Ezekiel 21

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, set your face toward Jerusalem, and distil toward the sanctuaries, and prophesy against the ground of Israel. And you shall say to the land of Israel: Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, and I will cast out my sword from its sheath, and I will kill in you the righteous and the wicked. But because I have killed in you the righteous and the wicked, my sword shall go forth from its sheath against all flesh, from the south to the north, and all flesh shall know that I the Lord have drawn my sword from its sheath, irrevocable. (LXX: "And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Therefore prophesy, son of man, and set firm your face against Jerusalem, and look toward their holy places, and prophesy over the land of Israel. And you shall say to the land of Israel: Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, and I will draw out my sword from its sheath, and I will slay out of you the lawless and the unrighteous. Because I will destroy out of you the lawless and the unrighteous, so shall my sword go forth from its sheath upon all flesh, from the south as far as the north, and all flesh shall know that I the Lord have drawn my sword from its sheath; it shall not return any more.") Because he had said above: They say of me: Does not this man speak in parables?, and the people were demanding a plain statement, therefore the Lord now says more plainly what he had spoken through a metaphor, or 'parable', and, as others rendered it, 'proverb': that the forests of Nageb and Darom and Theman [Hebrew words for the south] are Jerusalem and its temple and the Holy of Holies and the whole land of Judea, and that the flame which was to burn up the forest is to be understood as the devouring sword, which has been drawn from its sheath to kill the righteous and the wicked — for this is the green wood and the dry; whence the Lord also says: If they do such things, he says, in the green wood, what will they do in the dry? —; in place of which the Seventy, intending I know not what, translated 'the lawless and the unrighteous', as though both did not signify the same thing.

And what he had said there: And all flesh shall see that I the Lord have kindled it, that is, the forest or the flame, and it shall not be quenched, here he says in other words: That all flesh may know that I the Lord have drawn my sword from its sheath, irrevocable. For truly, for Jerusalem the flame has not been lulled to sleep, nor the fire quenched, nor the sword recalled, because there was a short time in between, and Jerusalem, with its temple, was set ablaze by Babylonian fire.

And you, son of man, groan in the breaking of the loins, and in bitternesses groan before them. And when they say to you: Why do you groan?, you shall say: For the report, because it comes, and every heart shall melt, and all hands shall be loosened, and every spirit shall grow weak, and waters shall flow down all knees; behold, it comes, and it shall be done, says the Lord. (LXX: "And you, son of man, groan in the breaking of your loins, and in griefs groan in their sight. And it shall be, if they say to you: Why do you groan?, then you shall say: Because of the tidings, because it comes, and every heart shall be seized, and all hands shall be loosened, and all flesh and every spirit shall be tested, and all thighs shall be defiled with moisture; behold, it comes, and it shall be, says the Lord God.") First he had said: 'Prophesy, or distil, toward the south, the southwest and the noonday, and toward the southern forest'. Because this seemed obscure, and the people did not understand the prophet's words, in the second place it is set down more plainly that the southern forest is Jerusalem, and that all the unfruitful trees, at whose roots the axe has been laid, are to be understood as its inhabitants, and that the sword is to be interpreted in place of the fire. In the third place the prophet is commanded that, since they are silent and do not ask why he has prophesied these things, he should do something by which he may be questioned, and should answer what the Lord has spoken. 'Groan', he says, 'and wail, not with a light voice nor with moderate grief, but in the breaking of the loins, so that your groaning may be brought forth from your inmost bowels and from bitterness of soul; and you shall do this before them so that, when they have asked you why you are crushed with such great groaning and what evil has befallen you that you groan so, you may answer them with my word: This is why I lament and cannot hide the grief of my heart, because the report which had always sounded in my ears is being fulfilled in deed, and it comes — the menace, that is, of the raging Babylonian army; and when it has come and has hemmed Jerusalem in with a rampart, then every heart shall melt and all hands shall be loosened, so that, with panic seizing men's minds, no one dares to resist; for the spirit of all the warriors shall grow weak, and such trembling and dread shall seize them all that, under the compulsion of fear, their limbs and bowels are loosened and the bladder cannot hold its moisture, so that their knees are defiled with urine' — for it is natural that, under the compulsion of fear, the bladder is relaxed and, against a man's will, the moisture flows down; which indeed also tends to happen in the severity of illnesses, that, after the strength of the sick has failed, not only the knees but even the beds are defiled —. 'Behold', he says, 'it comes, what I have often foretold and what is being fulfilled in deed, and it shall be done, which not I but the Lord has spoken'. I know that a certain man unrolled many testimonies on the breaking of the loins and the flowing waters, so that the prophet's chastity might be made out, and the bitterness of soul and the inward pain of mind, namely that the waters of seed defile the knees; but this exposition does not belong to the present passage.

