Zechariah 8

And the word of the Lord of hosts came, saying: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I have been jealous for Zion with a great jealousy, and with great indignation I have been jealous for her. Thus says the Lord of hosts: I have returned to Zion, and I will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and Jerusalem shall be called the city of truth, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the sanctified mountain. LXX: And the word of the Lord Almighty came, saying: Thus says the Lord Almighty: I have been jealous for Jerusalem and Zion with a great jealousy, and with very great fury I have been jealous for her. Thus says the Lord Almighty: I will return to Zion, and I will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and Jerusalem shall be called the true city, and the mountain of the Lord Almighty, the holy mountain. That the Lord took Jerusalem, that is, the Israelite people, in the wilderness as a wife, and, as she lay in the blood of idolatry, covered her with his cloak and cherished her with a husband's love, we learn more fully in Ezekiel; and she afterward, eating fine flour and honey and oil, adorned with the most beautiful garments, and having from her husband's bounty every ornament of gems, committed fornication with the Assyrians and Chaldeans; and she heard from the Lord: As a wife despises her husband, so the house of Israel has despised me. But handed over to captivity and mocked by her lovers, and stripped of her former beauty, after she had spread her feet to every passer-by and was defiled to the crown of her head, mindful of her former happiness she says again and again: I will return to my former husband, for it was better with me then than now. And he, receiving her and having her again in marriage, he who had said to her before: I will not be angry with you, and my jealousy has departed from you, now says: I have been jealous for Zion with a great jealousy, and with great indignation I have been jealous for her. As much as I was indignant before, because she was disfigured by many lovers and stained my bed, for which reason I also handed her over to her lovers, not at all as an adulteress under a husband, but as a harlot and a vile slave, prostituted in brothels, so much the more have I now returned to her, because she has done repentance and has built my temple, in which I will dwell in the midst of her. And she shall be called the city of truth, she who before was called the city of falsehood, of which it is also written in Isaiah: Truth slept in her, but now murderers. And the mountain of the Lord Almighty shall also be called the sanctified mountain, on which, the temple being restored, victims are sacrificed and the order of the ceremonies is kept. These things according to the history. But no one doubts that Zion and Jerusalem, watchtower and vision of peace, can be taken as the souls of the faithful, whom, when they have sinned, the Lord in anger hands over to captivity, so that those who had not perceived God through good and prosperous things may perceive him through evil and adverse ones. And when they have done repentance, the Lord will return to Zion, and dwells in the midst of Jerusalem, which we understand to be one and the same city; and in those in whom the falsehoods of sins and vices formerly reigned, Christ, the truth, will afterward abide. And the mountain of the Lord of hosts shall be called the holy mountain, of which it is said: Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, and: Great is the Lord and exceedingly to be praised, in the city of our God, on his holy mountain. Of which Isaiah and Micah cry aloud: In the last of days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of the mountains and lifted high above the hills; and all peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall prosper; and they shall say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob. Of this mountain and of this city the apostle Paul also — if indeed, in receiving the epistle, the Latin tongue does not reject the authority of the Greeks —, discoursing in a sacred speech, says: You have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and many thousands of angels, and the Church of the firstborn, who are written in the heavens.

But if we refer it to the Church, of which it is said: Glorious things are spoken of you, city of God, and: The rush of the river gladdens the city of God; the Most High has sanctified his tabernacle; God in the midst of her shall not be moved, who can doubt that the streets of the Church are the virtues, in which wisdom acts confidently and is proclaimed on the tops of the walls? Hence the psalmist too cries out to the Lord: Your commandment is exceedingly broad. Seeking the Lord and Savior in these streets, the bride says in the Song of Songs: I will rise and go about the city, in the market and in its streets, until I find him whom my soul has loved. So there shall dwell, or sit, old men and old women, of whom it is written — if, however, anyone is pleased to receive the book —: Honorable old age is not that of long time, nor is it reckoned by the number of years. But grey hairs are men's prudence, and a spotless life is old age; of such the Lord also speaks to Moses: Appoint with you seventy elders, whom you yourself know to be elders; for which reason, too, before Abraham no one was called an old man, of whom we read it written: Abraham, failing, died, nourished in a good old age, an old man and full of days. For grey hairs are the glory of old men, of which it is said: A man's grey hairs are his wisdom. These, for the multitude of their days, shall hold rods and staffs in their hands, and shall say to their disciples: What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in a spirit of gentleness and meekness? For he who brings forth wisdom from his lips strikes the senseless man with a rod. And on the contrary: He who spares his staff hates his son, but he who loves him corrects him diligently. And not only old men but old women too shall sit in the streets of Jerusalem, whom Paul describes with apostolic mouth: Honor, he says, widows who are truly widows, and in another place: Let a widow be chosen not less than sixty years of age, who has been the wife of one husband, having testimony in good works; if she has brought up children, if she has received guests, if she has washed the feet of the saints, if she has ministered to those placed in tribulations, if she has pursued every good work.

