Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
The daughter of the robber having been laid waste, he foretells that Christ will be born in Bethlehem, who will feed Israel in the strength of the Lord, and will be magnified even to the ends of the earth. Then, in verse 5, he says that Christ will be peace when the Assyrian comes into our land; for then He will crush him. Third, in verse 7, he foretells that the remnants of Jacob, that is, the Apostles and the first Christians, will be like the dew of the Lord, irrigating the minds of men, and efficaciously, like a lion, seizing them and subjugating them to themselves and to God. Finally, in verse 10, he asserts that God will then take away sorceries, divinations, groves, and all the arms and defenses in which the unfaithful trusted.
Vulgate Text: Micheas 5:1-15
1. Now you shall be laid waste, daughter of the robber: they have laid siege against us, with a rod they shall strike the cheek of the judge of Israel. 2. And you, Bethlehem Ephrata, you are little among the thousands of Judah: out of you shall come forth to Me He who is to be the ruler in Israel, and His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity. 3. Therefore He will give them up until the time in which she who is in labor shall bring forth: and the remnant of His brethren shall be converted to the children of Israel. 4. And He shall stand, and shall feed in the strength of the Lord, in the sublimity of the name of the Lord His God: and they shall be converted, for now He shall be magnified even to the ends of the earth. 5. And this One shall be peace: when the Assyrian shall come into our land, and when he shall tread in our houses: and we shall raise up against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men. 6. And they shall feed the land of Assur with the sword, and the land of Nimrod with its lances: and He shall deliver from Assur when he comes into our land, and when he treads within our borders. 7. And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples like dew from the Lord, and like drops upon the grass, which waits not for man, nor tarries for the sons of men. 8. And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, like a lion among the beasts of the forests, and like a young lion among the flocks of sheep: who when he passes through, and tramples, and seizes, there is none to rescue. 9. Your hand shall be exalted over your enemies, and all your adversaries shall perish. 10. And it shall come to pass in that day, says the Lord: I will take away your horses from your midst, and I will destroy your chariots. 11. And I will destroy the cities of your land, and I will pull down all your fortifications, and I will take away sorceries from your hand, and there shall be no divinations in you. 12. And I will cause your graven images and your statues to perish from your midst: and you shall no more worship the works of your hands. 13. And I will pluck up your groves from your midst, and I will crush your cities. 14. And I will execute vengeance in fury and in indignation upon all the nations that have not hearkened.
Verse 1
1. Now you shall be laid waste, daughter of the robber. — The Hebrew is an elegant paronomasia, hitgodedi bat gedud, as if to say: Now you shall be laid waste, daughter of the devastator; now you shall be plundered, daughter of the plunderer, or, as others render it: Now you shall be cut to pieces, daughter of cutting; or, as the Zurich Bible renders it: Now you shall be surrounded by troops, daughter of the troop. Note first, hitgodedi is of the hitpael conjugation, which is partly active, partly passive, and commonly signifies a reflexive action, by which the agent acts upon himself, so that the same person is both agent and patient, as if to say: You will lay waste and cut yourself to pieces, or you will be laid waste and cut to pieces by yourself, that is, by your own fault, by your own demerit; namely, on account of your crimes you will perish. Therefore hitgodedi can be rendered not only passively, as we have just seen, but also actively. Hence the Syriac renders it: Now you will go out with a troop, daughter of mighty troops; the Arabic: Now you will go out with armies; Pagninus: Now you will wage war, daughter of the warrior; others: Now you will gather yourself into troops, daughter of the troop; others: Now you will lead out armies, daughter of the army; others: Now you will be cut to pieces, daughter of cutting; Arias: Gather your assembly, daughter of the assembly; others: Set up Mars and martial camps, daughter of Mars. Moreover, "daughter of the robber" is the same as a robber, devoted to robberies, just as "son of man" is the same as man, "son of sheep" is the same as a sheep, "daughter of a goat" is the same as a she-goat.
Note second, gedud signifies a gathering, assembly, crowd, troop, army; hence in the books of Kings, the troops of the Syrians raiding and plundering the land of Israel are called gedudim; our Translator renders it and calls them robbers, that is freebooters, plunderers, whom the Belgians call vrijbuiters. The same translator here renders it "daughter of the robber," as also Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion and the fifth Edition translated it. Hence also Leah called her fifth son Gad, as if gedud, that is a troop of sons, as if to say: I have now borne so many sons that I could form an army from them, Genesis 30:8. So the Chaldean and Aquila render it there. Gedud therefore is a troop of skirmishers, or an excursion and raid of light-armed soldiers for the purpose of plundering and robbing; likewise an army that devastates everything, such as those of the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans: about whom St. Augustine truly said, in book I of The City of God, chapter 4: "Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves but small kingdoms?" And a pirate captured by Alexander the Great, when asked why he practiced piracy, replied: "I do the same thing you do: I am small, you are a great plunderer of the world; but because I do it with a small ship, I am called a robber; because you do it with a great fleet, an emperor," as St. Augustine relates in the same place.
Third, for "the judge of Israel," as the Hebrew and Latin have it, the Septuagint renders it "the tribes of Israel"; the Chaldean, "the judges of Israel"; taking the singular for the plural by enallage.
One may ask, who is this daughter of the robber? There are four opinions: the first is that it is Babylon; the second, that it is Damascus; the third, that it is Jerusalem; the fourth, that it is Nineveh and Assyria.
For first, it can be understood of Babylon, either actively, as if to say: Gather your troops of robbers, that is your soldiers and plunderers, O Babylon, so that you may besiege us Jerusalemites, and strike the cheek of the judge, that is the king of Israel, namely Zedekiah, and deprive him of his kingdom and his eyes, and blind him; or passively, as if to say: Shortly you shall be laid waste by Cyrus, O Babylon, because you were the daughter of the robber, that is a robber devoted to robberies, and as such you besieged and devastated us, and struck our king Zedekiah on the cheek, indeed you blinded him. This opinion is favored by the fact that in the preceding chapter, verse 10, he mentioned Babylon and its plundering. For consoling the Jews who were to be captured by the Babylonians: "Be in pain, he says, and labor, daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor; for now you shall go forth, etc., and you shall come even to Babylon, there you shall be delivered," namely by Cyrus. This is what he says here: "Now you shall be laid waste, daughter of the robber," that is of Babylon, namely by Cyrus; therefore these words seem to be antistrophic to those of chapter IV, verse 10.
Second, "daughter" of gedud, that is "of the robber," can be understood as Damascus and Syria: for from there frequent gedudim, that is robbers, made raids into the land of Israel, and devastated it by plundering, as is clear from the books of Kings. For the word gedud, that is robber, seems to refer back to those gedudim recorded in the books of Kings. It is also supported by the fact that Isaiah threatens the Syrians and Damascenes with destruction on account of these plunderings in chapter 7:7, and then immediately adds the joyful oracle about Emmanuel the king to be born to the Jews, saying in verse 14: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel." Now Micah here customarily alludes to Isaiah, and here he seems to deliver the same oracle that Isaiah gave in chapter 7. For after the devastation of the daughter of the robber he adds the joyful oracle about Christ the king, to be born in Bethlehem, just as Isaiah does. The meaning therefore is, as if to say: You shall be laid waste, O daughter of the robber, O Damascus, robber and plunderer of Israel; because you besieged the Jews and frequently struck their princes on the cheek, that is shamefully: but you shall be laid waste by Shalmaneser the Assyrian, whom Emmanuel our avenger, before He is born as man, will send against you, as Isaiah foretells in the passage already cited. This meaning seems fitting: for Micah is often antistrophic to Isaiah. But against this is the fact that Micah has made no mention of Damascus up to this point; I grant, however, that there is an allusion to it and to Isaiah here, as I shall explain more fully shortly.
Third, "daughter of the robber" can be understood as Jerusalem, as if to say: You, O Jerusalem, who once were dear to me, as a daughter of Zion; but now you have become the daughter of the robber, because you oppress and plunder the poor; you, I say, on account of these robberies of yours shall be laid waste by the Chaldeans, who will besiege you, and will strike Zedekiah and your other judges and princes on the cheek, that is, they will treat them shamefully and afflict them, as I said in chapter 4, verse 10, and chapter 3, last verse. And this oppression of yours will last until Christ. For after the Chaldeans, the Greeks, and especially Antiochus Epiphanes, after Antiochus, Pompey and the Romans will destroy you, until your Christ the king, the Messiah and liberator, shall be born in Bethlehem, who will redeem you, and will shake off every yoke of both men and demons from your neck. So Remigius, Haymo, Albert, and Clarius.
Fourth and genuinely, "daughter of the robber," in Hebrew gedud, that is troops and army, here refers to Assyria, namely the host of the Assyrians, and the camp of Sennacherib, who like a robber devastated Judea, and besieged Jerusalem and shamefully treated the judge, that is the prince of Israel, namely King Hezekiah, as if he had struck him on the cheek. For Rabshakeh, sent by Sennacherib, not only reviled Hezekiah, but also blasphemed his God, as is clear from Isaiah 36. Therefore he hears here from God the avenger: "You shall be laid waste," and this devastation He soon inflicted upon him, sending an angel who struck down 185,000 soldiers in his camp. For the striking of the cheek has passed into a proverb, and signifies nothing other than a grave ignominy and enormous disgrace. Perhaps also Sennacherib actually struck the envoys of Hezekiah, or the princes of Israel whom he had captured, disgracefully on the cheek, even though Scripture does not say so: because he made them his slaves, on whose faces brands are usually burned, both for the sake of ignominy, and so that they may be distinguished from free men lest they escape. The emperor Caligula did this to noble Romans whom he condemned to the mines or to the beasts; who were therefore called inscribed, lettered, branded; Suetonius is the witness in the Life of Caligula, chapter 27.
This exposition is proved, first: for this verse is connected to and pertains to the preceding chapter, as is clear from the word "now," and so Albert, Lyra, Pagninus and others teach; indeed Pagninus places this verse as the last of the fourth chapter, and begins the fifth chapter from the following verse: "And you, Bethlehem Ephrata," etc. But in the preceding chapter from verse 11 to the end of the chapter, he treated of Sennacherib and the Assyrian camps, plundering Judea and besieging Jerusalem, and of his slaughter and spoliation by Hezekiah and the Jews, who were going to offer his spoils and booty to God in thanksgiving. Therefore since these words are immediately connected to and follow those, it follows that this passage treats of the same devastation and defeat of Sennacherib.
Second, because Micah alludes partly to Isaiah chapter 7, as I said in the second exposition; but what Isaiah said about the Syrians, Micah says about the Assyrians; for both were neighbors and kinsmen; both were plunderers of Israel: partly to Isaiah 10:5: "Woe to Assyria, the rod of My fury!" because it is the daughter of the robber, through whom I will exercise My fury upon Israel, and I will chastise him; but so that when the chastisement is completed, I will cast the rod into the fire, and I will consign the Assyrians to a similar devastation as they inflicted upon Israel; and to Isaiah chapter 33:1, where about the same Sennacherib and his camps to be slain by the angel, with a similar figure and paronomasia, indeed with almost the same words that Micah uses here, Isaiah says: "Woe to you who plunder! Shall you not also be plundered?" As if to say: Woe to you, Sennacherib, because just as you plundered Judea, so also you will be the prey of Hezekiah and the Jews: "And you who despise," not only Hezekiah, but also God: "shall you not also be despised," not only by the Jews, but also by your own sons, who will murder you? "When you shall have finished plundering, you shall be plundered: when, wearied, you shall cease to despise, you shall be despised."
Third, because Jerusalem, even when it hears sad and threatening things from God, is usually called Jerusalem or Zion, not the daughter of the robber; but Assyria is so called, as is clear from the words of Isaiah already cited.
Fourth, because Micah immediately adds about the Assyrians, verse 5: "And this One shall be peace: when the Assyrian comes into our land." And verse 6: "And they shall feed the land of Assur with the sword, and the land of Nimrod with its lances; and He shall deliver from Assur when he comes into our land." These words plainly allude to the coming and defeat of Sennacherib, and are antistrophic and exegetical of what he says here: "Now you shall be laid waste, daughter of the robber."
Allegorically, the daughter of the robber is Jerusalem, which killed the Prophets, and Christ Himself, and actually struck Him with blows on the cheek: therefore it will be besieged and laid waste by Titus and the Romans, who will accordingly render retaliation to it, and will strike its judges and princes on the cheek, and will treat them shamefully as slaves and bondsmen, fine them, sell them, kill them. Hence Christ also calls Jerusalem and the temple a den of thieves: "My house, He says, shall be called a house of prayer: but you have made it a den of thieves," Matthew 21:13. So St. Jerome, Remigius, Rupert, Hugh, Lyra, Clarius, Vatablus and others; indeed they consider this to be the literal meaning of this passage.
Hear St. Jerome: "Indeed I promised you, O daughter of Zion, that a time would come when I would make your horn iron; and your hooves bronze, and having crushed the multitude of demons, you would offer whatever they had previously possessed to the Lord of the whole earth; but because this is to happen when the fullness of the Gentiles shall have entered, and all Israel shall have been saved, now in the meantime, according to your merits, you are to be laid waste, or, as the Hebrew has it, cut to pieces. For by no means, according to the Apostle, are you called circumcision, but concision; nor do I call you my daughter, but the daughter of the robber, who in Hebrew is called gedud, that is, the devil always girded for plundering. For you have made My house a den of thieves, you have fought against Me, and your sons have laid siege against Me, and against My Son and My Spirit. Is it not an insult to the Trinity, when with a rod and a reed, at your doing, the Romans struck the head of the Judge of Israel, saying: Prophesy to us, O Christ, who is it that struck You? or when one of your servants struck Him on the cheek, saying: Do you thus answer the high priest?" The Septuagint supports this exposition when they render it: Now the daughter shall be blocked with a blockade, he has placed distress upon us; with a rod they shall strike upon the cheek of the tribes of Israel, as if to say: Titus will most tightly besiege Jerusalem, and will block and press it, capture it, and strike it on the cheek, just as it struck Christ. So St. Jerome.
Symbolically, Arias understands by the daughter of the robber the Gentile world, namely Rome and other cities of the Gentiles, which persecuted Christ and the Apostles under Nero, Decius, Diocletian, etc.; but from Constantine onward the daughter of the robber, that is this Gentile world, plundering Christians and subjecting them to martyrdoms, will be laid waste and overturned, and pagan Rome itself will perish, and become a new Christian Rome, indeed Rome once the capital of paganism will become the capital of Christendom. Likewise the Hebrews and Vatablus understand by the daughter of the robber Rome, whose first inhabitants were robbers, who made it an asylum for criminals. Hence Juvenal, Satire 8:
However far back you search and trace back Your name, you derive your race from an infamous asylum, Whoever he was, the first of your ancestors, He was either a shepherd, or that which I prefer not to say.
