Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Hosea is commanded to take a harlot as his wife, and to beget from her children of fornication, so that by this deliberate act he may represent that the Synagogue, that is, the Israelites, violated the religion and faith given to one God, and turned aside to idols as to adulterous gods. The Prophet obeys, and takes a harlot, and begets from her three children, to the first of whom he gives the name Jezreel, that is, "Seed of God"; to the second, Lo-Ruhamah, that is, "Without Mercy"; to the third, Lo-Ammi, that is, "Not My People," by which he sets before the Jews, as in a daily image, Israel's impiety, and therefore its punishment and rejection; which he then pursues more fully through the following chapters. Finally, in verse 10, he promises that the spiritual Israel will be an innumerable people of God and sons of the living God.
Vulgate Text: Hosea 1:1-11
1. The word of the Lord, which came to Hosea the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel. 2. The beginning of the Lord's speaking in Hosea: and the Lord said to Hosea: Go, take to yourself a wife of fornications, and have children of fornications: because the land will commit great fornication, departing from the Lord. 3. And he went, and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim: and she conceived, and bore him a son. 4. And the Lord said to him: Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and I will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease. 5. And in that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. 6. And she conceived again, and bore a daughter. And He said to him: Call her name Without Mercy; for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will utterly forget them. 7. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them in the Lord their God: and I will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, nor by horses, nor by horsemen. 8. And she weaned her that was called Without Mercy. And she conceived, and bore a son. 9. And He said: Call his name Not My People; for you are not My people, and I will not be yours. 10. And the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which is without measure, and shall not be numbered. And it shall be in the place where it was said to them: You are not My people; it shall be said to them: Sons of the living God. 11. And the children of Judah, and the children of Israel shall be gathered together: and they shall appoint themselves one head, and shall come up out of the land; for great is the day of Jezreel.
Verse 1: THE WORD OF THE LORD WHICH CAME TO HOSEA THE SON OF BEERI.
1. THE WORD OF THE LORD WHICH CAME TO HOSEA THE SON OF BEERI. — This is the title of the prophecy, prefixed not by Ezra (as others have supposed), who is said to have restored and reconstructed the books of Sacred Scripture after the captivity; but by Hosea himself, just as the titles of the other Prophets were prefixed by the prophets themselves, by which they testified that they were the authors of these prophecies and that they had received them from God through revelation, to which therefore all should believe and give assent. "The word" therefore is the same as oracle, prophecy, discourse of the Lord, as the Chaldean translates it. Cajetan adds, on that passage of Luke, "The word of the Lord came upon John:"
The divine inspiration, instruction, and mission, he says, is called the word of the Lord: "word" therefore signifies not only prophecy, but also mission. For by this word of God they were sent to the people, and were commanded to proclaim these oracles of God to them. By this therefore they were constituted ambassadors of God, prophets, teachers, and heralds to the people. Why prophecy is now called "word" and now "vision," I have discussed in Canon I on the Major Prophets.
TO HOSEA THE SON OF BEERI. — The Hebrews, and from among them Lyranus, Arias, and Guadalupensis, hold that this Beeri is Beerah, who was a prince of the tribe of Reuben, and was captured and led into Assyria by Tiglath-Pileser, 1 Chronicles 5:6. But the chronology stands against this, for Hosea and his father Beeri long preceded Tiglath-Pileser. For Hosea began to prophesy at the beginning of the reign of Uzziah: but Tiglath-Pileser invaded Samaria and led captives from it in the 52nd year of Uzziah, as is clear from 2 Kings 15:27 and 29. Moreover, St. Epiphanius, Dorotheus, and Isidore, in the Life of Hosea, assert that Hosea was from the tribe of Issachar, not Reuben. Wherefore it is fabulous what R. David reports, and Vatablus after him, that Hosea and the other Prophets who do not bear the name of their homeland were Jerusalemites.
Allegorically, St. Jerome says: Hosea, that is, Jesus, is the son of Beeri, that is, "of my well," that is, of God the Father. For God the Father is not a cistern now full of water, now empty and dry; but He is like a well gushing forth perennial and living waters, both of the generation of the Son, and of wisdom and all good things, which He communicated and continually communicates to His Son, by which He Himself, through Hosea and other Prophets and Apostles, waters, moistens, and makes fruitful the dryness of the Jews and Gentiles.
Leo Castrius explains differently: Beeri, he says, is the same as "in my light." It therefore signifies Jesus, who as light from light, is the Word existing from the Father and in the Father. But in that case it should have been written Beori, not Beeri, as St. Jerome rightly observes.
IN THE DAYS OF UZZIAH, JOTHAM, AHAZ, HEZEKIAH, KINGS OF JUDAH, AND IN THE DAYS OF JEROBOAM THE SON OF JOASH, KING OF ISRAEL. — He names the kings of both Judah and Israel, because he prophesies against both Judah and Israel, that is, the ten tribes, though more against Israel; hence he so often names Ephraim, Israel, Bethel, Beth-Aven, which signify none other than Israel, that is, the ten tribes. So St. Jerome, Athanasius in his Synopsis, and Eusebius in his book On the Titles of the Prophetic Books. From this it is clear, first, that these prophecies, though brief, were nevertheless spoken successively and over a long period of time, and then written down; second, that Hosea was the first of the Prophets, as I shall shortly show, and that he prophesied for a very long time, and not only predicted but also saw the destruction of the ten tribes that he had foretold; for this occurred in the 6th year of Hezekiah. So St. Jerome and Rufinus. Wherefore the Hebrews report that Hosea surpassed 90 years in prophesying, during which he said many things that he did not write; and having suffered much from a rebellious people, he obtained the palm of confession, that is, of a slow but long martyrdom.
JEROBOAM. — This was not the first king of Israel, who caused the schism under Rehoboam, 1 Kings 12:20; but was far later than him, namely, he was the great-grandson of Jehu, king of Israel, to whom God, in 2 Kings 10:3, had promised the kingdom up to the fourth generation, and so He fulfilled it. For Jehu was succeeded by his son Jehoahaz, he by Joash, he by this Jeroboam, and he by Zechariah, whom Shallum deprived of kingdom and life: in the fourth king therefore of his line, namely in Zechariah, the royal line of Jehu failed, 2 Kings 15:10.
Hosea names, besides the kings of Judah, also Jeroboam king of Israel, to signify that he prophesied then, and indeed more against Israel than against Judah. But why of the kings of Israel does he name only Jeroboam, omitting Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah, and Hoshea, who reigned in Israel at the time when in Judah reigned Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah? For in the 6th year of Hezekiah, which was the 9th year of Hoshea, the kingdom of Israel was overthrown by the Assyrians. I answer: Various authors give various reasons, but the true and genuine one is that the Prophet might indicate that he began to prophesy not at the end, nor in the middle of the reign of Uzziah or Azariah (who reigned 52 years), but at its beginning. For in the 27th year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Uzziah began to reign in Judah; but Jeroboam reigned 41 years: whence it follows that only the last 14 years of Jeroboam coincided with the first 14 years of Uzziah, during which they reigned simultaneously, Jeroboam in Israel and Uzziah in Judah, during which time Hosea must have prophesied; for he began when both were reigning together. See 2 Kings 14:23, and 2 Kings 15:1. At that same time also,
that is, shortly after Hosea, Amos began to prophesy under both these kings, as he himself says in chapter 1:1. So Arias, Ribera, and Castro. From what has been said it follows that Hosea prophesied the destruction of Samaria and the kingdom of Israel about ninety years (for there are that many from the beginning of the reign of Uzziah to the 6th year of Hezekiah, when Samaria was captured) before it occurred: and he predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah about 224 years (for there are that many from the 1st year of Uzziah to the last year of Zedekiah, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Chaldeans) before it happened. For the destruction of Jerusalem was 134 years later than the destruction of Samaria. So timely does God forewarn sinners of an impending blow, and gives them notice to flee from the face of the bow, and by repenting to escape it, lest they complain that they were warned too late. Thus a hundred years before the flood He commanded Noah to build the ark, and to warn mankind of the coming deluge. From this it follows again that Hosea began to prophesy shortly before Isaiah. For Isaiah began in the 17th year of Uzziah, as Eusebius records in his Chronicle.
Verse 2: THE BEGINNING OF THE LORD'S SPEAKING IN HOSEA.
2. THE BEGINNING OF THE LORD'S SPEAKING IN HOSEA. — There is a twofold literal sense here: The first, meaning: First of all, before Isaiah, Joel, and the other Prophets, the Lord spoke to Hosea himself, or to Hosea. Whence it follows that Hosea was the first of all the Prophets. Christopher de Castro denies this; but St. Jerome, Rupert, Haymo, Vatablus, Albert, Hugo the Cardinal, Dionysius here, and St. Basil and Rufinus on Isaiah chapter 1 assert it. And the Hebrew text, as it is now pointed, confirms this. For it reads: In the beginning the Lord spoke through Hosea, as Vatablus translates. For they now point דבר as dibber, that is, "He spoke," in the past tense, whereas our Vulgate and the Septuagint read it as the infinitive dabber, that is, "of speaking." Our version moreover favors this. For "the beginning of the Lord's speaking (supply: was) in Hosea" is the same as: the Lord took and made the beginning of speaking in Hosea, that is, He first began to speak in Hosea.
But in this sense all the other Prophets could have used the same opening, and said in like manner: The beginning of the Lord's speaking in Isaiah, Obadiah, Joel, etc. But no one else says this, only Hosea. It is therefore a sign that he demands not only this sense, but most especially the former one, which belongs to him alone.
IN THE LORD, — that is, of the Lord; for you may translate it either way from the Hebrew, but more significantly "in the Lord": for "in the Lord" signifies the cause and author of the beginning of speaking, meaning: The Lord gave and laid the beginning and as it were the foundation of His oracles in Hosea.
IN HOSEA, — by inwardly inspiring him with what he should do and say to the people. Second, "in," that is, to Hosea, as the Septuagint, Vatablus, and others translate. Third, "in," that is, through Hosea to the people. Fourth, "in," that is, with Hosea. For the Hebrew preposition beth signifies all these things.
The second sense is, meaning: This is the beginning of how the Lord began to speak with Hosea, namely, what follows: "Take to yourself a wife of fornications," etc. So also explain St. Jerome, Theodoret, Haymo, Hugo, Lyranus, Castro, and Vatablus, who again translates thus: At the beginning when the Lord spoke through Hosea, He said to Hosea himself: Go, take to yourself a wife, etc., meaning: Note, O reader, and marvel at why God gave such a beginning to His oracles, namely by commanding Hosea to take a harlot, so that by this very act he might represent and censure the harlotry-like morals of the people.
GO, TAKE TO YOURSELF A WIFE OF FORNICATIONS, — that is, one given over to many fornications and infamous, a notorious harlot, a public prostitute, whether in a tavern, or in a brothel, or in some other place selling her body for shameful profit to anyone. By a similar Hebraism one is called "a man of blood," "a man of sorrows," "a man of mercy," "a man of virtue," meaning one who is very bloodthirsty, deeply grieving, remarkably merciful, endowed with outstanding virtue. Hosea is therefore commanded to take a famous harlot, and to join her to himself in lawful marriage, and to beget children from her, so that by this symbol, as by words and a real sermon, he might censure the apostasy and idolatry of his people. For in this the Prophet represents God, the harlot wife represents the Synagogue, that is, the people of Israel or the ten tribes, as is clear from what follows; for fornication here, and commonly among the Prophets, signifies sins, especially of idolatry, by which the Israelites, having abandoned God their Spouse, out of desire for a more licentious life, clung to idols and their pleasures as to lovers. For so the Prophet explains, when immediately subjoining the reason for this marriage commanded by God, he adds: "Because the land will commit great fornication," that is, because the Israelites will greatly devote themselves to idolatry, and with headlong and universal impulse will rush to worship idols, meaning: I, God, want you, O Hosea, to have a wife most addicted to fornication up to now, to signify that My wife, namely the Synagogue, is and will be mystically a harlot, that is, an idolater, so that what began under Jeroboam may henceforth increase all the more. So St. Jerome, the Chaldean, and others.
Those therefore err who think that in this passage the Prophet is commanded to fornicate, that is, to approach a harlot remaining a harlot, without taking her as his wife. Whence they conclude that fornication is lawful. For this is a manifest error, which Alphonsus de Castro attributes to the Greeks, book VII Against Heresies, under the word "Fornication"; for fornication was prohibited not only in the New but also in the Old Testament by natural and divine law, as I showed in the case of the fornication of Tamar, Genesis 38:16, from the common opinion of the Fathers and Interpreters. And more fully in 1 Corinthians 6:9.
Finally, God commands the Prophet: "Take to yourself a wife"; therefore He commands him to join her to himself in marriage, not to fornicate with her. So generally the Fathers and interpreters.
You will say: St. Thomas, I-II, Question 100, article 8, reply 3, and II-II, Question 154, article 2, reply 2, Cajetan and some Thomists say that Hosea fornicated, and yet did not sin, because God, the Lord of marriage and all things, dispensed him, and gave him power and right over the body of the harlot. And they think all this is signified by God's words to the Prophet, in which He says: "Take to yourself a wife," not of marriage, but "of fornications."
I answer: Theologians dispute whether God can dispense from the law of nature, that is, from the Decalogue: and various authors answer variously. First, Ockham in II, Question XIX, reply 3 and doubt 4, Gerson in the tract On the Spiritual Life, lecture I, corollary 10, in Alphabet 61, letter E, and Almain, tract III on Morals, chapter 15, assert that God can dispense from absolutely every precept of the Decalogue and of the law of nature; indeed Ockham says that God can command hatred of God, and make it so that this is not evil but good. Their reason is: Every sin, they say, is sin because it is prohibited by the will of God. If therefore God wills that something not be a sin, by that very fact it will not be a sin.
The second opinion is that of St. Bonaventure in I, dist. 47, Question 4, Scotus in III, dist. 37, Question 1, § "Here it is said," and Gabriel in III, dist. 37, Question 1, article 2, conclusion 1: that God can dispense from the precepts of the second table, but not the first, that is, He can dispense in those things that concern one's neighbor, but not in those that concern God. The third is that of Durandus in I, dist. 47, Question 4, no. 46: that God can dispense from the affirmative precepts of the second table, but not from the negative ones.