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, prophesy, and you shall say: Thus says the Lord God: Speak. The sword, the sword is sharpened and filed; it is sharpened to slaughter victims, and it is filed that it may gleam: you who move the scepter of my son, you have cut down every tree. And I have given it to be polished, that it may be held in the hand; this sword is sharpened, and this one is filed, that it may be in the hand of the slayer. Cry out and howl, son of man, because this one has come among my people, this one among all the leaders of Israel who had fled; they have been handed over to the sword with my people, therefore clap upon your thigh, because it has been proved, and this when it has overturned the scepter and it shall be no more, says the Lord God. You therefore, son of man, prophesy, and strike hand against hand, and let the sword be doubled, and let the sword of the slain be tripled. This is the sword of great slaughter, which makes them stand aghast, and melt in heart, and multiplies the ruins. In all their gates I have set the confusion of the sword, sharpened and filed to flash, clad for slaughter. Be sharpened, go to the right or to the left, wherever the desire of your face is. Moreover I too will clap hand against hand, and I will fulfill my indignation; I the Lord have spoken. (It is too much if I set down both editions, and the length of the books is drawn out, especially where there is either no difference or a small one; I will therefore set down some of the things that disagree. Where we said: You who move the scepter of my son, you have cut down every tree, they translated: Kill, despise, reject every tree; again, where we said: Who had fled, have been handed over to the sword, both they and others translated: My guests, or inhabitants; and where we said: Clap upon the thigh, they put: Strike the hand; and where we translated: And this when it has overturned the scepter, their edition has: The tribe has been rejected.) He speaks, moreover, to the sword of Nebuchadnezzar, that it should come against Jerusalem and be sharpened and filed, for many must be slaughtered; and he makes an apostrophe to it: 'You are the one who moves and overturns the scepter of my son, namely the rule of the people of Israel, and you cut down every tree, the whole multitude of the people. I have given', he says, 'this sword to be held in the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, and to be in the hand of a most powerful man.

According to the ἀναγωγὴν [anagogy, the higher sense] we can take the sharpened sword, prepared for slaughter, as the devil, of whom the Apostle says: To hand over such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved; and in another place: Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme; and in the Psalms it is written: He sent fury and wrath and distress, a sending by most evil angels. Some think that this sword was also in the hand of the angel when Jerusalem was struck under David. Others, however, suspect that it is also said of that sword of which it is written in the Gospel: 'I came not to send peace upon the earth, but a sword, and to divide among themselves every bond of kinship, so that the wicked may fall and the saints rise again'. But it is impious to believe this of the Savior's sword, and not rather of the devil, who overturns the scepters of the Lord in the Church, who slays all among the people, both the leaders and the guests of God, and is then approved by the Lord, when he has overturned Judas the traitor and those like him; into whom, after he had eaten the morsel, Satan entered. And the sword of the slain is doubled and tripled, so that the sin of Jerusalem may be loosed, because she has received from the hand of the Lord her sins twofold. The Lord, moreover, rejoices and exults, and is the exhorter of the raging sword, that it may go either to the right or to the left, and wherever the desire of its face carries it, so that, the wicked being slain, the good may remain, and that which is written may be fulfilled: What has chaff to do with wheat?, says the Lord.

Therefore, O prophet, cry out and howl, and bear witness to the impending evils with the lamentation of your voice. This sword has spared no one, nor left anyone without a share in the impending evils. It has come among the people, it has come among the leaders of Israel, it has come among my guests and the priests who dwelt in my temple. Therefore strike your thigh, or your hand, and take on the bearing of a mourner. For this sword has been proved by me, and this when it has overturned my scepter and kingdom, which shall be no more and shall come to its end in King Zedekiah.

Again I command you, prophet, that you, who had struck your thigh in astonishment and wonder, should strike your hands also, so that not only once but a second and a third time the sword may come to slay'. For Nebuchadnezzar had come the first time when he carried off Jeconiah, and the second time when Jehoiakim reigned, the third time when Zedekiah did. 'And this is the tripled sword, when a great slaughter took place, and it multiplied the ruins to such a degree that they were stunned in mind and melted in heart, and it caused confusion in all their gates'.

It is commanded therefore to it, that is, to the sword sharpened and filed to flash, clad and ready and prepared for slaughter, that it go to the right if it so wishes, or to the left. 'Wherever', he says, 'it pleases your face, enter boldly, having me as your leader and helper. I will clap hand against hand, so that, as your patron and exhorter, I may spur you on as you rage against my adversaries. Do not hesitate, do not dread and fear to suffer what Sennacherib suffered; I the Lord have spoken; you are the minister of my will, carry out my sentence'.