Therefore God will permit Israel to be afflicted by the Assyrians, that is by all manner of tyrants, until in Bethlehem she gives birth to Christ, who will crush the Assyrians, and will bring back the remnant from captivity, and convert them to Himself; so that in Christ He may show His mercy as well as His power.
Micah plays by paronomasia on the words bat gedud, that is "daughter of the robber," who struck the judge of Israel ballechi, that is "on the cheek," and he contrasts it with bet lechem, that is Bethlehem, which is "the house and daughter of bread," as if to say: Nineveh through its Assyrians, plundering and robbing, struck Hezekiah and the Jews; and allegorically Jerusalem struck Christ and the Christians on the cheek; but Bethlehem will not be a plunderer or robber, but rather, being beneficent, will give abundant bread, and Christ Himself, who will rule Israel not as a plunderer and tyrant, but as a gentle and generous king, who will free His faithful from the daughter of the robber, and will give them the bread of life, both of the present life and of eternal life.
Verse 2
2. And you, Bethlehem Ephrata. — This is the illustrious prophecy about Christ. For Micah alone foretold that Christ would be born in Bethlehem, and because of this the scribes and the Magi sought Him in Bethlehem, recognized and adored Him, Matthew 2:6.
But how does the Prophet pass from the daughter of the robber, as if abruptly, to Bethlehem? How does this verse cohere and connect with the former? Vatablus connects it thus: he opposes, he says, Jerusalem to Bethlehem, as if to say: You, Jerusalem, because you are the daughter of the robber, celebrated and famous for your robberies, you will be punished and laid waste: but in Bethlehem, an obscure little village, Christ will be born. Therefore Bethlehem is more excellent than you, O Jerusalem, royal and proud city.
But I say that Micah imitates Isaiah: for just as Isaiah, in chapter 7, foretells that the Jews will be freed from the hand of the robbers of Syria and Assyria through Emmanuel; so Micah says the same thing here, as if to say: The host of Sennacherib, namely the Assyrian camp, will be laid waste; but not by your strength, O Jerusalem, O Hezekiah, but by the power of Christ who is to be born in Bethlehem, so Theodoret: for since Sennacherib will devastate all Judea, and consequently Bethlehem itself, and only Jerusalem will remain, which he will besiege: hence on account of Christ to be born in Bethlehem, and His foreseen merits, God will send an angel who will slay him, because he violated and plundered Judea, and specifically Bethlehem, which is to be the homeland of Christ. In a similar way Isaiah flies from Cyrus to Christ, chapter 45:8, saying: "Drop down dew, you heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down the Just One." Again, under the name of the Assyrians, Scripture is accustomed to understand any tyrants whatsoever by antonomasia, as I said on Isaiah chapter 7:17, as if to say: The Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and other tyrants will oppress you, O Jerusalem, until Christ is born in Bethlehem, who will free you from all of them. Finally, mystically the Assyrians signify demons, as if to say: So that Christ may free us from spiritual Assyrians, that is from demons, sins, death, and hell, He will be born in Bethlehem. This is what Micah adds in verse 3: "Therefore He will give them up until the time in which she who is in labor shall bring forth: and the remnant of His brethren shall be converted," etc. As if to say:
Note: Bethlehem received this name, partly from the fertility of the place, as I said on Genesis 35:19, for Bethlehem in Hebrew means the same as "house of bread," that is a place fertile in grain, from which bread is made, as well as wine. For, as Adrichomius writes in his Description of the Holy Land: "Bethlehem is situated on a moderately high mountain, on a narrow and oblong site. The land below it excels greatly in the abundance of all things, especially of wine, so that what is brought from other places in Palestine cannot compare. Indeed the journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem so delights travelers with its pleasantness, its trees, gardens, and fragrant herbs, that if to such a splendid face of nature some heavenly meditation worthy of a Christian be added, one would seem to be no longer on earth, but in paradise, beholding the nativity and cradle of Christ with one's own eyes."
But partly Bethlehem is named from its prince, who was called Bethlehem, and either gave his name to the city that he had either built and founded, or adorned, or confirmed the name already given. For Bethlehem was the son of Salma, son of Caleb, son of Hur, son of Judah, as is clear from 1 Chronicles 2:51 and 54, and chapter 4:4. So Lyra, Dionysius, Hugh, and Abulensis on that passage, who on those words of 1 Chronicles 2:51, "Salma the father of Bethlehem," says: "This man was the prince of the city of Bethlehem of Judah, which was previously called Ephrata," Genesis 35:19. And Hugh: "From whom, he says, Bethlehem in the tribe of Judah was named, from which Christ was born." So also a Castro here. Hence also in 1 Ezra 2:21, the sons of Bethlehem, as patriarchs, are counted in a great number, namely one hundred and twenty-three; and in 2 Ezra 7:26: "The sons of Bethlehem, he says, and Netophah, one hundred and eighty-eight." Therefore in the time of Moses this city was not yet called Bethlehem, because neither Moses nor Bethlehem had yet entered it or the Holy Land. Therefore the fact that in Genesis 35:19 Bethlehem is named seems to have been done not by Moses, who is the author of Genesis, but by the men of the Synagogue, who arranged and published the writings of Moses.
after the times of Moses and Bethlehem. About which matter I said more in the Prolegomena to Genesis.
Moreover, Bethlehem was distant from Jerusalem six miles, or six thousand paces, that is two French leagues, to the south. From Nazareth, however, where Christ was conceived and incarnated at the announcement of the archangel Gabriel, and from which the Blessed Virgin came to Bethlehem to give birth to Christ, it was distant 30 French leagues, that is a three-day journey. So the geographers report.
The Venerable Bede writes, in his book On the Holy Places, chapter 8; Burchardus, Adrichomius and others report that on the eastern corner of Bethlehem there is a rock adjacent to the wall itself, removed from the crowds and eyes of men, in which there is a sort of natural semi-cave, which they used as a stable for livestock, the exterior part of which is said to have been the place of Christ's nativity, while the interior is called the manger of the Lord. Hence St. Jerome, Origen and others say that Christ was born in a cavern and grotto; so that the most hidden mystery might be brought forth in a hidden place, and so that He might teach us to despise the halls and pomps of the world. But St. Helena adorned this cave by building a most magnificent basilica over it, about which more shortly.
From what has been said, it is clear that this cave was situated not in the city of Bethlehem itself, but outside in the suburban field, near the walls of the city, and Eusebius expressly teaches this in book 7 of the Demonstration of the Gospel, chapter 5, and Baronius from him. Hence it follows that Christ was not born in the city, but in the countryside, like a rustic boy, so that the country folk might congratulate themselves on Him as their fellow citizen, and therefore say with Him:
The countryside pleases us; let Pallas herself inhabit The citadels she founded.
Add that Christ was born in the countryside, by the very fact that He was born in Bethlehem: for this, in comparison with Jerusalem and other cities of Judea, was like a rural village and hamlet, as I shall soon show. Finally, Bede writes in the passage cited, and Baronius from him, that from this rock a fountain of waters miraculously sprang forth on that very night on which Christ was born, and it continued to flow down to his own times.
Ephrata. — Bethlehem was first called Ephrata, partly from the fertility of the land already mentioned, from the root para, that is "it bore fruit," just as from the same root Joseph named his son Ephraim, saying: "God has made me grow in the land of my poverty," Genesis 41:52; partly from Ephrata the wife of Caleb, from whom Bethlehem was born as firstborn; for Caleb had other firstborn sons from other wives. So Abulensis on 1 Chronicles chapter 2 and chapter 4. And it is clear from 1 Chronicles 2:19, where it says: "And when Azubah (Caleb's former wife) had died, Caleb took Ephrata as his wife, who bore him Hur." Again verse 50: "These were the sons of Caleb, the sons of Hur, the firstborn of Ephrata: Shobal the father of Kirjath-jearim, Salma the father of Bethlehem." Ephrata therefore was the great-great-grandmother of Bethlehem: for she bore Hur, who was the great-grandfather of Bethlehem. For Hur begat Caleb, Caleb begat Salma, Salma begat Bethlehem. Rabanus, whom Hugh cites on 1 Chronicles chapter 2 and chapter 4, thinks that Ephrata was Miriam, the sister of Moses, who after she was struck with leprosy in Numbers 12, was called Ephrata, that is "she saw fury," that is, she knew the wrath of God by experience. She, he says, bore Hur, who with Aaron supported the hands of Moses praying for victory, while Joshua fought against Amalek, Exodus 17. On the contrary, St. Jerome, following Josephus, thinks that Caleb received Hur from Ephrata; but that Hur was the husband of Miriam, the sister of Moses, and consequently that Ephrata was the mother-in-law of Miriam. But others deny both claims, and think that Miriam remained a virgin. So St. Ambrose, Gregory of Nyssa, and Apponius, whom I cited on Exodus 15:20.
Bethlehem therefore is surnamed Ephrata, as if to say: Bethlehem built on fertile soil, in which Ephrata, the wife of Caleb, or certainly her descendants, dwelt. It was also called Bethlehem of Judah, to distinguish it from another Bethlehem which was in the tribe of Zebulun, Joshua 19:10. Third, it was called Bethlehem of Caleb, who was the husband of Ephrata. For in 1 Chronicles 2:24, the Hebrew reads: And after the death of Hezron in Caleb Ephrata. Fourth, it was called the city of David, because David was born in it. From Ephrata the inhabitants were called Ephrathites. Thus David, in 1 Samuel 17:12, is called "the son of an Ephrathite of Bethlehem of Judah," and Mahlon and Chilion, the sons of Naomi, are called "Ephrathites of Bethlehem of Judah," Ruth 1:2. Hence it seems that the whole fertile region was called Ephrata, in which the city built there was called Bethlehem Ephrata, or of Judah.
Mystically, St. Jerome interprets it differently: Ephrata, he says, which is interpreted as "fury," signifies the madness of Herod, who there, raging with hatred against Christ, killed all the infants on account of Him. But then immediately St. Jerome also interprets Ephrata as "fruitful," to correspond with Bethlehem, that is "house of bread." St. Ambrose follows the former interpretation in his commentary 1 on Micah, near the end of volume 2. For addressing the sinner: "Let no one, he says, despair of remedy: behold for you, where the house of one who sees fury was, there is the house of bread: where cruelty was, there is piety: where the punishment of the innocent was, there is the redemption of all, as it is written: And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrata, you are not the least among the princes of Judah; for from you shall come forth a prince in Israel. Bethlehem is the house of bread, Ephrata the house of one who sees fury. In Bethlehem Christ was born of Mary: and the same Bethlehem is also Ephrata. Therefore in the house of fury Christ was born, and therefore it is no longer the house of fury, but the house of bread: because it received as bread Him who descended from heaven. But the house of one who sees fury is Ephrata, because there Herod, while seeking Christ, determined to kill the little infants. But now let no one fear, because that rest which David sought was heard of in Ephrata, it was found in the fields of the forest. Then the forest was still a gathering of nations; but after it believed in Christ, it became fruitful: because it received the fruit of the blessed womb." He then adds another analogy:
"Rachel therefore died in giving birth, because even then, as the wife of the patriarch, she was seeing the fury of Herod, who spared not even the youngest age. And at the same time in Ephrata she bore Benjamin, superior in appearance, posterior in mystery, namely Paul, who before he was born caused no small pains to his mother, whose sons he persecuted. And there she died and was buried, so that we, having died and been buried together with Christ, might rise in the Church. For from there, by another interpretation, either 'made fruitful' or 'filled with fruits,' Ephrata is signified. And she is among the few, because few are those who enter into the house of bread through the narrow way. And she is not among the few, that is, of those making progress, who did not recognize Christ. Nor is she the least, who is the house of blessing and the receptacle of divine grace: and she is the least in this sense, that whoever confers anything upon her seems to confer it upon Christ. And whoever desires the Church, desires Christ. For in every least one, Christ is either injured or honored, according to what He Himself says: What you did to one of these least ones, you did to Me."
You are little. — In Hebrew tsair, that is "small, a young lad"; the Septuagint renders it "you are the least." You will object: St. Matthew, chapter 2:6, translates it in the opposite way, namely, "you are by no means the least." First, Osiander the Lutheran translates tsair as "little"; hence he renders it: Listen, you Bethlehem Ephrata, you are too small to be among the thousands of Judah. Which in substance is the same as what St. Matthew has: "You are by no means the least among the princes of Judah." But he errs; for tsair is a noun, not an adverb, and signifies "small," not "little." Second, Clarius, Mariana and Jansenius on Matthew 2, read it as a question: Are you little among the thousands of Judah? As if to say: By no means; and so the Gothic Bibles of St. Isidore read it. But the Roman Bibles and other Latin ones lack this interrogation mark. I say therefore that here in Micah the adversative particle "but" is tacitly understood from the connection of the discourse, just as the same particle is understood in Psalm 118:141 and 157, and elsewhere, as if to say: O Bethlehem, you are indeed the least, if you consider your walls, your houses, your citizens, your circumference, your renown; but nevertheless you are by no means the least, if you consider the princes either already given by you or yet to be given: for you gave David, you will give Christ. This is what the Hebrew signifies, which word for word reads thus: And you Bethlehem Ephrata, you are too small to be among the thousands of Judah; yet from you shall come forth to Me one who is to be ruler in Israel, as if to say: You are small as to place; for you are too small to be counted and compared with the other great cities of Judah; but as to the ruler to be given by you, you are not small, but great. Hence the Zurich Bible and Vatablus translate: You are indeed small among the chieftainships of Judah; but from you shall come forth to me one who shall be ruler in Israel. So St. Jerome, Theodoret, Remigius, Albert, Lyra, Arias and others generally. And St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration 19: "Nothing, he says, prevented Bethlehem from being at once both a small city and the metropolis of the whole earth: as the parent and nurse of Christ."
Hence the Antiochene Arabic translates: And you Bethlehem, a small city (village), will not be small among the thousands of Judah; because from you shall go forth a ruler over Israel; and the Alexandrian Arabic: And you, Bethlehem Ephrata, not lowly among the thousands of Judah; because from you shall go forth a head over Israel, and his days are from the days of eternity; and the Syriac: But you Bethlehem Ephrata, you are too small to be among the thousands of Judah; from you shall go forth a ruler who shall be over Israel, and his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of the age: now he will deliver them up until the time when she who is in labor shall give birth.
And Prudentius in the Hymn of Epiphany:
O alone among great cities Greater, Bethlehem, to whom it fell To bear incarnate from heaven The Leader of salvation. Whom a star, which surpasses the wheel of the sun In beauty and in light, Announces to have come to earth, God with earthly flesh.