But I say that God cannot directly and formally dispense from any precept of the law of nature. The reason is that the law of nature contains and prescribes what is by its nature and intrinsically good: wherefore what is done against it is by its nature and intrinsically evil, not because it is prohibited by God's will, but because by its very nature it is contrary and repugnant to nature and natural reason. For just as possible things are possible, not because God willed them to be possible, but because it involves no contradiction in itself for them to exist; in the same way, works against the law of nature are evil by their very nature, not because God willed to prohibit them as evil, but because of themselves they are contrary and repugnant to rational nature as rational. Since therefore God cannot at His will change the natures of things, neither can He change the law of nature, so that what it dictates to be in accord with reason and good, God should decree not to be in accord and to be evil. Wherefore no one, not even God, can make hatred of God to be good or lawful (for this is repugnant not only to reason and nature, but to divinity itself), or make it lawful to steal, commit adultery, or lie: for to steal is to take another's property against the owner's will; to commit adultery is to misuse shamefully a woman who is not one's own but another's; to lie is to speak against one's mind and deceive. But these things are so intrinsically and by their nature evil and depraved that they cannot be good and honest. Wherefore just as God cannot persuade these things, so neither can He do them, nor command them, much less will and bring it about that they are honest and lawful. From this it is clear that the first opinion and its foundation are false. For fornication is not evil because God so wills and hates it; but rather He hates it because it is in itself and by its nature dishonest and shameful. Just as therefore creatures have their existence from God's will, but their possibility from the very nature of God; for given that God is omnipotent, it naturally follows and as it were results that He can create man, horse, etc., and consequently that those creatures are possible which without God would be impossible: so likewise positive law, both divine and human, depends on and is made by God's will, but natural law is derived from the eternal law, which is in the mind and reason of God. So St. Thomas, Cajetan, Richard, and from them Gabriel Vasquez, I-II, disp. 179, no. 12. Indirectly however, and materially, God can dispense in these same precepts, namely by changing the matter of the thing commanded, and thus withdrawing it from the law of nature and the obligation of the Decalogue. But this occurs almost only in the precepts of the second table, not the first, as the authors of the second opinion said. I explain: God can give me a right over the goods, body, and life of another, and then I may lawfully seize his goods, which otherwise would have been theft; use the body of another, which otherwise would have been adultery; kill another, which otherwise would have been homicide. So God commanded the Hebrews, Exodus 12:36, to despoil the Egyptians, because by this very act He gave them the goods of the Egyptians, and made it so that those goods were no longer the Egyptians' but the Hebrews'; wherefore the Hebrews seizing them, seized not another's but their own property; their own, I say, by God's donation, who is the supreme Lord of all things, indeed of life and death. But here He gave Hosea a right over the body of the harlot, and by this very act made it so that she was his own wife, not another's. Wherefore Hosea, using her, did not fornicate but by a material act in marriage was joined to her as to his own wife. Thus if God should command or permit someone to go to a brothel, and there unite with a harlot only once, for the purpose of raising offspring from her, that union would no longer be fornication, but would be an act of temporary marriage; for he would unite not with another's woman, but with his own, and consequently with a wife, at least a temporary one, by God's dispensation. For God can remit the obligation by which a wife
bound herself in marriage to perpetual fidelity, and therefore He can dispense from the marriage bond, and make it so that it is not perpetual but temporary, for as long as it pleases Him; especially because He can either neglect the education of offspring (for the sake of which marriage requires permanence), as being its Lord, or provide for it by other means. Thus formerly He dispensed with the Jews in marriage, when He permitted them to give their wives a bill of divorce, by which the marriage was truly dissolved, so that each spouse, as free and released, could contract another marriage with another person. Just as therefore at that time a husband at any time, even after the first union, could repudiate his wife; so too he could now unite once with one woman, and immediately dismiss her, if God were to dispense with him in the same manner now.
St. Thomas therefore holds that Hosea, by God's command and dispensation, was united with the harlot only by a temporary union (and therefore by catachresis he calls this union fornication), and not by a stable and perpetual marriage. And so he supposes that this wife of Hosea was temporary, and the marriage with her temporary, namely for certain acts of generation and for three children to be begotten from her; and that afterward he dismissed her, and thus the temporary marriage with her was dissolved. Therefore St. Thomas teaches that Hosea approached the harlot, not as a concubine, but as a wife, though only a temporary one; for he holds that God dispensed with him to contract with her for a time only, and to use her as his own; he holds therefore that Hosea did not fornicate, but used marriage, though only a temporary one. His words are: "Hosea, approaching the harlot wife or adulterous woman, was not guilty of adultery or fornication; because he approached her who was his own according to the divine command, who is the Author of the institution of marriage." How this act of marriage of his is called fornication, he explains in II-II, Question 154, article 2, reply 2: "Hosea," he says, "did not sin by fornicating under divine command, nor should such a union properly be called fornication, although it is named fornication (when it says: Take to yourself a wife of fornications) with reference to the common course," by which, namely, one who unites with a harlot temporarily and deserts her when lust is satisfied is commonly called a fornicator by the populace. Whence it is clear that St. Thomas teaches that Hosea here did not fornicate, but was united for a time with the harlot as his own wife, by God's concession and dispensation. But the truer view is what other Doctors and Interpreters commonly hold, namely that Hosea contracted not a temporary but a stable and perpetual marriage with the harlot. For he is commanded to take her as his wife; and from what follows it is clear that he cohabited with her for four or even more years; for it is said that he begot three children from her, and then had them nursed and raised by her. Hence there was no dispensation here, but only God's command; for Hosea could lawfully take a harlot as his wife.
take, but was not bound to; and so that he might be bound, God commands and obliges him. You will object: This harlot wife represents the Synagogue practicing idolatry: but the Synagogue, after the marriage covenant entered into with God, returned to its idols; therefore this harlot also, after marriage with Hosea, returned to her fornications; otherwise she would not equally represent the Synagogue, nor would the type correspond to the antitype. I answer: What is similar in all respects is not a similitude; but only in that in which the comparison is placed; wherefore it is not necessary in allegories and types that all circumstances of time, manner, action, etc., correspond to the thing signified, but only those in which the representation is made, and the comparison of the signifying with the signified, that is, of the type with the antitype. So here the Prophet is commanded to marry a harlot, in order by this to represent that the Synagogue is a harlot. Therefore the comparison and similitude is placed only in this: that just as the Prophet marries a harlot, and begets children from her, who are called children of fornications from their mother's disgrace, that is, children of a harlot: so God's wife, that is, the Synagogue, is a harlot, that is, an idolater, and begets and rears children like herself, namely idolaters. For this matter could not lawfully be represented otherwise. For God could not command the Prophet to fornicate, so as to approach a harlot as not his own, just as the Synagogue worshiped idols and gods not its own; or so that after union and offspring he should send her back to the brothel and to her debaucheries; for this would have been sin. This was therefore a marriage of Hosea with the harlot (even according to St. Thomas's opinion, at least a temporary one), and consequently the children of fornications are called children born from this marriage; therefore they were not truly children of fornications, but were only commonly reckoned and called by this name, on account of the mother's fornications prior to the marriage. Simply therefore and in general, the Prophet is here commanded through the harlot wife to represent the idolatry of the Synagogue, abstracting from time and place, where and when; whether she committed it before the covenant with God or after. Add that the Jews after this prophecy of Hosea, that is, after the punishment and destruction brought by the Chaldeans, after being punished and repenting they renewed the covenant with God through Ezra, they did not return again to their idols, just as this wife of Hosea, after her marriage with him, is not recorded as having returned to her fornications. It is true that there is a greater appearance of fornication, and consequently of similitude, if with St. Thomas one says the marriage was not stable but temporary; but on the other hand, the matter itself appears more shameful and more dishonest, for it seems to be in reality a fornicatory union, and only a simulated marriage.
Haymo errs, secondly, who interprets "wife of fornications" as a wife who after marriage, from her former habit of fornicating, again fornicates with other suitors, that is, commits adultery, and from them begets children, who are therefore called children of fornications, that is, born of adultery, whom the Prophet
is commanded to take upon himself and raise, as well as to retain and support the mother. For this would have been not only infamous but also scandalous, and therefore unlawful; for the Prophet would have seemed to foster his wife's adulteries and to consent to them. Hence the Wise Man declares: "He who retains an adulteress is foolish and impious," Proverbs 18:22. See Sanchez, book X On Divorce, disputation 13. Wherefore it was infamous, and a public disgrace to the world, that the Emperor Claudius allowed his wife Messalina to be publicly unchaste. So Suetonius in his Claudius, and Marcus Aurelius the Philosopher on account of his wife Faustina, who was engaged in continual debaucheries; and when he was warned about the matter, and friends advised him to repudiate her if he did not wish to kill her, he replied effeminately: "If we dismiss our wife, let us also return the dowry," by "dowry" meaning the Empire, which he had received by adoption from Antoninus Pius, the father of Faustina, at the wish of the Emperor Hadrian. So Julius Capitolinus in his Antoninus.
Thirdly, Lyranus and Burgensis err, who take fornication here mystically for idolatry, and think that Hosea is here commanded to take a wife of fornications, that is, a gentile and idolater. Their reason is that this wife represents the Synagogue practicing idolatry: therefore the wife herself was also an idolater. I answer by denying the consequence. For the same thing is not represented by the same thing, but by something similar: and the Prophets are accustomed to represent idolatry through fornication; because fornication is its most fitting symbol, mirror, and image. So St. Jerome, Theodoret, Haymo, Hugo, and interpreters generally. Wherefore when God says to the Prophet: "Take to yourself a wife of fornications," He takes fornication literally as it sounds; but when He subjoins the reason and symbol of this command, and explains it saying: "Because the land will commit great fornication," He takes fornication mystically for idolatry; because He had commanded that idolatry be symbolically represented through the true and real fornication of the Prophet's wife.
You will ask whether these things were truly and really done, or only through an imaginary vision; that is, whether Hosea really married a harlot and begot from her children of fornications, or whether God only represented this to him in his imagination, so that he seemed to himself to marry her and beget from her; as dreamers seem to themselves to do the things they dream about? That it was only a vision is held by the Chaldean and some Rabbis, whom the followers of Origen follow, as Rufinus attests, along with Haymo, Isidore, Burgensis, and Vatablus. Indeed St. Jerome himself holds the same when writing on Ezekiel 4. And here in the Preface: "Hosea," he says, "hearing from the Lord: Take a harlot wife, does not wrinkle his brow, does not show grief by his pallor, does not display shame by the changed redness of his cheeks; but proceeds to the brothel, and leads the harlot to the bed. And he does not initiate her into matronly modesty, but shows himself to be a
prodigal, he proves. For he who is joined to a harlot is made one body with her. Who is wise, and shall understand these things?" and after that he answers, and infers that these things are to be interpreted typically and in a special sense. The fundamental reason therefore of this opinion is this: because it would have been a shameful and unworthy thing if a holy man and Prophet had married a harlot.
But it is far truer what all the other Fathers and Interpreters commonly hold, that this matter was performed not through a vision but in reality. So Theodoret, Cyril, the Hebrews, Arias, Hugo, Dionysius, and others here, and St. Augustine, book III of On Christian Doctrine, chapter 12, and book 22, Against Faustus, chapter 23, St. Basil on Isaiah 8, Irenaeus, book IV Against Heresies, chapter 37, St. Thomas in the passage cited, and others generally; indeed St. Jerome himself holds the same here, as one will see who carefully weighs his words. For he says in his usual manner that this history is to be referred to the antitype, that is, that Hosea married the harlot, not out of love for her and lust, but to represent the marriage of Christ and the Church. This therefore, and nothing else, he meant when he said that this act of Hosea is to be interpreted typically and figuratively.
The reason for this opinion is that this is required by the simple narrative of the divine command and of the act, namely the obedience of the Prophet; for otherwise when it is a vision, Scripture usually expresses this or indicates it by some sign, as is clear from Apocalypse 1:4; Ezekiel 40:1, and elsewhere. Moreover: Here the husband is named, namely Hosea; the wife, namely Gomer; the wife's mother, namely Diblaim; her three children, namely Jezreel, Lo-Ammi, Lo-Ruhamah, all of which indicate that this is not a parable but a true history. The reason is that the people had fallen asleep in their idols and sins, and thus despised the ordinary rebukes and admonitions of the Prophets, indeed did not even listen to them; therefore God willed, by a real and extraordinary prophecy, namely by commanding the Prophet to marry a harlot and beget children from her, to awaken the people sleeping in sin from their slumber of wickedness, and to move them to repentance. For the same reason He commanded Isaiah, chapter 20, to go naked through the city of Jerusalem in broad daylight, he being a noble man of great authority, so that by this extraordinary sign he might turn all eyes upon himself, and actually give them a type and image of the imminent spoliation and destruction, and thus convert the people to lamentation. For the same reason He commanded Ezekiel, chapter 4, to eat food cooked with cow dung, to foreshadow thereby the impending famine and disaster for the city.
To the argument I answer that God's command and authority wiped away from this marriage of the Prophet every stain of infamy and shame, especially because it was undertaken for prophecy and as a sacrament of a future reality. Add that it is not shameful but holy and honest to marry a harlot with this purpose, that she might exchange a shameful life for an honest one, and fornication for marriage; indeed confessors are accustomed and obligated to advise those living in concubinage to turn their concubinage into marriage.
So St. Augustine, book 22 Against Faustus, chapter 80, responds to the Manicheans who attacked the Old Testament and objected that in it fornication was commanded to the Prophet. For St. Augustine responds: Fornication was not commanded, but a harlot, having left fornication, was taken into a chaste and holy marriage, about which more shortly.
St. Jerome here responds likewise to the pagans, and opposes to them similar examples from the pagans themselves: "On what grounds," he says, "do they praise the most learned Xenocrates, who made Polemon, a most dissolute young man, drunk among lyre-players and flute-players and immodest women and crowned with ivy, obey wisdom, and changed a most shameful youth into a most wise philosopher? Why do they exalt Socrates to the heavens, who transferred Phaedo, from whose name Plato's book takes its title, from the brothel where, because of the cruelty and avarice of his master, he served the lust of many, to the Academy? And whatever they reply about the masters of philosophy, we shall apply to the defense of the Prophet."
AND HAVE CHILDREN OF FORNICATIONS. — The word "have" (fac) is not in the Hebrew, nor in the Septuagint, nor in the Syriac, nor in the Arabic. For they read: Take to yourself a mother of fornications, and children of fornications. Hence first, some take "children of fornications" properly as children begotten from fornication, whom Hosea is commanded, as witnesses of the mother's fornication, to accept as his own, support, and as it were adopt, together with the mother, which was a great ignominy and punishment for the Prophet, and this in order that through this he might represent that the Synagogue likewise bore idolatrous children, whom nevertheless God, as children of the Patriarchs and His own children, feeds with ignominy and grief in Jerusalem. So Theodoret, Hugo, Lyranus, and Arias explain.
But that these children were not adopted but natural; not previously begotten, but to be begotten by the Prophet from the harlot, is clear from what follows. For he says: "And he went (Hosea), and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son," etc. The word "have" (fac), therefore, although not expressly in the Hebrew, is nevertheless understood; indeed it is included in the word "take." For to take children from a wife, among the Hebrews, is the same as to receive and beget. For the verb לקח lacach, that is, "I take, I receive, I carry," among the Hebrews has the widest range of meaning. So St. Jerome, Augustine, Basil, Vatablus, and others cited above.
Second, Ribera holds that they are called "children of fornications," that is, of a harlot, because they were children of an idolatrous mother. But this I refuted above. For idolatry is mystical fornication, not literal, which is what is discussed here.
