Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
First, Olympiodorus, Paschasius, and Bonaventure think that Jeremiah in this chapter speaks literally of Christ and Christ's Passion. But Jeremiah mourns in these Lamentations the literal calamity of his own time: therefore he mourns Christ's afflictions and crosses only allegorically. Second, Theodoretus, Rabanus, Hugh, St. Thomas, Lyranus, and Vatablus think this chapter is the voice of the people, or of any Jew, whether in Jerusalem or in Babylon, mourning the common disaster. Third and most plainly, as the words indicate, Origen, Eusebius, Rupert, the Hebrews, and Vatablus consider that Jeremiah here mourns his own calamities, especially those by which, during the time of the siege, he was afflicted by his own citizens, Jeremiah 20 and following. For this is what he says at the beginning of the chapter: I am the man who sees my poverty; and verse 14: I have become, he says, a derision to all my people; whence he also bewails his prison and chains, verses 5, 6, 7, 9, and his want and hunger, verses 15, 16, 17, and his beatings and blows, verses 3, 12, 30; yet at the same time in himself he represents and mourns the affliction of his people, as I shall say at verses 7, 8, 10. Then, at verse 21, he raises hope in God, showing the usefulness of tribulation. Fourth, at verse 40, he exhorts his citizens to turn back to God. Finally, at verse 50, bewailing his own sufferings and those of his citizens, he calls down similar evils upon his enemies.
Vulgate Text: Threni 3:1-66
1. I am the man who sees my poverty under the rod of His indignation. 2. He has driven me, and brought me into darkness, and not into light. 3. Only against me has He turned, and turned again His hand all the day long. 4. He has made old my skin and my flesh, He has broken my bones. 5. He has built around me, and has surrounded me with gall and toil. 6. In dark places He has set me, like the dead of old. 7. He has walled me in so that I cannot go out: He has made heavy my chains. 8. Even when I cry out and plead, He has shut out my prayer. 9. He has blocked my ways with hewn stones, He has overturned my paths. 10. He has become to me a bear lying in wait, a lion in hiding. 11. He has turned aside my paths, and broken me: He has made me desolate. 12. He has bent His bow, and set me as a target for the arrow. 13. He has sent into my loins the daughters of His quiver. 14. I have become a derision to all my people, their song all the day long. 15. He has filled me with bitterness, He has made me drunk with wormwood. 16. And He has broken my teeth one by one, He has fed me with ashes. 17. And my soul has been cast away from peace, I have forgotten prosperity. 18. And I said: My end has perished, and my hope from the Lord. 19. Remember my poverty, and my transgression, the wormwood, and the gall. 20. I will be ever mindful and remember, and my soul will waste away within me. 21. These things I shall recount in my heart, therefore I will hope. 22. The mercies of the Lord, that we are not consumed: because His compassions have not failed. 23. They are new each morning, great is Your faithfulness. 24. The Lord is my portion, said my soul: therefore I will wait for Him. 25. The Lord is good to those who hope in Him, to the soul that seeks Him. 26. It is good to wait in silence for the salvation of God. 27. It is good for a man when he has borne the yoke from his youth. 28. He will sit alone, and be silent: because He has lifted it upon himself. 29. He will put his mouth in the dust, if perhaps there may be hope. 30. He will give his cheek to the one who strikes him, he will be filled with reproaches. 31. For the Lord will not cast off forever. 32. For if He has rejected, He will also have mercy according to the multitude of His mercies. 33. For He has not humbled from His heart, nor cast off the children of men. 34. To crush under His feet all the prisoners of the earth. 35. To turn aside the judgment of a man before the face of the Most High. 36. To subvert a man in his cause, the Lord has not willed. 37. Who is this who has spoken and it came to pass, when the Lord did not command it? 38. From the mouth of the Most High shall there not proceed both evil and good? 39. Why has a living man murmured, a man for his sins? 40. Let us search our ways, and seek, and return to the Lord. 41. Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to the Lord in heaven. 42. We have acted wickedly, and provoked to wrath: therefore You are inexorable. 43. You have covered Yourself in fury, and struck us: You have killed, and not spared. 44. You have set a cloud before You, so that prayer may not pass through. 45. You have made me an uprooting and a rejection in the midst of the peoples. 46. All our enemies have opened their mouths against us. 47. Fear and the snare have come upon us, prophecy and destruction. 48. My eye pours down streams of water, at the destruction of the daughter of my people. 49. My eye is afflicted, and does not cease, because there is no rest, 50. until the Lord looks down and sees from heaven. 51. My eye has despoiled my soul because of all the daughters of my city. 52. My enemies have hunted me down like a bird, without cause. 53. My life has sunk into the pit, and they have placed a stone over me. 54. Waters have overflowed above my head: I said: I have perished. 55. I called upon Your name, O Lord, from the lowest pit. 56. You heard my voice: do not turn Your ear from my sighing and my cries. 57. You drew near on the day when I called upon You: You said: Do not fear. 58. You have judged, O Lord, the cause of my soul, the redeemer of my life. 59. You have seen, O Lord, their iniquity against me: judge my judgment. 60. You have seen all their fury, all their thoughts against me. 61. You have heard their reproach, O Lord, all their thoughts against me; 62. the lips of those rising against me, and their plots against me all the day long. 63. Behold their sitting down and their rising up; I am their song. 64. You will repay them, O Lord, according to the works of their hands. 65. You will give them a shield of the heart, Your labor. 66. You will pursue them in fury, and destroy them from under the heavens, O Lord.
Allegorically, Jeremiah here afflicted represents Christ suffering and with Him any martyr. See Denis the Carthusian applying each detail to Him.
Tropologically, let the pastor of a people, in a besieged city, imitate these words and laments of Jeremiah; and let any holy person do so, in the common calamity and punishment of the state. Thus St. Augustine, says Possidonius, when Africa was being devastated by the Vandals, wept and lamented continually, and when his city of Hippo was besieged by them for 14 months (whence after his death it was captured by them and burned), in the third month of the siege, he fell from grief into a fever: and he prayed to the Lord, either to free the city, or to make His servants strong to endure His will, or to take him from this world. This third thing happened to him: for he died during the siege. Near death he continually read the penitential Psalms of David, and wept abundantly, and said that even praised Christians and priests ought not to depart from the body without worthy and fitting penance. Let such people therefore read these Lamentations of Jeremiah.
Verse 1: I am the man,
1. I am the man, — as if to say: I, Jeremiah, see, that is, I experience and endure, no small part of this common disaster in which I am involved along with my citizens. For Isaiah, Zephaniah, and other prophets predicted this future disaster, but did not see it, having already died before: Ezekiel was alive, but was far away, dwelling in Babylon; only Jeremiah, being present, beheld the disaster of Jerusalem, and was a great part of it, not on account of his own ruin, but on account of the slaughter of his citizens and fatherland, which continually struck his eyes. For man the Syriac translates giant, by which name the Syrians are accustomed to call God, on account of His immense strength. Hence in the abstract they call Him מנתיח gaborutho, as if to say: Gianthood itself, that is, immense fortitude itself, and the mightiest immensity. See what was said on Isaiah, chapter LVII, 15.
Poverty. — The Hebrew עני oni you may more fully translate, with the Chaldean and others, as affliction; and among the Latins also, affliction and misery are called poverty by synecdoche. Mystically St. Bernard, Sermon 2 On the Lord's Supper: "The second course (at Christ's table), he says, is spiritual poverty, which three things constitute: the laying down and contempt of possessions; the lowliness and abasement of oneself; the renunciation of one's own will in all things. Voluntary poverty, therefore, which is held without possession or desire, the more unencumbered it is, the more secure it is. It is the guardian and teacher of virtues: just as conversely the immoderate abundance of things is the root of vices. It is expedient to be naked when wrestling with the devil, who is naked. The naked athlete fights more vigorously; the swimmer strips to cross the river; the traveler, having cast aside his burdens, runs well. Noble therefore is the title of voluntary poverty, which Christ taught by word: Blessed, He says, are the poor in spirit, etc. He consecrated it by example; for He had no house of His own in which to lay His head, and in which to eat the Passover with His disciples; nor had He anything of His own from which to pay tribute. He commended it also by prophetic utterance, saying: I am the man who sees my poverty." He adds examples: "The first after Christ to hand down the example of this poverty were the Apostles, when in the primitive Church the multitude of believers had one heart and one soul, and all things were common. This was prescribed for the Religious followers of the Apostles; which seeks as its companion poverty of spirit, so that one may think and judge humbly and abjectly of oneself," etc.
Under the rod of indignation, — under the chastisement by which, offended and angered by my sins and those of my citizens, He chastises me Jeremiah along with my Jews. He alludes to the watchful rod, Jeremiah I, 11.
His, — the enemy's. So Olympiodorus. Better others say, His, namely God's; for he continually emphasizes His indignation throughout these Lamentations, and Jeremiah, afflicted by Him, continually turned Him over in his mind, in deed, and in speech. Thus the bride, Song of Songs I, 1: "Let him kiss me, she says, with the kiss of his mouth." Who? Surely the bridegroom, whom alone I turn over in my mind, and whom I think others likewise turn over.
Note: Pastors of their flocks, and saints, are accustomed to attribute the common disaster of the state to their own sins out of humility. Thus Jeremiah did here; thus Daniel did, chapter IX, and the Maccabees, Book II, chapter VII.
Thus St. Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, going to meet Attila as he approached, and asking who he was, and hearing: I am Attila, king of the Huns, the scourge of God, said: "And who among mortals can resist the scourge of God? I am a wolf, a scatterer of the Lord's flock; come therefore, be the scourge of my fig tree, and use it, as God permits." He therefore ordered the gates to be opened, and holding Attila's bridle, he led him on foot with his troops through the middle of the city. Attila, as if thunderstruck, having gone out by another gate, left the city untouched. So Nicolaus Olanus in his Attila, chapter IX.
Allegorically, Christ is the man, in Hebrew גבר gaber, that is, the strong one, of whom Jeremiah said, chapter XXXI, 22: "A woman shall encompass a man." For this man, when Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah, and all the other prophets excused themselves from saving Israel, alone took our affliction manfully upon Himself, and made it His own.
Tropologically, this man is Adam, "who, driven from paradise, lost the true delights of interior joy," says St. Gregory, Book XXXIV of the Morals, chapter II.
Verse 2: He has driven me.
2. He has driven me. — In Hebrew it means, He led and led away.
Into darkness, — into the dark prison, into which Jeremiah was cast by Pashhur and other Jews, and in it he spent his life for three years, Jeremiah XXXIII and XXXVIII. Again, darkness signifies adversity, light prosperity. Psalm LIV, 6: "Fear and trembling came upon me, and darkness covered me;" Job XVII, 12: "After darkness I hope for light," as if to say: After clouds comes the sun, after mourning I hope for joy.
And not into light, — as if to say: Into sheer Cimmerian darkness, lacking all light. For the negation added to the affirmation signifies this amplification, as in chapter II, verse 17: "He has destroyed and not spared," that is, He has utterly destroyed, without any mercy. Ezekiel XVIII, 21: "He shall live and shall not die," that is, he shall certainly live; Isaiah XXXVIII, 1: "You shall die and shall not live," that is, you shall certainly die; John I, 20: "He confessed and did not deny," that is, plainly and explicitly, without any denial or evasion, he confessed that he was not the Christ.
Verse 3: Only against me has He turned, and turned again His hand ...
3. Only against me has He turned, and turned again His hand all the day long, — as if to say: God through all the days has done nothing else to me than continually strike me with blows and slaps. It is a metaphor from those who strike someone, who continually deal slaps with the hand, now striking one cheek, now the other in turn, and thus doubling the blows, and turning and turning again the face, like a smith who turns the iron, hammers and hammers again, until he shapes it into the form he desires.
Thus the bride, Song of Songs I, 1: "Let him kiss me, she says, with the kiss of his mouth." Who? Surely the bridegroom, whom alone I turn over in my mind, and whom I think others likewise turn over.
Verse 4: He has made old my skin
4. He has made old my skin — by continual suffering, hunger, and beatings, He has worn away the youthful beauty in me, and has brought the wrinkles of old age upon my skin: whence also my bones, by which the body is supported, that is, my strength has been destroyed and as it were crushed. So Origen, St. Thomas, Dionysius. Thus the Psalmist says, Psalm CXVIII, 83: "I have become like a wineskin in the frost;" for a wineskin, exposed to frost, tends to contract and wrinkle and as it were grow old.
Verse 5: He has built around me,
5. He has built around me, — namely a rampart and siege-works, with which the Chaldeans enclosed Jerusalem. So the Chaldean, Origen, Theodoretus.
Second and better, Origen and Rupert supply the word prison, as if to say: God fashioned a prison for me, and shut me up in it. This is clear from the following verse where he says: "In dark places He has set me."
Third, Maldonatus and Sanchez not unreasonably explain it metaphorically: "He has built around me," that is, He has surrounded me with toil and gall, as he immediately explains, that is, on every side He has surrounded me with dangers and labors, like a city that is encircled by walls; so that I cannot flee from one evil without running into another.
He has surrounded me with gall and toil, — that is, with bitterness and exhaustion in so many labors, persecutions, and sufferings. The Hebrew can also be rendered: He has surrounded the head and suspended it, namely by a chain and a yoke, which was cast upon Jeremiah's neck; third, the Chaldean translates: He has surrounded the city, He has uprooted the heads, that is, the leaders of the peoples; fourth, the Hebrews understand Nebuchadnezzar by gall, and Nebuzaradan by toil, who burned the city and temple. But the first sense is the plainest.
Allegorically, Christ in His Passion was given gall to drink, and was wearied by so many journeys, blows, and the cross.
Verse 6: In dark places He has set me, like the dead of old,
6. In dark places He has set me, like the dead of old, — given over to death and oblivion forever, as if to say: I lay in a dark and foul prison, just as the dead are accustomed to lie in the grave forever, of whom it is said in Psalm XLVIII, 12: "Their graves are their homes forever." Hence among the Persians, the prison into which those about to die were cast was called lethe, that is, oblivion; among the Romans, barathrum, from its depth and mire. Thus Ezekiel, chapter XXXVII, calls the Jews captive in Babylon the dead, and calls Babylon their grave; and consequently the return from captivity to their homeland and freedom, he calls a resurrection: for just as civil servitude is death, so prison is a grave, and the imprisonment of a citizen is his burial.
Verse 7: He has walled me in.
7. He has walled me in. — In Hebrew it is גדר gadar, that is, He has blocked up as with a hedge over me, as if to say: God has enclosed me Jeremiah on every side with prison and chains, so that I cannot escape anywhere. So the Chaldean, Origen, Hugh, Dionysius.
Second, Rabanus and St. Thomas understand this of the people besieged in Jerusalem; Theodoretus, Rupert, and Lyranus of those captive in Babylon. For Jeremiah here so mourns his own calamity that he simultaneously also mourns the disaster of the people: for this afflicted him as if it were his own. Hence some words are more fitting for Jeremiah, others more for the people, such as what he says here: "He has walled me in;" and verse 5: "He has built around me."
Tropologically St. Gregory, Homily 12 on Ezekiel: "We have, he says, as chains the very weakness and corruption of our mortality; but when tribulation and groaning are added to us, those very chains of nature are made heavier."
Verse 8: When I cry out (from the Hebrew it can be translated: Whe...
8. When I cry out (from the Hebrew it can be translated: When I was crying out); He has shut out, — or, as the Septuagint has, He has blocked, namely the windows, the way, and the gates of heaven, so that my prayer may not reach God, as if to say: God is inexorable toward me, as he says in verses 42 and 44. Hence it is clear that these things pertain not so much to the person of Jeremiah as to the people, whom he here represents. For God was favorable and gracious to Jeremiah, but inexorable to the people: whence He forbade Jeremiah to pray for them, chapter XIV, verse 11. This is indeed the extreme calamity of one who is afflicted and besieged on every side by enemies: that he should have both God and men hostile to him, and heaven should seem to him brazen, just as the earth is iron.
Verse 9: He has blocked my ways with hewn stones,
9. He has blocked my ways with hewn stones, — as if to say: In the prison I am held as if blocked in by hewn stones, so that I cannot go away or escape by any path: hence He has overturned my paths, that is, the paths of escape; He has subverted them, that is, He has taken away every means and way of getting out, so that no escape lies open anywhere, no avenue of slipping away. For subverted, Castro translates, blinded, that is, He made the paths blind, that is, He hid the ways of escape, so that I cannot find them. But in Hebrew it is not עור ivver, that is, He blinded, but עיין ivva, that is, He curved, cast down, overturned; Vatablus translates, He perverted. By this phrase he signifies that God has cut off from both the Jews and Jeremiah every hope of help and escape, both from prison and still more from the impending destruction of the city and nation. This phrase denotes the extreme anguish and desperation of one who is placed in straits from which he cannot struggle free. Thus Job, chapter XIX, verse 8: "He has fenced in my path, he says, and I cannot pass."
