Micah 2

Woe to you who devise what is useless, and work evil on your beds; in the morning light they do it, for their hand is against God; and they coveted fields and took them by violence, and seized houses, and they wronged a man and his house, a man and his inheritance. Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I devise evil against this family, from which you shall not withdraw your necks, and you shall not walk proudly, for it is a most evil time. In that day a parable shall be taken up over you, and a song shall be sung with sweetness by those who say: We have been laid waste with devastation; the portion of my people has been changed. How will it depart from me, when he returns who divides our lands? Because of this you will have no one casting the cord of the lot in the assembly of the Lord. LXX: They have become men who devise toils and work evils on their beds, and at once in the day they will accomplish them, because they did not lift up their hands to God; and they desired fields, and plundered orphans, and oppressed houses, and seized a man and his house, a man and his inheritance. Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I devise evils against this tribe, from which you shall not withdraw your necks, that you may not walk upright suddenly, for it is a most evil time. In that day a parable shall be taken up over you, and a lament shall be lamented in a song of those who say: In misery we have been made miserable; the portion of my people has been measured out by the cord, and there was no one to forbid him, that he might be turned back. Our fields have been divided; because of this you will have no one casting the cord in the inheritance. What we set at the end of the section according to the Hebrew, in the assembly of the Lord, for which the Seventy translated in the Church of the Lord, is, according to the common edition, the beginning of the following section. And therefore we shall discuss it there, if the Lord commands. Woe, therefore, to you, peoples of the Jews, who both devise evil and complete it in deed. And the beds given you for rest you pollute with debaucheries, and whatever iniquity you plot at night, as if it were not permitted to put it off, you hasten to fulfill as soon as the day has dawned, not considering that your hand is strong against God. And in order that Scripture might teach what it was that they devised at night and did by day, it sets it out part by part. They coveted, he says, fields and took them by violence, and houses, it is understood, they coveted, and those which they had coveted they plundered; and not only did they wrong men and their houses, but they also laid waste with rabid mouth their descendants, who deserved mercy because of their tender age.

But this same thing can also be taken of the last captivity, that all things befell them because they crucified the Lord, yet in such a way that it is the edition of the Seventy translators that is expounded. For the glory of the daughter of Israel has been made bald and shorn over her once most delicate sons, and if any hair grew back afterwards, it was cut off in turn by another shaving and shearing. Then all their counsels were turned into toil, and what they devised, with mind and spirit asleep, brought them toils; and what they had done was thrown into confusion as soon as the light of Christ and vengeance appeared. For though they had read that Israel conquered when Moses lifted up his hands to the Lord, and was overcome by Amalek when Moses let his weary arms sink, they did not lift up their hands to the Lord, but, perpetrating every crime against the poor and the people of the Lord, they desired fields, and plundered the houses of orphans, and laid waste alike a man and his wife and his children and his substance.

But if we wish to follow the third exposition, of which I spoke above, that the whole discourse is directed to the human soul, which, falling from paradise, has come into the captivity of this world, we shall see that all our thinking is toil and pain, and our beds are full of evils, and the very light that is seen is mixed with darkness, and what we plot at night we accomplish in gloom. For who of us lifts holy hands to God without anger and scheming? Who does not desire the estates of this world, forgetful of the possessions of paradise? You may see some joining field to field and boundary to boundary, and the lands of cities not sufficing for the small little body of a man.

I have expounded, as far as the narrow limits of my slender wit allowed, both the first captivity, by the Assyrians and Babylonians, and the second, by the Romans, because they crucified the Lord, and the third, the spiritual one, by which each one of us fell with Adam from paradise and lives in the captivity of this world; from which, when the Lord comes, he will raise up those who are crushed, and loose those in fetters, and lead back into his own possession those who were once the devil's captives, and the speech of the Psalmist will be fulfilled, who says: Ascending on high, he led captivity captive. According to this exposition, a fourth captivity can also be understood with regard to the Church, from which each one goes out through sin, and afterwards is led back into Jerusalem by Ezra, which means helper, that is, by the word of God. But if anyone, meditating on the law of the Lord day and night, has had greater zeal, greater talent, leisure and grace, and can say something more probable about the present section, I do not envy him, I do not scorn him; rather, I desire to learn from him what I do not know, and I will gladly profess myself his pupil, provided he teaches and does not disparage. For nothing is so easy as for a man at leisure and asleep to dispute about the labors and vigils of others.

