Homilies on Ezekiel 4.1–4.8

“The word of the Lord” which came to the prophet concerns the sinful land: how for its offenses it is tormented with various punishments, “famine,” “evil beasts,” “the sword,” “death” (and death, moreover, that is sudden, arising either from the fault of corrupted air or from whatever event may occur); and it is said: “But if I also send my four vengeances upon the sinful land, and these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, are in the sinful land, they alone will be saved.” In the first threat, in which he set the punishment of famine apart from the other punishments, he was silent about the names of sons and daughters. But in the word in which he threatened the land with evil beasts, he says: “If their sons and daughters will be saved … but they alone will be saved, and the land …”; and after a short silence he added: “and it will be for destruction.” Again, in the threat of the sword: “They will not deliver,” he says, “sons or daughters.” And of death he spoke likewise: “Their sons or daughters will not be left, but Noah and Daniel and Job themselves will deliver their own souls.” A great task of exposition, then, lies upon us, and for this reason we must attend carefully; and we beg our hearers, coming together as to some great spectacle, to fix the eye of the mind, so that the obscure meaning does not slip away while their senses are relaxed. He did not say in the present passage, “if the inhabitants of a city or of some place sin,” but “if the land sins.” And I know that every simpler person, when he hears “if the land sins,” is at once carried to the easy interpretation, so as to say that “land” is named for those who live on the land; but what follows in Scripture will at once remove this explanation. For when the land has sinned and fallen into its sins, the hand is stretched out not upon the inhabitants of the land but upon the land itself, and by the first chastisement it is crushed, so that “the support of bread is taken from it”: that is, the punishment of the land, if famine prevails in it, is that its crops are denied to the seed. For just as a sinful man without offspring and barren is counted among the cursed, according to what is written in a certain place (for contraries are understood from contraries), and of the righteous it is said, “There will be none without offspring or barren among you,” and sinners are condemned to be without children and posterity in everlasting barrenness, as happened “in the house of Abimelech,” whose wombs God shut because of the sin committed in the matter of Isaac, so the land too is in a way left without offspring and barren when famine is sent upon it. Do you think it true that what the word begins to assert is said not of the inhabitants of the land but of the land itself? I can rise for a moment to higher things and prove by the testimonies of the Scriptures how a sinner is called “earth”: for it is said to Adam, “You are earth, and to earth you shall go.” We can say that even now the sinner who offends is “earth.” But on the other hand, going over the very wide forest of Scripture, I am driven to suspect that this earth which we see is a living being. For if we wish to take what is written, “who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble,” according to what is written, we understand that at God’s look earthquakes are stirred up, though not those the Jews suppose; for they assert that the trembling of the earth is its shaking, which is far from the truth. For we too are anxious and trembling because of our sins on earth, and yet our trembling does not shake the body into trembling; as is also said in another place: “Upon whom shall I look,” says the Lord, “but upon the humble and quiet one who trembles at my words?” From this it is plain that one who serves God meekly and humbly trembles at his words in mind rather than in body. Let these things, said by the way, suffice for the testimony we adduced: “who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble.” Take also other things said of the earth: “The earth is offended by those who dwell on it.” How is the earth offended, and when does it turn away from those who dwell on it? When they are sinners. Take another example too: “The earth will be well pleased in its sabbaths”; for, on the contrary, certain sabbaths of the earth are spoken of, in which it is well pleased and rejoices. I do not yet cite: “Attend, heaven, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth,” nor that: “Hear, heaven, and give ear, earth,” nor the prophecy of Jeremiah: “Earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord: write this man down as disowned.” Many things are hidden from us because of the poverty of our memory and the slowness of our mind. There are many rational beings that God has made, and they are capable of good and evil: not only “principalities and powers and rulers of this darkness,” but also, on the better side, thrones, dominions, and the rest which the Apostle left to our understanding when he said: “and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” The air too is full of living beings, according to the testimony of the same Apostle, who declares: “in which you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience.” So there is the earth, and living beings as a whole, and, part by part, the varieties of living beings; for when the earth is offended, and again is well pleased in its sabbaths, not all of it is