Verse 10: He has become to me a bear lying in wait.
10. He has become to me a bear lying in wait. — He calls God, justly raging against himself and the Jews, a bear and a lion; because he attributes to God what the enemies, lying in wait for and attacking Jeremiah like bears and lions, did with God's permission, and to them he was like a target at which they all hurled their arrows. So Rupert, as if to say: God, who before was my father and protector, has now in the Chaldeans become to me a bear and a lion. In the bear is noted the savagery of tearing apart and devouring; in the lion also the unconquerable spirit, the terror, and the strength. Hence Scripture usually joins these two animals when it signifies a terrible slaughter, as in Proverbs chapter XXVIII, 12; Hosea, chapter XIII, 8; Amos chapter V, 19.
Note: Jeremiah speaks here in the name not only of himself, but also of his fatherland and his citizens; to whom he had been given as pastor, prophet, and herald. Hence Theodoretus, the Chaldean, and others explain these things of Jerusalem, as if to say: The Chaldeans, like bears and lions, lying in wait for Jerusalem, captured it, devastated it, and hurled all their weapons at it as at a target.
Second, some understand Nebuchadnezzar by the bear, and Titus by the lion. For the destruction inflicted on the Jews by Titus and the Romans was more grievous and cruel than that by the Chaldeans. But all these things properly pertain to the destruction by the Chaldeans: nevertheless the vision of the Prophet, or of the Holy Spirit, directed all these things further to the destruction by the Romans. Just as therefore Nebuchadnezzar was a bear and lion to the Jews, so also was Titus.
Verse 11: He has turned aside my paths.
11. He has turned aside my paths. — Rightly: for this is what the Hebrew סורר sorer signifies, which descends from סור sur, that is, he departed, with the letter resh doubled, and means, he turned aside, caused to withdraw, overturned, subverted, as if to say: Just as a bear and lion attacking a man on a path trip him up, overturn him, and kill him: so also God, when I Jeremiah wanted to flee from Jerusalem by hidden paths, seized me through Pashhur and the Jews, overthrew me, and thrust me into prison: in the same way He caused my people, namely the Jews, fleeing from captured Jerusalem through the paths of the royal gardens, to be seized by the Chaldeans, overthrown, and killed or taken captive. Hence in explanation, he adds: "He has broken me."
Second, "my paths," that is, He has subverted all my actions, that is, He has turned them to a different outcome than the one I intended; He has caused everything to go badly for me. So Maldonatus.
Third, the Chaldean, deriving sorer from סיר sir, that is, thorns, translates: He has hedged my paths with thorns, so that if I wish to advance, I run into thorns, and am pricked and bloodied by them.
He has broken me, — as if to say: He has shaken, battered, and crushed my entire self from head to toe, from skin to bone.
He has made me desolate. — So also the Septuagint, me, namely Jerusalem; or rather the soul of Jeremiah: whence in Hebrew it is masculine שמם scomem, that is, He has made me desolate.
Verse 12: He has bent His bow,
12. He has bent His bow, — that is, I was exposed to the weapons of all evils, God has pierced me with all sufferings, as with His javelins.
He has set me as a target for the arrow, — He has made me a mark at which He and all others aim their weapons, in order to pierce it. For target the Hebrew is מטרה mattara, which word signifies not only a target but also a guard-post, that is, a prison; as if Jeremiah were fixed in it like a target, to be pierced with arrows. Hence the Arabic of Antioch translates: He has made me an obstacle (the Alexandrian has, an adversary) for His arrow.
We read of trained and skilled archers that they would hit the target with every shot. Such were formerly the inhabitants of the Balearic Islands, who so trained their boys in the art of throwing that they would not give them food unless they first struck it with an arrow: and the Benjaminites, who could also hit a mark when throwing a javelin, Judges XX, 46. The Cretan archer Alcon is celebrated, who, when he saw the son of Phalarus encircled by a serpent, struck the serpent with so sure a blow that he did not touch the boy's body. Of whom Virgil says, Eclogue 5: Either you have the praises of Alcon, or the quarrels of Codrus.
The Emperor Domitian, according to Suetonius, so directly struck the heads of whatever wild beasts with an arrow that with two throws he would make as it were two horns; sometimes, when a boy stood far off presenting his outstretched right hand as a target, he balanced his arrows with such art that he hit all the spaces between the fingers without touching the fingers themselves. Similar is what the brass-hammerers of Dinant do, who between two thumbs display and present the spot for the hammer to strike, which the strikers hit with so sure and continuous a blow that in human memory, in so great a number, scarcely any has been found who erred and touched and injured the thumb of the one holding the brass. The Parthians, while fleeing, would certainly pierce the enemy behind them with arrows, as Virgil and Lucan attest: And the Parthian trusting in flight and turning his arrow. And: Swifter than the Parthian and the arrow sent behind his back.
Much more does God certainly reach and strike the target He wishes, and whomever He wishes to mortify, He directly touches in that which the person loves and desires, and either takes it away, or tortures him in it. Thus He mortified Jacob, who loved his Joseph too much, by allowing Joseph to be sold and carried away. Thus He afflicted David in Absalom, Abraham in the sacrifice of Isaac, and Eli in his sons.
Verse 13: He has sent into my loins (that is, into my tender flesh ...
13. He has sent into my loins (that is, into my tender flesh and body: it is a synecdoche) the daughters of His quiver, — that is, the arrows which are contained in the quiver, as daughters in a mother's womb. Thus Horace, Ode 22, Book II, calls it: "A quiver pregnant with arrows." By the name of quiver he signifies God's providence, judgment, and vengeance, from which He sends forth weapons, that is, scourges, "into my loins," that is, my desires and longings, and my most intimate and secret parts (for such in a person are the loins), because He does all things contrary to my wishes and will; not to destroy me, but to correct, instruct, and perfect me. So Origen and Rabanus. Hence the Arabic of Alexandria translates: He has cast His arrow into my loins; the Arabic of Antioch: His arrow has now entered into my loins.
Second, he names the loins to signify the greatest pain; for this is usually felt most keenly in the loins. Therefore the loins in hidden language are as it were the seat of divine correction and chastisement, according to Psalm XXV, 2: "Try my loins;" and Jeremiah XII, 2: "You are near to their mouth, but far from their loins." Hence Psalm XV, 7, says: "Even through the night my loins have rebuked me;" and Job XVI, 14: "He has wounded, he says, my loins (which are the seat of the kidneys), and poured out my entrails upon the ground." "The quiver of God, says Rabanus, is the hidden judgment or counsel of God: He casts an arrow from the quiver when from the hidden counsel of judgment He sends forth an open sentence: for we all recognize what is scourged; but from what cause the scourge comes we do not know. But when after the scourges, correction of life follows or does not follow, the reason of the counsel is revealed: for some He corrects and amends by striking, others He makes harder, so as to condemn them more justly, as Pharaoh."
Morally, let Christ on the cross say this with Jeremiah, St. Sebastian, and any Christian: "He has bent His bow, and set me as a target for the arrow; He has sent into my loins the daughters of His quiver." For thus Christ "was set as a sign that will be contradicted," and as a target which Jews and Gentiles vied in piercing, Luke II, 34. Thus Job, chapter XVI, 13: "I, he says, who was once wealthy, was suddenly crushed, etc., He has set me as a target: He has surrounded me with His spears;" and St. Paul, I Thessalonians III: "Let no one, he says, be disturbed by these tribulations: for you yourselves know that we are appointed to this," as a target, to be pierced through by javelins. The same in I Corinthians IV: "We have been made, he says, a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men, etc.: even to this hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, etc.: we have been made the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things until now;" and II Corinthians XI: "In many labors, he says, in prisons more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths often," etc.
First, let the faithful person know that the whole life of a good Christian is a cross, whether internal or external, whether sent or voluntarily assumed; and one should expect and desire this daily: for daily some arrow will be shot either from God, or from the devil, or from the flesh, or from friends, or from enemies, or from slandering tongues. Thus diseases are the arrows of God. An arrow in the feet is gout, an arrow in the side is pleurisy, an arrow in the eye is a cataract, an arrow in the head is dizziness, an arrow in the stomach is indigestion; arrows in the ear are insults and curses; arrows in the soul are movements of pride, anger, lust, etc., which the devil stirs up; arrows in one's goods are losses of wealth and fortune.
Thus Emperor Frederick III, hearing that many curses were being hurled against him by wicked men, turning to his nobles said: "Do you not know that princes are exposed as a target for arrows? For lightning strikes very tall towers, but passes over low roofs."
Second, let the person know that these arrows, from wherever they come, are arrows of the Lord, that is, of His providence and love toward us; not signs of hatred, not of malevolence. God shoots us with arrows, therefore, first, to lay us low when we kick back and are proud, and to subject us to Himself; thus He shot Paul with an arrow when He struck him down and converted him. Second, to chastise and expiate past sins; thus He shot Jeremiah and the Jews with arrows here. Third, to kill the desires of our flesh; thus He shoots the lustful with diseases, and teaches them to fight against desires and to overcome them. Fourth, to bring a person to perfect patience, that is, to holiness and perfection. "For patience has a perfect work," says St. James, chapter I, 4: thus He shot Job with arrows. Fifth, to make a person similar to and close to Christ. For God has determined to show His virtue and glory in this world through the strong patience of the saints: whence, coming into the world, He chose no other place for Himself than on the cross. Do you wish, then, to find God? Seek the cross. If you are on the cross, rejoice: for you have God with you, for He Himself says: "I am with him in tribulation: I will deliver him, and glorify him." Thus, when St. Antony after a fierce struggle with demons asked Christ: "Where were You, good Jesus, where were You?" the Lord answered him: "Antony, I was here, but I was waiting to see your contest." Sixth, to transfer a person from earthly desires and thoughts to heavenly things, and to prepare him for heaven.
Third, let the Christian know that daily he ought to offer himself to the cross, and stand firm, as a target for the arrow; indeed daily ask for some cross from God, as St. Francis Xavier used to do, who in his constant labors, persecutions, and lack of resources prayed to God not to free him from these unless He sent greater ones; for it is the mark of a noble spirit to glory in the cross with St. Paul. Therefore, so that we may be prepared for any adversity, let us consider that we have been placed here by God as a target for the arrow, and let us resolve with steadfast spirit that we will receive all of God's arrows; and therefore let us fix our mind through thought, hope, and love on heaven and God: for one who dwells in heaven with the Blessed despises all these lowly goods and evils, as trifling and of no consequence. Therefore let us transfer our spirit from earth and from the body to the angels; let our conversation be in heaven. Let us dwell on earth only in body, so that these arrows strike only the body, not the soul. Let the soul here conduct itself like an angel in an assumed body: for an angel feels none of the goods or evils of the assumed body, because the angel is separate from the body and dwells in heaven. Let the holy soul do likewise: for when it has done this, and through resignation and patience has risen above the cross, it will feel no cross, and will often be freed from it. For God sends the cross precisely in order to bring us to patience and victory, and once that is achieved, He withdraws all war and the cross.
Verse 14: I have become a derision to all my people, their song al
14. I have become a derision to all my people, their song all the day long.
Verse 15: He has filled me with bitterness, He has made me drunk wi...
15. He has filled me with bitterness, He has made me drunk with wormwood. — He says the same as in the previous half-verse: "He has filled me with bitterness;" and verse 5: "He has surrounded me with gall and toil;" whence verse 19, St. Jerome joins gall and wormwood, and by these understands straits, necessities, the magnitude of evils: Theodoretus understands a bitter and harsh life; and this serves for their purification and medicine, says Hugh. For wormwood serves this purpose.
Note: For filled, the Hebrew is הטביעני hisbiani, that is, He has saturated me, as the Septuagint translates, with bitterness, as with myrrh. For myrrh in Hebrew is called מר mor: hence the Hebrew מר cor and mara, and the Latin amara and amaritudo (bitterness). For the bitterness of myrrh holds first place among bitter things: whence if it is eaten, it provokes tears, and embitters the stomach and the whole person. Hence it is a symbol of grief and harshness, as this riddle about it signifies:
From tears, and for tears, my origin began. From eyes I flowed, but now from a tree I am born, Joyful the honor of the leaf, but a sad image of sorrow.
Hence the bride in the Song of Songs, chapter I, 12: "My beloved is to me a bundle of myrrh." And chapter IV, 6: "I will go to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of incense." Such was Mount Calvary for Christ crucified, and for His bride. And chapter V, 5: "My hands dripped with myrrh, and my fingers were full of the choicest myrrh."
Verse 16: He has broken my teeth one by one.
16. He has broken my teeth one by one. — In Hebrew it is: He has broken my teeth with a pebble, or at the counting-stone, by which calculations and numbers are reckoned: "one by one" therefore, that is, designating each one in order and individually: for this is the Hebrew חצץ chatsats: whence comes חץ chets, that is, an arrow, because one is shot after another in order, as if to say: He broke all my teeth, when He mixed pebbles or small stones into my bread, and as I bite them, I break my teeth. Hence
Second, others generally, along with the Chaldean and Septuagint, translate: He has broken my teeth with a stone. Therefore in reality stones were mixed into Jeremiah's bread in prison, which wore down his teeth, either from the malice of the Jews, or more likely from hunger and scarcity; for thus when the poor bake their bread under ashes, much dust and pebbles are mixed into it. So Jeremiah ate bread full of grit, which caused him great pain and distress. Hence Seneca, Book I On Benefits, chapter VII, calls a favor that brings harm and torment a stony bread. So the Hebrews and Vatablus.
Third, Maldonatus: He has broken my teeth with a stone, that is, he says, He has caused me the greatest pain, as if He had crushed my teeth with a stone, and ground them to the fineness of sand and pulverized them, says H. Pintus.
Fourth, others: With a stone, they say, that is, with a decisive and condemnatory vote, He has condemned to death all my teeth, that is, all my members. For formerly judges, casting stones into an urn, would deliver sentence: of condemnation if they cast a black stone; of acquittal if a white one. The first sense is the plainest.
Allegorically, the teeth are the Apostles, who were broken when they fled during Christ's Passion.
Tropologically: The teeth, says Rabanus, are the preachers, who chew and break up the food of God's word for the people, or the internal senses that do so for the soul, and cut away what is foreign. If these chewers are toothless, or have teeth that are dulled — that is, if they are unskilled, or fixed on earth and earthly goods — the whole body will feel hunger, that is, the whole people and the whole soul.
He has fed me with ashes, — He has cast me down so that, sitting on the ground in ashes, I must mix my bread with them. Thus David says, Psalm CI, 10: "For I ate ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping."
Note: Ashes and sackcloth, or haircloth, were formerly signs of mourning and the garb of penitents. Thus Judith and the Jews during the siege of Holofernes, clothed in haircloth, sprinkled ashes on their heads, Judith chapter IV, 9 and 16, and chapter IX, 1. The same was done when the angel under David was inflicting a plague upon the people, I Chronicles XXI, 16. Esther also did the same with her attendants, chapter IV, 1 and 3; Job chapter XVI, 15, who also in chapter XLII says: "I do penance in dust and ashes;" and the Maccabees, Book I, chapter II, 14, and Daniel, chapter IX, 3. Hence the Chaldean here translates, He has humbled me in ashes; others, He has enveloped, covered, buried me in ashes; if me, therefore also my bread and food. Less correctly Vatablus renders, He has turned me into ashes; and the Zurich Bible, He has cast me into mud.
Morally, one feeds on ashes who often thinks about death and reflects on this: "You are dust, and to dust you shall return," Genesis III, 19. Second, one who is mindful of his own worthlessness and ruminates on this: "Why does earth and ashes exalt itself?" Ecclesiasticus X. Third, one who with St. Job, chapter XLII, "does penance in dust and ashes." Thus St. Francis, as St. Bonaventure testifies, for the sake of penance and to mortify his appetite and sensuality, would sprinkle his bread with ashes, to make it tasteless. The same did St. Jacopone, a follower of St. Francis, who taught this method of overcoming gluttony: if anyone would make tasty foods tasteless with ashes, wormwood, or some other bitter or insipid substance: indeed he himself, when tempted by appetite for meat, in order to conquer it, bought meat and let it rot, and daily brought the putrid meat to his mouth. "He has therefore fed me with ashes," as if to say: From my taste and from all my senses He has taken away all savor, all delight and consolation: not only from my senses, but also from all the faculties and powers of my soul: for this is what follows:
Verse 17: My soul has been cast away from peace.
