Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
God accuses the Jews of ingratitude: for Jacob, He says, I loved as a son, but Esau I hated. Where then is My love and My fear? Second, in verse 7, He accuses the priests that they offer polluted bread and blind and maimed victims. Hence third, in verse 11, with these removed, He promises to substitute new ones who will in every place offer piously and holily the most pure and most august mincha, that is, the sacrifice of the Eucharist.
Vulgate Text: Malachi 1:1-14
1. The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by the hand of Malachi. 2. I have loved you, says the Lord, and you have said: In what have You loved us? Was not Esau the brother of Jacob, says the Lord, and I loved Jacob, 3. but hated Esau? And I made his mountains a desolation, and his heritage for the dragons of the desert. 4. But if Edom should say: We have been destroyed, but returning we will rebuild what was destroyed: Thus says the Lord of hosts: They shall build, and I will destroy, and they shall be called the borders of wickedness, and the people against whom the Lord is angry forever. 5. And your eyes shall see, and you shall say: Let the Lord be magnified beyond the border of Israel. 6. A son honors his father, and a servant his master: if then I am a father, where is My honor? And if I am Lord, where is My fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise My name. And you have said: In what have we despised Your name? 7. You offer polluted bread upon My altar, and you say: In what have we polluted You? In that you say: The table of the Lord is despised. 8. If you offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And if you offer the lame and the sick, is it not evil? Offer it to your governor; will he be pleased with it, or will he accept your person? says the Lord of hosts. 9. And now entreat the face of God that He may have mercy on you (for by your hand this has been done), if in any way He may accept your persons, says the Lord of hosts. 10. Who is there among you that will shut the doors and kindle My altar for nothing? I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept a gift from your hand. 11. For from the rising of the sun even to its going down, great is My name among the nations: and in every place sacrifice is offered and a pure offering is presented to My name: because My name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. 12. And you have profaned it in that you say: The table of the Lord is contaminated, and what is placed upon it, with the fire that devours it, is contemptible. 13. And you have said: Behold, what a labor! And you have puffed at it, says the Lord of hosts, and you have brought in from plunder what is lame and sick, and you have brought it as an offering: shall I accept it from your hand, says the Lord? 14. Cursed is the deceitful man who has in his flock a male, and making a vow, sacrifices a feeble thing to the Lord: for I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and My name is terrible among the nations.
Verse 1: The Burden Of The Word Of The Lord To Israel
1. THE BURDEN OF THE WORD OF THE LORD TO ISRAEL. — "Burden," that is, a sad and burdensome prophecy, as I have already often said; whose horror he tempers by saying, "to Israel," as if to say: God has placed this burden on my lips, so that I may as it were carry it to Israel, and deliver it to him.
I will set forth and explain. For God loves Israel as His son, and therefore corrects and chastises him with this burden. More aptly and properly, therefore, our Vulgate translates the Hebrew אל el as "to Israel" rather than the Tigurina's "against Israel."
TO ISRAEL. — To the two tribes, namely Judah and Benjamin. For these alone, after the ten tribes were carried off to Assyria, claimed for themselves the ancient and ancestral name of Israel, especially because many from Israel, that is, from the ten tribes, whether left behind or fugitives, joined themselves to the two aforementioned tribes and merged into one nation and commonwealth with them, as I said in my commentary on Zechariah. So St. Jerome, Remigius, Hugh, and Lyranus. Here learn morally that Israel, that is, those strong with God and through God, cannot be any but those who cultivate fraternal union and fellowship; for those are weak and defenseless who, intent on themselves alone, separate themselves from the companionship and aid of brethren and associates. Well known is the saying: "In concord small things grow; in discord great things fall apart."
BY THE HAND OF MALACHI, — that is, through Malachi as a hand, that is, an instrument and tool. The mouth is therefore here called a hand by catachresis: because the hand is the instrument of instruments, as the Philosopher says.
Morally, learn here that he who corrects or chastises you for your vices or errors is Malachi, that is, an angel, and as it were an angel sent to you from heaven by God, indeed bringing you a heavenly oracle and a great gift, who ought to be respectfully received, honored, and loved by you. Therefore he who corrects another should think that he is performing the role of God's angel; and accordingly should fulfill this divine ministry angelically, that is, without anger or any other passion, sincerely, calmly, modestly, gently showing the depths of charity and compassion, just as the angels have compassion on human weakness and ignorance, which they understand fully when they correct people, according to that teaching of the Apostle, Gal. 6:1: "You who are spiritual, instruct such a one in the spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted." See what I have said there. In turn, he who is corrected should think that he is being corrected by an angel, and that this burden of chastisement, even if rather harsh, is imposed on him by God's command, and therefore should give thanks for it; as St. Charles Borromeo used to do, who besides others had formally appointed two serious priests as inspectors and censors of all his actions. For he had given them this duty, that they should continually watch over all his words and deeds, and note if he sinned in any matter, and freely and sincerely admonish him about it, and he listened to them kindly; and when warned of any error, he immediately corrected it: so his Life relates, Book VIII, chapter 16. He had of course learned this very thing from his predecessor St. Ambrose, who, as his Life relates, when warned by anyone, would give thanks to the one who warned him, saying that he had received a great benefit from him. Truly did the Wise Man say in Prov. 27:5: "Open rebuke is better than
hidden love. Better are the wounds of a friend than the deceitful kisses of a flatterer." And chapter 9:8: "Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you." And Ecclesiastes 7:6: "It is better to be rebuked by a wise man than to be deceived by the flattery of fools." On the other hand, the proud, because they are foolish, "when they perceive themselves assailed by rebuke, believe it to be the sword of persecution," says St. Gregory in Book X of the Moralia, chapter 3. Indeed the Wise Man says: "He who hates reproofs is foolish," Prov. 12:1. "The pestilent man does not love him who corrects him, nor does he go to the wise," Prov. 15:12. And verse 10: "He who hates reproofs shall die." And verse 32: "He who rejects discipline despises his own soul: but he who acquiesces in reproofs is a possessor of understanding." This is what the mourning angels proclaim in Jer. 51:9: "We healed Babylon, and she is not healed: let us forsake her." For "he who does not wish to be corrected, does not wish to be set right. And he who hates correction, this is a trace," that is, a certain sign, "of the sinner," that is, of one fixed in sins and obstinate like the devil, Sirach 21:7.
Therefore St. Basil in the Shorter Rules, Rule 159: "He who is of this kind, he says, his company among the remaining brethren is pernicious." Hence the same author elsewhere commands that such persons be separated from the congregation as plagues. The same, Rule 158: Just as, he says, a sick person anxious about the health of his body willingly accepts whatever the physician prescribes, even if the method of cure is bitter and harsh; so a humble person, and one who truly desires the salvation of his soul, promptly and cheerfully accepts correction, however biting and sharp.
Galen wrote a book on this subject, On Recognizing and Curing the Diseases of the Soul, where he teaches that just as the only hope of a sick person for recovering health lies in the physician, so all hope of salvation consists in this: if one seeks and finds a man endowed with virtue and prudence, and entrusts himself entirely to him to be instructed, corrected, and formed, and believes him rather than himself, even if he does not see in himself the defects which the other points out. This is what Sirach 20:4 says: "How good it is for the corrected to show repentance!" So did St. Peter when corrected by St. Paul, Gal. 2:11, and the Emperor Theodosius when corrected by St. Ambrose for the massacre of the Thessalonians, as the Tripartite History relates, Part II, Book VII, chapter 6. In the Chronicles of the Cistercian Order it is narrated that formerly in the monastery of Clairvaux there was this pious custom, that if anyone was warned or rebuked by another about some defect, the one rebuked would immediately recite the Lord's Prayer for the one who rebuked him, as an act of thanksgiving.
I HAVE LOVED YOU. — God contrasts Esau with Jacob, in that He loved the latter but hated the former. By Jacob understand the family rather than the person of Jacob, namely his posterity, that is, the Jacobites: likewise by Esau understand the Edomites, the posterity of Esau. Moreover He says: "I loved" in the past tense, not "I love" in the present, as if to say, according to St. Jerome: I loved the Jacobites of old, when they worshiped Me and loved Me in return: but now when they
turn away from Me, I likewise turn away from them. For "to love one who does not love in return is to waste the expenditures of love." But others better explain דלכי "I loved" as encompassing every tense, as if to say: Jacob I loved, love, and will love. For thus the Hebrews often signify all tenses through one. That this is so is clear from the fact that with these words He rebukes the present Jews for not responding to His love, but repaying love with hatred, as if to say: I have loved you from of old: for just as I loved your fathers, so also I love you their children. Otherwise the Jews would have objected, saying: What does it matter to us that You loved our fathers, when You hate us ourselves? Moreover the love of God is efficacious, and the source of all good and every gift: for from love and benevolence all beneficence is born. I have loved you therefore, and therefore I led you out of Egyptian slavery, I chose you into My Synagogue, I gave the law from heaven, I fed you with manna, I led you through the desert with a pillar of fire and cloud, I gave you miraculous victories over your enemies, I led you into Canaan, I established, protected, nourished, and enriched you; with kings, prophets, and all good things I heaped you.
AND YOU SAID. — The Hebrew vav is conversive, whose function is to turn the past into the future. Hence Vatablus translates "and you will say"; the Chaldean, "that if you say." For hitherto they had not said this, because they had not yet heard from God: "I have loved you"; but upon hearing it they began to clamor and say:
IN WHAT HAVE YOU LOVED US? — By what sign, by what gift, by what benefit have You shown Your love for us? See here the remarkable ingratitude of the people, by which they are not only ungrateful for so many benefits of God, but have even forgotten them, to the point that they do not recognize them; as if God were a stranger to them and had never conferred any good upon them; although from the books of Moses, Judges, Joshua, Kings, and the rest of Sacred Scripture it was established that they had received innumerable and very great gifts from God. This is what the Psalmist reproaches them with in Psalm 77:11: "They forgot His benefits and His wonders which He showed them." To this question of the ungrateful God responds and says:
Verses 2 and 3: Was Not Esau The Brother Of Jacob And I Loved Jacob, But Hated...
