Joel 3

For behold, in those days and at that time, when I shall turn back the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations, and I will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and I will plead with them there over my people and my inheritance Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; and they have divided my land, and over my people they have cast the lot; and they have put a boy in a brothel, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink. LXX: For behold, I, in those days and at that time, when I shall turn back the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, will gather all the nations, and I will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and I will plead with them there for my people and my inheritance Israel, who have been scattered among the Gentiles; and they have divided my land, and over my people they have cast lots; and they have put a boy in a brothel, and they were selling girls for wine, and they were drinking. Let us speak as we promised: first, according to anagogy, joining what comes after to what went before; then, if we can, we shall try to refer the same things to the day of judgment. When the believers have been saved on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and the remnant of the people of the Jews, who believed with the apostles and through the apostles, has been called, at that time, after the Lord, who had come to preach sight to the blind and release to the captives, has turned back the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, and has set free those who confess the Lord and who dwell in the Church, in which is the vision of peace, he will gather all the nations that refused to believe, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat; which, according to the Hebrew truth, is said more expressively in Greek κατάξω, that is, I will lead downward, and draw down from the heights to lower places. And consider at the same time that when the Lord summons all unbelievers, or the adverse powers, to judgment, and pleads with them for his people: I will bring them down, he says, into the valley of Jehoshaphat. But when he exhorts believers to battle, he says: Rouse the strong; let them approach, let all the men of war go up; let the nations arise and go up into the valley of Jehoshaphat: they are urged not to go down, but to go up. For everyone who is judged on account of his sins is placed in the valley which is called Jehoshaphat, that is, the judgment of the Lord. For he who believes in the Lord shall not be judged. And there he will dispute with them, convincing them not by the power of his majesty but by the truth of reason: those who have parted the people of God among themselves and have scattered his inheritance among the nations, so as to compel the servants of God to serve them; and who have divided his land, separating it among themselves by many errors, so that some worshiped Jupiter, others Juno, and Minerva, and Fever, and Blight, and Anubis, and the crocodile, and the ibis, owls, hawks and storks.

All of which the Jews recall to have been fulfilled according to the letter in the times of Vespasian and Titus, and above all of Hadrian. But if we wish to refer what is written to the day of judgment, we say that everyone who is saved is saved in the Church, or in the heavenly Jerusalem. And after the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem has been turned back, then all are to be gathered and brought down into the valley of Jehoshaphat; and there the Lord will plead with those who have persecuted his people, and have divided among themselves the inheritance of the Lord, and have scattered them among the nations, and have cast the lot over his land. And these things we ought to take not only of the heretics, who have divided the people of God among themselves and make them Gentiles, but also of every harsh and proud teacher, who under the name of teaching and of the priesthood lord it over those allotted to them and oppress those who are subject to them. And when they have been negligent, and have caused one of the least to stumble, they even put boys into the brothel, or hand them over to harlots; and, for the sake of their own pleasure, whose God is the belly, and their glory is in their confusion, they sell girls that they may drink wine. And they hand over young men to harlots and sell girls to luxury who, for the sake of shameful gain, do not rebuke those who sin.

Under these names the people of God was once divided; and the adverse nations, that is, the princes of this world and the rulers of darkness, not only divided the people of God among themselves, but put boys into the brothel, to compel them to change their male nature, of whom the Apostle speaks: For this reason God gave them up to passions of disgrace; for their women exchanged the natural use for that use which is against nature. And likewise the males also, having left the natural use of the woman, were inflamed in their desire toward one another, males working shamefulness on males, and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was due. And not content to have done this, they sold a girl for wine, that they might drink, and put gluttony before lust.

But what are you to me, Tyre and Sidon, and all the border of the Philistines? Will you render vengeance to me? And if you avenge yourselves against me, quickly, swiftly I will return your recompense upon your head. For you have taken my silver and my gold, and my desirable things, and the most beautiful you have carried into your shrines; and the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem you have sold to the sons of the Greeks, that you might remove them far from their borders. LXX: What have I to do with you, Tyre and Sidon and all Galilee of the foreigners? Are you rendering me retribution, or do you keep anger in your heart against me? — for this is what μνησικακείτε means in Greek —. Swiftly and quickly I will return your retribution upon your heads, because you have taken my silver and my gold, and my choice and best things you have carried into your temples, and the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem you have sold to the sons of the Greeks, that you might cast them out of their borders. And these things too the Jews think are said against Tyre and Sidon and the borders of the Philistines, or Galilee of the foreigners, because at the time of the Jewish captivity, when they were conquered by the Romans, these persecuted the people of God; nay rather, in the people of God, God himself, who was set over the people, according to what is written: He who receives you receives me. Therefore, conversely, he who persecutes the people of God persecutes God himself, whose people it is.

For Galilee, in the Hebrew is written Galiloth, which Aquila translated Θῖνας, Symmachus borders; and Θῖνας, that is, mounds of sand, let us refer to the shores of Palestine, not to a Galilee of the Philistines, which does not exist at all.

They refer this against Tyre and Sidon so as to maintain that the vengeance for the blood of Christ and the overthrow of Jerusalem, which happened by the judgment of God, happened of itself. But let us, following the tropology we have begun, interpret Tyre and Sidon and the Philistines as those who hem in and afflict and persecute the people of God — for this is what Tyre sounds in our language —, and hunt him to death, which the name of Sidon indicates, and, drinking blood, fall down, or wallow in the mire, which is what the Philistines and Galilee signify. Swiftly and quickly the Lord will repay them what they deserve, because they have persecuted him. And his silver and gold, namely the words of the Scriptures, and the νοήματα, that is, the meanings, and everything that was beautiful in the Church, they have made the slaves of their errors. The heretic, whomever he has deceived and made to worship his own images, sells the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem to the Greeks, or Gentiles, and makes them from Christians into heathens, to banish them from their borders, in which they had been begotten in Christ, so that they dwell no longer in Judea and in the confession of the truth, but in the error of the Gentiles. All these things we can also refer to the day of judgment, the vengeance not differing, although in time they seem to differ from the things above.

I will repay you, he says, what you have done to my people, because you have taken my silver and gold, that is, the vessels of the temple, and whatever was most precious and most splendid in it, the golden lampstand and the golden table of the showbread, and the two golden Cherubim, and the mercy seat, and the golden bowls and censers, and have consecrated them to your idols. But history relates that it was rather the Chaldeans who did these things, who placed the vessels of the temple of the Lord in the temple of Bel, from which Belshazzar afterward drinks in the bowls, and at once his kingdom is transferred to the Medes and Persians. But since these things are said to be going to happen after the great and terrible day of the Lord, which the apostles interpret of the resurrection of the Lord, and the Hebrews defer to the future time of judgment, it is rather to be understood of the Romans; for Vespasian and Titus, having built the temple of Peace at Rome, consecrated the vessels of the temple and all its offerings in that shrine, as Greek and Roman history relates.