17. My soul has been cast away from peace. — So read the Roman, Hebrew, and Septuagint editions. By peace he means rest, prosperity, and joy; whence follows: "I have forgotten prosperity," namely, former happiness, as if to say: My soul lacks all its accustomed tranquility, gladness, and happiness. For so great a heap of all evils so walls me in and penetrates me that it drives from me all memory of past joy and of good things. Let the damned say this, who in their torments have been cast away from peace and from God, who is every good: where they no longer remember the good things they had here. Thus Abraham rubbed in the memory of good things to the Rich Man, which he had had in life: "Son, remember that you received good things in your life," Luke XVI, because he did not remember his past pleasures; just as the Blessed in heaven have forgotten the labors they endured here — St. Lawrence his gridiron, St. Stephen the stones, St. Catherine the wheel, St. Sebastian the arrows — and other martyrs now as it were no longer remember their torments. Hence Job XI, 16 says: "You will forget your misery, and remember it as waters that have passed away, and as the noonday brightness will rise for you at evening, and when you think yourself consumed, you will rise like the morning star." When the saints seemed consumed by tyrants, they arose as shining stars in heaven. Just as the waters of rivers, having already flowed past, do not go back to return, but proceed to the sea: so those miseries, having already passed, will not return to the Blessed, as Revelation XXI says: "And death shall be no more, neither mourning nor crying: because the former things have passed away." Hence Christ, rising from the dead, hearing two disciples speaking about His death: "Are You the only stranger in Jerusalem, and do You not know the things that have happened in it these days?" said, what things? — as if He had forgotten all the torments He had endured two days before. The saints therefore say with Christ that saying of Joseph, Genesis XLI: "God has made me forget all my labors." Just as the Blessed forget evil things, so the damned utterly forget the good things of this world. Truly the Wise Man says, Sirach chapter XI, 19: "The wickedness of one hour, he says, causes forgetfulness of great luxury;" namely, the bitterness and anguish of the hour of death abolishes the memory of all past pleasures. While you are therefore in pleasures, remember the end: let those voices of the damned ring in your ears, Wisdom V, 8: "What has pride profited us? or what has the boasting of riches brought us? All those things have passed away like a shadow," etc.
Mystically, however, these words can be applied to Christ making atonement, as if He Himself on the cross, as a victim, bearing the sins of every faithful soul, should say to it: "Remember my poverty (my nakedness) and my transgression, the wormwood and the gall," with which I was given to drink for you. To whom the devout mind, pierced with vicarious love and compunction, should respond and say: "I will be ever mindful and remember (such great charity toward me), and my soul will waste away within me." For Jeremiah here bears and represents the person of Christ suffering.
Verse 18: My end has perished.
18. My end has perished. — In Hebrew it is נצחי nitschi, which first, the Chaldean, Vatablus, and Pagninus translate as: my strength or my fortitude has perished; second, the Septuagint has: my victory has perished, as if to say: The hope of victory has perished for me, by which I hoped I would overcome my enemies and so many evils, seeing as I see that God is against me; third, others translate: my stability or perpetuity has perished; fourth, Rabbi Solomon: my shield and my age have perished; fifth, Rabbi Abraham: my standing in the strength that was mine has perished; sixth, our Translator most aptly renders it, "my end has perished," that is, I have perished, my life that is soon to end has perished, as if to say: The end of my life has come, in which I will perish with my life; it is all over with my life: so that it is a hypallage. Or more simply, my end has perished, that is, the hope of seeing the end of my misfortunes has perished for me, as if to say: My miseries will never end, there is nothing to expect — I will never be freed from these evils, there is nothing further to hope for — no rest, no freedom, no joy, or consolation. It is a Hebraism, for thus the Hebrews say: Flight has perished from me, hope has perished, joy has perished; that is, I have no escape, no hope, no joy; so therefore also my end has perished, that is, there will be no end to my misfortunes.
Let the reprobate say this, those condemned to the eternity of hell and its fire. The hope of an end lightens sufferings, even the most bitter ones. For the wretched say: "O you who have suffered heavier things, God will give an end to these also." But where there is no end to the pains, and the wretch knows this for certain, this is what tortures, what drives him to desperation and madness. Therefore this is the greatest, or at least the chief, punishment of the damned: the thought of their eternity.
Of wormwood and gall, — that is, of the most bitter affliction, as I said at verses 5 and 15.
Verse 19: Remember,
19. Remember, — O God! It is a sudden apostrophe of the Prophet bewailing, and tossing about in grief, and looking this way and that, to see whether hope of aid might shine from somewhere. For when he looks to nature and human resources, he despairs and says: "My end has perished:" but when he looks up to God, he conceives hope and prays: "Remember my poverty and my transgression," that is, the misery into which I have fallen because of my transgressions. So Rabanus.
Second and better, "my poverty," that is, my misery, "and my transgression," by which, namely, my fellow citizens of Jerusalem and Anathoth, in afflicting me, violate the rights of friendship and humanity. So Hugh, Lyranus, and Dionysius; whence the Septuagint translates, my persecution; the Chaldean, how harshly I am treated by enemies; Vatablus, my rebellion, by which namely they rebel against me and my oracles. For the Hebrew word מרוד merud signifies rebellion, and my is taken passively, not actively, and is the same as against me. Less correctly therefore Dionysius explains: "my transgression," that is, my exile, by which I was transferred and passed from my own land to a foreign one; and Paschasius: "my transgression," he says, which namely I, Christ, took upon Myself to atone for on behalf of men. For Christ was made sin and a curse for us, as the Apostle says, Galatians III, 13.
Morally, learn here how great a good is the constant remembrance of God and of oneself. For this is the cause of all good things, just as forgetfulness is the cause of all evil things. Hence Moses again urges upon the Hebrews: "Remember the Lord your God," Deuteronomy VIII, 2, 18, etc. Thus when Anna remembered and invoked the Lord, as if a reward were hidden away: "The Lord remembered her," so that she conceived and bore Samuel, I Kings I, 19. Thus when Esther remembered and prayed to the Lord, it is said, chapter X, 12: "The Lord remembered His people, and had mercy on His inheritance," so that through her He might free the Jews destined for death by Haman. Conversely, Isaiah threatens Damascus with destruction and desolation, chapter XVII, 10: "Because, he says, you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and have not remembered the God of your strength." And Ezekiel says to Jerusalem, chapter XXIII, 35: "Because, he says, you have forgotten Me, and cast Me behind your back, you too shall bear your wickedness." And Hosea, chapter I, 6, is commanded to give his daughter the name: "Without mercy: Because, He says, I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will utterly forget them," who have forgotten Me. And chapter IV, 6: "You have forgotten the law of your God, I too will forget your children." Therefore saints and wise men guarded most carefully against forgetfulness of God, and exercised themselves in the constant remembrance, thought, invocation, love, and praise of God. Hence Enoch "walked with God," Genesis V, 24, as also did Noah, Genesis VI, 9. Tobias on his deathbed gave his son a golden precept, which parents should impress upon their children: "All the days of your life, he says, keep God in your mind," chapter IV, 6; and verse 20: "At all times bless God: and ask Him to direct your ways, and that all your counsels may remain in Him."
Truly memorable was Queen Esther, who confidently said to God, chapter XIV, 16: "You know my necessity, that I abominate the sign of my pride and glory which is upon my head, etc., and your handmaid has never rejoiced since I was brought here until the present day, except in You, O Lord God." How frequent David's remembrance of God was, is clear from the Psalms, as Psalm XV, 8: "I set the Lord always before me." Psalm XXIV, 15: "My eyes are always toward the Lord: for He will pluck my feet from the snare." Psalm LXXVI, 4: "I remembered God, and was delighted."
The memory of God, therefore, in the faithful and holy person, produces not only immense merit, help, and grace, but also heavenly delight. This is what Baruch says, chapter V, 5: "Arise, Jerusalem, etc., and see your children gathered from the rising of the sun to the setting, rejoicing in the memory of God at His holy word." And Isaiah chapter XXVI, 8: "Your name and Your memorial are the desire of the soul." And verse 4: "You have hoped in the Lord for everlasting ages, in the Lord God, the Mighty One, forever." And chapter LXIII, 7: "I will remember the mercies of the Lord." And Jeremiah LI, 50: "Remember the Lord from afar." Cassian, from Abbot Isaac, Conference X, chapter VI, teaches that not only perfection but also the blessedness of this life consists in the constant remembrance of God, which, he says, enables a person "to deserve to possess the image of future blessedness in this body," and adds: "This is the end of all perfection, that the mind, refined to such a degree, may daily be raised from every fleshly condition to spiritual things, until all its conversation, all the turning of the heart, becomes one continuous prayer."
He suggests the means and practice in chapter IX: "For possessing the perpetual memory of God, he says, this formula of devotion must be inseparably set before you: O God, come to my assistance: O Lord, make haste to help me. For this little verse, etc., embraces all emotions. For it contains the invocation of God against all dangers; it contains the humility of a devout confession of one's own frailty; it contains the watchfulness of perpetual solicitude and fear; it contains the confidence of ever-present and standing-by help; it contains the ardor of love and charity." Does the devil tempt you with gluttony, pride, anger, sloth? Say at once: "O God, come to my assistance." Therefore turn this little verse over constantly in your mind, sleeping, waking, praying, working. Thus the Church repeats it again and again, and begins each of the Hours with it, and by her example teaches every faithful person to do the same. For no one is so busy that at the beginning of each hour, if he wishes, he cannot accustom himself, by aspiring to God with voice or mind, to say: "O God, come to my assistance."
My soul will waste away within me. — The Septuagint: My soul will converse with me; Symmachus: It will talk to itself; Pagninus: It will bow down, it will be humbled; Vatablus: My soul will lament, namely itself and its sufferings, so that it nearly wastes away and fails. So Theodoretus and Rupert.
Verse 21: Recalling these things,
21. Recalling these things, — namely so many sufferings (and the constant memory of them, and thence the pain and contrition of heart), by which I seem to have made satisfaction for my sins and to God, which were discussed above: at the same time also recalling the arguments and motives most effective for hope, which I here add in verse 22 and following; these things, I say, recalling, I take up again my nearly collapsed spirit: for God cannot despise a contrite heart, nor forget His former clemency toward me and His people. For that clemency, like Himself, is immense and endless.
Therefore I will hope. — So it should be read with the Roman, Hebrew, and Chaldean editions; wrongly therefore do some read, in God I will hope. Thus Christ recalls His gall and sufferings, and commemorates them before the Father, and offers them to Him, so that He may obtain fruit in us.
Verse 22: The mercies of the Lord,
22. The mercies of the Lord, — are namely the reason that we have not been utterly consumed on account of our sins, as if to say: The wrath of God never rages so fiercely that it is not tempered by mercy, to which one may have recourse. The Chaldean, Pagninus, and others translate: The mercies of the Lord are so great that they do not fail, as if to say: It must be attributed to the immense mercies and compassions of God that His clemency, though provoked by so many of our sins, nevertheless does not fail, nor does it cease to wait for us, to do us good, and to have pity on us: for they think that תמנו tamnu is used in place of תמו tammit.
Tropologically, let the penitent soul continually say with St. Mary of Egypt: "It is of the mercies of the Lord that we are not consumed." And with Isaiah and St. Paul, Romans IX, 29: "Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have become as Sodom, and we would have been like Gomorrah."
Verse 23: They are new each morning.
23. They are new each morning. — That is, from childhood I was enlightened by Your knowledge. So Rabanus, Hugh, St. Thomas, Lyranus. But note: the word novi is not the past tense of nosco (I know), but is the plural noun from novus (new). That this is so is clear from the Hebrew חדשים chadascim, and from the Septuagint, Pagninus, Vatablus, and others, who translate: New mercies of Yours appear to us daily; and the Chaldean who translates: He brings forth His wonders at dawn; and the Syriac: In the newness (renewal) of the dawn great is Your faithfulness; and the Arabic: Your faithfulness, O Lord, is great, and we hope that You will look upon us, like the rising of the morning suddenly. And so some Latin codices, as Francisco Luca testifies, read novae here, but the Roman editions read novi: for they retain the masculine gender which is in the Hebrew chadascim. Therefore new, supply days, daily bright and joyful from the abundance of Your mercies, dawn upon us: or new, namely effects of Your mercy appear day by day, as if to say: So far from Your mercies failing, we receive new ones daily, and new ones daily come to us swiftly at the very break of dawn; for with the sun, indeed before the sun at the very dawn itself, new blessings from heaven rain down upon men day by day, like manna.
St. Bernard says excellently in his Meditations, chapter VI: "Just as, he says, there is no moment in which a person does not use or enjoy the goodness and mercy of God, so there should be no moment in which he does not have Him present in his mind."
For at dawn the Hebrew is לבקרים labbecarin, that is, each morning, or every daybreak: morning or dawn signifies the speed and constancy of God's compassion and beneficence.
We read in the Life of the wondrous Blessed Mechtild, that she once heard the saints saying to her: "Come, how blessed are you who still live on earth, and how many things you can merit: for if a person knew how much he could merit even in a single day, as soon as he awoke from sleep, his heart would be so expanded with joy that that day had dawned, in which he could live for God, and by God's grace increase his merit to God's praise, that throughout the whole day he would be made more eager and stronger for all that he must do or suffer." This is reported by D. Blosius, Book IV of Spiritual Grace, chapter IV, and others. This therefore is the new benefit (one of many) to be considered daily at dawn, and then God simultaneously makes Himself felt, and sends other devout thoughts and impulses into the mind, by which a person, thinking about the brevity of this life and the eternity of the next, about the dignity of virtues and the ugliness and harm of vices, rouses himself to fight vigorously that day against his vices, and to grow and advance powerfully in virtues. Would that all people received these holy seeds and inspirations of God in the morning, and disposed themselves for them through devout thoughts and through meditation, which is the support and foundation of a holy life! For in the morning the mind, like the head, is most serene, alert, and keen, and therefore most suited for thinking and meditating on high and divine things, and for receiving and ruminating on God's holy seeds and impulses. The pagan Pythagoras saw this in shadow, among whose golden teachings and verses Hierocles his disciple records this one:
First having prayed To the gods, set about your work.
Third, some, with certain Septuagint codices, instead of chadascim, read חדשים chodascim, that is, months in the mornings, so that the sense would be, as if to say: Each new month is renewed like the morning, or like dawn; renewed, I say, by Your mercies which You bestow upon us anew in that month, and therefore on the first day of each month we celebrate the feast of the New Moon, that is, of the new month, so that we may ask from God new blessings for the new month. Let Christians do the same on the first Sunday of the month.
Allegorically, St. Jerome, or rather Rabanus, refers these things to the time of the primitive Church: for this was as it were the dawn and daybreak of the Church: "The Prophet speaks, he says, to the primitive Church in Jerusalem, praising her beauty; which after the dawn of Christ's resurrection, putting off the old man, declared the beauty of the new man by her rising," as if to say: "At dawn," that is, at Christ's resurrection, there will arise new men, that is, those renewed by grace, who will display new conduct and a new life.
Great is Your faithfulness. — First, some take Your passively, so that "Your faithfulness" is the same as our faith and trust which we have in You, as if to say: From so many new mercies which we experience day by day, our faith in You is increased, so that we believe in You more, trust in You, and commit all our affairs to You, say Theodoretus, Rabanus, Hugh, St. Thomas. For we learn through experience that this is most useful and most safe: for God directs and prospers those who trust in Him and rest upon His providence through all actions, sufferings, and difficulties, and leads them as a sheep, like Joseph; so that they may say with David: "The Lord rules me (in Hebrew, The Lord is my shepherd), and I shall want for nothing," etc.
Second and better, Lyranus, Dionysius, and Vatablus explain it thus: Great is Your faithfulness, that is, Your fidelity and truthfulness, O Lord, because You most faithfully fulfill what You promise; hence it is no wonder if we daily experience new mercies from You: for our sins cannot exhaust them, since they far surpass and outstrip those sins.
Third, others join both meanings, as if to say: It is a great thing to believe in You, because You never fail in what You promise, but always fulfill it; and specifically what You promised to David, Psalm LXXXVIII, saying: "But if his sons shall forsake My law, etc., I will visit their iniquities with a rod: but My mercy I will not take away from him." For that mercy is immense, and far greater than our sins; and therefore we pray and beseech that You would actually show it in this our chastisement.
