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and this place will no longer be called Fall and Polyandrion of the son of Ennom, but Polyandrion of slaughter." What the valley of the son of Ennom is, which in Hebrew is called gehennom, from which they think gehenna is named, we have said above. I wonder, however, what the Seventy meant by putting diaptōsis, that is, "fall," for Topheth, and polyandrion, which means "a multitude of men," for "valley"; unless perhaps because the people fell there and a multitude of men was slain, either spiritually in the error of idolatry or, according to the letter, by the Babylonian army, which is read more clearly in what follows.

[14] "And I will scatter the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and overthrow them by the sword before their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their lives, and I will give their corpses as food to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth. And I will make this city a stupor and a hissing; everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss over all its plague. And I will feed them with the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and each one will eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their lives will hem them in." Although we know that these things happened to the people in the Babylonian captivity too, they are referred more fully to the times of the Savior, when they were besieged by Vespasian and Titus and their city collapsed into eternal ashes in the times of Hadrian; so that those who had offered their sons to idols were afterwards themselves driven by the necessity of famine to turn them into food, and the flesh of all was given to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth; so that those who had abused God's gifts for impiety and sacrificed their own flesh to idols made their bellies the tombs of their children.

[15] "And you shall break the flask in the eyes of the men who go (or: will go out) with you, and you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as a potter's vessel is broken, which can no longer be restored." This is plainly said not of the Babylonian but of the Roman captivity. For after the Babylonians the city was rebuilt, the people brought back into Judea and restored to its former abundance; but after the captivity that happened under Vespasian and Titus, and afterwards under Hadrian, the ruins of Jerusalem will remain until the end of the age, although the Jews think that a golden and jeweled Jerusalem is to be restored to them, and again victims and sacrifices, and marriages of the saints, and a reign of the Lord and Savior on earth. Although we do not follow these things, we cannot condemn them, because many churchmen and martyrs have said them, so that each may be fully convinced in his own mind and all things may be reserved for the Lord's judgment. Just as an earthen clay vessel, once broken, cannot be re-formed into its old shape, so the people of the Jews and overthrown Jerusalem will not have their former state. Indeed, the very name of the city today is void: it is called Aelia after Aelius Hadrian, and with its former inhabitants it has also lost its former name, to shake down the pride of its inhabitants. The names of the holy Cross and the Resurrection signify not a city but a place; not the great wealth of former times, through which the Jewish people perished, but the glory of holiness, which our poor little Bethlehem possesses, having not gold and jewels but the bread that was born in it. [16] "And they will bury (or: they shall bury) in Topheth, because there is no other place for burial. So will I do to this place, says the Lord, and to its inhabitants, to make this city like Topheth (or: like a fall). And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be like the place Topheth (or: of the fall)." What is added in the Seventy, "and the houses of the kings of Judah will be like the place Topheth," is not found in the Hebrew. And there follows:

[17] "All the houses are unclean on whose roofs (or: housetops) they sacrificed to all the host of heaven and poured out drink offerings to strange gods." What he had said above, "this place will no longer be called Topheth and the valley of the son of Ennom, but the valley of slaughter," he now sets out more clearly: that there will be such slaughter in that place that the people will be buried there in heaps, and the place once of religion will become a mound of the dead; and the city itself, which overlooks this place, will become like Topheth (for which the Seventy translated "fall"), and the houses of Jerusalem and the palaces of the kings will likewise be turned into ruins. And the reason is given: because they were unclean and polluted by the crime of idolatry, in that on their housetops and roofs they sacrificed and burned incense to the sun and moon and the stars of heaven; and not content with this error, they sacrificed to demons and poured libations to strange gods.

[18] "And Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the house of the Lord and said to all the people: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all its towns all the evils that I have spoken against it, because they have hardened their neck so as not to hear my words." After Jeremiah, in Topheth, in the presence of the elders of the people whom he had brought with him, had broken the flask or jar and prophesied the Lord's words about the crushing of the people and the city of Jerusalem, he returns and stands in the court of the house of the Lord and speaks to the whole multitude, which had not wanted to go to the place Topheth, that the Lord will bring on the city of Jerusalem and on all its towns the evils he has spoken against it. And so that we may not think the sentence cruel, he gives the reasons why he will bring the evils: "because," he says, "they have hardened their neck so as not to hear my words, unwilling to repent even after many impieties."