'When', he says, 'the divine word had said to me: Prophesy, son of man, and speak to the sword, and say: The sword, the sword, and the rest that the prophecy of the sword contains, a second time the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Do you wish, son of man, to know who this sword is, and to learn more openly the person of the raging sword? Listen to what I say: Set two ways, so that by them the sword of the king of Babylon may come, who will indeed go forth by the one road of the Chaldeans but, when he has come through the desert and the wilderness to the fork of the land of Arabia which is called that of the Ammonites, of which one way leads to Jerusalem on the right-hand side, but the left to Rabbath of the Ammonites' — which is a metropolis and today is named Philadelphia.

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: And you, son of man, set for yourself two ways, and let the sword of the king of Babylon come: both shall go forth from one land; and with his hand he shall take a conjecture, at the head of the way of the city he shall cast it. You shall set a way for the sword to come to Rabbath of the Ammonites, and to Judah, into Jerusalem the most fortified. For the king of Babylon stood at the fork, at the head of the two ways, seeking divination, mixing arrows; he questioned idols, he consulted entrails. At his right hand the divination came out against Jerusalem, to set battering rams, to open the mouth in slaughter, to lift up the voice in howling, to set battering rams against the gates, to heap up a mound, to build siege works. And in their eyes he shall be as one consulting an oracle in vain, and imitating the idleness of the sabbaths; but he himself will remember the iniquity, so as to capture. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you have called your iniquities to remembrance, and have uncovered your transgressions, and your sins have appeared in all your thoughts; because, I say, you have called them to remembrance, you shall be taken by the hand. I know that in this place, following the Seventy translators, I have read a manifold exposition, which refers Rabbath of the Ammonites to the people of the nations, but Judah and Jerusalem to those who are gathered under the name of Christ and are given by their deeds the dignity of the name; and holds that the king of confusion, the devil, stands at every head of the ways and lies in ambush in secret, and that that little verse is fulfilled: Beside the path they have set a stumbling block for me; and that he stands at the fork, desiring either to hold those who are his own or to acquire new servitude for himself, and always goes to the right, namely to those who are placed on the right side, to storm them, to exult in slaughter, to capture wretched Jerusalem with battering rams and the heaping up of earthly works; and that at first indeed he seems to her to do nothing and to strive in vain, but, as he recalls the iniquities of those who dwell in the Church — or rather, by their evil works they bring the adverse powers back to the remembrance of their former crimes —, all the sins of the people and their thoughts are laid bare, and therefore they are captured, because they have heaped new offenses upon old ones. Another may have said these things; we must pursue the truth of the history we have begun.

'Mindful', he says, 'of the slaughter that befell the Assyrian king when a hundred and eighty-five thousand were cut down in one night, he will be afraid to turn aside to the right-hand side and go against most fortified Jerusalem, but he will stand at the very crossroads and, according to the rite of his nation, will consult the oracle, putting arrows into the quiver and mixing them, inscribed or marked with the names of each, to see whose arrow comes out and which city he ought to attack first' — this the Greeks call βελομαντίαν [belomancy, divination by arrows] or ῥαβδομαντίαν [rhabdomancy, divination by rods] —. 'He questioned the idols, therefore, he consulted the entrails. To the right came his divination, that he should go against Jerusalem and attack it, heap up mounds, set battering rams, build siege works and shut in the city, and in slaughter open his mouth and rouse the roar of an exulting and howling army.

Doing this', he says, 'he will seem to the inhabitants of Jerusalem to consult the oracle in vain, and as it were to wear away the idleness of the sabbaths, namely to play and accomplish no work. But the king of Babylon will trust not in his own strength but in the iniquity of the people, by which he knows that they have offended God and have heaped up the sins of their fathers with new offenses, and that their transgressions have been laid open to all; and therefore he will not doubt of victory, because he will trust in the iniquity of Jerusalem'. This is according to the Hebrew, from which the Seventy disagree in most places, not so much in sense as in words.

But you, profane, wicked leader of Israel, whose day has come, foreordained in the time of iniquity, thus says the Lord God: Take off the miter, take away the crown; is not this that which raised up the lowly and brought low the lofty? Iniquity, iniquity, iniquity I will set it; and this shall not be until he comes whose is the judgment, and I will deliver it to him. (LXX: "And you, profane, lawless leader of Israel, whose day has come in the time of iniquity, the end, thus says the Lord God: You have taken off the miter and put on the crown; this shall not be alike; you have humbled the lofty and raised up the lowly. Iniquity, iniquity I will set it; nor shall this be such, until he comes to whom it is due, and I will give it to him.") Symmachus translated this passage thus: But you, profane, lawless leader of Israel, whose day has come, appointed in the time of iniquity, thus says the Lord God: He has taken off the miter and taken away the crown; neither this nor that; he has raised up the lowly and brought low the lofty. Iniquity, iniquity, iniquity I will make it; and this was not he whose is the judgment, whom I am going to give. After the overthrow of the city of Jerusalem and the captivity of the people, the word is directed to the leader of Israel, whom no one doubts to signify Zedekiah, in whom the rule of the kings of Israel from the stock of David came to an end. 'There has come to you', he says, 'the day which was foreordained against you long ago, and because of you the priesthood and the kingdom of the Jewish people perished'.

