Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 3.5.13–3.6.8

Verses 25–27. — “Did you offer me victims and sacrifice in the wilderness for forty years, house of Israel? And you carried the tents of your Moloch, and the image of your idols, the star of your god, which you made for yourselves. And I will make you go into exile beyond Damascus, says the Lord, the God of hosts is his name.” Blessed Stephen also recalled this passage at the time of his glorious passion. For when, surrounded by columns of raging Jews, he was arguing about the mystery of our Redeemer foretold by the holy seers, he said: “God turned and gave them up to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the Prophets: Did you offer me victims or sacrifices for forty years, house of Israel? And you took up the tents of Moloch and the star of your god Rempha, the figures that you made to worship them; and I will remove you beyond Babylon.” Although the passage itself seems to have a plain cause, namely the censure rebuking wicked peoples, yet it so [joins] sentences belonging to different times that it has cast not a little obscurity. Then Jerome took up so wretched an opinion on this passage as to say that during the forty years they are reported to have spent in the wilderness they seem to have served not God but idols; whereas history records nothing of the sort, but only that they cast the head of a calf while Moses delayed, which, however, at his command they at once destroyed. So they did not offer the ceremonies of the law to stars or angels, whose rite and orders our Maker composed with his own mouth, and commanded that everything be offered to him alone. According to the custom of the Scriptures, then, the speech of the one rebuking joined different times but like things, to show that in their present sacrileges they imitated their profane fathers, who, wickedly demanding that gods be made for them, fell in the vast wilderness. “What wonder, then,” he says, “if these too are driven from their own borders beyond Damascus, that is, to perish in Babylon and beyond?” As for his writing “the star of your god,” in the Hebrew the star is said to have a name, that is, of Lucifer, which the Saracens are reported to worship even today. Scripture, however, records nothing of the kind, namely that at the time when the head of the idol was made in the likeness of the Egyptian ox they call Apis, they also decided to serve the stars. But we [gather] that through imitation of Egyptian superstition they are compared to other Gentiles too, as if there were no profanity which they are not judged to have venerated and worshiped by taking up one idol. There is, however, a connection in the meanings if, setting aside what had been inserted, what he says, “Did you offer me victims and sacrifice in the wilderness?”, looks back to what he had said, “Woe to those who desire the day of the Lord”: that is, “Your profanity so misuses my patience and kindness, which defers vengeance for long times, that you argue that that destruction will never come, since it has not yet come, although it has often been promised: as if there were no examples by which you might recognize my [way], that I grant even those destined for destruction a long time for repentance. To pass over the rest, look at least at this: when the people brought out of Egypt had come to Mount Sinai, and, standing amid miracles worthy of my power, had nevertheless returned to the worship of the idols it had left, it deserved to be destined to destruction. Yet I, softened neither by their sacrifices nor by their gifts, granted a time of forty years, and did not promise that my anger would rage suddenly against the guilty. But I consumed little by little the columns already handed over to the sentence; and so neither did the length of the time granted frustrate the judgment announced, nor did the horror of the crime hasten the vengeance once kindled. Why, then, do you doubt that what you see already done will happen? That is, coming calamities are announced to you and not quickly inflicted so that space may be given for amendment, not so that vengeance may vanish, which no time will be able to hinder. But since you shamelessly misuse the goodness of God, the end of those fathers whom you have imitated in sacrileges will follow you: as their corpses fell in the vast wilderness, so you, driven from your ancestral borders, will die in a barbarian region.”

