Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
God threatens wicked priests who are negligent in their worship with poverty, a curse, and disgrace, because it is their duty to guard knowledge, since they are angels of the Lord: "I will send poverty upon you," He says, "and I will curse your blessings." And verse 9: "Therefore I also have made you contemptible and lowly before all peoples." Second, in verse 10, He convicts the priests and the people with many arguments that they were repudiating their Israelite wives and marrying foreign women, and therefore likewise, in verse 13, He declares that He will reject their sacrifices. He therefore gives two reasons here why their offerings displease Him: the first is that they are worthless and unlawful; the second is that they are offered by those who are defiled and polluted by marriage with idolaters.
Vulgate Text: Malachi 2:1-17
1. And now this commandment is for you, O priests! 2. If you will not hear, and if you will not lay it to heart, to give glory to My name, says the Lord of hosts: I will send poverty upon you, and I will curse your blessings, and I will curse them: because you have not laid it to heart. 3. Behold, I will cast the shoulder before you, and I will scatter upon your face the dung of your solemnities, and it shall take you away with it. 4. And you shall know that I sent this commandment to you, that My covenant might be with Levi, says the Lord of hosts. 5. My covenant was with him of life and peace: and I gave him fear, and he feared Me, and he was afraid before My name. 6. The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found on his lips: in peace and in equity he walked with Me, and he turned many away from iniquity. 7. For the lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth: because he is the angel of the Lord of hosts. 8. But you have departed from the way, and have caused many to stumble at the law: you have made void the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts. 9. Therefore I also have made you contemptible and lowly before all peoples, as you have not kept My ways, and have accepted persons in the law. 10. Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then does every one of us despise his brother, violating the covenant of our fathers? 11. Judah has transgressed, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: for Judah has profaned the sanctification of the Lord, which He loved, and has married the daughter of a strange god. 12. The Lord will destroy the man who has done this, both master and disciple, from the tents of Jacob, and him that offers a gift to the Lord of hosts. 13. And you have done this again: you covered the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and bellowing, so that I will no longer regard the sacrifice, nor receive any pleasing thing from your hand. 14. And you said: For what cause? Because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, whom you have despised: and she is your companion, and the wife of your covenant. 15. Did not one make her, and the residue of His spirit is hers? And what does the one seek, but the seed of God? Keep therefore your spirit, and despise not the wife of your youth. 16. When you shall have her in hatred, put her away, says the Lord God of Israel: but iniquity shall cover his garment, says the Lord of hosts: keep your spirit, and do not despise. 17. You have wearied the Lord with your words, and you said: Wherein have we wearied Him? In that you say: Every one that does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and such please Him: or certainly, where is the God of judgment?
Verse 1: And Now This Commandment Is For You, O Priests!
1. AND NOW THIS COMMANDMENT IS FOR YOU, O PRIESTS! — He returns from the people to the priests, as to the source of the evil: for he censured their avarice and their neglect of sacred things in chapter 1, verse 6 and following. Let the priests of the new law hear this rebuke of God, and consider it dictated to them by the Holy Spirit, from whom as God rightly requires greater holiness, so He will punish them more severely if they are negligent or scandalous in their office.
Verse 2: If You Will Not Hear, And If You Will Not Lay It To Heart, To ...
2. IF YOU WILL NOT HEAR, AND IF YOU WILL NOT LAY IT TO HEART, TO GIVE GLORY TO MY NAME — that is to say: If you will not obey Me when I admonish you and reprove your sins; if, I say, you will not firmly resolve within yourselves and impress upon your hearts that henceforth you will duly worship Me, and will see to it that My altar, sacrifices and worship maintain their proper dignity, honor and glory, by offering clean, lawful, and worthy sacrifices to Me. Note the Hebraism: "To lay upon the heart," or in the heart, means to impress upon the heart, to apply the heart, to bend and direct the heart, to be carried and to strive by the heart. By "heart" understand the mind and will, and its purpose, resolution and decree.
You will ask: What does God command here to be laid upon the heart? The Chaldean responds: His fear; for he translates: Unless you lay the fear of Me upon your heart, to give glory to My name. For this fear, not only servile but also filial, is like a heavy weight placed upon the heart of a man, which presses it and impels it to submit to God and to obey Him in all things; just as weights in a clock move its wheels by pressing them, and cause the hand of the hours to revolve in the set measure of time, to indicate and show whatever hours of the day. For in a similar way the weight of our heart is the fear and love of God, according to the saying of St. Augustine, Book XI of the City of God, chapter 28: "My love is my weight; by it I am carried wherever I am carried. Just as the inclinations of bodies, says St. Augustine, are their weights. For as a body is carried by its weight, so the soul is carried by its love, wherever it is carried." Second, Vatablus responds that the precepts of God are commanded here to be laid upon the heart, that is to say: Unless you attend to My precepts, unless you apply your heart to what I command you. Where note that the wise and good place God's precepts upon the heart, so that they as it were press down upon and dominate it, and drive it to carry them out: but the foolish and wicked place them under the heart, so that the heart dominates them, and takes them up if, where, and when it wishes; if it does not wish, it thrusts them down and neglects them. Third, it can more simply and easily be said that God commands the priests here to impose the glory of the divine name upon their heart, namely to resolve in their heart to give and procure the glory of God in His sacrifices. For the Prophet explains what he commands to be "laid upon the heart" when he immediately adds: "That you may give glory to My name." For the glory of God is the weight that ought to press and impel the heart of the priest to carry out the duties of the priesthood piously and properly. For the end and aim of the priesthood is the glory of God. Therefore the priest should look to this end and aim in all his actions, and carry them out so religiously that through them God is honored and glorified. Thus St. Ignatius, the founder of our Society, had this firmly impressed upon his heart as the principle and rule of his whole life: "For the greater glory of God."
I WILL SEND POVERTY UPON YOU. — In Hebrew, meera, that is, a curse. Whence follows: "And I will curse your blessings." So the Septuagint, the Chaldean, Pagninus, Vatablus and others. Now, for God to curse is efficacious, and the same as to do evil; just as conversely, for God to bless is to do good. Therefore God's curse can be understood as poverty, disgrace, barrenness, pestilence, and all evils and adversities. Our translator, however, renders it "poverty," both because this was most often and most especially threatened and intended by God against the Jews, and this is what the earthly and carnal Jews feared most; and because the proper and fitting punishment for avarice is poverty — that is to say: You, O priests, strive through avarice to enrich yourselves by stealing from Me the better sacrifices and claiming them for yourselves: therefore I will make it so that they impoverish you: for I will make it so that through them you incur the very poverty that you wickedly thought to escape by means of them.
Let the avaricious note here, especially the clergy, that it has been most justly ordained by the eternal law of God that passions are punished by contrary penalties, and that by the same things through which one sins, by those same things one is also punished; namely that the proud are punished by disgrace, the gluttonous by hunger, the envious by the exaltation of the rival whom they envy, the slothful by toil and fatigue, and consequently the avaricious by want and poverty.
Let them therefore know and reflect that this will certainly be inflicted upon them and their posterity by God, both in this life and in the next. Therefore let them cease to serve avarice, since it will bring them not the riches they seek, but want: let them rather devote themselves to almsgiving, which will win them all riches.
I WILL CURSE YOUR BLESSINGS. — First, that is to say: I will deprive you of the good things I gave you, and which you possess from My blessing; I will take from you the better and richer offerings, because you have stolen them from Me; I will cause the people to offer sparingly, and worse things to you, because you have offered worse things to Me, according to the saying: "He who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly: and he who sows in blessings shall also reap from blessings" (2 Corinthians 9:6). For the blessings of God are fruits, wealth and graces with which He fills us and does us good. Whence He also said before: "I will send poverty upon you." So St. Cyril, Remigius and Vatablus.
Second, that is to say: Upon the people, beasts, fields and houses upon which you, O irreligious priests, have bestowed your blessings, I will curse and do evil; I will afflict and overthrow them. So St. Jerome.
Third, that is to say: I will regard your blessings as execrations. Whence the Chaldean translates: I will curse your blessing, and I will execrate it.
Symbolically, Theodoret takes "blessing" to mean the priesthood, that is to say: I will take the priesthood from you, because you are unworthy of it and abuse it, especially when I shall abolish it together with the old law, and institute a new and holy one through Christ.
Tropologically, St. Jerome says: "Those who abuse their health for lust, and turn their riches to luxury, and disfigure their good reputation by sordid conduct — these change the blessings of God into a curse." Likewise properly of priests: "who flatter sinners, provided they are rich, and pander to their vices, of whom it is said in Isaiah 3: O my people, they who call you blessed, they deceive you, and undermine the paths of your feet."