Since, therefore, you have done these things and devised what is useless, I too, the Lord, will devise evil against this family; not that what I devise is evil, but that what I inflict seems evil to those who suffer it; and it will so press upon you that you cannot lift your necks, nor walk proudly, you, namely, whom the time of captivity had oppressed.

Therefore the Lord devised evils against that tribe, by no means against the twelve tribes, but against the tribe of malice, befouled in crime, from which they could not lift their neck, nor walk upright. In short, to the present day they are subject to the Roman Empire, and are pressed down by the yoke of captivity, and do not lift their necks. As for what follows, ἐξαίφνης, that is, suddenly, it is not found in the Hebrew scrolls, and yet it can fit the present passage, so that we say: Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I devise evils against this tribe suddenly, from which they cannot lift their necks, and for this reason they will not be able to lift them, because the time is evil. For just as they worked evils against the Lord Jesus, so they will endure the evils of perpetual captivity, and will come into such great distress that all their songs and psalms will be turned into mourning.

Therefore the Lord devises evils against us, from which we cannot lift our necks, nor walk upright, for it is a most evil time, according to the words of John, who says: The world is set in wickedness. The same thing is signified also by that daughter of Abraham in the Gospel, a noble soul, whom Satan had bound and bent over, and who could not be raised up on high before the coming of the Lord, nor look up at her Creator. Hence the Savior says: This woman, he says, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound, ought she not to have been loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?

Then a parable will be spoken over you, and your miseries will be turned into a song: We have been laid waste with devastation, the portion of my people. My temple, he says, which alone I had more than the other nations, will be changed into a ruin. How will the Assyrian depart from me, when he returns to distribute my fields to himself by lot? Therefore, O family of Israel, against which I devise evil, you will have no part in the inheritance of the just.

And the people will know how to say nothing else but this: In misery we have been made miserable. For the land of promise, which had earlier been divided by lot to two and a half tribes beyond the Jordan, with Moses casting the cord, and afterwards apportioned by Joshua son of Nun to the remaining tribes, has been divided among the nations by a Roman surveyor, and there was no one to forbid; rather, though it holds all the nations, there is no one of the Jews who possesses the ancient soil in its former freedom.

Since, therefore, all our glory has been shorn, and we have enlarged our shaving, or our widowhood — for so it is found in some codices —, men have been sent to mourn us with Jeremiah, and to take up a parable over us, and to say with the Apostle: I shall mourn many who have sinned and have not repented. For who would not mourn, seeing human souls possessed like assorted household goods by demons and various vices? One demon, that of fornication, casts the cord; another, that of avarice; that one, of murder; this one, of perjury, stretches out the lines. The portion of the people of God has been divided by the cord, and the fields once of holiness and of paradise, with whose fragrance Isaac was delighted in his son Jacob, have been handed over to the Assyrians and to the Babylonian king. And while the foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests, The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

Do not speak, speaking; it will not drip upon these, confusion will not overtake them, says the house of Jacob. Is the Spirit of the Lord cut short, or are such his thoughts? Are not my words good with him who walks uprightly? And on the contrary my people has risen up as an adversary; you have taken away the cloak from over the tunic, and those who were passing by in simplicity you have turned into war. LXX: In the Church of the Lord do not weep with tears, nor let them lament over these things? For he will not cast off the reproaches, which he speaks: The house of Jacob has provoked the Spirit of the Lord, if these are his devices; are not his words good with him, and have they walked upright? And formerly my people stood out with enmities against its own peace; they flayed off its skin, to take away hope, the crushing of war. Do not speak, he says, speaking, for which Aquila translated: Do not drip, dripping; at times by a Hebrew idiom calling eloquence a dripping, from the fact that it flows and reaches the ears of those who hear, in the likeness of descending rain. Do not deceive yourselves, O house of Jacob, and say to one another for mutual consolation: God is good, the captivity which we fear will not come.