Moreover, what some say in St. Jerome's commentary, that St. Matthew made a slip of memory, so that instead of "you are the least," he wrote "you are by no means the least," is impious to say: for St. Matthew did not write this of himself, but from the dictation and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is more probable that the Septuagint, whom the Evangelists usually follow, translated it as "by no means the least," and that St. Matthew followed them. For thus from the Septuagint read Theodoret, Origen in book 1 Against Celsus; Cyprian, Testimonies book 2, chapter 12; Eusebius, Demonstration book 6, chapter 15; Ambrose, book 5, epistle 1; Augustine, The City of God book 18, chapter 30; although the Royal Bible, the Complutensian Vatican and St. Jerome in the Septuagint read "you are the least."
The city of Bethlehem is here called parvulus (small) in the masculine, not parvula (small, feminine). You may ask why: First, Jansenius on Matthew 2, answers that "village" is understood, as if to say: And you, Bethlehem, who are a small village: for "village" in Hebrew is called in the masculine pelech, or schuc, or chuts. Others understand "people"; for Christ was born from the people of Bethlehem. Thus Israel and Judah are everywhere taken in the masculine among the Prophets, because am, that is "people," is understood. Third, Ribera thinks the reason is that the Hebrews by metaphor call cities "men"; hence it is called "daughter of Zion," "daughter of Babylon," etc. But cities are usually compared to women, not men; because they are beautiful, adorned and pompous like matrons, or splendidly dressed daughters. Why then is Bethlehem here compared to a man, or a young man, and called tsair, that is "small" (masculine)? I answer, because it refers to the man Bethlehem, who was the founder or prince of the city of Bethlehem, as I have already shown. And so he speaks metonymically about the city, in the name and person of its prince; because he compares it with the thousands and princes of Judah. Hence because Judah was a man, and the tribe of Judah was celebrated for manly strength and dominion, therefore Bethlehem, which belonged to the tribe of Judah, is introduced as a strong young man who is compared and competes with the other men of his tribe, namely with the princes of Judah, as if to say: O Bethlehem, prince of the city of Bethlehem, you are by no means the least among the princes of Judah: because from your city Bethlehem, and from your descendants, Christ will be born. It is metonymy: for the prince is taken for the city which he inhabits and rules. Similar is that line of Virgil: "Already Ucalegon next door is burning," that is, the house of Ucalegon.
This exposition is confirmed first, from the Septuagint: kai su oikos tou Bethleem tou Euphrata, that is, "and you, house of Bethlehem, son of Ephrata." Where the masculine article tou indicates the man Bethlehem, who gave his name to the city of Bethlehem. Thus Nineveh from its founder Ninus is often called Ninus. Second, from a similar passage in Joshua, chapter 14, verse 15, where about Hebron, which was previously called Kiriath Arba, that is the city of Arba the giant, it says: Adam the greatest among the Anakim was situated there; for which the Septuagint translate: "the metropolis of the cities of the Anakim itself"; where Kiriath Arba, the city, is called Adam, that is "the greatest man," that is the metropolis of the cities which the Anakim, or giants, occupied, as the Septuagint translate. For since the giants were great and warlike men, hence likewise the city and their metropolis is called by the name Adam, that is "man," not "woman." So here Bethlehem, because it was manly and produced the greatest men, namely Bethlehem, Jesse, David, and especially Christ; hence it is compared to a man, not a woman. For this is what he adds: "From you shall come forth to Me He who is to be ruler in Israel," a man certainly, not a woman, whom it is therefore fitting to be born from you as from a man. Sanchez adds that the masculine epithet is applied to Bethlehem because in its etymology and ending it is masculine, even though in its meaning it is feminine. For it is formed from bet and lechem, that is "house" and "bread," which in Hebrew are masculine nouns. Thus Toledo, Louvain, Liege, Ghent are neuter in their endings; Paris, Bruges are masculine. Thus Ovid uses Lesbos, and Virgil uses Abydos, in the masculine. Ovid, Metamorphoses 11:
And the shores of Mitylenaean Lesbos are tried.
Virgil, Georgics 1:
Pontus and the straits of oyster-bearing Abydos are tried.
Symbolically, Micah represented in himself the smallness and the greatness of Bethlehem: for he was indeed a great Prophet, but small in name. For the Hebrew Micha, that is Micah, is shortened and abbreviated from Michaiah, or Michaiahu. Hence Pagninus in his Hebrew Names thinks that the prophet Micah, who predicted death to King Ahab, was called by him contemptuously Micha (for so it is in the Hebrew, 3 Kings 22:8) instead of Michaiahu: for this was his proper and full name. In a similar way the Jews, instead of Yeshua or Yehoshua, write in abbreviated form, out of contempt for our Christ, Yesu in Hebrew. Thus in Genesis 23:16, Ephron, after he sold the burial place, is called Ephran, with the letter vav removed. And in Jeremiah chapter 22:24, the impious king Jeconiah is called by the diminutive Coniah in Hebrew: just as the Flemish call worthless men who are named John, in shortened and contemptuous form, Hennen; and Sebastians, Bastiaen; Anthonys, Tonen. So also the Italians, Spaniards, French, and other nations. Hence Micha in Hebrew means the same as "who are you?" the same namely as Matthias, who was the last and posthumous, and therefore the least of the Apostles. For Matthias means the same as mi atta, that is "who are you?" Micha signifies the same. For atta, that is "you," when it is a suffix, as here, changes to cha. Micah therefore was among the Prophets what Matthias was among the Apostles. I know that there are also other etymologies and meanings of these names: but they are not relevant to the present matter.
Among the thousands of Judah. — From the Hebrew and the Chaldean there can be a twofold meaning. The first: you are small, that is, you are too small to be numbered among the thousands of Judah. The second: you are so small that you are to be reckoned not among the illustrious cities of Judah, which are few, but among the thousands of little villages and hamlets that are in Judah. So Arias. But the first meaning better fits the Hebrew, especially because by antithesis he opposes Bethlehem to the thousands of Judah. So St. Jerome, Haymo, Remigius, Rupert, Hugh, Lyra, Dionysius, Clarius and others.
Note: For "thousands" the Hebrew is alaphim, which first signifies "thousands"; second, "princes"; hence St. Matthew in chapter 2 has: "Among the princes of Judah"; third, "chieftainships." According to the first meaning, the sense will be: O Bethlehem, you are scarcely a small village, and too small for you to raise your head or be counted among the great and celebrated cities of Judah, which abound with many thousands of citizens; but even though in population you are the least, yet in dignity you are the greatest: because you will give birth to Christ. So St. Jerome and the others already cited. According to the second meaning, the sense will be, as if to say: O Bethlehem, you are small, indeed the smallest, if you consider your territory, among the princes, namely the cities, or even the men of Judah: for you are the least both in location and in the production of past princes; because you have given few princes to Judah: but you are by no means the least among the princes of Judah, if you consider the ruler who is to come forth from you, namely the Messiah. According to the third meaning, the sense will be: O Bethlehem, if you count your citizens, you are small among the chieftainships of Judah; indeed you do not deserve a tribune or chiliarch, who presides over a thousand citizens, since you scarcely number a thousand citizens: but nevertheless you are by no means small, if you look at Christ who is to be born from you. For He will be not merely a chiliarch, but the Lord of all Israelites, indeed of all men and angels.
Note: The people of Israel were distributed by Moses into chieftainships (thousands), as is clear from Exodus 18:25; just as nowadays armies are distributed into thousands, so that each thousand contains a thousand soldiers, over whom a chiliarch or tribune presides. Therefore the cities of Israel were distributed by thousands, that is by groups and tribes, each of which contained a thousand citizens. Hence Gideon, in Judges 6:15, says to the angel in Hebrew alphi, that is "my thousand is the weakest of all the thousands that are in Manasseh." A thousand, that is a millennial tribe, to which my family belongs. Hence our Translator clearly renders: "Behold, my family is the lowest in Manasseh."
From you shall come forth to Me. — Note: Some refer the word "to Me" to Micah, since he himself said in the preceding verse: "They have laid siege against us," etc. Hence he seems to speak in his own person and that of his people, as if to say: To me Micah and my nation, and indeed to the whole world, Christ will be born. So a Castro. But then he would rather have said "to us," as Isaiah said in chapter 9:6: "A child is born to us." Therefore Remigius, Haymo, Albert, Vatablus and others more correctly refer "to Me" to God and to the eternal Father. For the Prophet speaks in His person: therefore these words are understood, which the Prophets customarily prefix to their oracles: or, if they do not prefix them, they understand them implicitly: "Thus says the Lord," as if to say: Thus says the Lord: From you, O Bethlehem, Christ shall come forth to Me, that is for My service, praise and glory; so that He may celebrate My name in Israel, indeed in the whole world, and may subject and reconcile all nations to Me. Again, that He may be ruler and governor in Israel for Me, that is in My place and on My behalf; so that He may establish and govern My Church of the faithful on My behalf. So the Apostle says in Romans 1:3: "Who was made to Him from the seed of David according to the flesh." You will object: in verse 4, Micah speaks of God in the third person; therefore here he does not speak of Him in the first person, saying "to Me." I answer: In the Prophets there are frequent enallages and changes of persons; for they speak in the manner of a dialogue; and in dialogues different persons are introduced.
Gregory Nazianzen speaks brilliantly in oration 38 on the Nativity of Christ, beginning thus: "Christ is born: glorify Him. Christ from heaven: go forth to meet Him. Christ on earth: be exalted. Sing to the Lord, all the earth. And to contract these two into one: let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth exult on account of the heavenly One, and afterwards the earthly One. Christ in the flesh: exult with trembling and with joy: with trembling, on account of sin; with joy, on account of hope. Christ from a Virgin: women, cultivate virginity, that you may be mothers of Christ.
Who does not adore Him who is from the beginning? Who does not praise and celebrate Him who is the last?" And further: "Let John cry out: Prepare the way of the Lord: I too will proclaim the power and might of this day: He who is without flesh is incarnated: the Word grows dense: the invisible is seen: the intangible is touched: He who is free from time takes a beginning: the Son of God becomes the son of man. Jesus Christ yesterday and today, the same also forever. Let the Jews be scandalized, let the Greeks mock, let the heretics be afflicted with the itching of the tongue. They will believe when they see Him ascending into heaven: and if not even then, certainly when they see Him descending from heaven, and sitting as judge."
And after recounting the darkness, vices, and miseries of the world, he adds: "Since these required greater help, they also received greater. And this was the Son of God Himself, He who is more ancient than the ages, He who is invisible, He who is incomprehensible, He who is incorporeal, that Beginning from the Beginning, that Light from Light, He the fountain of life and immortality, that expression of the archetype, that unmoved seal, that Image like in all things, He the boundary and reason of the Father: He, I say, betakes Himself to His own image, and bears flesh on account of flesh, and is joined with an intellectual soul on account of my soul, that He may purge like by like. And He takes on all human things except sin, conceived indeed from a Virgin whose soul and body had been prepurified by the Spirit (for it was fitting both that procreation be honored and that virginity be preferred): but going forth as God with humanity, one thing from two contraries, namely flesh and spirit, of which He deified the one, and the other was deified. O new mixture! O admirable temperament! He who is, becomes: He who was not created, is created: He who can be contained in no place, through the intervention of an intellectual soul, is contained between divinity and the grossness of flesh. He who enriches others, is afflicted with poverty: for He undergoes the poverty of my flesh, that I may attain the riches of His divinity. He who is full, empties Himself: for His glory is emptied for a brief time, that I may become a partaker of His fullness. What riches of goodness are these? What mystery surrounds me? I received the divine image, and did not guard it: He becomes a partaker of my flesh, that He may bring salvation to the image and immortality to the flesh; He enters a second partnership with us, and one far more admirable than the first. For then He imparted to us what was more excellent: but now He Himself becomes a partaker of what is inferior. This is more divine than the former: this is far more sublime in the eyes of wise and prudent men."
And then he shows that this self-abasement was not unworthy but worthy of the Word, both to raise up men who had fallen to the lowest depths, and to descend as a physician with immense mercy to cure the sick, and to show us that the best road to loftiness is humility. "Because on account of the soul inclined toward the ground, he says, He casts Himself down, so that He may raise up with Himself the one tending downward on account of sin:"
unless perhaps someone should accuse the physician by that name because he bends down to the disease and endures the stench, in order to give health to the sick; and also the one who, moved by a feeling of humanity and compassion, lets himself down into a pit in order to save, according to the prescription of the law, a beast that has fallen in." The same author in his Sentences: "The Word of the Father, he says, is our man, so that by this kind of mixture God may mingle with men. He is one God from both sides, having become man to this extent, that He may make me, a mortal, into God."
Who is to be ruler in Israel. — First, the Jews according to Lyra understand this ruler to be Hezekiah; but wrongly. For Hezekiah was born a king in the royal city, namely in Jerusalem, not in Bethlehem. Add: Hezekiah was already born when Micah predicted that this ruler would be born. For he had the oracle under Hezekiah, as I said at the beginning of the chapter, and in chapter 3:8.
Second, Theodore of Mopsuestia, the heretic, with his disciples and followers of whom he had many, understood this ruler as Zerubbabel; but equally wrongly. For Zerubbabel was born in Babylon, not in Bethlehem; and hence in Hebrew he is called Zerubbabel, as if babel zera, that is "seed," that is "son," of Babylon; for Jeconiah in Babylon begat Shealtiel, Shealtiel begat Zerubbabel, Matthew 1:12, who after 70 years of captivity, led the Jews back from Babylon to Judea, with the permission of Cyrus. Add: Zerubbabel was not a ruler, that is a king, in Israel; much less was his going forth from the days of eternity. Therefore this explanation, along with others similar to it, as Jewish and erroneous, is condemned by the general Council of Constantinople, the fifth in order, session 2, and the Roman Council under Vigilius, as I said in the Prolegomenon.
I say therefore, it is certain as a matter of faith that this ruler is Christ. So all the orthodox, both Greeks and Latins, and the Hebrews in Galatinus book 4, chapter 13; hence also the Chaldean expressly translates: From you Christ shall come forth before Me. Likewise also of old, when Christ was being born, the scribes, asked by the Magi and by Herod where Christ was to be born, answered: "In Bethlehem of Judah. For thus it is written through the Prophet (Micah in this passage): And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, you are by no means the least among the princes of Judah: for from you shall come forth a leader, who shall rule My people Israel," Matthew 2:6. And again: "Does not the Scripture say: That from the seed of David, and from Bethlehem the town where David was, Christ comes?" John 7:42. Hence it is clear that the common understanding of the Synagogue of old, and now of the Church, was and is that this passage is to be understood of Christ: for no other Prophet foretold that the place of Christ's birth would be Bethlehem, except Micah here.
Add that St. Matthew and Luke the evangelists, when they report this answer of the scribes about Christ to be born in Bethlehem, approve it, indeed they report it precisely to teach that in Christ that sign of the Messiah was fulfilled, which among the Jews by the common confession of all was received, namely that from Bethlehem, which by the common consent and confession of all gave the Messiah to the whole world, namely God born as man! in which Christ, coming into the world, first beheld light, heaven and this soil: certainly Bethlehem surpasses all royal cities, all metropolises, all the trading centers of the world in nobility as well as in sanctity.
