Homilies on Jeremiah 18.6–18.10

“At last I will speak against a nation or against a kingdom.” The “at last” will seem to be said simply. But it is said in this sense: in “I will speak against a nation or a kingdom,” the “at last” is of this kind: “I will raze” is said to the first nation as the last word; to the second nation, “I will build you up.” And again “I will uproot” is said to the first, and “I will plant” to the second. Must the end, then, come about because the end has been spoken? God, who does not repent, is said in Scripture to repent. And let us attend to the text, so that, if we can defend how these things are said, we may accept the word. “At last,” he says, “I will speak against a nation or against a kingdom, to remove them and to destroy; and if that nation turns from their evils about which I spoke against it, I too will repent of the evils I planned to do to them. And at last I will speak about a nation or a kingdom, to build it up and to plant it; and if they do evil before me so as not to hear my voice, I too will repent of the good things I spoke of doing to them.” We are required to give a defense concerning God's repentance; for repenting seems blameworthy and unworthy not only of God but even of a wise man. For I do not conceive of a wise man repenting; the one who repents, as far as customary use of the word goes, repents of having planned badly. But God, foreknowing the future, cannot have planned badly and so repent. How, then, did Scripture introduce him saying “I will repent,” not to speak yet of what is said in the books of Kingdoms, “I repent that I anointed Saul king,” and of what is said generally about him, “and repenting of evils”? But see what we are taught about God in general. In one place, “God is not like a man, to waver, nor like a son of man, to be threatened,” and we learn through this text that God is not like a man; but through another, that God is like a man, which says, “For the Lord your God has disciplined you, as a man disciplines his son,” and again, “he bore with your ways, as a man bears with his son.” So when the Scriptures speak of God in himself, and do not intertwine his dispensation with human affairs, they say he is not like a man. For “of his greatness there will be no end,” and “he is to be feared above all gods,” and “Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts; praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you stars and light.” And gathering ten thousand other things from the sacred writings you might find things to which you will apply “God is not like a man.” But when the divine dispensation is intertwined with human affairs, it takes on the human mind and manner and speech. And just as we, if we talk with a two-year-old child, lisp for the child's sake (for it is not possible, if we keep the dignity of a grown man's age and speak to children without coming down to their language, for the children to understand), understand something of this kind about God too, when he dispenses the affairs of the human race, and especially of those who are still infants. See how we grown men even change words for babies, and name bread for them in a special way, and name drinking with another word, not using the language of grown men which we use with grown men of our own age, but some other childish and babyish word. And if we name clothes for children, we give them other names, as it were inventing a child's name. Are we then imperfect? And if anyone hears us talking with children, will he say, “This old man has become foolish; this man has forgotten his beard, his manhood”? Or is it granted, by way of accommodation, that one who talks with a child should speak not in an old man's or a grown man's language, but in a child's? And God speaks to children: “Behold,” says the Savior too, “I and the children God has given me.” It might be said to the old man who speaks to the child childishly, or, to put it more expressively, babyishly, “You have borne with your son's ways; you have taken on the ways of the baby and put on his condition.” So understand for me the Scripture too that says: “The Lord your God bore with your ways, as a man bears with the ways of his son.” And it seems that those who translated from the Hebrew, not finding the word current among the Greeks, coined this one too, as in many other cases, and made “The Lord your God tropophorēsen you (that is, bore your ways), as a man bears with (according to this example I have given) his son.” Since, then, we repent, when God speaks with us who repent he says “I repent”; and when he threatens us, he does not pretend to be foreknowing, but threatens as one speaking to babies. He does not pretend that he has foreknown “all things before they come to be,” but, if I may so put it, playing the part of the baby, he pretends not even to know the future. And so he threatens a nation for its sins and says: “If the nation repents, I too will repent.” O God, when you threatened, did you not know whether the nation would repent or not? What then? When you promised, did you not know whether the man, or the nation to whom the word was spoken, would remain worthy of the promises or not? But he does not make a show of it. And you might find many such human expressions in Scripture, such as “Speak to the sons of Israel; perhaps they will hear and repent.” God did not say “perhaps they will hear” as though in doubt; for God does not doubt, so as to say, “perhaps they will hear and repent”; but to show your free will fully and so that you may not say, “If he foreknew that I would perish, I must perish; if he foreknew that I would be saved, I must certainly be saved.” So he does not make a show of knowing what depends on you, so as to preserve your free will by not having anticipated or foreknown whether you will repent or not. And he says to the prophet: “Speak; perhaps they will repent.” You will find ten thousand other such things said of God bearing with the ways of man. If you hear of God's wrath and anger, do not think that wrath and anger are passions of God. They are accommodations in the use of words, to turn and improve the baby; since we too put on a frightening face for children, not from our disposition but by way of accommodation. If we keep a gracious expression toward the baby on our face and show the tender affection we have for it, not altering ourselves or, as it were, changing for its correction, we ruin it and make it worse. So God is said to be angry and says he is wrathful, so that you may turn and be improved. And truly he is neither angry nor wrathful; but you will suffer the effects of wrath and anger, coming into pains hard to bear because of wickedness, when he disciplines you with what is called God's wrath.

Next, after the word about the two nations, the first to which the threat is given, and the second to which the promise is given, he says (clearly to the first): “And now say to the men of Judah and to those who dwell in Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am forming evils against you.” Because these evils I am forming against you are in my hand, they can fall. Make them fall from my hand, so that I may change the evils I am forming against you and make them good. You would not find, “Behold, I am forming good things for you,” and what corresponds to it said next, so that he might then show that he lets fall from his hands the good things he forms so as to make them evil. But he forms evils, according to the example given, and in forming evils he arranges (apart from the interpretation given of “it fell from my hands”) that, if it falls, the end of the evils being formed may turn out, I know not how, different.