Verse 24: The Lord is my portion,
24. The Lord is my portion, — that is, my hereditary lot, my inheritance, and all my good is the Lord; whence Rupert explains it thus, as if to say: Let others be anxious and troubled about many things, let them hunt after riches and honors: for me, says Jeremiah, to whom it was said in chapter XVI, 2: "You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons and daughters," one thing is necessary, namely the Lord, whom, having cast aside all anxiety about earthly things, I alone will await. Thus David says, Psalm XV, 5: "The Lord is the portion of my inheritance, and of my cup: You are He who will restore my inheritance to me;" and Psalm LXXII, 25: "For what have I in heaven? and besides You what do I want upon earth?" Surely nothing at all: "My flesh and my heart have failed: the God of my heart (its soul and center), and God is my portion forever." Thus St. Paulinus, says St. Augustine, when captured by the Vandals, used to say: "Lord, I am not tormented on account of gold and silver: for where all my possessions are, You know," namely, "You are my portion and my share in the land of the living;" and St. Francis: "My God and my all."
Second, "The Lord is my portion," that is, my measure and my reward, namely for my works, and especially for my patience in captivity and tribulation. So Maldonatus. For thus "portion" is taken in Job XXIX, 29: "This is the portion (that is, the reward, the recompense) of the wicked man from God."
Verse 25: The Lord is good to those who hope in Him.
25. The Lord is good to those who hope in Him. — He gives the reason why he chose God as his portion and why he waits for Him: because, namely, He is good to His own. Furthermore, he enumerates many benefits of endurance and hope. The first is that one finds God good, that is, well-disposed and beneficent. Thus the Poet says in the Aeneid XII: Be good to me, O shades, that is, be propitious and favorable. The second is, verse 26, that one waits in silence and with certainty expects liberation and salvation from God. The third is, verse 27, that it accustoms a person from childhood to the yoke of discipline and endurance, and thus gradually and easily brings him to perfect patience and holiness. The fourth, verse 28, is that it brings to the soul solitude, quiet, and tranquility. The fifth, verse 29, is that it humbles a person down to the dust. The sixth, verse 30, is that it makes a person gentle, compliant, indeed rejoicing in blows and reproaches, so that he seems to feed and be satisfied on them as on delicacies. The seventh, verse 31, is that it produces resignation of spirit, by which a person wholly resigns himself into the hands and providence of God: for he knows and believes that all these things are sent upon him for his good, and therefore he rests and reposes in that providence completely. The eighth, verse 40, is that it leads a person to a serious examination and amendment of himself. The ninth, verse 41, is that it leads a person to prayer, penance, and the imploring of divine help and clemency.
Learnedly and devoutly St. Bernard, Book V On Consideration, chapter XI: "I say to you, he says, Father Eugenius, God alone is He who can never be sought in vain, nor when sought can fail to be found. Let your own experience teach you this: or if not, believe one who has experienced it, not me, but the saint who says: You are good, O Lord, to those who hope in You, to the soul that seeks You." Whence he rightly infers: "What then is God? As regards the universe, the end. As regards election, salvation. As regards Himself, He alone knows. What is God? Omnipotent will, most benevolent virtue, eternal light, unchangeable reason, supreme blessedness, creating minds to participate in Himself, vivifying them to feel, affecting them to desire, expanding them to receive, justifying them to merit, kindling them to zeal, making them fruitful for bearing fruit, directing them to equity, forming them to benevolence, moderating them to wisdom, strengthening them to virtue, visiting them for consolation, enlightening them to knowledge, perpetuating them to immortality, filling them to felicity, surrounding them for security."
To the soul that seeks Him. — St. Bernard on Psalm XC, Sermon 9, notes "that he spoke of those who hope in Him in the plural, because this seems to be common to many."
Verse 26: It is good (both useful and honorable) to wait in silence,
26. It is good (both useful and honorable) to wait in silence, — without murmuring, without complaint and troubled spirit, to submit oneself tranquilly, silently, and patiently to the tribulation sent by God, and to await "salvation," that is, safety, as the Septuagint has, and God's deliverance; in Hebrew literally it is, it is good, and he will be silent; which the Hebrews explain, as if to say: A man will do well if he waits and is silent: for, as St. Bernard says, Epistle 341: "The consolation of present things weakens the soul, the expectation of future things strengthens it." Thus David sings, Psalm LXI, 1: "Shall not my soul be subject to God? For from Him is my salvation. For He too is my God, and my savior: my protector, I shall be moved no more." And Moses to the Hebrews trembling at the approaching Pharaoh with his forces, Exodus XIV, 14: "The Lord, he says, will fight for you, and you shall be silent." Isaiah gives the same counsel, saying, chapter XXX, 15: "In silence and in hope shall be your strength."
Morally, learn here that silence is the mother of compunction, devotion, and endurance. Hence Climacus, Step 4: "The devotee of silence, he says, draws near to God, and standing continually before Him in the hidden place of the heart, is illuminated by Him." Thalassius: "Silence purifies the mind and makes it more perceptive: it guards the heart." St. Francis: "Silence warms the heart with the love of God." Another: "Silence is the mother of the wisest thoughts." Rightly therefore Gerson, Chancellor of Paris, Volume II, in his response to IV, Question XCXI, conclusion 3: "The founders of religious orders, he says, considering the manifold peril to the soul hanging on the fault of the tongue, most wisely ordained as the supreme remedy a constant silence for their followers according to place and time, adding certain penalties to reinforce their rules against transgressors. And it is clear from experience that where this rule of silence is observed more strictly, there religious life flourishes more laudably and perfectly." Turrecremata, Treatise LVII on chapter VI of the Rule of St. Benedict, assigns ten reasons and fruits of silence. The first is that through it the sins that arise from talkativeness are avoided. It is the golden maxim of St. Bernard, Treatise On Perfection: "Let words come twice to the file before once to the tongue:" the file is silence. For truly St. Augustine, Epistle 7 to Marcella: "Although, he says, Cicero (as it is written) never uttered any word that he wished to recall: yet this praise is more credible of one who is excessively foolish than of one who is perfectly wise." The second: scandals of dissension are avoided, and dangers into which the talkative fall; hence that old proverb: "The safe reward of silence." The third: because it befits the state of disciples to be silent, such as religious who are continually exercised in the school of virtues. The fourth: it contributes to a person's perfection: hence Apollonius of Tyana, since he did not know how to be silent, imposed upon himself a Pythagorean five-year silence, so tenaciously that he answered the emperor's questions not by voice but by writing. The fifth: it achieves the truth of religion, which without silence is considered empty. The sixth: it strengthens a person, since it blocks the gate against enemies. The seventh: it assists the peace of the community, which is most necessary in colleges and cloisters. The eighth: it prepares one for contemplation and conversation with God. The ninth: it preserves the fervor of devotion. The tenth: it is the sign of a wise and prudent man. Hence Seneca: "The sum of sums, he says, will be this for you: I bid you be slow to speak;" and Euripides: "Fitting silence is the crown of a man;" and Climacus: "While, he says, we are under the master's hand, with supreme silence, always pretending ignorance, let us accustom ourselves: for a silent man, a son of philosophy, always possesses the greatest knowledge." For, as the same author says at Step 11, "silence in thought is the mother of prayer, the recall from captivity, the guardian of the fire of divine love, the diligent inspection of thoughts, the watchtower against enemies, the prison of grief, the friend of tears, the worker of the memory of death, the painter of punishments, the investigator of judgment, the keen minister of sorrow, the enemy of self-confidence, the spouse of quiet, the adversary of ambitious learning, the addition of knowledge, the craftsman of contemplation, the secret advance toward God, the hidden ascent." Hence the Essenes too, in their assemblies, love-feasts, and meals, kept a remarkable silence, as Josephus testifies, Book II, chapter VII. Furthermore, the Essenes were religious Jews before Christ, and after Christ became Christians. Cassian testifies the same of the Tabennesians, Book IV, chapter XVII. I have said more about silence on Isaiah XXX, 15 and XXXII, 17.
Verse 27: It is good for a man when he has borne the yoke (of the L...
27. It is good for a man when he has borne the yoke (of the Lord) from his youth. — "The yoke," namely of the law and commandments of God, so that he may obey God and submit his neck to His yoke; whence the Chaldean translates, it is good for a man if he has taught his soul to bear the yoke of the Lord's precepts from his youth. So Hugh, Dionysius, and others: for he who is accustomed to this yoke of the law will easily be patient, gentle, and humble in adversity, Matthew XI, 30.
Hence Plato in the dialogue called Euriphron: "It is fitting, he says, to take the first care of the young people themselves, so that they may turn out as good as possible, just as it befits the farmer to take the first care of young plants." And the Wise Man, Proverbs XXII: "It is a proverb: A young man according to his way, even when he grows old, will not depart from it." And Job XX, says Sophar: "His bones will be filled with the vices of his youth, and they will sleep with him in the dust."
Therefore St. Jerome, Epistle 7 to Laeta On the Education of her Daughter: "What uncultivated minds have drunk in, he says, is difficult to eradicate. Who can restore to its original whiteness wool dyed with purple? A fresh vessel long retains the taste and smell with which it was first imbued. Greek history relates that Alexander, the conqueror of the world, could not rid himself, in his manners and his gait, of the faults of his tutor Leonides, with which he had been infected while still a little child."
And St. Ambrose on Psalm CXVIII, Sermon 19: "He who, he says, has borne the yoke from his youth, and has willingly submitted his tender neck to the reins of mature governance, will sit apart, removed from the tumult of assailing passions, and will be silent in peace: for there is no longer need for him to quarrel with the body or to struggle with various desires, because the soul that seeks God has taken up the yoke of the word, and has made captive for itself all the pleasures of youth."
Second, more aptly and genuinely, "the yoke," namely of the adversities which God lays upon us. For it is most useful if from his youth a person, like Jeremiah, has accustomed himself to adversity, humiliation, and the yoke of the Lord's discipline and correction. Jeremiah here tacitly encourages the young Jews carried off to Babylon to constancy, because this training will henceforth be useful to them for their whole life, for the easy endurance of any labors and misfortunes, and for the advancement and perfection of patience, and for the acquisition of all discipline and virtue: for by this yoke God is accustomed to tame, gentle, form, and perfect the young. Again, God is accustomed to soften and sweeten this yoke with the oil of consolation and of immense fruit. Finally, that spirit is wise and noble which from childhood has learned and persuaded itself that he is truly free who has devoted himself to the divine yoke; and grieves if any time of life has been withdrawn from this noble service and discipline of God. For he wishes through all time, from childhood to old age, to subject and give himself to it; and this with silence and patience, so that he does not protest or murmur against God who imposes it; nor again does he try to shake off the yoke itself: for whoever does this does not bear the yoke willingly but drags it unwillingly, and hates it, and therefore both diminishes his merit and doubles his punishment and pain. Therefore let the one who desires greater merit and less pain and sensation of the yoke say with Micah, chapter VII, verse 9: "I will bear the wrath of the Lord (that is, the punishment inflicted on me by an angry God, patiently and willingly): because I have sinned against Him."
Third, others take beth for caph, and instead of in youth translate like youth, like young men, as if to say: It is good to bear the yoke of the Lord like young men and vigorous, spirited youths, who are accustomed to be most patient of labors and misfortunes. But the second sense is the genuine one.
From this learn morally that it is most useful to accustom oneself from youth to discipline, mortification, austerity, and patience: for thus one will become illustrious in holiness. Thus Christ from His manger began to lead a poor and hard life, and to prepare Himself for the cross and martyrdom. Hence He says: "I am poor and in labors from my youth." Thus Samson and Samuel from childhood abstained from wine and strong drink, and were consecrated as Nazirites. Thus St. John the Baptist when scarcely two years old went into the desert, clothed in haircloth, living on locusts, and so merited to become the groomsman and a martyr. Thus St. Placidus at five years old was handed over to St. Benedict to be formed, and from childhood accustomed himself to monastic life, and became an illustrious religious and martyr. Thus St. Nicholas from childhood fasted on Wednesday and Friday. Thus St. Paul the first hermit, St. Antony, and St. Hilarion at the age of 15, leaving everything, entered the desert and an austere life. Thus St. Benedict everywhere received boys into his Order, so that from their tender years they might become accustomed to the austerity and discipline of monastic life. Thus formerly tender boys and young girls were raised by their parents for torments and martyrdoms, as St. Felicity raised seven sons and led them to martyrdom, as St. Gregory testifies, Homily 3 on the Gospel. Indeed even now, this year and in preceding years, we have heard that in Japan many boys constantly underwent martyrdom for the faith of Christ, whom their parents had raised and encouraged for this purpose. There exist catalogs and images of the boy martyrs and those who were crucified.
And thus did that heroine who under the tyrant Dunaan, piously raising her two little daughters, consecrated them both to virginity and to martyrdom, about whom see Procopius, and from him Baronius, Volume VII, year of Christ 522, page 91. Again, to pass over others, thus did that glorious matron under the same tyrant, who raised her son from the breast for martyrdom: for when Dunaan was persecuting Christians in the city of Najran in Arabia, this matron anointed herself and her five-year-old son with the blood of martyrs: therefore she was condemned by the tyrant and seized to be cast into the fire; and behold, her little son, weeping for his mother being seized, when asked by Dunaan "whether he preferred to be with him in his kingdom, or with his mother on the pyre," answered: "I wish to be with my mother, so that she may take me too to martyrdom: for she herself has often encouraged me to this." And when Dunaan asked him: "What is martyrdom?" the boy answered: "To die for Christ, and to live again." Dunaan again: "Who is Christ?" "Come, said the boy, to the Church, and I will show Him to you." Again Dunaan tried to coax him, to whom the boy said: "Away with you, Jew, I seek not you but my mother;" and when he had seen his mother cast into the fire, he bit the tyrant Dunaan on the thigh, and ran at full speed to his mother, and leaped into the furnace, and embracing his mother, became with her an heir of martyrdom. Baronius narrates the matter at greater length from Procopius, Volume VII, year of Christ 522, page 93.
Great, therefore, is the value of a pious, as well as robust and rigorous upbringing of children: for it makes them spirited, strong, and tolerant of misfortunes, and therefore naturally long-lived: while on the contrary a soft and delicate upbringing makes them soft, effeminate, weak, feeble, and therefore of shorter life. For this reason we see in the Alps, where the cold is extreme, parents exposing their small children nearly naked on the rocks in the most freezing weather, so that they may become accustomed to bearing the cold and grow hardened. Indeed I have seen in the Alps very robust men and women, scarcely clothed in the cold, walking barefoot in icy waters and laboring, indeed even playing.
Thus the Spartans exercised their boys with whips for the endurance of labors and pains. Hear Plutarch in his Laconian Sayings: "At Sparta, he says, boys, beaten with whips throughout an entire day, often to the point of death at the altar of Diana Orthia, endure it cheerfully and eagerly, and compete with one another for the victory, which consists in who endures the blows longer and more. The victor achieves the highest glory. That contest is called the flagellation, and is held every year." What wonder then if the mother of St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, when she sent him as a boy to Paris for his studies, gave him two hair shirts, and ordered him to wear them two or three times a week; and afterwards sent him still others, one after another; both so that by them he might tame youthful ardor and desire, and so that he might become accustomed to the cross? Whence he himself, following his mother's counsels, added a coat of mail to the hair shirts, and wonderfully afflicted his body with them, as is clear from his Life, chapter IX. See more examples of saints and martyrs who began from childhood in the Mirror of Youth, which Bernardus Dorhofius recently published.
Verse 28: He will sit alone,
28. He will sit alone, — that is, sorrowful, penitent, and like Magdalene, meditating on and bewailing the gravity of his sins, by which he merited this yoke. Second and preferably, "he will sit alone," as if secure, patient, tamed by the yoke of the Lord, trusting and awaiting help and liberation from this yoke of tribulation, not from man, but from God. So Origen, Theodoretus, Olympiodorus.
Morally, note here what good things solitude produces for the solitary person. Moses in the wilderness over 40 years learned to lead the people, and there in the burning bush he saw the Lord. Christ the Lord withdrew into the desert immediately after His baptism, Matthew IV. The Theban wildernesses were once full of troops of monks and most holy men. St. Jerome was a most ardent lover of solitude, to which he invited his dearest companions and friends by letters. Writing to Rusticus: "For me, he says, the town is a prison, solitude is paradise;" and to Heliodorus: "O desert blooming with the flowers of Christ! O solitude in which those great stones are born, from which in the Apocalypse the city of the great King is built! O wilderness rejoicing more familiarly in God!"