Thus says the Lord of hosts. Old men and old women shall yet dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and a man's staff in his hand for the multitude of days. And the streets of the city shall be filled with infants and girls, playing in its streets. LXX: Thus says the Lord Almighty: Old men and old women shall yet sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each one holding his rod in his hand, for the multitude of days; and the streets of the city shall be filled with boys and girls, playing in its streets. So great, he says, once I have returned to Zion and am dwelling in the midst of Jerusalem, will be the prosperity of all things and the rest and tranquillity from wars, that, with no enemy remaining, old age in both sexes will reach the furthest span of life and support its trembling limbs with a guiding staff. The streets of the city too shall be filled with boys and girls playing. Now this is wont to happen when there is security and deep peace in the cities, so that playful youth celebrates the joy of the cities with games and dances.

This is that wine with which, when youths and maidens are intoxicated, they at once thirst for virginity. They are filled with the spirit of chastity, and the prophecy of Zechariah comes to pass, at least if we follow the Hebrew literally, for he prophesied concerning virgins: "And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof. For what is his goodness, and what is his beauty, but the corn of the elect, and wine that gives birth to virgins?" They are virgins of whom it is written in the forty-fifth psalm: "She is led to the king, with her virgin companions, her escort, in her train. With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king."

Old men and old women of this sort shall sit in the streets of Jerusalem, and shall hold staffs in their hands, and the streets of the city shall be filled with boys and girls playing. These are the boys and girls, the old men and the young, whom the psalmist exhorts to sing to the Lord, saying: Young men and maidens, old men with the younger, let them praise the name of the Lord. And John, the evangelist and apostle: I write, he says, to you, children, because your sins are forgiven you for the name of the Savior. I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning. And of these Solomon speaks in Proverbs: To give shrewdness to the innocent; and to the younger boy sense and understanding. And again: Hear, children, the instruction of a father, and attend, that you may know understanding. Of these boys, little maidens and girls, Psalm 44 (45) also speaks: There shall be brought, he says, to the king virgins after her, according to what is written: The daughters of Judah exulted and rejoiced in all your judgments, O Lord. And when they hear from the Apostle: Rejoice, again I say rejoice, they will show the gladness of the mind by the gesture of the body, and, leaping in the dance, they will say with David: I will dance and play in the sight of the Lord.

Thus says the Lord of hosts: If it shall seem difficult in the eyes of the remnant of this people in those days, shall it be difficult in my eyes? says the Lord of hosts. LXX: Thus says the Lord Almighty: If it shall be impossible before the remnant of this people in those days, shall it also be impossible before me? says the Lord Almighty. At each of the words and sentences in which prosperity is promised to Israel, and which, because of the greatness of the things, seem almost incredible, the prophet sets forth: Thus says the Lord Almighty; saying this in other words: Do not think that the things I pledge are mine, and do not disbelieve them as though they came from a man; the promises I unfold are God's. He had said above that old women and old men would sit in the streets and, for the length of their time, would hold staffs in their hands; that the streets would be thronged with a multitude of people; that boys and girls would lead dances as on feast days; and that Jerusalem was to be built up and restored to the state of its former happiness. This seemed incredible to the remnant of the people, who had come from the captivity, as they saw the city utterly abandoned, and the ruins of the walls and the burnt houses displaying the hands of Babylon. Therefore he joins to it: If to you who are the remnant of the captive people what I pledge seems either difficult or impossible, that in those days in which Jerusalem is to be built there should be such happiness, will it be either difficult or impossible in the sight of the Lord, who by my mouth promises that these things shall be? For the things that are impossible with men are possible with God. We have seen these things fulfilled in the churches of Christ in the time of persecution, when the ferocity of the persecutors was roused to such madness that they even destroyed our meeting places and handed the divine books over to the flames, and all the islands, mines and prisons were filled with chained flocks of confessors and martyrs. Who at that time would have believed that churches would be built again by those very men who had destroyed them before? Not that they were the same men, but that the same royal power which formerly sat in ambush with the rich, and, as though by a decree of the senate, tried to extinguish the name of Christ, now at the public expense builds the basilicas of the churches and raises their highest gables, so as not only to adorn ceilings and roofs gleaming with gold, but to clothe the walls with veneers of varied marble; and the divine books which formerly it handed over to burning, it now venerates, gilded and purpled and set off with a variety of gems, for the safekeeping of the Roman state.