AND I WILL CURSE THEM. — He repeats and insists on the same thing, that is to say: I will utterly and severely curse your blessings. Second, Pagninus and Vatablus translate: indeed I have already cursed, that is, I have begun to curse, it — namely every one of your blessings; the Chaldean: I will execrate it. God's cursing is efficacious, and the same as doing evil, but that of men is inefficacious: for often those whom men curse, God blesses. Thus basil, says Pliny in Book 29, chapter 7: superstitious gardeners "prescribe that it be sown with curses and reproaches, so that it may grow more luxuriantly. And those who sow cumin pray that it may not sprout." Yet God blesses it, so that it grows abundantly.
Verse 3: Behold, I Will Cast The Shoulder Before You
3. BEHOLD, I WILL CAST THE SHOULDER BEFORE YOU. — For "I will cast" the Hebrew is goer, which properly, as the Chaldean translates, means to rebuke, and by metalepsis to cast away by rebuking, to corrupt, to scatter. Again for "shoulder" the Hebrew is a word which, if you point it zera, means seed; but if you point it zeroa, means arm or shoulder: the rabbis and more recent scholars read zera; whence Pagninus translates: I will corrupt your seed — that is to say: Behold, I will curse your blessings, as I said, because I will corrupt the seed that you have sown in the earth, and cause it to be eaten by worms, so that little or no crop will grow for you to harvest. The Zurich translation: I will rebuke and by rebuking scatter your seed, whether of grain or of children — that is to say: I will overthrow both your harvests and your posterity; I will destroy you together with your seed, that is, with your children.
But the Septuagint and our Vulgate for zera, that is seed, read zeroa, that is arm or shoulder — this being the right shoulder of the peace offering. For this by the law of Leviticus 7:31 belonged to the priest; by which tropologically the priest was admonished to work strenuously, "so that his labor may be not only useful but also distinguished; so that as he surpasses his subjects in the honor of his rank, he may also surpass them in the virtue of his conduct," says St. Gregory, Pastoral Rule, Part 2, chapter 3. The sense is, that is to say: The shoulder which I set apart and gave to you by law, I will contemptuously abandon to you, and as if indignant I will cast it before you, by causing the offerers to hurl the shoulder and the victims into your faces contemptuously and indignantly, because they see you so worthless, negligent and irreligious, handling and performing God's sacrifices so carelessly and irreverently. So St. Jerome, Remigius and Hugh. Lyranus adds to this, who by "arm" understands strength and sustenance, that is to say: The sustenance which you received from the sacrifices, I will take from you: or your arm, that is your strength, I will cast down, so that it may accomplish nothing great or heroic, but may succumb to enemies. Both readings, zera and zeroa, are embraced by Arias and a Castro, who explains thus, that is to say: I will cast down the arm with which you offer Me the mincha, that is the flour of your seed and wheat, and I will indignantly scatter that very flour into your faces.
Third, Aquila translates: Behold, I will rebuke you with My arm — that is to say: With My arm, and with My power, I will cast you down and scatter you. He alludes partly to military commanders, partly to orators who threaten and fight with their arm. For "the arm extended further forward is like a kind of weapon of oratory," says Cicero in Book 3 of On the Orator.
Symbolically, Theodoret says, that is to say: The arm, or shoulder, that is your sacrifices and ceremonies, I will cast away and abolish on account of your neglect and abuse, and I will introduce and establish new ones through Christ and the Apostles. Finally, in the Hebrew there is an elegant play on words between zera and zeroa, and zorati, that is "I will scatter" — that is to say: I will scatter your arm, and the seed scattered by it from you into the field.
AND I WILL SCATTER UPON YOUR FACE THE DUNG (in Hebrew, for emphasis and greater reproach, the word dung is repeated: And I will scatter dung upon your faces, dung, I say) OF YOUR SOLEMNITIES.
By "dung," understand with the Septuagint the stomach, which produces and contains dung: for the stomach in the peace offering belonged to the priest, according to the law of Leviticus 7:31. The sense is, that is to say: Because you offer mutilated, worthless and unlawful victims, I in My indignation will give, and through the offerers I will hurl upon you the stomach which I assigned to you by law, so that the dung contained in it, shaken out by this throw, may bespatter and defile your faces, and it "shall take you away with it," so that you, covered in this dung, may be an object of ridicule and contempt to Me and to all, and be called dung-collectors, worthless and abject, as I threatened Eli, and actually carried out (1 Samuel 2:30). Furthermore, dung is a symbol of the reproach and disgrace with which God will afflict you, when on account of your neglect of sacred things, your ignorance and wicked life, He will make you contemptible and hateful to the people, and when He will punish you with want, famine and war, and hand you over to Antiochus Epiphanes and other enemies to be harassed and mocked. Whence the Chaldean translates: I will reveal the shame of your sins upon your faces.
Verse 4: And You Shall Know
4. AND YOU SHALL KNOW — that is to say: You do not now believe Me when I threaten, but the punishment will teach you — namely "the Phrygians do not learn except by blows." For when you see yourselves despised and punished, as I here predict, then you will know that the commandment about the piety, purity and holiness of priests, and about clean sacrifices to be offered properly and lawfully, formerly ordained by Me in Leviticus, but now renewed and refreshed through Malachi, was issued by Me, that is by your God, for this purpose: that "My covenant formerly made with Levi," that is with the Levitical tribe, might stand firm and unimpaired. For you will see that you have lost the good things promised by Me in the covenant, because you have violated the conditions of the covenant; and moreover that you are punished. So St. Jerome, Remigius, Albert, Hugh and Lyranus, who by Levi understand not the person but the tribe of Levi, that is the Levites, as the Septuagint translates. For God did not make this covenant with Levi the son of Jacob himself, but with his descendants, namely with Aaron, who was first consecrated by God through Moses as priest and high priest of the Jews, and thereafter transmitted the priesthood and pontificate to his posterity, as is clear from Leviticus 8. Whence Ecclesiasticus sings of him, chapter 45, verse 7: "He exalted Aaron, his brother, and his like, of the tribe of Levi: He established for him an eternal testament, and gave him the priesthood of the nation, and made him blessed in glory." So the Hebrews, Theodoret, Vatablus and Arias; the latter two also understand by Levi Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron through his father Eleazar, because on account of his zeal, by which he vindicated God's honor by killing the worshippers of Baal-Peor, God sealed and confirmed by a new promise the pontificate to him and his posterity in perpetuity. Indeed some Hebrews, whom Blessed Peter Damian follows (Epistle 12, or as others note, 11, chapter 2, to Pope Nicholas II), hold that Phinehas is the same person as Elijah, and therefore that he still lives, and will live until the end of the world, as I said on Numbers 25:11. Less correctly Rupert understands by Levi Moses, both because the descendants of Moses were not priests, but the descendants of Aaron; and because Moses did not so much enter into a covenant, as one contracting with God, as he was the intermediary and mediator of the covenant which God made not only with the Levites, but with all the tribes of Israel. Levi therefore here signifies the priestly order descending from Aaron, which as it was a great honor, so it had a great burden imposed upon it, as is clear from the whole of Leviticus, and often the penalty of death if they sinned, as is clear from Leviticus 10:8 and chapter 22:3.
Verse 5: My Covenant Was With Him Of Life And Peace
5. MY COVENANT WAS WITH HIM OF LIFE AND PEACE — namely, to be given to him both in this world and in the next, if he worshipped Me properly and observed My laws and ceremonies — that is to say: I made a covenant and promised Aaron and his posterity a long, peaceful, prosperous and happy life, if he kept My covenant and My ordinances, that is, if he properly and lawfully carried out the duties of the priest. So Theodoret and others. God actually granted this to Aaron in fact: for He extended his life to the age of 123, which was the fortieth year from his pontificate, as well as from the departure of the Hebrews from Egypt, and He defended his pontificate against rivals — Korah, Dathan and Abiram — by swallowing them alive into the earth, and by making the dry rod of Aaron flower (Numbers 16 and 17). The Hebrews apply these things to Phinehas, whom they report lived as a healthy and prosperous high priest for three hundred years; indeed others hold that he still lives; for he is Elijah, as I said shortly before.
AND I GAVE HIM FEAR. — Behold the covenant of God with Aaron and his posterity: for God promised Aaron a long life and peace, that is prosperity, if he obeyed Him: Aaron in turn promised God fear, namely that he would reverently worship and serve Him. For fear here and elsewhere signifies reverence and worship of God. Moreover, he did not have this fear and reverence from himself, but from God: for it is a gift of God and of the Holy Spirit, as Isaiah teaches in chapter 11:3. Whence it follows: "He feared Me, and he was afraid before My name" — namely Aaron, and his descendants Phinehas, Onias, the Maccabees, and other true and good priests. For he speaks only of the good ones.