Famous on account of Plato's name is the villa of the Academy, in which he himself taught, withdrawn from the city of Athens, as Laertius testifies. Hesiod sings that he learned poetry from the Muses, but on Mount Helicon while he was pasturing lambs, namely:
Poems seek the seclusion and leisure of the writer.
In the desert the children of Israel were fed with manna for 40 years, and trusting in the column as their guide, they set out on the journey to the promised land, and there, not in Egypt, they received the law from God. St. Bernard, Sermon 40 on the Song of Songs: "O holy soul, he says, be alone, so that you may keep yourself for Him alone to whom you have chosen from among all. Flee the public, flee even your own household, withdraw from friends and intimates, and from the one who serves you. Do you not know that you have a modest Bridegroom, who by no means wishes to grant you His presence when others are present?" Jeremiah, chapter IX, 2, desires solitude, so that there he may weep over his slain fellow citizens. Just as plague is accustomed to rage in an army and in crowds of people, not in the countryside and in solitude: so also vices. Hence the Psalmist desires, Psalm LIV: "Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly, and be at rest?" And again: "I fled far away, and remained in solitude." For the desert is a wall and rampart of virtues.
Just as it is difficult, says St. Chrysostom, to preserve the fruits of a tree planted beside a road until maturity, so it is difficult for a man in the midst of the tumults of the world to preserve his innocence to the end. The more natural heat is stored up within during wintertime, the more it thrives and digests; but the more it is diffused in summer, the more it languishes: the same is the principle of spiritual heat, that is, of divine love: for the less it flows out to external things, the more it burns within. Hence St. Bernard says in a letter: "Believe one who has experienced it: you will find something more in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot hear from teachers." Finally, solitude not only removes occasions of sinning, but also lifts the mind to heaven and to God. This is what the Lord says, Hosea II: "Behold, I will allure her, and lead her into the wilderness: and I will speak to her heart." And St. Jerome, to Marcella, Epistle 15 On the Praises of Asella: "Asella, he says, enclosed in the narrow confines of a single cell, enjoyed the breadth of paradise." And further: "She would speak to the Bridegroom either praying or singing psalms. And while she rejoiced in her resolution, she exulted all the more vehemently in that no one knew her."
Finally, memorable is what Cassius Dio writes in the Life of the Emperor Hadrian, about a certain prefect of his who was called Similis: He accepted the prefecture unwillingly, he says, which he then laid down when leave was granted: and having been released, he lived in the country for seven years (which was the remainder of his life), spending them in leisure and quiet, and dying he ordered this to be inscribed on his tomb: "Here lies Similis, whose age was indeed of many years, but who lived only seven."
Because he has lifted it upon himself, — namely the yoke of the Lord's tribulations, about which the preceding passage spoke. So Theodoretus, Olympiodorus, Vatablus. This sense is required by our translation, as well as by the Syriac and Arabic, which I shall cite shortly. Second, Vatablus translates, because He has lifted, namely God, this yoke upon him, as if to say: Because the afflicted and patient person knows that God has imposed this yoke upon him, which we neither can nor ought to resist; hence he undergoes it patiently, because he believes that the same God, when He wishes, will lay it down and take it away.
Third, Hugh, Rabanus, Rupert, and Lyranus read, because he has lifted himself above himself, namely from earthly to heavenly things, as if to say: Surpassing himself he has raised himself from earth to heaven, from weakness to strength, from faintheartedness to loftiness of spirit. Others explain: he has lifted himself above himself, that is, transcending his state, he has been puffed up with pride and arrogance. Hence Blessed Peter Damian, following the first sense, Epistle 1300:
"The solitary man, he says, plainly while he is silent lifts himself above himself, because the human mind, when it is enclosed on every side within the barriers of silence, is raised sublimely to higher things, is carried to God by heavenly desire, and is inflamed in His love by the ardor of the spirit; and like a living fountain, when it is not permitted to flow this way and that through the channels of words, it is heaped up to greater heights as its waters rise: let therefore the temple of your breast now grow through silence, let the structure of virtues rise up, so that the heavenly Bridegroom Himself, whom you love with all your being, may rest delightfully as in His bridal chamber." And St. Bernard, Sermon 1 On Saints Peter and Paul: "He will lift himself above himself, that is, he says, when he was young and felt the ardors of a slippery age, he put on old age, leaving what he was, assuming what he was not: he lifted himself above himself, because he does not look to himself, but to Him who is above him: for he will sit and be silent even now from the noise of diabolical suggestions, from the noise of carnal desires, from the noise of the world. Happy the soul that does not hearken to those tongues: though it may hear them." And St. Basil, Treatise On the Praise of the Solitary Life: "He will sit alone, he says, and be silent; for he will lift himself above himself. For the dweller (in you, O cell, O solitude!) lifts himself above himself, because the soul hungering for God raises itself from the sight of earthly things, and suspends itself on the height of divine contemplation, separates itself from worldly activities, and on high balances its wings with heavenly desires in contemplation: and while it strives to gaze upon Him who is above all things, man himself too transcends himself along with the rest of the dejection of the worldly valley."
But this reading is corrupt and false: for one should read with the Hebrews, Greeks, and Roman Latins, and other corrected editions, he has lifted upon himself. Hence the Syriac translates: He will sit alone and be silent, because he has received upon himself your yoke; and the Arabic of Antioch: He will sit alone and be silent, because he has now imposed upon himself your yoke; and the Arabic of Alexandria: He will sit alone and be silent, because he has received it, so as to keep your commandments. He therefore by the yoke understands the law and commandments of God, not the cross and tribulation.
Verse 29: He will put his mouth in the dust,
29. He will put his mouth in the dust, — he will humble himself, and worshipping God with his face cast down to the earth, he will press his mouth down to the dust, and thinking and speaking humbly of himself, he will say with Abraham: I am earth and ashes, and like a defendant and suppliant lying face down on the earth and ashes, he will beg for pardon, and will say with Job: Spare me, O Lord; and with David: Have mercy on me, O God; if perhaps by humble prayer he may become the possessor of his hope and liberation. Conversely, to set one's mouth in heaven, Psalm LXXII, 9, is to speak proudly and grandly against God, heaven, and the saints, and as it were to insult them. So Origen, Rabanus, Lyranus, Vatablus.
Otherwise Sanchez: He will put, he says, his mouth in the dust, as one conquered, so that the victor may trample his head, as Joshua did in chapter X; whence verse 34 here adds: "To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth."
Otherwise also Theodoretus, as if to say: He will be silent and nobly bear insults and reproaches, just as if his mouth were full of earth. St. Ambrose on Psalm CXVIII, Sermon 10, for this verse reads thus: "He will give his mouth to the digging of a grave, if indeed there is hope for patience;" and so he explains: "He shows a silence beyond the measure of patience, so that he as it were buries his own mouth, lest it speak, and blocks it as with a rampart of virtues, lest it utter a cry of pain, bringing such a weight of patience which hope may foster, that it buries and encloses the very voice as in a tomb and grave, which no injury can extort or arouse."
Verse 30: He will give his cheek to the one who strikes him,
30. He will give his cheek to the one who strikes him, — as if to say: Animated by this hope, the servant of God will voluntarily expose himself to scourges, reproaches, and blows: for a slap inflicts not only pain, but notable disgrace and shame. Thus Paul, II Corinthians XII, says that an angel of Satan was given to him, to buffet him, that is, to humble him and make him ashamed: for this is what the sting of the flesh does, that is, the temptation of lust. He describes the singular patience of any man who has borne the yoke of the Lord from his youth. Although this is said generally, nevertheless it should be understood specially of Christ: for Jeremiah, imprisoned, struck with a blow, and harassed by the Jews, was a type of Christ; and Christ was the most perfect idea and exemplar of all martyrs and of all patience. So Maldonatus throughout, the Fathers, and the interpreters.
He will be filled with reproaches, — because he will bear them for the sake of God, as joyfully as if he were eating a sumptuous and splendid meal; so that by this resignation and humble endurance he may earn, win, and make God favorably disposed toward him: for he will consider and persuade himself, "that the Lord will not cast him off forever."
Note: It is the mark of illustrious saints and perfect men to feed on and be satiated with reproaches. St. Dorotheos, the great teacher of perfection, teaches this, and narrates wondrous examples of a certain holy Father who, when assailed with the most grievous insults by another, did not turn away, but paid attention to what was being said, and even gave thanks: "Blessed, he said, be your mouth, brother, by the Lord." When the other responded: "You, you shameless and most greedy old man, you say this to be praised!" "Indeed, said the old man, most certainly, my brother, the matter is just as you say." When this encounter was finished, someone asked the Father whether he had not been at all disturbed by those insults. He affirmed that he had never otherwise been so peaceful, because he had felt his soul guarded at that time by a singular grace of Christ. Is this not a perfect and heroic work? The same holy Father, when asked by what means, if you are despised and assailed with insults by another, the mind should be composed to equanimity, so that it does not leap into anger, said: "If you have despised yourself, you will not be disturbed," as Abbot Poemen taught: "For if anyone, he says, holds himself in contempt, whatever another says to him, he will not be saddened."
you have cast yourself aside, you will enjoy the full peace of soul." And he added: A certain brother, he said, whom I had initiated to God with the religious habit, began afterward to speak many sinister and obscene things about me. I learned this secretly and said to myself: "This man has been sent by Christ, so that he may burn away with iron all the vanity and vainglory of your soul. He is the physician of your soul; just as those who habitually call you blessed and holy do you harm." So I said to those reporting his insults against me that those evils had indeed been found, and that they were only the smallest part of what he had seen in me: but that hidden in my soul lay infinite things which he had not seen. Afterward that brother met me at Caesarea, and repeatedly greeted me and kissed me, as if he had said nothing about me. I in turn greeted him back most lovingly and kissed him, as if I knew nothing of what he had said against me. Then he, weeping, fell at my feet: Forgive me, he said, Father; for I have said many unworthy things about you. I in turn embraced him with a kiss and told him that I had known all these things, and yet had always pursued him with the same love, nor could I be induced to utter any sinister word against him, but had continually propitiated heaven for him with my prayers. Let this be proof for you, he said: I was laboring under a severe eye ailment, when, remembering you, I made the sign of the holy cross upon my eyes and prayed: "O Lord Jesus Christ, through the prayers of that man (I named you), heal me"—and I was instantly cured.
The same man related that when a certain beggar had received less alms than he hoped from Blessed Dionysia, he began to vomit forth dishonorable things about her and about me; and when she wanted to avenge so great an insult, I said: "My lady, you are setting a trap for yourself: for you are excluding all virtue from your soul. What worthy thing will you endure compared to what Christ endured for you? Do you remember, my lady, how great a wealth of riches you have scattered like dung? But if you have not acquired meekness for yourself, you will be like a blacksmith who beats a mass of iron and fashions no vessel from it." St. Ignatius says: I desire meekness, by which all the force and power of the prince of this world is weakened. A sure mark of contempt for the world is to be disturbed by nothing. "You have despised gold, yet you are moved by the prick of a needle? You are not a servant of God, but of the honor which you love; for as many as are the vices of the soul, so many are its masters. For, as the Apostle says: 'By whom a man is overcome, of the same also he is the slave.'" Having heard these things, she was corrected and amazed: "You have found," she said, "the God whom you seek." All these things from Patricius and Dorotheus are reported by our Father Raderus in the Viridarium, part III, ch. 2.
Climacus, in the chapter On Humility: Consider, he says, that you have wasted any day on which you have not endured reproaches. For this reason the eleventh rule of our Constitutions so seriously and gravely instills in us a burning desire to suffer injuries and insults. St. Gregory Nazianzen writes of himself that he is more illustrious through ignominy than through honor and splendor. Likewise concerning his brother Caesarius, who had been removed from the prefecture of the treasury by Julian the Apostate, because he was a Christian, or rather because he voluntarily resigned it at his urging,
Nazianzen writes that from the neglect of this honor he became more honored, and that by this ignominy he was adorned and made illustrious.
Verse 33: FOR IF HE HAS CAST OFF (as if to say: Granted that God ma...
33. FOR IF HE HAS CAST OFF (as if to say: Granted that God may seem to have cast off the afflicted one for a time, yet) HE WILL ALSO HAVE MERCY — that is, He will also again have mercy on the same person: For He will not "restrain His mercies in His anger" (Psalm 76:10); in Hebrew it says: if He has caused grief, He will have mercy; for He Himself will strike and will heal (Deuteronomy 32:39). This sure hope of divine compassion and deliverance encouraged Jeremiah and holy men to offer their cheeks eagerly to blows, and to rejoice in being filled with reproaches. Thus Tobit, chapter 3: "After a storm," he says, "You make calm: and after weeping and tears, You pour in exultation."
FOR HE HAS NOT HUMBLED FROM HIS HEART — as if to say: It is not God's pleasure, proper to Him, or intended by Him in itself, to afflict men, but God does this incidentally and as if compelled by our sins: for it is proper to God to have mercy, and, as is said in Wisdom 1:13: "God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living." Hence the Seventy translate: He did not respond from His heart, and He humbled the sons of man. For the Hebrew word ענד (ana) signifies both to humble and to respond; which Theodoret explains thus: As if God does not speak from His heart when He suggests that He is angry, since within He bears the bowels of mercy. The Chaldean explains it quite differently, thus: Because each person does not afflict his own soul, and does not remove pride from his heart, therefore He did this, so that destruction would fall upon the sons of men. Just as a physician wills cauterization and cautery for a sick friend, not for its own sake, but to free him from disease: so also God wills our tribulation, so as to cut away the vices of the soul, not to afflict and torment the person.
Verse 34: TO CRUSH.
34. TO CRUSH. — This verse and the two following depend on the preceding one, as if to say: God does not humble in order to crush, like a cruel master and tyrant. Or rather these three verses depend on the end of verse 36, namely "the Lord did not know," for there the three verses of the letter tamed, which begin here, are concluded, as if to say: "The Lord did not know," that is, He does not know or understand how to crush at His whim, without merit, those bound to the earth, or how to turn aside, in the manner of perverse judges, the judgment, that is, the norm of judgment of any man, not willing to admit him to his own defense; but corrupted by hatred or favor, or by gifts, willing to condemn an innocent man without hearing his case, or to punish a guilty one more than is fair, so as to pervert a man pleading his cause before him and defending himself justly, and to condemn him unjustly; for these things "the Lord," who is most just and most merciful Father, "did not know," in Hebrew He did not see, that is, He does not know how to do such things, nor has He ever thought of them. So Olympiodorus, Rupert, Lyranus, Vatablus. Hence the Syriac translates: The Lord did not see, so as to condemn a man in his judgment; and the Arabic of Antioch adversatively, but in the same sense, translates: And man has made judgment
his, and heard him, because the Lord sees him.
Second, these words, as they depend on the end of verse 36, can be translated and connected with Maldonatus thus: God did not humble from His heart, "so as to crush," namely so that the Chaldean enemy might crush the Jews, and turn aside and pervert their judgment: "the Lord did not know," in Hebrew, the Lord did not see; that is, in such a way that the Lord did not see, that is, did not provide for or care, as if to say: God did not humble the Jews from His heart, because He did not allow the Chaldeans to afflict Judaea without great counsel and providence; for He did this so that the Jews might be corrected. Hence it follows: "Who is he," etc., as if to say: Since these things are so, who would dare to say that anything happens without the Lord commanding it? That is, without His will and providence. The Egyptians signified this with an image of God, which they painted holding in His hand a belt with which He girdled heaven and earth, understanding by the belt providence, by which God binds, contains, and governs all things. The same was signified by the ladder reaching from earth to heaven, which Jacob saw (Genesis 28).
Second, otherwise these four verses (namely 33, 34, 35, 36), "the Lord did not know," others take in this way, as if it were meeting this objection: If it is true what you say, that God has not cast off His faithful ones, but has mercy on them; why then do we see many of them, like the Jews, being crushed under the feet of tyrants, namely the Chaldeans, and their judgment being deflected, and those justly defending themselves being condemned, and stripped of all their goods? He responds that all these things, if they happen, do not happen with God's approval, but as if with His ignorance, that is, not by His will, not by His command, but by His permission; that is, they do not happen by His antecedent will, but by His consequent will, namely on account of the foreseen and permitted guilt of the Chaldeans. So Rabanus, Hugo, St. Thomas; hence the Alexandrian Arabic translates: And he condemned the good man in judgment, and he does not see it.