I say therefore that the children to be begotten by Hosea from a lawful marriage with the harlot are called children of fornications, that is, children of a mother who had previously been entirely given over to fornications. For this mother, who had been a public harlot, breathed her own shame and infamy upon her offspring; nor could the subsequent marriage remove and erase this stigma in the eyes of the people. From their mother therefore the children receive the mark of infamy and the name of fornication. So St. Jerome and others already cited.
Moreover, they are called children of fornications because they themselves will be inclined to fornication, and will absorb and drink in this vice and libidinous disposition together with their nature from the harlot mother. For this aptly corresponds to the thing signified. For these libidinous children signify the Jews who are mystically libidinous, that is, inclined to idols, whence He threatens destruction to them as well as to the mother in chapter 2:4, saying: "I will not have mercy on her children, because they are children of fornications." So Emmanuel Sa, Mariana, and Pineda, book I On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 4, no. 3. For by a similar phrase in Scripture, those who are very inclined to obedience, distrust, or pride are called children of obedience, of distrust, of pride, so that they seem begotten and produced from obedience, distrust, or pride itself. Hence the Syriac translates: Take to yourself a woman who fornicates, and children who fornicate; because by fornicating the land will fornicate from after the Lord, away from the Lord.
Here note morally that the vices of parents, especially of mothers, are transmitted to their children; for when the mother is corrupted, the seed is corrupted, which corrupts the offspring that is formed from the seed. Wherefore it is very important for bridegrooms who seek brides to inquire, not so much whether the brides are wealthy and beautiful, but whether they are chaste, honest, and virtuous, lest, if they are unchaste, dishonest, and vicious, they beget similar offspring. "Upright morals, therefore," says the philosopher Antiphanes, "are the most outstanding possession, and a dowry nobler than all gold."
That this is so is taught by natural scientists and physicians, and by reason and experience themselves. For this reason, throughout the books of Kings, the mothers of Solomon, Abijah, Jehoshaphat, Manasseh, and other kings are carefully named, because on the mother depends the character and education of the children, for good or for ill; and as the mother is, so is the child; especially because the child follows the affection and love which it experiences more in the mother than in the father. Aristotle gives the reason in Nicomachean Ethics IX, 7. Children are loved more by their mothers, he says, because their generation is laborious, and mothers know better that the children are theirs. So the Spartans, as Plutarch testifies in the Laconian Sayings, were continent and strong in wars and labors, because they had heroic mothers who, by the institution of Lycurgus, accustomed both themselves and their children to continence, labors, and hardship. Hence Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, when someone reproached her: "You Spartan women are the only ones who rule your husbands," replied: "Because we alone give birth to real men."
Hence the son of a harlot is what one is called who has harlot-like morals. So Saul, when his son Jonathan interceded for David, called him the son of "a woman who seizes a man of her own accord," 1 Samuel 20:21, that is, the son of a harlot, meaning: You are like a harlot's son, because your mother was a harlot. Or meaning: You do not seem my son, but the son of an adulteress, because you love David my enemy more than me; as if your mother had begotten you not from me but from David, and therefore had engendered David's love in you. So Agrippina, Nero's mother, was given over to lusts, so much so that she even provoked Nero to incest with herself,
and therefore what a monster of lust and cruelty she gave to the world in Nero! So Sabellicus from Cornelius Tacitus, book II, Enneads VII. The Emperor Heliogabalus, the son of a Greek harlot,
from her absorbed his filthiness and obscenity. So Lampridius and Rhodiginus, book XI, chapter 13. Even Solomon, the husband of three hundred roasted meats (i.e., wives), and the concubine-keeper of seven hundred concubines, had as his mother Bathsheba, an adulteress. Semiramis compelled her son Ninus to debauchery, and was therefore killed by him, if we believe Ctesias, whom Sabellicus cites, book I, Enneads I.
St. Afra the martyr, formerly a harlot (who was recalled from her shameful and unclean trade by Narcissus, Bishop of Jerusalem), had as her mother Hilaria, who provided for herself by pimping alone. So her Life records.
The unchaste Venus was the daughter of the most incestuous Jupiter, says Ovid in Metamorphoses book X. Julia, the daughter of Caesar Augustus, was a rival of her father's lusts, according to Suetonius in his Augustus.
For this reason, as well as on account of ignominy, illegitimate children are barred from the priesthood by canon law and are irregular; for the priesthood requires angelic purity. Similarly, I have shown with many examples in Genesis 21:7 that infants, while nursing, absorb and imbibe the character, affections, and vices of their nurses together with the milk.
Finally, Aristotle in the book On the Generation of Animals, chapter 4, and in Problems, book X, chapter 12, and Hippocrates in On Generation, teach that nature tends to make children more like their mothers than their fathers, both in body and in character. Wherefore the institution of some cities is both pious and prudent, that the illegitimate children of unchaste mothers be taken from the mothers by the magistrate, lest the mothers corrupt the character already vitiated in the children's seed by an even more corrupted education and depraved example; and they are handed over to be raised by respectable matrons, who may correct and reform the depraved nature by a grave and severe upbringing; as we see in Rome in the Hospital of the Holy Spirit and in the Monastery of St. Catherine de' Funari. Similarly in other cities orphanages for illegitimate children have been erected and endowed.
You will ask, for what reasons did God will that the Prophet should take a harlot and beget children from her? I answer: The primary literal reason is the one I gave a little earlier, namely that by this He might give the Jews a kind of living mirror, in which they could clearly see and contemplate their own turpitude and idolatry. The secondary reason was charity, namely to provide for the harlot's modesty and conscience by converting her into a wife. So St. Augustine, book 22 Against Faustus, chapter 80: "What," he says, "is there against the clemency of Truth (for Christ, who is the Truth, said to the Pharisees: Harlots and tax collectors will precede you into the kingdom of heaven)? What is there hostile to the Christian faith, if a harlot, having abandoned fornication, is converted into a chaste marriage? And what is so incongruous and foreign to the faith of a Prophet, as if he should not believe that all sins of impurity are forgiven when changed for the better? And so when the Prophet (Hosea) made a harlot his wife, both the woman's correction of life was provided for, and the sacrament of the figure, about which we shall shortly speak, was expressed." He then adds in the same place, and more fully in chapter 89, that the Manicheans criticized this act of Hosea, not because it was infamous, but because they condemned marriages, and preferred to fornicate freely rather than burden a wife's womb with offspring and themselves with the burden of raising them; and therefore they pretended that God, or a part of the divine substance, was as it were bound and confined by chains in offspring.
Moreover, God here willed to exercise the Prophet's obedience as well as his patience, "so that the more sordid the wife, the more patient might be the Prophet who married such a wife," says St. Jerome, especially because Hosea was young, virginal, holy, and in the flower of his age, as well as of purity and virtue, when he married the harlot; for this was his first prophecy, which he had at the beginning of the reign of Uzziah, and he then continued his life through the 52 years of Uzziah, the 16 of Jotham, the same number of Ahaz, and reached the times of Hezekiah. Therefore he must have been a young man when he married the harlot.
The allegorical reason is that Hosea, through his marriage with the harlot, might represent a similar but mystical, and indeed twofold, marriage of Christ: The first with our flesh, which was a harlot, that is, the flesh of sin, which, having been purified, He united to Himself and espoused through the Incarnation. So St. Ambrose, book II of the Apology of David, chapter 10, mystically explains not only this marriage of Hosea, but also David's adultery. "To the Prophet," he says, "it was said: Go, take to yourself a harlot wife. The Lord commands that there be a marriage with her who was a harlot, and the fruit of this marriage is Christ. For to the son who was born from fornication (that is, from the wife of Hosea who had formerly been a harlot), the name Jezreel was given by the Lord, which means divine generation. If therefore that godly union with the harlot is holy, then certainly this godly union with the adulteress is also holy," etc. And shortly after: "From unequal unions a godly partnership was made, when the Word was made flesh; the consortia of divinity and flesh are not natural. God took on flesh, assumed a soul; through an unprecedented and unnatural incarnation He made the partnership to be legitimate, that God might be all in all." Hence the name of the son is Jezreel, that is, seed of God, or arm of God. For Christ is the arm, that is, the power of God, as Isaiah 53:1 calls Him. Christ is also the seed of God, because He was conceived and born not from the seed of a man, but from the Holy Spirit. Wherefore Tertullian, in the book On the Flesh of Christ, chapters 18 and 19: "The Son of God," he says, "from the seed of God the Father, that is, the Spirit, in order to be the son of man, had to take flesh alone from human flesh without the seed of a man; for the seed of a man was unnecessary in the presence of the seed of God." And in chapter 19: "What then? Was not
from blood, nor from the will of the flesh, nor from the will of man, but from God was He born." So also Leo Castrius, who however wrongly contends that this sense alone is the literal one, and excludes all others. Note here in passing that the Holy Spirit is not properly the seed of God. For God does not emit any seed from Himself, as man does; therefore improperly and by catachresis Tertullian calls the Holy Spirit the seed of God, because He Himself, by the divine power received from the Father and the Son, accomplished in the Virgin what the seed of a man accomplishes in a wife: He is therefore called "seed" because He served in place of and in the role of seed: for He formed and organized the body of Christ in the Virgin, just as male seed coagulates, assembles, forms, and organizes the body of the embryo in the mother's womb from her seed and blood.
The latter marriage of Christ is with the Church, which Hosea here represents by his own. So St. Ambrose, in the book On Solomon, chapter 5: "This harlot," he says, "is the type of the Church, once established among the nations, corrupted by the worship of idols, polluted by the defilements of vain superstition, made an adulteress by the multitude of false gods; and she roamed the uncultivated haunts of groves and sacred woods with lascivious and shameful dances of disordered movements, given over to luxury, enslaved by the pomp of the pagans. After our Lord Jesus Christ poured over her the pure fountain of baptism, she received the cleansing both of her crime and of her name." So also St. Augustine, book 22, Against Faustus, chapter 89, and St. Prosper, book On Predictions and Promises, XV, part 2, and indeed St. Paul, Romans 9:24. As a type of this, Moses took an Ethiopian wife, Numbers 12:1, "against whom," says St. Jerome in the Preface, "Aaron and Miriam, the carnal priesthood of the Jews and the prophecy that serves the letter, murmured and offended God. She who says in the Song of Songs: I am dark and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem." Therefore to Christ coming into the world the Father said and commanded: "Take to Yourself a wife of fornications," namely the Church from the Gentiles, and from her beget children who will be children of fornications, that is, of a Gentile mother; but from their Father, inasmuch as He is the Son of God, they may themselves also be children of God, of whom many will return to the former fornication of their mother, that is, will follow their own lusts and sin, and therefore will be punished and rejected by God.
Wonderful indeed was the mercy and condescension of Hosea in marrying the harlot, but far greater that of Christ in most intimately uniting and espousing our flesh and our Church to Himself, in order to purify, sanctify, and glorify her, and render her as it were divine, and then He obtained the name of Hosea, that is, of Jesus and Savior. Thus the imitators and followers of Hosea and Christ are those who lower themselves to anything hard, base, and abject, and undergo any labors and pains, in order to convert souls fornicating with their lusts, foul and horrible, and make them pure, and lead them back to God their Spouse.
Hence the tropological reason is that by this example God might teach Hosea, that is, preachers, confes-
sors, and others burning with zeal for their neighbors, to snatch souls from Satan, the flesh, and sin, and through repentance and chastity to espouse them to Christ, as Paul espoused the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 11:2. For the sinful soul is a harlot, indeed an adulteress, and begets children of fornications, that is, works of lust, gluttony, and pride.
Hence St. Jerome in the Preface, tropologically takes this harlot as St. Mary Magdalene, whom Christ espoused to Himself as a penitent: "This," he says, "is the harlot and adulteress who in the Gospel washed the Lord's feet, wiped them with her hair, and honored them with the ointment of her confession." And further: "This is the harlot of whom the Lord says to the Jews: Amen I say to you, harlots and tax collectors will precede you in the kingdom of God. That harlot (Rahab, Joshua 2) received my two scouts, the bravest young men, of whom I sent one to the circumcision and the other to the nations, with hospitality, hid them with diligence, raised them to the roof, and covered them with stalks of flax. She who, struck by persecutions and washed in baptism, changes her color, and is turned from dark to white."
BECAUSE THE LAND WILL COMMIT GREAT FORNICATION. — That is, Israel, the ten tribes, will fornicate intensely and continuously. For He speaks of these, not of Judah, as is clear from what follows. For the future tense joined with the participle or gerund of the same verb signifies among the Hebrews the intensity and continuation of an act, or a habitual action. Understand fornication here mystically, namely as idolatry; for here God applies and explains the symbol or parable, meaning: I have commanded you, O Hosea, to take a harlot and from her beget children of fornications, in order through this to represent to the Jews that they in like manner will mystically fornicate, that is, will love and worship idols, having abandoned Me, their God.
Verse 3: AND HE WENT, AND TOOK GOMER THE DAUGHTER OF DIBLAIM.
Verse 3. 3. AND HE WENT, AND TOOK GOMER THE DAUGHTER OF DIBLAIM. — Hugo and Dionysius wrongly read by diastole "de Belaim," as if Belaim were a proper name of a place from which Gomer came. For that Diblaim is one word, and a Hebrew one, is clear from the Hebrew text. Diblaim therefore is the name of Gomer's mother, says St. Jerome and Rupert, although some would have it be the name of her father. He notes the wife by name and lineage, so that we may know this is history, not a vision. Sanchez suspects that Diblaim was also a harlot, both because the name of her husband is not mentioned, and because such was her daughter Gomer; for "as the mother, so also her daughter," says Ezekiel 16:44. Fittingly the wife was called Gomer, and her parent Diblaim; for Gomer in Hebrew means "completion" or "consumption"; Diblaim means "two cakes of dried figs"; by which is signified that the Synagogue is to be consumed and devastated: "Who, completed in fornication and a perfect daughter of pleasure, seems sweet and pleasant to those who enjoy her," says St. Jerome, because she served idols and pleasures with body and soul. For Diblaim, that is, twin figs, is a sym-
bol of twofold pleasure and sweetness. Hence Vatablus: "Gomer," he says, "means consumption, and Diblaim two fig cakes, by which are understood the pleasures of mind and body, which produce consumption and destruction," according to that saying of the Apostle: "He who sows in the flesh, from the flesh shall reap corruption." This twofold pleasure can also be understood as that of spirit and flesh, or of ambition and the belly, namely gluttony and lust. For from these two arises all concupiscence, all sin, all the ruin of mankind. This is therefore an elegant maxim: Gomer is the daughter of Diblaim, that is, corruption is the daughter of figs, namely, corruption is the daughter of pleasure; punishment is the daughter of guilt; for the latter as a mother gives birth to the former: just as a worm is born in a fig and in fruit, so from love and pleasure pain, rottenness, and shame are born.
Valerius Maximus says excellently, book IX, chapter 1: "Campanian luxury," he says, "embracing with its allurements Hannibal, unconquered by arms, delivered him to the Roman soldier to be defeated."