Verse 6: The Law Of Truth Was In His Mouth
6. THE LAW OF TRUTH WAS IN HIS MOUTH — that is to say: Aaron taught My law truly and rightly to the people with his mouth. This is the second condition of the covenant which God requires of Aaron, and which the priest and high priest must render to Him, namely to teach the true faith, religion, law and worship of God, and to refute every heresy and superstition, and false worship of God. Therefore the high priest in the old law wore inscribed on his breastplate the Urim and Thummim, that is, doctrine and truth. See what was said on Exodus 28:30 and Leviticus 10:8. Weightily the Author of the Imperfect Work on St. Matthew in St. Chrysostom, homily 25, says: "Not only is he a betrayer of truth who, transgressing truth, openly speaks falsehood in place of truth; but also he who does not freely proclaim the truth which he ought to proclaim freely, is a betrayer of truth. For with the heart one believes unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." And St. Ambrose, Book 2, Epistle 47, to the Emperor Theodosius: "Nothing," he says, "is so dangerous in a priest before God, so shameful before men, as not to freely declare what he feels. For it is written: And I spoke of Your testimonies before kings, and was not confounded. And therefore, O Emperor, the silence of a priest should displease your clemency, and his freedom of speech should please you. For you are involved in the danger of my silence, and you are helped by the benefit of my freedom."
INIQUITY — that is, falsehood, error and false doctrine, says Vatablus, and falsity, as the Chaldean translates; add also fraud, hypocrisy, flattery, injustice, and any other iniquity.
IN PEACE AND IN EQUITY HE WALKED WITH ME — namely in My precepts, that is to say: Aaron strove to keep My precepts, maintaining peace and equity with his neighbors. Where note that he who deals peacefully and equitably with his neighbors, this man walks with God, who is the lover, author and guardian of peace and equity. Whence the Septuagint translates: Directing in peace (that is, in peace and rectitude, or smoothness) he walked with Me. This is the third condition of the covenant which God requires of Aaron and of every priest, namely equity and peace, or peaceable conduct, that they may walk in it with God, as Enoch did in Genesis 5:22, and Noah in Genesis 6:9. See what was said there.
AND HE TURNED MANY AWAY FROM INIQUITY. — This is the fourth condition of the true Aaron and the true priest: that by word and example he strive to draw all from an impious and wicked life to a pious and holy one. Therefore St. Chrysostom in Book 3 of On the Priesthood calls priests our parents: "For parents," he says, "generate us for the present life, but priests for eternal life." St. Gregory justly laments: "Behold," he says, "the world is full of priests, yet in God's harvest a laborer is very rarely found, because we indeed take on the priestly office, but we do not fulfill the work of the office. For we receive the fruits of holy Church in our daily stipend, yet we do not labor in the least in preaching for the eternal Church." See more in Homily 17 on the Gospel. And St. Chrysostom weighs in gravely in his commentary on Matthew chapter 23, Homily 43: "Many," he says, "are priests, and few are priests: many in name, and few in deed. See therefore how you sit upon the chair, because the chair does not make the priest, but the priest makes the chair: the place does not sanctify the man, but the man the place. He who sits well upon the chair receives honor from it: he who sits badly does injury to the chair. For you sit in judgment. If you have lived well and taught well, you will be judge of all: but if you have taught well and lived badly, only of yourself. For by living well and teaching well, you instruct the people how they ought to live: but by teaching well and living badly, you instruct God how He ought to condemn you." The same author on Matthew chapter 25: "When the people act well, each one is rewarded according to his own merit; but the priest for the good of all. For he will have a crown for his own deeds, and a little crown for the winning of others." Again St. Gregory, Homily 11 on Ezekiel: "We," he says, "who are called priests, over and above the evils that are our own, add also the deaths of others; because we kill as many as we see going tepidly and silently to death each day. Then the subject dies without you, when he has endured you as one who contradicts the cause of death: for to the dead man whom you do not contradict, you are joined." St. Isidore, Book 3 of On the Supreme Good: "Priests," he says, "are condemned for the iniquity of the peoples, if they do not instruct the ignorant or reprove the sinning. For as it is fitting to reprove the sinner, so it is not fitting to irritate the just." Hugh of St. Victor, Book 2 of On the Cloister of the Soul: "There are three voices of the shepherd," he says, "namely gentle, sweet, and loud. Gentle belongs to the weak, sweet to the dying, loud to the deaf."
Verse 7: For The Lips Of The Priest Shall Keep Knowledge, And They Shal...
7. FOR THE LIPS OF THE PRIEST SHALL KEEP (that is, ought to keep) KNOWLEDGE, AND THEY SHALL SEEK (that is, ought to seek, and in fact will seek) THE LAW AT HIS MOUTH. — He gives the reason for what he said in verse 6: "The law of truth was in his mouth," because, namely, he did what he ought to have done. For it is the priest's duty to know the law and to teach it to others, according to what Ecclesiasticus says of Aaron, chapter 45, verse 2: "And He gave him in His precepts the power to teach Jacob His testimonies (that is, His laws: for these are testimonies of the divine will, namely what God wills to be done or not done by us), and in His law to give light to Israel." So St. Paul requires of Titus (Titus 1) "that he be able to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict," says St. Jerome. Therefore St. Ambrose, Book 3 of On the Faith, chapter 7, calls the Bible, which contains the law of God, "the priestly book," as if it were the priest's own, and to be read by them constantly. St. Jerome notes that it does not say: They shall produce knowledge, but they shall keep it — namely so that they may speak it opportunely and fittingly, giving their fellow servants food in due season, as Christ admonishes in Matthew 24:45 — so that the mouth of the priest is like a salutary storehouse, from which each person may draw for himself what he needs, and which God has stored there for the common benefit and instruction of all. Therefore the Author of the Imperfect Work in St. Chrysostom, Homily 38 on Matthew: "Just as the stomach," he says, "receives food and cooks it, so too priests receive the knowledge of the word through Scripture from God, and cook it within themselves — that is, by treating and meditating on it within themselves, they serve it out to all the people." And St. Ambrose, Sermon 13, compares priests to bees: "Just as bees," he says, "from the little flowers of the divine Scriptures produce sweet honeys, and whatever pertains to the medicine of souls, they compose by the art of their mouth."
St. Bernard writes admirably in Book 2 of On Consideration, addressed to Pope Eugene, chapter 13: "Among laypeople," he says, "trifles are trifles; in the mouth of a priest they are blasphemies. You have consecrated your mouth to the Gospel: to open it for such things is now unlawful; to make it habitual is sacrilege. The lips of the priest, says Malachi, shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth — certainly not trifles or fables. A scurrilous word, which men color with the name of wit or urbanity, is not enough to banish from the mouth — it must be banished far from the ear as well. It is shameful to be moved to laughter; it is more shameful to move others." In particular, St. Chrysostom, in the homily on the man who fell among thieves, says: "Let the priest remember," he says, "that he is the watchman of all, so that he may provide the sheep with healthful pastures, give the lambs the waters of a pure spring, drive away wolves from the sheep, exclude harmful beasts from the lambs, heal the wounded, recall the wandering, instruct the ignorant, raise the fallen, teach all in general and each in particular, and provoke all by the example of his life: let his teaching be twofold, so that his deeds may match his words and correspond to his doctrine: in nothing let him be less who is above all. Let him shine in his charisms; let him be resplendent in his duties. Let him be humble with authority, sublime with humility. Nor should he be better because greater; but rather greater because better. Let him multiply peoples, and by teaching them make them better than when he received them. Thus it will happen that while he earnestly attends to men, he makes the Lord his debtor." Therefore St. Ambrose, in the Book on the Dignity of the Priest, chapter 6, says that priests are the eyes of the Church, so that through them the rest of the body may receive the guidance of light: "For what else," he says, "does the word 'bishop' mean, but 'overseer'? especially since he sits on a higher throne in the Church, and so looks upon all that the eyes of all look upon him. Therefore if this is so, why do you display yourself as a foul mirror before the eyes of all?"
BECAUSE HE IS THE ANGEL OF THE LORD OF HOSTS. — The Septuagint: Because he is the angel of the Lord Almighty. In Hebrew it is malach, or Malachi: "Ezra, the priest of God, explains his own name," says St. Jerome, "that is Malachi (for he, along with the Hebrews, holds that Malachi was Ezra), which is interpreted as 'angel of the Lord.' Now a priest of God is most truly called an angel, that is a messenger, because he is the intermediary between God and men, and announces God's will to the people: and therefore on the priest's breast is the rational, and in the rational are placed doctrine and truth, so that we may learn that the priest ought to be learned, and a herald of the Lord's truth."