2 and 3. WAS NOT ESAU THE BROTHER OF JACOB (and a twin from the same birth?) AND (yet) I LOVED JACOB, BUT HATED ESAU? — So also the Syriac and both Arabic versions, as if to say: I chose and loved in advance Jacob with his posterity the Jacobites above Esau and his posterity the Edomites. And this first, when I said and foretold to the mother, while both were still in the womb of their mother Rebecca, and therefore before any merit or demerit of theirs: "The elder shall serve the younger," namely Esau shall serve Jacob, Gen. 25:23; where note that this hatred of Esau was not proper and formal (for God could not hate Esau before he sinned), but only a lesser love, namely that Esau was placed after Jacob and yielded to him in gifts and was subjected to him. So Gen. 29:31, where our Vulgate translates: "But the Lord seeing that (Jacob) despised Leah," the Hebrew, Chaldean, and Septuagint have: "But the Lord seeing that she was hated,"
Leah; where the neglect of Leah and the lesser love for her than for Rachel is called hatred: for Jacob did not properly hate Leah, whom as a wife he loved and supported. Second, when I preferred the Jews to the Edomites, giving to the Jews My law, Church, temple, Prophets, kingdom, etc., and subjecting the Edomites to them. Third, and most pertinent to the present matter, when I freed the Jews from Babylon, I left the Edomites captive there for your benefit; hence explaining He adds: "And I made his mountains a desolation," etc.
Note from St. Jerome, Theodoretus, Lyranus, Vatablus, Arias, Ribera, and others, that Malachi speaks literally not of the predestination of Jacob and the reprobation of Esau, as if to say: I predestined Jacob and the Jacobites, but reprobated Esau and the Edomites and consigned them to hell; for this is clearly false: because many Jacobites were damned and many Edomites, like Job with his friends, were saved: but he speaks of the preferential election of Jacob over Esau to temporal goods. For he looks back to that promise made to the mother of both, while still pregnant, Gen. 25:23: "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be divided from your womb, and people shall overcome people, and the elder shall serve the younger," namely Esau shall serve Jacob, and the Edomites the Jacobites; which passage manifestly speaks of election to temporal dominion, not spiritual. The sense therefore is, as if to say: I loved you, O Jews, more than the Edomites your brethren, of which I give you this sign and proof: when I had handed over both you and the Edomites to be devastated by the Chaldeans on account of your many sins, I, loving you and preserving My former love for your fathers, shortly after brought you back from captivity and restored you to your homeland: but the Edomites, because they were your enemies, I left in it for your benefit, and their land, reduced to a wasteland, I gave over to be inhabited by dragons. That this is the literal and genuine sense is clear from what follows. From this the Apostle allegorically rises in Rom. 9:13 to predestination and election to spiritual goods, of which that election of Jacob to temporal goods was a type. For just as God preferred the Jacobites to the Edomites in earthly riches, so in spiritual things He prefers and places before them the faithful in faith over the unfaithful, the just in grace over the unjust, the elect in glory over the reprobate. So St. Jerome and others throughout, whom the scholastics follow, and specifically Gabriel Vasquez, Part I, Question 23, Disputation 95, number 45. See what I have said on Rom. 9:13.
Morally, let each person here learn to appreciate God's love and beneficence toward himself, by which he has been preferred to many others in some respect — for example, if he is a religious, he is preferred to seculars; if a priest, to laity; if learned, to the unlearned; if a believer, to unbelievers, etc. And so if each person considers the gifts of his nature and grace, he will find that he has received from God certain particular and proper ones by which he surpasses others; just as conversely in some things he is surpassed by others; so that from the former he may have occasion for humility, and from the latter for praise and thanksgiving. See what I have said on Exodus 25:4. So in each saint in his own way that eulogy of Abraham is true: "There was none found like him in glory, who kept the law of the Most High," Sirach 44:20. And that saying of St. Paul: "Each one has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that," 1 Cor. 7:7.
AND I MADE HIS MOUNTAINS A DESOLATION. — "His," namely of Seir, as certain manuscripts read with Rupert, that is, of Edom: for it is situated in mountains, like the Tyrol and Switzerland in the Alps. He proves that He hated and still hates Esau, that is, the Edomites, from the fact that He laid waste their region through Nebuchadnezzar, so that with the citizens carried off to Babylon and not brought back from there, it became a lair of wild beasts and a den of dragons. So Lyranus, Vatablus, Ribera, and others. For Nebuchadnezzar after the destruction of Jerusalem invaded and destroyed Edom, as I said in my commentary on Obadiah.
Verse 4: We Have Been Destroyed
4. WE HAVE BEEN DESTROYED. — In Hebrew יששנו russasnu, that is, we have been impoverished and reduced to extreme want: so the Chaldean, Pagninus, Vatablus, and Arias; namely through the devastation of fields and cities, which our Vulgate clearly translates "we have been destroyed"; the Septuagint: Edom has been overthrown.
BUT RETURNING WE WILL REBUILD WHAT WAS DESTROYED. — In Hebrew חרבורת charabot, that is, what has been laid waste and deserted; just as we see the Jews, whom we rival, having returned from Babylon to their homeland, rebuilt their houses and cities under Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes.
THUS SAYS THE LORD: THEY SHALL BUILD, AND I WILL DESTROY. — Behold the hatred of Esau and the love of Jacob, as if to say: You, O Jews, have rebuilt Jerusalem and the temple, and I have protected and promoted your building: the Edomites will want to rival you and restore their cities in the same way; but I will oppose them and hinder and destroy their buildings. "Unless therefore the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guard the city, he watches in vain who guards it," Psalm 126:1.
AND THEY SHALL BE CALLED THE BORDERS OF WICKEDNESS, — as if to say: Edom shall be called a destitute and accursed land, a land desolated on account of wickedness; a land which, as it had the guilt of wickedness, so also bears its punishment, to the point that all who pass through it will hiss and mock, saying: How wicked was this land, which God so desolated and, as it were, struck from heaven like Sodom. The word רשער risça, that is, "of wickedness," alludes to רשש russas, that is, "he has been impoverished," as if to say: Edom was a people of risça, that is, of wickedness, therefore russas, that is, impoverished and desolated. For from this שח rase or rus means poor; as if in Latin you were to say: The Edomite was a Cyrus, was rich; let him therefore become an Irus; he was, if not richer than Cyrus, certainly more terrible and more wicked; let him therefore be poorer than Irus. Just as Cyrus, slain by Tomyris queen of Scythia, became an Irus, when his head, enclosed in a leather bag full of blood, heard her mocking: "Cyrus, drink the blood which you so greatly thirsted for."
AND THE PEOPLE AGAINST WHOM THE LORD IS ANGRY FOREVER. — It is a metonymy: for under the cause he means the effect, namely under anger the vengeance flowing from anger, as if to say: The Edomites are the people upon whom God's wrath and vengeance will rest forever: because He will punish them with eternal devastation, destruction, and desolation.
You may ask, how is this true? For just as the Jews, so also the Edomites survived the destruction by the Chaldeans. For the Edomites were subjugated after this time by Simon Maccabeus and his son Hyrcanus, as Josephus attests in Book XIII of the Antiquities, chapters 16 and 17; indeed the Edomites took part in the Jewish War under Titus, as Josephus attests in Book VI of the War, chapter 7. I answer: it is true, first, because their captivity was never revoked by public decree, nor resolved by a general return; because they were all carried off in troops to Babylon, but were not brought back in troops from it, as the Jews were brought back by the edict of Cyrus, 1 Ezra 1:1. Nevertheless some remnants of them remained in Edom and neighboring places, which gradually grew and propagated, with the addition of settlers from other nations who migrated into Edom as a place abandoned and open to anyone: the result was that the inhabitants were not pure Edomites, but a mixed and virtually new people. See what I have said on Jer. 49:13. Second, these remnants of the Edomites were subjugated by Hyrcanus, as I have already said, who compelled them to circumcision and Judaism, and thus turned the Edomites into Jews. At that point, then, the Edomite nation and religion were cut off, and then this oracle of Malachi was fulfilled: "They shall be called the people against whom the Lord is angry forever": because He forever abolished their commonwealth and unfaithful synagogue, and transformed and merged it into the synagogue and commonwealth of the Jews, and made them subject to the Jews, both in civil and in sacred affairs. Therefore when Titus besieged the Jews, twenty thousand Edomites came to their aid, to fight for the Jews as brothers, indeed as fathers, masters, and lords. Finally, after the Jewish War the Edomites were gradually so destroyed that not even their name survives, as the nation, though scattered, and the name and distinction of the Jews does survive: for everywhere the Jews are distinguished and set apart from the native populations. The Jews wrongly take the Edomites to mean the Romans, as I said in my commentary on Obadiah.
Tropologically Remigius says: "Esau and Jacob, he says, brothers generated from one stock, represent the figure of vices and virtues: which two, although they are contraries, proceed from one source of the heart. For because we have free will, according to our choice we either turn aside to vices or to virtues. Esau is the firstborn: because vices come first through infancy, adolescence, and youth: afterward Jacob is born, who is interpreted as 'supplanter'; because the firmer age succeeding corrects
the errors of the weaker age and supplants them. Hence well is the elder brother said to have been hairy and a rough hunter, accustomed to the woods; the younger is described as gentle and simple, dwelling at home. And so under the name of Esau, God is said to hate vices, not the nature which He made good: and therefore He places his borders in desolation, so that all evil may be rooted out and vices may not grow again. But if shameless malice attempts to rebuild what has been destroyed, the Lord declares that He will destroy it again. Which He does in two ways: either when sinners are corrected, or when those who obstinately persist in sinning are condemned by just retribution."
To this George of Venice adds, in tome II of On the Oracles of the Prophets, section 7, number 318, where he asks why Esau is called Seir, and answers: because Seir signifies whirlwind, horror, terror, a he-goat, hairy, a faun (for Seirim are Satyrs), a demon — all of which rightly fit the wicked, living according to the flesh and blood, whose end is destruction, and whose wages are death (as the Apostle says) and hell. The lot of these, therefore, is demonic, fearful, full of horror, pain, and anguish. Hence Christ came to rescue animal man from Seir and lead him to Jerusalem, that is, to the vision of peace. And so Seir and Edom are the wicked, and especially the damned in hell. For of these it is most truly said: "And they shall be called the borders of wickedness, and the people against whom the Lord is angry forever." For the damned are the bellows and fuel of hell, upon whose heads the burning wrath and indignation of God continually presses, and that wrath is efficacious and fiery, vomiting forth conflagrations of flames with which He will burn them forever. Woe, woe, woe to crime and the wicked! May God avert this curse from our necks.