Third, the Chaldean and Theodoret explain it as if to say: God does not humble of Himself and by His own inclination, but on account of sins, namely those who are accustomed to crush others and to condemn unjustly. The first sense is the plainest.
All the prisoners of the land — namely of Judaea, that is, all the Jews bound and captured by the Chaldeans, so Hugo; or, as St. Thomas says, "prisoners," that is, those afflicted on earth, the lowly and the poor (Psalm 68:34).
Second, Olympiodorus and Vatablus by "prisoners of the earth" understand sinners; for these are bound and chained by their sins.
Third, Theodoret: these, he says, prisoners of the earth are men tied to the earth, who savor earthly things, and do not raise their mind to sublime and heavenly things. But the first sense is the literal one.
Verse 35: TO TURN ASIDE (God) THE JUDGMENT OF A MAN (not weighing h...
35. TO TURN ASIDE (God) THE JUDGMENT OF A MAN (not weighing his merits on a just scale, but turning the balance of judgment to one side or the other) IN THE SIGHT OF THE FACE OF THE MOST HIGH — that is, His own. It is a Hebraism, for God speaks of Himself in the third person.
Verse 36: TO PERVERT A MAN
36. TO PERVERT A MAN — that is, a man's case and judgment. THE LORD DID NOT KNOW — that is, He practically does not know, He does not do the three things just mentioned, namely to crush, to turn aside, and to pervert a man in judgment. From the Hebrew, oth-
Verse 37: WHO IS HE?
37. WHO IS HE? — The Prophet said that it was not from His heart, that is, not from God's good pleasure, as if God delighted in Himself in the punishments of the innocent, that evils came upon the Jews: nor that God had humbled and afflicted them deliberately; now lest anyone say: Therefore these things happened to the Jews by fortune and by chance, he meets this by saying that this is so impious and foolish that it cannot be said by anyone.
In Hebrew it says: Who is he that said: This has happened, and the Lord did not command it? As if to say: Nothing happens to a man in human affairs beyond God's will and command, that is, His ordination, whether commanding or permitting. So Theodoret, Rupert, Hugo. Others explain it differently, as if to say: What tyrant, for example Nebuchadnezzar, can say and command something evil to be done so that it immediately happens, even beyond God's will? As if to say: This cannot happen: for a tyrant is only the instrument and rod of God's fury (Isaiah 10:5).
Verse 38: FROM THE MOUTH OF THE MOST HIGH SHALL THERE NOT COME FORT...
38. FROM THE MOUTH OF THE MOST HIGH SHALL THERE NOT COME FORTH BOTH EVILS AND GOOD THINGS? — This question depends on the preceding verse, as if to say: Who is so impious as to say that neither adversities nor prosperities come to us from the mouth, that is, from the command and ordination of God? This is an effective consolation in every tribulation, if we consider that nothing happens to us of which God is not the author, and that all things are tempered by Him for our salvation, and that in the meantime we should acknowledge our own guilt, and humbly implore His clemency and help.
This is what Isaiah says, chapter 45:6: "I am the Lord, and there is no other, forming light and creating darkness, making peace and creating evil." And Amos 3:6: "Shall there be evil in a city which the Lord has not done?" And Ecclesiasticus chapter 11: "Good and evil, life and death, poverty and riches, are from God."
Verse 39: WHY HAS HE MURMURED?
39. WHY HAS HE MURMURED? — As if to say: When a man is punished, let him not excuse himself by accusing fate, fortune, or God's will; but let him attribute it to his own evil will and sins, and let him say what is in Psalm 118: "I know, O Lord, that Your judgments are equity, and in Your truth You have humbled me;" and again: "You are just, O Lord, and Your judgment is right," as the Emperor Maurice said when he saw his own sons being killed before him by Phocas. So Hugo, St. Thomas, Lyranus. Origen, Olympiodorus, and Theodoret explain it in much the same way, but regarding guilt, not punishment, as if to say: Let a man ascribe his sin not to fate, but to himself.
Second, Vatablus explains: Why does a man grieve over his sin by anxiously tormenting himself and speaking in desperation? Let him rather repent and return to the Lord.
Third, the Chaldean explains: Why does a man find riches which he misuses during the days of his life? That is, why does he not make good use of the gifts with which he has been endowed by God? For the Hebrew root און (aven) also signifies riches acquired by labor or by plunder. The first sense is the plainest.
FOR HIS SINS — that is, for the punishments of his sins; or, when he is afflicted for his sins, as if to say: Rashly and unjustly does a "living man" murmur when he is punished for his sins, because he has deserved so much, and even more: for God punishes less than what is deserved, and tempers judgment with mercy in this life. But after this life He will execute judgment without mercy in hell. Therefore let the damned groan and complain, not the "living man." Again "living," because "all is vanity for the living man." Why then does a living man murmur against God, whose whole life, and indeed his whole self, is vanity? So Sanchez.
This is a celebrated passage on the divine will and God's providence, which governs and ordains each thing in particular; to which therefore we must submit and resign ourselves in all things.
The pagans themselves saw the same thing. This is the golden saying of Pythagoras: "By whatever misfortunes men are divinely afflicted, bear your lot moderately as it comes, and do not be indignant: it is fitting also to seek a remedy." His disciple and interpreter Hierocles assigns the manner and cause: "The bond of our will and divine judgment," he says, "produces misfortune, and this whole divine misfortune is nothing other than God's verdict against our transgressions. Be indignant therefore at yourself and your guilt, not at God: remove the guilt, and God will remove the misfortune." For this reason he constantly calls these misfortunes θεῖας τύχας, that is, divine fortunes, or lots justly sent upon us by God the judge. For "calamities," he says, "have been brought upon us by our iniquity and divine judgment, whose office it is to punish the wicked." Homer, in Odyssey I, introduces Jupiter speaking thus:
How rashly mortals accuse the gods! They make the divine ones The authors, if they have suffered any evil, When beyond fate their own foolish mind begets them sorrows.
Chrysippus, as Laertius attests in book VII, chapter 2, used to say that "worthless men should not be endured or heard, nor the cowardly and audacious, who, when convicted of fault and wrongdoing, take refuge in the necessity of fate as in some asylum; and say that what they have done most wickedly should be attributed not to their own rashness but to fate."
Seneca, epistle 108: "The best thing," he says, "is to endure what you cannot correct, and to follow God (by whose authorship all things come about) without murmuring. He is a bad soldier who follows his general groaning. This is the great soul that surrenders itself to God. On the other hand, that man is petty and base who struggles against Him, thinks ill of the order of the world, and would rather correct the gods than himself."
The same author in On Providence: "For what is the duty of a good man? To offer himself to fate." Thucydides, book II, in the oration of Pericles: "What is divinely sent must be borne of necessity; what comes from enemies, manfully."
What then shall the faithful Christian say, who, enlightened by faith, knows with certainty that God's providence governs all secondary causes, and moderates and directs all things both adverse and prosperous toward the salvation of His servants and friends; who continually hears that word of the Apostle: "For those who love God, all things work together for good"? Surely this ought to be the constant and solid thought, resolution, and consolation of every Christian in poverty, sickness, persecution, calumny, shipwreck, fire, plunder, exile, death, etc.: I am certain that nothing can happen to me, however adverse, harsh, and bitter, which has not first been ordained from the supreme court of the Heavenly Emperor. I am certain that men, demons, and all creatures of the whole world can inflict nothing upon me beyond what God wills, has foreseen, and has given them the power to do — He who makes all things work together for good for His own. Let the same therefore be done in me; I do not refuse, I do not flee: for I wish nothing other than that God's will be done, and that it be fully accomplished in me and in every creature.
St. Clement in his book of Recognitions relates that after his conversion he was sent by St. Barnabas to St. Peter, so that he might be more fully instructed by him. So he went; and soon St. Peter told him to come the next day to the disputation which he was going to hold with Simon Magus. The Magus then asked Peter for a three-day truce; St. Peter granted it to him. Clement was grieved at the truce being granted; for he longed to hear St. Peter and was burning with desire. To him St. Peter said: "Pagans are troubled when things do not happen according to their wish, as they desire; but we Christians, who know that God governs and moderates all things, rest in peace and consolation in whatever turn of events. Know that this truce is given by God's counsel for your good, so that in the meantime I may prepare you for the coming disputation, that you may grasp it better and more fully." This is what in his own faith-
the same St. Peter teaches the faithful: "Casting all your care upon Him; because He cares for you." Therefore in whatever turn of events we must trust in God and have recourse to Him, and say to Him with Jeremiah 14:9: "But You are in our midst, O Lord, etc., do not forsake us." For, as Blessed Teresa used to say: "If we lean upon God, there is no power so great that God will not humble it on our behalf."
Louis de Blois, a man of outstanding piety and learning, in his Spiritual Monitor, chapter 11, relates that Blessed Gertrude's Spouse, Jesus, appeared to her, carrying health in His right hand and sickness in His left, and urged her to choose whichever she wished. But she, turning away from both hands of the Lord, said: "Lord, I desire with all my heart that You not regard my will, but accomplish Your good pleasure in all things." Wherefore the Lord, praising this, said to her: "Whoever wishes Me to come to him freely must resign to Me the key of his own will. And if through human frailty it happens that he takes it back, let him immediately repent and resign it to Me once more: and the right hand of My mercy will receive him and lead him to the kingdom of eternal glory." Blessed Gertrude did this: whence neither dangers, nor tribulations, nor losses of property, nor other obstacles, nor even her own faults and defects, could ever obscure the secure and constant confidence which she maintained in the most kind mercy of God. For she was most firmly confident that all things both adverse and prosperous were being turned to her good by God's providence. And the Lord once said to her: "That secure confidence which anyone has toward Me, believing that I truly can, know how, and will faithfully assist him in all things, has overflowed My heart and exerts such force upon My loving-kindness that I can in no way be absent from or fail such a person."
In like manner the Lord said to St. Mechtilde: "It is very pleasing to Me that people trust in My goodness and presume upon Me. For whoever has humbly trusted in Me and has believed in Me well, I will be present to him in this life, and after death I will benefit him beyond all merit. As much as anyone can believe in Me and piously presume upon My goodness, so much and infinitely more will he obtain. And therefore it is useful for a person, by hoping great things from Me, to believe well in Me." And when Mechtilde asked what she should chiefly believe about His ineffable goodness, the Lord answered: "Believe with firm faith that I will receive you after death as a father receives his dearest son, and that no father has ever so faithfully shared his inheritance with his only-begotten son as I will share all My goods and Myself with you. Whoever firmly believes this about My goodness, and with humble charity, shall be blessed."
Verse 40: LET US SEARCH OUR WAYS
40. LET US SEARCH OUR WAYS — that is, examining and searching all the hiding places down to the very bottom, all the actions of our life and conscience. "Let us search," says St. Bernard, sermon 58 on the Canticle, at the end, "our ways and our pursuits; and in this let each one judge himself to have made progress, not when he finds nothing to reprove, but when he reproves what he finds: then you have not searched yourself in vain, if you have recognized that there is still need for searching. And your inquiry has not deceived you as many times as you have thought it should be repeated; but if you always do this when it is needed, you always do it: therefore always remember that you need heavenly help and the mercy of Christ."
Again let us search without flattery and without dissimulation the depths of our heart, in which sometimes lies hidden some appetite that defiles all our works, and displeases God, and turns away His grace and blessings from us; remove this and root it out, if you wish to be blessed and watered by God. Great is the necessity and utility of this searching and examination, and all holy men have used it, and even the pagans; whence that saying of the Poet:
Do not lower your eyes to sweet sleep, Before you have first reviewed the deeds of the day just passed.
St. Jerome in book III of his Apology against Rufinus, chapter 10, places this among the golden precepts of Pythagoras: "The greatest care must be taken at two times, morning and evening, that is, concerning what we are about to do and what we have done." Galen, in his book On Recognizing and Curing the Diseases of the Soul, chapter 6: "Each day," he says, "recall to memory the things mentioned above. And indeed it will be best for you to do this more frequently: but if you cannot do so that often, at least in the morning hours always before you undertake any of the things you are going to do, and in the evening hours before you go to bed." If we believe Stobaeus, sermon 3, Phocylides was the first of all men to teach mortals to examine themselves and their actions three times a day: in which matter he surpassed Pythagoras.
Among the faithful, St. Ephrem the Syrian, volume III, in his Ascetical Sermon: "Each day," he says, "evening and morning, carefully consider the state of your business and the accounting of your commerce; and in the evening, entering the chamber of your heart, examine yourself and say: Do you think I have exasperated God in anything today? Have I uttered idle words? Have I sinned through contempt or negligence? Have I irritated a brother? Have I detracted from anyone?" etc. Then, when sins are detected, he commands that sorrow and tears be poured forth. He soon adds concerning the morning examination: "And when dawn has come, again meditate on the same things and say: How, do you think, has this night passed? Have impure and sordid thoughts invaded me, and have I willingly dwelt upon them?"
St. Dorotheus, sermon 11: "In what manner," he says, "we ought to purge and purify ourselves each day, our Fathers taught most exactly, namely that in the evening each person should carefully investigate how—"
he has spent that day. Again in the morning let him examine how he has passed that night, and let him do penance and come to his senses before God, if he has committed any sin." St. Bernard, in his book On the Solitary Life: "No one," he says, "loves you more, no one will judge you more faithfully. In the morning, demand an accounting from yourself of the preceding night, and announce to yourself a caution for the coming day; in the evening, demand an accounting of the past day, and make a decree for the oncoming night: thus, being strict, you will never have leisure for wantonness."
St. Bonaventure, volume II, epistle 25, memorial 24, speaking about preserving purity, says thus: "For preserving this more diligently and purely, by daily examination, seven times a day examine your life, always before or immediately after each canonical hour, considering and examining most attentively how from hour to hour you have walked worthily before God, without stain on the path of justice."
About St. Xavier, Tursellinus writes in book VI, chapter 6: "More frequently during the day he would more diligently examine his conscience, and he greatly exhorted others to do the same, considering that the hinge of a perfect life turned on this."
Finally our holy Father Ignatius prescribed for us an examination of conscience twice a day, and it has been received into the practice of our whole Society; likewise a particular examination for each person concerning some vice to be rooted out; he himself, however, used to examine himself every hour, and compare hour with hour, day with day, week with week, month with month, to see what progress he had made, or in what matter he had fallen short, as Ribadeneira attests in book V, chapter 1 of his Life.
Verse 41: LET US LIFT UP OUR HEARTS WITH OUR HANDS.
41. LET US LIFT UP OUR HEARTS WITH OUR HANDS. — Tropologically St. Gregory, in Moralia XVIII, 3: "He lifts up hearts with hands," he says, "who strengthens his prayer with works: for whoever prays but refuses to work, lifts up his heart and does not lift up his hands; whoever works but does not pray, lifts up his hands and does not lift up his heart."
Verse 42: WE HAVE PROVOKED TO WRATH.
42. WE HAVE PROVOKED TO WRATH. — In Hebrew מרנו (marinu), that is, we have embittered, we have rebelled. See what was said on chapter 1, verse 20.
THEREFORE YOU ARE INEXORABLE. — In Hebrew, therefore You have not spared, that is, You do not spare, but You scourge us.
Verse 43: YOU HAVE COVERED IN FURY
43. YOU HAVE COVERED IN FURY — that is, You have stretched forth fury and wrath as a veil before Yourself, so that You would not recognize or see anyone, or hear the sinner, but would strike us without regard; hence, explaining, he adds: You have covered with a cloud, etc. For there in the Hebrew the same word is used as here, namely saccota.
So Pagninus and Vatablus. Again, as if to say: You have interposed wrath as a hedge and rampart between You and us, so that with a hostile mind You might pursue and attack us. For this too is what the Hebrew saccota signifies; whence מכות succot are called military tabernacles/encampments: and סך (sac) signifies a rampart and palisade, with which a commander covers his camp and separates and fortifies it from the enemy.
Second, Maldonatus explains it thus: "You have covered," that is, You have armed Yourself with fury as with a shield, and struck us; in Hebrew ותרדפנו (vattir dephenu), that is, and You have pursued us. Or, as others say, You have covered Your face, so as not to see us Your children being slain by the enemy; just as a father covers his face so as not to see his son being mistreated by an enemy, or being cut by a surgeon.
