Jeremiah 24

The prophet speaks thus concerning the people of Israel and ours: "The Lord showed me two baskets of figs. One had very good ones, the other had very bad ones." This fact, as has often been said, presents an image of the two people, for those two baskets prefigured the synagogue and the church. The basket of very bad fruit mystically designated the people of the synagogue, while the one with very good fruit pointed out the church of the Christians.

The fifth book of the commentaries on Jeremiah, brother Eusebius, will take its beginning from two baskets, of which the one will show the sweetness of the right faith, the other the bitterness of the faithlessness of the heretics. Although Hananiah son of Azzur resists Jeremiah, and Shemaiah the Nehelamite desires that the prophet be sent into prison, and Zephaniah the priest swears himself to the words of the false prophets, yet truth can be shut up and bound, but it cannot be conquered; it is content with the fewness of its own and is not terrified by the multitude of its enemies. Therefore raise your hands to heaven with Moses and hang up the ancient serpent in the desert, and at once Amalek will be destroyed and the poisoned bites will not prevail, and the people of the Lord, secure, will cross the streams of the Jordan with Jesus [Joshua], and after the vast wilderness will eat the bread that was born in our little village of Bethlehem.

The Lord showed me, and behold, two baskets — or, according to Symmachus, hampers — full of figs, placed before the temple of the Lord, after Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had carried away Jeconiah, son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and his princes and the smith and the setter from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon. One basket had very good figs, as figs of the first season usually are, and one basket had very bad figs, which could not be eaten because they were bad. And the Lord said to me: What do you see, Jeremiah? And I said: Figs, good ones, very good, and bad ones, very bad, which cannot be eaten because they are bad. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: As these figs are good, so will I know the exile of Judah, which I have sent out from this place into the land of the Chaldeans, for good. And I will set my eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them back into this land, and I will build them and not destroy them, and I will plant them and not pluck them up. And I will give them a heart, that they may know me, that I am the Lord, and they shall be to me for a people, and I will be to them for a God, because they will return to me with their whole heart. For as the very bad figs, which cannot be eaten because they are bad, thus says the Lord, so will I give — or hand over — Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his princes and the rest of Jerusalem, who have remained in this city and who dwell in the land of Egypt. And I will give them to vexation and affliction — or dispersion — to all the kingdoms of the earth, for a reproach and for a parable and for a proverb and for a curse in all the places to which I have cast them out. And I will send among them the sword and famine and pestilence, until they are consumed from the land which I gave to them and to their fathers. Some interpret the two hampers or baskets of good and bad figs as the law and the Gospel, the synagogue and the Church, the people of the Jews and that of the Christians, Gehenna and the kingdom of heaven, of which the one pertains to the punishment of sinners, the other to the dwelling-place of the saints. But we, knowing according to the Apostle Paul that the law is good and holy and the commandment good and holy, and that there is one God of both Testaments, should rather refer them to those who at the coming of the Lord the Savior believed and did not believe: so that those who, stirred up by the scribes and priests, cried out, saying: Crucify, crucify such a one, are the basket of bad figs; while those of the people who believed after his ascension are referred to the good figs and to the best basket and hamper.

It must also be noted that this vision came to the prophet in the times of Zedekiah, after Jeconiah had been led into 'exile'; for he did not say 'captivity', because Jeconiah had handed himself over of his own accord. And by the smiths and setters we ought to understand either interpreters and teachers of the law, or craftsmen and enclosers of gold and gems, an art that is most precious among the barbarian nations. For 'setters' the Seventy translated 'bound men', to signify the evil of captivity, and of their own they added 'rich men', which is not found in the Hebrew. And he compares the basket that had good figs, and very good ones, to the figs of the first season — which in Greek are called proima —, namely to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and Aaron and Job and the other holy men, of whom one of the twelve prophets speaks: Like a grape in the desert I found Israel, and like figs on the fig tree I found their fathers; whence we too are called sons of Abraham, and on the contrary it is said to the Jews: If Abraham were your father, you would do his works. But these baskets, which had good and bad figs, were not outside and beyond the Church, but before the temple of the Lord, because all things lie open to his knowledge. Nor do these figs that are outside have as great a bitterness as those that after the confession of faith have been changed by transgression; nor do the good figs that are not in sight of the temple of God — such as were the philosophers of the world, who, by natural goodness and by the understanding of the Creator, seemed not so much to follow the virtues as to praise them — have as great a sweetness as the figs have that are in the temple of God, among which were the prophets and apostles, of whom one fig said: I gave you milk, not solid food, and: My little children, with whom I am in labor again until Christ is formed in you. Hence it is said that in sight of the temple of God the good figs were very good and the bad figs were very bad.

