Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
To the Jews who had remained in Jerusalem against God's command, He predicts destruction; but to those who, obedient to God and Jeremiah, had surrendered themselves to the Chaldeans and had been led to Babylon, He promises in verse 6 a return to Jerusalem; and flying from these to the Christians, He promises them a heart of flesh and a new spirit.
Vulgate Text: Ezekiel 11:1-25
1. And the spirit lifted me up and brought me to the east gate of the house of the Lord, which faces the sunrise; and behold, at the entrance of the gate were twenty-five men, and I saw among them Jezonias the son of Azur, and Pheltias the son of Banaias, princes of the people. 2. And He said to me: Son of man, these are the men who devise iniquity and frame the worst counsel in this city, 3. saying: Were not houses recently built? This is the cauldron, and we are the flesh. 4. Therefore prophesy against them, prophesy, O son of man. 5. And the Spirit of the Lord fell upon me and said to me: Speak: Thus says the Lord: Thus you have spoken, O house of Israel, and I know the thoughts of your heart. 6. You have slain many in this city and have filled its streets with the slain. 7. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Your slain, whom you have placed in its midst — these are the flesh, and this is the cauldron; but I will bring you out from the midst of it. 8. You feared the sword, and I will bring the sword upon you, says the Lord God. 9. And I will cast you out of its midst and deliver you into the hand of enemies, and I will execute judgments upon you. 10. You shall fall by the sword; at the borders of Israel I will judge you; and you shall know that I am the Lord. 11. This city shall not be your cauldron, and you shall not be flesh within it; at the borders of Israel I will judge you. 12. And you shall know that I am the Lord, because you have not walked in My precepts and have not executed My judgments, but have acted according to the customs of the nations that are around you. 13. And it came to pass, as I was prophesying, that Pheltias the son of Banaias died; and I fell upon my face, crying with a loud voice, and said: Alas, alas, alas, O Lord God! Will You make a complete end of the remnant of Israel? 14. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: 15. Son of man, your brethren, your brethren, the men of your kindred, and the whole house of Israel, all of them, to whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said: Depart far from the Lord; the land has been given to us for a possession. 16. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because I have sent them far off among the nations, and because I have scattered them among the lands, I will be for them a small sanctuary in the lands where they have come. 17. Therefore speak: Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you from the lands in which you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. 18. And they shall go there and shall remove all its offenses and all its abominations from it. 19. And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them; and I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, 20. that they may walk in My precepts and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God. 21. But as for those whose heart walks after their stumbling blocks and abominations, I will recompense their way upon their own heads, says the Lord God. 22. And the cherubim lifted up their wings, and the wheels with them; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them. 23. And the glory of the Lord ascended from the midst of the city and stood over the mountain that is to the east of the city. 24. And the spirit lifted me up and brought me into Chaldea, to the captivity, in a vision, by the Spirit of God; and the vision that I had seen was taken up from me. 25. And I spoke to the captivity all the words of the Lord that He had shown me.
Verse 1: He Brought Me
1. HE BROUGHT ME — namely, from the court of the priests (where in chapter 9, verse 6, I saw their slaughter; and in chapter 10, verses 4 and 6 at the same place, I heard the sentence being pronounced by God about the burning of Jerusalem) to the Eastern gate of the court of the laity, where the glory of God had taken its stand.
WHICH FACES THE SUNRISE. — It is a pleonasm; for it means the same as "Eastern," as was said before. This gate was the most famous, because from it was seen the most august facade of the temple, which faced east.
TWENTY-FIVE MEN. — Not priests, like those destined by God for death in chapter 8, verse 16, but, as follows, princes of the people. For the Hebrews report that Jerusalem was divided into 24 districts, and each district had its own leader or prince (as is still done in Rome); so there were 24. Moreover, the twenty-fifth seems to be the president of all and the governor of the city. These correspond to the 24 elders of the Church, Apocalypse 4:4. These 24 princes therefore gather here at the gate of the temple to deliberate about public affairs.
JEZONIAS THE SON OF AZUR. — This was therefore a different person from the Jezonias of chapter 8, verse 11. For that one was the son of Saphan.
Verse 3: Were Not Houses Recently Built? This is the Cauldron and We Ar...
3. WERE NOT HOUSES RECENTLY BUILT? THIS IS THE CAULDRON, AND WE ARE THE FLESH. — Vatablus translates: Destruction is not near; let us build houses. So also Pagninus and others. The Septuagint with our Translator read it as a question: "not," that is, "were not houses recently built?" These are the words of certain princes, as if to say: The houses and walls of Jerusalem, like a cauldron, are of iron and very strong: who then should fear the Chaldeans? Granted that Jeremiah saw in chapter 1 a cauldron, that is, a boiling pot, and us being cooked in it as flesh; yet we will not be taken out of the pot, that is, Jerusalem, until fully cooked, that is, in extreme old age. So Theodoret. For flesh is not usually taken out of a pot until it is fully cooked, says Maldonatus.