Finally, Arias takes the twin figs literally as the twin kingdom of the Hebrews, namely Israel and Judah, for both were given over to their idols and delicacies, and therefore devoted to destruction by God. For although this prophecy of the first chapter is directed properly and primarily to Israel (for he calls it Jezreel in verse 4), nevertheless it is directed secondarily and consequently also to Judah, Israel's rival and follower.
Verse 4: CALL HIS NAME JEZREEL.
4. CALL HIS NAME JEZREEL. — Hosea is commanded by God to call his first son, born from the harlot wife, Jezreel, so that through him he might represent to the Hebrews the disaster impending over Jezreel, that is, Israel, or the ten tribes. Jezreel in Hebrew has a fourfold etymology and four meanings. First, Jezreel is said as though זרע אל zera el, that is, "seed of God." Second, as though זרוע אל zeroa el, that is, "arm of God." Third, as though יזרה רע אל iizze ra el, "God will scatter evil" or "destruction." Fourth, as though זרע אל zara el, that is, "God will scatter" or "disperse," namely the Israelites, so that they go as captives into Assyria and are scattered throughout the whole world. Again, Jezreel signifies Israel, indeed is the same as Israel, if you change the letter ז to ש, and י to the related א.
Note: Jezreel was a royal city and the capital of the ten tribes, says St. Jerome, and it was on the border of the tribes of Manasseh and Issachar, situated at the foot of Mount Gilboa to the west, with a notable tower and watchtower from which there was a magnificent view through all of Galilee as far as Carmel, Tabor, Lebanon, and beyond the Jordan. Near this city were the most pleasant and fertile fields, and a vast valley, which extended for more than ten thousand paces, and was called the Valley of Jezreel from the neighboring city; just as conversely the city was called Jezreel, that is, "seed of God," from the most fertile valley, because the seed yielded a most abundant harvest, indeed a hundredfold, so that it seemed to be the seed of God and blessed by God. Before the city was the vineyard and field
of Naboth, which was still being shown in the times of Borchard and Breydenbach, as they themselves write in the Description of the Holy Land. Moreover, God commands Hosea to call his firstborn by the name of this city and valley, Jezreel, so that through him he might represent Israel. Hence He gives the reason for the name, saying: FOR YET A LITTLE WHILE, AND I WILL VISIT THE BLOOD OF JEZREEL UPON THE HOUSE OF JEHU. — He names "Jehu" because his descendants were then reigning in Israel and were the propagators of idolatry. For Jeroboam was then reigning, who was the third from Jehu: for Jehu was succeeded by his son Jehoahaz, he by Joash, he by Jeroboam, he by Zechariah, who was killed by Shallum, and in him the line of Jehu was cut off. From the words of Hosea it is clear, and all acknowledge, that there is an allusion here to the history of Ahab, Jezebel, Naboth, and Jehu.
For Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, through false accusation had Naboth killed in Jezreel, in order to seize and possess his vineyard located there. Wherefore God through Elisha anointed Jehu as king, and commanded him to avenge this crime in the same place. Jehu therefore killed Jezebel and had her buried in the field of Jezreel. Moreover, he ordered all the sons of Ahab to be killed in Samaria, and their heads to be sent to him in Jezreel, 2 Kings, chapters 9 and following.
Now first, Arias explains the words of the text thus, meaning: Call, O Hosea, your son Jezreel, that is, "arm of God," because just as I, God, by My arm poured out in Jezreel the blood of Jezebel and her sons, so in the same place I will pour out the blood of the descendants of Jehu, because they are like Ahab and Jezebel in wickedness. This sense seems rather forced. For "the blood of Jezreel" must be taken here in the genitive, as the blood of Jezreel, as of a person whose blood is poured out; not in the dative or ablative, as blood poured out by Jezreel as an arm or instrument.
Second, Theodoret, whom our Emmanuel follows: Jezreel, he says, that is, "seed of God," is Israel, which is the people of God, namely the ten tribes. Now "blood" in Scripture is called homicide, and by catachresis any enormous sin and crime, such as idolatry is here, especially because idolaters not infrequently shed blood by killing children and other people and sacrificing them to Moloch, Baal, and other idols: and they always killed souls both their own and those of their people. This sense seems rather mystical than literal.
Third, Rupert, Vatablus, and Antonius Fernandius in Vision I, lecture 3, explain it thus, meaning: I will punish the blood of Jezebel and her sons shed by Jehu in Jezreel, because although he did this at My command, yet in that slaughter he was not so much concerned to serve My will as his own ambition: namely, so that with the royal family killed, he himself might seize the kingdom and reign as a tyrant. This interpretation does not sufficiently correspond to Scripture, which praises Jehu for this deed and promises him the kingdom up to the fourth generation, 2 Kings 9 ff.
Fourth, Christopher de Castro: Jezreel, he says, is Israel, and its first king Jeroboam, and its remaining kings: meaning, I will avenge the blood of Jezreel, that is, of the Israelites, shed by Jeroboam and the other kings, especially those descended from the family of Jehu, because they killed pious Israelites who refused to go to Dan and Bethel to worship their golden calves. For that Jeroboam did this will be clear from chapter 5; wherefore I will overthrow the house of Jehu and the whole kingdom of Israel. But this is uncertain; for nowhere do we read that Jehu killed those who refused to worship idols. This interpretation however, like the others already reviewed, can be admitted and find a place as accessory and partial, and they are probable. But the principal and genuine sense must be sought.
I say therefore that because the words of the Prophet clearly allude to the slaughter of the house of Ahab carried out by Jehu in Jezreel, and threaten a similar fate; hence the first and principal sense is this, meaning: I, God, O Jehu, had chosen you to overthrow the idolatry introduced by Jeroboam and promoted by Ahab and Jezebel in Israel; and therefore I made you king, and commanded that you kill and bury all the descendants of Ahab, and this in the valley of Jezreel, because he had there killed My faithful worshiper Naboth. But if you would not do this, but having killed them would nevertheless foster their idols, you should know that you would experience a similar, horrible, indeed more horrible, divine vengeance. But you, as though senseless and reckless, forgetting this severe vengeance of God against Ahab, of which you yourself had been the minister and executioner, stumbled on the same stone and worshiped the same idols. For this is what is said in 2 Kings 10:29: "So Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel; but from the sins of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin, he did not depart, nor did he abandon the golden calves." I will therefore "visit the blood of Jezreel upon" your "house," that is, I will bring upon your house a plague and slaughter similar to what you by My command brought upon the house of Ahab in Jezreel. And so, just as you shed the blood of all his sons, so the blood of all your descendants shall be shed, and all your posterity shall be stripped of kingdom and life; and shortly after, namely after forty years, all Israel that followed you in idolatry shall either be killed or led captive into Assyria. Wherefore, that you may represent this to the Israelites, O Hosea, I command you to name your son Jezreel, and to explain to them that he is called Jezreel so that they may remember Jezebel and the sons of Ahab killed and buried in Jezreel on account of idolatry, and may know that they are to be killed in the same manner for the same cause, so that whenever they name or hear named the name of your son Jezreel, the whole slaughter of the house of Ahab, carried out in Jezreel, and a similar one to be carried out shortly against them, which I here through you threaten them with, may recur to and return to their minds. So Mariana and others. Hence Jezreel, like Sodom, proverbially signifies great vengeance, great destruction, says Sanchez.
Note here: For "I will visit," the Syriac translates, "I will avenge"; the Hebrew is פקדתי pakadti, which is of very general and broad meaning; it signifies not only to avenge, take vengeance, and punish, but in general it is the same as to require, review, impose, bring upon. The sense therefore is, meaning: "I will visit," that is, I will require, "the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu," and will say: Why did you, O Jehu, shed the blood of the house of Ahab in Jezreel? Did you not do this at My command, because they were idolaters and leaders of idolatry in Israel? Why then were you not afraid to worship and defend the same idols? Be therefore like them in punishment, as you were like them in guilt; their blood was shed by you; let yours also be shed: their line was cut off, and let yours be cut off. "I will visit" therefore, that is, I will require and review and reckon up the punishments of the house of Ahab to your house, and will say: Behold, Ahab sinned with so many and such great idols and crimes; you, O Jehu, have sinned in just as many. Wherefore, as I punished Ahab with so many plagues and with the slaughter of all (namely seventy) of his sons, so I will punish you with just as many plagues: and as the number of Ahab's sins, so also the number of his plagues, I will reckon up and charge to you and your house, that is, I will bring them upon you and inflict them.
This is the principal sense, to which however the others are attached and connected. And so you should now add here the second exposition of Theodoret and the fourth of Christopher de Castro, in this manner, meaning: Because you, O Jehu, like Ahab, shed the blood of pious Israelites who worshiped the true God and spurned your golden calves, who were Jezreel, that is, the seed, that is, the people of God; and because you compelled all the Israelites to bloodshed, that is, to the enormous crime of idolatry, therefore like Ahab the blood of all your descendants shall be shed. And just as I avenged the blood of Naboth shed by Ahab by killing his entire line in the house of Ahab, so also I will avenge the blood of the faithful shed by you and yours in your family by overthrowing it: for it is a grave crime, crying to heaven for vengeance, to kill the innocent, especially the faithful and holy. For, as St. Augustine says on Psalm 9, explaining the text: He sits in ambush, etc., to kill the innocent, "to kill the innocent is to make the innocent guilty," which is a perversion both of justice and of nature.
You will say: The blood of the descendants of Ahab was shed in Jezreel not because of his idolatry, but because he had there shed the blood of Naboth, in order to seize his vineyard. Therefore these things are not rightly applied to the blood of the descendants of Jehu to be shed because of idolatry. I answer that the premise is false. For that slaughter was brought upon the house of Ahab because of idolatry, as is expressly stated in 2 Kings 21:22, 26; but the determination of the place, namely that it should happen in Jezreel, was made because Naboth had been killed there, who was an enemy of idols and a worshiper of the one true God.
For that all these things pertain to the punishment of idolatry is clear from the fact that for this reason Hosea is commanded to take a harlot and beget children of fornications, in order to represent the idolatry of the Israelites. Hence He says: "Because the land will commit great fornication," namely mystically with idols; and therefore He threatens it with bloodshed and destruction.
Here is relevant the explanation which Haymo, Hugo, and Albert bring from the Chaldean, which is as follows: I will visit, that is, I will impute the blood of the house of Ahab shed by Jehu in Jezreel to Jehu himself and his house, because he himself worshiped the same idols on account of which he killed the sons of Ahab and overthrew his line; and consequently he showed by his very deeds that he had wickedly and unjustly killed the idolaters; and had not so much obeyed God's command as followed his own ambition and tyranny, as Vatablus said, since he himself was just as much an idolater as they. And so the blood of Jezreel will turn back against him and return upon his house; for he deserved, who wickedly killed idolaters, that his own house and whole line, as being likewise idolatrous, should be similarly cut off, so that just as he punished idolaters with the sword, so his own idolatry should be punished and cut down by the sword. In "Jezreel" there is a beautiful play on its etymology, meaning: I will visit the blood of Jezreel, that is, of the seed and people of God, namely of the pious Israelites, whom Ahab (as is clear from 2 Kings 9:7) and Jehu afflicted and killed, upon their house and family, and I will be to them Jezreel, that is, יזרי רע אל iizza ra el, that is, "God bringing evil and destruction," namely, I will crush and overthrow them.
Finally, the Septuagint and after them the Arabic translate quite differently, namely: I will avenge the blood of Israel upon the house of Judah. I suspect, with St. Jerome, that there is a typographical error in them, and that instead of Israel one should read Jezreel, and instead of Judah, Jehu. For so the Hebrew, Chaldean, Latin, and Syriac read. Wrongly therefore Leo Castrius, from the Septuagint version and from the fact that the Prophet does not say: I will visit the calves of Jeroboam, but: "I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Judah," contends that these things are to be taken literally as referring to the destruction of Judea and Jerusalem by Titus. For the meaning, he says, is: The blood of Jezreel, that is, of Christ (for He is called Jezreel, that is, "seed of God," because He was conceived not from the seed of a man but from the Holy Spirit) killed by the Jews, I will avenge upon Judah, by overthrowing Jerusalem and Judea through the Romans. Wrongly, I say: for from the whole context it is clear that the subject here is the idolatry of Israel and its punishment by the Assyrians, not the destruction of Judah by Titus. This sense of his is therefore mystical and allegorical, and fitting, but not literal.
Morally, learn here how severely God punishes those who do not esteem God's judgments and chastisements of the wicked, nor are led by them to the fear of God and a change of life, but commit the same sins for which they see others chastised by God. Indeed, that they have chastised others by God's command, such as angelic princes, judges, magistrates, governors, pre-
the twelve tribes, namely both Judah and Israel. You may ask, when and how was the kingdom of Israel crushed in the valley of Jezreel? For we read nothing about it in Scripture. Some take Jezreel to mean Samaria: for the entire people gathered there when the Assyrian was approaching, and there they were defeated and captured by him. But nowhere is "the valley of Jezreel" taken for Samaria, especially since Samaria was situated on a mountain, not in a valley. Better, therefore, do others judge from this passage of the Prophet that before the destruction of Samaria and the nation, the Israelites, as was their custom, engaged in pitched battle with the Assyrians in the nearby valley of Jezreel. For this valley extends very far and was most suitable for battle. There, therefore, the Israelites were defeated and slain by the Assyrians, who then, pursuing their victory, besieged Samaria and overthrew it along with the entire kingdom. So say St. Jerome, Cyril, Theodoret, Haymo, and other commentators. Whence Borchard, Breidenbach, and from them Adrichomius in his Description of the Holy Land, writes thus about this valley: "The valley of Jezreel, two miles wide (but much longer), which is also the plain of Galilee. In this valley or intermediate plain many great battles have been fought. For here Gideon fought against the Midianites, Judges vi and vii. And Saul against the Philistines, 1 Samuel xxxi. Likewise Ahab against the Syrians, 3 Kings xx, and afterwards the Tartars fought there against the Saracens."
Moreover, God aptly decreed that Israel should be struck down in Jezreel. For there is great force and emphasis in the proximity and allusion of words and events, as if to say: Once, O ten tribes, you were Israel, that is, a people ruling with God, when following the piety of your father Jacob and serving the one God, you obtained from Him blessing and every good thing you sought, for which reason Jacob was called Israel, Genesis xxxii, 28. You were likewise then Jezreel, that is, the seed and people of God. But now, rebels and apostates from God: since you have turned aside to idols, you are not Jezreel, that is, the seed of God, nor Israel, that is, those ruling with God; but God will now rule over you, as an enemy ruling, raging, and ravaging in the city which He captures and lays waste.