Third, others say, as if to say: You have covered us with calamities proceeding from Your anger and fury. So Hugo, and St. Thomas and Lyranus. To this belongs the explanation of Sanchez: You have covered us, that is, You have condemned us to captivity and death. For it was customary to veil the faces of captives and the condemned, as was done to Haman (Esther 7); and Ezekiel, chapter 12:12, concerning Zedekiah: "His face shall be covered." Hence also the lictors, hearing the chief priests crying against Christ: "He is guilty of death," veiled His face and mocked Him when veiled. Because also among the Romans, the judge, sentencing a defendant to death, would say: "Go, lictor, bind the hands, cover the head, hang him on the accursed tree." Therefore there are here two veiled faces: the first of the Jews in this place; the second of God, concerning which he adds: "You have set a cloud before You, lest prayer pass through." This sense is fitting.
Fourth, as if to say: You have covered us with the darkness of Your fury, so that we cannot see where to flee, and thus You have pursued us blinded all the way to exile. So the Chaldean, Origen, and Vatablus. The first sense is more fitting, and properly corresponds to the Hebrew saccota.
Verse 44: YOU HAVE SET (stretched out) A CLOUD (namely of our sins
44. YOU HAVE SET (stretched out) A CLOUD (namely of our sins) BEFORE YOU (between You and us, because with Your eyes You always behold them as a dense cloud, preventing) LEST OUR PRAYER PASS THROUGH (to You); the Seventy render, on account of prayer, namely to repel it. So Origen, Theodoret, Rupert, Hugo, St. Thomas, Lyranus. Thus the Psalmist says, Psalm 89:8: "You have placed our iniquities in Your sight;" and Isaiah 59:2: "Your iniquities have divided between you and God." On the other hand, concerning the humble, Ecclesiasticus says, chapter 35:21: "The prayer of one who humbles himself penetrates the clouds," etc.
Note: Sins are called clouds: first, because they are like dark and foul vapors ascending from a wicked heart, as from a murky and marshy land; second, because they take away the sight, benevolence, and beneficence of the sun, that is, of God; third, because, just as from clouds come hailstones, thunders, and lightning bolts, so from sins spring forth the anger, fury, and punishments of God; fourth, just as clouds separate heaven from earth, so sins separate man from God, heaven, and the angels. Hence the rich man heard from Abraham: "Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed; so that those
who wish to pass from here to you cannot, nor can they cross from there to here" (Luke 16:26).
Second, by the cloud can be understood God's firm sentence, by which He had decreed to punish the Jews and not to allow Himself to be entreated; for this is what He says in Proverbs 1:24: "Because I called, and you refused, etc. I also will laugh at your destruction;" and verse 28: "Then they will call upon Me, and I will not hear: they will rise early, and they will not find Me." He alludes to a judge who, after pronouncing a death sentence, shuts himself in his house lest he hear the pleas of friends for the defendant and revoke the sentence, and admits no one to conversation. Hence Rabbi Samuel rightly says: The gates of prayer are sometimes open, sometimes closed: but the gates of repentance are never closed in this world. If you ask: Why does God punish His own so severely? I answer: Because little progress is made with us when He deals more gently. Our vices cling by the roots and are fixed in the very marrow, and are not uprooted except by a harsher and more penetrating scalpel.
Hence Rabbi Samuel, as quoted by Galatinus, book X, chapter 3, when Rabbi Hanina asked: "What does it mean that is written in Lamentations 3: 'You have covered Yourself with a cloud, lest prayer pass through'?" answered: "Because the gates of prayer are sometimes open and sometimes closed: but the gates of repentance are never closed in this world, as it is said in Psalm 65: 'The hope of all the ends of the earth, and in the sea far off,' that is, repentance. For just as this sea is never closed, but whoever wishes may wash himself in it at any hour he wishes: so repentance itself, at whatever hour a man wishes to perform it, he performs it, and blessed God receives it. But prayer has its appointed times, as it is said in Psalm 69: 'But my prayer is to You, O God: in the time of good pleasure.'"
Tropologically St. Gregory, in Moralia book XXVIII, chapter 9: "Holy men," he says, "praying to God say: 'You have set a cloud, lest prayer pass through,' as if they were saying: Upon our mind, accustomed to earthly pleasures, You by a just judgment cast the phantasms of its own cares, by which You confound it in the very intention of its prayer, and since You are not unaware that it is given to weak desires, You rightly rebuff it, blinded, from beholding the clarity of Your light; so that, when it strains toward You, it is reflected back from You by the very cloud of its own thoughts, and what it assiduously thinks about earthly things because it wills to, this it also tolerates in prayer when it does not will to."
Verse 45: YOU HAVE MADE ME AN UPROOTING AND A CASTING OUT IN THE MI...
45. YOU HAVE MADE ME AN UPROOTING AND A CASTING OUT IN THE MIDST OF THE PEOPLES. — For 'uprooting,' in Hebrew it is סחי (sechi), that is, scrapings, for example of a pavement, or of a leprous house, as if to say: You have scraped us away from Judaea, and made us vile and despised like filth and scrapings which are scraped from a pavement. Hence the Syriac translates: You have made us uprooted and despised among the peoples; and the Alexandrian Arabic: You have made us despised and expelled among the peoples. Alluding to this, St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:13: "We have become as the refuse of the world." Our translator renders it "uprooting," that is, an uprooted tree, as if to say: Just as a fruitless tree is uprooted and torn from its place: so You have uprooted us from Judaea, torn us out, and cast us into Babylon. For 'rejection,' in Hebrew it is מאום (maos), that is, refuse; that is, shavings, filings, and filth which are swept out from a house or other thing, rejected and cast away into a dung-heap or rubbish pile. Hence St. Paul translates it "peripsema" (off-scouring), when he says: "The off-scouring of all things until now." Jeremiah speaks in the person not
his own, but of the people. This is what the Lord had threatened against them, Jeremiah 18:7: "Suddenly I will speak against a nation and against a kingdom, to uproot it, and to destroy it, and to scatter it."
Second, the Chaldean and the Hebrews translate: You have made us a removal and a casting out, so that we might go into exile and wander here and there among the nations, as the Lord had threatened in Jeremiah 34:17.
Third, the Seventy translate: You have caused me to close my eyes, and to become [despised] in the midst of the peoples: to close the eyes is to shut them from fear, dread, and trembling lest prayer pass through. Hence Rabbi Samuel rightly says: The gates of prayer are sometimes open, sometimes closed: but the gates of repentance are never closed in this world.
Verse 46: THEY HAVE OPENED THEIR MOUTH AGAINST US
46. THEY HAVE OPENED THEIR MOUTH AGAINST US — so that, like beasts, they might most greedily devour us with their whole mouth, as it were, that is, lay waste and destroy us: it is a metaphor from wolves and lions, which, voracious for prey, gape with the whole opening of their mouths.
Second, "they opened their mouth," namely for mockery, as if to say: They mocked us and hurled insults at us. So Theodoret, Lyranus, Vatablus, Maldonatus.
Third, "they opened their mouth," namely, to issue wicked decrees against us.
Verse 47: PROPHECY.
47. PROPHECY. — So also the Seventy, not 'devastation,' as Lyranus and Reuchlin correct in the Hebrew Lexicon: for although the Hebrews and Vatablus translate the Hebrew שאת (set) as 'devastation,' as if to say: Fear and a pit, that is, a snare, was our devastation and destruction; yet our translator, with the Seventy, takes set for משא (massa), that is, a burden, that is, a burdensome prophecy and prediction: for both set and massa are derived from the same root נשא (nasa), that is, he bore, he carried. The sense therefore is, as if to say: The punishments prophesied by Jeremiah and the Prophets threw us into dread, and from dread into a snare and destruction; for while we feared them and wished to avoid them by rebelling against the Chaldeans, contrary to the command of God and Jeremiah, then we fell into captivity and ruin.
Second, others explain it as if to say: What the Prophets prophesied has had and continues to have a true outcome; for we fear, we are seized, we are crushed, although we previously spurned those prophecies. So Rabanus and Dionysius.
Third, St. Thomas explains it thus: The prophecy of the false prophets was the cause for us, first, of dread before the devastation; second, of a snare, when we were caught in it; third, of destruction after it.
Fourth, Rupert explains them as being the words of Jeremiah, as if to say: Because I prophesied what God commanded, hence I am shaken with fear, ensnared, cast into prison and crushed. The first sense is the most fitting. For in a similar manner Isaiah threatens, chapter 24:17: "Fear, and the pit, and the snare upon you, who are an inhabitant of the earth."
Verse 48: STREAMS.
48. STREAMS. — In Hebrew פלגי מים (palge maim),
that is, streams of waters. St. Gregory on Psalm 101 says that in the truly penitent there ought to be such an abundance of tears that they can be divided, just as waters are divided by a gardener to irrigate the beds of vegetables. We draw forth streams of waters when we pour out tears separately for each individual sin.
St. Bernard says: My firm resolution is never to laugh until I hear from the mouth of God those words: "Come, blessed ones;" nor will I cease from weeping until I am free from that sentence: "Depart, accursed ones, into eternal fire." This mourning keeps away sins. Ovid truly sang:
The harmful pleasure of Venus Does not often visit mournful beds. The mind will be apt to be captured when it is most joyful in its affairs, And will revel in its seat upon rich soil. While hearts rejoice and are not chalked with sorrow, They lie open, and then Venus steals in with her beguiling art.
Thus "St. Domnina," says Theodoret in the Philotheos, chapter 30, "with continual tears not only watered her cheeks, but also her garments of hair; for she covered her body with such clothing. For her vehement love for God produced those tears, inflaming her to divine contemplation, pricking her with its goads, and urging her toward the departure that was to come." Likewise St. Olympias, niece of the prefect Ablavius, most noble and most holy, and therefore dearest to St. Chrysostom, wept continually: "Her whole life," says Palladius in the Lausiac History, chapter 144, "was in compunction and frequent flood of tears, and one could more easily see a fountain's streams fail in summer than tears fail from those sublime eyes that always beheld Christ."
Likewise Abba Macarius, when asked to say a word of edification, "weeping, said: Let us weep, brothers, and let our eyes produce tears before we depart hence, where our tears will burn our bodies. And they all wept and fell prostrate on their faces, saying: Father, pray for us." Again, "once as Abba Pastor was passing through Egypt, he saw a woman sitting by a tomb and weeping bitterly, and he said: Even if all the delights of this world were to come, they would not transfer her soul from mourning. So also a monk ought always to have mourning within himself." This is found in the Lives of the Fathers, under the title On Compunction. A certain old man saw someone laughing and said to him: "We are about to render an account of our whole life before the Lord of heaven and earth, and you laugh? Let compunction accompany you as a shadow accompanies a body." In the same place: Another called the gift of tears the promised land, to which, if after 40 years you arrive with the children of Israel, you will not fear war. In the same place: Another said: "When you are tempted, sharpen the sword of tears against the one who attacks you." In the same place, under the title On Constant Prayer: A brother asked St. Anthony, saying: "What shall I do for my sins?" He answered: "Whoever wishes to be freed from sins will be freed from them by weeping and lamentation; and whoever wishes to be built up in virtues, through weeping
will he be built up in tears. The very praising of the Psalms is a lamentation. Remember the tears of Hezekiah and Peter." In the same place, book VII, chapter 38: St. Abraham the hermit, as St. Ephrem attests in his Life, wept every day: "When hearing of any sinner or impious person," he says, "did he not beseech the Lord with tears day and night for that person's salvation?" St. Arsenius had a cloth in his bosom on account of the tears which, out of desire for eternal life, frequently flowed from his eyes, says Rufinus. Abba Pammon, seeing a theatrical woman, wept; when asked why, he said: "For two reasons: The first is the perdition of this woman. The second is that I do not have as much care to please God as she has to please dishonorable men," says the same Rufinus.
Verse 49: MY EYE HAS BEEN AFFLICTED.
49. MY EYE HAS BEEN AFFLICTED. — Vatablus: My eye (that is, my eyes) has wept, and does not rest without ceasing, until the Lord looks upon me from heaven and attends to my prayers. In Hebrew, 'my eye' is נגרה (niggera), that is, it has been drawn out or has flowed down, that is, it pours itself out in tears in such a way that it seems to be torn out and to fall: "because there was no rest" from tears, or because there was no one who might bring me any consolation and rest.
Note: In the Hebrew, Jeremiah here reverses the order of the letters. For he places the letter pe after ain, which in the alphabet precedes it; and this because of the connection of the words and the sense; for since under the letter pe he had said in verse 48, palge, that is, "my eye poured forth streams of waters," hence fittingly continuing this he adds ain, which in Hebrew signifies 'eye,' and says of it in verse 49: "My eye has been afflicted, nor has it been silent, etc. My eye has despoiled my soul." See what was said on chapter 2, verse 16.
Verse 51: MY EYE HAS DESPOILED MY SOUL.
51. MY EYE HAS DESPOILED MY SOUL. — That is, my eye has snatched away my soul by weeping; my soul has flowed out through my eyes into tears, as if to say: The pitiable sight of my daughters taken captive, mocked by the enemy, has wrenched the soul out of me. For 'despoiled,' in Hebrew it is עולל (olel), that is, it has gleaned grapes, as if to say: Just as those who plunder a vineyard leave not even a single cluster: so my eye by its continual weeping has consumed and, as it were, plundered all the strength and all the joys of my soul, and has sucked and drained the very spirit of life and the sap of the heart, "on account of all," that is, on account of all the daughters of the city, namely the tender and delicate Zion maidens, whom he saw going into captivity. So Hugo, St. Thomas, Lyranus, Dionysius, who however by 'daughters of the city' understand the cities subject to Jerusalem and laid waste by the Chaldeans. Somewhat differently Sanchez, as if to say: From the time my eye beheld such a great slaughter of my people, nothing remains in me that could be a source of pleasure or solace, nor do I see anything left for me to attend to except tears.
With much greater right should the eyes weep, which, delighted by the appearance of vanity and of changeable goods, have seduced the heart to set aside the supreme good and beautiful and embrace the filth of creatures. Hence St. Gregory, in Moralia book XXI, chapter 2, extending this sentence to the eye which through curiosity and fault despoils the soul, explains it thus: "My eye," he says, "has despoiled my soul: for by coveting visible things it has lost invisible virtues; it has therefore betrayed (others read: 'lost') the interior fruit through exterior sight, and through the eye of the body has suffered the plundering of the heart. Hence for purity of heart we must maintain the discipline of the senses: for however great the virtue with which the mind may be endowed, however great the gravity with which it may flourish, the carnal senses still clatter with a certain childishness externally, and unless they are restrained by the weight of interior gravity and by a kind of youthful vigor, they drag the weakened mind toward all things fleeting and trivial. Hence Job says: 'I have made a covenant with my eyes.'"
After the sin of the first parent, the eyes are the gates of death and the enemies of the soul, about which Seneca rightly said: "With great providence God placed in the eyes both sight and weeping, so that those who commit sin by seeing might pay the penalty by weeping." Hence Homer sang that Tiresias alone was wise among the dead, being blind, while the other souls wandered like shades. And Cicero, in Tusculan Disputations book V: "The Poets," he says, "never introduce Tiresias the seer deploring his blindness." Democritus of Abdera judged that blindness greatly contributed to sharpness of intellect and quiet contemplation; therefore he deprived himself of his eyes, says Gellius in book X, considering that his meditations would be more exact and vigorous if he freed them from the enticements and impediments of the eyes. Homer, most keen-sighted in mind, was blind. Hear him in his hymn: "I am a blind man, and I dwell in rocky Chios." For the eyes are the enticers of desires and the leaders in love. Hence Virgil in the Bucolics:
As I saw, as I was undone, as wicked error carried me away.
And in the Georgics:
A woman burns by being seen.
And another: "A woman's eye is a dart to young men." Therefore let everyone do what Ezekiel chapter 20:7 advises: "Let each one cast away the offenses of his eyes;" and Christ: "If your right eye scandalizes you, pluck it out," etc. (Matthew 5:29). For, as St. Bernard says, sermon 5 on the Feast of All Saints: "It is commonly said: What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over."
John Moschus relates in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 96, about a certain nun, who, since she suffered continual persecution on account of her beauty from a young man, asked him what so drew him into love of her; and when he said: Your eyes; she dug out her own eyes and sent them to the young man, who, stupefied and filled with compunction, changed his life and became a monk.
St. Lucy the virgin did the same; but she miraculously afterward recovered the eyes she had dug out, as James of Vitry and the Chronicle of the Friars Preachers relate.
St. Audomarus, Bishop of Therouanne, in the year of Christ 638, being blind, when at Arras during the elevation of the body of St. Vedast he received his sight through the saint's merits, bore it with a troubled spirit, and praying for blindness again, obtained it; for he kept saying that it had been sent upon him by God for his salvation. So Sigebert in his Chronicle. For, as St. Gregory says of the contemporary St. Spes, Abbot, who was blind for 40 years, in Dialogues IV, 10: "While God pressed the venerable old man with exterior darkness, He never deprived him of interior light and consolation."