For the miter is the insignia of the high priest; the crown, that is, the diadem, is the mark of a king. 'Is not this the miter and this the crown, which did nothing by judgment but, in imitation of the Babylonian king: Whom he wished he exalted, and whom he wished he humbled?

In the place where we translated: Is not this, Symmachus rendered beautifully: Neither this nor that; for because he had said: Take off the miter, take away the crown, he added: 'Neither this nor that is', that is: 'Both the kingdom and the priesthood shall cease'. Hence, of those who afterwards, until the coming of Christ, were kings and priests alike, one, Hyrcanus the high priest, placed a diadem on his own head and wished in vain to claim both this and that for himself, since the kingdom was not owed to him after Zedekiah, but to him for whom it was laid up and who was the expectation of the nations; of whom Malachi also speaks: You priests, who defile my name, and a little after: My will is not in you, and I will not accept victims from your hands. For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place sacrifice is made and a pure offering is offered to my name; which pure offering, without the blood of goats, rams and bulls, is fulfilled at the coming of Christ, when he who is desired by the nations has come, and the sun of righteousness has risen, in whose wings is healing.

Therefore, not once nor — according to the Seventy — twice, but a third time I will set iniquity upon you forever, which was not reckoned to you at once, but until Christ comes, whose is the judgment, and the Father delivers to him the kingdom and the priesthood, or the Church gathered from the nations'. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son; and in another place: O God, he says, give your judgment to the king, and your righteousness to the king's son; this is he for whom the everlasting rule and priesthood are laid up, of whom Jacob also spoke: A prince shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up; and he shall be the expectation of the nations.

And you, son of man, prophesy and say: Thus says the Lord God, to the Ammonites and to their reproach; and you shall say: Blade, blade, unsheathe yourself to slay, file yourself that you may kill and flash, while vain things were seen for you and lies were divined, that you might be set upon the necks of the wounded wicked, whose day has come, foreordained in the time of iniquity; return to your sheath, to the place in which you were created; in the land of your birth I will judge you, and I will pour out my indignation upon you, in the fire of my fury I will blow upon you, and I will give you into the hands of foolish men and of those who fashion destruction. You shall be food for the fire, your blood shall be in the midst of the land; you shall be given over to oblivion, because I the Lord have spoken. That the sword of the king of Babylon stood at the head of two ways, at the crossroads of the right and the left, of which one led to Jerusalem, the other to Rabbath of the Ammonites, and that the lot came out that he should go first against Jerusalem, we have read above; and, now that it has been stormed and taken, he foretells that its kingdom also and its priesthood have perished forever. What remained concerned the Ammonites, and the very order of the division called for it: what had become of the left-hand way. Hence the prophet is commanded to speak to the Ammonites and to their reproach, that they themselves are to be captured, and he directs his speech to the same sword: 'O blade, blade, you who are prepared for slaughter, who are filed so that you may flash and kill, although the idols have given you answers, and all that is answered by demons is vain, so that you might, namely, hang over the necks of the wounded and that through you might be fulfilled what the Lord had long threatened, nevertheless, once your work is completed which you did against the Ammonites, return to your sheath, that is, into Babylon, to the place in which you were made and created, so that in the land of your birth I may judge you and pour out my indignation upon you, and you may be captured by the might of the Medes and Persians'; which is said more fully in the volume of Isaiah, in the vision against Babylon: Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them; and a little after: And that Babylon, glorious among kingdoms, renowned in the pride of the Chaldeans, shall be as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall not be inhabited to the end.

And because he was once speaking under the person of the sword about the king, or rather the kingdom, of Babylon, he keeps the μεταφορὰν [metaphor]. 'In the fire', he says, 'of my fury I will blow upon you, so as to have you consumed by fire; and I will hand you over to the hands of foolish and unskilled men, who have not the art of forging and sharpening swords, so that you may by no means be sharpened any more, be filed and flash to kill, but may be food for the fire, and your blood, which you shed with all looking on, may rather flow back upon you; and you shall be handed over to eternal oblivion; and may you perish forever, because I the Lord have spoken these things, for whom to have said is to have done'.