The priest is therefore an angel of God: first, because he is a messenger of God to men. Whence the Zurich translation renders: For he is an ambassador of the Lord of hosts. For just as an ambassador announces nothing other than the will of the prince who sent him, and can add nothing to it or take anything from it, so too the priest announces God's will to the people, and can add nothing to it or take anything from it, says St. Chrysostom in Homily 2 on the Epistle to the Romans. And in turn he carries the prayers of the people to God. He is therefore as much an ambassador of the people to God as of God to the people — that is, an intermediary, mediator and go-between: "God," says Tertullian in the book Against the Jews, chapter 9, "is accustomed to call those 'angels' whom He has appointed as ministers of His power." Second, just as angels minister to God, so do priests. Whence the Chaldean translates: Because he is a minister before the Lord of hosts. Whence Plato in the Phaedrus says there is a threefold ecstasy and divine frenzy: first, of prophets; second, of priests; third, of lovers. For nothing can be worthily done by any of these three unless the mind is called away from the body, and is seized outside itself into the ardor and, as it were, frenzy of the beloved thing, especially the heavenly and divine. Third, just as the angels continually stand before God, keeping their mental gaze fixed upon Him, and continually sing His jubilee and praise: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts ("for it is the work of angels to praise God," says St. Basil on Psalm 28): so the priest also ought to pray and sing continually, according to Psalm 137:2: "In the sight of the angels I will sing praise to You." Fourth, because he ought to imitate the truth, sincerity, chastity, purity, virtue and zeal of angels, and to be as it were an angel among men, as a teacher among children, as a shepherd among animals. Therefore Isidore of Pelusium aptly chastises the frivolity of the priest Dorotheus from this passage, Book 1, Epistle 319: "Since the priest," he says, "is called the pattern of the flock, and the light of the Church, and truly is so, it is necessary that his subjects be imprinted by his conduct, as wax by a seal. Therefore if you wish to be a light, pursue scurrility and the impudence of laughter with hatred: lest otherwise you teach many impudence and effrontery. For the priest of the Lord Almighty is an angel: and an angel knows nothing of laughter, ministering to God with fear and trembling." Fifth, the priest is an angel by divine consecration, by which he receives from God a power greater than the angels have. Sixth, the angels have three duties, namely to purify, to illuminate and to perfect, as St. Dionysius says in the Celestial Hierarchy. And "the perfection of angels is sanctification," says St. Basil in the homily On the Holy Spirit. The same are the duties of the priest. For as a mediator, his task is to lead the people back to God: hence it is necessary that he constantly have God in mind and see Him, to whom he intends to lead the people back. Moreover, how one can see God, Plotinus, though a Platonist, teaches briefly and beautifully in the book On Beauty, chapter 9: "Let him become divine, beautiful and godlike," he says, "who is to behold divine beauty." Hear also St. Ambrose in the book On the Initiates, chapter 2: "The priest is an angel who announces the kingdom of Christ and eternal life: he is to be valued by you not for his appearance, but for his office." Socrates used to say that "the mouth of the wise man (such as the priest is) is like the door of a temple," because just as the latter, so the former opens and brings forth nothing but sacred things. Seventh, it belongs to the angels to persevere in holiness and sanctification, says Basil in the same place: for those who did not persevere in it became demons.
Thus perseverance in his work and office is necessary for the priest. If this was true of Aaron and the priests of old, it is certainly far more true of Christian priests, who prepare and handle far more august and divine sacrifices and mysteries. About them there is a golden saying of St. Gregory Nazianzen, Apology 1: "The guardian and champion of truth," he says, "is ranked with the class and order of the angels, celebrates God with the archangels, transmits sacrifices to the heavenly altar, and at the same time exercises the priesthood together with Christ, restores the creature, presents the image to the Creator, and acts as the heavenly craftsman for the world, and — to say what is greater — he is a god, and makes others gods." Again St. Chrysostom, Homily 2 on 2 Timothy: "Do you not know," he says, "what a priest is? He is certainly an angel of the Lord. He does not speak from himself. If you despise him, you do not despise him, but God who ordained him." For the priest in his ordination receives from God alone the power of remitting sins, of consecrating the Body of Christ, of teaching, of preaching, etc. The same author, Book 3 of On the Priesthood: "For indeed," he says, "the priesthood itself is exercised on earth, but it is to be referred to the class and order of heavenly things. For not any mortal, not an angel, not an archangel, not any other created power, but the Paraclete Himself arranged this order, who caused mortal men, while still remaining in the flesh, to conceive in their minds the ministry of angels. Therefore it is necessary that the priest be so pure that, if placed in the very heavens, he might stand in the midst of those heavenly powers."
The same author, in Homily 5 on the words of Isaiah, demonstrates that the priest is greater than the king, and the priesthood greater than the kingdom: because the king has jurisdiction only over the earth, but the priest also over heaven: "For the priest," he says, "a throne has been placed in heaven, and he has authority to pronounce on heavenly affairs. Who said this? The King of heaven Himself: Whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven, etc. And so the priest stands midway between God and human nature, bearing to us the benefits that come from above, and carrying our petitions thither, reconciling the angry Lord to both natures, snatching us who have offended from His hands. And therefore God has subjected the very royal head to the hands of the priest." The priesthood therefore is a heavenly kingdom. Hence the Author of the Imperfect Work, Homily 18 on Matthew, says: "Priests are the vicars of Christ, and Christ: and he who honors the priest of Christ honors Christ: and he who insults the priest of Christ insults Christ."
Fittingly, St. Ambrose in Sermon 5 compares priests to bees on account of three analogies. The first is: "Because just as bees," he says, "from the little flowers of the divine Scriptures produce sweet honeys, and whatever pertains to the medicine of souls, they compose by the art of their mouth." The second: "because just as bees prefer chastity of body, provide the food of heavenly life, and exercise the sting of the law. For they are pure for sanctification, sweet for refreshment, and severe for vengeance." The third: "because as if in a kind of beehive they contain the grace of Mother Church, in which, composing the cells of diverse merits with the sweetest preaching, from one swarm of the Savior they produce many swarms of Christians."
Finally, St. Chrysostom, Book 2 of On the Priesthood: "Behold," he says, "the dignity of the priest. He acts on earth, but his office is contained among heavenly affairs. For not a man, not an angel, not an archangel, not any other creature, not a power, but the Holy Spirit Himself instituted this office, and enabled those still remaining in the flesh to perform the ministry of angels." St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans: "The priesthood," he says, "is the summit of all goods that exist among men: and if anyone dishonors it, he dishonors God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the firstborn of all creation, and the sole priest of God by nature." See more in St. Chrysostom, Books 3 and 6 of On the Priesthood. Therefore St. Francis never allowed himself to be ordained a priest, repeatedly saying that he was unworthy of so great a dignity. And he would add: If a priest were coming toward me from one direction, and an angel from the other, I would leave the angel and run to the priest, kiss his hands, and ask his blessing from him, because he consecrates the Body of Christ and administers to us the bread of life. So also St. Hedwig, Duchess of Poland, wonderfully venerated priests as angels of God, and humbly asked their blessing, as her Life records.
Verse 8: But You Have Departed From The Way You Have Caused Many To Stu...
8. BUT YOU HAVE DEPARTED FROM THE WAY (this way of the law, of knowledge, of truth, of equity and of divine fear, which I prescribed for Aaron and the Levites in verse 5 and following, and therefore) YOU HAVE CAUSED MANY TO STUMBLE AT THE LAW (by giving them an example of violating and despising the law): YOU HAVE MADE VOID THE COVENANT OF LEVI — by not observing the already-stated conditions of the covenant, which I have just reviewed. Therefore in turn neither will I keep or grant to you those things which I promised in this covenant.
Verse 9: Therefore I Also Have Made You Contemptible
9. THEREFORE I ALSO HAVE MADE YOU CONTEMPTIBLE. — For it is just that a priest who despises God should in like manner be despised by the people, according to what God threatened Eli (1 Samuel 2:30): "Whoever glorifies Me, I will glorify him: but those who despise Me shall be without honor." It is just that he who has defiled and dishonored the honor of the priesthood should himself be dishonored, and all the more so, as he has fallen from a higher pinnacle of honor to the lowest depth of vileness and contempt. Thus we see some impure priests become the laughingstock of men, and be reckoned the vilest of mortals, sweepings and refuse.
In like manner St. Ambrose, in the Book on the Dignity of the Priest, chapter 6, and St. Gregory, Homily 17 on the Gospel, teach that the reason why priests and clergy are despised is their own ignorance, frivolity and wicked life. Truly St. Augustine, or whoever is the author, in the book On the Good of Widowhood, chapter 7, says: "Just as star differs from star in brightness, so priest differs from priest in conduct. For it belongs to many to be called priests, but it does not belong to all to be priests," etc. Therefore, in order to guard the pinnacle of their rank and honor, let them honor God, live worthily of their rank, and carry out so holy a ministry in a holy manner. "Let the priestly dignity claim for itself a sober gravity from the crowds, a severe life, a singular weight," says St. Ambrose, Epistle 26. And St. Gregory, Pastoral Rule, Part 2, chapter 1: "The conduct of the prelate," he says, "ought so far to surpass the conduct of the people, as the life of the shepherd is accustomed to differ from the flock. Let him therefore of necessity be clean in thought, eminent in action, discreet in silence, useful in speech, near to each one in compassion, above all others in contemplation, a companion through humility to those who do well, erect through zeal for justice against the vices of sinners, not diminishing the care of interior things amid the occupations of exterior things, not abandoning the oversight of exterior things amid the anxieties of interior things." Finally, St. Jerome to Heliodorus: "The house and conduct of the bishop," he says, "placed as it were on a watchtower, is the teacher of public discipline: whatever he does, all think they should do the same."