Verse 5: Let The Lord Be Magnified Beyond The Border Of Israel
5. LET THE LORD BE MAGNIFIED BEYOND THE BORDER OF ISRAEL. — He contrasts "the border," that is, the region of Israel, with the border, that is, the region of wickedness, namely Edom, in verse 4, as if to say: Let the Lord be glorified who punishes the wicked and rewards the good: because He devastated wicked Edom and exalted pious Judea, indeed He subjugated the wicked to the pious, and thus made the unfaithful and wicked into the faithful and pious. This was accomplished by Hyrcanus, as I have already said. Hence second, the Chaldean translates: The glory of the Lord is multiplied, for He has extended the borders of Israel, namely all the way to Edom. Third, others explain it thus, as if to say: May God extend the borders and dominion of Israel, so that by the same means He may equally extend His glory and magnificence, and may be known and worshiped by the nations subject to Israel. Fourth, others translate: Let the Lord be magnified beyond the border of Israel, as if to say: May the glory and magnificence of God not be confined to the narrow borders of Israel, but may they propagate and extend beyond them through the whole world. This began to happen under the Maccabees, through their victories obtained from heaven by God; but allegorically it was fully accomplished through Christ and the Apostles. For their sound has gone forth into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. For the true Israel is the Church and the Christian people, who have spread from Judea throughout the entire world. So today true believers, with Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, etc. subjugated, rejoice at the expanded empire not so much of the state as of the Church, and say: Let the Lord be magnified beyond the border of Israel.
Anagogically, as if to say: Let God be praised for the glory, triumphs, and multitude of Israel, that is, of the saints and the elect. For these marvelously praise God because they see that so happy a lot has fallen to them, especially when they see the borders of wickedness, that is, the assembly of the damned, especially of their friends and companions, so punished and burned by God, and that they themselves have been rescued and saved from their lot by the grace of God. So St. Jerome. See the Apostle, celebrating and glorifying God for this benefit throughout chapter 1 of Ephesians.
Verse 6: A Son Honors His Father
6. A SON HONORS HIS FATHER. — Having recounted His benefits to the Jews, God here passes to their offenses, which they ungratefully repaid. He therefore blames and accuses their ingratitude and irreverence. Note, "honors," that is, by the law of nature, divine and human law, he is bound to honor, and if he is truly a son such as he ought to be, he actually does honor. Now honor in this precept: "Honor your father and mother," encompasses four things: first, love; second, reverence; third, obedience; fourth, beneficence and support, if they are in need, as I said on Deut. 5:16.
IF THEN I AM A FATHER, WHERE IS MY HONOR? AND IF I AM LORD, WHERE IS MY FEAR? — For to a father honor is properly owed by a son, to a master fear from a servant — not only servile fear, but also liberal, which encompasses reverence, love, and diligent and exact obedience. Now God is the father of the faithful: first, by creation; second, by preservation and governance; third, by nourishment; fourth, by paternal care and providence; fifth, through faith and grace by which He justifies us and adopts us as children and heirs of His kingdom. He is likewise Lord by the same titles and others: that He has redeemed us, and as it were purchased us with the blood of His Son; that He is the supreme majesty whom every creature is bound to serve; that He has hired us as servants and laborers to cultivate His vineyard, with the promised reward of eternal glory, etc. By these titles God is the father and lord of all, even of the laity. Hence St. Jerome, Theodoretus, Remigius, and Hugh hold that this speech is directed by God to all the Jews, even the laity, and that they are accused of ingratitude, irreverence, and impiety, because they did not respond to His love, of which He said: "I loved Jacob"; but hated the God who loved them, dishonored and despised Him.
Malachi begins his prophecy and correction with the correction of the priests: because the reform of the commonwealth and the laity depends on the reform of the clergy and priests: for as the priest is, so is the people. Indeed in this century, the ignorance and evil life of many priests gave occasion to the heresy of Luther. Therefore Christ also, both at the beginning and at the end of His preaching, rebuked the vices of priests. The author of the Opus Imperfectum teaches this excellently, in St. Chrysostom's Homily 38 on St. Matthew, at the beginning, where he rightly compares priests to the stomach; for explaining the solemn entry of Christ on Palm Sunday into Jerusalem, when He first went to the temple: "And Jesus, he says, entered the temple of God. This was proper for a good son, that upon arriving he should run to his father's house and render honor to the one who begot him, so that you, having become an imitator of Christ, when you have entered any city, should first before every other action run to the church. This was proper for a good physician, that entering a sick city to heal it, he should first attend to the origin of the disease. For just as from the temple every good goes forth, so also from the temple every evil proceeds: just as when a physician first comes to a sick person, he immediately inquires about his stomach and hastens to restore it first: because if the stomach is healthy, the whole body is strong; but if it is disordered, the whole body is weak: so if the priesthood is intact, the whole Church flourishes; but if it is corrupt, the faith of all withers. And the heart and stomach are understood as the priests: because in spiritual matters the whole people is governed through them. And just as the heart is the seat of wisdom, so priests are the receptacles of spiritual wisdom, as Isaiah says of kings: Every head is in pain; but of the priesthood: Every heart is in sorrow."
He explains this by applying the functions of the stomach analogically to priests, saying: "For just as the stomach, receiving food, cooks it in itself and disperses it through the whole body; so also priests receive the knowledge of the word through the Scriptures from God, and cooking it within themselves, that is, treating and meditating on it within themselves, they supply it to the whole people. And just as when the stomach distributes, each member receives nourishment and converts it into itself according to its own nature; for example, what the liver receives all becomes blood; what the gall bladder receives all becomes bile; what ascends to the lungs becomes phlegm; what goes to the breasts all becomes milk: so when priests speak the word of God in the Church, all receive it; but each one converts it according to his own heart, so that the one and same word in upright hearts proceeds to life; but in perverse hearts it stirs up anger, like bile: in others it produces the sweetest love, like milk: in still others, hatreds, like harmful phlegm to be spat out. See therefore, O priests, how you compose yourselves in word and deed. For just as in the body, if some member is weakened, the stomach is not entirely weakened; but if the stomach is weakened, all members are found to be weak: so if any of the Christians sins, the priests do not altogether sin; but if the priests also are in sins, the whole people turns to sinning. Therefore each Christian will render an account for his own sin: but priests will render an account not only for their own sins, but also for the sins of all. He saw a tree with pale leaves, withered, and the diligent farmer understood that it had damage in its roots. For truly, just as when you see a tree withered with pale leaves, you understand that it has some fault near the root; so when you see a people undisciplined and irreligious, know without doubt that its priesthood is not sound." These words I have quoted at greater length, because every one of them is golden from a golden mouth.
Yet that God here speaks more properly and genuinely to the priests is clear from what follows: "Says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests." For the Hebrew has: Says the Lord of hosts to you priests, who despise My name. He says, namely what preceded: "If then I am a father, where is My honor?" Hence the Complutensian edition reads and punctuates so as to join all these words in this way: Where is My fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests. So Lyranus, Pagninus, Vatablus, and others. Where note that priests are called sons of God above the laity, both because they are dedicated and consecrated to God, so as to belong to His family, as it were; and because they ought to be just and holy, so as to offer to God holy sacrifices and prayers for the people: for the holy are the adopted sons of God; and properly, because in the old law the Levites and priests were offered and given to God in place of the firstborn of the children of Israel, whom God had freed from the destroying angel and from death, and therefore had claimed for Himself, Exod. 13:2 and Num. 8:16. The sense therefore is, as if to say: You, O priests, God accuses and blames above all, because although you are His firstborn, particularly loved by Him above the laity and the rest of the children of Israel, and chosen as priests; yet you do not honor Him as a father,
nor revere Him as lord; but you dishonor and despise Him and His worship and victims. For fear here and elsewhere denotes reverence, adoration, sacrifice, and every worship of God: "For he who fears does not scrutinize, but worships, observes, adores, honors, glorifies, praises, commends," says St. Chrysostom in Homily 2 On the Incomprehensible Nature of God.
Hear St. Ambrose on the words of Malachi, at the end of tome II: "If you are a servant, he says, render to your master the obedience of fear: if a son, show to your father the affection of piety. But you, since you do not give thanks, neither love nor revere God. Therefore you are either a rebellious servant or a proud son. He who is a useful Christian should always speak praises to his father and lord, and procure all things for his glory; as the blessed Apostle says in 1 Cor. 10: Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God. See what kind of banquet the Apostle wished the true Christian's to be: that the faith of Christ should be consumed rather than the fattening of lunch; and that the frequent invocation of the Lord's name should refresh a man more than a manifold and copious serving of food, and that religion should nourish the hungry better than rich fare." See what follows, where he beautifully teaches that the Christian ought to give thanks and sing praises to God the Father both in the morning and evening, like a nightingale and other birds.
Hear also St. Bernard in sermon 16 on the Canticles: "Thus He Himself, he says, showed Himself to me as a father; but I did not in turn show myself to Him as a son. With what face do I now raise my eyes to the countenance of so good a father, so bad a son? I am ashamed to have done things unworthy of my birth; I am ashamed to have lived degenerate before so great a father. Lead forth streams of water, O my eyes; let confusion cover my face," etc. And in sermon 83: "God demands, he says, to be feared as Lord, honored as Father, loved as Spouse. Which of these is preeminent? Love, of course. Without it, fear has punishment, and honor has no grace. And honor that does not come from love is not honor but flattery. And indeed to God alone be honor and glory: but neither of these will God accept if they have not been seasoned with the honey of love."
not to eat these, but that they were consumed by fire. Hence they reserved the better ones for themselves, or exchanged them for inferior ones, thinking it better to give the worse to the fire and the better to the belly. Hear St. Jerome: "What does it profit," he says, "if we offer the best? Whatever is offered will be devoured by fire;" this was a pretext for avarice and gluttony. So today we see certain priests and prelates who are splendid at their tables and banquets, but sordid at the altar and in the temple; who use precious tablecloths and Falernian wines at their tables, but torn linen and cheap drink rather than wine at the altar. On this matter Cardinal Bellarmine justly complains in The Groan of the Dove.