Verse 1. “Woe to you who are wealthy in Zion and trust in the mountain of Samaria: the nobles, heads of the peoples, who enter the house of Israel with pomp.” Scripture often declares that pride was always hateful to God, since it was such a beginning of sin that it changed angels into demons. Hence blessed David anxiously prays that he may not lie under the trampling of the proud: “for there,” he says, “all who work iniquity have fallen.” Here, however, he keeps the order of the prophets in rebuking, so as to show that pride is a kind of fruit of ungodliness; the speech of the apostle too seems to have entered on this course, for when he said that they had served creatures, abandoning the Creator, he then added a list of crimes and outrages, declaring that they swarmed with abominable deeds because they had violated the rights of piety toward God. “Woe, then,” he says, “to you who are wealthy in Zion and trust in the mountain of Samaria”: not that we judge the crimes of the poor more lightly, but a greater reproach of crimes strikes you whom greater wealth stretches out. “For the more conspicuous you are in honor and means, the more it befitted you to have greater zeal for religion; but now you strive to be rich no less in ungodliness than in money. Heavy laments will seize you, then, because according to the divine sentence some mercy can be granted to the lowly, but the mighty will suffer torments mightily. Amid such great miseries of the regions, which [Israel] experiences either from strength lost or from calamities already rushing in, you trust in the defenses and fortification of places, thinking that you will be safe against the wrath of the judge in Zion and Samaria.” “Woe to you who are wealthy in Zion and trust in the mountain of Samaria: the nobles, heads of the peoples, who enter the house of Israel with pomp. For you never showed more than in the time of adversity how much the ambition of luxury had filled you, since, though the nation’s rule has already been for the most part consumed, you still swell with wealth and flow with luxury within besieged cities.”

Verse 2. “Cross over to Calneh and see, and go from there to Hamath the great, and go down to Gath of the Philistines, and to all the best kingdoms of these, whether their border is wider than your border.” He fittingly brought in mention of foreign nations, and on the occasion of another speech showed that the Creator of things had assigned to others too the regions they would inhabit and the kingdoms in which they would flourish: those peoples did not desire more, while these are shown to be both ungrateful and profane, having been so harmful to cities that those whom they had first corrupted by their example they afterward crushed in proud plunder. The form of the divine judgment should be noted: with it, the deserts of the afflicters are not weighed according to the qualities of the afflicted (as if, when those who are crushed are not innocent, the injury of those who crush them seemed excusable too), but they are charged as guilty just as if they had violated saints. For they leap on others not out of hatred of others’ wickedness but by the impulse of their own iniquity, bearing the mind of robbers, not of censors; and to express their iniquity the moderation and a certain uprightness of profane and neighboring nations is set above them. “Cross over,” he says, “to Calneh, to Hamath the great, to Gath of the Philistines, and look carefully whether they received lands wider than yours to inhabit; with their lot they are so content that they seem to seek nothing else.” This reproach, as it accuses them of greed, so it requires explanation. For it seems inconsistent that, after charging them with the crime of wealth and luxury, he should bring forward as proof those who seemed to inhabit smaller lands. For it could be replied that these had more to boast of because they had gathered greater riches from the revenues of the region granted to them, and the comparison brought in would have no force to reproach, since this happened as the very consequence required. What, then, is the sense here that the words leave out? Surely the one that convicts the sacrilegious peoples of fratricidal minds, which another prophet, blessed Hosea, plainly showed when he said: “In the days of desolation he showed faithfulness; the princes of Judah became like those who take the boundary”: that is, when the ten tribes had been carried off by the conquering Assyrian, the people of Judah, estranged from mercy and compunction, rejoiced that an enlargement of its borders had come to it. With this view, then, the prophet shows now too that not only in Judah but also in Israel itself, which first lay under captivity, ungodly princes exulted that, when the common people and inhabitants of the region had been consumed by various disasters, a wider possession came to them as if they were to be freed within the walls of the cities. He charges this crime more, however, to the tribe of Judah, whose name he calls in what follows. Rightly, then, he condemned their victims and gifts too, praising even the moderation of neighboring nations. But let us see the rest.