The Church, then, is commanded not to have sadness and anxiety over the affairs of the world and the losses that are wont to happen in this world, and it is said to her inhabitants: O you who are in the Church of the Lord, rejoice always, and whatever befalls you from the judgments of God, give thanks for it. Nor do I say this because you ought not to weep — for Blessed indeed are those who weep, for they shall laugh —, but I warn you of this, that you do not lament over the things that are of the world. If one of your kin has died, if the treasury has seized your property, if gout or any other disease whatever has oppressed your body, do not weep, do not shed tears, and do not consider the present but the future, and be weighed down rather because you dwell longer in this tabernacle of death. Rather beware of this, that you do not insult those who fall, and think another's ruin your own edification; let each one measure himself by his own strength, not by the weakness of another. Otherwise what justice is this, for the branches of the wild olive to insult the branches of the olive, which were broken off because of their unbelief, and to say: The house of Jacob provoked the Spirit of the Lord to anger, killing the prophets, worshipping idols, crucifying the Son of God? He who does this will not be free from reproach, and with the measure with which he judged he will himself be judged, and just as he speaks of the sins of the one who falls, so another will insult his ruin.

So much according to the Hebrew understanding; but the Seventy translators in this place do not cohere with themselves at all. For to what was set first, In the Church of the Lord do not weep, what consequence is there, that there should be added, for he will not cast off the reproaches which he speaks: The house of Jacob has provoked the Spirit of the Lord? And also what follows: If these are his devices, are not his words good with him, and have they walked upright? What bearing on the later part have the words that are said: And formerly my people stood out as an adversary against its own peace; they flayed off its skin, to take away the crushing of war? It seems to me, however, that in a place so very difficult the sense can be rendered or expressed thus, if only the prudent reader will acquiesce in our reasoning.

But some one will say to me, You adduce a thing strange to me, when you call the Son the Word. For John indeed speaks of the Word, but it is by a figure of speech. Nay, it is by no figure of speech. For while thus presenting this Word that was from the beginning, and has now been sent forth, he said below in the Apocalypse, "And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and He that sat upon him (was) Faithful and True; and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. And His eyes (were) as flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns; and He had a name written that no man knew but He Himself. And He (was) clothed in a vesture dipped in blood: and His name is called the Word of God." See then, brethren, how the vesture sprinkled with blood denoted in symbol the flesh, through which the impassible Word of God came under suffering, as also the prophets testify to me. For thus speaks the blessed Micah: "The house of Jacob provoked the Spirit of the Lord to anger. These are their pursuits. Are not His words good with them, and do they walk rightly? And they have risen up in enmity against His countenance of peace, and they have stripped off His glory." That means His suffering in the flesh. And in like manner also the blessed Paul says, "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be shown in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." What Son of His own, then, did God send through the flesh but the Word, whom He addressed as Son because He was to become such (or be begotten) in the future? And He takes the common name for tender affection among men in being called the Son. For neither was the Word, prior to incarnation and when by Himself, yet perfect Son, although He was perfect Word, only-begotten. Nor could the flesh subsist by itself apart from the Word, because it has its subsistence in the Word. Thus, then, one perfect Son of God was manifested.

Will his generous mercy and his most clement Spirit, which has risen widely and abundantly upon all, be cut short and be severe in us alone? Or are his thoughts of such a kind as we see in men, so that he holds on to an old anger and is roused to vengeance by sudden fury? To this the Lord answered: I am indeed good, and my words sound clemency, but to those who walk on the right road.

There follows: If these are his devices: are not his words good with him, and have they walked upright? That the Jewish people stumbled, he says, so that the fullness of the Gentiles might come in, belongs to the dispensation of God, so that afterwards, when Israel believes, all might be saved, and all might stand in need of the mercy of God. Hence the Apostle too, coming to the question of this place, proclaims that the depth of the wisdom and knowledge and of the judgments of God is an unsearchable abyss. If, then, it is God's devices and thoughts that the former branches of the olive should be broken off and others from the wild olive grafted in, you ought not to insult but to fear lest you fall, nor should you suppose that you please God in this, if you read his words, that is, his scriptures. The scriptures profit the reader only if what is read is fulfilled in deed. If, speaking of the scriptures, you can say: Or do you seek a proof of him who speaks in me, Christ? The Lord indeed will give the word to those who preach the gospel with great power, and upon a high mountain has he gone up who preaches the gospel to Zion, and he lifts up his voice in strength who preaches the gospel to Jerusalem. And in this way the words of God are good, if they are with him, that is, if God does not desert the preacher whose heart and lips agree. But he who confesses with his lips while his heart is far from God, and recounts his justices and takes up his covenant in his mouth, and is defiled with the filth of sins, with him the words of God are not good. This is to be said not only of the sinner, but also of him who does not have spiritual grace, that is, the grace of prophecy and of teaching and of interpretation, and of the greater charisms. This must be said, that if a man of this kind wishes to give the causes of the elements and the reason for his faith, and to explain why God, who is good and the Creator of all, came to the Jews alone and called the nations only in the last age, he does not have the good words of God with him, but out of his own unskillfulness defiles even those words of God which are good, words which walk upright and require upright ears. And these things indeed the Lord commands the people that succeeded, and the Church gathered from the Gentiles: not to insult the former generation, and so by insulting not be free from reproaches.