YOU HAVE ACCEPTED PERSONS IN THE LAW. — "Person," that is, face or person, as the Septuagint translates; for the most worthy and conspicuous part of a person is the face, by which some please and others displease; whence the former are accepted and the latter rejected. It is a Hebraism: for the Hebrews call the acceptance of persons the "acceptance of faces," for the reason just stated. Whence Symmachus translates: You have revered faces in the law. The sense is, that is to say: You, O priests, were judges of the people, and when you ought to have judged according to the law, and protected the innocent, orphans, wards and the poor, you judged according to respect or acceptance of persons; you preferred the fat, rich and splendid faces of the wealthy and powerful to the thin, poor and abject faces of the poor; you adjudicated the cause and goods of the poor to the rich. But if so, the Prophet would more properly have said: You have accepted persons in judgment, not in the law. For to accept a person in the law means in expounding or executing the law to regard not so much the intent of the law as the status and dignity of the persons — for example, to exempt the rich from the law, and to bind and punish the poor by it, according to the saying of Juvenal, Satire 2: "The censor pardons crows, and vexes doves."
For the sight of a face moves one greatly either to love, or to compassion, or to hatred, etc. Therefore the Areopagite judges, incorruptible, judged by night or in darkness, lest any face, whether illustrious or abject, should move them to any feeling that might pervert right judgment, says Lucian in the Hermotimus. First, then, Vatablus explains it thus: If some question of law is put to you, O priests, you answer with more regard for the persons than for the matter and the truth, flattering the rich. Second, Theodoret: You accepted and sacrificed the victims of the rich, even though mutilated and forbidden by law; but you rejected those of the poor: which is the vice of accepting persons, as well as sacrilege. Third, Rupert: You looked upon the beautiful and wealthy faces of foreign women, and married them; but your own Israelite women you repudiated on account of their plainness or poverty: for he treats of this vice at length in what follows, and on account of it he rejects and refuses their sacrifices and offerings in verse 13. The Syriac and both Arabic versions translate differently, namely: You accepted the law on the surface, which some explain thus: on the surface, that is superficially — that is to say: You fulfill the outer shell of the law before men, but not the mind and meaning of the law — that is to say: You are hypocrites.
Verse 10: Have We Not All One Father?
10. HAVE WE NOT ALL ONE FATHER? — The Prophet passes on to another vice of the priests (for they were the ringleaders in the crime) and of the people of that era, namely that after their return from Babylon they were repudiating their Israelite wives on account of their poverty, old age, toil, illnesses and hardships, as St. Jerome holds — or rather were treating them as maidservants and despising them, as Lyranus holds (whence he only says "you despise," and repeats it three times; and in verse 16, he advises them rather to dismiss them) — and in their place were marrying foreign women, young, wealthy and beautiful, contrary to the law forbidding this in Deuteronomy 7:3, and honoring these as their wives. Ezra, a contemporary of Malachi, censures and corrects the same vice in chapters 9 and 10. Now he uses two arguments for the love of spouses, and thereby for reconciling and restoring the marriage itself. The first is drawn from the communion of blood, namely that they all have one and the same father — either Jacob, as the Hebrews hold, or more likely the first patriarch Abraham: for he is called in Ecclesiasticus 46:20 the father of a multitude of nations. For this is what the name Abraham means in Hebrew: and from him the Jews called themselves and boasted of being children of Abraham. So St. Jerome, Remigius, Rupert, Lyranus and others.
The sense is, that is to say: You, O Jews, married to Jewish wives, are mutually brothers and sisters: for you have one common father Abraham, as well as Isaac and Jacob or Israel, from whom you are called Israelites, just as from Abraham you are called Abrahamites; it is therefore fitting that you mutually honor and love each other with fraternal love and honor, as children of the same house and family of Abraham. Do not therefore be unjust to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, by despising your wives, who are daughters of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; do not rend this union, indeed this unity, of your family; do not prefer foreign and alien women to your own sisters. The second argument is drawn from the community of religion, namely that all have and worship one God, who, although He created heaven and earth and all nations, yet properly created, that is, formed into His Church, His people, His nation, adopted and took to Himself the Hebrews, whom He created as a new and spiritual people in His faith, religion, worship and Synagogue, instilling in them the knowledge, fear and love of Himself, according to Deuteronomy 32:6: "Is not He your father who possesses you, and made you, and created you?" and verse 18: "You have forsaken the God who begot you, and you have forgotten the Lord your Creator." God is therefore the Creator of all by nature, but properly of the Hebrews by faith and grace. So the Apostle says that Christians in Christ, as in a common Father, are reborn, regenerated, and made a new creature through baptism — not a natural but a spiritual one — and therefore like brothers must be most closely united to one another and must love one another, because for all there is "one God, one faith, one baptism" (Ephesians 4:4). The sense therefore is: If the love and reverence of Abraham do not move you, let the fear and love of your God move you: do not apostatize from your God and His daughters to the daughters of idolaters, who will certainly lead you away to their idols, as they led Solomon astray: do not be rebels against God who forbids this; otherwise believe and fear that He will be a fierce avenger of the contempt shown to Him, and a punisher of both lawful and unlawful deeds. Since therefore you are bound to your wives by a double bond, so tight, of blood and of religion, do not break and violate it.
WHY THEN DOES EVERY ONE OF US DESPISE HIS BROTHER? — Lyranus thinks that the hatreds and quarrels are here reproved, by which the Jews were at odds and fighting among themselves: whence to bring them to concord, he said they have one father Abraham, and worship one God of Israel. But the Prophet is not properly speaking here about just any discord among them, but about that which arose from the fact that they were repudiating, or rather despising, their Israelite wives — as the Prophet says — that is, preferring to them beautiful and wealthy foreign women, whom they honored as wives, while they oppressed their Israelite wives and treated them as handmaids or slaves. For by this, not only the wives themselves were offended, but also their brothers, parents and relatives, and therefore they contended with each other in hatreds and quarrels. The sense therefore is: Why do we despise our old wives and reject the daughters of our brothers? says St. Jerome, who therefore understands "brother" as father-in-law: for by despising the father-in-law's daughter, they were despising the father-in-law himself and the other relatives. Again, under "brother," by the scriptural figure of enallage, understand also sister, that is, kinswoman or countrywoman, namely a Hebrew woman. For just as under "man" a woman is usually understood, so also under "brother" a sister. The sense therefore is: You despise your wives, who are your sisters, because they are of the same race and nation, namely Hebrew women. So Arias. Moreover, out of modesty the Prophet says: "Every one of us," not "of you," so that the reproof may be gentler, inasmuch as he includes himself, though in reality he was not guilty of this fault. The sense therefore is: "Every one of us," that is, most of our people.
VIOLATING THE COVENANT OF OUR FATHERS. — "The covenant," namely, that we made with God, promising to keep His laws, among which one is the prohibition of marrying foreign women. By "covenant" therefore understand by metonymy the law, which was the condition of the covenant that the Jews had struck with God: so St. Jerome, Remigius, Rupert and others; especially because, as Arias says, through these wives, being idolaters, the husbands were gradually enticed to apostatize from God, and consequently from the covenant by which they had promised always to worship God, and to turn aside to the idols, superstitions and vices of their wives, as happened to Solomon.
Verse 11: Judah Has Transgressed : And Abomination Has Been Committed In...
11. JUDAH HAS TRANSGRESSED (the covenant and the law just stated): AND ABOMINATION HAS BEEN COMMITTED IN ISRAEL. — He said the same thing by way of exaggeration with other and sharper words. For after the return from captivity there was no other Israel than Judah and the Jews.
BECAUSE JUDAH HAS PROFANED THE SANCTIFICATION OF THE LORD. — By "sanctification," or as the Hebrew has it, codesh, that is holiness; the Zurich translation: holy thing; the Septuagint: holy things — it can be understood first as God's holy law; second, the holy worship of God; third, the holiness of life to which Israel was bound and which it professed, and on account of which it was called a holy nation, namely one dedicated and devoted to God, according to Exodus 19:6: "You shall be to Me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation." Whence the Chaldean translates: The men of the house of Judah violated their own soul, which was sanctified before the Lord and beloved. The same thing is done tropologically by every sinner: for through sin he pollutes the temple which God had sanctified for Himself in his soul, and makes of it a profane shrine, indeed a sacrilegious shrine of the devil, as the Apostle teaches in 1 Corinthians 6:19: "Do you not know," he says, "that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God?" Fourth, the holiness of faith and religion, because through their idolatrous wives they were being led away from the true faith in God to the faith and worship of idols: so Lyranus. Fifth, the holiness of the temple: for the temple is called in Hebrew codesh, that is holiness, because it is most holy and must be worshipped most holily. For sinners by their crimes pollute the earth, and especially the temple in which they dwell — that is to say: God despises your offerings
and sacrifices, as I said in verse 13; because you despise His law, and pollute the temple by your marriages with idolaters. Sixth, the holiness of charity, that is, the bond of kinship and the sacred union of one's own nation, which they were violating by repudiating or despising their countrywomen and taking in foreign women. Seventh, the holiness of marriage, which they were defiling through divorce. So Vatablus. Eighth, and best of all, the holiness of Judah was its separation from the Gentiles, by which, according to God's law, Judah as a people dedicated to God separated itself from intercourse, and especially from marriage, with idolatrous Gentiles; so St. Jerome, Remigius and Hugh, according to Psalm 113:2: "Judah became His sanctification," that is, a nation separated from others, as if dedicated and holy to God, worshipping, celebrating and sanctifying God. Finally, the sanctification or holiness of God is properly that by which He is holy in Himself, and as such is known and worshipped by men. For this is profaned if anyone mingles it with idols and idolaters. Whence he gives the reason and explains himself when he adds: "And has married the daughter of a strange god."