Morally, learn here first that to God, as the Author of all things, not just anything, but the best and most excellent things ought to be given. Second, against the heretics, that God is honored and delighted by the magnificence of temples, altars, sacred vessels, etc., because He is greater than all praise, and more magnificent than all magnificence. Famous and magnificent was the sacred table which, as Cedrenus, Baronius, and others attest, the Emperor Justinian erected in the august temple of Hagia Sophia. For it was made of gold, silver, and every kind of precious stone, wood, metal, and all things that the earth bears, the sea, and the whole world. From every precious material he had collected the most abundant, the best, the choicest; and having melted those that flow, he had mixed in the dry, and fashioned the whole into the form of a table: so that the entire varied work was a marvel to behold. Around it he displayed this inscription: "From Your own gifts we offer to You, Your servants, O Christ, Justinian and Theodora. Graciously accept these, O Son of God the Word, who for our sake assumed flesh and were affixed to the cross, and preserve us in Your right faith. And the commonwealth which You have entrusted to us, increase and protect it for Your glory, through the intercession of the holy Mother of God, the Virgin Mary."
Josephus, Antiquities XII, ch. 2, celebrates the table which Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, sent as a gift to the temple of Jerusalem, in order to obtain from Eleazar the high priest the seventy translators who would convert the Holy Scriptures from Hebrew into Greek. For it was entirely of gold, two and a half cubits long, one cubit wide, and a cubit and a half high. It was adorned with revolving wave-ornaments and excellent sculptures. The exterior face of the border was distinguished by beautiful gems of oval shape. Beneath it ran a crown around the circumference, representing every kind of fruit, with clusters of grapes hanging down, ears of grain emerging, and pomegranates interspersed, all made of precious stones reproducing the natural colors of the fruits, and bound with gold around the entire table. On the table itself was carved a meander of great value, varied through the middle with gems like stars, with carbuncle and emerald shining most sweetly. The base was made of carbuncle, a palm's breadth wide, in the shape of a molding; and where the feet rested, it was eight fingers
Verse 7: And you say: In what have we polluted You?
7. And you say: In what have we polluted You? — that is, we have offered You polluted bread, that is, a polluted victim? Note here, O priest, that he who is polluted and offers a polluted sacrifice to God, as it were pollutes and defiles God Himself: because he defiles the table, the victim, and the food of God, especially in the new law, where the victim is Christ our God Himself. Wherefore the Apostle, I Cor. 11:27, expressly declares: "Whoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord," that is, he shall be as it were a slayer of Christ and a slayer of God, just like Judas the traitor. "For when the sacraments are violated, He whose sacraments they are is Himself violated," says St. Jerome.
In that you say: The table of the Lord is despised (that is, contemptible). — Because, namely, you say: The altar of the Lord has now become cheap; and therefore any cheap things may be offered on it. For he calls the altar a table, because, as I have already said, a sacrifice is like a banquet, in which the guest is God: the table is the altar, the food is the victim, the drink is the libation, the minister is the priest. He here touches the root of the evil, and says that the cause of the contempt of sacred things is the cheapness of the altar itself, as if to say: You, O priests, despise my altar and say that it has become worthless, and therefore it matters little what or what kind of offering is made on it: and so you offer on it blind, lame, and maimed victims.
You ask, for what cause and on what grounds did they say the altar had become worthless? I answer first, because of the long cessation of sacred rites: because for seventy years of captivity they had been without temple, altar, and sacrifices. For this tends to produce in the minds of the inhabitants a forgetfulness, neglect, carelessness, and contempt for sacred things, as we saw in the villages of Belgium during the Dutch war abandoned by priests, where the country folk, especially the young and children who had never seen a priest, when they first saw one, stood amazed; or ran away, thinking they were seeing not a man but a monster, or a spirit, as I myself once had occasion to see and experience in that very place. Second, because they saw that the temple rebuilt by themselves did not equal the glory of the former temple, which the old men had seen and the young had heard about from the old, and they thought the sanctity of religion was lacking because the grandeur of the building was lacking, says St. Jerome; whereas on the contrary, "God requires not so much the adornment of the altar as the devotion of those who offer," says Remigius. Third, because the Jews recently returning from Babylon were poor; hence they could not give rich offerings to the priests, who consequently neglected the altar and gave themselves to other business by which they might procure their livelihood. So indeed today we see that when the revenues of churches are withdrawn or perish, the care and ministrations of priests perish or diminish as well. So Vatablus. Fourth, because they saw that God
in width. So great was the subtlety of the art that, when stirred by a blowing wind, it seemed the work of nature, not of art: and the thickness of the table was half a cubit. These and more details are in Josephus.
Mystically, from these examples let us learn to present to God an honored and magnificent table, not a cheap and despised one as the Jews did. We shall do this mystically if we offer to God our soul adorned with every kind of virtue. For the soul is like a microcosm to be dedicated to God, who is the macrocosm; and especially if we exercise works of charity. For by these we furnish a table not so much for the poor as for God Himself: for in this He delights and, as it were, feasts.
Symbolically, Remigius and St. Jerome say: "The victim of God is some good thing, such as prayer, almsgiving, etc. But a victim is blind if the mind of the one offering is not illuminated by the light of truth; or if the intention of the one offering is not pure. The prayer-victim is lame of him who approaches the Lord with a double mind. He is weak who does not have Christ, who is the power and wisdom of God. If such victims are offered, they cannot please God at all, but rather make the one offering guilty." Obedience is maimed when it subjects to a superior the will but not the intellect; the hand but not the mind.
Tropologically St. Jerome says: "We pollute the bread, that is, the body of Christ, when we approach the altar unworthily and, being filthy, drink the pure blood, and we say: The table of the Lord is despised — not that anyone would dare to say this openly, but the works of sinners despise the table of God." Hence the Apostle says of such people, I Cor. 10:20: "You cannot drink the chalice of the Lord and the chalice of demons: you cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons," etc. Again, he pollutes the bread and the table of God, and hurls insults against God Himself, says St. Jerome, who is a teacher and preacher who teaches the word of God, which is the bread of the soul, for the sake of profit or human glory, and flatters the rich, honors sinners, and repels the holy poor, "thinking the table of the Scriptures of God to be the same as the tables of idols and of secular teaching."
Verse 8: If you offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil?
8. If you offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? — So also the Septuagint and the Chaldean translate it interrogatively, as if to say: It is certainly evil, because it is against the law of Leviticus 22:22, which requires a victim that is whole and free from defect. More recent translators, such as Vatablus and the Zurich Bible, translate it affirmatively: "When you sacrifice a blind victim (supply: you say), it is not evil," but good and lawful. Therefore the avaricious priests sinned, who, in order to increase their offerings and their profits, rejected no victim offered by the people, even if it was blind or maimed; indeed, in place of a whole one offered by the people, they themselves substituted a lame or mutilated one from their own flock, reserving the whole one for themselves.
So today Christians sin who, for tithes and first-fruits, give handfuls or inferior animals, keeping the better ones for themselves; who thrust their lame, one-eyed, dull, and unfit sons into monasteries, and hand over the vigorous and sharp ones to the world; who give the time of their flourishing youth to the flesh and blood, and the time of their worn-out old age to piety and God, etc.; who give the better hours to studies and the worse to prayer: for they contemn the majesty of God who place themselves before Him, so as to assign to themselves the better things and to God the worse. If they offered such things and such persons to a prince or a king, would they not be beaten? He who would set before a king food half-eaten by pigs or dogs would be punished; shall he not be punished who offers to God things half-consumed by the devil, and still exhaling something diabolical?
Offer it to your governor (and see) if it will please him — that is, you will surely see that it will not please him, but will greatly displease him, and he will reject your gifts, and indeed be angry with you: for he will think himself despised and held cheap by you, because you offer such worthless things, namely blind, lame, and maimed animals, while reserving the whole ones for yourself. If then you would not dare to offer such things to your mortal human governor, how do you dare to offer them to the immortal God, who is the King of kings and the Lord of lords?
Or if he would accept your face — that is, you and your gift, which you offer turning your mouth and face toward him: for the face is the index of the mind and soul, and represents the whole man and person. For a comely, honest, generous, reverent face deserves to be accepted, and is received with a cheerful and kindly countenance by a prince, and much more by God: but an unbecoming, base, avaricious, shameless, irreverent face is despised and rejected by them, as if to say: A governor and prince will not accept such an avaricious and shameless face that offers him such an avaricious and shameless gift, but will oppose it; how much more will I not accept the same but turn away from it? So of the reverent, patient, and pious Job, God says in Job 42:8: "But my servant Job shall pray for you: his face I will accept."
Verse 9: And now entreat
9. And now entreat. — By these words he exhorts them not ironically, as Clarius and Arias would have it, but seriously to repentance, as is clear from what follows. So St. Jerome, Theodoret, Haymo, Rupert, Lyranus, and others.
For from your hand (so the Hebrew, Chaldean, Septuagint, Zurich Bible, and others: therefore Pagninus wrongly translates: From our hand) this has been done, that is: This crime is not your fathers', but yours; the fault belongs not so much to the laity as to you, O priests (for it is them he is addressing, as is clear from verse 6). Therefore humbly entreat the face of God, whom you have offended and provoked to indignation. So St. Jerome, Theodoret, Lyranus, and others. Vatablus interprets differently, as if to say: From your hands, that is, from the works of your hands this curse has proceeded, of which it is said in what follows, verse 14: "Cursed is the deceitful man who has in his flock a male, and making a vow, sacrifices a weak one to the Lord."
If perhaps He may accept your faces — that is, you and your offerings, as I said at verse 8. Some translate from the Hebrew thus: For He will take away, that is, if somehow He may take away from you His face, namely His angry face, or your sad face weighed down by evils, by showing you a cheerful face and thereby gladdening you. For the Hebrew nasa means both to accept and to take away or remove. Theodoret interprets differently, as if to say: Shall I receive you into grace without repentance and prayer for pardon?