But he who, I do not say long ago, but yesterday, worshipped idols in insult to me, and, as far as lay in him, seized tyrannical arms against me; who stripped the unhappy people of God's help, and took away the cloak as if from over the tunic; who turned against me in war all the simple among the believers and those who rest in the authority of their elders, will not the Lord drip upon him, and will not confusion seize him? But as for what we have translated, And on the contrary my people has risen up as an adversary, since the word mul signifies both the contrary and yesterday, Symmachus rendered it more plainly, so as to say: One day before, my people stood out as an enemy, in order to resolve the question, namely that God was imputing to the people not past vices but recent ones, and such as seemed to have been committed as if yesterday.

And he himself, who is the true judge and speaks without perturbation, relates how in his passion Israel was contrary to him, and did this not because it could harm its Creator, but because it perpetrated everything against its own peace. Hence too the word to Jerusalem: If you knew the things that are for your peace. And with their peace lost, they flayed off their own skin, that is, they took away from themselves the help of God by which they were protected, and left their flesh as it were bare, without skin and covering, so that whatever seemed beautiful while the mercy of God covered it from above, this, when that mercy withdrew, displayed ugliness to those who saw it. And when peace and the help of God withdrew, because they had resisted the Lord, of whom it is said, The Lord who crushes wars, the Lord is his name, they could not resist their adversaries, but were defeated in every contest, nor was there anyone to crush the wars springing up against them, in respect of both persons of the enemies, either the men who led them captive, or the strength of the adversaries who daily slaughtered their souls by blasphemy.

Let him who cannot fly like an eagle fly like a sparrow. Let him who cannot fly to heaven fly to the mountains. Let him flee before the valleys that are quickly destroyed by water. Let him pass over the mountains. Abraham's nephew passed over the mountain of Segor and was saved. But Lot's wife could not climb it, for she looked back in womanly fashion and lost her salvation. "Draw near the everlasting mountains," the Lord says through the prophet Micah, "arise from here, for this is not a rest for you by reason of uncleanness. You have been corrupted with corruption, you have suffered pursuit."And the Lord says, "Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains." Mount Zion is there, and so is the city of peace, Jerusalem, built not of earthly stones but of living stones, with ten thousand angels and the church of the firstborn and the spirits of those made perfect and the God of the just, who spoke better with his blood than Abel. For the one cried out for vengeance but the other for pardon. The one was a reproach to his brother's sin; the other forgave the world's sin. The one was the revelation of a crime; the other covered a crime according to what is written, "Blessed are they whose sins are covered."

You have cast out the women of my people from the house of their delights; from their little ones you have taken away my praise forever. Arise and go, for you have no rest here; because of its uncleanness it will be corrupted with a most grievous rotting. The translation of the Seventy — if indeed it is the Seventy's; for Josephus writes, and the Hebrews hand down, that only the five books of the law of Moses were translated by them and handed over to King Ptolemy —, differs so much in the present place from the Hebrew truth that we can neither set out the heads side by side nor explain their meanings together. Therefore let our translation be discussed first, and afterwards we shall come to them. The word is still against the people of God, to whom he had already said above: On the contrary my people has risen up as an adversary: from over the tunic you have taken away the cloak; namely that they had not only done this, but had also made the women, that is, the matrons once delicate, go into captivity, or, under a metaphor, the cities of Judea, which in Isaiah too he calls the daughters of Zion, because Zion was their metropolis. From their little ones too, he says, you have taken away my praise forever: no one remained among the people, all being either killed or captured, who sang my psalms; and even the few who survived in Babylon testify that they cannot sing. How, they say, shall we sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land?