Tropologically, every faithful person when he sins pollutes and violates this eightfold holiness. For he himself, through faith, baptism and grace, has been sanctified and dedicated to the worship of God, and especially the priest and religious, who through ordination or profession is properly consecrated to God. Sin is therefore the pollution and profanation of an eightfold sacred thing (as is clear to anyone running through each of the points just made and applying them to sin), and consequently it is, as it were, an eightfold sacrilege. Whence the Septuagint translates in the plural: Because Judah has profaned the holy things of the Lord in which — that is, which the Lord loved — and therefore carefully commanded and wished to be observed by us. Against these, Isaiah threatens in chapter 26:10, saying: "In the land of the saints he has done wicked things, and he shall not see the glory of the Lord." Furthermore, that the faithful, and especially religious, through faith, grace and vows enter into a marriage and nuptials with Christ, and betroth their souls to Him as brides; and therefore if they violate and dissolve that marriage by sinning, they are spiritually adulterers — this is clear from 2 Corinthians 11:2: "I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." For what the word "I will" effects in carnal nuptials, the word "I vow" effects in spiritual ones. For, as St. Bernard says in Sermon 85 on the Song of Songs: "The loftiness does not terrify when likeness associates, love reconciles, and profession weds. The form of profession is this: I have sworn and resolved to keep the judgments of Your justice." And shortly after: "Therefore when you see a soul that, having left all things, clings to the Word by all her vows, lives by the Word, governs herself by the Word, conceives from the Word what she may bring forth by the Word, who can say: For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain — know her to be the bride married to the Word." Therefore St. Agnes, as St. Ambrose testifies in Sermon 90, said to the young man who courted her: "I am betrothed to Him whom the angels serve, whose beauty the sun and moon admire, whose mother is a virgin, whose father knows no woman: when I love Him, I am chaste; when I touch Him, I am clean; when I receive Him, I am a virgin. With His ring He has pledged me, and with immense jewels He has adorned me. To Him alone I keep my faith; to Him I commit myself with all devotion." This is what God promises through Hosea, chapter 2, verse 19: "I will betroth you to Me forever: and I will betroth you to Me in justice, and judgment, and in mercy, and in compassion. And I will betroth you to Me in faith: and you shall know that I am the Lord." See what was said there.
AND HAS MARRIED THE DAUGHTER OF A STRANGE GOD — namely as a wife. For in Hebrew it is baal, that is, he married, joined to himself in marriage, possessed as a husband burning with love. He calls the foreign woman a "daughter of a strange god," who worships a god — not the true God of Israel, but a foreign one, namely the idol and demon of other nations — as her god and father.
Tropologically, the "daughter of a strange god" is the concupiscence of the flesh and of the eyes, and the pride of life, to which the sinner is joined as to a bride, indeed an adulteress, by insane love. You have heard the guilt of Israel; hear the punishment; and from the gravity of the latter, estimate the gravity of the former. He says therefore:
Verse 12: The Lord Will Destroy The Man Who Has Done This, Both Master A...
12. THE LORD WILL DESTROY THE MAN WHO HAS DONE THIS, BOTH MASTER AND DISCIPLE. — In Hebrew, er ve-oneh, that is, the one who rouses or watches, and the one who responds. The rouser and watcher is the master, who watches in order to seek out, teach and defend the truth, and to rouse, stimulate and sharpen the mind of the disciple, now by teaching, now by disputing, now by questioning; the responder is the disciple, whose task it is to respond to the master who rouses and questions him. The sense therefore is: God will destroy the Jew who, having despised his own wife, marries a foreign woman, whoever he may be, whether teacher or student, whether priest or layman, whether noble or commoner. So St. Jerome. Second, the Zurich translation renders er ve-oneh as: the one who is the instigator, and the one who complies — that is to say: God will destroy both the instigator and the executor of the crime. Third, the Chaldean translates: son and grandson. For the son is the one who rouses and begets the grandson; whence the grandson responds to him. Fourth, Clarius and Arias translate: the one who knocks at the door of the house, or rouses from sleep, and the one who responds to the knocker or rouser — that is to say: God will destroy absolutely everyone in such a family. Fifth, the Septuagint, reading ad (that is, "until") for er, translates: Until he is humbled from the tents of Jacob; for the Hebrew word ana means both to humble and to respond.
AND HIM THAT OFFERS A GIFT — as if to say: Even if he is a priest offering sacrifices. So the Chaldean and St. Cyril.
Verse 13: And You Have Done This Again : You Covered The Altar Of The Lo...
13. AND YOU HAVE DONE THIS AGAIN (the Zurich translation: Then you add this also; the Chaldean: And you do this a second time — that is to say: To the former crime, in which you marry foreign women, you add a second one, namely): YOU COVERED THE ALTAR OF THE LORD WITH TEARS — that is to say: Your former wives, whom you despised, you treated so vilely and wretchedly, as if they were maidservants and slaves — indeed you punished them so cruelly — that they in their extreme affliction fled to the temple, and there before the altar shed most abundant tears, complaining to Me of your injustice, and begging for help and vengeance. So St. Jerome, Cyril, Theodoret and others generally, except Lyranus, who explains it thus: You, remaining in marriage with foreign women, in order to expiate this crime, run to the temple, and there with profuse tears beg for pardon. But in vain, because you do not form the resolution of amending your ways, but wish to persist in your crime and unlawful marriage. St. Chrysostom, following this sense, tropologically applies these words to those who seize the property of others, and to expiate their plunder give a portion to the temple or to the poor: "Such almsgiving is Jewish," he says, "or rather diabolical. Christ does not wish to be nourished by plunder," etc. So he says in Homily 86 on Matthew.
WITH BELLOWING. — The Septuagint and the Chaldean: with groaning; Pagninus: with clamor; our translator more forcefully renders it as bellowing. For bellowing is properly the dreadful cry of cattle. Whence Statius in Thebaid Book 11, about Jupiter changed into a bull, when he was carrying Europa, sings thus: "He deigned to have his back pressed by our virgin, and to bellow falsely through the calm waves." Hence by catachresis it is attributed to other animals, and to man, and even to the earth and sea. Whence Virgil in the Aeneid: "You will see the earth bellowing;" and in Book 6: "The ground bellows beneath their feet;" and Catullus, Epigram 64, on Berecynthia: "All places resound with bellowing din." The bellowing here therefore signifies the immense lamentation of the wives despised by their husbands, flowing from immense affliction and grief, so that they seemed not to wail in the manner of women, but to bellow in the manner of cattle, according to the words of Oenone to Paris in Ovid: "And I filled sacred Ida with querulous howlings."
SO THAT I WILL NO LONGER REGARD THE SACRIFICE. — Because I look upon the tears and bellowing of the wives whom you oppress; for they, being just and pitiable, move Me more than the wicked and impure sacrifices of cruel men.
Verse 14: Because The Lord Has Been Witness
14. BECAUSE THE LORD HAS BEEN WITNESS. — In Hebrew heid, that is, He has declared or protested that this was His mind and will — that is, He commanded and sanctioned that marriage be indissoluble, and that the husband love his wife, and for her sake leave father and mother (Genesis 2:24); but you violate this protestation and law of Mine by abandoning and despising your wives. So St. Jerome, Theodoret, Remigius, Hugh and Lyranus.
Second, the Hebrew heid can be translated with the Zurich version as "He witnessed," and with Vatablus, "He can testify," to allude to the rite of the ancient Hebrews, who contracted marriage with God as witness and groomsman, as Theodoret says, so that the marriage would be all the more sacred and inviolable, inasmuch as it had been arranged with God, as it were, present and acting as best man. Whence Laban, in Genesis 31:49, invoking God as witness, says to his son-in-law Jacob: "Let the Lord watch and judge between us, when we have departed from one another, if you shall afflict my daughters, and if you shall bring in other wives over them: no one is a witness of our speech except God, who is present and watching." And from this the place was called Galeed, that is, the mound of witness. So also Raguel joined his daughter Sarah to Tobias, invoking God and saying: "The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob be with you, and may He Himself join you together." The same prayer the priest offers for Christian spouses when he joins them and blesses them. So also among the Gentiles the bonds and rights of marriage were so sacred that they would not enter into them except by invoking the gods as witnesses and guardians, and by winning their favor through sacrifices. Hear Valerius Flaccus, Book 8 of the Argonautica:
"Then when the son of Aeson came with his bride to the sacrificial altars, and together they approach, and together they begin to pray, Pollux bore before them the fire and the nuptial water, that they might turn together to the right in a circle." And shortly after: "And behold, I am the first to bring and brandish this torch for your marriage; I am the first to celebrate the nuptial rites."