Verse 10: Who is there among you that will shut the doors and will kindl...
10. Who is there among you that will shut the doors (of the temple) and will kindle (the Complutensian edition wrongly reads: will not kindle) the altar (that is, the fire of the altar, and through the fire the victims and incense that are daily burned to God on the altar) for me for nothing? — that is: None of you serves the temple and altar for free, but each receives wages for his labor, and is sustained and lives from the offerings of the altar; why then do you neglect the altar and my worship on it, and perform it carelessly? For if not out of regard for religion and God, at least out of regard for your wages, and bound by the obligation of justice, you ought to carry out this office of yours, for which you were hired at a price, diligently and carefully. So St. Cyril, St. Jerome, and others. Note that the Zurich Bible translates literally from the Hebrew thus: Would that one of you would shut the doors! Do you then kindle fire on my altar for nothing? which our Translator expressed in other words but with clearer meaning when he translated: Who is there among you that will shut the doors, and will kindle my altar for nothing? Others however, with the Septuagint and Chaldean, translate it contrarily in this way: Who is there among you that will shut the doors, so that you would not kindle my altar in vain? — that is: Would that someone among you would shut the doors of the temple, so that you would not burn upon my altar these polluted victims in vain, that is, to no purpose. For those do not please me, but what pleases me is the pure mincha of Christ, which is offered throughout the whole world, as follows. So Theodoret, Vatablus, and Clarius. Hence also St. Jerome notes that the Greek dorean, that is, for free, can be translated as, in grace: "namely," he says, "that they may not have the grace of serving at the altar of the Lord, but be deprived of it." This second meaning fits very well both with the Hebrew and with what follows: and the Hebrew chinnam often means freely, in vain, to no purpose, as in Psalm 34:19: "They hated me freely" (in Hebrew, chinnam).
I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord. — The Zurich Bible: There is no good pleasure in you for me, that is, you do not please me, you are not acceptable to me because of your irreligiosity, neglect, and contempt of sacred things. For the Hebrew chepets means pleasure, good pleasure, delight, and the affection of love and benevolence, which the Septuagint usually translate and call eudokian. "And (that is,
therefore) I will not accept a gift (in Hebrew, ha-mincha, about which more shortly) from your hand." For the old sacrifices were not pleasing by their intrinsic efficacy (ex opere operato), as they are in the new law, but only by the merit of the one performing them (ex opere operantis). Since therefore those performing and sacrificing here displeased God, the sacrifices also displeased Him; and so through Christ, together with the Synagogue, the law, and the nation, they were abolished. The same will happen to Christians. Hear St. Chrysostom on Matthew 20: "First," he says, "darkness will come in the valleys as the day declines toward sunset. When therefore you see the hills becoming dark, who doubts that night has already come? So first among the secular and lay Christians does the darkness of sins begin to prevail. But now when you see that dark iniquity has seized the priests placed on the highest summit of spiritual dignities, who are called mountains and hills, how can it be doubted that the end of the world is at hand?" The same, Homily 47 on Matthew 24: "If some part of a house," he says, "has been cut away, with effort it can still be repaired. But if the very foundation has been shattered, what will the head of the household do, except lay new foundations in some other place, and transporting the stones from the prior location, build himself another house? So also in spiritual matters: if indeed the common people sin, they are corrected through penance; but if the priesthood itself, which is the foundation of the people, has been ruined, what is God to do? According to Christ's words: You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its savor, with what shall it be salted? It is good for nothing further except to be cast out and trodden underfoot by men," Matthew 5:13.
Verse 11: For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name...
11. For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles — that is: I no longer wish to be confined within the narrow borders of Judea; Jerusalem is too small for me, the temple too cramped: I am constrained in Palestine, for I fill heaven and earth. Therefore it is fitting that the whole world be my temple, that all nations everywhere worship me with victims and sacrifices. Wherefore shortly through Christ I will bring it about that my name is proclaimed to the nations throughout the whole world, and that they everywhere acknowledge, adore, and celebrate me.
And in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean offering. — "There is sacrifice and is offered," that is, shortly through Christ and the Apostles it shall be sacrificed and offered: for the Prophet speaks prophetically, and prophesies about future things, as if to say: I do not want, O Jewish priests, your sacrifices; rather I will shortly abolish them, both because they are impure and polluted, and because they are offered in one place by a few Jews. Therefore in their place I will, through Christ, substitute another sacrifice, which will be in itself most pure and most holy, and which will be offered to me everywhere on earth by all nations whatsoever.
You ask, what is this clean offering? First, the Jews answer that it is the prayers which pious Jews dispersed among the nations offered to God in every place. Hence the Chaldean translates: I will accept your prayers, and my name shall be sanctified by your hands, and it shall be as a clean offering before me. But from the text it is clear that this is false. For God here rejects the sacrifices of the Jews, saying: "I have no pleasure in you. And I will not accept a gift from your hand;" and He contrasts with them the sacrifices of the nations, and accepts those.
Second, Hugh thinks it is the offering which Gentile proselytes and those acknowledging the God of the Jews offered in the temple of Jerusalem. But the phrase in every place stands in the way, which Hugh wrongly inverts and explains as if to say: From every place.
Third, Arias takes it to mean the offerings and victims which the nations in the time of Malachi, recognizing the true God from the movement of the heavens and the governance of the universe, offered to Him everywhere. But the nations were sacrificing to Jupiter, Hercules, Baal, not to the true God: for they held Jupiter to be the ruler of the universe. For few among the pagans, such as Job and his friends, recognized and worshipped the true God: all the rest worshipped idols, which are therefore called in Scripture the gods of the nations.
Fourth, Calvin and the heretics, who deny every sacrifice properly so called in the new law, take it as a mystical offering, namely the worship of God through faith, hope, charity, prayer, invocation, and praise, and pious works, especially of charity and almsgiving, or the conversion of souls. The same is the view of Clarius and Vatablus, whom Tertullian seems to favor in Book V Against the Jews: but the same author contradicts them in Book III Against Marcion, ch. 22, where he explains himself, and by the clean offering understands the sacrifice of the Eucharist, and the praises and hymns of God which were customarily sung with it: for which reason he usually understands by prayer and hymns the Eucharist, just as other Fathers from time to time call it thysia, that is, prayer, sacred supplication, liturgy; indeed for this reason it is called the Eucharist, that is, thanksgiving.
But I say truly, it is a matter of faith that this clean offering is the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Whence it is clear against the heretics that the Eucharist is not only a sacrament but also a sacrifice. This is proved first, because the Hebrew for offering is mincha, which word, although by its origin it signifies any gift, donation, offering, or sacrifice, has nevertheless been appropriated by Moses and God to one sacrifice, namely to signify properly the grain offering, which was made from flour or bread, and which is described in Leviticus 2, as I said there. Now this mincha, or grain sacrifice, was a sacrifice properly so called, as is clear from Leviticus 2, and was a type of the Eucharistic sacrifice: for in both, flour and bread are offered, but in the Eucharist transubstantiated and changed into the body of Christ. Since therefore the typical and Jewish mincha was a sacrifice properly so called, it follows much more that the true and Christian mincha, namely the Eucharistic, is a true and proper sacrifice. Hence the Septuagint translates: In every place incense is offered to me, and a clean sacrifice; the Arabic: From the risings of the sun to its settings my name is glorified among the nations, and they bring me victims and incense to my name in every place; the Syriac: In every place they make incense to me, and offer clean oblations to my name; the Zurich Bible: In every place incense and a pure meal-offering is offered to my name. For the pure meal-offering is the grain sacrifice, or the flour with which they sprinkled the head of the victim to be sacrificed: hence from this mola (meal) the verb immolo (I sacrifice) was derived. Malachi alludes to the perpetual sacrifice which they offered daily both morning and evening, in which the victim was a lamb, with the tenth part of fine flour mixed with oil, Exodus 29:38. For the lamb represented Christ, and the fine flour the species of bread under which He Himself is sacrificed in the Eucharist.
Second, the same is indicated by the word clean, as if to say: This mincha will be in itself a clean and holy victim, so that it will always remain clean, even if those offering it are unclean. But only the Eucharist is such, in which the victim is Christ Himself, most pure and the Holy of Holies.
Third, because Malachi here speaks only to the Aaronic priests, as I said at verse 6, and to their table and polluted victims he opposes the priests, the altar, and the clean victim of the new law. Therefore he speaks of a sacrifice not metaphorical and mystical, but genuine and properly so called. For these three — namely, priest, altar, and sacrifice — are correlative, so that where one is, the other two must necessarily be present. For the priest is the priest of the sacrifice that is offered on the altar; and conversely, the sacrifice offered on the altar is the sacrifice of the priest sacrificing on the altar. Since therefore these three truly existed in the old law, which was a type of the new law, it follows that in the new law also there are true and proper priests, altars, and sacrifices, especially because no Church or religion, indeed no nation worshipping God or an idol, has ever been without a priest and a sacrifice. For nature dictates that God is to be worshipped with worship and sacrifice.
Fourth, the same is proved by the word sacrificatur (is sacrificed), for which the Hebrew is muctar, that is, is burned, is set on fire, is fumigated, is consumed by fire. But prayer is not set on fire or consumed by fire, but a victim properly so called is. Hence muctar is the same as "is sacrificed," because formerly every sacrifice was burned to God. But now in the Eucharist it is not burned, but in another more worthy manner it is sacrificed to God, and in His honor is transubstantiated, and by eating is consumed: about which more shortly.
Fifth, the same is shown by the phrase in every place and among the nations. For there is no sacrifice that is offered everywhere among the nations by the faithful, except the Eucharistic sacrifice.