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Behold, I will save my people from the land of the east and from the land of the setting of the sun. And I will bring them, and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God, in truth and in justice. LXX: likewise. Some of the Jews say that these things were fulfilled after Zerubbabel and Nehemiah, when the temple had been built, the walls of the city raised and the Jewish state restored, by the Maccabees and the various princes who ruled Judea down to Herod. Others relate that they are to be fulfilled at the consummation of the world under the Christ, for whom they wait in vain. But we say that they were both partly fulfilled at that time, that is, after Zerubbabel and Nehemiah, and went before as it were in types and images, when the people was brought back from captivity and dwelt in Jerusalem and was called the people of God, and the Lord was again called their God, by no means in falsehood and iniquity but in truth and justice; and that now, most fully, under the Lord and Savior in the Church, that is, in the true Jerusalem, the promise is fulfilled in deed, especially because it is said: Behold, I will save my people from the land of the east and from the land of the west; of whom the Lord also spoke in the Gospel: Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall recline in the kingdom of heaven with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And long before, the psalmist had promised, saying: The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken, and has called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion the loveliness of his beauty. For there shall come out of Zion one to rescue and to overturn iniquities from Jacob, when from the east and the west incense is offered to the name of the Lord in every place, and a pure sacrifice, by no means in the victims of the Old Testament, but in the holiness of evangelical purity; of which incense we read elsewhere too: Let my prayer be directed as incense in your sight. And what this incense is, the words that follow show: The lifting up of my hands an evening sacrifice. For after there sprang up from the rod of Jesse one who should rule the nations, and in him the nations hoped, and from the east and from the west both the first people and the last believed in the Lord, and there was made one flock, then all the nations were called to gladness and stirred to joy, as the prophet says: Rejoice, you nations, with his people. According to what is written elsewhere: All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. [Zechariah 8:8] Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

And what follows, In truth and justice, signifies that the shadow of the old law departs and the truth of the Gospel comes, by no means in the justice of the Jews, but in Christian justice; for the Lord himself is truth and justice, of whom we read: Truth has risen from the earth, and justice has looked down from heaven. Hence in Psalm 14 (15) too justice and truth are named together: He who walks without blemish and works justice, and speaks truth in his heart.

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Let your hands be strengthened, you who hear in these days these words through the mouth of the prophets, on the day on which the house of the Lord of hosts was founded, that the temple might be built. The Seventy translated "the Lord Almighty" for "the Lord of hosts", the rest likewise. The temple having been built under Zerubbabel and Joshua (for it was in the fourth year of King Darius, on the fourth day of the ninth month, which is called Chislev), all these things are said when the temple had already been raised; the same prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, who had exhorted both the leaders and the people that it might be built, now exhort them, so that from the truth of the earlier things they may lend faith to those which are promised for the future; and that they may strengthen their hands, in no way fearing the onset of the Medes and the plots of the surrounding nations who desire to hinder them; and that they may be strengthened through the mouth of the prophets, from the day on which the foundations of the temple were laid until the day on which the temple was built up on them, and may hear what follows. We explain the history briefly, referring spiritually to the Church whatever is said of Jerusalem and of the temple: in the Church hands are strengthened through good works, and houses are founded when the foundations of faith are laid, and the temple is raised when the multitude of believers is made firm, and lives in such a way that it deserves to be the temple of God.

For before those days there was no wage for men, nor was there a wage for beasts, nor was there peace for him who came in and went out, because of the tribulation; and I let loose all men, each one against his neighbor. LXX: For before those days the wage of men shall not be for gain, and the wage of beasts shall not stand, and for him who goes out and him who comes in there shall be no peace because of the tribulation; and I will send forth all men, each one to his neighbor. The Seventy referred everything to future time, but it is better referred to the past, as it stands in the Hebrew, and the truth of the exposition will bear this out. Before the house of the Lord was founded and the temple of the Lord was built, all your labor was in vain. And men as well as beasts, in farming, in trading and in various works, were frustrated in empty efforts; enemies abroad and sedition at home disturbed the peace, and everywhere there was a standstill of public business because of the frequency of wars and the plots at home, while brother keeps no faith with brother, and all kinship is hostile. Haggai the prophet, embracing this sense in other words, says: And now set your hearts from this day and upward, before stone was laid upon stone in the temple of the Lord. When you came to a heap of twenty measures, and they became ten; and you went in to the winepress to press out fifty flagons, and they became twenty. I struck you with a burning wind and with blight, and with hail all the works of your hands, and there was none among you who would return to me, says the Lord; and this we can take both of the Church and of each one of the believers. For before the foundations of the house of God are laid in us, and we are built up as a temple for God, and hear from the Apostle: You are the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells in you; whatever good work we seemed to have, whether as rational beings, who are called men, or as simple ones, who are called beasts — For men and beasts, he says, you will save, O Lord — has no wage with God; and there are wars and discords in us, and tribulation everywhere, and we are without the peace of Christ, which, as he went to the Father, he left to the apostles; and the Lord's saying is fulfilled in us: A man's enemies are those of his own household. For every brother supplants with supplanting; and every friend walks deceitfully, and a man mocks his brother and does not speak the truth; their tongue has learned to speak a lie. But if we turn to Christ and are made his temple, at once we shall hear the Apostle proclaiming: Each one shall receive his own wage according to his work.