Therefore Modestinus, in Law 1 of the Digest on the Rite of Marriage, defines marriage as a conjunction of divine and human law. And Gordian, in the law Adversus of the Digest on Crimes regarding the Disinherited, calls a wife a partner in things both divine and human. Hence also they did not join in marriage without first taking auguries, so that the augurs might declare from the will of the gods that the marriage was begun under favorable auspices and would be prosperous. Hence Claudian, in the epistle to Serena: "Let the auspicious purple join me; let the hall encircle me with a sacred marriage bed." The same in his work on Rufinus, Book 1: "Under this omen the torches joined Oedipus to his mother, and Thyestes to his daughter." But properly it was Juno whom those about to marry invoked, and they paid her many honors, because they believed she presided over the joining and reconciling of spouses. Ovid teaches this in Medea's epistle to Jason: "Let Juno be witness, she who is set over sacred marriages." And in the epistle of Hypsipyle: "I was not known to you by stealth; Juno the bride-goddess was present." And Virgil in Aeneid Book 4: "To Juno above all, to whom the marriage bonds are a care." And Statius in the Silvae: "Juno gives the sacred bonds, and Concord doubles the distinguished torch." Moreover, those sacrificing to Juno would tear out and cast away the gall of the victim, to signify mystically that all bile and anger ought to be absent from marriage.
So Plutarch in his Conjugal Precepts. To this belongs the law of Numa, who succeeded Romulus, recorded in Gellius, Book 4, chapter 3: "Let a concubine not touch the temple of Juno; if she touches it, let her sacrifice to Juno a female lamb with her hair let down." They also invoked the holy god Fidius, or Medius Fidius, as the guardian of faith and the reconciler and avenger of the sacred covenant: about whom see Ovid, Book 6 of the Fasti, and St. Augustine, Book 18 of the City of God, chapter 19: "The Sabines," he says, "enrolled their first king Sancus, or as some call him, Sanctus, among the gods." So sacred were the marriages of the pagans; how much more religious and inviolate, then, ought they to be among Christians!
Note: Malachi here dissuades the Jews from despising and repudiating their Israelite wives by seven arguments. The first is that God from the beginning of the world sanctioned the bond of marriage and willed it to be perpetual. Likewise from the custom and rite of marriage, He was the witness and as it were the matchmaker of your marriage; do not therefore violate the rights of a marriage so sacredly sanctioned by God. So St. Chrysostom in the Homily on the Bill of Divorce, volume 4.
BETWEEN YOU AND THE WIFE OF YOUR YOUTH. — This is the second argument, that is to say: This is your first and lawful wife, whom you married in your youth, that is, when you first became an adult — the one you married as a young man; do not therefore break off her first and tender love.
WHOM YOU HAVE DESPISED. — In Hebrew: you have defrauded; the Chaldean: you have lied.
AND SHE IS YOUR COMPANION. — Pagninus: your partner; the Zurich translation: your consort. This is the third argument, that is to say: Just as God gave Eve to Adam as a helper both for generation and for life, so He gave you this woman of your own people as a companion and partner in family, labors and all good things as well as bad. Since therefore she has been your faithful and inseparable companion and partner for so long a time, do not desert her at the end of your life; do not put this stain upon your glory; do not conclude the comedy and drama of your life with so unworthy a catastrophe.
AND THE WIFE OF YOUR COVENANT. — This is the fourth argument, that is to say: This is the wife with whom you first entered into the marriage covenant; do not therefore break this covenant, lest you be called and actually be a covenant-breaker.
Verse 15: Did Not One Make Her?
15. DID NOT ONE MAKE HER? — This is the fifth argument, that is to say: One God originally made one woman, namely Eve, and one man, namely Adam, so that between these two, and consequently between all other spouses to be descended from them, there would be one and indivisible marriage; for Adam could not be joined to any other wife than Eve, since no other had been created by God; nor could Eve turn to any other husband than Adam, since there was no other man in the world. Do not therefore break this ordinance of God and the unity of marriage: do not be a degenerate from the first parents, Adam and Eve. So St. Jerome, Theodoret, Remigius, Lyranus.
Second, the Chaldean understands "one" as Abraham; for he translates: Was not Abraham one, from whom the generation was propagated? And what did the one seek, except that offspring might remain to him before the Lord? — that is to say: Abraham your father, from whom your whole nation descends, did not despise Sarah, although she was barren, but at her request married Hagar; because from her he sought not pleasure, as you do, but offspring. And the Zurich translation, Pagninus and Vatablus: Did not even one do this, in whom the spirit was excellent (for the Hebrew word sear means both residual and excellent)? And what did that one do? He sought the seed of God — that is, Abraham, though he was one and without children, and a most excellent man, did not do what you do — that is to say: You despise and repudiate your wives without the example of your ancestors, indeed contrary to their example; for you have begotten children from your wives, which Abraham sought but could not beget from Sarah; and yet he did not therefore despise her, much less repudiate her. You are therefore not legitimate children of Abraham, but degenerate and illegitimate.
AND THE RESIDUE OF HIS SPIRIT IS HERS. — This is the sixth argument, that is to say: God created from Himself one human spirit and vital breath, one part of which He, as it were, gave to Adam, the other remaining part to the woman, namely Eve. Therefore you should not rend this unity by divorce. For the woman is, as it were, half of the man — both in body, because she was formed from the residue of the man, namely from his rib; and in spirit, because the vital breath which God breathed into Adam He afterward divided with Eve, when He breathed into her the same, not in number but in kind — that is, a human and similar one — and made her a living being, indeed a living person. So St. Chrysostom in the Homily on the Bill of Divorce. Hence, second, "spirit" can be understood as love and affection; for since Adam and Eve were formed and consist, as it were, of the same body and vital breath, they equally share the same spirit, that is, the affection of love implanted by nature, by which the woman loves the man, and the man loves the woman, intimately as his counterpart, his other half — indeed, as another self. For the cause and purpose for which God formed the woman from the man was to implant in them the greatest mutual love for one another, and union in marriage, so that they would never think of divorce or repudiation, because through this the one body, as it were, of man and woman is rent asunder, and the one spirit — not only human, but also
divine, inasmuch as breathed into them by God, as it were a particle of the divine breath. So St. Jerome, Theodoret, Remigius, Albert and Lyranus. Arias interprets it differently; for he takes "spirit" to mean mind, counsel, judgment. Whence he translates thus: And did not one make her, and the residue of his spirit is hers; and what did that one seek? The seed of God. And he explains it thus, that is to say: Not just one of you committed this sin of divorce, but very many: whence there is scarcely one who has a residue of spirit, that is, of sound mind, counsel and judgment. For what do they each seek? Is it the seed of God, namely to beget children faithful to God? By no means; but they desire to satisfy their own lust.
AND WHAT DOES THE ONE SEEK, BUT THE SEED OF GOD? — This is the seventh argument, that is to say: What does the one — namely God — intend and seek from the marriage of one with one that He sanctioned, if not that faithful and holy children be begotten for Him, from a faithful father and mother, and not unfaithful children from foreign women? For the foreign and idolatrous mothers, whom you, O Jews, court, will instill in their children the love and worship of their idols, and will raise them in that way. So St. Jerome and his followers. This signifies that Jews in marriage ought not to pursue pleasure and lust, and therefore to court foreign women; but rather offspring and their pious and holy upbringing, which they can hope for only from Israelite wives, and therefore these must be kept and sought.
Morally, let preachers note these seven reasons by which the sanctity and indissolubility of marriage are demonstrated by God, and let them use these against divorces and adulteries, as well as against quarrels and disputes of spouses, in order to persuade them of conjugal and holy love. Likewise let them dissuade Catholics from entering into marriages with heretics; for these are the foreigners who will raise their children in a foreign faith, that is, in faithlessness and heresy. Valerius Maximus, Book 4, chapter 6, recounts illustrious examples of conjugal love among the pagans.