St. Aquilinus, Bishop of Evreux, asked God to close the light of his eyes, so that he might better and more attentively contemplate heavenly things; he obtained this, and yet he excellently fulfilled his episcopal office by preaching. So the author of his Life, October 19, records.
St. Herluca of Bavaria, when as a young woman she was more devoted to adorning her body than her soul, was struck first by illness, then by blindness from God, and came to her senses, passing from vanity to holiness. Afterward, admonished by God to send a wax globe as a votive offering to the tomb of St. Cyriacus the martyr for the recovery of one eye, she sent it, received it back, and saw so keenly to the last days of her life that she surpassed eagles and lynxes, nor did any force of tears — which she shed most abundantly — impair them, nor did the finest needle-embroidery on cloth make them dim. Yet she always lacked the other eye, lest she erase from her mind the reason for having once lost both. So Father Gretser relates from the Chronicles in the Appendix to Gregory VII, and Raderus in the Viridarium, part III, chapter 3.
Note: Symmachus translates: My eye has plunged my soul, as into a sea of tears; Vatablus: My eye has caused grief to my soul on account of much weeping, beyond all the daughters of my city, that is, I have wept more than all the daughters of my city. Rabbi Solomon translates less correctly: My eye has defiled my soul. He says, explains Jeremiah himself, that his soul was defiled because, since he was of the priestly line, he should not have wept for the dead according to the law of Leviticus 21:2. The Arabic translates better: My eyes have wept, and my soul is saddened on account of all my cities; and the Syriac: My eye is saddened (or anxious, troubled) over my soul, on account of all the daughters of my city, or of my cities.
Verse 52: THEY HAVE CAUGHT ME IN HUNTING (Theodoret, Hugo, St. Thom...
52. THEY HAVE CAUGHT ME IN HUNTING (Theodoret, Hugo, St. Thomas, Lyranus explain this of the people captured by the Chaldeans, who are called hunters, Jeremiah 16:16; for these hunted the Jews) WITHOUT CAUSE — that is, without any fault of the Jews, not that they had not sinned against God, but that they had not sinned against the Chaldeans.
Second, and better, Jeremiah here returns to himself and his own troubles and imprisonment; for in Jeremiah 37, the Jews laid snares for him, saying that he was fleeing to the Chaldeans, and they cast him into prison; hence he says: "They have caught me in hunting without cause," that is, without any desert on my part, since I had harmed them in nothing, but rather had helped them: so Origen, Lyranus, Rupert, Vatablus; for thus חנם (gratis) is taken in Psalm 34:7, and 68:3, and 118:161. Or "without cause," because they derive no benefit from my misfortune.
Verse 53: MY LIFE HAS SUNK INTO THE PIT.
53. MY LIFE HAS SUNK INTO THE PIT. — In Hebrew: They have shut up my life in a pit, that is, a prison, so that there was no hope of redemption. Hence the Seventy translate: They put my life to death in the pit, because there, deprived of all hope of salvation, Jeremiah was as if dead.
THEY PLACED A STONE UPON ME — upon the pit or well into which they cast Jeremiah as into a prison (Jeremiah 38:6). Thus the den of lions, into which Daniel was cast (chapter 6:17), they covered with a stone. And David, Psalm 68:16: "Let not the pit close its mouth upon me," namely blocked with a stone. It seems therefore that this was the custom at that time.
Tropologically St. Gregory, Moralia book XXVI, 24: "Life sinks into a pit," he says, "when it is defiled by the stain of iniquity; and a stone is placed upon it when the mind is consumed in sin even by hard custom, so that, even if it wishes to rise, it can no longer do so in any way, because the weight of evil habit presses down from above."
Verse 54: THE WATERS HAVE OVERFLOWED
54. THE WATERS HAVE OVERFLOWED — namely of the pit; because I was cast up to my neck, says Josephus, into a muddy pit; or rather the "waters" of tribulations and afflictions. For thus the Psalmist says, Psalm 68:2: "Save me, O God: for the waters have come in even unto my soul."
I HAVE PERISHED. — In Hebrew נגזרתי (nigzarti), that is, I have been cut off, namely because my life is cut short like a thread, which the Poets said was done by their Clotho.
These things allegorically agree with Christ's passion and tomb; for the Jews placed a stone upon His tomb. So St. Jerome, or rather Rabanus, Olympiodorus, and Rufinus in his Commentary on the Creed, near the middle.
Verse 55: FROM THE LOWEST PIT
55. FROM THE LOWEST PIT — from the greatest afflictions.
Second, St. Thomas and Theodoret explain this of the underground prisons into which the Jews were cast at Babylon.
Third, and best, Jeremiah, who was cast into the lowest pit, that is, the deepest or bottommost (for this is the Hebrew תחתית, tachtiioth) and most profound pit, speaks of himself and his own pit, as I have said. So the Chaldean, Olympiodorus, Hugo, Lyranus.
Verse 56: YOU HAVE HEARD MY VOICE
56. YOU HAVE HEARD MY VOICE — when You freed me from prison through the eunuch Ebed-melech (Jeremiah 38); now therefore I pray that again, as is Your custom, You may hear me.
DO NOT TURN AWAY (in Hebrew: do not hide) YOUR EAR FROM MY SOBBING. — In Hebrew, from my breathing, which when frequent produces sobbing, as if to say: In You I hope and breathe, because in human affairs I have no relief, relaxation, hope, or consolation. Jeremiah wrote these Lamentations after the destruction of Jerusalem: hence here he partly recalls the evils which he suffered from the Jews during and before the siege of the city; and partly for future evils, now threatening him from the Jews in Egypt, he begs for God's help; for he suffered terrible things there, and was finally stoned to death. See chapters 42, 43, and 44. His plea for future help begins here and extends to the end of the chapter.
Verse 57: YOU HAVE DRAWN NEAR
57. YOU HAVE DRAWN NEAR — You have come to me, You have offered me Your hand and help, when You brought me out of prison through the eunuch (Jeremiah 38). The Chaldean translates: You sent an angel who might free me, on the day when I called upon You. By 'angel' he understands the eunuch, who here was like an angel to Jeremiah, or a true guardian angel of Jeremiah, who prompted the eunuch to free Jeremiah from prison, and who comforted Jeremiah in prison, reminding him of that voice of God from chapter 1:17: "Do not be afraid."
Verse 58: YOU HAVE JUDGED
58. YOU HAVE JUDGED — namely first, when You put to death my enemy Hananiah the false prophet (Jeremiah 28:17); second, when You freed me from prison through the eunuch, and then through Nebuchadnezzar; third, when You proved by the very event that my prophecies, which they attack as if false, are true, by causing the king, the people, and the city to be captured, as I had predicted. So the Chaldean, Origen, Rupert, Hugo, Lyranus, Vatablus. But Rabbi Solomon and St. Thomas take these words about the people, whom God of old delivered from Pharaoh and often judged, that is, vindicated and set in freedom.
Verse 59: THEIR INIQUITY.
59. THEIR INIQUITY. — In Hebrew it is עותתי (avvatati), that is, my iniquity, or my perversity, namely the injury which my enemies the Jews inflict upon me; for תי ('my') is taken passively, that is, which I suffer. So the Chaldean.
Verse 60: ALL THEIR FURY.
60. ALL THEIR FURY. — In Hebrew נקמתם (nigmatam), that is, their vengeance.
Verse 61: THEIR REPROACH
61. THEIR REPROACH — with which they afflicted me.
Verse 62: THE LIPS OF THOSE WHO RISE UP AGAINST ME
62. THE LIPS OF THOSE WHO RISE UP AGAINST ME — You have heard.
Verse 63: BEHOLD THEIR SITTING DOWN AND THEIR RISING UP; I AM THEIR...
63. BEHOLD THEIR SITTING DOWN AND THEIR RISING UP; I AM THEIR SONG. — See that I, both when they sit and when they rise and stand, am their story and their song. Thus Christ says: "They that drank wine sang against Me" (Psalm 68:13), and Job 30:9: "I have become their song."
Second, sitting is the posture of those who pray; standing is that of those who work, as if to say: Whether they are at leisure or at business, they hurl jibes at me.
Third, sitting belongs to judges, who handle serious matters; rising belongs to those at leisure when they cease from serious affairs, as if to say: Whether they handle serious business or take a break from it, they mock me. So a Castro.
Fourth, sitting and rising signify every movement, posture, bearing, and action. Psalm 138:2: "You have known my sitting down and my rising up," that is, all my movements and actions, as if to say: You see, O Lord, that the Jews in every
work and action sing about me, laugh at me, and mock me. So Maldonatus. The Prophet prays to God that, just as He was present to him formerly before the destruction, so now too He may be present and free him from the machinations of the Jews who wished to flee to Egypt, or who had already fled there.
Verse 65: YOU WILL GIVE THEM A SHIELD OF THE HEART.
65. YOU WILL GIVE THEM A SHIELD OF THE HEART. — In the Hebrew there is a beautiful paronomasia: for נגינה (neginna), that is, their song with which they sing against me (verse 73), You will give them a just and fitting recompense מגנה (meginna), that is, a shield or encircling of the heart, that is, sorrow and anguish that girds, closes, constricts, and oppresses the heart, say Vatablus and the Chaldean (hence the Arabic also translates: Constrict them with sorrow of heart); so that the heart, overwhelmed by evils, finally becomes hardened and insensible, like a shield or a stone; for experience shows that this naturally happens in extreme dangers and afflictions, as I myself have experienced when placed in the most imminent peril of captivity and life. Or, as if to say: You will give them a cardiac ailment, as physicians call it, in which the heart is, as it were, suffocated by a covering placed upon it from grief; so Rabbi David and Maldonatus. Let this be the prison of those who shut me in an unjust prison. Thus Zedekiah, who imprisoned Jeremiah, and his princes who urged him to it, were captured by the Chaldeans, imprisoned, blinded, and killed, and thus encircled and overwhelmed by anguish and sorrows.
He alludes to the shield of the ancients, which covered the soldier almost entirely, and was therefore nearly equal to him in length, while the buckler and targe covered only the head or chest. Livy teaches this in book I: "In place of the buckler, the second class was given (a shield), because they had no breastplate, so that the shield might serve in place of buckler, breastplate, and cuirass, and protect the whole body." Hence Ammianus, book XVI, records that soldiers crossed rivers on their shields as on boats. Moreover, soldiers slain in battle were carried on their shield as on a bier, as Virgil shows of Pallas being borne in Aeneid X. Hence that saying of the Spartan woman to her son: "Either bring back the shield" — as a victor — "or return on it" — as one slain, on a bier. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Just as a shield girds and covers the whole soldier, so may Your fury encircle and overwhelm them entirely.
Again, as if to say: You, O Lord, were to me Jeremiah a friendly shield in prison; but to my enemies and Yours, be a hostile shield. For just as You willed Your faithfulness and kindness to be a shield for me; so those who persecute me will have no other shield for their heart from You than indignation, toil, and misfortune. So Sanchez, who also adds that the Hebrew meginna can be derived from the root נגן (nagan), that is, to play, to sing psalms, so that meginna would be the same as negina, as if to say: I am to them a song and a story for insult: You will be to them a song for toil and mourning, such as a funeral dirge or a death-song that is customarily sung at the obsequies of the dead. This allusion is not unsuitable; for the same word can allude to many things; yet the genuine and proper meaning of meginna is that it signifies a shield, as translate
our translator and others, from the root גנן (ganan), that is, he covered, he protected. Therefore the first exposition is solid and genuine.
Differently the Seventy translate it as ὑπερασπισμὸν καρδίας, that is, protection of the heart. And Rabbi Joseph attributes this shield to the Prophet, by which God was going to protect him so that the Jews hostile to him could not harm him. But the words of the text resist this, saying: "You will give them," not "him." Others by shield or covering of the heart understand ignorance, blindness, hardness, and unbelief. So Hugo, Lyranus, Dionysius. Hence tropologically by this shield you may understand the crass and affected ignorance of God's and the Church's commandments, says Delrio in adage 881.
Finally Rabbi Solomon for 'shield of the heart' translates 'crushing' or 'breaking of the heart.' For the root מגן (magan), he says, signifies to break and to crush. But in both respects he errs, and shows himself unskilled in Hebrew words.
YOUR TOIL. — In Hebrew תאלה (taala), that is, a curse, an execration, so that nothing may turn out well for them, as if to say: You will give them a shield of the heart, namely Your curse, which may cover, constrict, and harden their heart.
Second, Rabbi Solomon translates taala as 'Your folly,' from the root יאל (iaal), which in the niphal signifies to be foolish: hence אויל (evil) means a fool, as if to say: They themselves said that Your oracles, O Lord, and the threats of Jeremiah concerning the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity and afflictions of the Jews, were false and foolish; now therefore You will throw this back in their faces, so that these oracles which they called foolishness may in reality come upon them and be the shield and oppression of their heart: then they will see that not Your words, but their own words and deeds were foolishness, and that by opposing God and the Prophets they acted foolishly.
Third, and best, תאלה (taala), that is, a curse, is placed by metathesis for תלאה (telaa), that is, toil: for it alludes to verse 5: "He has surrounded me with gall and toil," as it is in Hebrew, telaa. Telaa signifies toil, weariness, trouble, sorrow, anguish, and torment, as if to say: The weariness, sorrow, and trouble with which my enemies the Jews made You toil, O Lord, by wearying You with their continual sins — repay this to them as like for like, so that they likewise may toil, be tormented, and be wearied by evils and afflictions sent by You; and let this be their shield, or the encircling and oppression of the heart. So Rupert, Hugo, St. Thomas. Hence the Syriac, both Arabic versions, and the Chaldean translate telaa as a blow, a striking, an affliction, and refer it to the following word תרדוף (tirdoph), which our translator renders 'You will pursue'; but they translate it 'it will pursue' (for it can be rendered either way). So the Syriac translates: You will give them sorrow of heart, and Your blow will pursue them; the Arabic: Constrict them with sorrow of heart; and Your persecution will pursue them; the Chaldean: Your affliction will weary them, as if to say: Let the Jews feel, O Lord, Your harsh hand that wearies us; indeed this actually happened to them, when with extreme famine
and other miseries they labored during the siege, and afterward when the city was captured they were led into prisons and into Babylon. So Lyranus. 'Toil' therefore is taken here actively, not passively, as if to say: "Your toil," namely, not that by which You toil and grieve, but that by which You will cause them to toil and grieve. Hence, explaining, he adds: "You will pursue in fury and destroy them under the heavens, O Lord."
Allegorically, as if to say: Your toil, that is, the toilsome life, passion, and cross which the Jews imposed upon You, O Christ, repay to them in the destruction through Titus and Vespasian. So Delrio. To this pertains the exposition of St. Jerome, or rather of Rabanus, except that he takes the 'shield of the heart' as the scandal of the Jews arising from the human weakness they saw in Christ: "He gave them," he says, "a shield of the heart, His toil; because by a just judgment He thereby showed them (the Jews) as proudly obstinate against Him, since He Himself labored for us in His weakness; for they rejected from themselves the words of the preachers, having disdained the infirmities of the Lord's passion," as if to say: God justly punished the Jews with blindness and hardness of heart, because they rejected Christ who was toiling for them in His humanity, afflicted and suffering: for from this very thing they ought to have loved and honored Him all the more, the more unworthy things He undertook for them; because therefore they did not do this, but turned away from the laboring Christ, hence they were justly blinded and hardened by God.
Likewise St. Gregory, homily 22 on the Gospels: "You will give them," he says, "a shield — Your toil; for lest the arrows of preaching penetrate their hearts, while they disdained the toil of His passion, they held, as it were, that very toil of His as a shield, so as not to allow His words to pass through to them, since they saw Him laboring unto death."
Finally Hector Pinto explains it thus: You, O Christ, will give to men the toil which You undertook for them, so that it may be a shield for them in every temptation. Your passion will be their protection, Your toil will be their buckler. But those who reject or neglect this will be afflicted here and will go to hell. However, this sense does not well cohere with the letter and context.
Verse 66: UNDER THE HEAVENS
66. UNDER THE HEAVENS — from the earth. This truly came to pass; for during the seventy years of captivity all the enemies of Jeremiah perished, and not one of them returned to Judaea: just as in the desert all the murmurers perished, and only Joshua and Caleb entered Canaan (Numbers 14:29).