He Himself, therefore, will strike you down through the Assyrians in the valley of Jezreel, both because there the line of the idolater Ahab was slain, whom you have imitated; and because to this place the threefold etymology of Jezreel, which I reviewed at the beginning of the chapter, aptly applies. For it alludes to this, as if to say: In this valley you will experience Jezreel, that is, first, zeroa el, that is, the arm of God, striking and slaying you; second, because there will be Jezreel, that is, izza ra el, meaning God will scatter evil and destruction upon you; third, there will be Jezreel, that is, zara el, meaning God will disperse you into Assyria and to every wind and region of the world. Leo Castro offers another sense: The valley, he says, of Jezreel, that is, of the seed of God, namely Christ, is Jerusalem; because Christ taught, lived, was crucified and died in Jerusalem, as if to say: Yet a little while, that is, after a short time, namely 40 years after Christ's crucifixion, "I will visit the blood of Jezreel," that is, of Christ crucified by the Jews, "upon the house of Jehu," that is, upon the ten tribes, "and I will crush Israel," that is, all the Jews from both the ten and the two tribes, "in the valley of Jezreel," that is, in Jerusalem through Titus. For after the captivity, the ten tribes had increased from the remnants of the captivity, and thus both the kingdom of Israel and Judah were destroyed by Titus and the Romans. But this sense is not the literal one, as he contends, but allegorical and mystical, and an apt one at that. For if God avenged the blood of Jezreel, that is, of Israel, so atrociously upon the house of Jehu, why would He not most atrociously avenge the blood of His only-begotten Son upon the Jewish nation, so treacherously and wickedly slain by them?
Tropologically, in like manner God will avenge and punish impiously living Christians, who, as the Apostle says, Hebrews x, 29: "have trampled underfoot the Son of God, and have counted the blood of the covenant, by which they were sanctified, an unholy thing, and have insulted the Spirit of grace. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
represent both men and women, as being participants in idolatry, to be involved in this disaster; second, a daughter represents the weakness and feebleness of the Israelites, who on account of their sins, having become not so much men as women, could not resist the Assyrians: so say St. Jerome, the Chaldean, Cyril, Haymo, Hugo, and the Rabbis; third, these three children represent the same thing, namely the disaster and destruction of the Israelites, but at the same time they represent the three quasi-parts and stages of this disaster. And so the first, Jezreel, represents the slaughter of Jehu's line, as is expressly stated in verse 4: for while that line was reigning, the kingdom of Israel was still strong and, as it were, masculine. But Jehu's line was cut off in Zechariah his great-grandson, whom Shallum the tyrant killed. The second, a daughter, represents the weak and feeble state that the kingdom of Israel had after Zechariah under Shallum, Menahem, and Pekah, kings of Israel, when Shalmaneser so wore down and diminished the kingdom of Israel with many plunderings, disasters, and captivities that it was already inclining toward ruin. The third son represents the complete slaughter of the nation and the destruction of the kingdom under Pekah the second-to-last, and under Hoshea the last king of Israel. So say Isidorus Clarius and R. David. For Pekah, an impious and cruel king, killing a hundred thousand of the Jews and besieging Jerusalem with Rezin king of Syria, stirred up against himself and his kingdom of Israel the wrath of God, and hastened its destruction, as Isaiah foretold, chapter viii, 6 and following. These three children could also represent the three kings of Assyria, namely Pul, Tiglath-Pileser, and Shalmaneser, who devastated and plundered the kingdom of Israel, until Shalmaneser, having captured Samaria, completely overthrew it.
Verse 6: And she conceived again, and bore a daughter.
6. And she conceived again, and bore a daughter. — Because the Israelites were secondly hard and obstinate, they had to be pounded with many blows of the Prophets. To the first son and his sad oracle, therefore, is added here a second oracle and portent, equally sad and threatening, indeed sadder and more threatening; like a second battering ram that strikes and shakes their iron hearts. Hear St. Cyril, book VI of the Glaphyra: "St. Hosea, he says, married a harlot wife, and did not deprecate the infamous marriage, and suffered himself to be the father of infamous children, whose names were, Not my people, Not having obtained mercy. The Israelites opposed the predictions of the Prophets and neither received nor read the law of God. God therefore commanded him to do things that would be like pictures of future events, so that, as on a canvas, future things might be plainly and openly depicted, so as to strike the ears and eyes even of the unwilling, that those who were wise might choose better things: that those whom they could, they might lead away from impiety." For as often as the Israelites saw these children of the prophet, so often they beheld themselves as in an image; and as often as they called them by name, so often they proclaimed and recounted to themselves the fates decreed for them by God; for example, when calling these boys they said: Come here, Lo-ruhamah, that is, Without mercy; come now, Lo-ammi, that is, Not my people — they were tacitly saying and thinking to themselves: "Change the name, and the story is told about you." You are the one whom this boy represents, he bears your character. You, therefore, are not the people of God, you are without mercy, whom God has rejected and condemned.
A daughter. — This daughter represents the same thing as Hosea's first son Jezreel, namely the devastation of Israel or the ten tribes. But why is the first a son and the second a daughter? I answer: the physical reason is that spouses customarily beget now sons, now daughters. The first symbolic reason is to repre-
And He said (God) to him (Hosea): Call her name Without Mercy — so that through this offspring you signify that the Israelites are unworthy and incapable of God's mercy, and by a just decree of God are destined for certain destruction; whence explaining He adds: "For I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel;" the Septuagint: I will no longer love them, as if to say: Often before this I had mercy on the Israelites when they were afflicted and repentant for their sins, when I sent them Gideon, Samson, David, and other kings and judges, that is, defenders of the people. But now, because they make no end of sinning and worshiping idols, and because they are obstinate and impenitent in their crimes, I threaten that I will no longer have mercy, but without any hope of pardon or mercy, I will deliver them to the sword and fire of the Assyrians.
In Hebrew, for Without mercy it is לא רחמה Lo-ruhamah. This, therefore, was the proper name of Hosea's daughter. Arias thinks that lo, that is, not, namely I will not have mercy, pertains to Israel or the ten tribes; but ruhamah, that is, having obtained mercy, pertains to Judah; about whom it adds: "And I will have mercy on the house of Judah." Because Judah returned from captivity, not Israel. But this is more subtle than solid; for lo ruhamah is a single name and signifies one thing, namely the abandonment of Israel by God: wherefore lo cannot be separated from ruhamah. The subject here is properly Israel, not Judah; but only incidentally is added: "And I will have mercy on the house of Judah," so that through this Israel's punishment is heightened, when it hears that it alone is destined for destruction and vengeance, while mercy is being prepared for Judah, its neighbor and brother.
But I will utterly forget them. — In Hebrew it is כי נשא אשא להם ki nasa essa lahem, which is variously translated: for the Hebrew word nasa has various meanings, namely, to bear, to take away, to lift up, to pardon. Wherefore, first, the Chaldean translates: If they repent, pardoning I will pardon them. But this version contradicts the name, Without mercy. Second, Vatablus translates: Taking away I will take them from my face. Third, R. David: Lifting up I will lift up upon them, namely, the Assyrian enemies. Fourth, the Septuagint, rendering not word for word but the sense, translate: Opposing I will oppose them, or rather, as others read, turning away I will turn away from them. Fifth, others: Carrying away I will carry them away into captivity. Sixth, others: Deceiving I will deceive them, or seducing I will seduce them. For the Hebrew nasa, if the sin has a point on the right horn, means to seduce, to deceive. Seventh, our translation and others render: Forgetting I will forget them, that is, completely and entirely I will forget them; I will erase them from my memory, so that I will never again wish to think or speak of them. For the Hebrew nasa with he means to forget. For the letters aleph and he among the Hebrews are interchangeable, and often one is put for the other.
Note the catachresis. For in God there is properly no forgetfulness of anything, since He possesses the highest wisdom, and all things past and future are always objectively present to Him. Nevertheless He is said to forget when He casts off, neglects, and abandons someone, so that to men He seems to have forgotten him. Just as, therefore, He is said to be angry when He punishes; to remember when He does good; to sleep when He delays either punishment or reward: so He is said to forget when He neglects and casts off. St. Augustine says beautifully, Confessions I, chapter iv: "You love, he says (O Lord), and are not inflamed; You are jealous, and yet secure; You repent, and feel no grief; You are angry, and yet tranquil; You change Your works, but do not change Your counsel."
Morally, it is an enormous punishment for a sinner when God forgets him: because it is a sign of his impenitence and obstinacy, as well as of divine abandonment and reprobation. Such a person, therefore, can expect nothing of grace, nothing of wisdom, nothing of good from God, from whom, as from the sun, all light and all good necessarily flows. The cause of this divine forgetfulness is that the sinner first forgets God; which is for him the cause of all evils. Whence, to shake off this forgetfulness from His people, God cries out through Jeremiah, ii, 32: "Can a virgin forget her ornament, or a bride her breast-band? Yet my people has forgotten me for days without number." And Isaiah, xvii, 10: "You have forgotten the God of your salvation." And li, 13: "You have forgotten the Lord your Maker." And xliv, 21: "Remember these things, O Jacob and Israel, for you are my servant: I formed you, etc., do not forget me." Conversely the Psalmist prays, Psalm xii, 1: "How long, O Lord, will You forget me to the end?" And Psalm xli, 10: "Why have You forgotten me? And why do I go about in sadness while the enemy afflicts me?"
Moreover, God inflicts this punishment upon the sinner justly and fittingly: for he who forgets God, by the law of retaliation, deserves in turn that God should forget him. Do you wish, then, that God not forget you, but continually remember you? Do not forget Him, but continually remember Him, always keep Him before your eyes and in your mind. Hence Christ gave this teaching to Blessed Catherine of Siena: "Daughter, remember me, and I will remember you. Always think of me, and I will likewise think of you;" so her Life records. Wherefore St. Dominic enjoined upon his followers "that they should continually speak with God, or about God." And St. Thomas Aquinas was accustomed to say: "He is not a religious who does not always have God in his mind." This is what the Prophet proclaims, Isaiah lxiii, 7: "I will remember the mercies of the Lord." And Jeremiah, li, 50: "Remember the Lord from afar." So Jonah in the belly of the whale, ii, 8: "When my soul, he says, was faint within me, I remembered the Lord, that my prayer might come to You:" and soon God in turn, remembering him, "spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land." Again the Psalmist signifies the fruit of this remembrance when he says, Psalm lxxvi, 4: "I remembered God, and I was delighted." And Psalm cxiii, 12: "The Lord has been mindful of us, and has blessed us." Therefore let us continually say with Isaiah, xxvi, 8: "Lord, Your name and Your memorial are the desire of the soul. My soul has desired You in the night: and with my spirit within me, in the morning I will watch for You."
Verse 7: And I will have mercy on the house of Judah.
7. And I will have mercy on the house of Judah. — Because Judah, although it had some impious kings and some impious people, nevertheless had many faithful and pious kings whom the people followed: such as Jehoshaphat, Uzziah, Hezekiah, Josiah, and especially David, to whom God promised and swore, Psalm lxxxviii, mercy and a stable kingdom, and that Christ would be born from his seed. But Israel with all its kings, from the first Jeroboam to the last Hoshea, for 256 years continuously worshiped idols, namely the golden calves at Dan and Bethel, and therefore God refused to have mercy on it, but destroyed it utterly; second, because Christ was to be born from Judah, for so God had decreed. Note: I will have mercy is a virtue, but solely and entirely a virtue. Mercy, therefore, as a virtue, is in God, not as a passion. For mercy in God is the affection of benevolence by which He desires to assist our misery and to relieve and remove it, or at least to mitigate it; in men, however, it is a virtue and at the same time a passion, arousing tenderness of soul, compassion, and a feeling of another's misery, tears, lamentation, etc., which cannot exist in God. For God is ἀπαθής, that is, impassible.
Wherefore Lactantius truly, in his book On the Wrath of God, chapter xvi, reproves those who think there is no movement of soul, no affection in God, and adds: "And because there are some affections that do not befall God, such as lust, fear, avarice, grief, envy, they said He was free from every affection whatsoever; for He is free from these because they are affections of vice; but those which belong to virtue, that is, anger toward the wicked, charity toward the good, compassion toward the afflicted, since they are worthy of divine power, He possesses as His own, and just, and true." Whence the Church also prays: "O God, whose property it is always to have mercy and to spare," etc. In God, therefore, there is a true and proper act of mercy, as well as of charity, wisdom, and other virtues. For God, since He is life, has these vital acts of the virtues; but these are not accidents in Him, as they are in us, but are the same as His essence. For since this essence is immense, and of infinite virtue, perfection, and activity (for it is itself a certain immense and most efficacious act), it contains within itself and absorbs all acts of the virtues, which in angels and men are divided and distinct, because finite and limited. Just as, therefore, the sea absorbs all rivers, and does not grow or swell from them, because it is vast and quasi-immense, so that in comparison with it rivers are like a drop which it immediately absorbs; so too the divinity is a sea that absorbs all endowments and perfections, or rather contains them within itself.
Again, just as the divine essence, because of its immensity, is the same with the Father, and the same with the Son, and the same with the Holy Spirit, who are three most distinct and really diverse persons, so much more does the same divine essence identify itself with the intellect, will, love, and other divine powers and acts, both concerning itself and concerning creatures. For since it is fully and completely infinite in every direction, nothing whatsoever can be added to it; because whatever you might think or wish already existed before in it, and it communicates that very thing to creatures without any diminishment or change to itself. For so great is the fullness of every good in it that no addition can be imagined; so great is its firmness that no diminishment is possible. Whatever good, therefore, is found scattered throughout the whole multitude of angels, men, and all creatures — all of that is gathered in God into a simple unity, and that without limitation and infinitely. Hence it comes about that God through His most simple essence is formally wise, just, merciful, etc., and thus is wisdom itself, goodness itself, justice itself, mercy itself, etc. The very essence of God, therefore, by itself alone accomplishes what in creatures is accomplished by goodness, wisdom, mercy, and very many other and most diverse virtues, but in the most eminent and unlimited manner. Who now would not love this good in which is every good? Indeed, who would love any other good, which compared with it is a shadow, and rather the privation of good than good itself?
And I will save them in the Lord their God. — That is, through the Lord, not by their own help and strength, but by the Lord's. Note the Hebraism: for the Hebrews speak of themselves in the third person, as if they were speaking of someone else. So it is said in Genesis xix, 24: "The Lord rained fire upon Sodom from the Lord," that is, from Himself. And Numbers xii, 7: "But not such is my servant Moses, who, etc., sees the Lord plainly," that is, me.
The Chaldean translates: I will save them through the word of the Lord their God, that is, through God's faithful and firm promise, by which He will actually provide the salvation He promised. Mystically, through the word, that is, through His Son, who will take flesh from the Jews and be born a man, as if to say: I will save them through Jesus, that is, the Savior of the world. So say St. Jerome and St. Hilary, book IV On the Trinity, toward the end. Indeed, Leo Castro thinks the Prophet here speaks literally of Christ, who brought salvation to Judah, that is, to believers, and rejected Israel, that is, the unbelievers. But it is clear from what has been said that these are allegorical, not literal. Moreover, although these words are general and common to the whole Holy Trinity, they can nevertheless be mystically appropriated to the Son: for to Him are appropriated salvation, liberation, and redemption.