offended, nor does all of it exult. For in a way it has been trained together with its inhabitants and has learned to keep sabbaths, whether in shadow or in truth, according to the quality of its nature. Hence, by a more sacred understanding, a sabbath rest is kept by the holy land after seven years, until it pleases God to dwell in it; but if sinners are in it, the land no longer keeps its sabbath by weeks of years but by seventy. We have the word about the seventy years set down in the holy writings, both in Jeremiah and in Daniel; and it will come to pass that on the day of judgment not only man but the whole creation will be judged. For “every creature groans and is in travail.” If every creature groans and is in travail, and earth and heaven are part of the creatures, and all other things under heaven and above the heavens, and “the whole creation will be freed from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God,” who knows whether the earth too, according to its nature, is held liable for some sin? For if it is a living being, if it is rational, if it needs to hear the prophetic word that says, “Attend, heaven, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth,” and “Hear, heaven, and give ear, earth,” why should we not say that, just as among men there is one who hears and does the words he was commanded to do, and another who hates them and does not fulfill what is commanded, so it is with the earth, as with the angel who transgressed? For “the angels who did not keep their own dominion but deserted their proper dwelling he has kept in eternal chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.” Since, then, angels transgress, and there are others who keep God’s commands, and not only men but also the angels of God await the judgment (as we have often said, both from what is written in the Apocalypse and from countless other passages), why, I say, should there not be a judgment of the earth and of the air? But if you do not think you should agree with this discussion, in which we assert that the whole creation is to be judged, hear another testimony too about the earth. God asks Cain who killed his brother Abel, and after many words which we read in Genesis, at last he says of the earth: “Cursed is the earth, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.” Nor do I pass over this: “Cursed is the earth in your works”; and, on the contrary, whenever it is blessed. For we read of the earth both cursed and blessed by the voice of God. You see, then, that it is rightly said: “The whole creation groans.” And to return to the earlier example, “The earth is offended by those who dwell on it,” I think, because the earth bears us like a mother, and rejoices over good sons and grieves over sinners. For “a foolish son is anger to his father and grief to her who bore him”: not only to this father and mother of whose seed we spring, but also to that mother who is truly our mother; for “God took dust from the earth and formed man”; so the earth is our mother. It rejoices when it bears a righteous son. The earth rejoiced bearing Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the earth rejoiced at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, seeing itself worthy to bear the Son of God. What need is there to speak of the apostles and prophets, when it is written of the Lord’s coming, “All the earth cries out with joy”? Even the wretched Jews acknowledge that these things are proclaimed of the presence of the Christ, but foolishly fail to recognize the person, though they see fulfilled what was said. For when, before the coming of Christ, did the land of Britain agree in the worship of the one God? When did the land of the Moors? When did the whole world at once? But now, because of the churches, which hold the boundaries of the world, the whole earth cries out with joy to the Lord of Israel, and is capable of good things according to its boundaries. “And he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the sons of Israel, and his people Jacob became the Lord’s portion, Israel the lot of his inheritance.” It is capable, I say, as a living being according to the qualities of its parts, of both good and bad actions, for which it deserves either praise or punishment. So when it is said, “The land that sins against me by committing an offense,” a certain mystery is signified. For things are said in one way of the inhabitants and in another of what is inhabited: “Heaven and earth will pass away.” Why does heaven pass, why does the earth pass away, unless because they have done certain things that deserve their passing? And in another place: “All the earth,” he says, “was corrupted.” When was it corrupted? Before the flood, not because it was corrupted by the inundation of the flood. So he says: “The land that sins against me by committing an offense, I will stretch out my hand over it and crush its support of bread.” God, stretching out his hand over the sinful land, sends famine upon it. I can also interpret otherwise the land’s sometimes offending. For our soul is land, as is signified in the parable of the Gospel: the soul is rock; the soul is good and fruitful land through much patience. This land, then, often sins and often does not sin. And if it sins, he stretches out his hand over it and crushes every support of its bread. Do not crush, almighty God, the support of bread from this land of ours, but rather grant us your seed, that it may bear fruit in us a hundredfold.