LXX: The leaders of my people will be cast out of the houses of their delights; because of their evil devices they have been cast out. This can be taken both generally of the princes of the Jewish people, the priests and Pharisees, who after the passion of the Lord were cast out of the city of their delights, in which they had formerly wantoned because of their evil devices; and specially of the stock of David, because as soon as the Lord was born, the prince failed from Judah, and the leader from his thighs, when he came for whom it was reserved, and the expectation of the nations appeared. But the prophetic word also describes the princes of the Church who abound in delights and believe that they keep their chastity amid feasts and wantonness: that they are to be cast out of their spacious houses and sumptuous banquets, and dishes sought out with great labor, and cast out because of their evil thoughts and works. And if you wish to know whither they are to be cast out, read the Gospel: Into the darkness namely without, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Is it not a confusion and a disgrace to preach Jesus crucified, the poor and hungry master, with stuffed bodies, and to set forth the doctrine of fasting with red cheeks and swollen faces? If we are in the place of the apostles, let us not only imitate their speech, but also embrace their way of life and their abstinence. Holy, certainly, is the ministry of the apostles also, to minister to widows and the poor. It is not right, they say, that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. But now the priest of Christ invites to dinner, I do not say the poor, I do not say the brethren and those who cannot invite in return, from whom, apart from the grace, episcopal hands could hope for nothing else, but soldiers and men girt with the sword, and judges, with centurions and squadrons of soldiers keeping watch before their doors. The clergy run about the whole city, seeking to provide for the judges what they either cannot find in their own praetoria or at least do not buy up once found. Nor indeed is it to be thought that this invective is directed generally at everyone, but rather that the prophetic word strikes those who are such, and threatens them with punishments and everlasting darkness, so that those who are not restrained by shame and modesty may repent at least at the threat of penalties.

LXX: Draw near to the eternal mountains. By the eternal mountains we can understand either angels or prophets, of whom it is also written in the psalm: Its foundations are on the holy mountains, and in another place: I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, whence help will come to me. And he draws near to the eternal mountains who is not separated by his sins from the fellowship of the blessed, just as Moses too drew near to God, not in place but in merit. And to those who drew near to the eternal mountains the Lord himself spoke: I am a God who draws near, and not a God from afar. The mountains are called eternal to distinguish them from those which are not eternal, namely the princes of this world, the dark mountains; and when these have been lifted up like the cedar of Lebanon, they pass away with the world, and their place cannot be found.

In the Lord I trust; how do you say to my soul: Flee away to the mountains like a sparrow? The crafty adversary both tempted the Lord and Savior in the wilderness, and wishes all the saints to depart from the land of Judah and to dwell in the desert of the virtues, that there he may more easily strike them down. But even his very counsel is deceitful: for he does not exhort that one take the wings of the dove — a bird gentle, simple, and domestic, said to lack gall, and which is offered for the Lord in the temple — but the wings of a sparrow, a bird chattering and roving, which after the rearing of its young knows nothing of the fidelity of wedlock; although Aquila and Symmachus rendered "bird" generally in place of "sparrow." By the mountains, however, we can understand those of which it is said in another place, "Draw near to the eternal mountains," and in the second psalm of the steps, "I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains from whence help shall come to me": and to which, after the abomination of desolation shall stand in the holy place, we ought to migrate.

Arise, therefore, and go into captivity, for you have no rest in this land, which has been polluted because of your crimes and cannot be cleansed unless it first keeps a long sabbath. And the reason I say to you, you have no rest here, is that your land is polluted and will be corrupted with a most grievous rotting, namely by captivity, either the Babylonian or the Roman, because it drank the blood of the Lord; for it can be understood according to either truth of the history.

LXX: Arise and walk, for there is no rest for you here. We are commanded to think that there is rest for us in none of the things of the world, but, as if rising from the dead, to strive toward the heights, and to walk after the Lord our God, and to say: My soul has cleaved after you. But if we despise this, and refuse to hear him who says, Arise, you who sleep, and be lifted up, and Christ will enlighten you; we shall indeed slumber, but we shall be deceived, and we shall not find rest, for where Christ does not enlighten the one who rises, what seems to be rest is tribulation.