Sixth, the Council of Trent teaches that this passage is to be understood in this way, Session 22, chapter 1, as do all the Fathers and doctors, namely St. Jerome, Theodoret, Remigius, Rupert, Haymo, Hugh, Lyranus, Ribera here, likewise Clement of Rome, Apostolic Constitutions Book VII, ch. 31, St. Martial,
Epistle to the Bordelais, ch. 3, Irenaeus Book IV, ch. 32, Justin Against Trypho, Cyprian Book I Against the Jews, ch. 16, Cyril, Catechesis 16, Eusebius Book I of the Demonstration, ch. 6, St. Augustine Book XVIII of the City of God, ch. 35, St. Chrysostom on Psalm 95 and Oration 2 Against the Jews, Tertullian in the passage cited, Damascene Book IV, ch. 14, and moreover the Rabbis, such as Rabbi Samuel, Treatise On the True Messiah to Rabbi Isaac, ch. 20, and others cited in Galatinus Book XI, ch. 11; see Bellarmine Book I On the Mass, the whole of chapter 10, where he refutes all the evasions of the heretics.
Calvin and Antonius Sadeel, and others who dismiss the Mass, object that mincha is here taken figuratively for pure religion and the spiritual worship of God, by which we worship and adore God in the mind; because, they say, the Hebrew for sacrificatur is muctar, that is, incense is offered, fumigation or incense is burned, as the Septuagint translates. But there is no incense that we offer to God in the new law properly so called, but only mystical incense, namely prayer and the pure worship of God: therefore that is what is meant here. I reply: the root of muctar is catar, which, although it properly means to fumigate, to burn incense; yet often by metalepsis it means to sacrifice: because in the sacrifice of old the victim was burned, and so through fire and smoke it ascended to God: so all the lexicons and all the Hebrews teach. The Eucharist therefore is the clean offering, which is muctar, that is, sacrificed to God. Add that there is an allusion to the old Jewish mincha, on which frankincense was placed, all of which was properly muctar to God, that is, fumigated and burned, according to the law of Leviticus 2:2: for by the frankincense, which by the usage and rite of all nations is burned to God, it was signified that this thing, namely the mincha, that is, the grain sacrifice, was offered and sacrificed to God. Hence also in our solemn Masses thurification is employed. By this thurification, therefore, the Prophet by metonymy understands the sacrifice, of which it is the sign and symbol, indeed a part; but more on this shortly. Now let us examine the individual words more closely.
In every place — because nothing so celebrates and magnifies the name and glory of God throughout the whole world as the sacrifice of the Eucharist, in which Christ Himself offers Himself as a victim to God the Father through the hands of His priests, as I shall show shortly.
There is sacrifice. — The Septuagint, the Zurich Bible, and Pagninus translate: incense is offered; the Syriac: they place incense, they burn incense; the Antiochene Arabic: they make incense to me; the Alexandrian Arabic: they bring me incense. For the Hebrew muctar is a passive participle of the Hophal conjugation, which accordingly can be taken either as a noun, meaning incense, fumigation; or as a verb, or rather a verbal, meaning is burned, is set on fire; the Septuagint took it as a noun, our Translator as a verbal. Here note that the Eucharist is called incense or thymiama. First, because it contains the body of Christ as a victim, burned to God on the altar of the cross with the fire of charity, which like incense exhaled a most sweet odor to God, by which it appeased His anger and reconciled Him to mankind. Second, because the Eucharist is confected and seasoned with sacred prayers, which are incense to God, according to Psalm 140:2: "Let my prayer be directed as incense in Your sight." So St. Chrysostom on Psalm 95: "Clearly," he says, "he interpreted the mystical table, which is the unbloody sacrifice. And he calls the pure incense the sacred prayers which are offered after the sacrifice. For this fumigation refreshes God — not that which is taken from earthly roots, but that which is exhaled from a pure heart." Finally, the Eucharist is called incense because it not only represents but actually contains Christ, who was burned for us on the altar of the cross, that is, roasted by sorrow and love, and sacrificed to God.
Tropologically, the incense is the ardent prayers, sighs, and vows of both priests and faithful, when they either consecrate and confect, or receive and eat the Eucharist, according to what is said in Apocalypse 4:8, that the angels had and offered to God "golden bowls full of perfumes, which are the prayers of the saints." Hence St. Chrysostom, Homily to the People of Antioch: "Therefore," he says, "let us depart from that table like lions breathing fire, having become terrible to the devil, and revolving in our minds our Head, and the charity which He showed us."
Is offered. — In Hebrew muggas, that is, is brought, is led to, is offered, is applied, is brought near. For the root nagas means to approach, to draw near: for the victims and gifts that are offered to God, as it were, approach and draw near to Him, especially the Eucharist, in which the victim is Christ the Son of God Himself.
Offering. — In Hebrew mincha, that is, a gift, a present, which is brought to God, given, offered, from the root nacha, that is, he brought, he gave, he offered. Now the mincha was properly a grain sacrifice, namely of flour and bread, Leviticus 2, which therefore by its very form and appearance was an express figure of the Sacrament and sacrifice of the Eucharist: hence together with it in the daily sacrifice of the lamb, wine was poured out daily according to the law of Exodus 29:40, which repre-
sented the other species of the Eucharist, namely wine, under which by the power of the words of consecration the blood of Christ is placed and sacrificed, just as under the species of bread by the power of the same words the body of Christ is placed. Moreover, with the mincha they burned and offered oil, frankincense, and salt: oil signifies the mercy of Christ, which in this Sacrament and sacrifice He daily displays to us as if new and revived; frankincense, His religion and most sweet fragrance, with which He sacrificed Himself to the Father on the cross, and again sacrifices Himself in the Eucharist; salt, the eternity and incorruption which through the Eucharist He will bring us in the blessed resurrection, as He Himself promised, John 6:55. I have said more about these things at Leviticus 2. So also that the ancient sacrifices of the pagans — who ate porridge and bread rather than meat — were unbloody and pure, that is, of grain not of flesh, Ovid teaches in Fasti I:
What could reconcile the gods to man before Was grain, and a bright grain of pure salt.
And so in sacrifices the mola (salted meal), as it was called, consisted of grain and salt: for the mola, says Festus Pompeius, was nothing other than roasted grain sprinkled with salt; and because the victims were sprinkled with it when ground, it thence acquired the name mola: which accordingly Virgil, Aeneid II, calls salted produce:
And salted grain, and fillets around the temples.
So also Tibullus, Book III, Elegy 4:
And the vain race of men, fearing all things of the night, Appease them with pious grain, and crackling salt.
Again Ovid, Fasti IV:
You may give grains of spelt to the Goddess, and the honor Of crackling salt, and grains of incense on the old hearths.
The same, Fasti I:
Hence I am called Janus, to whom when the priest places A grain-cake and spelt mixed with salt.
Moreover Arnobius, Book II Against the Nations, teaches that grain offerings existed before the knowledge and use of incense: "Incense," he says, "neither Romulus himself, nor Numa who was skilled in devising religious rites, knew to exist or to be produced, as the pious grain shows, with which it was customary to perform the duties of solemn sacrifices."
Clean — first, because the body of Christ, which is offered in the Eucharist, is most pure and most holy, as having been formed from the Virgin by the work of the Holy Spirit, and hypostatically united to God Himself. Second, because it cannot be defiled by any unworthiness or malice of the priests or of those offering, as the Council of Trent states, Session 22, chapter 1. For even if the priest were the most wicked of men, the Eucharist nevertheless always retains its purity and its power of cleansing from itself, that is, from the work performed (ex opere operato). Third, because the Eucharist frees people not only from sins, but from the causes of sins, namely from concupis-
cence, temptations, and passions it purifies, and either removes occasions of sin or adds strength to overcome them.
Finally, there were three kinds of sacrifice prescribed by God for the Jews, Leviticus 1. The first was the holocaust, namely an ox, sheep, or dove, which was entirely burned in honor of God. The second, a victim for sin, namely for its expiation. The third, a peace offering, by which, for peace, that is, for safety and benefits either already obtained, they gave thanks to God, or for those yet to be obtained they prayed. In the new law these three have been succeeded by the single sacrifice of the Eucharist, which eminently embraces these three kinds in itself. For it is the most worthy holocaust to God, by which the supreme majesty of God is worshipped and honored, and it is the renewal and repetition of that holocaust by which Christ offered and sacrificed Himself entirely to the Father on the altar of the cross. It is likewise a propitiatory sacrifice for sins, according to Hebrews 10:6: "Holocausts for sin did not please You; then I said: Behold, I come. In the head of the book it is written of me, that I should do, O God, Your will." And verse 10: "In which will we have been sanctified through the offering of Jesus Christ." Third, the Eucharist is a peace offering, by which we give thanks to God for all gifts received, and pray for those yet to be received.
Morally, learn how pure and holy the priest ought to be, who consecrates, touches, eats, and distributes the most pure offering, indeed purity itself — Christ, I say, the Holy of Holies — which is not granted to the angels. Therefore an angelic, indeed more than angelic purity is required, that we may receive, indeed confect, the Lord of angels. Therefore to the Jews, and much more to Christians, God declared, Leviticus 20:26: "You shall be holy to me, because I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from other peoples, that you should be mine." And Leviticus 22:32: "I am the Lord who sanctify you." See what I said there, and at Leviticus 9, at the end of the chapter. Truly our Thomas the God-taught, Imitation of Christ Book IV, chapter 12, says: "O how great and honorable is the office of priests, to whom it is given to consecrate the Lord of majesty with sacred words, to bless Him with their lips, to hold Him with their hands, to receive Him with their own mouth, and to minister Him to others! O how clean ought those hands to be, how pure the mouth, how holy the body, how immaculate the heart of the priest, into whom the Author of purity so often enters! From the mouth of the priest nothing should proceed but what is holy, nothing but what is honest and useful, he who so often receives the Sacrament of Christ. His eyes should be simple and modest, which are accustomed to behold the body of Christ. His hands should be pure and raised to heaven, which are accustomed to handle the Creator of heaven and earth. To priests it is especially said in the law: Be holy, because I the Lord your God am holy."
Because my name is great among the nations. — The word because can be taken partly in its proper and causal sense,
that is: The reason why the nations will offer to God an offering as pure and noble as the flesh and blood of Christ the Son of God Himself is that they will esteem me and my name highly; for they will believe and profess me to be the supreme and most august deity, and therefore they will offer me the supreme and most august sacrifice just described. Partly improperly and consecutively, so that in Hebrew usage because does not signify the cause, but the consequence and effect, as if to say: From this sacrifice of the Eucharist it will follow that my name is magnified; through this sacrifice I will be wonderfully glorified, and my name also.