Note: This illustrious oracle, from which the Magi learned the place of Christ's birth, and Christ Himself, was delivered by Micah under King Hezekiah, after the destruction of Samaria, before Jerusalem was besieged by Sennacherib, as is clear from what was said in verse 10 and chapter 3:10. It was therefore delivered around the year 9 or 10 of Hezekiah: for the destruction of Samaria occurred in the year 6 of Hezekiah, the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib in the year 14 of Hezekiah: and this oracle was delivered in the intervening time. Hence it follows that Micah delivered it about twenty-two years after that prophecy of Isaiah about the same birth of Christ, chapter 7:14: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son: and his name shall be called Emmanuel." For Isaiah delivered this in the year 4 of Ahaz, as I showed in that passage: and Ahaz reigned 16 years. His son Hezekiah succeeded him, around whose year 10 Micah prophesied these things. Therefore since Isaiah delivered his oracle about Christ in the year of the world 3207, that is 742 years before Christ, it follows that Micah delivered his oracle about Christ to be born in Bethlehem in about the year of the world 3229, that is 720 years before Christ. Around which time the Erythraean Sibyl flourished, whose verses about the nativity, judgment, and resurrection of Christ St. Augustine records in book 18 of The City of God, chapter 23.
Note second: From Bethlehem came many princes and illustrious men. The first was Ibzan the judge, that is prince of Israel, who had thirty sons and as many daughters, Judges 12:8. The second was Elimelech, the husband of Naomi; to whose son Ruth married, and when he died she married Boaz; from whom she bore Obed the father of Jesse, from whom David was born, as is clear from the book of Ruth. The third was King David, from whom the entire family of the kings of Israel and Judah descended, down to the last king, Zedekiah. Bethlehem was therefore the nursery of the entire royal and Davidic stock, and their common homeland: since it was fitting that the city which was to bring forth the King of heaven should first prove itself worthy through so many heroes, and that they should be a prelude to it, so that at last, even in the judgment of men, this homeland would be deemed worthy, which, having produced its ultimate work of virtue, would present to the world something above heroes and all men, namely the very Son of God, to be adored. Moreover, Samuel in Bethlehem anointed David, the youngest of his brothers, as king, 1 Samuel 16. Hence Bethlehem is called "the city of David." Hence also Rehoboam, the grandson of David through Solomon, rebuilt Bethlehem and fortified it with new buildings and walls, 2 Chronicles 11:6.
One may ask, why did Christ wish to be born in Bethlehem, rather than in Rome, or Jerusalem, or some other place? I answer first, so that Bethlehem might demonstrate that Christ is the son of David the Bethlehemite, to whom He had been promised by God, and therefore that He is the true Messiah. St. Luke indicates this reason, chapter 2, saying: "Because he was of the house and family of David." Second, so that by being born in a humble place, He might more clearly show His power, by which He raised Himself to a kingdom, according to that saying of 1 Corinthians 1: "God chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and the ignoble things of the world, etc." Third, because Bethlehem was on the way to Jerusalem: and it was fitting that Christ be born on the road and in pilgrimage, because, as St. Gregory says, "through the humanity which He had assumed, He was being born as it were in a foreign place." Fourth, so that by this poor and humble birth of His He might merit for us a sublime birth through grace and glory, and a lofty place in heaven; and "through His poverty He might prepare for us many mansions in His Father's house," says the Venerable Bede on Luke chapter 2.
Tropologically, first, because just as Christ chose and taught humility and poverty, and refuted pride and arrogance; so He chose a humble and poor homeland, namely Bethlehem, and a similar manner of being born. Hence St. Leo, sermon 1 on Epiphany: "He who had taken on the form of a servant, He says, chose Bethlehem for His nativity, Jerusalem for His passion." Christ therefore, being born, from the manger as from a pulpit, preaches and cries out, not by word but by deed: Sons of men, why do you love vanity and seek after lies? Learn from Me to despise palaces, riches, pleasures, pride, the pomps of the world: for they are vanity of vanities, and all is vanity. Learn from Me, for I am poor and humble of heart: learn to fix your heart on heaven, to seek heavenly riches and honors. Augustus sat on the lofty summit and throne of the Roman Empire; Christ lay in a lowly stable: but Christ was loftier in the stable than Augustus on the summit of empire. Hence St. Bernard, sermon 3 on the Nativity: Either Christ, he says, is deceived, or the world errs (for they teach diverse and contradictory things), but it is impossible for divine Wisdom to be deceived: therefore the world errs, and all followers of the world err, according to that Psalm: "I said, these always err in heart." And St. Augustine, sermon 18 on Time, which is on the Nativity: "The whole school of this nativity, he says, is the workshop of humility." Second, Bethlehem in Hebrew signifies "house of bread": therefore it represents Christ, who is the bread of the world, and the manna descending from heaven. So St. Jerome.
Hear St. Gregory, homily 8 on the Gospel: "Rightly is Christ born in Bethlehem. For He Himself is the one who says: I am the living bread, which came down from heaven. Likewise the place in which the Lord is born was previously called the house of bread: because it was to be that He would appear through the substance of flesh, who would refresh the minds of the elect with interior satisfaction." Bethlehem therefore was Ephrata, that is fruitful, and the granary of the whole earth: because from it the whole world received bread, not of seven years, as the Egyptians received from Joseph, Genesis 41:36 and 55, but of eternal life, which is Christ.
Seven noble cities of Greece contend over the birthplace of Homer, and each tries to claim him as its own citizen: how glorious then is Bethlehem, which by the consent and confession of all, gave the Messiah to the whole world, namely God born as man! in which Christ, coming into the world, first beheld light, heaven, and this earth: certainly Bethlehem surpasses all royal cities, all metropolises, all the trading centers of the world in nobility as well as in sanctity. For Christ made it far more celebrated by His birth than Aristotle made his Stagira, Cato his Tusculum, or Cicero his Arpinum.
Therefore the Fathers celebrate Bethlehem with wonderful praises and encomiums. This city drew to itself from the West St. Jerome, St. Paula, St. Eustochium, and innumerable throngs of noble matrons and men, who preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and chose to live and die there at the manger of Christ; for which reason St. Paula built there three monasteries for women, over which she herself presided; and one for men, over which St. Jerome presided. Hear St. Jerome concerning St. Paula, in her Life: "And entering Bethlehem, and going into the cave of the Savior, after she saw the sacred lodging of the Virgin and the stable, in which the ox recognized its owner, and the donkey the manger of its Lord, so that what is written in the same Prophet might be fulfilled: Blessed is he who sows beside waters, where the ox and donkey tread; in my hearing, she swore that she could see with the eyes of faith the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, crying in the manger, the Lord with the Magi adoring, the star shining above, the virgin mother, the diligent foster-father, the shepherds coming by night to see the Word that had been made, and already then they were dedicating the beginning of the Evangelist John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made flesh; the little ones slain, Herod raging, Joseph and Mary fleeing into Egypt, and mingling tears with joy she said: Hail, Bethlehem, house of bread, in which was born that bread which came down from heaven: hail, Ephrata, most fruitful region, and karpophore, whose fertility is God." She then cites this oracle of Micah: "About you Micah once prophesied: And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrata, you are not the least among the thousands of Judah. From you shall come forth to Me one who is to be prince in Israel, and his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity. Therefore you will give them up until the time of her who gives birth. She will give birth, and the remnant of his brethren will be converted to the children of Israel. For in you was born the prince, who was begotten before the morning star, whose nativity from the Father exceeds every age. And the origin of the Davidic line remained in you until the virgin gave birth."
And further: "Rightly did David swear, rightly did he make vows saying: If I shall enter into the tabernacle of my house, if I shall go up into the bed of my couch, if I shall give sleep to my eyes, and slumber to my eyelids, and rest to my temples, until I find a place for the Lord, a tabernacle for the God of Jacob. And immediately he explained what he desired, and with prophetic eyes, He whom we now believe to have come, he perceived as still to come: Behold, we have heard of Him in Ephrata, we have found Him in the fields of the forest: indeed the Hebrew word (for in Hebrew it is vav cholem, that is 'his' in the masculine), as I learned from you as teacher, signifies not Mary the Mother of the Lord, that is abrav, but Him Himself, that is abres. Hence he speaks confidently: We will enter into His tabernacle, we will worship in the place where His feet have stood. And I, wretched and sinful, have I been deemed worthy to kiss the manger in which the infant Lord cried: to pray in the cave in which the virgin mother poured forth the Lord as an infant? This is my rest, because it is the homeland of my Lord: here I will dwell, because the Savior has chosen it. I have prepared a lamp for my Christ, my soul will live for Him, and my seed will serve Him. Not far from there she went down to the tower of Eder, that is of the flock, near which Jacob fed his flocks, and the shepherds keeping vigil by night were worthy to hear: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will; and while they were keeping their sheep, they found the Lamb of God, with pure and most clean fleece, which in the dryness of the whole earth was soaked with heavenly dew: and whose blood took away the sins of the world, and drove the destroyer of Egypt from the doorposts."
The same St. Jerome, in the name of St. Paula and Eustochium, inviting St. Marcella to Bethlehem in epistle 17: "With what speech, he says, with what voice can we describe for you the cave of the Savior? And that manger, in which the little infant cried, is to be honored more by silence than by our lowly speech. Where are the wide porticoes? Where the gilded ceilings? Where the houses decorated with the punishments of the wretched and the labor of the condemned? Where the basilicas built like a palace with the wealth of private citizens, so that the vile little body of man may walk about more preciously, and as if anything could be more ornate than the world, they prefer to look at their own roofs rather than at heaven? Behold, in this small hole in the earth the Creator of heaven was born: here He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, here He was seen by the shepherds, here He was pointed out by the star, here He was adored by the Magi. And this place, I think, is holier than the Tarpeian Rock, which, having been struck by lightning from heaven repeatedly, showed that the Lord was displeased with it. And then, with Christ accompanying us, when through Shiloh, and Bethel, and the other places in which the standards of the Lord's victories have been erected as churches, we shall have returned to our cave; we will sing continually, we will weep frequently, we will pray unceasingly, and wounded by the javelin of the Savior we will say together: I have found Him whom my soul sought, I will hold Him and will not let Him go." See also his epistle 18 to the same Marcella.
Moreover, in Bethlehem St. Paula died and was buried, after she had lived there holily and devoutly for twenty years, for whom St. Jerome composed this epitaph:
She whom a Scipio begat, whom the parents of Paulus raised; The offspring of the Gracchi, the illustrious child of Agamemnon; She lies in this tomb: her forebears called her Paula, Mother of Eustochium, foremost of the Roman senate: She followed the poverty of Christ and the rural fields of Bethlehem.
Hear St. Cyprian, in his treatise On the Nativity of Christ: "They come to Bethlehem; He whom Gabriel foretold, Emmanuel is found: a small city, a poor little house, scanty furniture; no grandeur of a house, except a reclining-place in a stable: the mother on the hay, the son in the manger. Such was the lodging chosen by the Maker of the world, such were the delights of the sacred Virgin's childbirth. Swaddling-bands are gathered instead of purple, rags instead of fine linen in royal attire: the mother is the midwife, and she renders devoted attendance to her beloved offspring; she touches, embraces, joins kisses, offers her breast, the whole affair full of joy: no deceit, no insult of nature in the childbirth. Handmaids are not permitted by the family's means, the services of slaves are excluded by slender expense, and a poor table."
Moreover, in Bethlehem the star appeared and stood still, appearing to the Magi, who by its indication recognized Christ there, and adoring Him there,
Gold, frankincense, and myrrh, to the King, the Man, and the God They bring as gifts,
as Juvencus sings. Therefore Prudentius in his Poem on the Epiphany celebrates it thus:
O alone among great cities Greater, Bethlehem, to whom it fell To bear incarnate from heaven The Leader of salvation. Whom a star, which surpasses the wheel of the sun In beauty and in light, Announces to have come to earth, God with earthly flesh, etc.
Bethlehem therefore is "the rising of the world, and the metropolis of the earth," as Gregory Nazianzen says in oration 19, and the house of bread, in which Christ the bread from heaven rises. Hence deservedly sighing for it, St. Chrysostom says on Luke chapter 2: "O if only I were permitted to see that manger, in which Christ lay!"
St. Jerome writes to Paulinus that the Emperor Hadrian profaned Bethlehem by erecting there an image of Adonis; "so that in the cave where once the infant Christ cried, the lover of Venus might be lamented." Adonis stood there for 180 years until the Emperor Constantine, when St. Helena his mother, having overthrown Adonis, built a magnificent church over the cave itself, and over the very manger in which the Lamb of God had reclined, she erected an altar, on which the same One who had first shone upon the world there for the salvation of men would be continually offered to God. And Constantine also adorned the same cave with royal ornaments of gold and silver, and with various hangings; so that this basilica was a wonder of the world, and there was nothing like it in the whole world. For it is very lofty and most spacious, whose entire upper vaulting consists of four rows of marble columns, admirable in both size and number. For each row had fifty columns, of remarkable craftsmanship, cost and expense; above the columns themselves the nave of the church rises in mosaic work, which displayed all the histories of the Old Testament, from the beginning of the world to Christ, distinguished by wonderful craftsmanship and variety of colors. The walls are encrusted with tablets of the most precious alabaster; whose richness and beauty was such that the Sultan of Egypt attempted to steal them sacrilegiously and adorn his palace in Cairo with them, but, terrified by a huge serpent miraculously emerging from the wall and biting the tablets themselves, he desisted from the crime; therefore even the Turks and Saracens themselves frequent this temple with reverence. The entire pavement is of marble. To the place of the most sweet nativity of Christ, one descends from the temple into the chapel by ten steps, to a place more august even than heaven itself, and to be venerated with eternal memory by all the faithful. This place is covered with a white marble table, on which the Sacred Liturgy is also celebrated. Moreover, that part of the stone on which Christ is said to have been born, and the part of the manger in which He was laid, are not covered with marble, but lie bare for the adoration and kissing of pilgrims. The stone on which Mary reclined, and on which she sat with bent knees, has the likeness of a star. And this whole chapel is adorned with costly work of marble and gold. Nor is the place of the circumcision far from the temple. To the east, as far as a stone's throw, the tombs of St. Paula and Eustochium can be seen. These and more details are given by Salignac, Burchardus, Bredembachius, and from them Adrichomius in his Description of the Holy Land. The same things were affirmed to me at Rome by serious men who had recently visited Bethlehem and the holy places.