But now I will not deal with the remnant of this people as in the former days, says the Lord of hosts, but there shall be a seed of peace. The vine shall give its fruit and the earth shall give its shoot; and the heavens shall give their dew, and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things. LXX: And now I will not deal with the remnant of this people as in the former days, says the Lord Almighty, but I will show peace. The vine shall give its fruit and the earth shall give its shoots; and heaven shall give its dew, and I will cause the remnant of my people to possess all these things. Before the foundations of the house of God were laid and the temple was built, there was no wage for men, nor a wage for beasts, nor, because of tribulation and distress, peace for those who came in and went out, and all men were at variance among themselves with hostile hatred. But now, since the foundations of the house of the Lord have already been laid and the temple has been built, I will by no means do as I had done before to those who have returned from the Babylonian captivity; but there shall be peace and joy everywhere, and the abundance to come will make up for the drought and famine of the former time. For the vine shall give its fruit, and all the winepresses shall be filled, the earth shall be clothed with glad crops, and with the rains and the night dew watering it, all things shall sprout; all that I have said, I will cause the remnant of my people to possess; the foundations of the house of the Lord have been laid, and the temple has been raised. The prophet Haggai too speaks these same things at the same time, who had said above: I struck you with a burning wind and with blight and with hail all the works of your hands. After the foundations of the temple were laid: Set, he says, in your hearts from this day and into the future, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, from the day on which the foundations of the temple were laid, set it upon your heart. Is the seed already in the shoot, and has the vine and the fig and the pomegranate and the olive tree yet flowered? From this day I will bless, and again I will move heaven and earth alike. Let us also say it another way, following the explanation begun concerning the Church. Before anyone receives the faith of Christ, and the foundations of the Holy Spirit are laid in him, no one will be able to hear: There is a wage for your work. Whether he be a Jew, or a heretic, or a Gentile, whatever good work he has done, unless he has done it in the name of Christ, he will not have the wage of his good work. We see the virgins of the heretics, the rigor of the philosophers, the observance of the Jews in the variety of foods, and yet we say, according to Haggai, that they eat and are not satisfied; they drink and are not made drunk; they are covered and are not warmed; and he who gathers wages puts them into a bag with holes. But after they have received the faith of Christ, both those and these who had been sinners in the Church, and for the greatness of their offenses had been handed over to the captivity of this world and burned by the Babylonian fire, and have heard the Lord preaching: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and sight to the blind, to heal those who are of a contrite heart, and when that which is said through Amos has been fulfilled in them: I will turn back the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the ruined cities, and I will plant them, then in those days justice shall rise, and abundance of peace.

The vine shall give its fruit, the vine that says in the Gospel: I am the vine, you are the branches. Every branch that abides in me, the Father cleanses, that it may bear greater fruit. And when its branches have been cleansed, that is, its shoots and layers, and with budding eyes have begun to promise the hope of fruits to come, so that what is written may be fulfilled: The flowering vines have given forth their fragrance, then the sun of justice has colored the hanging clusters, so that, sent into the winepresses of Psalms 8 and 83 (84), which are entitled for the winepresses, they may be trodden by the foot of the Lord, who comes up from Bozrah, that he may pour out the wine that gladdens the heart of man. The earth too shall give its shoot, not the dry and stony earth full of thorns, but the good earth which yields fruit a hundredfold and sixtyfold and thirtyfold, so that those who have sown in tears may reap in joy. But the heavens too shall give their dew, the heavens of which it is written in Psalm 18 (19): The heavens tell the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the works of his hands. Of these heavens it is said in the song of Deuteronomy: Rejoice, O heavens, with him, that is, with the Lord and Savior, whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son; it is he who speaks with Moses: Let my speech be awaited like the rain, and let my words come down like the dew. For those who were dead in sins shall rise again, and those who lay in whitewashed sepulchres, which are full of dead men's bones, shall be raised up, and those who dwell in the earth shall rejoice. And what the cause of the joy is, the following words show: For the dew which is from you is their healing. And all these things, namely peace and the fruit of the vines, and the abundance of the lands, which has grown up from the dew of the heavens, the remnant of my people shall possess, of whom Isaiah speaks: Unless the Lord Sabaoth had left us a seed, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like Gomorrah. For the remnant according to the election of grace has been saved, not by works, otherwise grace would not be grace.