The fig tree can be taken as a type of the delights of paradise due to the sweetness and excellence of its fruit. The devil beguiled the man by imitating it and then led him captive, persuading him to conceal the nakedness of his body by fig leaves.… The enemy, by his power, always imitates the forms of virtue and righteousness, not for the purpose of truly promoting its exercise but for deception and hypocrisy. He camouflages himself with the colors of immortality in order to entice those who are fleeing from death to embrace death. And so he desires to look like a fig tree or vine and to produce sweetness and joy, and he is "transformed into an angel of light," ensnaring many by the appearance of piety.For we find in the sacred Writings that there are two kinds of fig trees and vines, "the good figs, which are very good, and the evil, which are very evil"; and "wine that makes glad the heart of people" and wine that is the poison of dragons and the incurable venom of asps. But from the time when chastity began to rule over the human race, the fraud was detected and overcome, with Christ, the chief of virgins, overturning it. So both the true fig tree and the true vine yield fruit after that the power of chastity has laid hold on all, as Joel the prophet preaches, saying, "Do not be afraid, O land. Be glad and rejoice, for the Lord will do great things. Do not be afraid, beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are springing into life, for the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and the vine yield their strength. Be glad then, children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you food for righteousness." He calls the former laws the vine and the fig, trees bearing fruit for righteousness for the children of the spiritual Zion that bore fruit after the incarnation of the Word, when chastity ruled over us, when formerly, because of sin and much error, they had checked and destroyed their buds. For the true vine and the true fig tree were not able to yield such nourishment to us as would be profitable for life while as yet the false fig tree, variously adorned for the purpose of fraud, flourished. But when the Lord dried up the false branches—imitations of the true branches—uttering the sentence against the bitter fig tree, "Let no fruit grow on you henceforward forever," then those that were truly fruit-bearing trees flourished and yielded food for righteousness. The vine—and not just in a few places—refers to the Lord, and the fig tree to the Holy Spirit, as the Lord makes glad the hearts of people and the Spirit heals them. And therefore Hezekiah is commanded first to make a plaster with a lump of figs—that is, the fruit of the Spirit—that he may be healed—that is, according to the apostle—by love; for he says, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance"; which, because of their great pleasantness, the prophet calls figs. Micah also says, "Every person shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid." Now it is certain that those who have taken refuge and rested under the Spirit and under the shadow of the Word shall not be alarmed or frightened by him who troubles the hearts of people.

"I gave you," he said, "directions in the first commandment to attend to faith, and fear, and self-restraint." "Even so, sir," said I. And he said, "Now I wish to show you the powers of these, that you may know what power each possesses. For their powers are double, and have relation alike to the righteous and the unrighteous. Trust you, therefore, the righteous, but put no trust in the unrighteous. For the path of righteousness is straight, but that of unrighteousness is crooked. But walk in the straight and even way, and mind not the crooked. For the crooked path has no roads, but has many pathless places and stumbling-blocks in it, and it is rough and thorny. It is injurious to those who walk therein. But they who walk in the straight road walk evenly without stumbling, because it is neither rough nor thorny. You see, then, that it is better to walk in this road." "I wish to go by this road," said I. "You will go by it," said he; "and whoever turns to the Lord with all his heart will walk in it."

But let us follow the simple and true history: that he called Jeconiah the basket of good figs, who by the counsel of Jeremiah and the command of God had handed himself over to the Babylonian king, and to whom the Lord also promises prosperity; and the basket of bad figs Zedekiah, who, contradicting the sentence of God, was captured, and with his eyes blinded was led to Babylon and died there. And to such an extent did God set his eyes upon them for good, those who acquiesced in his command, and bring them back into their land, and build them and not destroy them, and plant them and not pluck them up, and give them a heart, that they might know him, that he himself was the Lord, and that they might become his people and he himself might be their God, that even in the captivity he set his eyes upon them and permitted them to work the land, to build houses and to plant orchards in the region of Babylonia; Daniel, through miracles of signs, was suddenly made a prince from a captive; the three youths were gloriously delivered from the fire of the furnace; and when the seventy years were completed, under Zerubbabel and Jeshua the great priest, and Ezra and Nehemiah, the greatest part returned to Jerusalem, whose number is contained in the volume of that same Ezra.

And lest we be thought to be setting down our own sense, Scripture itself lays itself open. As these figs, it says, are good, so will I know the exile of Judah, which I have sent out from this place into the land of the Chaldeans, for good, signifying Jeconiah and the princes who were captured with him. And on the contrary, of the basket that had bad figs: And as the very bad figs, he says, which cannot be eaten because they are bad, so will I give Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his princes and those who fled over into Egypt and who remained in this city, to vexation and affliction to all the kingdoms of the earth, when they were captured in Egypt too, and Nebuchadnezzar set his throne in Tahpanhes, and the Lord sent upon them the sword, famine and pestilence, until they were consumed from the land which he gave to their fathers. But what he said of the good figs: I will give them a heart, that they may know me, that I am the Lord, is like the apostolic saying: It is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish, in that not only our works but our will too rests on the help of God. In this place the ever-allegorical interpreter raves, and, wishing to do violence to the truth of the history, relates that some were captured from the heavenly Jerusalem and carried over into the land of the Chaldeans and will return again to their former place, such as Jeremiah and the other holy prophets, while others, who were sinners, will die in this land and in the valley of tears. I have set out the whole perikopēn [passage] of this vision together, so as not to divide the sense in the exposition.

Christ is a builder and architect, about whom it has been said in the prophets: "He will build my city, and he will turn back the captivity of my people." Thus the Lord said, "And I will build them up, and I will not tear them down." For the God who is good takes down certain buildings. For it is necessary that the building of unclean spirits be destroyed in us, and a temple to God be built in this way from virtues and right teachings so that his glory can be seen in it.

Put away doubting from you and do not hesitate to ask of the Lord, saying to yourself, "How can I ask of the Lord and receive from Him, seeing I have sinned so much against Him?" Do not thus reason with yourself, but with all your heart turn to the Lord and ask of Him without doubting, and you will know the multitude of His tender mercies; that He will never leave you, but fulfil the request of your soul. For He is not like men, who remember evils done against them; but He Himself remembers not evils, and has compassion on His own creature.