Rightly therefore St. Bernard, sermon 1 on the Vigil of the Nativity: "O Bethlehem, small, he says, but now made great by the Lord. He has magnified you, who was made small in you from great. What city, if it should hear, would not envy that precious stable, and the glory of that manger? For throughout the whole earth your name is now celebrated, and all generations call you blessed; everywhere glorious things are said of you, O city of God, everywhere it is sung: Because a man was born in it, and the Most High Himself founded it." St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration 38: "Revere the census, he says, on account of which you yourself are enrolled in heaven: and the nativity, on account of which you are freed from the bonds of birth: and honor that little Bethlehem, which led you back to paradise: and worship the manger, honor the manger, because when you were devoid of reason, you were nourished by the Word. Recognize, like the ox, your owner (Isaiah admonishes you), and like the donkey, the manger of your Lord; whether you are clean and a Jew, or unclean and of the Gentile part." The same author responds to the Arians who objected to him his ignoble homeland and family, in oration 25: "One and the same heaven, he says, is common to all, and one and the same earth has the role of both parent and tomb, from which we were taken, or to which we shall return, no one any longer surpassing others in anything. Having obtained God as the patron of my rusticity, I shall be placed with Bethlehem, I shall be despised with the manger." And further: "For all great and lofty men, the one homeland is the heavenly Jerusalem, in which we store our way of life. But these earthly homelands, and these distinctions of families, are the play and stage of this brief and transient life of ours. For whatever land anyone has first occupied, whether by tyranny or by misfortune, that is called his homeland, of which we are all equally guests and strangers, however much we may play with the designation of names."
Tropologically, let us place this Bethlehem before our eyes, and let us imagine that we are in it, and there with the eyes of the mind let us behold Christ being born, while in the church on the night of the Nativity of the Lord we recall this mystery; indeed while daily in the sacrifice of the Mass the same is represented to us. For truly and wisely wrote our Thomas a Kempis, in book 4 of The Imitation of Christ, chapter 2: "It should seem so great, new, and joyful to you, when you celebrate or hear Mass, as if on that same day Christ, first descending into the womb of the Virgin, were made man: or hanging on the cross, were suffering and dying for the salvation of men." The church therefore represents Bethlehem, the altar the manger, the host the newborn Christ, the corporal the swaddling clothes and bands, the Mother of God the priest, Joseph and the shepherds the Christians standing by. So did St. Francis, kissing with wonderful devotion the little child of Bethlehem in his symbolic Bethlehem and manger.
Hear St. Bonaventure in his Life, chapter 10: "It happened in the third year before his death, that he arranged to re-enact the memory of the nativity of the child Jesus at the town of Greccio, to arouse devotion, with as great solemnity as he could. And lest this could be ascribed to frivolity, having sought and obtained permission from the Supreme Pontiff, he had a manger prepared, hay brought, and an ox and donkey led to the place. The Brothers are summoned, the people come; the forest resounds with voices, and that venerable night is made splendid and solemn with copious and bright lights, and with sonorous and harmonious praises. The man of God stood before the manger, filled with piety, sprinkled with tears, and overflowing with joy. The solemnities of the Mass are celebrated over the manger, with Francis the deacon of Christ chanting the sacred Gospel. He then preaches to the people standing around about the birth of the poor King, whom, when he wished to name Him, he called the little child of Bethlehem out of the tenderness of love. A certain virtuous and truthful knight, who for the love of Christ had left secular military service and was joined to the man of God in great familiarity, Lord John of Greccio, asserted that he saw a certain very beautiful little child sleeping in that manger, whom the Blessed Father Francis, embracing with both arms, seemed to be awakening from sleep." St. Bonaventure adds that the hay from this manger, preserved by the people, healed many diseases of animals and drove away plagues.
Finally, St. Bernard, sermon 1 on the Vigil of the Nativity, teaches us to become Bethlehem, if we devoutly receive Christ: "Do you too wish to become Bethlehem? How beautiful you are, house of charity! How lovely, house of bread! Small, he says, are the loaves in our hands. But if we give them for the Lord's blessing, when they have been distributed and broken, they will make bundles of collected fragments. If therefore you wish the Lord to bless, do not cease from generosity, do not draw back your hands, do not turn away your face. For God loves a cheerful giver, and give, and it shall be given to you; make for yourselves houses of bread."
He sent the Holy Spirit. All these expeditions were from the days of eternity, because they were decreed from eternity.
Second, Arias and a Castro here, whom St. Jerome and R. Haccados in Galatinus favor, book IV, chapter 13, understand these goings forth as the two nativities of Christ, namely the temporal one from the Virgin in Bethlehem, and the eternal one from God the Father in heaven. Hence R. Haccados, by 'from the beginning,' that is, from eternity, thinks the eternal generation of Christ is indicated; but by 'from the days of the age,' the temporal one, by which indeed from the beginning of the world He was created in the loins of Adam, and as it were born. Conversely, others better understand by 'from the beginning' the temporal appearing of Christ, not only by which He appeared in the flesh, but also by which He was seen by the patriarchs, to whom He was promised; and by the Prophets, through whose mouths He Himself, as the Word of God, spoke: but by 'from the days of eternity,' they understand His eternal generation from the Father.
Third, others understand these things of the eternal emanation and nativity of Christ from the Father alone. This exposition is certain and the common one of the Fathers and Doctors, and therefore to be embraced. It is proved first, because the Prophet said shortly before about the temporal nativity of Christ: 'From you (O Bethlehem) shall come forth for Me He who is to be ruler in Israel.' Therefore when he adds: 'And His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity,' he is speaking of the eternal one, as if to say: Christ will go forth and be born in Bethlehem; but, lest you think He will be merely a man, and will go forth for the first time when He appears as man in Bethlehem, I add and say that already before, from eternity, He went forth from the Father, when He was begotten as God, coeval and consubstantial with the Father. For why would the Prophet repeat the temporal going forth here, when he had so clearly expressed it before?
Second, 'from the days of eternity' plainly signifies that here the eternal generation of Christ is being discussed, not the temporal one. You will say: In Hebrew it is 'from the days of olam,' that is, 'of the age.' I respond: Olam or 'age,' meaning 'hidden,' from the root alam, that is, 'he hid,' in Hebrew signifies eternity, which is hidden and impenetrable to all, when it is written with vav, as it is written here, as the Rabbis teach, unless some restricting particle is added that forces one to explain and interpret it as a very long time. But here no such thing is added; indeed, 'from the beginning' is added, which joined with 'the days of olam,' signifies plain and full eternity, as I shall shortly show. Hence the Chaldean translates: Whose name has been spoken from eternity, from the days of the age; the Tigurine, or Leo the Hebrew: His going forth from the age, from eternal days. So also the Rabbis in Galatinus at the cited place.
Finally, all the orthodox acknowledge that true eternity is being discussed here; although some understand the eternity of predestination, not of generation, but wrongly. For 'to go forth' is not 'to be predestined,' but to emanate, to be begotten, to be born, as when shortly before he said: 'From you shall come forth for Me,' that is, 'shall be born,' 'He who is to be ruler in Israel.'
HIS GOING FORTH IS FROM THE BEGINNING, FROM THE DAYS OF ETERNITY. — 'Going forth' is in the plural number; for in Hebrew it is motsaoth, that is, 'goings forth.' Hence the Septuagint translates 'Exodia'; Vatablus, 'His emanations.' Again, for 'from the beginning, from the days of eternity,' the Hebrew and the Septuagint have 'from the beginning, from the days of the age.' Hence there is here a triple explanation of the interpreters, according to the triple going forth of Christ. For the first going forth of Christ is temporal; the second is eternal; the third is partly temporal, partly eternal.
First, therefore, the more recent Rabbis, who deny the eternity and divinity of Christ, explain these goings forth thus, as if to say: Christ will not only go forth when He is born in Bethlehem, but already from David, from Abraham, indeed from Adam He went forth and was, as it were, born, both because He descended from them and lay hidden and was contained in their loins and generative power; in the same way the Apostle, Hebrews 7:9, says that Levi, before he was born, was tithed in the loins of Abraham; and because He sent them ahead as His leaders, so to speak, who would train and maintain His people Israel in the worship of God, and would protect and defend them against faithless enemies. To this is added the exposition of St. Cyril, who thinks the goings forth are said in the plural because Christ as man went forth twice: First, when He came into the world through the Incarnation; second, when after death He went forth from the world and ascended into heaven. Christ Himself signifies both in John 16:28: 'I came forth from the Father and have come into the world; again I leave the world and go to the Father': both are from the days of eternity, because both were decreed and predestined from eternity by God. Here pertains the explanation of others, who by 'goings forth' understand the various expeditions and excursions of Christ as man, which He undertook against the devil for the salvation of mankind. The first was when He put on our humanity. The second, when He drew the Magi and shepherds to Himself and converted them. The third, when traveling through Judea and Galilee, He saved many in body and soul. The fourth, when He ascended the cross for the redemption of mankind. The fifth, when rising He returned to life and destroyed death. The sixth, when ascending into heaven He opened it to us, and from there
we may receive either through faith or through the Eucharist. 'For Bethlehem,' he says, 'means house of bread, and Judah means confession. Therefore if you fill your soul with the food of the divine word, and faithfully, if not worthily, yet with as much devotion as you can, receive that bread which came down from heaven and gives life to the world, namely the Lord's body of Jesus, so that the new flesh of the resurrection may restore and sustain the old wineskin of your body, to the extent that the new wine which is within, strengthened by this glue, may be able to contain it: if, finally, you live by faith, and there is no need to groan because you have forgotten to eat your bread; you have become Bethlehem, truly worthy of the Lord's reception, if only confession has not been lacking. Let Judea therefore be your sanctification: to put on confession and beauty, this is the garment that Christ most values in His ministers.'
ruler in Israel.' You will say: Revelation 13:8, the Lamb, that is Christ, is said to have been slain from the foundation of the world, not really, but through God's foreknowledge and predestination; therefore similarly here 'going forth' can be explained not really, but in God's predestination. I respond: I deny the consequence; for the words of Scripture are to be taken properly, not improperly, unless necessity or contradiction compels it, as nothing compels here: but in the Apocalypse it does compel. For the Lamb, who really did not exist from the foundation of the world, could not then have been really slain (for what does not exist cannot be slain); therefore this slaying must be understood not as actual, but as mental, namely foreknown and predestined by God. But here there is nothing of the sort; therefore a real going forth and nativity, not a mental and predestined one, must be understood.
Third, that Christ born in Bethlehem is God, and therefore eternal, is clear from chapter 4:1: 'The mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established on the top of the mountains,' namely Zion, that is, the Church of Christ. For in place of 'Lord,' the Hebrew has Jehovah, which signifies none other than the true God, and is His proper name. And verse 2: 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord (in Hebrew, Jehovah): for from Zion shall go forth the law, and the word (the Gospel) of the Lord (in Hebrew, Jehovah, that is, of Christ) from Jerusalem.' And verse 7: 'And the Lord (in Hebrew, Jehovah, that is, Christ) shall reign over them, from this time forth and forevermore.' The same is clear from Isaiah 9:6, where the child to be born for us, namely Christ, is called 'God, Mighty, Father of the world to come' (in Hebrew, Father of eternity); and chapter 7:14, He is called 'Emmanuel,' that is, God with us.
Fourth, so the Fathers and orthodox interpret it everywhere: Theodoret, Haymo, Remigius, Rupert, Albert, Hugh, Lyranus, Dionysius, Clarius, Vatablus, Ribera here, Cyril in Homily 4 Against Nestorius, St. Chrysostom in the book That Christ Is God, Origen in book I Against Celsus, Eusebius in book II of the Demonstration chapter 11, St. Athanasius, and others everywhere against the Arians.
You will say: If only the eternal emanation and generation of Christ is being discussed here, why then does the Prophet call it 'goings forth,' or 'departures' in the plural? Ribera responds first that the reason is that the Hebrews customarily address the greatest and most excellent things in the plural, to signify the magnitude and excellence of the thing, because, although it is one, it nevertheless is equivalent to many. Thus they call God Elohim, in the plural; thus adonim, that is 'lords,' signifies the Lord; thus the elephant is called behemoth, that is 'beasts,' because in its mass and strength it equals, indeed surpasses, many beasts. Because therefore the eternal nativity of Christ is the greatest and divine, and eminently contains all created nativities, hence by the Hebrews it is called 'goings forth,' that is 'nativities,' in the plural. Second, Vatablus gives another reason: 'He uses the plural,' he says, 'because Christ always proceeds from the Father in a continuous emanation and procession, yesterday, today, and of old,
as if to say: Christ will be true man and true God, and coeternal with the Father;' because therefore Christ is continually begotten by the Father from eternity, hence His generation is called 'generations': for at every instant He is generated, and coexists with all the generations of creatures; just as we call the emanation of a spring 'wellsprings,' because it continually pours forth water. Hence is clear the eternity, and consequently the true Deity of Christ. The Arians denied both, whose axiom, as St. Athanasius attests in many places, was this: 'There was a time (or duration) when Christ was not.' Francis David, the leader of the new Arians, responds in the Alban Disputation, in the acts of the third day: 'The word "days" added explains the mind of the Prophet. For days began when the world was created. And those first days are called eternal, on account of their continuous succession: as Scripture often speaks, and therefore since a promise about the future Christ was also made at that time, His going forth is said to have been from the days of eternity.' But against this stands the fact that, although 'forever' in Scripture sometimes signifies a long continuous time, not an infinite one; nevertheless 'eternity,' and the Hebrew olam, joined with mickedem, always signifies immense duration. Second, 'His going forth' is not a promise about His being born, but His nativity, as when it is said here: 'From you shall come forth for Me (that is, shall be born) a ruler': for it is one thing for a man to go forth, another for a word or speech to go forth: the former signifies to be born, the latter to prophesy and promise.
Nor does it stand in the way that it is called 'the days of eternity'; for 'days' here is put for 'duration,' as when in Daniel chapter 7:9, God the Father is called 'the Ancient of Days,' that is, eternal.
You will say: How then does he say: 'His going forth is from the beginning'? For eternity has no beginning. I respond: Scripture calls 'beginning' that which was before time, and this was eternity. Hence, explaining, it adds: 'from the days of eternity.' For it speaks in a way adapted to human understanding, for when people wish to say that something has been from eternity, they say it was before everything, from the beginning. Thus Proverbs 8:22, uncreated Wisdom says: 'The Lord possessed Me at the beginning of His ways, before He made anything from the beginning.' And Sirach chapter 24:14, the eternal Wisdom of God says: 'From the beginning, and before the ages, I was created,' that is, from eternity. Likewise Isaiah 43:13, God says: 'From the beginning I Myself am,' as if to say: From eternity I am who I am. Furthermore, this sentence of Micah: 'And His going forth from the days of eternity,' St. John explains clearly through a three-part sentence in chapter 1:1: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,' as if to say: From eternity, and, so to speak, from the beginning of eternity, the Word went forth and was begotten from the mind of the Father; and therefore was with Him, and in His mind, and consequently He Himself was God: because whatever is in the mind of God and in God, is God. Hence also Christ,
when asked by the Jews who He was, responded: 'The Beginning, who also speaks to you,' John 8:25; in Greek kat' archen, as if to say: I am before Abraham, from the beginning, that is, from eternity; God from God, who also declares this very thing to you. And the same in Revelation 21:6 says: 'I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.'