“And I will send famine upon it, and they will remove man and beast from it.” How can I bring such hidden things out into public? How am I to be able to explain why famine, why fertility, why abundance, why want befall lands? “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” Is famine sent because of men and the wickedness of souls? Or do the things we see happen occur because of the angels to whom earthly things have been entrusted, if they have sinned? And if there are certain ministers of the heavenly dispensation who are in charge of the crops, perhaps the barrenness of the land comes about because of them too. For very many of his works are hidden; we cannot tell out the greatness of his wisdom. “The sand of the sea and the drops of rain and the days of the age, who will number them? The height of heaven and the breadth of the earth and the depth of wisdom, who will search them out?” So famine is sent in various ways upon the sinful land.

“And I will remove,” he says, “man and beast from it.” The land is one thing, man another. For he does not here name the inhabitants of the land in place of the land, as some think. For if he wished the inhabitants of the land to be understood by “land,” it would have been superfluous to say, “I will remove man and beast from it.” For the land rejoices when it is full of inhabitants, and it mourns when what is said happens: “I will remove man and beast from it.” Concerning these things we wish to say a few words, if the Lord grants understanding at your prayers (if indeed we have been made capable of the Lord’s understanding). Just as it is a punishment for a mother sentenced to exile to be deprived of her children, or at any rate to see her children sent off to another province, so in a way our mother the earth is scourged by God for her sins when man and beast are taken from her. She rejoices when she has men, and still more when she has excellent men living in the pursuits of God, as we set out above. So it is said, “when the land sins,” as if it were said: if ever a mother sins, I will take her son from her house; so now too: I will take man from it. For the earth rejoices not over beasts and rabid wild animals, but over cattle, because she loves gentle and tame animals.

“And I will remove from it man and beast. And if these three men are in its midst.” How can the number of these three dwell together in a sinful land? How can the lives of men who lived at such different times be joined together? In the present passage we read that they stand together in the sinful land: Noah, who was in the flood; Daniel, who lived in the Babylonian captivity; and Job, who is said to have lived in the times of the patriarchs and of Moses. For that is the time of Job’s life as we find it. What then can we say? We must remember, as we have often said already, that as man begets man, so Israel begets Israel. For Israel, being Jacob, begot the people Israel. And we find in the Scriptures that the name Israel is used both of one man and of the whole people. So not only does Israel beget Israel, but Reuben begets Reuben, Simeon begets Simeon, Levi Levi, and Judah Judah; and all the rest who are in the tribe of Judah, coming from his stock, are called Judah; and the Scriptures are full of the name Judah for the tribe of Judah. What is said in the blessings of Jacob, and through Moses, of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, and the rest does not suit the patriarchs so much as those who bore their name because of the root of the family. “Benjamin, a ravenous wolf, eats in the morning, and at evening will give food.” That Benjamin was never a ravenous wolf; that Benjamin never gave food at evening. But he who was born of the tribe of Benjamin, who proclaimed himself a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, circumcised on the eighth day, was Benjamin, the ravenous wolf eating in the morning, when he was young, and giving food at evening, when, having believed, he provided spiritual food to the churches he had founded. So Benjamin begets Benjamin. As man, then, is born of man, and Benjamin of Benjamin, so Judah is born of Judah and Reuben of Reuben. For “let Reuben live and not die, and let him be many in number.” So far was the word from being about the patriarch; it was about the people that was to descend from the patriarch. Why have these things been said? To explain the present passage about Noah, Daniel, and Job. For as Israel begets Israel, Job Job, Reuben Reuben, and the rest the rest, so Noah begets Noah. And I will say this about the sons of Noah: Shem was Noah, but Ham was not Noah, for he did not have his father’s likeness. And just as not all who are from Abraham are sons of Abraham (though they are of his seed, they are not his sons, since they are sinners), so those who have the likeness of Daniel’s deeds are Daniel, and those who imitate Job’s patience become Job. So do not say: “Blessed is Noah, because he was made worthy to be chosen alone by the Lord in the flood and, while the rest perished in the inundation, to be kept safe with his family”; but consider that if you too do what Noah did, you will be Noah. Hear the Savior saying: “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham.” So if anyone is a son of Abraham, he does the deeds of Abraham; if anyone is a son of Noah, he does the work of Noah; if anyone is a son of Daniel, he does what Daniel did. If anyone follows the path by which Job became glorious, for instance anyone who loses his property and, bearing patiently both the losses of his household goods and the deaths of his children, says, “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it seemed good to the Lord, so it was done; blessed be the name of the Lord for ever”; who is burned by bodily ills and scourged by the varied pain of his sufferings, and nonetheless glorifies the Lord in those very torments; who can answer with divine words and amid torments utter a prophetic voice such as Job uttered: he is an imitator of Job. And in this way Noah, Daniel, and Job can be found at the same time.