You ask: Whence and by what reasoning? I answer first, because the Jews and the Gentiles offered to God, or to their gods, sheep, oxen, goats, produce, and other creatures, to declare that God is the cause, principle, and end of all created things, and that they had received, were receiving, and sought all good things from Him. But Christians in place of creatures offer to God in the Eucharist Christ the Lord, the Son of God, who is the firstborn of every creature. Therefore as much as Christ the Creator is nobler than every creature, so much more is God honored and glorified by this offering of Himself than by the victims of the Jews and the Gentiles.
Second, because sheep, oxen, and goats are not worthy prices for sins: but the flesh and blood of Christ are worthy. Through these, therefore, satisfaction is made equally to the offence and justice of God, and consequently God and His justice are supremely honored, appeased, and reconciled through them.
Third, because through the Eucharist offered to the one and true God, idols and idol-offerings, that is, sacrifices immolated to idols, have been excluded; and consequently God's unity, dignity, and majesty among the nations throughout the whole world has been restored. For they acknowledge and profess in the Eucharist that they believe, worship, and adore no other divine powers that they formerly worshipped, but only the true God.
Fourth, because through this victim of Christ the supreme goodness of God is recognized, who gave His Son to us as Redeemer: and His justice, by which He punished sin with the death of His only-begotten Son: and His wisdom, by which He found a way to save us; but in such a way that at the same time His honor and just vengeance would be satisfied, namely by sending His Son in the flesh, who by suffering and dying in it would make satisfaction to the offended divine majesty: and His power, by which He instituted so august a sacrifice, commensurate and equal to Himself. The same can be seen in the other attributes of God, which became known to the world through Christ.
Fifth, because in the Eucharist "the merciful and compassionate Lord has made a memorial of His wonders," when He "gave food" so august "to those who fear Him," Psalm 110:4. For the Eucharist refreshes in our memory the benefit of creation, redemption, justification, glorification, and all the rest, as I showed at Zechariah 11:17.
Sixth, because the Eucharist is the miracle of miracles, the work of God's works, the wonder of the ages, according to Zechariah 9:17: "For what is His goodness and what is His beauty, but the wheat of the elect and the wine that makes virgins fruitful?" Therefore St. Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy ch. 2, calls the Eucharist "the consummation of all sacraments, the most divine and sacrosanct Sacrament, sacrosanct and most august mysteries." St. Martial, Epistle to the Bordelais, ch. 3 and 4, calls the Eucharist "the communion of the living God, the divine table, and food in perfect faith entirely heavenly." Irenaeus, Book IV, ch. 32, calls it "the new offering of the New Testament;" St. Cyprian, in his book On the Supper of the Lord, "inconsumable food;" Optatus of Milevis, "the pledge of eternal salvation, the protection of faith, the hope of resurrection;" St. Ephrem, in his book On the Nature of God Not to Be Scrutinized, "immortal fire: This indeed," he says, "exceeds all admiration, all thought, and all speech, what our only-begotten Son Christ the Savior did for us: He granted me fire and spirit to eat and drink, namely His body and blood." St. Chrysostom, Homily 14 on I Corinthians: "When I say blessing," he says, "I mean the Eucharist, and in saying Eucharist I open the entire treasury of God's benevolence. For with the chalice we have obtained the unspeakable benefits of God," etc. St. Cyril, Catechesis 4, says that through the Eucharist we become "Christ-bearers, and partakers of the divine nature."
Seventh, because through the Eucharist both the priest and those offering and assisting, indeed all the faithful of the entire Church, participate in the blood, redemption, and all the merits of Christ. Again, through it all grace with its source and author, namely Christ, is channeled to us. Hence truly and wisely our Thomas the God-taught, Imitation of Christ Book IV, ch. 5, says: "When the priest celebrates, he honors God, gladdens the angels, builds up the Church, helps the living, grants rest to the dead, and makes himself a partaker of all good things." Is this not the great glory of God's name, the great praise and glorification of God? Hence it is called the Eucharist, because it is itself the supreme thanksgiving. For we can render nothing greater to God for the natural and supernatural benefits we have received than Christ Himself: for Christ equals all other benefits of God, indeed surpasses them immeasurably. Hence St. Chrysostom, Book VI On the Priesthood: "At that time," he says, "angels attend upon the priest, and the whole order of heavenly powers raises its voice, and the place near the altar is filled with choirs of angels in honor of Him who is sacrificed." He confirms this by the vision of a holy man, who asserted that during Mass he saw a multitude of angels clothed in shining garments, surrounding the altar itself, with heads so bowed, as if one were to see soldiers standing in the presence of the king." The same, Homily On the Eucharist at the Dedication: "The Lamb of God," he says, "is sacrificed, the Seraphim stand by, covering their faces with six wings." The same, Homily 24
on I Corinthians: "While we are in this life, this mystery causes heaven to be earth for us. Ascend therefore to the gates of heaven, or rather not of heaven, but of the heaven of heavens, and then you will behold what I say. For what is worthy of the highest honor, I will show you on earth, etc. For I show you not angels, nor archangels, not the heavens, not the heavens of heavens; but the very Lord of all these." The same, Book III On the Priesthood: "Who then, who is not insane and has not lost his senses, could disdain and despise this most awesome and venerable mystery?" St. Gregory, Dialogues IV, ch. 58: "Who," he says, "among the faithful could doubt that at the very hour of sacrifice, at the voice of the priest, the heavens are opened, that in that mystery of Jesus Christ choirs of angels are present, the highest is joined to the lowest, earthly things are united to heavenly things, and one thing is made from the visible and the invisible?"
Eighth, because in the Eucharist the highest faith, hope, charity, religion, and all the other virtues by which we worship and glorify God are exercised. Faith, because we believe God saying that His body is truly there, even though sight, taste, touch, and all the senses judge the contrary, namely that it is bread and wine. Hope, for what shall we not hope from a God whom we believe gives us His Son as food and sacrifice? Charity, for who would not be set ablaze by it, thinking of the immense love of God and of Christ for us, by which He gives and communicates His whole self to us? Religion, for who would not worship with the utmost veneration a God whom he believes and sees to be present? And so with the rest. And this was one of the chief reasons why God instituted the Eucharist, namely to give an object and matter for exercising all the virtues, so that by them we might worship and honor Him. Finally, the Eucharist is the manna having in itself every delight and every sweetness of taste, and therefore magnificently celebrating and proclaiming God the Giver, and as it were crying with a mute voice: "He gave them bread from heaven: man ate the bread of angels. O how sweet is Your Spirit, O Lord, who to demonstrate Your sweetness to Your children, filling the hungry with good things from the most sweet bread provided from heaven, and sending away the fastidious rich empty!" as the Church sings.
The priest, therefore, about to go to the altar, should consider how great is the work he approaches. Let him consider and stand amazed that he is the ambassador of the Church, indeed of the whole world, to God, to transact the highest affairs with Him, namely: to render homage to God in the name of every creature, and a doxology and thanksgiving for all benefits received by every creature; to pray and propitiate God for the sins of the whole world; to obtain liberation, pardon, and grace for sinners about to fall into hell; to represent to God the illnesses, temptations, and afflictions of all the afflicted, and to ask for help; to obtain for each of the faithful the grace of God, the increase of virtues, and all good things; to pray for the dead, and to supplicate for the many thousands of souls who are burning in Purgatory. Finally, to be the mediator between God and men, and to assume the very person of Christ, and to repeat that same sacrifice which Christ offered on the cross, where He was both victim and priest. Who, considering these things, would not be struck with awe, would not stand amazed, would not be set on fire?
Verse 12: And you have profaned it in that you say : The table of the Lo...
12. And you have profaned it (namely, you have made my name vile and as it were polluted) in that you say (not so much in words as in deed and action): The table of the Lord is contaminated. — The "table" of God is the altar. He returns to the priests of his own age, whom he began to rebuke at verse 5, as if to say: Such will be my table and sacrifice in the time of Christ, as I have just described: But you, O Jewish priests (as I began to say at verse 5), on the contrary treat my altar so cheaply, meanly, and unworthily, and my sacred rites and sacrifices, as if they were cheap, mean, and polluted things; and as if the victim placed upon the altar were a contemptible thing, and likewise the sacred fire that devours and consumes it. So St. Cyril. The cause of this indignity was the long neglect of sacred things during the captivity, likewise the poverty of the Jews, and the avarice of the priests, as I said at verse 7. An occasion for contemning the fire of the altar also was that this fire, after the return from Babylon, was not given from heaven, as the previous one, but was kindled from a thick liquid, as is clear from II Maccabees 1:21. The Hebrew literally has: Its fruit, or its produce, is contemptible, and its eater (for this is ochelo): the fruit of the altar is the victim offered on it; the eater of it is the fire that burns and consumes it. Hence our Translator clearly renders: "What is placed upon it (the altar, namely the holocaust or another victim) is contemptible together with the fire that devours it." Now with different vowel points they read ochlo, that is, its food. Hence they translate: Its fruit is contemptible, its food, that is: The fruit of God's table, which is the food placed upon it for God, namely the victim placed on the altar, is contemptible. Hence the Chaldean translates: The table of the Lord is despised, and its gifts are despised; and the Zurich Bible: Its produce, namely its food, is cheap: because the fat of the victim and the entrails, which are burned to God on the altar, are cheap and vile things, says Vatablus. St. Jerome interprets differently: The fruit, he says, or produce of the altar is the fire (for this is born, as it were, from the altar and comes forth); but the food of the fire is the victims, as if to say: The fire of the altar is cheap, because the victims that it devours as food are cheap.
Verse 13: And you said: Behold, it is from labor : and you puffed it away
13. And you said: Behold, it is from labor (the Septuagint: these things are from affliction, that is: You cast the blame for why my altar and sacrifice are cheap and sordid upon your labors: for you excuse yourselves by your poverty and hardships, and say that having recently returned from the Babylonian captivity with great toil and expense, through all your labor you can barely acquire and offer such trifles, and such cheap things): and (while you say these things) you puffed it away — that is, you made it worthy of my puffing away. So St. Jerome, Remigius, Albert, and Lyranus.