“Let each turn now from his evil way, and make your practices better.” Sometimes the simpler folk say: “Blessed were the people of old, because they heard the Lord speaking through the prophet: ‘And the Lord spoke to them.’” The Lord speaks to us too now through what is written: “Let each turn from his evil way”; the Lord himself converses with you, saying: “And make your practices better.” But those to whom the words exhorting to repentance were spoken answered; and let us see what they answered, so that we may not answer the same. What, then, do they say in answer? “We will be bold, for we will go after our turnings away, and we will each do what pleases his evil heart.” Even if you do not say it in words, but your life is such as to sin, you too in effect say by your evil deeds, after the words of exhortation: “We will be bold, for we will go after our turnings away, and we will each do what pleases his evil heart.” What is “we will go after our turnings away”? Those who have begun to put their “hand to the plough” and [to strain forward to what lies ahead] have turned away from evil things. So when someone who has put his “hand to the plough” turns back, he will go “after his turnings away”; for he will go after the things he turned away from, and runs back to the sins he left. So of those who hear these things, whether catechumens who have left the pagan life, or believers who have already made progress in “straining forward to what lies ahead,” if their life has become wicked, they say nothing else than “we will go after our turnings away, and we will each do what pleases his heart,” not simply, but “his evil heart.” For there is an evil heart and there is a good heart. So let no one go “after his turnings away,” nor do “what pleases his evil heart.” “Therefore” to those who answer thus “the Lord says: Ask now among the nations: who has heard such horrible things as the virgin of Israel has done exceedingly?” This too will seem to be said simply. But if the church from the nations [is meant] … it will be said: “Ask now among the nations: hear the horrible things the virgin of Israel has done exceedingly.” For let us compare the life of those who sinned with the life of those who turned and believed, and we shall know that those did horrible things in killing “the Lord of glory,” while these, when those had done horrible things, turned to him who was put to death by them and died for the sins of the world. “Ask,” then, “among the nations: who has heard such horrible things as the virgin of Israel has done exceedingly?”

“Will the breasts fail from the rock, or the snow from Lebanon? Or will the water turn aside, violently driven by the wind? For my people have forgotten me; they have burned incense to vanity, and they will grow weak in their ways, on the everlasting paths, to walk on tracks that have no way to travel, to make their land a desolation and an everlasting hissing.” He has spoken here of differences of waters: first in “Will the breasts fail from the rock?”; second in “or the snow from Lebanon?”; third in “Will the water turn aside, violently driven by the wind?” These three kinds of waters are the springs of waters which the soul of the righteous, likened to the deer, longs for, so that each could say: “As the deer longs for the springs of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.” Who, then, has become a deer, an enemy to the race of serpents, suffering nothing from their venom, as is told of the deer? Who has so thirsted for God as to say, “My soul has thirsted for the living God”? Who has so thirsted for the breasts of the rock? “And the rock was Christ.” Who has so thirsted for the Holy Spirit as to say, “As the deer longs for the springs of water, so my soul longs for you, O God”? Unless we thirst for the three springs of water, we shall not find even one spring of water. The Jews seemed to thirst for one spring of water, God; but since they did not thirst for Christ and the Holy Spirit, they cannot drink even from God. Those from the heresies seemed to thirst for Christ Jesus; but since they did not thirst for the Father, who is the God of the law and the prophets, for this reason they do not drink even from Jesus Christ. And those who keep one God but despise the prophecies did not thirst for the Holy Spirit who is in the prophets; for this reason they will not drink either from the Father's spring, or from him who cried out in the temple and said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” So “the breasts do not fail from the rock.” But those “forsook the fountain of the water of life”; the fountain of the water of life did not forsake them. For God does not distance himself from anyone, but “those who distance themselves from him will perish”; rather God draws near to some and meets the one who comes to him. When the son who had devoured his property returned, at any rate, the father met him. And he promises through the prophets, saying: “I will draw near to them, closer than the tunic of their skin.” For “I am a God who draws near,” he says, “and not a God far off, says the Lord.” So “the breasts will not fail from the rock,” the waters of Jesus, “or the snow from Lebanon,” the Father's waters. For frankincense (libanos) is the sacred incense according to the law of God, and there is offered on the altar “clear frankincense, equal with equal.” And the mountain has the same name as this frankincense, and there is snow coming down from Lebanon, just as the water of the Holy Spirit, about which it is said, “Will the water turn aside, violently driven by the wind?” For it is carried by the wind. The water of the Holy Spirit does not “turn aside,” does not flee; but each of us, when he sins, himself becomes a fugitive from drinking of the Holy Spirit.

“For my people have forgotten me; they have burned incense to vanity.” Everyone who sins has forgotten God; but the righteous man says: “All these things have come upon us, and we have not forgotten you, nor done wrong.” And we must consider what “they have burned incense to vanity” is. If we take up what was said recently on the hundred and fortieth Psalm, we shall understand what “they have burned incense to vanity” is. Something of this kind was said in the Psalm: “Let my prayer be set forth as incense before you.” So my prayer, compounded … of a subtle heart, when our heart is not grown fat, when it is sent up, becomes like incense before God. If, then, the prayer of the righteous man is incense before God, the prayer of the unrighteous is incense, but such incense that it could be said of it and of the unrighteous man who prays: “They have burned incense to vanity”; as it is written of Judas: “Let his prayer become sin.” He, in praying, burned incense to vanity. And who is the one who burns incense to vanity? Let us consider it still more in this way. “Three times a year,” he says, “all your males shall appear before the Lord your God,” to which is immediately added: “You shall not appear before me empty.” So of those who come to appear …