That Ezekiel is not speaking here of those we read of in the Scriptures, namely those whom translation or death removed from this present life, we will try to prove from another passage too. Daniel, who was handed over to the chief of the eunuchs with Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, was a eunuch; and in the present passage it is said: “Noah and Daniel and Job will not deliver sons and daughters,” and so on. Suppose Noah had sons: how will Daniel’s sons be shown, since the Jews report that he was a eunuch? But because his soul was fruitful and holy, and he begot many children by prophetic and divine words, therefore it is said: “If in that time there were even these, Noah and Daniel and Job, they alone will be saved.” So we too can become Daniel; and, not to list all the saints, I can be Paul if I am an imitator of him who says, “Be imitators of me.” If I have the brand with which Paul was marked, if I possess the same form with which he was formed in Christ, through which, like a good father, he said, “My little children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you” …; but if I am convicted by the unlikeness of the seal, because Paul had a different form from the one I have in my soul, I deceive myself in saying, “You are my son, the seed of Paul.” Do not wonder that you may become a son of the Apostle. Have the virtues, and you will be a son of Christ. “Little children,” he says, “yet a little while I am with you.” And when you are Christ’s, you will also be the almighty Father’s, because they are one and of one nature. For this the righteous man labors, to this he turns all his effort: that he may be shown to be a son of Daniel, of Job, of Noah, and of Abraham, unto adoption by God, and be called no longer by the names of men but by the names of the sons of God. So if these three men are there, the Holy Spirit has no need to show Noah, Daniel, and Job even now.

“These three men in its midst.” A learned hearer says to me: “Three are named in the present passage, but your argument affirms that there are very many Daniels, Jobs, and Noahs.” We will answer him thus. Every likeness of like things is one, and those who are alike are not many. We are not many bodies; we are all one body, according to what is written: “But you are the body of Christ, and members in part.” And our Savior came to seek and save what was lost, in the mystery of the ninety-nine sheep that did not stray and the one that was lost. For “the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” For just as the one body is many bodies, and the one sheep is the many sheep that were lost, in this way all the Noahs, Daniels, and Jobs are brought back into one Noah, one Job, and one Daniel.

“They will be saved by their righteousness, says Adonai the Lord.” The first name of God is of four letters, which is rendered as the name of God by nature. So famine is sent upon the land because of its sins: the land, that is, in all the senses we have given above, and in whatever others we have left to the understanding of our hearers, so that from our words they might find other meanings for themselves. Let us look also at another work of the divine anger, which sends the worst beasts upon the sinful land. The Jews too say that if ever wolves have attacked houses and devoured men, or other beasts have done so (as history records that lions were once sent upon a savage people, and at another time bears), such devourings come down from God’s indignation. And for the present, withdrawing from the higher understanding so as to follow the letter, we see that the prophet now follows this sense. But he who is spiritual, judging all things and judged by no one, says confidently that there are many beasts which God sends upon the sinful land, if indeed our land has sinned. “Our adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour.” That story too, which offers itself to plain understanding, has for those who study the Scriptures carefully a meaning of this kind: when two bears were sent against the little boys who were insulting the prophet, saying, “Go up, baldhead, go up, baldhead.” For those bears were a sign of other beasts, which are truly wild, truly rabid, which are sent upon this sinful land. Far be it from us that beasts should be sent upon us as God’s vengeance; rather let us say in prayer: “Do not hand over to the beasts the soul that confesses you.” I know of righteous men, persevering in faith, who were handed over to wild beasts and, torn by them, completed their martyrdom, and yet did not cease to be blessed. For they had not been handed over to the spiritual and invisible beasts which tear the souls of sinners and fix their teeth in the hearts of the impious. “As when a shepherd snatches from the mouth of lions two legs of a sheep or the tip of an ear, so will the sons of Israel be snatched.” So the land is sometimes handed over to beasts for its overthrow, so that man and beast may be removed from it.