Gregory of Nazianzus says beautifully: 'God both always was, and is, and will be; or, to speak more correctly, always is. For "Was" and "Will be" are segments of our time and flowing nature. But He always is, and in this way He names Himself when He gave the oracle to Moses on the mountain. For He embraces in Himself the whole of being, having no beginning, nor about to have an end, like some immense and boundless sea of essence, surpassing all knowledge both of time and of nature: sketched by the mind alone, and that very slightly and obscurely, not from the things that are in Him, but from the things around Him: one appearance gathered from another toward a single image of truth: fleeing before it is grasped, and snatching itself away by flight before it is perceived by the intellect: illuminating the leading part of us, and that purified from the stain of vices, as much as the swiftness of lightning that does not pause illuminates the sight of the eyes. And this, in my opinion, happens so that, insofar as He can be comprehended, He may draw us to Himself (for what cannot be perceived at all, no one hopes for or tries to attain), but insofar as He cannot be grasped, He may excite admiration of Himself, and from that admiration be more ardently desired, and desire may purge, and purging may make divine, and when they have been rendered such, He may now have fellowship with them as with familiars (I fear this may seem too boldly said by me): God united to and known by gods, and perhaps as much as He already knows those who are known to Him.'
FROM THE DAYS OF ETERNITY — that is, from all eternity. It is a catachresis: for eternity, properly being a constant, indivisible duration, all at once, and therefore intrinsically lacking succession, beginning, and end; for this reason it is not divided into days, months, and years, which coexist with it successively: hence by all who measure everything by the differences of their own time, days, months, and years are attributed to eternity. Thus it is said in Psalm 76:6: 'I thought upon the days of old, and I had in mind the years of eternity.' Thus in the Divine Office, at Eastertide, we sing of the martyrs: 'Perpetual light shall shine upon Your saints, O Lord, and an eternity of times.' Which is taken from 4 Esdras, chapter 2:35, where it says: 'Be ready for the rewards of the kingdom, for perpetual light shall shine upon you for an eternity of time. Flee the shadow of the world,' etc. For just as the immensity of God gathers into a point the whole magnitude of God, which without limit extends in every direction above the heavens into the immeasurable, so that it has no less in a point of place than in infinite space: so eternity gathers the duration, and as it were the age of God, which is coextensive with infinite time,
into a moment: so that it possesses the whole in an instant, or in a point. For just as immensity is to a point of place, so eternity is to a point of time. Micah therefore says that Christ, who would be born in time in Bethlehem, is eternal, and therefore God, as if to say: Therefore Christ will be born in our time, so that He may communicate to us His eternity: therefore He will become man, so that He may communicate to us His deity, and make us gods. For He says: 'I have said: You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High,' Psalm 81:6. Hence St. Gregory, Homily 8 on the Gospel: 'What does it mean,' he says, 'that the world is described when the Lord is about to be born, except that it is openly shown that He was appearing in the flesh who would inscribe His elect in eternity? Whereas conversely of the reprobate it is said through the Prophet: Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the just.' Therefore Christ was born to time, so that we might live for eternity; therefore He went forth from the days of eternity to the days of time, so that we might return from time to the days of eternity.
Note: Duration is threefold: time, aeviternity, eternity; time has its end, as well as its beginning; aeviternity has a beginning but lacks an end; eternity has neither end nor beginning. Again, just as aeviternity is the intrinsic measure of the life of angels, and time of the life of men: so eternity is the intrinsic measure of the divine life and existence, and consequently of the generation of the Word and the spiration of the Holy Spirit, as St. Thomas teaches in Part I, Question 10, Article 4, and P. Salas there. The origin and, as it were, the reason of eternity is the immutability of God. Hence St. Augustine in the book On the Nature of the Good against the Manichees, chapter 39: 'That,' he says, 'is true eternity, which is true immortality; this is that supreme immutability, which God alone possesses.' And shortly after: 'His alone is the immortality that is true eternity.' The same, in book IV On the Trinity, chapter 18: 'Insofar as we are mutable,' he says, 'to that extent we are distant from eternity.' And further on: 'True immortality, true incorruptibility; true immutability, this is eternity itself.' And St. Dionysius, On the Divine Names, chapter 9: 'The same,' he says, 'supersubstantially eternal, is unchangeable, remaining always in itself according to the same things, and in the same manner.' And the Psalmist, Psalm 101: 'But You are the selfsame, and Your years shall not fail.' Furthermore, St. Anselm thus defines eternity in the Monologion, chapter 24: 'True eternity is interminable life, existing all at once.' And Richard of St. Victor, book II On the Trinity, chapter 4: 'What else is eternity but duration without beginning and end, and lacking all mutability?' Others: 'Eternity is immeasurable duration.'
Most excellently Boethius in book III of the Consolation, the last prose passage: 'Eternity is the whole, simultaneous, and perfect possession of interminable life.' Hence eternity encompasses all times and temporal things, and is their source and origin. Hear St. Dionysius in the book On the Divine Names, chapter 10: 'God is called the Ancient of Days, because
He is in Himself both the age and time of all things; and before days, and before the age, and time.' The same, chapter 5: 'He Himself,' he says, 'is the aeviternity of aeviternities, existing before every aeviternity.' And shortly before: 'He Himself is the beginning and measure of aeviternities and times.' From what has been said it follows that eternity is the proper duration of God, namely of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; but that angels and men participate in it through their aeviternity, which has a beginning, but not an end. For through it they will live forever, enjoy God, and be blessed: although the common usage by catachresis calls this aeviternity also 'eternity,' namely created and participated: because the Blessed will be blessed as long as God will be blessed; indeed as long as God will be God, as long as His eternity will endure. O eternity, how great you are! How immense! How precious! How blessed! And yet how rarely do you dwell in the minds of men! How few esteem you and your weight! None penetrate you, few ponder you!
St. Gregory wisely says in book 6, letter 190: 'If we seek good things,' he says, 'let us love those which we shall have without end. If however we fear evil things, let us fear those which are endured without end by the reprobate.' And Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4: 'What,' he says, 'can seem great to him in human affairs, to whom all eternity and the magnitude of the whole world is known?' And St. Anthony handed down this axiom to his disciples: 'Let this,' he says, 'be the first commandment common to all, that no one grow weary in the vigor of the purpose they have undertaken; but that, as if beginning, they should always increase what they have started, especially since the spans of human life, compared to eternity, are very brief.
The promise of everlasting life is purchased at a cheap price. For it is written: The days of our life are seventy years: when therefore we have lived eighty or a hundred years laboring in the work of God, we shall not reign for an equal time in the future; but in return for years, the kingdoms of all ages will be granted to us: we shall not inherit the earth, but heaven.' So says St. Athanasius in the Life of St. Anthony.
Verse 3
3. THEREFORE HE SHALL GIVE THEM UP UNTIL THE TIME IN WHICH SHE WHO IS IN LABOR SHALL BRING FORTH. — The word 'shall give' can be taken in two ways, indeed in contrary senses: First, 'He shall give,' namely to the enemy, to the sword, or to a similar tribulation, as if to say: He will cast them before their enemies and will allow them to be afflicted by calamities; second, 'He shall give,' that is, He will preserve them in life, so that they may dwell in their land. Now various interpreters explain these things variously. The point of difficulty lies in what is called 'the time in which she who is in labor shall bring forth.'
First, some think it is the time of liberation from the Babylonian captivity, and of freedom under Cyrus, as if to say: Because the robbers of whom verse 1 speaks, that is, the Assyrian and Chaldean tyrants and plunderers, will afflict and captivate Israel for its crimes; hence God will give, that is, will permit them to rage against Israel until Cyrus, when, he releasing the captivity, the Synagogue in labor shall bring forth, that is, with joy and haste shall produce and gather together an immense crowd of her sons and citizens, returning with jubilation from Babylon to Judea. But here no mention of Babylon has been made, but only of Christ: for Christ is what all the preceding and following things regard.
Second, others distinguish the time of being in labor from the time of giving birth; the time of the Synagogue giving birth, they think, is that at which she gave birth to Christ; the time of being in labor, that at which she was afflicted and oppressed with torments by Titus and the Romans, as if to say: Because, namely, the daughter of the robber, that is Jerusalem, was going to strike and kill Christ, says Rupert, therefore God will allow the Synagogue and the Jews to continue until the time when she brings forth Christ the Savior, and then through Titus will afflict her, so that she is tortured as one in labor; and in this labor of pains she will be killed and expire. Hence the Chaldean translates: Therefore the Jews will be handed over to the Romans, when she who is in labor brings forth. The same Chaldean explains Isaiah 66:7 thus: 'Before she was in labor, she brought forth: before the pains came, she bore a male child,' as if to say: Before anguish comes upon her, she will be saved; and before the pains of labor come, the king Messiah will be revealed, as if to say: Before Titus comes afflicting the Jews, Christ the Savior will come and be born. So also the ancient Hebrews in Galatinus, book 4, chapter 11. Indeed St. Jerome explains it thus: Judaism will stand until the Church bears sons for Christ; until, that is, the gentile world, which before had been barren, believing in Christ, converts many to Him, who will succeed in the place of the Jews, as the people and sons of God.
Third, others understand the time of the nascent Church, when she bore many sons to God and Christ, according to the oracle of Isaiah chapter 54:1, as if to say: Because, namely, Christ is to be born from Israel and the Jews in Bethlehem, therefore God will give, that is, will allow them to live in Judea, and will defer the vengeance for His death, that is, the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, for a while; until, that is, the Church of Christ being born bears many sons from among the Jews to Christ; that is, until she grows and is strengthened, so that she can preserve and spread herself through all nations: which having been done, He will overthrow Judea and the Jews through Titus. So Lyranus, Vatablus, and Dionysius.
Fourth, and genuinely: 'The time when she who is in labor,' or, as it is in Hebrew, 'she who bears shall bring forth,' is the time when the Mother of God gave birth to Christ in Bethlehem: for she is called 'she who bears' and 'mother' par excellence; because her birth-giving was most noble, and therefore most desired by heaven and earth, and this is what that doubling 'she who bears' signifies; or, as our Translator renders it, 'she who is in labor shall bring forth': for 'she who is in labor' does not signify pain, but an ardent desire, joy, and acceleration of the birth, as I said in commenting on Isaiah 66:7: 'Before she was in labor, she brought forth.' For Micah here alludes to Isaiah in his usual manner. The meaning therefore is, as if to say: Because, namely, Christ will be born in Bethlehem, whom God has decreed and established as Savior
Hugo. 'For Elijah (whose name is interpreted as God the Lord) will turn the heart of the fathers to the sons, and the heart of the sons to the fathers, and the last people will be joined to the ancient one, so that they may truly be called sons of Abraham, when they have believed in Him whom Abraham saw and rejoiced,' says St. Jerome.
Verse 4
4. And He shall stand, — namely the ruler of Israel, that is, Christ born in Bethlehem from His parent the Virgin Mother of God, of whom verses 2 and 3 speak. He alludes to shepherds who, while they feed the flock, stand leaning on their crook or pastoral staff, both so that they may have all the sheep before their eyes, and see that none strays or separates itself from the flock; and also so that they may look around whether from some direction a wolf or other wild beast may be approaching to attack the flock, as if to say: In like manner Christ, as the shepherd of the faithful, will always be present to them, will watch over them, will feed and protect them from every attack of demons and enemies. So St. Jerome, Remigius, Hugo, and Vatablus. This is what Christ promised: 'Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world,' Matthew chapter 28, verse 20.
Note: The word 'He shall stand' signifies, regarding Christ the shepherd and king, first, His care and providence for the Church; second, His watchfulness in feeding her; third, His constancy. Hence Vatablus rightly explains it thus: He shall stand and feed, that is, He shall perpetually feed the faithful, He shall perpetually reign in the Church. For He will not pass away from her, as He passed from the Jews to the Gentiles; but He will continually stand and remain with the faithful.
Anagogically, as if to say: Christ after His resurrection will ascend into heaven, and there 'will stand' at the right hand of the Father, as triumphant ruler, to govern, protect, and defend the Church. Wherefore St. Stephen, contending with the Jews in the agony of martyrdom: 'Behold,' he said, 'I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God,' Acts 7:55. So Rupert; whence follows:
And He shall feed in the strength of the Lord, — as if to say: Christ the shepherd will rule the faithful as His sheep, with a strength not human but divine; both uncreated, which as the Son of God He received from God the Father as one and the same with Him; and created, which as man He participates as communicated by God: whereby it shall come to pass that no wolves or wild beasts shall prevail against Him, or be able to seize or scatter His flock; but rather He shall certainly lead them to eternal life, according to what He Himself says: 'My sheep hear My voice, etc., and no one shall snatch them from My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them from the hand of My Father. I and the Father are one,' John 10:27.
In the sublimity of the name of the Lord His God, — that is, Christ will feed His faithful sublimely, powerfully, and magnificently, as befits the majesty of the divine name, which He everywhere sets forth in His feeding, to prove that He is God and sent by God the Father: He will feed, I say, sublimely and gloriously, as if in that matter the glory of the divine name and honor were at stake; so that all who see the illustrious governance of Christ, by which He eminently feeds His sheep, would praise and cele-
Note: The name of God, with which Christ feeds His own, signifies various things. For first, the name of God is the honor, fame, and glory of God, as I have already said. Second, the name of God signifies the power and aid of God. Thus Christ, praying for His own, John 17:11, says: 'Father, keep them in Your name,' that is, by Your power and strength. Third, the name signifies the profession and invocation of the name, as if to say: Christ will feed His faithful sublimely, because He will profess to do it in the name of His Father, which He will profess, preach, and invoke. Fourth, the name of God is God Himself by metonymy; thus we are said to sanctify, praise, and celebrate the name of God, that is, God Himself. Thus Christ commanded the Apostles to baptize the faithful 'in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,' that is, in the faith, profession, and invocation of the one deity and most holy Trinity, as if to say: 'In the name,' that is, in-
And the remnants of His brethren shall be converted to the sons of Israel. — 'His,' namely of the ruler of Israel, to be born in Bethlehem, that is, of Christ, as if to say: The remnants, that is, the few of the Jews, who are the brethren of Christ according to the flesh, shall be converted to the sons of Israel, that is, to the Patriarchs and Prophets: so that they may embrace and emulate the faith, piety, and holiness of the Patriarchs and Prophets in Christ, according to Psalm 44:17: 'Instead of your fathers, sons have been born to you.' Or the sons of Israel are the Apostles, as if to say: When the Church in labor shall bring forth Christ and the Apostles, then the brethren of Christ, that is, the Jews remaining from the captivity, shall be converted to the sons of Israel, that is, the Apostles, and shall be gathered to their assembly and that of the faithful. Anagogically, as if to say: At the end of the world, when the fullness of the Gentiles shall have entered the Church, then the remnants of the Jews shall be converted through Elijah and Enoch, and then all Israel shall be saved. So St. Jerome, Haymo, Remigius, and
Symbolically, the meaning is, as if to say: Because God established that Christ would be born in Bethlehem, to make Him the savior of the world; hence He will give, that is, will allow Israel to be afflicted under the law, so that Israel may recognize from the law both sin and the weakness of the law for removing sin and for healing concupiscence; so that Israel, recognizing this, might with great prayers desire Christ and His grace, which would tame concupiscence and abolish sin. For God delayed Christ for four thousand years, until the birth from the Virgin, so that in the meantime the world might recognize the sins and wounds of its soul, as well as the weakness of nature and of the law, and urgently seek the physician, namely Christ, as the Apostle teaches in Romans 3:20 and following. So St. Jerome, Theodoret, Remigius, Hugo, and others.