LXX: Because of uncleanness you have been consumed with corruption. For what we have said, you have been consumed, it can, according to the Greek understanding, sound in the Latin language as you have been corrupted, so that the order is: because of uncleanness you have been corrupted with corruption. This is said to those who, serving the pleasure of the body and lust, corrupt not only their soul but their body as well, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God. He could also have said, because of uncleanness you have been corrupted, and the sense would have been complete even without with corruption. But now, because he says, You have been corrupted with corruption, he seems to me to have said it to distinguish it from a salutary corruption, of which the Apostle also speaks: And though our man who is outside is corrupted, yet he who is inside is renewed from day to day. He who always carries the dying of Jesus in his body, and corrupts the outer man, and subjects the flesh to the rule of the soul, is indeed corrupted, but not with corruption, because his corruption is salutary.

LXX: You have fled with no one pursuing. This is said to those who because of uncleanness have been corrupted with corruption, that through the consciousness of their sins, even without punishments, they do not dare to resist the enemy and fight. Hence too those who are fearful in battle with the enemy, and would terrify the minds of their brothers, are cast out of the camp and driven from the battle line, and in the curses of Leviticus the word is directed to men of this kind: The sound of a flying leaf will pursue you, and you will flee, with no one pursuing. I know that I have read in the commentaries of a certain man expounding the beginning of John the Evangelist, All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing, that he referred what is said, nothing, to wickedness; and again that he interpreted wickedness itself as the devil, and by this step, as it were, understood the very nothing that was made without Christ to be the devil. If, then, wickedness, or the devil, is nothing, and those who have been corrupted with corruption fled with no one, that is, nothing, pursuing, the devil pursued them in the guise of nothing. But if this seems to anyone too forced, and argued against the simplicity of Scripture by an artifice of eloquence rather than by true interpretation, let him follow either the former exposition or one he has found himself.

Would that I were not a man who has the spirit, and that I rather spoke a lie. I will drip for you into wine and into drunkenness, and this people will be the one upon whom it drips. Gathering I will gather Jacob, all of you; I will bring together into one the remnant of Israel alike. I will set him like a flock in the sheepfold, like cattle in the midst of the folds. They will be in tumult from the multitude of men; for he will go up opening the way before them; they will divide and pass through the gate and go out by it; and their king will pass on before them, and the Lord at their head. In this section too the Seventy translators differ much from the Hebrew. Therefore let us first expound according to what has been handed down to us by the Hebrews, and afterwards, if God wills, we shall treat of their translation. O Jewish people, to whom belong the promises, and whose are the covenants and the law, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, to whom, when the Babylonians or the Romans were threatening, I said: Arise and go into captivity, since there is no rest for you in this land, which because of its uncleanness will be corrupted by a final devastation, do not think that I speak willingly and proclaim with joy what I see coming; I would wish myself to be anathema for my brothers, who are Israelites. Would that I spoke from my own mind and did not have the Holy Spirit; and that, counted rather among the false prophets, I alone might perish, and the things I say might not be true; and that so great a multitude might believe in the Son of God, and not be handed over to perpetual captivity. But since I am a prophet, and speak by the Spirit of God, and, sent by the Godhead, proclaim the truth, for this reason I will drip my word for you into undiluted wine, which will make you drunk and cause you to fall. And while I drip, and sing of the evil of the captivity to come, this people will receive my rains, that is, willing or not, it must endure what I say.