And observe carefully the differences between the threats. In the first threat, of famine, he says: “Noah, Daniel, and Job alone will be saved.” But in the second, where he declares that he will send beasts, sons and daughters are named: “Nevertheless they alone will be saved, says Adonai the Lord.” This passage is understood in two ways. Let us first expound it according to the common sense, because of the folly of some who assert that the opinion of their own mind is God’s truth, and often say: “It will come to pass that each of us by his prayers will snatch from Gehenna whomever he wishes”; and they bring injustice before the Lord, not seeing that the righteousness of the righteous will be upon him and the iniquity of the wicked upon him, and each one will die in his own sin and live in his own righteousness. A martyr for a father is of no use to me if I do not live well and adorn the nobility of my family, that is, his testimony and the confession by which he was made illustrious in Christ. Nor does it profit the Jews who say: “We were not born of fornication; we have one father, God,” and a little later: “Abraham is our father.” Whatever they say, whatever they wish to claim for themselves, if they do not have Abraham’s faith, they boast in vain. For they will not be saved because they are sons of Abraham. Since, then, some think wrongly, we have necessarily inserted the sense of the letter, which says: “Noah, Daniel, and Job will not deliver sons and daughters, but they alone will be saved.” Let none of us trust in a righteous father, a holy mother, or chaste brothers. “Blessed is the man who has hope in himself” and in the right way. And to those who put their trust in the saints we may fittingly bring forward the example: “Cursed is the man who has hope in man.” And that: “Do not trust in men.” And another: “It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in princes.” If we must hope in someone, let us leave all else and hope in the Lord, saying: “Though an army encamp against me, my heart will not fear.” This being so, another question also arises for us, which we must examine carefully, so that the truth of the Scriptures may shine out. Why, when there are so many righteous men, has he now named only Noah, Daniel, and Job? I once heard a certain Hebrew expounding this passage and saying that these were named because each of them saw three times: glad, then sad, and again glad. Look at Noah before the flood: consider the world intact; and the same Noah afterwards, in the shipwreck of the whole world, kept safe alone with his sons and the animals in the ark; consider how after the flood he went out and planted a vineyard, in a way becoming the creator of a second world. Such is the righteous man: he saw the world before the flood, that is, before the consummation; he saw the world in the flood, in the corruption and destruction of sinners which will come about on the day of judgment; he will again see the world in the resurrection of all. Someone says to me: “I grant that Noah saw three times; what will you answer me about Daniel?” He too, before the captivity, flourished in the nobility of his homeland; then, carried off to Babylon, he was made a eunuch, as can be clearly understood from his own book; and he also saw the return to Jerusalem. To prove that he was in Jerusalem before the captivity and was made a eunuch after it, let us take what was said to Hezekiah: “They will take some of your sons and make them eunuchs in the king’s house.” Then, after seventy years, he is found praying to God that, the time of the captivity now being complete, the people may enter Jerusalem. We have his prayer written in his own book, and yet we cannot find where he died. So he saw three times: before the captivity, in the captivity, and after the captivity. Such is the righteous man. Let us see whether Job too had three times. He was rich: he had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, a very great household, seven sons, and three daughters. Then the devil received power against him. See how the times changed: a father rich in children suddenly becomes childless; a master rich in property is brought down to the last poverty. There are two times. After this the Lord appears to him and speaks to him from the cloud, and Job himself gave the answers written in his book. So in the first time he is proclaimed with God’s praises; in the second he is handed over to temptation and, struck with a most cruel sore from his feet to his head, suffers sad and hard things. At the end he came to have fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, a thousand grazing she-asses, and seven sons and three daughters were born to him. And so in Job too we find the three times that we find in righteous men. The righteous see three times: the present; the time of change, when God will judge; and the future after the resurrection of the dead, that is, the everlastingness of heavenly life in Christ Jesus, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.