And it shall be: as you were a curse among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so I will save you and you shall be a blessing: do not fear, let your hands be strengthened. For thus says the Lord of hosts: As I purposed to afflict you, when your fathers had provoked me to anger, says the Lord, and I did not have mercy, so, having turned, I have purposed in these days to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah: do not fear. LXX: And it shall be: as you were in a curse among the nations, house of Judah and house of Israel, so I will save you, and you shall be in a blessing; take courage and be strengthened in your hearts, for thus says the Lord Almighty. As I purposed to afflict you in that your fathers had provoked me to anger, says the Lord Almighty, and I did not repent, so I am ready and have purposed in these days to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah: take courage. He promises these things as to come after the building of the temple: that as the house of Judah and the house of Israel, namely the two and the ten tribes, were among all the nations a curse and a hissing and an example, so, when they have been saved and have returned to Judea, they may be a blessing to all. Do not fear, he says, the adversaries who rebel; be confident that what the Lord promises through me is true, let your hands be strengthened, finish the works which you have begun.

But concerning the Church and each one of the believers it can be understood thus: that in the time of persecution the Christians were a curse and an example to all the nations round about, because they had offended their Lord; and afterwards they are in blessing, when peace has been restored; and all this comes about because the Lord, who had at first been angry, afterwards has mercy on Jerusalem, the vision of peace, and on Judah, which confesses the faith of the Lord. Each of the believers, too, who are cast out of the Church for their vices and are handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that they may learn not to blaspheme, when they have done repentance, will return to their former state and will see the peace of the Lord, and will possess the glory of their confession.

What is written, I did not have mercy, or I did not repent, the heretics slander, as though the Lord were either cruel or changeable, if he either does not repent or repents. For if he has repented, they say that he is changeable; if he has not repented, they assert that he is cruel. Yet God repented that he had anointed Saul as king. And among the Ninevites, to whom he had announced through the prophet: Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown, because they did repentance, he himself too is said to have changed his sentence, not through the fault of an improvident mind, but from the difference in what they do, badly or well. For if they do evil, he threatens; if they have blotted out their former sins, he has mercy; God is not changed, who is one and the same and cannot be changed, but when they have changed from evil to good works, he himself also changes his own decree. He it is who also speaks in Genesis: The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah has been multiplied, and their sins are exceedingly great; I will go down, therefore, and see whether they are fulfilling it according to their cry which has come to me; and if not, that I may know. What he said is this: If they persist in their fury, punishment will not be lacking to the sinners; if they cease from their madness, they will become most worthy of my knowledge. For the Lord knows those who are his. And the Apostle writes to the Galatians: But then, not knowing God. And although God knows all, and nothing past, nor present, nor future is hidden from him, in the Gospel he says that he does not know the wicked: Depart from me, workers of iniquity, I do not know you. Therefore let us take both the knowledge and the repentance, and the wrath and indignation, and all the affections of God, not according to the defect of human speech, but according to the sense of the divine majesty.

The cause of the strengthening is the Lord's promise: For thus says the Lord Almighty, to whom nothing is impossible, who is able to fulfil what he promises: As I devised to afflict you and to hand you over to captivity, because your fathers provoked me to anger, and I did not have mercy, which the LXX translated οὐ μετενόησα, that is, I did not repent, which in Hebrew is written ulo naamathi; but I did not have mercy, so that I might correct you by captivity and train you through every torment and scourge; so now, in the present time, I have purposed to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And it is to be noted that when he is angry, the house of Judah and the house of Israel, that is, all twelve tribes which were handed over to captivity, are a curse among the nations. But after he has purposed to do good, he does not do it to Judah and Israel, that is, to the two and the ten tribes, namely to Jerusalem and Samaria, Oholah and Oholibah; but, leaving Israel in captivity, he does good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And he adds at the end: Do not fear, or take courage, in the sense which we have explained above.