Cyril adds, as if to say: This victim has become thin, maimed, or lame not from its own nature, but from the labor of the journey.
More recent interpreters — Rabbi David, Pagninus, and Vatablus — take it differently: for instead of metelaa with tsere, meaning from labor, as the Septuagint, the Chaldean, and our Translator read, they read mattelaa, and translate it: behold, the labor; or rather, as Rabbi Abraham explains, mattelaa is compounded from ma telaa, meaning what labor, as if to say: O how much labor I endured in bringing this victim! How burdensome it was to me and my shoulders! How exhausted and out of breath I am from carrying it! How heavy, fat, and plump this victim was for me! Hence Pagninus translates: behold, the labor, and you cast it down, as if to say: You throw the victim to the ground, as if to relieve yourselves of its weight by which you were burdened, and so, as our Translator renders, you puffed it away, as if breathless, drawing in breath by blowing. So they say, but they lie: for their victim is so cheap, thin, and meager that it could be puffed away and driven off by a breath, indeed killed, and it forces them to blow out and expire their thin breath. The Septuagint in the Roman edition translates: I puffed it away (although in the Royal edition it reads: you puffed it away, and so St. Jerome and Theodoret read) by antithesis and a play on contrasting meanings, as if to say: You puffed and sighed under the excessive weight; but I, as being a most light and worthless thing, puff it away, repel it with a light breath, reject it, and indeed abominate it. So the parasite in Plautus flatters the boastful soldier, saying: "Whose legions you blew away with your breath, like the wind does leaves." St. Jerome adds: "In the Hebrew it can be read: And you puffed me away (reading oti, that is, me: but now all read oto, that is, him), as if to say: You did not do injury to the sacrifice, but to me;" for you silently mocked me, puffed me away, and hissed at me.
Note that these words are addressed more to the people than to the priests. For just as he previously rebuked the carelessness of the priests in sacred matters, so here he rebukes the same in the people, who customarily followed their priests in wickedness and avarice, indeed led them. Hence he adds concerning the people, saying: "Cursed is the deceitful man who has in his flock a male, and making a vow, sacrifices a weak one to the Lord." So St. Jerome, Remigius, Hugh, Lyranus, although some, such as a Castro and Sanchez, think the discourse to the priests continues here. For he goes on speaking to them at the beginning of the next chapter. Let us say that both are blamed here.
From plunder. — God refutes the false excuse of the people, as if to say: You say that through your own labor you acquired these victims, such as they are. You lie: for you procured them by plunder, you seized them; and from the plundered ones you offered me the lame and sickly, while reserving the whole, fat, and healthy ones for yourselves. Your crime is therefore twofold, indeed threefold: first, plunder; second, irreverence and irreligion; third, lying. Shall I tolerate this wickedness? Shall I accept so foul and sordid a gift from your hand? Far from it. So St. Jerome, Remigius, Albert, and Lyranus.
Verse 14: Cursed is the deceitful man who has in his flock a male, and m...
14. Cursed is the deceitful man who has in his flock a male, and making a vow, sacrifices a weak one to the Lord. — "A male," that is, a robust, perfect, whole, and unblemished one.
Note first, that in Leviticus 22:23, it was decreed that if victims were votive, that is, offered from a vow, they must be perfect; but if voluntary, this was not required, and it was permitted that they be mutilated and imperfect. I assigned the reason there. Here therefore God, according to the law, requires in a vow a male victim, both in the proper sense; and male, that is, perfect: for he contrasts it with weak, or as the Zurich Bible translates, defective; Pagninus, blemished; the Chaldean, corrupted. For the Hebrew mascat, which our Translator renders as weak, means cut off, cut out, maimed, corrupted. So Virgil says in the Georgics:
Burn rich vervain and masculine (that is, strong and excellent) incense.
So Persius, Satire 5:
Beneath a warm breast the masculine bile Swelled, which no jar of hemlock could quench.
So we call wines masculine, spirits masculine, that is, strong and generous.
Note second: In the holocaust alone, as the most perfect sacrifice, God requires a male victim, Leviticus 1:3. Hence in a peace offering, if it is voluntary, He permits it to be female, Leviticus 3:1. I say, if it is voluntary: for if it were votive, that is, owed from a vow, the better one had to be chosen, and therefore a male, as is clear from this passage of Malachi. Hence if anyone had vowed a sheep from his flock to God, he had to choose a male, not a female; the tropological reason for which I assigned at Exodus 1:16, namely that God loves, and therefore wants those making vows to consecrate to Him, masculine things, that is, generous and manly things, not feminine, that is, languid and weak. Therefore the best things are to be vowed and offered to God, and with the utmost zeal, says St. Cyril.
Note third, the phrase if he has, for as St. Jerome says: "If you do not have a male, this curse does not harm you. But in saying this, he shows that they have what is best, and offer what is bad." Therefore a woman dedicating herself to God is well-pleasing to Him: just as a man offering a female sheep, when he does not have a male one.
Note fourth: the word deceitful signifies that the sin here is not only against religion, but also against justice. For just as a merchant who sells his goods to a buyer at a certain price, if he afterwards delivers them damaged and corrupted, sins by fraud, and is
unjust; so also he who promised God a victim, namely one worthy of God and according to the prescription of the law whole and perfect, is fraudulent and sins against justice if he afterwards delivers to Him one that is maimed, mutilated, and defective, and he commits theft in sacred matters, and therefore sacrilege.
Morally, let religious and those who make vows learn here that their vows ought to be masculine; and that what they have vowed must be given to God whole, manly, perfect, and the best. Therefore their chastity ought to be in every part undefiled and whole, their poverty perfect, their obedience manly and masculine. For this is what the reverence of the supreme and divine majesty demands, to whom they consecrate themselves, that they offer to Him the highest, the best, and the most perfect things; namely, that they make themselves a holocaust to God, offering all their possessions to Him through the vow of poverty, their entire body through the vow of chastity, their entire soul through the vow of obedience. Hence St. Basil, Sermon 1 On Monastic Institutions, asserts that he who has bidden farewell to the world has been made a kind of divine vessel; and therefore he must take care not to be polluted by depraved use; and he must guard himself as something dedicated to God, lest he incur the crime of sacrilege; namely, if he contaminates again in the service of common life the body that he consecrated to God.
Hence St. Gregory, Homily 12 on Ezekiel, teaches that religious are holocausts to God: "Those," he says, "who abandon all that is of the world, and set their whole mind on fire with the fire of divine love; these indeed become a sacrifice and holocaust to almighty God." The same is taught by St. Thomas, II-II, Question 186, article 7. Moreover St. Augustine, City of God X, 6: "The man himself," he says, "consecrated and devoted to the name of God, insofar as he dies to the world that he may live for God, is a sacrifice," in which the victim is the man himself, the knife is his hatred and denial of self, the death is the renunciation of secular life to embrace the spiritual, the fire is the love of God, the wood is prayers and exercises of piety, the sacrifice is the offering and consecration of himself through the three vows. So St. Teresa, as her Life records, vowed that in every matter she would do what was best, most perfect, and most honorable to God. Thus they offer a masculine victim to God who through continence slay all desires, as being feminine things of women. Again, those who despise all shame and fear for the glory of God. Furthermore, those who generously endure and overcome persecutions, exiles, hunger, imprisonment, torments, and death for God, as the martyrs did.
Thus the Maccabean mother and heroine offered a masculine spirit and seven masculine offspring as victims for the law of God to martyrdom, she who "exhorted each one in the language of her fathers, filled with courage and wisdom, and joining masculine resolve to womanly thought, said: I do not know how you appeared in my womb," etc., II Maccabees 7:21. The same number of masculine children together with herself St. Felicitas offered to God for martyrdom under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in the year of our Lord 175. When the prefect Publius urged her to look out for herself and her sons by obeying the emperor and sacrificing to his gods, she replied: "Your compassion is cruelty, your counsel is alluring and cruel;" and turning to her sons: "Look up," she said, "O my sons, at heaven, where Christ watches and waits for you with His saints: fight manfully for the salvation of your souls: show yourselves faithful and steadfast in the love of Christ Jesus." Animated by these words, her sons to a man gave their bodies to be seized, and underwent a glorious death for Christ, as did their mother after them. The same number of masculine children St. Symphorosa offered together with herself to God, along with her husband Getulius, all of whom obtained the crown of martyrdom under the Emperor Hadrian, in the year of our Lord 138, to whom is fitting that saying of the Wise Man, Proverbs 31:10, 17, 19, 25: "Who shall find a valiant woman? Her worth is from afar, and from the uttermost borders. She girded her loins with strength, and strengthened her arm. She put her hand to strong things. Strength and beauty are her clothing, and she shall laugh in the last day."
Because I am a great King, says the Lord — and therefore great things are fitting and owed to me, namely excellent and most perfect things, and therefore masculine, not feminine: strong, not weak; whole, not maimed or mutilated.
And my name is terrible. — In Hebrew nora, that is, fearful and revered; the Chaldean translates, powerful. He looks back to verse 6: "If then I am a Father, where is my honor? And if I am a Lord, where is my fear?" Therefore terrible means the same as supremely awe-inspiring and revered. For when reverence is extraordinary, from a deep consideration of so great a majesty it generates trembling, awe, and astonishment. This is the sacred awe of which Virgil speaks, Aeneid I:
And with bristling shade the dark grove looms above.
And Lucan:
In trees there is an inherent awe.
Again, terrible, that is, fearful, as Pagninus translates, and formidable: because He horribly chastises and punishes the neglect of Himself and His sacred things. Hence Zephaniah 2:11 says: "The Lord will be terrible upon them, and will diminish all the gods of the earth, and men shall adore Him each one from his own place, all the islands of the nations."
The Septuagint derives the Hebrew nora not from iare, that is, he terrified; but from raa, that is, he saw, and so translates: epiphanes, that is, my name is illustrious among the nations. This was true in the time of Malachi and the Maccabees, whose heavenly victories made God illustrious and formidable to all nations throughout the world; it is more truly so in Christ and Christians: for all nations celebrate Christ and His God the Father. So Theodoret.