Allegorically, Arias says: Christ will allow Israel, that is, His Church, namely the Apostles and disciples, to be afflicted by the Jews for a while, until she, as if emerging from childbirth at Pentecost, is strengthened by the coming of the Holy Spirit, so that, increased in number and strength, she may spread herself through all nations.
Fourth, and genuinely: 'The time when she who is in labor,' or, as it is in Hebrew, 'she who bears shall bring forth,' is the time when the Mother of God gave birth to Christ in Bethlehem. The meaning therefore is, as if to say: Because, namely, Christ is to be born from Israel and the Jews in Bethlehem, and therefore God has foreordained and established Him as the savior and ruler of Israel, He will therefore give them up, that is, will permit Israel and the Jews to be afflicted by the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, until the Mother of God brings forth Christ. For He will be the redeemer and savior of Israel and of all nations. So St. Jerome, Haymo, Remigius, Hugo here, and Eusebius, book 7 of the Demonstration, chapter 11.
To this pertains the explanation of others, which is as follows: The affliction of the Synagogue will successively endure, both the Babylonian, Greek, and Roman captivity, until she brings forth Christ: for He will liberate her from all servitude. Note: Scripture usually speaks of Israel as of a people, sometimes in the singular, because the people collectively is one and singular; sometimes in the plural, because in the people there are many persons and individuals. So Micah does here. Again, he sometimes speaks of Israel in the masculine, as of a people; sometimes in the feminine, as of the Church and Synagogue. Hence he says: 'She who is in labor shall bring forth,' as a mother.
brate the magnificent name of God, as if to say: Christ will govern the Church as a shepherd, with such power and glory as befits Him who is called by the name of the eternal Father, the Legate, indeed the Son, of the eternal Father. This is what John says in chapter 1, verse 14: 'We saw His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father,' that is, such as befitted the Only-begotten Son of God. And Isaiah chapter 60, verse 15: 'I will make you the pride of the ages,' where for 'pride' in Hebrew is the same word geon, which the translator renders as 'sublimity' in this passage.
Furthermore, Christ feeds His own so sublimely, by giving them both the sublime doctrine of the Gospel, and powerful grace, such as the martyrs above all others had for overcoming fires, swords, wild beasts, and all torments; and also certain and continuous protection, and stupendous and unheard-of miracles, such as Christ and the Apostles performed.
And they shall be converted, — as if to say: Christ, feeding through Himself and the Apostles, that is, teaching and instructing men, will convert them to Himself and to God. The translator reads, as does the Chaldean, iascubu, that is, 'they shall be converted'; others with different vowel points, following the Septuagint and Symmachus, read iescebu, that is, 'they shall sit,' 'remain,' 'dwell' quietly and peacefully, as if sitting at home in peace, alluding to chapter 4, verse 4: 'Each man shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree,' as if to say: Under Christ as shepherd and king, the faithful converted to Him shall live in the utmost peace. So St. Jerome, Lyranus, Pagninus, Vatablus, and others.
Because now He shall be magnified — Christ the sublime shepherd. The word 'now' signifies not the present time of Micah, but of Christ: for he continually speaks of Christ, as if to say: I seem to myself, with the eyes of the spirit, like Abraham, to see that glorious day when Christ, born of the Virgin, will magnificently feed the faithful. Whence in admiration and exultation I cry out 'now,' namely, with Christ present, feeding, and ruling: Christ and the name of God shall be magnified, 'even to the ends of the earth.'
The word 'because' here signifies not a cause, but an effect and consequence, as if to say: Whence it will follow that the name of God and of Christ shall be magnified throughout the whole world. Or certainly it is enclitic, and is added merely for the sake of ornamental pleonasm. For the Hebrews are accustomed to add and prefix to a distinguished sentence ki, that is, 'because.' Second, more simply, the word 'now' can be referred to the time of Micah, as if to say: Christ, when He shall be born as man, will feed His faithful in the strength of the Lord: because behold, now, before He is born as man, He is already scattering the first and preliminary rays of His power (as the sun emits light before it rises, in the dawn), and begins to be magnified even to the ends of the earth. For He will soon crush the Assyrian Sennacherib in Judea through an angel, as follows. And therefore he said that Christ went forth from the days of eternity: because since Christ is eternal, He shows Himself in every age through miracles and heroic works, which He has wrought for the protection and benefit of Israel His people.
Verse 5
5. And this one shall be peace. — You may ask, who is 'this one'? Some understand Hezekiah, who by praying with his people obtained from God peace for Judea, when the enemies, namely the Assyrians, were slain by an angel. So Theodoret. Others take it as Cyrus, who gave liberty and peace to the Jews. So Lyranus. Others take it as Judas Maccabeus with his brothers, who by their victories gave peace to their homeland. The Chaldean paraphrase favors this reference to Judas. But since none of these has been previously mentioned, but only Christ the ruler of Israel, to be born in Bethlehem, and the discourse is continuous about Him: I say that 'this one' is Christ, yet with an allusion to Hezekiah, Cyrus, and Judas.
The meaning therefore is, as if to say: Christ will be peace not in a formal sense, but in a causal sense, that is, He will give peace to His Church and to His faithful: peace, I say, threefold and complete, namely peace with God, peace with conscience, and peace with neighbors: and of this peace He will give a prelude, a beginning, and a type, by giving, in this time of Micah, Hezekiah, and shortly after, Cyrus and Judas Maccabeus, who will procure for Israel victory against the Assyrians, and thereby peace.
You may object: Only Hezekiah fought against Sennacherib and the Assyrians, not Cyrus, not Judas; but Cyrus fought against Babylon and the Chaldeans, Judas against Antiochus and the Greeks. I answer, first, that the Chaldeans are included under the Assyrians: for the monarchy was transferred from the Assyrians to the Chaldeans; hence then the Chaldeans ruled both Nineveh and Assyria, as well as Babylon and Chaldea. And thus Cyrus is said to have conquered the Assyrians, because he conquered the Chaldeans. Hence also Assur is here called 'the land of Nimrod,' because Nimrod, the first king and tyrant of the world, ruled Assyria; yet he placed the beginning and seat of empire in Babylon: hence Nimrod was the author of the building of the tower of Babel, as I said in Genesis 10:8, 9, and 10. Micah names the Assyrians rather than the Chaldeans, because in his time Sennacherib and the Assyrians held sway, insulting Hezekiah and the Jews: hence he properly and primarily
When the Assyrian shall come. — He alludes, as is his custom, to Isaiah chapter 36; for by 'the Assyrian' he properly means Sennacherib, who in the time of Hezekiah threatened Jerusalem, whom Christ slew through an angel, and thus gave peace to the city and to King Hezekiah. Subsequently, however, under 'the Assyrian' he includes Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, Pompey, Nero, Decius, and other enemies and persecutors of Israel and the Church, as I have already said. For Christ defeated all of these, and daily defeats them, fighting on behalf of His faithful.
We shall raise up against him seven shepherds and eight principal men. — In Hebrew, 'of man,' and so Ribera thinks it should be read in the Latin. Hence the Syriac also translates 'eight princes of men'; the Arabic, 'eight chiefs or governors of men.' But the Latin Bibles, the Royal, Vatican, and all others read 'men': for 'chiefs of man,' that is, 'of men,' are 'chief men'; the Chaldean has 'seven kings and eight princes of men'; Symmachus, 'seven shepherds and eight anointed ones of men'; 'anointed ones,' that is, kings and princes: for they are anointed ones, that is, anointed with the pouring of oil (for this is what the Hebrew nosech signifies) at their creation and inauguration. And the Septuagint: 'They shall rise up against him as shepherds, and eight bites of men.' They read nesiche with a shin: for nasach with a shin means 'to bite.'
But others commonly read nesiche with a samech, and then it means 'princes.' The meaning, however, comes to the same thing. For by 'bites' the Septuagint understand princes and leaders, who may bite and subdue the Assyrian, just as lions by biting subdue any wild beasts for themselves.
Note: The shepherds are the same as the chiefs, that is, princes, as if to say: Against the Assyrian we shall raise up seven, indeed eight, that is, many, indeed very many princes, who may resist him and defeat him. For the number seven in Scripture is a symbol of multitude: and if eight is added, it signifies a great and immense multitude; as when it is said in Ecclesiastes 11:2: 'Give a portion to seven, and also to eight.' The meaning is, as if to say: Distribute portions of your bread and wealth generously among the poor, and give alms to seven, that is, to many, and also to eight, that is, to many more of the needy, as if to say: Give to as many and as much as you can.
He alludes to the kings of the Assyrians and Persians, who had in their service seven princes, as supreme counselors and ministers in the government of the kingdom, who seem to have been instituted after the pattern of the seven angelic princes through whom God governs the Church and the world, about whom see Job 12:15 and Revelation 1:4, as I said on Revelation 1:4. Thus in Jeremiah 39:3, seven, indeed eight princes of Nebuchadnezzar are named, who, placed in charge of his court and camp, besieged and conquered Jerusalem, namely Nergal, Sharezer, Semegarnabu, Sarsachim, Rabsaris, Nergal, Sharezer, and Rabmag. Thus of Ahasuerus, the husband of Esther, it is said in chapter 1, verse 14: 'And the nearest to him were Carshena, and Shethar, and Admatha, and Tarshish, and Meres, and Marsena, and Memucan, the seven princes of Persia and Media, who saw-
the face of the king, and were accustomed to sit first after him.' From these seven was Darius Hystaspis, who, when the Magi had been killed and the line of Cyrus had failed with Cambyses, was chosen king of the Persians by the neighing of his horse.
The meaning is, first, as if to say: Now behold, Christ the ruler of Israel shall be magnified. For when Sennacherib the Assyrian comes to besiege and capture Jerusalem, we Israelites, united with Hezekiah our king, by the invocation, aid, and command of Christ, shall raise up St. Michael with his six companion Archangels, who are the princes of the heavenly court and protectors of the Synagogue of the faithful, so that through an eighth angel sent by him they may destroy the camps of Sennacherib. For these are the seven shepherds and eight principal men, as the Hebrew has it. Again, we shall raise up Eliakim, Shebna, Joah, and many other princes of the court of Hezekiah, who shall generously resist Sennacherib and his legate Rabshakeh, and when his camps have been destroyed by the angel, shall despoil and plunder them.
Second, as if to say: When the Assyrian comes, that is, Nebuchadnezzar, says Lyranus, ruling both the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and shall have captured Jerusalem, and led the Jews to Babylon, we Israelites shall raise up Prophets and other holy men, such as Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Zerubbabel, Jesus the son of Josedec, etc., who by invoking Christ shall overthrow the Assyrian, that is, Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar. For Christ raised up Cyrus, who through his seven princes and kings killed Belshazzar, captured Babylon, and liberated the Jews from there. Xenophon names these seven princes and kings of Cyrus (to whom Micah here alludes) in book 5 of the Cyropaedia. Their names are these: Embas king of Armenia, Antuchas of Hyrcania, Damatas of the Cadusians, Thambrodas of the Sacae, Tigranes, and Gadatas and Gobryas, the last two of whom killed Belshazzar.
Third, as if to say: When the Assyrian comes, that is, Antiochus Epiphanes the tyrant, ravaging Judea, by our prayers through Christ we shall raise up, that is, Christ invoked by us shall raise up His forerunners and advance leaders, who may rout Antiochus and liberate the Jews; namely the seven and more Maccabees, that is, Mattathias, Judas, Jonathan, Simon, John, Hyrcanus, Alexander, etc. Finally, after Christ is born, when the Assyrian comes, that is, the tyrant Nero, Hadrian, Aurelian, Decius, etc. Likewise Arius, Nestorius, Pelagius, Eutyches, and other heresiarchs who destroy the Church, Christ will raise up seven and eight, that is, many princes both ecclesiastical and secular, who will resist them, defeat them, and cast them down.
Such were SS. Peter and Paul contending with Simon Magus and Nero, and defeating them. St. John and St. Clement with Domitian, St. Ignatius and St. Dionysius with Trajan, St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian with Gallus and Volusianus. Such again were Constantine, who drove Diocletian and Maximian, the greatest persecutors of the Church, to the noose, and secured peace and empire for the Church; Theodosius, Arcadius, Honorius, Marcian, and the following Christian emperors, who by their own arms, and through bishops by anathema and ecclesiastical censures, struck down Nestorius, Eutyches, Pelagius, and similar heretics at the Council of Nicaea, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople, etc. So generally St. Jerome, Remigius, Rupert, Hugo, and others.
He says 'we shall raise up,' because the Israelites, that is, the faithful, choose and create for themselves princes both ecclesiastical, namely bishops through the clergy; and secular, namely kings and emperors, by themselves.
Christ, once born, through His apostles and successors, will defeat by spiritual arms the kings and princes of the Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, etc., and will convert and subdue them, to such a degree that they themselves, now converted, will also feed, that is, govern, protect, and propagate the Church, as Constantine and his successors did.
Note: For 'they shall feed, etc., the land of Nimrod with their lances,' the Septuagint translates 'in its pit'; which St. Jerome explains mystically: 'Nimrod,' he says, 'is interpreted as descending temptation: for the land of the giant and hunter and one who exalts himself against the Lord is not on mountains, but in pits. Therefore the land of Nimrod has been reduced to its pits: for he who digs a pit shall fall into it.' And shortly after: 'But what Symmachus says: And they shall feed the land of Assur with the sword, and the region of Nimrod within its gates; this is to be understood as meaning that the strong man is bound in his own house, and the adversary is wounded. And according to Aquila and the fifth Edition, he is pierced with the daggers and lances of the seven shepherds and eight anointed men.'
Morally, learn here that Christ is our peace. Hence His type was King Solomon, who was peaceful both in name and in reality. Alluding to this passage of Micah, Paul calls Christ the peace of Jews and Gentiles, saying: 'For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in His flesh, etc., that He might create the two in Himself into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, killing the enmities in Himself,' Ephesians chapter 2, verse 14. See what is said there. Do you wish therefore peace with God, with your soul, with your neighbors? Go to Christ, who is our peace: ask peace from Peace; fix Christ in your mind, and you have fixed peace. For He Himself is the Prince of Peace, as well as the Father of the age to come, as Isaiah calls Him in chapter 9, verse 6.