Verses 3–6. — “You who are set apart for the evil day, and draw near to the throne of iniquity; who sleep on beds of ivory and are wanton on your couches; who eat the lamb from the flock and calves from the midst of the herd; who sing to the sound of the psaltery; like David they thought they had instruments of song; drinking wine from bowls, and anointed with the best ointment; and they suffered nothing over the breaking of Joseph.” Of those whom he had called above the nobles, entering the house with pomp, glorying in their riches and banquets, trampling the heads of the lowly, and rejoicing even at their brothers’ captivity, he consequently ran through the feasts and delights. “Woe,” he says, “to you who are set apart for the evil day,” over whom the time of vengeance hangs, to which you are so dedicated that you seem chosen for it altogether. As for his saying, “and you draw near to the throne of iniquity,” we ought to understand it either so that the conjunctive particle placed before, that is, “and you draw near,” has the force of a causal one, “because”: so that the sense is that those set apart for the evil day, who have drawn near to the throne of iniquity, are to be punished because they exercised unjust judgments against others; or else he calls the throne of iniquity that by which injustice, once examined, will be condemned: as we speak of a court of extortion and of murder, not because extortion or murders are committed there, but because by its examination they are punished. “Living in such atrocity of crimes, you are so far from thinking of any zeal for repentance that you pursue all the instruments and kinds of luxury; and not content to have given whole days to play, you lie on ivory couches and soft spreads, so that bodies warmed in silks may be equal to the work of obscenity; and you season your feasts even with the pleasure of the ears. For when you consume lambs and calves chosen from the flocks and herds, and pour out wine to drunkenness, you make the psaltery and lyre resound; and to these outrages you add insults to antiquity, saying that you have the instruments that served most blessed David. Nor do you wretches consider how great a difference there is between your pursuits and his, and between your merits and his. For David sounded forth in holy song the praises of the Creator, the laws of virtue, and the remedies of disturbance; you, on the contrary, sound the incitements of luxury with injury to the Creator, whose law is despised. He delighted in sober feasts and was strengthened by prophetic anointings; you are soaked in drunkenness and debauchery, and even in common oil, and oil spoiled by art. Finally, he, full of the feeling of mercy, followed with tears and prayers the calamities that would come upon his nation many ages later; but you look with such dry eyes on those same calamities, already inflicted and already raging, that you rejoice, like fratricides, that they have come.” So when he says, “they suffered nothing over the breaking of Joseph,” he referred it to the compassion that he knew usually arises in the hearts of those who love or pity; a hardness that this song too accuses in the person of the just man: “I looked for one to grieve with me, and there was none; and for comforters, and I found none.” When, then, captivity seized Joseph, that is, the ten tribes, Judah felt no feeling of mercy or compassion. Why not, since it thought rather that a time had been offered for increasing its wealth, if it joined its brothers’ fields to its own borders? Let us hear what such a wish and such a purpose receive.

Verse 7. — “Therefore,” he says, “they shall now go into exile at the head of the exiles, and the band of the wanton shall be taken away”: that is, they will at once confess the emptiness of their hopes when the captivity that had been delayed a little seizes them too. For they will be driven from their borders at the head of the exiles, that is, those who had believed they would be safe will be exiled among the first; and so the troops of the luxurious will perish.

Verses 8, 9. — “The Lord God has sworn by his soul, says the Lord God of hosts: I detest the pride of Jacob, and I hate his houses, and I will hand over the city with its inhabitants. And if ten men remain in one house, they too shall die.” To show how gravely he shuddered at their contempt for their brothers’ captivity, he swore in words that bring forth vengeance. As for the prophet’s saying that God swore by his soul, understand it as said in the manner of those he was speaking to: since we value nothing more precious or sweeter than our soul, he too, not as a living being composed of soul and members, but as one who marked his majesty and his life by the name of soul, swore that he detests the houses of Jacob and his pride, and will subject them to such calamities that populous families will be consumed by such constant deaths that no one will remain in them who can bury the dead. By the name of Jacob he indicated Judah and Israel alike, since he had just mixed them together in calamity. When, then, many houses have come to such solitude that they find no one to perform the funeral, neighbors will come and attend to the burning of their relatives; they will not bury them in honored tombs according to custom, but will burn them in a common fire; and those neighbors we have mentioned, entering, will search lest anyone lies hidden in the inner rooms or remains, and will speak to one another:

Verses 10–12. — “And he will say to him: Be silent, and do not mention the name of the Lord. For see, the Lord will command, and will strike the greater house with ruins and the lesser house with cracks.” What does he mean by saying, “Be silent, and do not mention the name of the Lord,” when the greatness of misery could surely bend even obstinate hearts to remember their judge and Creator, and so it would more fittingly be said, “Let us remember the name of the Lord, whose indignation has laid us waste with such manifold calamity”? Let us gather the sense hidden in this passage from what went before. “Woe,” he says, “to those who desire the day of the Lord; why do you want it? The day of the Lord is darkness to you, and not light”: not that they could seek the time of their condemnation, but because, as we have explained, misusing the delay of vengeance, they defamed the prophets themselves for lying, as though they threatened evils that would come in no age. So now he says that when the long-promised captivity has seized the columns of the guilty, and that day, that is, the time, has come which they had boasted in mockery of desiring, such terror of the divine name will fill them that they will say to one another that no one should dare to mention the name of the Lord, whose severity, once offended, has appeared so great that it is thought his anger might be roused even by naming him. “For see, the Lord will command, and will strike the greater house with ruins and the lesser house with cracks.” A little before we said that by the name of Jacob both Judah and Israel, that is, all the tribes together that had been divided among themselves, were indicated. The present verse resolves this, announcing that both the greater and the lesser house will be struck with cracks and ruins; by different words he seems to show one thing, namely the overthrow of houses. For since cracks in the walls usually precede ruin, he marked that both would fall by collapse and cracking; he called the greater house Israel, by the number of tribes, and the lesser Judah, and announces that both, as they were polluted by like iniquity, will perish by like calamity.

Verse 13. — “Can horses run on rocks, or can one plow with wild oxen? For you have turned judgment into bitterness and the fruit of justice into wormwood.” A most pleasing sense, and one covered by the manner of expression. For in allegorical words he reproaches the people with the vices in which it was squalid: here he did not simply mean four-footed beasts, horses or wild oxen, but heightens the pride of the profane nation. For it had already come into bitterness from the sweetness of judgments by crushing the innocent, and claimed so much for itself from its strength that it thought it could be struck by no troubles, since it had gained so much wealth that, like wild oxen that never bend their necks to plows, it enjoyed continual freedom, and, like a horse free of reins, ran not on paths difficult for horses but through fields and meadows. “It is certain, then,” he says, “that the wild ox does not bear the yoke, nor does the horse willingly go over rocks; but you, who rejoiced to have shaken off yokes and broken bridles, and seemed to yourselves in luxury, in strength and freedom, wild oxen, prove by events what you drank in by hopes, namely that you are subject to no rule. Since this falls out quite the contrary, and you go at the will of enemies on the roughest roads and bear heavy labors with broken necks, you must confess that you are neither horses nor wild oxen, and that you have gained no defense or strength either by your riches or by your minds.”

Verses 14, 15. — “You who rejoice in nothing, who say, Have we not taken horns for ourselves by our own strength? For see, I will raise up against you, house of Israel, says the Lord God of hosts, a nation; and they shall crush you from the entrance of Hamath to the torrent of the desert.” He has fully supported the explanation given before, namely that their belief that they were free and strong like wild oxen and horses came not from awareness of their strength but from their own opinion and the vanity of hope. “For you rejoiced,” he says, “in nothing, saying among yourselves, Have we not taken horns for ourselves by our own strength?”, horns which seemed to show the form of wild oxen. “So you claimed so much for yourselves from your own strength that you thought you could safely despise the commandments. A strong army will come upon you, and will lay you waste first, O Israel, by the power of the conquerors: from the entrance of Hamath, that is, from Antioch, to the torrent of the desert, the part that touches the wilderness: that is, it will ravage all your borders with enemy cruelty; and you, O Judah, remaining under a brief delay, it will nonetheless blast and dismay by the neighboring fire.”