You may ask, of what salvation of Judah does the Prophet here speak literally? First, St. Jerome, Cyril, Haymo, Theodoret, Rupert, Lyra, Hugo, and Vatablus think he speaks of that by which He delivered Hezekiah and the two tribes from the hand of Sennacherib, killing in his camp in one night through an angel 185,000 Assyrians, 4 Kings xix. Second, and more probably, the Prophet speaks of the salvation that Cyrus brought to the Jews by liberating them from the Babylonian captivity. For this was by far the greater and more desired, joyful, complete, and universal salvation of all: and in this, Judah is rightly contrasted with and placed before Israel, which never returned from the Assyrian captivity. So say the same authors cited just above.
(1) This opinion seems to be confirmed by the reasoning that, since God had said in verse 4 that the kingdom of Israel was to be destroyed, and indeed without mercy, He now contrasts the better condition of the kingdom of Judah, which its citizens would enjoy after the exile. This deliverance, moreover, the people obtained not by military force, but through the benevolence of Cyrus and Darius, whose hearts God wonderfully disposed toward the Jewish people.
And I will not save them by bow, and sword, and battle, and by horses, and by horsemen. — That is, not through arms and war, but through my mercy alone I will save them. Note: That the two tribes, namely Judah and Benjamin, returned to Judea under Cyrus who released them from Babylon, is certain from 1 Ezra, chapter i. That the same happened with the ten tribes which had been carried off into Assyria before the two, namely that they returned from there to Samaria, is the opinion of St. Cyril on Hosea xi, Theodoret, and Theophylact on Hosea iii. But the contrary, namely that they never returned from Assyria, is clear from this passage, and from 3 Kings xvii, 23, and from Josephus, Antiquities XI, chapter v. And this is the common opinion of St. Jerome here and in Malachi ii, shared by Catholics and Hebrews alike.
You will say that Hosea predicts their return here, verse 11, chapter xi, 8 and following, and chapter xii, 9, and chapter xiv, 6, and Ezekiel xxxvii, 16 and 22, and Jeremiah l, 4, and Tobit xiv, 6, saying: "The destruction of Nineveh is near: and our brothers who are dispersed from the land of Israel will return to it." I answer: Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel speak of a spiritual return and freedom (not bodily) which many of the Israelites, as well as of the Jews, obtained through faith in Christ, about which more below. Tobit, however, speaks of the return of the Jews not to Samaria but to Jerusalem. For he says: "The house of God, which was burned in it, will be rebuilt again: and there all who fear God will return, and the nations will abandon their idols, and they will come to Jerusalem and dwell in it." I confess, however, that not a few of the Israelites or Samaritans, after Nineveh was destroyed where they were held captive, fled to Jerusalem and there worshiped God with the Jews in the temple; and this Tobit seems to suggest, when immediately after the destruction of Nineveh he adds: "And our brothers, who are dispersed from the land of Israel, will return to it." But this return was a private one of a few fugitives, not a common and public one, because it was accomplished neither by the public authority of the Assyrians or Chaldeans, nor by the common counsel and agreement of the Israelites (as the return of the Jews from Babylon was made by the authority of Cyrus, and by the common consent of the people, under the leadership of Nehemiah and Ezra); but each one either remained in Nineveh, or returned to Judea, or migrated elsewhere, as it pleased or suited each one.
In a similar way, earlier on, not a few faithful and pious Israelites, fleeing the idolatry of Jeroboam and the disaster threatening Israel, fled from Samaria to Judea and settled there, as is clear from 2 Chronicles xi, 16, and xv, 9, and xxx, 1, and from Josephus, Antiquities VIII, chapter iii. These, carried off with the Jews to Babylon and brought back with them, afterwards multiplied greatly. Many also in the very destruction of Samaria fled to neighboring Judea. Many of the poorer ones were also left in Samaria to cultivate it, while the rest were led to Assyria; just as in the destruction of Judea and Jerusalem, the Chaldeans left some Jews there to be vinedressers, farmers, etc., as is clear from 4 Kings, final chapter, 12. Whence to these, namely those descended from Zebulun and Naphtali, Christ preached, Matthew iv, 13, and from these He chose most of the Apostles, as is clear from Psalm lxvii, 28, and Isaiah ix, 1. Hence also Anna the prophetess, who was of the tribe of Asher, dwelt in Judah and Jerusalem, Luke ii, 36.
Verse 8: Verses 8 and 9
8 and 9. And she conceived, and bore a son (that is, a third child). And He said to him (namely God to Hosea, as is clear from verse 4): Call his name, Not my people. — The name therefore of the third child was לא עמי Lo-ammi, that is, Not my people. Now first, Rufinus and Albert think this child signifies the two tribes, namely the Jews cast off by God into the Babylonian captivity; Vatablus and Arias, the same completely destroyed by Titus and the Romans. But in this chapter the Prophet prophesies the destruction of Israel, that is, of the ten tribes; not of the two, that is, of the Jews. For about these he said the contrary a little earlier in verse 7, namely: "I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them." Second, others think the Cutheans are signified here, that is, the Assyrians who were transferred from Cuthah and other places to Samaria by Shalmaneser, when he carried the Israelites away to Assyria. For the Cutheans were not the people of God, because along with the God of Israel they worshiped Assyrian idols, as is stated in 4 Kings xvii, 41. But the Cutheans were not Israelites, but Gentiles. The Prophet therefore continues to prophesy about the destruction and devastation of Israel, that is, the ten tribes, and he is commanded to represent their total rejection and reprobation by God through the name of this third child, namely that Israel would no longer be the people of God, but of the nations and of idols, and would live among the nations, and there, growing in offspring and strength, like a male child in paganism would become a strong and vigorous man. So say St. Cyril, St. Jerome, Theodoret, the Chaldean, Rupert, Haymo, and others.
So conversely Isaiah, viii, 3, is commanded by God to call his son Shear-Jashub, that is, a remnant shall return; to signify that a remnant of the Jews would be converted to God and to Christ, as I said there. Such prophetic names, and as it were omens given by God, are frequent in Scripture, as: "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church," Matthew xvi, 18. So Christ called James and John Boanerges, that is, sons of thunder, thundering and lightning. So Isaiah, viii, 1, says the name of the child Emmanuel shall be: "Make haste to plunder, hasten the spoil."
With a similar device the poet said: Let there be Maecenases, and Virgils shall not be lacking, O Flaccus. And Virgil, Eclogue iv, calls Julius Caesar, pierced with 23 wounds in the senate house, Daphnis, and sings of his apotheosis: Fair Daphnis marvels at the unfamiliar threshold of Olympus, And beneath his feet sees the clouds and stars. The very groves resound: A god, a god is he, Menalcas.
Moreover, the pagans often received or changed their names from some present or future event. So among the Greeks, according to Cicero, in his book On the Orator, Tyrtamus, later from his eloquence received the name Euphrastes, and finally from the divine quality of his speech found the name Theophrastus.
The Homer of philosophers, who had received the name Aristocles from his grandfather, was called Plato from the breadth of his chest, or rather from the very broad and fertile abundance of his genius for disputation, as Plutarch attests in his Life of Plato. Among the Romans, that Tyrian who was formerly called Malchus (which in the ancient language of the Hebrews and Phoenicians means king), finally at the wish of his teacher Cassius Longinus, renamed himself Porphyry from the purple of kings. So Porphyry in his Life of Plotinus. So too emperors, newly created, received new names or cognomens. Severus the African, to please the Roman people, took the cognomen of Pertinax; Julian, to satisfy the pleasure-loving soldiers, took that of Commodus. So Herodian, book II. So now in the sacrament of Confirmation, everyone is allowed to change his name; and indeed at entry into Religious life many change theirs, so that, for example, among the Franciscans they take the name of Francis, among the Dominicans of Dominic, among the Benedictines of Benedict, so that they may always have before their eyes the virtues of the founders of their Order along with the name, and may strive to emulate them and express them in their conduct.
For you are not my people, and I will not be yours. — In Hebrew: I will not be for you, that is, God, ruler, guardian, provider, nourisher, father, mother, as I have been until now. How great a happiness and blessing it is to be the people of God, and to have God as father; and conversely how great a misfortune it is not to be the people of God, and to have God as an enemy — Moses describes at length in Leviticus, the entire chapter xxvi, and in Deuteronomy, the entire chapter xxviii.
Mystically, these three children signify three degrees of sin and three stages of the sinner's descent, by which he gradually plunges into hell. For the first child, Jezreel, that is, the seed of God, namely lost and poured out, and as it were slain, as was said in verse 4, signifies the first degree of sin, whereby the sinner, intent on his own allurements, neglects and does not heed the admonitions, sermons, and inspirations of God, and therefore God gradually withdraws these and His grace from him. From this he descends to the second degree, which is impenitence and obstinacy, so as to be without mercy. From there he plunges to the third degree, so as not to be among the people of God, but, condemned by God, is thrust into hell.
Verse 10: And the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which is without measur...
10. And the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which is without measure and cannot be numbered. — Here the Prophet passes to another topic, and, as is his custom, turns from sad things to joyful. Whence the Hebrews and Lyra begin the second chapter here. Wherefore Theodoret and Cyril are less correct in connecting these words with the preceding by way of exaggeration, in this sense, as if to say: My decree concerning the destruction of Israel stands firm and will stand firm, even if Israel should grow like the sand of the sea and become innumerable. For the contrary is signified by the words "and it shall be" and what follows. And so at this point the Prophet rises from carnal Israel to spiritual Israel, from earthly goods to heavenly and divine ones.
For lest anyone should object and say: How, O Prophet, do you predict that Israel is to be destroyed and cut off, when God promised Abraham that his seed, namely Israel, would be innumerable like the sand of the sea, Genesis xxii, 17 — he meets and answers that this is true and shall remain so, but in spiritual Israel, not carnal.
You may ask, when and through whom was this prophecy fulfilled? First, Hugo thinks it was fulfilled through Hezekiah, who, according to 2 Chronicles xxx, summoned Israelites from everywhere to worship God in Jerusalem; likewise through Josiah, who instituted a solemn Passover, to which both Israelites and Jews flocked from all sides. These, therefore, then appointed one head for themselves, namely the pious king Josiah, or Hezekiah. But Hezekiah summoned the Israelites at the beginning of his reign, when Samaria had not yet been destroyed nor the Israelites dispersed. Hosea, however, speaks here of the Israelites already dispersed, indeed rejected, who are to be gathered again by God. Josiah did indeed gather those dispersed after the destruction of Samaria, but only a few; yet Hosea says they will be innumerable.
Second, Rufinus, Theodoret, and Hugo think it was fulfilled under Cyrus; for then the Israelites, mixed with the Jews, returned from Babylon to Jerusalem under the leadership of Zerubbabel. But these too were very few.
I say therefore, first, that this prophecy began to be fulfilled by Christ, who evangelized both Israelites and Jews in person; for He preached in Galilee and Samaria, and specifically in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, as St. Matthew says, iv, 15; and from there He summoned and gathered His Apostles. Again, shortly after, Samaria through Philip received the word of God, wherefore St. Peter and St. John were sent there, Acts viii. Moreover, more and more from Israel are converted daily. Finally, all the Israelites will be converted at the end of the world, as the Apostle says, Romans xi, 26, and then this prophecy of Hosea will be perfectly fulfilled. So say St. Jerome and Christophorus a Castro here. But since these Israelites are and will be few, and cannot be called innumerable, hence
I say second, that under the name of Israelites are understood also the Gentiles converted to Christ, and that in them this prophecy is perfectly fulfilled. For these are innumerable, and they are the true Israelites according to the spirit, not according to the flesh; because according to faith they are children of Abraham and Israel, and consequently heirs of the blessing and goods promised by God to both. For through faith they are adopted into the family of Abraham and Israel; and therefore they are called, and before God are, children of Israel, just as adopted children in civil law are called and are children and heirs of the one who adopts them. The sense, therefore, is as if to say: Although I said that the Israelites according to the flesh are to be destroyed and cast off by God, nevertheless the promise made to Abraham, Genesis xxii, 17, in which He says: "I will bless you, and multiply your seed like the stars of heaven and like the sand on the shore of the sea," will not fail nor be void, because in their place into the family
others who from among the nations believe in Christ will succeed and be adopted into the family of Abraham, and they will be children of Abraham according to faith and spirit; for these will be like the sand of the sea, virtually innumerable. That this is so is clear first because the Apostle, Romans ix, 25, explicitly explains this passage of Hosea as referring to the Gentiles, and from it proves against the Jews that not only the Jews, but also the Gentiles will share in Christ's calling and grace: "Whom He also called, he says, not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles, as He says in Hosea: I will call not my people, my people; and not beloved, beloved; and not having obtained mercy, having obtained mercy. And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them: You are not my people, there they shall be called children of the living God." Then he proves that the Israelites, or Jews, are also to be called and saved through Christ, but few, not innumerable, from Isaiah, saying: "But Isaiah cries out for Israel: If the number of the children of Israel were as the sand of the sea, only a remnant shall be saved," etc. What could be clearer?
You will say: Hosea's words are to be understood literally of the natural Israelites, but the Apostle merely accommodates them to the Gentiles by analogy and similarity; because, just as the Israelites, so also the Gentiles were not the people of God, but called by Christ became the people of God, as St. Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Christophorus a Castro explain. But this cannot be said. For first, the Apostle speaks didactically and argues scholastically against the Jews, and proves from this passage of Hosea that the Gentiles are to be called by Christ; therefore Hosea truly and properly spoke about the Gentiles. Otherwise the Jews would have answered Paul and evaded his argument by saying: Hosea speaks of the Israelites only, not of the Gentiles; therefore you, O Paul, wrongly and falsely twist, indeed distort, his words to apply to the Gentiles. Second, because the Apostle clearly teaches elsewhere that the blessing promised to Abraham and Israel, and the goods that Hosea and the other Prophets promise to the Israelites and their posterity through Christ, do not pertain to carnal Israelites, but to spiritual ones, that is, to believers from both the Gentiles and the Israelites; and the best interpreter of the Prophets is St. Paul.
Hear him clearly pronouncing this, Romans ix, 6, and thus resolving and explaining similar Old Testament passages objected to by the Jews: "But it is not that the word (the promise made to the posterity of Abraham and Israel) of God has failed; for not all who are from Israel are Israelites; nor are all who are the seed of Abraham his children, but in Isaac shall your seed be called, that is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed," etc.; and Galatians iii, 6: "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Know, therefore, that those who are of faith, they are the children of Abraham. And Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preannounced to Abraham (saying): Because in you shall all nations be blessed. Therefore those who are of faith shall be blessed with faithful Abraham." Therefore this promise of Hosea pertains to the Gentiles who imitate the faith of Israel and believe in Christ.
Third, this is the common exposition of the Fathers: namely, that by Israel here are understood both the Gentiles and the natural Israelites converted to Christ. So say St. Jerome, Cyril, Rufinus, Haymo, Hugo, Albert, and others here, and St. Augustine, Against Faustus, book XXI, chapter lxxxix; and often elsewhere; Cyprian, Testimonies against the Jews, book I, chapter xix; Tertullian, Against Marcion, book IV, chapter xvi; Irenaeus, book II, chapter iv; Prosper, On the Calling of the Gentiles, book II, chapter xviii; Primasius, Anselm, and St. Thomas on Romans ix.