Again, do you wish for a sign by which you may know for certain whether Christ dwells in your soul? Consider whether you have peace in your conscience. If you have it, then assuredly the author and king of peace is present there and reigns. If you do not have it, then assuredly Christ is absent: because just as the sun cannot exist without light, fire without heat, a king without a kingdom, so Christ cannot exist without peace; for in peace is His place, Psalm 75:3. This is what the Apostle urges: 'Let the peace of Christ rejoice in your hearts,' Colossians 3:15. See what I noted there and on Isaiah 2:4.
this regards. Second, because Nimrod, the first tyrant of the world, was king of the Assyrians; and hence the Assyrians were the first monarchs and celebrated tyrants; hence through subsequent ages this name remained, so that any powerful tyrants were called Assyrians, whether they were Greeks, Persians, or Romans, as I showed on Isaiah chapter 7, verse 17. Thus Judas Maccabeus conquered the Assyrians, because he conquered Antiochus and the Greek tyrants. Hence, third, the Assyrians signify any enemies of the Church whatsoever, such as infidels, Saracens, heretics; likewise demons: for Christ routs all these tyrants, and thus procures peace for the Church, but a peace begun in the present Church: for since she is militant, she cannot exist without wars and struggles: but He will give perfect peace in heaven, where after wars and victories the Church will be in full peace, joy, and happiness, perpetually triumphing. So St. Jerome, Haymo, Rupert, Albert, Hugo, Arias, Clarius, Ribera, and others generally understand this passage of Christ.
Mystically, St. Jerome understands by the seven shepherds and chiefs the saints of the Old Testament, and by the eight the saints of the New Testament. Rupert, however, enumerates them individually thus: The seven shepherds of the faithful, he says, were Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and David: but the eight chiefs were eight judges, that is, princes and saviors of Israel, namely Joshua, Caleb, Othniel, Ehud, Barak, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson. But these lived long before Micah; and Micah promises these shepherds and chiefs for the future. For he says: 'We shall raise up,' etc.
Mystically also St. Ambrose, in his commentary on Genesis addressed to Horontianus, narration 2, explains thus: 'The seven shepherds,' he says, 'are the precepts of the law, by which the flock, still as it were irrational, was led and governed through the desert by the rod of Moses. The eight bites of men are the commandments of the Gospel and the words of the Lord's mouth. For with the heart one believes unto justice, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Good bites, through which we have tasted the gift of eternal life, devouring the remission of sins in the body of Christ. In the Old Testament there was the bitter bite of death, therefore it was said: Death prevailing has devoured. In the New Testament there is the sweet bite of life, which has swallowed up death. Therefore the Apostle says: Death is swallowed up in its victory. Where is, O death, your victory? Where is, O death, your sting?'
Verse 6
6. And they shall feed the land of Assur with the sword, and the land of Nimrod with their lances. — The land of Assur is Nineveh and Assyria, so called from its first inhabitant Assur, the son of Shem. The land of Nimrod is Babylon: for there Nimrod the tyrant began to reign, as I said above. The meaning is, as if to say: Cyrus shall feed, that is, shall rule and conquer with his swords and lances Assyria and Babylon. Again, when the Assyrian Sennacherib comes into our land, Isaiah, Hezekiah, etc., shall defeat him through an angel. Furthermore, Christ once born, through His apostles and successors, shall defeat with spiritual arms the kings and princes of the Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, etc., and shall convert and subdue them, to such a degree that they themselves, now converted, shall also feed, that is, govern, protect, and propagate the Church, as Constantine and his successors did.
Verse 7
7. And the remnants of Jacob shall be, — as if to say: The Apostles and those similarly believing in Christ, though few and as it were the remnants of the Jews, shall be like a most welcome rain and dew, who by their divine doctrine and holiness of life shall make fruitful the earth, that is, earthly men: the earth, I say, which does not await a man, that is, the hand and work of man irrigating it, but of God and heavenly grace, as if to say: God, with His heavenly light and grace, at the preaching of the Apostles, falling upon the minds of the hearers and gently and sweetly bedewing them, shall make them fruitful in virtues and good works. So St. Jerome: 'For the hearts of the peoples were burning,' he says, 'with the fiery darts of the devil. And all the nations committing adultery against God had hearts like an oven kindled with fire. Hence the dew falling from the Lord became the healing of the sick,' as it was for the three youths in the Babylonian furnace, Daniel chapter 3.
As drops upon the grass. — So also Aquila, Theodotion, and the Chaldean, who has: 'As drops of the latter rain upon the grass.' Hence it is surprising that the Septuagint translates: 'As lambs upon the pasture,' especially since not sheep but dew was mentioned before; yet it is a fitting simile: for the Apostles by their lamb-like innocence, purity, modesty, and cleanness fell upon the minds of men, just as lambs settle upon the grass. Hence Christ: 'Behold,' He says, 'I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves,' Matthew 10:16.
Verse 8
8. As a lion among the beasts, — as a lion among wild animals, as if to say: The Apostles, like most powerful lions, shall subject to the Gospel any infidels whatsoever, so that no one can resist them: and those obstinate in their infidelity they shall strike down with threats and miraculous plagues, as Paul blinded Elymas the magician, and Peter, casting down Simon who was flying through the air, broke his legs. By the dew is signified the sweetness, by the lion the strength and efficacy of the Apostles, of the Gospel, and of the grace of Christ. For this is the best governance, in which sweetness is mixed with strength and efficacy. For God's providence uses this in the governance of the world, which 'reaches from end to end mightily, and disposes all things sweetly,' Wisdom 8:1.
So St. Jerome, Theodoret, Haymo, Rupert, Lyranus, Vatablus, and others. He alludes to and in passing touches upon Judas and the Maccabees, who like lions subdued the enemies of Israel. For of Judas it is said in 1 Maccabees 3:4: 'He was made like a lion in his deeds, and like a lion's cub roaring in the hunt.' And of the Maccabees, book 2, chapter 11: 'Rushing upon the enemies with the impetuosity of lions, they overthrew them'; for 'the lion, mightiest of beasts, will not be frightened at the approach of any,' Proverbs 30:30. Hear Silius Italicus, book 12, comparing the consul Paulus to a lion:
Paulus, when he sees the adverse battle intensify, Like a wild beast which, when darts surround it, of its own accord Leaps upon the steel, and through its wounds closes with the enemy, Bears his arms into the midst of the throng.
Thus St. Paul, the Apostles, and apostolic men leaped upon the infidels, such as St. Francis Xavier, Gaspar Barzaeus, Joseph of Anchieta, and other Christian lions of this age.
Verse 9
9. Your hand shall be exalted, — namely, O Christ, O ruler of Israel. For he looks back to verses 2 and 4, where he said: 'And He shall feed in the strength of the Lord, etc., because now He shall be magnified even to the ends of the earth.' So St. Jerome, Remigius, Rupert, Hugo, and Vatablus. Second, 'your,' namely, O Jacob, O Israel. So Theodoret, Rupert, Lyranus, and Arias, as if to say: Your hand, O Israel, in the time of Christ shall be exalted over your enemies, namely the gentiles and infidels. For the Apostles, who are to be born from you, and your sons, shall slay them, so that they perish not in body but in mind and life; namely, as regards their infidelity and former life, which they led in ignorance of God and in crimes. They shall therefore slay in them impiety, lust,
drunkenness, etc., and cause piety, chastity, sobriety, etc., to live in them. So St. Jerome. This victory is far greater and nobler than if they had slain them all. For what is more admirable, what more generous, than to slay enemies and make them friends; to slay infidels and make them faithful; the impious, pious; the unchaste, chaste; the drunkards, sober? etc. This meaning is more straightforward. For immediately before, it spoke of Jacob: 'And the remnants of Jacob shall be among the nations,' etc. And what follows is about the same: 'I will take away your horses from your midst.' Yet this meaning coincides with the former. For the exaltation of Christ is the exaltation of Israel, that is, of the Church, and vice versa.
Verse 10
I will take away your horses from your midst. — He continues to speak of Jacob, that is, of the Apostles and the faithful scattered among the nations and converting them to Christ; that is, of the Church of Christ, which began from the Jews and grew from the Gentiles. Hence he speaks here chiefly of the Gentiles, who were to be converted from idolatry and paganism to Christ and the Church; for the Jews in the time of Christ, indeed not even after the return from Babylon, publicly worshipped idols. The meaning is, as if to say: O Jacob, that is, O Church, which arose from Jacob but was chiefly propagated among the nations, I will take from you all defenses, all weapons, all citadels and fortifications, with which you formerly attacked Christ and the faith of Christ, or resisted Him; and specifically I will take away sorceries, divinations, oracles, idols, and their temples and cities.
For these things the infidels opposed to the faith and the Church, and with them as battering rams they assailed the Church. Hence, second, I will take from you these weapons, because I will give you full peace, confidence, and security in Christ, upon whom you will lean securely and rest in His protection, and will not trust in former weapons and other human aids; since, having found them weak and powerless, you will despise them. This is what He said in chapter 4, verse 5: 'They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. And each man shall sit under his fig tree.'
Third, I will take from you your weapons, because I will cause you to expand your boundaries not by arms, but by heavenly doctrine, meekness, holiness, patience, death, and martyrdom. So Arias, Vatablus, and Lyranus.
Mystically, St. Jerome says: 'O Israel, I will slay your horses from your midst, that is, from the chief part of your heart, the lustful impulses breaking forth and, like horses with broken restraints, running wild; and your chariots, in which you delighted in your vices, and, joining sin to sin, you were carried along as if triumphing in a four-horse chariot.'
Verse 11
11. And I will take away sorceries. — The Hebrew and Chaldean: I will cut off sorcerers from your hand; the Chaldean, from your midst, and soothsayers shall not be for you; for when sorcerers and soothsayers are cut off, sorceries and illusions are cut off: just as when heretical ministers and books are cut off, heresy is cut off. In Hebrew, sorcerers are called mecussephim, diviners, meonenim. Hence the Zurich Bible translates 'astrologers.' Meonenim literally are 'eye-watchers,' that is, observers either of times, or of dreams, or of stars, or of birds, or illusionists who dazzle and deceive the eyes, as stated in Leviticus chapter 19, verse 26; for these were frequent among the Jews. Hence Juvenal, Satire 6:
Whatever dreams you wish, Jews will sell them.
And divinations shall not be in you. — For Christ abolished the oracles of the gods, that is, of demons, not only among Christians, but also imposed silence upon them among the pagans; hence Plutarch published a book On the Silence of the Oracles. And Juvenal, who was a contemporary of the Apostles, in Satire 6, asserts that astrologers and Chaldeans are consulted by the pagans because the demons have fallen silent:
But greater trust will be placed in the Chaldeans: whatever The astrologer has said, they believe it reported from the fountain Of Ammon: since at Delphi the oracles have ceased, And the darkness of the future condemns the human race.
Verse 13
13. And I will pluck up your groves, — in which the pagans erected their idols and temples, and there celebrated their sacrilegious sacrifices, feasts, and banquets. A grove (lucus) is a wood thick with trees; called lucus, not because there are lights (lumina) there for the sake of religion, as some claim, but by antiphrasis, because it is minimally bright (luceat); just as war (bellum) is so called, because it is least of all good (bellum) and pleasant. For a grove was not to be cut down, for the sake of religion, that is, of superstition; for it was not permitted to cut its trees; indeed, rather, planted by hand, it was sacred, and consecrated either to some god or to the ashes of some person. A grove therefore was sacred. Hence Virgil, Aeneid 1:
A grove there was in the midst of the city, most rich in shade.
Where Servius comments: Wherever Virgil places a grove, a consecration also follows, as:
In the grove then of his father Pilumnus, Turnus was sitting in the consecrated valley.
For the souls of heroes were said to inhabit groves. Hence Virgil, Aeneid 6:
No fixed abode is ours; we dwell in shady groves.
Hence God ordered the groves, as superstitious and idolatrous, to be cut down, Deuteronomy chapter 12, verse 3, and Exodus chapter 34, verse 31.
And I will destroy your cities. — The Hebrew arim signifies both 'cities' and 'enemies.' Hence the Chaldean, Arias, Pagninus, and Vatablus translate: 'I will destroy your enemies'; yet the Septuagint, our Translator, the Zurich Bible, and others translate, 'I will destroy' or 'scatter your cities,' namely the idolatrous ones, in which there are idols and groves, as preceded; and which are consecrated to idols, as Dan and Bethel were consecrated to the golden calves, Delphi to Apollo, Heliopolis to the Sun.
These cities are therefore different from those of which he spoke in verse 11: 'And I will destroy the cities of your land'; for there by 'cities' he means the fortifications and citadels in which the pagans had their strongholds, as if to say: I will take from you your fortifications, weapons, and all human defenses in which you are accustomed to trust, so that you may learn to trust and lean on God alone. But here he means cities consecrated to gods or idols. Furthermore, God destroyed the cities when through the Apostles He caused them to cease being pagan and begin to be Christian, so that they now lived for Christ who formerly had lived for Venus, Jupiter, and Bacchus, as I said at verse 9.
St. Jerome says beautifully: 'I will scatter the cities of your land. For you did not build the city which the rushing river of God gladdens, Psalm 35, and which is situated on mountains, the heavenly Jerusalem; but that which Cain had built, Genesis 4. Hence they are called cities of the earth, built by earthly works.'
Verse 14
14. And I will execute in fury and in indignation vengeance upon all the nations that have not hearkened. — The Chaldean: which have not received the teaching of the law, as if to say: Those who refuse to hear, that is, to believe and obey the Gospel, I will avenge and punish. Thus He avenged Himself on the Jews, the despisers and murderers of Christ, and destroyed them utterly through Titus and Vespasian. He did the same subsequently to various nations that rejected and killed the preachers of the Gospel; but He will do the same to all on the day of judgment: 'In a flame of fire giving vengeance to those who do not know God, and who do not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,' as the Apostle says, 2 Thessalonians 1:8.
Furthermore, the Jews refer all these things from verse 5 up to this point to their Messiah, whom they expect at the end of the world; after the seven shepherds whom they imagine and desire, and eight principal men, have conquered the Assyrian; for then, with Christ coming, the Jews will be in blessing, strength, and glory, so that like lions they will overthrow and subdue all nations.
But 'let the carnal Israel answer,' says St. Jerome, 'what idols will then be taken away from Israel, which it does not now worship? What groves will be cut down, which it does not have? What cities will be overthrown, which were long ago de-
stroyed? What soothsayers will be removed, whom, since Israel neither has them nor boasts of having them, yet for so long a time the daughter of Zion has been forsaken, and sits without an altar and without priests; and while others eat their produce, they themselves, with dry throats, promise to themselves a future they know nothing of.'