Second, St. Jerome and Origen explain it differently, as if these were the words of other princes holding a contrary opinion, as if to say: Granted that Jerusalem is encircled with iron walls, nevertheless in the cauldron we will be burned and cooked by the Chaldeans; let us therefore flee to Egypt.
Third, and more fully: Jeremiah was urging the Jews, saying: Surrender yourselves to the Chaldeans and you will live; but if you resist them, the city will be burned and you will perish. The Jews respond: There is no reason to fear the Chaldeans in so fortified a city. Jeremiah counters: I saw, he says, Jerusalem as a boiling pot. You may have seen that, say the Jews, but since then we have long seen, and, as the Septuagint says, we recently see houses being built: therefore Jeremiah's prophecy is not true, and the people generally do not fear it. And granted that Jerusalem is a pot or cauldron and we are the flesh in it, we would rather be cooked and burned in it than be slaughtered by the sword if we surrender to the Chaldeans. It is irony, as if to say: We do not fear fire in the city, but the sword outside. This is clear from verse 8. For the city, as a most fortified cauldron, will preserve and protect us as flesh.
Symbolically, note here that the impious and carnal lower their souls to pots and love them, dwelling in them; so that they may say according to their own sense that verse of Psalm 60:8: "Moab is the pot of my hope." Thus the Hebrews, having left Egypt, soon began to murmur: "Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of flesh!" — brooding over them with their whole body, mind, affection, and gullet, Exodus 16:3. This is caused in them by a perpetual greediness and habit of gluttony. For they do nothing other than constantly provoke it by devouring and drinking. Such is the force of habit and practice. Lycurgus demonstrated this visibly to the Spartans with the beautiful example of two little dogs. For he raised twin puppies of the same mother with dissimilar habits: one, by feeding it at home, he made a glutton; the other, by exercising it outdoors, he made keen and a hunter. Then, when the Lacedemonians had assembled in one place, he said: "For acquiring virtue, teaching and habit are of enormous importance, which I will show you immediately."
Then, bringing in two puppies, when he had placed a pot in the middle and a hare before them, one rushed with great eagerness toward the hare, the other toward the pot. Then he said: "These two, both born of the same parents, but having followed different habits of life, the one has turned out a glutton, the other a hunter." So Plutarch in his Life of Lycurgus.
Verse 7: Your Slain Are the Flesh
7. YOUR SLAIN ARE THE FLESH — as if to say: You are not the flesh in Jerusalem to be cooked and buried as in a pot, as you wish, O Jews; rather, the flesh is the Prophets, whom you slaughter as victims of God. You, however, will be led away from Jerusalem, unworthy of being buried in it, to be killed in Reblatha, verse 10. So Origen and Polychronius.
Verse 8: You Feared the Sword
8. YOU FEARED THE SWORD. — That is, you were unwilling to surrender yourselves to the Babylonians, as Jeremiah commanded, fearing that you would be killed by them: hence their sword will devour you. Moreover, this affirmation contains a tacit negation, as if to say: You did not fear captivity, but the sword, that is, war from the Chaldeans, and therefore you sought help against them from the Egyptians, Jeremiah 2:18; wherefore I will send both upon you, namely the sword, which you feared, and the captivity, which you did not fear. So Maldonatus.
9. JUDGMENTS — that is, just retribution.
10. AT THE BORDERS OF ISRAEL — in Reblatha, which is at the borders of Israel.
I WILL JUDGE (the Chaldean renders: I will avenge Myself upon) YOU — because there Nebuchadnezzar killed the princes and blinded Zedekiah, Jeremiah 39:6, as if to say: Not in the pot, that is, in Jerusalem, as you boast; but at the borders of Israel you will die, indeed you will be killed. Wherefore:
Verse 11: This City Shall Not Be Your Cauldron and You Shall Not Be Fles...
11. THIS CITY SHALL NOT BE YOUR CAULDRON, AND YOU SHALL NOT BE FLESH WITHIN IT (as if to say: Jerusalem, as a cauldron, will not be able to protect you, as flesh; because) AT THE BORDERS OF ISRAEL (in Reblatha) I WILL JUDGE — that is, punish and kill you.