This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. [Zechariah 8:16] Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

These, then, are the words which you shall do: Speak the truth, each one with his neighbor; judge truth and the judgment of peace in your gates; and let none of you devise evil in your hearts against his friend, and do not love a lying oath; for all these are things that I hate, says the Lord. LXX: These are the words which you shall do: Speak the truth, each one with his neighbor, and a peaceable judgment, judge in your gates, and let each one not devise evil against his neighbor in your hearts, and do not love a lying oath, for all these things I hate, says the Lord Almighty. I have promised that I will not deal with the remnant of the people of the captives as in the former days. And as I purposed to afflict them, when their fathers had provoked me to anger, and I did not have mercy, so now, having turned, I have purposed in these days to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. So that my sentence, then, may stand, and the promise may not be made void, do these things which I command: Speak the truth with your neighbors. Let us take neighbor to mean the whole race of men, since we have been begotten of one parent; otherwise, if neighbor is taken to mean kinsman, we must lie to strangers and foreigners. The Apostle says this same thing: Putting away lying, speak the truth, each one with his neighbor. Truth, he says, and the judgment of peace judge in your gates. In judgment let truth and justice come first; then mercy follows. For this is the judgment of peace: that the judge should have as his purpose to make peace between those at variance, according to that saying of the Gospel: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. And what follows, In your gates, agrees with that prophetic saying: They hated him who reproves in the gates, and they abhorred the holy word. And in another place: They shall not be put to shame when they speak with their enemies in the gate. David too used to judge in the gates, when Absalom, promising the truth of judgment, was laying a trap for his father. And it is asked why among the Jews the place of judging was in the gates. So that the farmers should not be forced to enter the cities and undergo some loss, the judges sat in the gates, so that they might hear townsmen and countrymen alike at the going out and coming in of the city, and when the business was finished, each might at once return to his own dwelling.

For indeed there is nothing equal to this virtue. Wouldest thou learn the power of this virtue? "Though Moses and Samuel stood before Me," saith God, "my soul would not regard them." Nevertheless, those whom Moses and Samuel were not able to snatch away from God's wrath, this precept when observed was able to snatch away. Hence it is, that He continually exhorts those to whom He had spoken these things, saying, "Let none of you revengefully imagine evil against his brother in your heart," and "let none of you think of his neighbour's malice." It is not said merely, forego wrath; but retain it not in thy mind; think not of it; part with all thy resentment; do away the sore. For thou supposest that thou art paying him back the injury; but thou art first tormenting thyself, and setting up thy rage as an executioner within thee in every part, and tearing up thine own bowels. For what can be more wretched than a man perpetually angry? And just as maniacs, who never enjoy tranquility, so also he who is resentful, and retains an enemy, will never have the enjoyment of any peace; incessantly raging, as he does, and daily increasing the tempest of his thoughts, calling to mind his words and acts, and detesting the very name of him who has aggrieved him. Do you but mention his enemy, he becomes furious at once, and sustains much inward anguish; and should he chance to get only a bare sight of him, he fears and trembles, as if encountering the worst evils. Yea, if he perceives any of his relations, if but his garment, or his dwelling, or street, he is tormented by the sight of them.

[Burnt offerings] he accordingly did away with, so that the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ might be without restraining yoke and without manmade offering. Again he says to them, "Did I command your fathers when they came out of the land of Egypt to offer me burnt offerings and sacrifices? Rather I did command them this: Let none of you cherish evil in his heart against his neighbor, and do not love a false oath." We ought therefore to understand, if we are not senseless, the kindly intention of our Father, for he speaks to us, desiring us not to err like them but to seek how to make our offering to him. To us he accordingly speaks thus: "A contrite heart is a sacrifice to the Lord; an odor of sweetness to the Lord is a heart which glorifies its maker." We ought, therefore, to watch carefully after our salvation, brothers, lest the evil one, sneaking in among us deceitfully, push us away from our life.

And do not devise evil, he says, against your friends in your hearts; raath, which all with one voice have translated κακίαν, that is, evil, we can take in two ways, both for affliction and for wickedness. For affliction: If there is evil in a city which the Lord has not done, and: Sufficient for the day is its own evil. For wickedness, God speaks in the prophet Jonah: The cry of their evil has gone up to me, and in the Apostle we read: Filled with all iniquity and evil. In both ways, therefore, he who is holy neither afflicts his friend nor devises evil against him in his heart. And do not love, he says, a lying oath; for the Lord commands in the Gospel: But I say to you, do not swear at all, but let your speech be, yes yes, no no; for he who does not swear will never be able to swear falsely. Let him who swears hear what is written: You shall not take up the name of the Lord your God in a vain thing. All these are things that I hate, says the Lord, according to the words of Malachi, who says: And all the things that I hated, you did. In precepts which pertain to life and are plain, we ought not to look for allegory, lest, as the Comic poet says, we seek a knot in a bulrush.

Therefore, when we come to the feast, we must not treat it as the shadows and pictures that Israel had, for they are fulfilled. Nor should we come to it as we would any ordinary secular feast. Oh, no! Let us go quickly to the Lord, who is himself the feast. We must not look at the feast as a time to delight the appetite and overindulge but as a display of virtue. The feasts of the heathen are made up of laziness and greed. They think idleness is the mark of a feast, and when they feast they do the despicable acts of death and hell. Our feasts, on the other hand, are scenes of virtuous activities and the practice of temperance. The prophetic word says it very clearly, "The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months shall become feasts of joy and gladness for the house of Judah."