LXX: The spirit has set a lie. It has dripped for you into wine and drunkenness, and it will be from the drop of this people; Jacob, to be gathered, will be gathered. It is not, as most suppose, the spirit stood false, but the spirit has set a lie that must be read, which in Greek is said πνεῦμα ἔστησε ψευδὲς, that is, τὸ ψεῦδος (the lie). For just as with putrid wounds, lest a cancer creep on and the dead body feed upon the living flesh, physicians arrest the wound and burn it with a cautery or with a καυστικῷ (caustic) powder, so the Spirit of God put an end to the lie, lest the people of God be any longer subverted by the voices of the false prophets. That spirit, in the New as well as in the Old Testament, wherever it is set down without an addition, is to be understood in a good sense, we have often said, and we shall now set it out in part, lest anyone be in doubt. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, and: If we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit, and elsewhere: But if by the spirit you put to death the works of the flesh, you will live, and in the Old Testament: Giving breath to the people which is upon it, and spirit to those who tread upon it; there is no doubt from what precedes that it signifies the earth. For those who tread on earthly works and put them under their feet surely deserve to receive not an evil but a good spirit. On the contrary, an evil spirit is always read with an addition, as there: But when the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, and in another place: He rebuked the unclean spirit, and: An evil spirit seized Saul, and other things like these. The Spirit of God, therefore, who put an end to the lie in the false prophets, will himself drip for you into wine and drunkenness: the wine that gladdens the heart of man, and the drunkenness with which Noah was made drunk, and of which it is said elsewhere: Eat, friends, and be drunk. Yet all this gladness and drunkenness, in comparison with the wisdom of God, which like a river waters the heavenly Jerusalem, is a drop and a very small droplet. Nor will those hesitate to speak of a drop of the wisdom of God in men who have read of the stone cut from the mountain without hands, and that the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and that the apostles themselves too knew in part and prophesied in part. From this wisdom, then, that is, from the drop of the Jewish people — for he came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel —, Jacob was gathered: everyone who supplants Esau, and snatches away his birthright and blessing, and, before he is born, while still lying in the womb, seizes the heel of his hairy brother.

St. Paul wished that he could be accursed if the people of Israel be saved to God's glory. The man who knows that death is not the end is confident in his readiness to die for Christ. Again, "We rejoice when we are weak, but you are strong." It is no wonder if St. Paul, for the glory of Christ and the conversion of his brother Jews and of the Gentiles, should be ready to be accursed of Christ. Even the prophet Micah wanted to be a liar and to lose the inspiration of the Holy Spirit if the Jews could escape the punishment and the destruction which he had prophesied: "Would that I were not man that had the Spirit, and that I rather spoke a lie." And there was the case of the lawgiver, Moses, who did not refuse to perish with his brothers who were doomed to die but said, "I beseech you, O Lord, this people have sinned a heinous sin; either forgive them this trespass, or, if you do not, blot me out of the book which you have written."

LXX: With all, receiving I will receive the remnant from Israel. When, he says, the people of the Gentiles has believed, and the whole world has been brought to my faith, and the fullness of the Gentiles has entered, then the remnant of Israel too will be saved; not that remnant of which it is written in the book of Kingdoms, I have left for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal, and of which Paul speaks, So also at this present time a remnant according to the election of grace has been saved, and of which this prophet testifies above, And it will be from the drop of this people; Jacob, to be gathered, will be gathered, but that remnant which, after all have been received, will be received by God at the end, and of which it is now said, With all, receiving I will receive the remnant of Israel, so that, according to what is written, God, shutting up all under sin, may have mercy on all.

LXX: I will set their turning away like sheep in tribulation. The remnant from Israel, which I am to receive after I have received all, I will now in the meantime, because they have turned away from me, set in tribulation, and straiten, and make to sit without priest, without altar and without prophet, so that him whom they did not perceive through benefits they may understand through punishments.

LXX: Like a flock in the midst of their resting place; I will set is understood. Not only, he says, will their turning away, by which they turned away from me, be set like a flock in tribulation, but after they have been afflicted and have completed the time of distress, they will be set in rest, that is, in their resting place. And then they will migrate from men and transcend the state of the human condition, and will fulfill what follows: They will leap forth from men. And not only will they leap forth and depart, but all to whom the word of God comes, and who, leaving human vices behind, imitate the way of life of the Godhead, and hear: I said, you are gods, and all sons of the Most High, they will leap forth from men, and will be borne, as it were, to heaven.