13. AS I WAS PROPHESYING, PHELTIAS THE SON OF BANAIAS DIED. — While I was in Babylon, rapt in spirit to Jerusalem, and saw and heard God, and seemed to myself to be presenting His words to the princes of Judah, behold, in spirit I saw one of them die, namely Pheltias: so that just as God began to slay the priests in chapter 9, verse 6, here He begins to slay the princes through the six men of whom chapter 9, verse 2 speaks.
AND I SAID: ALAS, ALAS! — For although Pheltias was impious and his death was something to be glad about, nevertheless the Prophet groaned, because with Pheltias the leader of the people slain, he feared that the whole people would likewise be slaughtered.
Verse 15: Your Brothers
15. YOUR BROTHERS (that is, your kinsmen, namely the Jews led away with you to Babylon, who surrendered themselves to the Chaldeans, are mocked by the Jerusalemites, that is, by the Jews who refused to surrender to the Chaldeans. For they say to them mockingly): DEPART FROM THE LORD — that is, from the city, the temple, and the Lord's inheritance; renounce your right as Israelites. The Lord wished you to be far from Himself, but He has distributed to us the Promised Land. Therefore, says the Prophet, or rather God through him: the opposite of all this will happen. For I will deliver you over to death, but I will bring them back, that they may be the seedbed of posterity and the heirs of Jerusalem. So Theodoret and St. Jerome. It is a Hebrew aposiopesis. "Your brothers" — supply: "are mocked and ridiculed." The sense, therefore, is: The Jews who remain in Jerusalem against God's command, refusing to surrender to the Chaldean, and who boast of their temple because they retain and inhabit it — these, I say, truly do not have the temple, because they retain only the walls of the temple, without God. For I, God, and all My glory have already departed from the temple and from the Jews, as I said in the preceding chapter, verses 4 and 18. Moreover, these will soon be ignominiously expelled by the Chaldeans from those very walls of the temple and city which they retain. But the Jews who, at My command, surrendered to the Chaldean and migrated to Babylon, and whom those remaining in Judea suppose to be without a temple and without God — these have a temple in Babylon, because they have Me, and I will be for them an invisible temple for a short time, until shortly afterward I bring them back to their homeland, to the visible temple. So Maldonatus.
Verse 16: I Will Be for Them a Small Sanctuary
16. I WILL BE FOR THEM A SMALL SANCTUARY — in Hebrew למקדש lemicdas, that is, a sanctuary or small temple; Vatablus renders it: of the few, as if to say: Although, at My command, they leave the temple of Judea, I will nevertheless give them in Babylon another temple, which they so greatly desire, namely, I will give them a place and an oratory, in which they, though few, may worship Me, and from which, as from a temple, I will hear, console, protect, and watch over them. That this happened in this way we gather from Psalm 137:1. He calls it "small" because in exile they did not have a temple but an oratory. Again "small," that is, destined to last a short time. Allegorically, this more truly came to pass when God through Christ built a new Church of the few in Zion. For to this the Prophet rises.
St. Jerome explains it otherwise, as if to say: In Babylon I will sanctify them, that is, I will turn them from idolatry so that they may worship Me in holiness. I will change their perverse heart, I will give them a pious, upright, clean, and holy heart. Again the Scholiast says: I will give them modest, that is few, saints, namely Daniel, the three youths, the prophet Zechariah, etc. Finally Theodoret says: I will bring them sanctification, that is, a modest consolation, namely by promising them that they will soon be freed from captivity. Hence others translate: And I will be for them a sanctuary for a short time.
Verse 17: Speak
17. SPEAK — namely, to the Jews captive in Babylon, to console them. For up to now the Prophet has spoken to the Jews remaining in Jerusalem and predicted sorrowful things for them; but now he promises joyful things and a joyful liberation to the captives, and this for the purpose that the obedient Jews, captive in Babylon, may congratulate themselves; while the disobedient, remaining in Judea, may be pricked in heart and repent.
I WILL GATHER YOU — under Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah I will bring you back from Babylon to the land of Israel. So St. Jerome.
Verse 18: They Shall Remove All Offenses and All Abominations
18. THEY SHALL REMOVE ALL OFFENSES AND ALL ABOMINATIONS. — That is, the idols by which they offended God, and therefore stumbled and fell into all kinds of calamities. For from the return from captivity the Jews never again publicly worshipped idols, but the true God. So Theodoret and Prado: The Israelites, he says, as if refined by the fire of captivity in Babylon, laid aside the rust of idolatry.