And the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying: Thus says the Lord of hosts: The fast of the fourth, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth shall be to the house of Judah for joy and for gladness, and for glorious solemn feasts; only love truth and peace. LXX: And the word of the Lord Almighty came to me, saying: Thus says the Lord Almighty: The fourth fast, and the fifth fast, and the seventh fast, and the tenth fast shall be to the house of Judah for joy and for gladness, and for good festivals; — for in Hebrew this is said tobim, that is, ἀγαθάς —, and rejoice, and love truth and peace. To what Sharezer and Regem-melech had asked above through envoys, whether they ought to fast and lament in the fifth month and in the seventh month, as it stands in the LXX, or after the building of the temple to end the fast and lay aside their mourning, the prophet, after many things have been set out in between which they were to do and which they were to hope for, answered in the person of the Lord: The fast of the fourth, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth — for month is understood ἀπὸ κοινοῦ (from the shared word) —, to the house of Judah, and to Jerusalem, shall be turned into festal days and joy. God seeks only truth and peace. On this passage many of our writers have said many things, and things at variance with one another. Some, confessing the obscurity by their silence, have passed over it in their commentaries as though it were a very deep pit, judging it more right to say nothing at all than to say too little. We are therefore compelled to have recourse to the Hebrews, and to seek the truth of knowledge from the spring rather than from the streams, especially since this is not some prophecy of Christ, where they are wont to dodge and to hide the truth with a lie, but the order of a history woven from what precedes and what follows. The fast of the fourth month, which among the Latins is called July, on the seventeenth day of that same month, they think was the day when Moses, coming down from Mount Sinai, threw down and broke the tablets of the law; and, according to Jeremiah, the walls of the city were first breached. In the fifth month, which among the Latins is called August, when because of the spies of the holy land a sedition had arisen among the people, they were ordered not to go up the mountain but for forty years to go round toward the holy land by long and wasteful wanderings, so that, except for two, Caleb and Joshua, all fell in the wilderness. In this month the temple at Jerusalem was burned and destroyed, both by Nebuchadnezzar and, many ages later, by Titus and Vespasian; the city of Bether was taken, to which many thousands of the Jews had fled; the temple was ploughed up by Turannius Rufus to the disgrace of the oppressed nation. And in the seventh, which among us is called October, as we said above, Gedaliah was slain, and the remnant of the tribe of Judah and of Jerusalem was scattered. Let us read Jeremiah. In the tenth month, which among us is called January, because it is the door of the year and its beginning, Ezekiel, set in captivity, heard, and all the people of the captives, that in the fifth month the temple had been overthrown, as we learn most fully in that same prophet. This, then, is the whole of what is said: The days of lamentation and of fasts which until now you have kept in mourning, know that, since I have purposed to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah, they are to be turned for you into gladness and joy and solemn feasts; provided only that you love truth and peace. According to ἀναγωγὴν (anagogy): since we fast when the bridegroom is taken away from us and we do not deserve to have his presence, when the Lord has returned to us and has purposed to do good to us, all sadness shall be turned into joy; and the former famine of the word of God shall be made up for by the presence of his teachings and the fullness of the heavenly bread.

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Until peoples come, and dwell in many cities, and the inhabitants go one to another, saying: Let us go and entreat the face of the Lord, and let us seek the Lord of hosts. I too will go, and many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to entreat the face of the Lord. LXX: Thus says the Lord Almighty: Many peoples shall yet come, and the inhabitants of many cities; and those who dwell in the cities shall be gathered into one city, saying: Let us go to entreat the face of the Lord, and let us seek the countenance of the Lord Almighty. I too will go, and many peoples and very many nations shall come, to seek the face of the Lord Almighty in Jerusalem, and to entreat the face of the Lord. The fast of the fourth, and of the fifth, and of the seventh, and of the tenth month shall be changed into excellent solemn feasts, so much so that the cities of Judea which before were deserted shall be thronged with many inhabitants; and one city shall go to another, and they shall exhort one another and say: Because for these seventy years the ways of Zion mourned, since there was no one to go to the solemn feast, all her gates deserted, and her priests groaning, now that peace has been restored, let us go to Jerusalem, where it is commanded in the law that we should sacrifice victims, and that three times in the year every male of ours should appear in the sight of the Lord; and when one city says to another: Let us go and entreat the face of the Lord, and let us seek the Lord Almighty, the other city will answer: I too will go: at which time many peoples and countless and strong nations shall come, to offer sacrifices in Jerusalem to the Lord of hosts, and to entreat his face. For the Lord draws near to those who do not tempt him, and shows his face to those who are not unbelieving. He who has seen the Son sees the Father also; and the Lord and Savior is the image of the invisible God, not that the Son is visible and the Father invisible, but that when the Son is named, the Father is perceived. For he is by no means Father if he has no Son. Hence he himself also says in the Gospel: Father, I have manifested your name to men. What we said of Jerusalem and Zerubbabel, or of the time after Zerubbabel, is more rightly and more fully referred to Christ and to Jerusalem, which is understood as the Church; and that then from the whole world both peoples and nations will flock together to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord. In a time of persecution also, as we touched on briefly before, let the teachers and priests of the Church boldly promise the captives and the believers that the παροικίαι (sojourning communities) are to be built again, and the tranquillity of peace restored, and the face of the Lord entreated in the churches. We run quickly over what is plain, so as to linger over what is more obscure.