[19] "And Phassur the son of Emmer, the priest, who was appointed chief in the house of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these words. And Phassur struck Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks that were in the upper gate of Benjamin in the house of the Lord." For Phassur the Seventy translated Phaschor, which is interpreted "blackness of mouth"; and for the "stocks" (nervus), as we said, the Seventy and Theodotion rendered "cataract," Symmachus basanistērion or streblōtērion, both of which mean "instruments of torture"; we have said "stocks" in the common way, a kind of torture we also read of in the Acts of the Apostles when the apostles Paul and Silas were put into the custody of prison. He was the high priest of the temple, and he abuses the dignity of priesthood given him perversely, not to teach and rebuke by word, but to terrify with tortures. So too the Savior and the apostle Paul are beaten at the high priest's order. Nor is it surprising if even today the servants of God are struck by Phaschor, sent to prison, and kept under dreadful guard; for this power is given by God so that the faith of the prophets may be shown. Yet the one who strikes is not greater, but the one who is struck is stronger. And the prophet patiently accepts God's judgment and does not protest at the blows, but considers him who commands. Emmer means "word," from which "blackness" is often born, not by the parent's fault but by the crime of the degenerate. The torture by which the prophet is tormented is seen to be on the "right hand," which is what Benjamin means, and in the "lofty" gate, which indicates not truth but the unjust power of the high priest.

[20] "And when it was light the next day, Phassur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks, and Jeremiah said to him: The Lord has not called your name Phassur, but Terror on every side." Here too all have interpreted both the high priest's name and the kind of torture as above. The high priest's name is changed so that the punishment to come may be shown by the name. "You will by no means," he says, "have blackness of mouth and the rule of unjust power, but you will be led captive to Babylon" (for this is what "terror on every side," or "round about," signifies), "so that, trembling and uncertain of your own safety, you may look about here and there and dread the adversaries coming against you." For "terror," which in Hebrew is written magur, the Seventy and Theodotion translated metoikon, that is, "migrant"; Aquila's second edition "stranger," his first "looking around"; Symmachus "carried off" or "gathered" and "compelled."

[21] "For thus says the Lord: Behold, I will make you a terror, you and all your friends, and they will fall by the sword of their enemies, and your eyes will see it; and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will carry them to Babylon and strike them with the sword. And I will give all the wealth (or: strength) of this city and all its labor and every precious thing (or: glory), and all the treasures of the kings of Judah I will give into the hand of their enemies, and they will plunder them and take them and carry them to Babylon. But you, Phassur, and all the inhabitants of your house will go into captivity, and you will come to Babylon, and there you will die and there you will be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have prophesied a lie." According to the earlier interpretation, in which the name Phassur had been changed so that he should be called Magur, all have translated similarly, to mean "terror" or "sojourning" or "removal," "transfer," and "migration." And he threatens that he, with his friends, is about to be captured and handed over to the hands of enemies, that the whole people of the tribe of Judah is to be held by the hands of the king of Babylon, some to be killed by the sword and others led into captivity, and that all the riches both of the city and of the royal treasuries are to be taken by the enemies, and that Phassur himself with all his kin and household is to be led into captivity and die in Babylon, because he deceived the people with his lie, promising them by falsehood not true and sad things but prosperous ones. At the same time we must note the prophet's patience and prudence: sent to prison, he is silent and conquers the injury by silence; yet he does not hide what he knows is coming, so that at least in this way the pseudo-prophet high priest may stop sinning and pray for God's mercy.