Verse 19: And I Will Give Them One Heart
19. AND I WILL GIVE THEM ONE HEART — that is, a unanimous, friendly, and agreeing heart, so that with unanimous consent they may worship the God of their fathers. The ancients called such people "of one heart," for whom Christ prays: "That they all may be one," John 17:21. Of these it is said in Acts 4:32: "And the multitude of believers was of one heart and one soul." Or "one," that is, whole and entire, not divided, not double — so that they do not worship God with one heart and idols with another.
So the Chaldean, Rabbi David, and Maldonatus. Thus Ecclesiasticus 2:14 says: "Woe to the double heart!" And Psalm 12, verse 3: "They spoke with a double heart." For hypocrites and the deceitful seem to have two hearts, one within the breast, another on the lips; like the partridges of Paphlagonia, which have double hearts, and are therefore deceitful and harmful, as Pliny testifies, book 11, chapter 37; Aelian, book 10 On Animals, chapter 35; Gellius, book 16, chapter 15. Hence also St. Ambrose, book 6 of the Hexameron, chapter 3, maintains that the partridge is so named from "destroying" (perdendo). The Septuagint translate: I will give them another heart, that is, another will. They seem to have read אחר acher, that is "another," for אחד echad, that is "one."
AND A NEW SPIRIT — a new mind, will, and impulse toward God's commands and obedience, to be carried out even through arduous works of virtue; and this placed in them by the power of the grace of the Holy Spirit inspiring and impelling the soul to these heroic deeds.
Note that these things were fulfilled in an incipient way in the Jews returning from Babylon to a new worship of the one God, and to a new life and new customs; but fully they were accomplished in Christians returning from the captivity of sin, whom these Jews represented.
I WILL TAKE AWAY (the Septuagint renders: I will extract) THE HEART OF STONE (hard and intractable); AND I WILL GIVE THEM A HEART OF FLESH — that is, soft, pliable, obedient, flexible. Wherefore St. Augustine, XVIII Against Faustus 4, says: A heart of stone is a will without feeling; a heart of flesh is a will with feeling, namely, with a taste for divine things. "I will take away, says Augustine, their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, that is, not a heart without feeling but a heart with feeling: whence the Apostle drew, when he says, 2 Corinthians 3:3: Not on tablets of stone, but on the fleshy tablets of the heart. For what else did he say than a heart of flesh?" The same author, in his book On Grace and Free Will, chapter 14: "Because, he says, a stone is without feeling, to which the hard heart is compared, to what else should an understanding heart be compared than to flesh which feels?" And below: "A heart of stone means nothing other than a will that is most hard and utterly inflexible toward God." Then, in chapter 15, St. Augustine objects from the mind of Pelagius: If God takes away the heart of stone, how then can Ezekiel say to the Jews in chapter 18, verse 31: "Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit"? And he answers: "Let us remember that He who says: Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit, is the same one who says: I will give you a new heart, and I will give you a new spirit. How then does He who says: Make yourselves — also say: I will give you? Why does He command if He Himself is going to give it? Why does He give it if man is going to do it — unless because He gives what He commands, and helps the one He commands to do it?" God gives a new heart and a new spirit by breathing into man prevenient and cooperating grace, by which man, being stirred up and freely cooperating with it, makes for himself a new heart and a new spirit. The new heart, therefore, belongs both to God who moves first and to man who cooperates with God. So also St. Jerome, Theodoret, and the Interpreters and orthodox doctors generally explain. In a similar figure Ovid said:
You were born on the rocks, nursed with the milk of beasts; And I will say that your breast is made of flint.
More about the heart of flesh and stone I shall say in chapter 36, verse 26.
Note: God takes away the heart that is hard and obstinate in sins and gives a heart of flesh, soft and obedient to Himself. First, because He removes the hardness, which is a natural quality: corporeal in the body, for example in stone; spiritual — namely, stubbornness and obstinacy — in the soul. He can remove it merely by denying the concurrence that is necessary for its sustenance and preservation. Again, He removes the hardness by removing the difficulties which, like a stone, weigh down, depress, and harden the will: for example, the lustful person perceives it to be impossible for him to abstain from fornication, because he has induced in himself a habit that is like a second nature. The slothful person perceives his own pusillanimity and weakness, on account of which he thinks it impossible for him to undertake the arduous path of virtue. God removes these by showing the reason, through His grace and divine powers, that it is possible — indeed easy — to overcome all these things, and that many Saints have overcome them.