Finally, the words that follow plainly signify the same thing, by which he says that those who once were not the people of God will be called children of the living God, gathered into one Church under one head, Christ, will ascend from the earth, and that this will be the great day of Jezreel — all of which applies more to the faithful Gentiles than to the Israelites.
And it shall be that in the place where it is said (that is, where it was said, both by God and by men, so Vatablus; whence the Septuagint translates, where it was said) to them: You are not my people; it shall be said to them: Children of the living God. — Understand this place not as Chaldea, to which the Jews had been carried off, as Albert would have it; nor as Jerusalem and Judea, as Haymo and Hugo think; but as whatever place in the whole world where there are believers and faithful in Christ, so from the Chaldean St. Jerome and St. Augustine, Questions to Simplicianus I, Question ii, indeed St. Peter, 1 Peter ii. For writing to Christians dispersed through Bithynia, Pontus, Galatia, Asia, etc., to whom he himself had preached the Gospel, and vividly explaining these words of Hosea, he says: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession. Who once were not a people, but now are the people of God; who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy." The place, therefore, is the Church of Christ, dispersed among all nations and throughout the whole world.
Children of the living God. — This is the greatest dignity and exaltation of man, through which we become sharers in the divine nature, says St. Peter. St. Leo truly says, Sermon 6 On the Nativity: "All gifts, he says, are exceeded by this gift, that God should call man His son, and man should name God his father." Wherefore the same, Sermon 1 On the Nativity, teaches that man ought to imitate God the Father, and put on His ways, so as to live a divine life, not an earthly or animal one: "Recognize, he says, O Christian, your dignity, and having been made a sharer in the divine nature, do not return to your former baseness by a degenerate way of life;" and Sermon 6: "Let the chosen and royal race correspond to the dignity of its rebirth: let it love what the Father loves, and in nothing disagree with its Author, lest the Lord again say that word of Isaiah, chapter i: I have nourished and brought up children, but they have despised me;" but let it follow that saying of Christ, Matthew v: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
These, therefore, "were born not from blood, nor from the will of the flesh, nor from the will of man, but from God;" like unto the Only-begotten of God, to whom the Father said from eternity: "You are my Son, today I have begotten You." Moreover, the word living has emphasis, as if to say: They are not children of mute and dead gods, not of idols; but children of the true and living God, who is the divine and uncreated life itself, and breathes and communicates it to them.
Note: In this generation and filiation, the father is God, the seed is prevenient grace, the mother is the will consenting and cooperating with it, the offspring is the just man, the soul is charity. Again, the model of this filiation is the filiation of the Word of God; for just as God the Father from eternity begot a Son consubstantial and equal to Himself in all things, so after His likeness He begets sons in time, who through grace are what the Son of God is by nature. Our filiation, therefore, is the image of divine filiation. This is what the Apostle says, Romans viii, 29: "Whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren;" and verse 14: "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit of servitude again unto fear, but you received a spirit of adoption as sons, in which we cry: Abba, Father." He proves the same thing by adding: "For the Spirit Himself bears witness to our spirit, that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs — heirs indeed of God, and co-heirs with Christ; if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him."
It is done through the Holy Spirit. — Moreover, to inspect, desire, and admire this adoption by God more deeply, it should be noted that in it not only are grace and charity and other gifts of the Holy Spirit infused into the soul, but the Holy Spirit Himself is also given, who is the first and uncreated gift that God gives to men. God could have, in justification through infused grace and charity, only made us just and holy, and that would have been a great grace and beneficence of God, even if He had not adopted us as His children; but not content with this, He willed to make us just in such a way as to simultaneously make and adopt us as sons. Again, He could have made this adoption by giving us only charity, grace, and created gifts; for grace is a participation in the divine nature to the highest degree to which divinity can be participated by a creature, not only naturally but also supernaturally. This benefit of God, therefore, would have been greater than the former. But the immense goodness of God, not content with that, willed to give us Himself at the same time, and to sanctify and adopt us through Himself. Wherefore the Holy Spirit of His own accord attached Himself to His gifts, to grace and charity, so that whenever these are infused into a soul, He simultaneously with them and through them infuses Himself personally and substantially, according to the Apostle's words: "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us," Romans v, 5. Wherefore the Apostle calls Him the spirit of adoption as sons: "For you did not receive, he says, a spirit of servitude again unto fear, but you received a spirit of adoption as sons, in which we cry, Abba, Father. For the Spirit Himself bears witness to our spirit, that we are children of God; and if children, then heirs — heirs indeed of God, and co-heirs with Christ; if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him," Romans viii, 13; and: "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God," ibid. verse 14; and: "And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father," Galatians iv, 6.
This, therefore, is the supreme condescension of our God, and equally our supreme dignity and exaltation, by which in receiving charity and grace, we simultaneously receive the very Person of the Holy Spirit, who of His own accord inserts and attaches Himself to charity and grace, and through them dwells in us, gives us life, adopts us, deifies us, and moves us toward every good. Do you want something greater? Receive this. The Holy Spirit, descending personally into the just soul, brings with Him the other divine Persons, the Father and the Son, inasmuch as He cannot be separated from them. The entire Trinity, therefore, comes personally and substantially to the soul that is justified and adopted, and remains and dwells in it as in its own temple, as long as the soul perseveres in righteousness, according to 1 John iv, 16: "He who abides in charity abides in God, and God in him;" and 1 Corinthians vi, 17: "He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit with Him." This is what Christ, about to die, asked and obtained in that most divine prayer to the Father, saying: "That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in me, and I in You, that they also may be one in us," John xvii, 21 — namely, that they might share the one and same Holy Spirit, and in Him be united, and through Him to the other divine Persons; and thus in Him all may be one, because the Holy Spirit, who is shared by all and who is in all, is one and the same. Whence all are one in a single undivided reality, namely in the Holy Spirit, just as the three divine Persons are one in one divine nature, and that singular and undivided. So explains St. Cyril, on John XI, chapter xxvi, St. Athanasius, Oration 4 Against the Arians, and from them Toletus.
In justification, therefore, and the adoption of the soul, grace and charity are infused, and with them the Holy Spirit, and the entire divinity, and the Most Holy Trinity, who has as it were substantially attached and enclosed Herself in these Her gifts, to unite, sanctify, deify, and adopt us substantially to Herself. By this adoption we first receive the supreme dignity of divine filiation, so that in reality we are children of God and quasi-gods, not merely accidentally through grace, but also quasi-substantially through nature: for God really communicates and gives us His own nature. Second, through this same filiation we as sons receive the right to the heavenly inheritance, namely to beatitude and all the goods of God our Father. Third, through this same filiation we obtain a wondrous dignity of works and merits, namely that our works, as being those of substantial children of God, so to speak, are of the greatest dignity, value, and worth, and fully proportionate and condign to their reward, namely eternal life and heavenly glory, inasmuch as they proceed, as it were, from God Himself and the divine Spirit who dwells in us, and impels us to them, and cooperates with them.
From what has been said it follows, first, that inherent righteousness, or justifying grace, by which we are sanctified and adopted as children of God, is not one simple quality, as some imagine, but encompasses many things, namely the remission of sins, faith, hope, charity, and other gifts, and the Holy Spirit Himself, the Author of these gifts (and consequently the entire Holy Trinity). For man receives all these things infused in justification, as the Council of Trent states, session VI, canon vii.
It follows second, that those err who think that in justification and adoption the Holy Spirit is given only as to His gifts, but not as to His substance and person. For the contrary is taught by St. Bonaventure in I Sentences, distinction xiv, article 2, Question i, where he shows throughout that the Holy Spirit is given not only personally in terms of charity and other gifts of the Holy Spirit, but that the Holy Spirit Himself is also given, who is the first and uncreated gift that God gives to men.
God could have, in justification through infused grace and charity, only made us just and holy, and that would have been a great grace and beneficence of God, even if He had not adopted us as His children; but not content with this, He willed to make us just in such a way as to simultaneously make and adopt us as sons. Again, He could have effected this adoption by giving us only charity, grace, and created gifts; for grace is a participation in the divine nature in the highest degree, insofar as the divinity can be participated in by a creature not only naturally but also supernaturally.
This benefit of God, therefore, would have been greater than the former. But the immense goodness of God, not content with that, willed at the same time to give us Himself, and to sanctify and adopt us through Himself. Wherefore the Holy Spirit of His own accord attached Himself to His gifts, to grace and charity, so that whenever these are infused into a soul, He simultaneously with them and through them infuses Himself personally and substantially, according to the Apostle's words: "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us," Romans v, 5.
Wherefore the Apostle calls Him the spirit of adoption as sons: "For you did not receive, he says, a spirit of servitude again unto fear, but you received a spirit of adoption as sons, in which we cry, Abba, Father. For the Spirit Himself bears witness to our spirit, that we are children of God; and if children, then heirs — heirs indeed of God, and co-heirs with Christ; if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him," Romans viii, 13; and: "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God," ibid. verse 14; and: "And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father," Galatians iv, 6. This, therefore, is the supreme condescension of our God, and equally our supreme dignity and exaltation, by which in receiving charity and grace, we simultaneously receive the very Person of the Holy Spirit.
are of the greatest dignity, value, and worth, and fully proportionate and condign to their reward, namely eternal life and heavenly glory, inasmuch as they proceed, as it were, from God Himself and the divine Spirit who dwells in us, and impels us to them, and cooperates with them. From what has been said it follows, first, that inherent righteousness, or justifying grace, by which we are sanctified and adopted as children of God, is not one simple quality, as some imagine, but encompasses many things, namely the remission of sins, faith, hope, charity, and other gifts, and the Holy Spirit Himself, the Author of these gifts (and consequently the entire Holy Trinity). For man receives all these things infused in justification, as the Council of Trent states, session VI, canon vii.
And he proves it from Sacred Scripture: 1 Corinthians vi, 19: "Your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God." Romans v, 5: "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." 1 John iv: "He who abides in charity abides in God, and God in him." John xiv: "Whom the Father will send in my name." And verse 17: "He will remain with you, and will be in you." And verse 23: "We will come to him, and make our abode with him." And John xvi, 7: "If I go away, I will send Him to you." Suarez gives the reason, number 12: "Because, he says, the gifts of grace by their own force and as if by connnatural right, require the real and personal presence of God in the soul sanctified by such gifts: because if we were to imagine, per impossibile, that the Holy Spirit were not otherwise really present within the soul, by the very fact that the soul were endowed with such gifts, the Holy Spirit Himself would come to it by personal presence, and would remain as long as grace lasted in it." In a similar way, he says, the Word is present to the humanity of Christ, and, if per impossibile He had not been previously present to it, through the hypostatic union He would become personally and intimately present to it.
He then adds a moral reason, namely that through grace the most perfect friendship is formed between God and man, which requires the presence of the friend, namely the Holy Spirit, who remains in the soul of His friend, to be intimately united to it, and to reside, be worshiped, loved, and adored in it as in His own temple.
From this communication of the very Person of the Holy Spirit and of the divinity, there follows the soul's supreme union with Him, elevation, and quasi-deification, and consequently the most perfect adoption, namely not only through grace, but also through the divine substance; because through it we obtain not only the right to the inheritance of God the Father, but also a participation in the divine nature, and the Holy Spirit Himself and divine filiation, not merely accidentally but quasi-substantially, in the sense I explained a little earlier. For just as among men he is properly called a father who communicates his nature to his son, so God, by giving us the Holy Spirit with and through His gifts, communicates His own divine nature, and in that way properly and perfectly makes and adopts us as sons. Whence St. Basil, in his homily On the Holy Spirit, says the saints are gods because of the indwelling Holy Spirit. For it was said to them by God: "I said: You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High," and from this he proves the Holy Spirit is God. "For it is necessary, he says, that the Spirit be divine and from God, who is the cause of divinity to those who are gods."
Now just as the formal cause of the prior adoption through grace is grace itself, so the formal cause of this second adoption, which is effected through the communication of the Holy Spirit Himself, is the Holy Spirit Himself dwelling in the soul of the just, while the medium is grace itself.
It follows third, that our adoption, although one in itself, is virtually twofold. The first is that by which we are adopted as children of God through created charity and grace infused into the soul. For this is the highest participation in the divine nature. The second is that by which through grace we obtain the Holy Spirit Himself and His divine nature; and through Him we are quasi-deified and enrolled as children of God. Moreover, both adoptions begin here through grace, but will be perfected and solidified in heaven through eternal glory, by which we will actually obtain possession of God's inheritance (and this firmly and immovably, without any fear or danger of ever losing it), and will be intimately united to God and enjoy Him through the beatific vision, by which in a new way God will communicate Himself substantially to the blessed soul, and will most intimately and most sweetly pour Himself into it and insinuate Himself. Of this the Apostle says, Romans viii, 23: "We ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption (that is, for the possession of the adoption, namely the inheritance to which we have been adopted) of the children of God." And St. John, Apocalypse xxi, 3: "Behold, he says, the tabernacle of God with men, and He will dwell with them. And they shall be His people, and God Himself with them shall be their God." And verse 7: "He who overcomes shall possess these things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son."
It follows fourth, that just as Christ is the natural Son of God, both as God through eternal generation, and as man through the hypostatic union, so we are adoptive sons of God, but far more nobly than are the adoptive sons of men. For those receive nothing physical from the adopting father, but only a moral designation through which they obtain the right to his inheritance. We, however, receive from God grace, and with grace God's very nature, so that just as among men he is properly called a father who communicates to another his human nature and begets a man, so God is called father not only of Christ but also of us: because He communicates His nature to us through grace, just as He communicated it to Christ through the hypostatic union, to make us His brothers, according to Romans viii, 29: "Whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren." And John i, 12: "He gave them the power to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born not from blood, etc., but from God."
Morally, from these things learn how great and how inestimable is the benefit of divine filiation and adoption. Few know it to be of such great dignity as I have now shown; fewer still weigh it with the weight it deserves. Surely everyone should reverently admire it within himself, and teachers and preachers should explain and impress it upon the people in the way I have just set forth, so that the faithful and holy may know that they are living temples of God, and that they carry God Himself in their hearts: and therefore that they should walk divinely with God, and conduct themselves worthily with so great a guest, who everywhere accompanies them, is everywhere present, everywhere watches over them. Rightly the Apostle, 1 Corinthians vi, 19: "Do you not know, he says, that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you have been bought at a great price: glorify and carry God in your body."
And St. Leo, Sermon I On the Nativity: "Recognize, he says, O Christian, your dignity, and having been made a sharer in the divine nature, do not return to your former baseness by a degenerate way of life. Remember whose head and whose body you are a member of. Recall that, snatched from the power of darkness, you have been transferred into the light and kingdom of God. Through the sacrament of baptism you have been made the temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great an Inhabitant by wicked acts, nor subject yourself again to the servitude of the devil; for your price is the blood of Christ, who will judge you in truth, because He redeemed you in mercy."