The whole life of a good Christian is a holy longing to make progress.

Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days, in which ten men of all the tongues of the nations shall take hold, and they shall take hold of the hem of a man who is a Jew, saying: We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you. LXX: Thus says the Lord Almighty: In those days, if ten men of all the tongues of the nations take hold, and grasp the hem of a man who is a Jew, saying: We will go with you, because we have heard that God is with you. Some of the Jews say that these things were fulfilled under Zerubbabel and after Zerubbabel. Others put them off to a future time, when they hope that the Christ will come. But we understand them both more rightly and more truly of the coming of the Lord and Savior, when he was born of the virgin Mary. In short, it is written: Until peoples come? When it says until, it signifies not the present time, in which Zerubbabel and Joshua were, but the future, when many peoples and strong nations shall come, to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to entreat the face of the Lord. At that time, therefore, and in those days, ten men of all the tongues of the nations shall take hold of the hem of a man who is a Jew, saying: We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you. And in Isaiah we read: Seven women shall take hold of one man, saying: We will eat our own bread and be clothed with our own garments; only let your name be called upon us, take away our reproach. Those, then, who there are called seven women, that is, Churches, whose number is contained also in the apostle Paul — for he writes to seven churches, to the Romans, to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, to the Colossians, to the Thessalonians. And in the Apocalypse of John the Lord, girded with variety and with purest gold, walks in the midst of the seven lampstands, that is, of the churches of the Ephesians, the Smyrnaeans, the Pergamenes, the Thyatirans, the Sardians, the Philadelphians, the Laodiceans —, are now named ten in the prophet Zechariah, whom the Lord also sought, so that, if he had found them in Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, he might deliver them from destruction. For the letter iota, with which the name of the Savior takes its beginning, signifies the number ten not only among the Greeks but also among the Hebrews. And by this mystical language it is shown that all who are counted under the name of Christian, whom the Lord also says he left, seven thousand, in the time of the persecution of Jezebel and the flight of Elijah, who did not bow the knee before Baal, and who have come to the measure of the perfect man out of all tongues and nations, shall take hold of the hem of a man who is a Jew, that is, of the Lord and Savior, of whom it is also said in the psalm: Judah is my king, and: Judah, your brothers shall praise you, and again: 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. For there shall be the root of Jesse, and he who shall rise up to rule the nations, in him the nations shall hope. And when they have taken hold of him, they will long to cling to his footsteps, since God is with him. Or else, whoever out of all tongues and nations have believed shall take hold of a man who is a Jew, the apostles who are of the Jews, and shall say: Let us go with you; for we have heard through the prophets, and have learned by the voice of all the Scriptures, that the Son of God, Christ, God and Lord, is with you. Where the prophecy is most manifest, and the coming of Christ and of his apostles and the faith of all the nations are proclaimed, let us seek nothing further. As for our having said that the number seven thousand pertains to the name of Christians, reckon in Greek ἑπτάκεις χιλίους (seven thousand) and χριστειανούς (Christians), and you will find the same number and sum, that is, one thousand nine hundred and forty-one. But they also refer to the mystery of this number the parable of the ten virgins in the Gospel, whom we interpret of the senses of the flesh and of the spirit, if they have prepared the oil of good works for their lamps, and have doubled the number five, so as to be holy, according to the Apostle, in body and in spirit. So too the ten cities, which he who has governed the senses of the body excellently shall receive in the future, the number doubled.

God will make the return of the remainder so conspicuous that many people who are from different nations and have shared that calamity will perceive God's care for the people. They will lay hold of any one of them and use him as a guide for a return to Jerusalem, since everyone is sufficiently stirred up to that end from the clear realization that God is with them on the basis of the incredible deeds done for them. The phrase "ten men," note, here too refers not to number but has the meaning of many.