Second, because He infuses softness into the soul: first, by showing the reason that the path of virtue is level, and that whatever is arduous in it is bravely and easily overcome, both through God's help and by considering and comparing it with the immensity and eternity of both heavenly rewards and infernal punishments; then by proposing other similar motives to the reason so vividly that the soul deeply grasps, esteems, and weighs them according to the gravity and dignity of the matters. For God not only proposes the object but simultaneously opens the understanding so that it may well penetrate and weigh it. Thus in Acts 16:14, God opened the heart of Lydia, so that she might attend to those things that were spoken by Paul. Again, He infuses into the will pious affections, impulses, encouragements, consolations, etc., by which the soul is stirred up and aspires to virtue however arduous, and gradually overcomes all obstacles and contrary inclinations. On this matter an exam-
—ple illustrious from his own experience is given by St. Augustine, book 8 of the Confessions, chapter 11, and book 9, chapter 1, where among other things he says: "How suddenly it became sweet to me to be without the sweetness of trifles! For You were casting them out and entering in their place, O my true and supreme sweetness: and so those things which I had feared to lose, it was now a joy to dismiss."
Finally, God alone by His omnipotence and omnipotent will comprehends and contains the individual wills of both men and angels, and He alone can enter into them and sweetly draw and bend them so that they freely consent and bend themselves to every nod of God, as St. Augustine teaches in his book On Correction and Grace, chapter 13, and St. Thomas, Question 6 On Truth, article 3, where he says that God, when He wishes to convert someone, gives those things which are most apt for moving the will, removing the impediments of passions and temptations, and bringing it about that no reason for good appears in the opposite, and no difficulty in what is to be chosen. Again, St. Augustine, in his book On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 38, places the efficacy of grace in this: that it causes nothing to be hidden from us of what pertains to justice, and it so delights the soul that whatever pleasure or pain anything else brings, that delight overcomes it. Thus God bent the heart of Paul the persecutor, so that, touched by God, he completely changed his purpose and mind, and becoming Paul and a disciple, said: "Lord, what do You want me to do?" Acts 9.
Verse 20: Judgments
20. JUDGMENTS — that is, just commands.
THAT THEY MAY DO THEM — that is, they will accomplish them: For among the Hebrews, "to do" means to accomplish, to do exactly, to complete; for the completed act is signified, not one merely begun.
AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE, AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD. — First, actively: that is, that people, as My people, may adore and worship Me as their King and God; and I in turn may protect, nourish, and govern them as My people. Second, passively: they will be a people guarded, nourished, and governed by Me; and I in turn will be their God, worshipped, loved, and invoked by them.
Verse 21: I Will Recompense Their Way
21. I WILL RECOMPENSE THEIR WAY (that is, their deeds and deserts) UPON THEIR OWN HEADS — that is, I will avenge Myself upon their heads, as if to say: I will punish them according to their deserts. He refers to the Jews remaining in Jerusalem against God's will.
Verse 23: And the Glory of the Lord Ascended
23. AND THE GLORY OF THE LORD ASCENDED — as if to say: That electrum-like image, described in chapter 1, representing God, departed from Jerusalem and from the temple.
AND STOOD OVER THE MOUNTAIN THAT IS TO THE EAST OF THE CITY. — That is, as the Chaldean, Theodoret, Polychronius, and St. Jerome say, it stood over the Mount of Olives, so as to watch from there the burning and devastation of Jerusalem, and so as from there, having completed its work, to migrate back to heaven. Allegorically, to signify that Christ would ascend into heaven from the same mountain. Finally, so as from this mountain to await and watch the new Jerusalem, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of the old in Zion — namely, the Church of Christ, which is rightly called, first, an olive and olive grove, because it has obtained oil and mercy from God, and is planted with ever-green plants, namely holy souls.
Second, it is said to be to the East because it receives the rays of the rising sun, that is, of the grace of God. Looking forward to this happiness of the new Sun of Justice, to arise in Jerusalem restored and renewed in later ages, Baruch in chapter 4, verse 36, exclaims joyfully: "Look about you, Jerusalem, toward the East, and behold the joy that comes to you from God," and chapter 5, verse 5: "Arise, Jerusalem, and see your children gathered from the rising of the sun." See Eusebius, book 6 of the Demonstration, chapter 1, and what was said on Jeremiah 11:16.
Verse 24: And He Brought Me Back
24. AND HE BROUGHT ME BACK (the spirit brought me back from Jerusalem) TO CHALDEA. — Ezekiel in body and in reality was in Chaldea; but because he had been rapt and led in spirit to Jerusalem, he is now, the vision being ended, brought back by the same means — not in body, but in mind and spirit. For all these things took place through a vision in mind and spirit, as the Prophet here says.
25. TO THE CAPTIVITY. — That is, to the captives who had migrated to Babylon, among whom I was living in body. For in chapter 8, verse 1, he says: "I was sitting in my house, and the elders of Judah were sitting with me."