[22] "You have deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived (or: you misled me, Lord, and I was misled); you were stronger than I and prevailed (or: you overpowered me and were able). I have become a laughingstock all day; all mock me. For long ago I have been speaking, crying out iniquity, and I keep shouting devastation"; or: "For with my bitter word I will laugh; I will call upon transgression and misery." The prophet says he was deceived by the Lord because at the beginning, hearing "I have given you as a prophet to the nations," and again, "Behold, I have set you today over nations and over kingdoms, to root up and pull down and destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant," he supposed that he would say nothing against the Jewish people but against the various nations round about, and so took up the prophecy gladly; and the opposite happened, so that by proclaiming the captivity of Jerusalem he endured persecutions and distress. And what he added, "I have become a laughingstock all day, all mock me," is because they thought he had lied about everything and that all he had foretold as coming were lies. For the prophet had thought that what the Lord threatened would come at once, and the people thought that what had not come at once would never come. "And I cry out the Babylonian devastation and the iniquity of the enemies by which my people is to be crushed." But if we follow the Seventy in what they said, "for with my bitter word I will laugh; I will call upon transgression and misery," this is the sense: "I know that present sadness is to be exchanged for future joy, according to what is written: Blessed are those who weep, for they shall laugh; and therefore I gladly bear misery, iniquity, and affliction, so that I even desire and call upon them, and compensate the shortness of the injury with the eternity of happiness."

[23] "For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and a derision all day. And I said: I will not remember him (or: I will not name the Lord), nor speak any more in his name. And there was in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I fainted (or: I was dissolved), unable to bear it. For I heard the insults (or: the abuse) of many, and terror round about (or: of those gathered from every side): Persecute, and let us persecute him!" "When I cried out and said that the Babylonian army was already coming and the enemy's sword would plunder everything, the word of the Lord was turned for me into reproach and derision, since they think the delay of the prophecy is a lie. Therefore I resolved in my mind that I would no longer speak to the people in God's words or name his name. When, overcome by shame, I had decided this modestly indeed but foolishly, there was," he says, "in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, (and I fainted,) or I was dissolved on every side, so that I cannot bear it." For the divine word, conceived in the mind and not brought out by the mouth, burns in the breast. Hence Paul too says: "If I preach the gospel, I have no glory, for necessity is laid upon me; for woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. For if I do this willingly, I have a reward; but if unwillingly, a stewardship has been entrusted to me." And at Athens, seeing the city given over to idolatry, he was stirred in spirit and burned with his whole mind; and a little later in the same book we read: "When Silas and Timothy had come from Macedonia, Paul was pressing on with the word, testifying to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ." And many teachers in the church to this day suffer similar things, hearing the abuse of many gathered round about against them and saying: "Persecute, and let us persecute them!"

[24] "All the men who were at peace with me and guarded my side: if somehow he may be deceived, and we may prevail against him and take our revenge on him! But the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior." When adversaries have risen up, and those who were once friends and at peace have turned to war and wish to lay traps for us, let us not care much, but let us choose to say what the prophet also says: "But the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior."

[25] "Therefore those who persecute me will fall and be weak (or: therefore they persecuted and could not understand); they will be greatly confounded, because they have not understood the reproach (or: the disgrace) everlasting, which will never be blotted out." Because they persecuted, they could not understand the prophetic word, and vehement confusion followed their ignorance; nor did they understand the everlasting disgrace that will take hold of them and will be blotted out by no forgetting. Let them say what they like, then, the men once at peace with me and who guarded my side, and let them wish to deceive, provided that after the persecution of a righteous man and teacher of the church they obtain such vengeance and such rewards.

[26] "And you, Lord of hosts, tester of the righteous (or: who test righteous things), who see the reins and the heart, let me see, I pray, your vengeance on them! For to you I have revealed my cause." The Lord alone knows how to test righteousness, just as he alone sees the inner places of the heart; hence Jesus too, knowing the thoughts of men, is God not by progress, as some think, but by nature. Something similar sounds in the Psalms: "No living person will be justified in your sight." If one living by virtues is not justified, how much more one who is dead in sins! And though the righteous man knows that he has God as his champion, yet with the impatience of human frailty he wishes to see already what he knows is to come. And he revealed his cause to him who says in another place: "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." Happy the conscience whose cause is revealed to the Lord, as the apostle says: "Everything that is made manifest is light."

[27] "Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord, because he has delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of the wicked!" He who is poor in spirit and does not have riches, which have received their consolation in this age, and of which Paul speaks, "only that we should remember the poor," when he has obtained vengeance from the Lord, praises the Lord in the spirit and glories that he has been rescued from the hand of the wicked. But all this happens not by our merit but by the grace of him who delivered the poor man, who has not the riches of converted pride but the humility of a poor man set free.