And St. Augustine, Sermon 24 On the Season, volume X: "The first birth, he says, is from male and female; the second birth is from God and the Church. Behold, they are born from God. Whence it came about that He should dwell in us. A great change: He became flesh, we became spirit. What is this? What condescension, my brothers! Lift up your hearts to hope for and grasp better things, do not add to worldly desires. You were bought at a price: for your sake the Word was made flesh, for your sake He who was the Son of God became the son of man, so that you who were sons of men might become sons of God." The same in his commentary on Psalm lii: "They are, he says, sons of men when they do evil; when they do good, sons of God. For God makes them from sons of men into sons of God, because from the Son of God, God made the son of man. See what that participation in divinity is! For the Son of God was made a partaker of our mortality, so that mortal man might be made a partaker of His divinity. He who promised you divinity showed His charity in you."
Hear also St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 7: "Knowing this, therefore, he says, let us conduct ourselves spiritually, that we may be made worthy of the adoption of God. For those who are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God, etc. Lest perhaps that be said to us also, if you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham. For if we call him father who judges each one's work without partiality, let us not spend the time of our sojourn or pilgrimage without fear, not loving the world, nor the things that are in the world. For he who loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Therefore, most beloved, let us glorify our heavenly Father through our works, that they may see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven. Let us cast all our care upon Him: for our Father knows what we need."
Hear also St. Ambrose, On the Faith, book V, chapter iii: "In those, he says, in whom God sees His Son according to His image, He adopts them through His Son into the grace of sonship: so that just as through the image we are made in His image, so through generation as sons we are called to adoption." And immediately: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. But if He is perfect according to the fullness of His majesty, we are perfect according to the progress of advancing virtue."
This is what St. John, marveling and astonished, impresses upon Christians, 1 John iii, 1: "See, he says, what manner of charity the Father has given us, that we should be called and be children of God. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when He appears, we shall be like Him: for we shall see Him as He is." Consider among men how great is the dignity of being the son of a prince, king, or emperor (for such a son by that very fact is more dignified than all other men of the entire kingdom), and know that the same holds in divine things — to be accounted a son of God. To be a son of God, therefore, is immeasurably more than to be a king, pontiff, emperor, lord of heaven and earth; indeed more than to be an angel, archangel, cherub, or seraph. How greatly, then, should this divine filiation be desired, embraced, carefully preserved, and, if lost, recovered! How great the thanks each just person should give to God for it! With what confidence, love, and reverence should the just person continually deal and live with God, as a son with his father!
He should indeed, like Noah, Enoch, and Abraham, be perfect in his generation, and walk with God; and be familiar rather with angels than with men. St. Cyprian truly says, in his book On Spectacles: "He will never, he says, admire human works, whoever recognizes himself to be a son of God. He casts himself down from the summit of his nobility, who is able to admire anything after God." The same, in his treatise On the Lord's Prayer: "When, he says, we call God Father, we ought to act as sons of God; so that just as we take pleasure in God as Father, so may He also take pleasure in us. Let us conduct ourselves as temples of God, so that God may be seen to dwell in us, so that we who have begun to be heavenly and spiritual, may think and do nothing but spiritual and heavenly things."
Verse 11: And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together.
11. And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together. — Both the natural ones, namely Jews and Israelites who will be converted to Christ, say St. Jerome, Haymo, Albert, Vatablus, Arias, and Castro; and the children of Judah and Israel according to the spirit, namely the Gentiles, who will be enrolled in the family of Judah and Israel and will pass into it, imitating the faith of Abraham in Christ, and thus will be his adoptive children: "they shall be gathered," I say, into the one Church of Christ. I know that St. Augustine in the cited passages and Lyra distinguish these two, taking Israel for the Gentiles and Judah for the Jews; conversely St. Jerome and Rupert take Judah for the Gentiles and Israel for the Jews converted to Christ. But I think this distinction is unnecessary; for since by Israel and Judah are fundamentally understood the true Israelites and Jews who will be converted to Christ, while symbolically and mystically are understood the Gentiles to be converted to Christ, who will be associated with the converted Jews and Israelites in one and the same Church, I do not see why or how among the faithful Gentiles we should or could make that distinction. Wherefore I judge that among the Gentiles Israel is not separated from Judah; but the Gentiles are associated and enrolled with both faithful Judah and faithful Israel believing in Christ, and are therefore called both Judah and Israel.
And they shall appoint for themselves one head. — Namely Christ as their leader and guide, and His vicar the Roman Pontiff.
And they shall go up from the land. — He alludes to the return from the Babylonian captivity, as the Chaldean, Theodoret, and Hugo note, as if to say: Just as once the Jews in Babylon, oppressed and walking with bowed neck and head like slaves, when they were set free by Cyrus, went out from there with heads held high and rejoicing and ascended to Jerusalem; so from a similar spiritual captivity, in which the Jews, Israelites, and Gentiles were imprisoned under sin and the power of the devil, they will be freed by Christ, and from there they will go out, and joyfully and gladly will ascend and proceed to the promised land, namely to Jerusalem, that is, to the Church both militant on earth, and through it to the Church triumphant in heaven.
This passage from unbelief, paganism, and Judaism, to the faith and the Church is called an ascent, first, because it was from darkness and prison into light and a city, namely into the sublime Church and into the admirable light of God, as St. Peter says; second, because it was a passage from servitude to freedom; for slaves walk bent, bowed down, and as if descending, while the free walk with upright neck, and as if ascending.
Third, the word ascend indicates that the life of Christians is not earthly, as is that of unbelievers, but heavenly, and that they ascend in mind and conduct from earth to heaven: "For our conversation is in heaven," as St. Paul says.
Fourth, Lyra and Ribera add, the word ascending signifies the growth and propagation of the faith and the Church, as if to say: The faithful will ascend from the earth, that is, they will grow gradually and spread themselves far and wide throughout the entire world and propagate themselves like a spring which, leaping up from the earth, pours out waters, but small ones, which nevertheless, partly by the continuous outpouring of the spring, partly by the confluence of other springs and streams, so increase as to form a great lake or river. So to ascend is taken for to grow, Jeremiah xlvi, 7, where of Pharaoh and his numerous army it is said: "Who is this that rises up like a river, and like the streams whose waters surge? Egypt rises up like a river, and like rivers its waves will be moved, and it will say: Rising up I will cover the earth." And of the forces of Nebuchadnezzar, xlvii, 2: "Behold, he says, waters ascend from the North, and they will be like an overflowing torrent, and will cover the earth." So Ezekiel, xix, 3, says: "She brought up one of her whelps, and he became a lion;" for brought up, the Hebrew has she made to ascend, that is, she exalted him and promoted him to be king. And the Psalmist, Psalm xcvi, 9: "You are exceedingly exalted," in Hebrew, you have exceedingly ascended (O Lord) above all gods, that is, above all the gods of the nations You have exalted and expanded Your power and glory.
For (in Hebrew כי ki, which is often not causal but assertive and admiring, and means the same as surely, indeed, truly) great is the day of Jezreel. — "Great," that is, most celebrated, most joyful, and most blessed. So the Romans called great days those which put an end to great troubles and long labors and miseries, and therefore were the most joyful, most desired, and most auspicious. So of this same day of Hosea, namely of the days of the Messiah, the Sibyl sang according to Virgil, Eclogue iv: The great months will begin to advance. So the astronomers call the Great Year that in which the seven planets, having completed their proper courses, come into agreement, of which Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, book II: "The Great Year, he says, is one that contains twelve thousand five hundred and fifty-four years, after which the Platonists said there would be a return and revolution of all things." So Christ brought back the Great Year, when He restored all things and brought them back to their original origin and happiness.
Conversely, small days are called days of humiliation, poverty, and anguish, Zechariah iv, 10: "Who, he says, has despised the day of small things?" in which Zerubbabel laid the small and humble foundations of the new temple.
Now Jezreel, that is, the seed of God, is called the people of God, or the Church gathered from Jews, Israelites, and Gentiles, whose head is Christ, whom the Apostle, Galatians vi, 16, calls "the Israel of God." The sense, therefore, is as if to say: Truly great, illustrious, favorable, admirable, and thrice and four times blessed will be that day, that age, in which the Israelites and Jews, both natural and mystical and adoptive, namely the Gentiles converted to Christ, previously scattered and wandering, will be gathered into one, to become Jezreel, that is, one people, one Church, namely children of the living God, to appoint for themselves one head, Christ, and to begin to ascend from earth to heaven. O how happy, how new and never before seen, how glorious and radiant it will be, and what a change it will bring to each individual believer and to the whole world — that day when Lo-ammi will become Ammi, that is, Not my people will become My people; when Lo-ruhamah will become Ruhamah, that is, she who was without mercy will be full of the grace and mercy of God. So say Albert, Haymo, Hugo, Lyra, and Vatablus.
O how salutary, august, heavenly, and blessed will be that day, that age in which Jezreel, that is, the Son of God, namely Christ the Lord, will be born, will preach, and will reign — He who, as Jezreel, that is, blessed seed, will beget for God very many faithful, holy, and glorious children through His preaching and heavenly life, both His own and that of His Apostles! So say St. Jerome, Rupert, Albert, Leo Castro, Emmanuel, and Mariana.
Hence this day of Jezreel can be taken as the day of the Incarnation, Nativity, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ, and of Pentecost, that is, the sending of the Holy Spirit, and of the preaching of the Apostles throughout the whole world. For through all these Christ accomplished and continues daily to accomplish our salvation, and begot and begets us for God; whence Haymo interprets the great day of Jezreel as the entire time of Christianity, namely the whole period that has flowed from Christ and will flow until the end of the world; for during this entire time Jezreel is generated and propagated, that is, the Church, or the people of God.
Hence first, Leo Castro here, and St. Cyril in the Glaphyra, book V, understand these words of the day of the Incarnation and Nativity of Christ: Great, they say, is the day of Jezreel, because from Jezreel, that is, from the seed of God, namely from the Holy Spirit, the Son of God was conceived; of whom the Psalmist said: "This is the day which the Lord has made;" and Paul: "Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation;" and Jeremiah, xxxi, 22: "The Lord has created a new thing upon the earth: a woman shall encompass a man;" and Isaiah, ix, 6: "A child is born to us, and a son is given to us, and the government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, God, Mighty, Father of the world to come, Prince of peace." Indeed the Sibyl according to Virgil, Eclogue iv, sings of Him thus: The great order of the ages is born anew: Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns, Now a new offspring is sent down from high heaven, Dear child of the gods, great increase of Jupiter. You, for the boy being born, by whom the iron age Shall first cease, and a golden race arise throughout the world, Be favorable, chaste Lucina.
Second, great will be the day of Jezreel, when the Son of God will suffer and die on the most cruel cross "for the nation, and not only for the nation, but to gather into one the children of God who were scattered," says St. John, xi, 52. For these are Jezreel, that is, "the seed whom the Lord has blessed," Isaiah lxi, 9, of whom the same Isaiah says, vi, 13: "The holy seed shall be that which stands in it."
Third, great will be the day of Jezreel, when the seed of God, that is Christ, will rise again and live again. "Great, says Rupert, will be the day, and great the glorification of the seed of God, which is Christ; of the seed, I say, rising from the dead, with whom those rising together indeed ascend from the earth, doing what the Apostle says: If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God; set your minds on things above, not on things on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Thus indeed, with the first ascent having been made, which is the first resurrection, finally bodies too will ascend from the earth, which will be the second resurrection; and they will follow their head just as members joined to the head, and as Christ Himself expressed it saying: Where the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together."
Hence fourth, the great day of Jezreel will be the day of judgment and resurrection, when Christ the judge will separate the seed of God from the seed of the devil, namely the elect from the reprobate, and will call the former to blessed and glorious life, and will lead them with Himself into heaven for an eternal triumph. So Cyril: "Great, he says, will truly be the day of Christ, when He will raise all the departed, and will indeed descend from heaven, and will sit upon the throne of His glory, and will render to each according to his works." Whence of this day Joel says, ii, 11: "Great is the day of the Lord, and very terrible: and who can endure it?" and verse 31: "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. And it shall be that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be salvation, as the Lord has said, and among the remnant whom the Lord shall call."
Behold, these are the days of Jezreel. Again, Jezreel signifies the arm of God. So all these days are Jezreel, that is, days and works of the great arm, that is, of great divine power and might: so Arias. In like manner, great was the day of Midian, when Gideon crushed the Midianites and freed the Hebrews from their yoke — which day was a type of this day of Christ our Redeemer, about which Isaiah therefore sings, ix, 4: "The yoke of his burden and the rod of his shoulder, and the scepter of his oppressor (namely the devil, O Christ) You have overcome, as (Gideon did) in the day of Midian." Note here: In this same valley of Jezreel, Gideon struck down the Midianites, as is said in Judges vi, 33, so that the Prophet plainly seems to allude to it. See what I said about the day of Midian on Isaiah ix, 4.
This, therefore, is the great day of Jezreel, when through the incarnate Christ that great mystery of the calling and adoption of the faithful was accomplished, which in all his epistles the Apostle so marvels at and admires. Whence in Ephesians ii, 11, stirring the Gentiles to thanksgiving and jubilation: "Remember, he says, that you were once Gentiles, etc., you were without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants, having no hope of the promise, and without God in this world. But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." And soon after: "Therefore you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God." Hence again, astonished, he exclaims: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways!" Romans xi, 33.
Tropologically: A great day of Jezreel for the Church is one on which many, converted to her, became Jezreel, that is, seed, that is, children of God. Such was the day when Constantine the Great, converted, converted the world subject to him. A great day for a nation or city is when, freed from the yoke of heretics or Turks, it passed into the freedom of the children of God and into the kingdom of Christ, so that it should continually commemorate it, and gratefully sing with the Psalmist: "This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." So a great day for a faithful soul is when it was baptized and made faithful; when, having relapsed into sin, it returned through repentance to God's grace; when it was called by God from the tumults of the world to the state of perfection, when it made its profession; when it was ordained to the priesthood, etc. For on these days it was made Jezreel, either simply or more excellently, that is, the seed or daughter of God, so that it rightly ought to celebrate those days returning each year with immense thanksgiving, praise, and jubilation, and sing with the Blessed Virgin: "My soul magnifies the Lord. And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. He has shown might with His arm."
So a great day of Jezreel was when Judith, killing Holofernes, liberated her country, which the Hebrews consequently celebrated with an annual feast, as is evident from Judith, last chapter, verse 31. So great was the day of Jezreel when Esther rescued the Jews destined for death, which posterity consequently recalled with the annual feast of Purim, that is, of lots, Esther ix, 26 and 31. So great was the day of the Dedication, that is, of the dedication of the temple, both as first performed by Solomon, 3 Kings viii, and as restored by Ezra, 1 Ezra vi, and afterwards by Judas Maccabeus, 1 Maccabees iv, 52. So great was the day of Nicanor's slaying by Judas, and the annual feast, 1 Maccabees vii, 49. So great was the day of the sacred fire given from heaven to Aaron and recovered under Judas Maccabeus, with which the victims were to be burned, 2 Maccabees i, 18. So great a day, indeed a year, was the fiftieth, namely the Jubilee, Leviticus xxv.