And lest you think that I am a prophet of evils only: now indeed the foretold captivity will come; but behold, in me speaks the word of God, which comes to all the prophets. When it is silent, the prophet does not speak; and now it says: I will come, and take a human body, I will be born of a virgin. Or thus: Because I came in the humility of the flesh and you did not believe me, I will come at the consummation of the world in my majesty with the angels and the other powers, and then I will gather all of you, Jacob; then I will bring together into one the remnant of Israel, and join them alike with the people of the Gentiles in my sheepfold; then I will hedge you about with a most firm wall, and so great will be the multitude of believers, and the tumult of the flock set among the folds, that the number of the cattle will be overcome by their abundance. And lest perhaps you think, because I said, I will set him like a flock in the sheepfold, and like cattle in the midst of the folds, that I am speaking of sheep, understand that these sheep are men. For there follows: They will be in tumult from the multitude of men. Tumult is the voice of very many, and the shout of an exceedingly great multitude uttered together, so that we may not suppose it to be the voice of one, but the common voice of all, praising the good shepherd, who has leveled every steep place and made it level with his own foot, so that he, the leader of their journey, is himself the door of paradise, and says, I am the gate; and as he divides the way and goes before, being both the way and the gate, the believing flock will pass through him. And this shepherd is king and Lord. Hence there follows: And their king will pass on before them, and the Lord at their head. But if we wish to take all these things of his first coming, and to refer the whole of Jacob and the remnant of Israel to the apostles and to that multitude from the Jews which was saved in the Acts of the Apostles, the expositor's explanation will not be far from the truth. For these the Lord truly gathered into his sheepfold, and set in the midst of the folds, and made a way before them, and led them into the Church, and he was their king before them, and is the Lord at their head forever.

LXX: Go up through the division. The present place has as it were its own exordium and an apostrophe of prophetic speech to him who desires to be saved, who is commanded to go up through the division. This indeed will become clearer if we take an example from Genesis, where twins are born of Tamar, with whom the patriarch Judah lay: It came to pass, it says, when she was giving birth, and had twins in her womb; in the very birth one put forth his hand, and the midwife tied scarlet on his hand, saying: This one will come out first. But when he had drawn back his hand, at once his brother came out, and she said: Why has the wall been divided for your sake? And she called his name Perez, which is interpreted division. And after this his brother came out, on whose hand was the scarlet, and she called his name Zerah, which in our language means seed, or rising. The elder people, then, in whom was the rising and the seed before the Church was born from the Gentiles, showed its hand in works, and afterwards drew it back, hearing through Isaiah: For your hands are full of blood. And when he had drawn back his hand and ceased from the works of justice, his brother, the people of the Gentiles, came out. And for his sake the hedge was divided, and the Lord and Savior destroyed, so that he might be able to advance, the partition which was in the middle and the wall separating the two peoples; and he made one flock, and created the two in himself into one new man, making peace. Hence too the midwife, speaking prophetically, says to Perez, the younger people: Why has the wall been divided for your sake? If you have understood the example from Genesis, go up, you who desire to be saved, by no means through the old people, which has its hand drawn back, but through the new, in which Christ is the way, in whom Jesus is the gate, through whom we advance to the Father; for he himself dissolved the middle partition and wall, that is, the obscurity of the ancient prophets, and opened all the mysteries of the old law, and, having scattered the difficulty of advancing, revealed the way to the eyes of all, so that whoever wishes to go on may be hindered by no obstacle nor be frightened by the fog of obscurity.

LXX: Before their face they divided and passed through the gate, and went out by it. And their king went out before their face. But the Lord is their leader. For this reason I said to you, Go up through the division, you who have risen with Christ and seek the things that are above: because the angels, or the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, divided what seemed to stand in the way, and made a way for those who wished to enter; and because, the road being open, they took to the road, they not only entered the gate, but also passed through it. And they entered because their king too entered the same gate and opened the way for them, so that they might walk without any difficulty. For the Lord himself is both king and shepherd, both the way and the gate, and he says: I am the gate: whoever enters through me will be saved; he will go in and go out, and will find pasture. Of this gate it is prophesied elsewhere too: This is the gate of the Lord, the just will enter by it. But whoever has entered ought not to remain in the state in which he entered; let him go out to the pastures, so that in entering there is the beginning, and in going out and finding pasture, the perfection of the virtues. He who enters is still in the world, and understands the Creator from the creatures. But he who goes out transcends the whole creation, and, counting as nothing all things that can be seen, will find pasture above the heavens, and will feed on the word of God, and will say: The Lord shepherds me, and I shall lack nothing. This is said so that we might understand the testimony of the Gospel, He will go in and go out, and will find pasture, and what is now said through the prophet, And they passed through the gate, and went out by it; yet this passing through and going out cannot be granted without Christ our king, who is king and Lord. For immediately there is joined: But the Lord will be the leader.