KEEP THEREFORE YOUR SPIRIT. — First, "your spirit," that is, keep your soul and will from the sin of lust, love and marriage with foreign women, and conversely from the sin of despising and repudiating your former wives, who are Israelites. So St. Jerome. Second, Remigius, Albert and Lyranus, by "spirit" understand the wife: for above he called her "the residue of the spirit" of the man — that is to say: Keep your former love for your wives, who are, as it were, half of your spirit, that is, of your soul. Whence, explaining further, he adds: "And do not despise the wife of your youth." Third, a Castro: Keep the spirit of Abraham, so that as he loved Sarah, so may you love your wives. Fourth, the Zurich translation renders: You therefore, as dear as your soul is to you, take care not to be faithless to the wives who were betrothed to you in your youth. Fifth, Arias translates from the Hebrew: Keep watch in your spirit — that is to say: In a matter of such importance, do not allow yourselves to be driven by rashness and lust, but do all things with a settled and mature spirit and judgment. Sixth, Vatablus translates: Guard yourselves therefore in your spirit, and do not transgress — that is, sin against God neither in soul nor in body. Seventh, most forcefully and most properly, by "spirit" understand the love and affection which a husband ought to bear toward his wife, as toward the other part of his body and spirit. For this is what the inferential word "therefore" signifies — namely that the Prophet is looking back to "the residue of the spirit" about which he spoke above — that is to say: The woman and the man share the same spirit, both vital and moral, of mutual love, as I said above; therefore it is fitting that they carefully guard this same spirit. Father Pineda adds to this in his commentary on Job 19:17, who by "spirit" understands the breath which husband and wife share with each other by their frequent conversations and intercourse. There is therefore in them a reciprocation of spirit, according to the saying of Job: "My wife shrank from my breath." The sense therefore is: Keep your breath, and do not share it with a foreign woman, but only with your lawful wife — that is, do not live with, associate with, converse with, or be intimate with a foreign woman, but only with the Israelite woman whom you originally married.
Morally, let men keep a chaste and manly spirit; for there is nothing that so softens and effeminates it, even in churchmen and devout persons, as the love of women, even when seemingly pious, especially of foreign women. An example is Sardanapalus, the last king and monarch of Nineveh, "whom," says Justin in Book 1, "Arbatus found among herds of harlots, spinning purple on a distaff, and in womanly attire, surpassing all the women in the softness of his body and the wantonness of his eyes, distributing tasks of spinning among the maidens." Thus Jezebel dominated Ahab, concubines dominated Solomon, Delilah dominated Samson, Omphale dominated Hercules, as Seneca describes in the Hippolytus: "The son of Alcmena laid down his quiver, / And suffered emeralds to be fitted to his fingers," etc. More clearly, Deianira in Ovid sings of Hercules thus: "She saw necklaces hung upon Hercules' neck, / On him for whom heaven was a light burden. / And drawing thick threads with your strong thumb, / You pay back an equal weight of spinning to your beautiful mistress. / Wretched man, you are said to have trembled at the crack of the whip, / And to have feared the threats at the feet of your mistress." See St. Cyprian, Treatise on the Singularity of Clerics.
Verse 16: When You Shall Have Her In Hatred, Put Her Away
16. WHEN YOU SHALL HAVE HER IN HATRED, PUT HER AWAY. — Various interpreters translate and explain this passage in various ways. First, Rabbi Hananus in Arias translates thus: God hates him who puts away his wife. Second, Pagninus: If he hates her, let him put her away — that is to say: If your wife is quarrelsome and hates you, put her away. Third, the Chaldean: If you hate her, put her away, and do not cover your sin with your garment — that is to say: If you hate your wife, divorce her, and do not hide your hatred under that cloak and pretext of keeping her in your house as though you loved her, while secretly treating her as a slave. Fourth, Vatablus translates and explains thus: Let him who hates put her away; but each one of you acts with iniquity under his garment — that is, each of you does indeed put away the wife he hates, but without giving a bill of divorce, so that she cannot marry another. Fifth, others: Let him who hates put her away, and he will cover iniquity under his garment — that is to say: The man who puts away his wife will cover his own infamy, with which his wife, while she was detained at home and treated badly, used to defame him. Sixth, many others think it is irony — that is to say: If you hate your wife, put her away; but know that iniquity will cover your garment. For the law did not permit divorce on account of hatred, but on account of the unseemliness of the wife — that is, on account of fornication, leprosy, incorrigible behavior, etc., as I said on Deuteronomy 24:1. Seventh and most clearly: When you hate your wife, put her away, giving her a bill of divorce so that she can marry another, rather than perpetually afflicting, beating, mutilating or killing her at home as a slave: but know that you will not escape iniquity. For although it is a lesser evil to put away a wife than to kill her, yet in itself it is a great evil: for it is not permitted to put her away merely on account of displeasure or hatred.
BUT INIQUITY SHALL COVER HIS GARMENT — namely, of the husband who puts her away, as is clear from the Hebrew masculine pronoun, not of the dismissed woman. There is an enallage of person, for "his" is put for "your." For "iniquity" the Hebrew is chamas, that is, injury, force, violence. Some translate: If a man puts away his wife, he will cover his iniquity with his garment — that is to say: By putting her away, he will cover his injury and infamy with the bill of divorce, as with a garment, a veil and a pretext, says Father Prado on Ezekiel 13:18. On the other hand, the Zurich translation renders: Will he therefore cover violence with his garment? — that is to say: By no means. Or, as Clarius says: Let not the man cover the hatred in his heart, as if he were hiding a stain under his garment. Vatablus and others explain it differently, as I reviewed shortly before. But there are various explanations of our Vulgate version. First, St. Jerome by "garment" understands the body, which is like the garment of the soul, according to the saying of the Apostle in 2 Corinthians 5:4: "We do not wish to be stripped" of the body, in the resurrection and in heaven, "but to be clothed over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." The sense therefore is: "iniquity," that is the punishment of iniquity, will cover the garment, that is your body — meaning: God will sharply punish you in your body, whose pleasures and lusts you unjustly pursue, and will afflict you with diseases, famine, blows, etc.
Second, the Septuagint by "garment" understands thoughts. For just as a garment covers the body, so thoughts, intentions, desires and concupiscences cover the soul, which are wound around each other in the soul into a kind of ball, just as in onions the layers wrap around and clothe one another. They therefore translate: Iniquity will cover over your thoughts. Third, others take "garment" in its proper sense, that is to say: Iniquity, that is the punishment for iniquity, will cover his garment: because God will punish the man who puts away his wife out of hatred with poverty and nakedness, so that he will be stripped of his possessions, even the most intimate ones, namely his garments.
Fourth and genuinely, "garment" is here taken metonymically for the man clothed in the garment. It is therefore a Hebrew phrase: "it will cover the garment," meaning what we would say, "it will cover the clothed man" — derived from the fact that a man is conspicuous and recognized by his garments, according to Ecclesiasticus 19:27: "The clothing of the body, and the laughter of the teeth, and the gait of a man declare what he is." So conversely it is said of the saints in Revelation 7:14: "They have washed their robes, and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb;" where he calls "robes" the consciences, which are, as it were, the garments and robes of the soul. Therefore in this passage the Hebrew reads: Iniquity will cover over your garment — that is, your iniquity will so overflow, stand out and abound that it cannot be concealed or disguised by any garment. For it will be so great that it will cover, hide and overwhelm both you and your garment. A similar phrase is found in Joshua 24:7: "He brought the sea upon them (the Egyptians), and covered them;" the Hebrew reads: He covered over them. 2 Chronicles 5:8: "The Cherubim spread their wings over the place;" the Hebrew reads: The Cherubim covered over the ark. Nehemiah 4:5: "Do not cover their iniquity;" the Hebrew reads: Do not cover over their iniquity — for the preposition "over" signifies overflow and abundance. So Lyranus, Arias and a Castro.
Finally, by "iniquity," or as the Hebrew has it, injury and violence, understand both the guilt and the punishment and vengeance of iniquity — that is to say: If you put away your wife on account of hatred alone, heavy guilt and infamy will cover you, as well as the punishment by which God will avenge this crime upon you.
KEEP YOUR SPIRIT (namely your affection and love for your wives), AND DO NOT DESPISE — them: see what was said on verse 15.
Verse 17: You Have Wearied The Lord With Your Words
17. YOU HAVE WEARIED THE LORD WITH YOUR WORDS. — He touches here on another crime of the Jews, namely blasphemy tending toward atheism, because they were saying that there is no divine power punishing the wicked and protecting the good. Whence Lyranus and Pagninus begin the third chapter from this point. The Septuagint translates: You have provoked God with your words; the Chaldean: You have caused trouble before the Lord; Arias and the Zurich translation: You have wearied and exhausted the Lord — namely with your continual contention, just as quarrelsome and clamorous people weary judges with their disputes and clamors and deafen their ears; Vatablus: You have caused Him annoyance.
Note here that the impious, especially blasphemers and atheists, by their wickedness weary, afflict and exhaust God, as far as lies in them, even though in reality they do not afflict or exhaust Him, because He is not capable of affliction or weariness. For if He were capable of it, this wickedness would certainly afflict and weary Him; nor would God be afflicted and wearied by anything other than this. A similar passage is Isaiah 1:14: "My soul has hated your solemnities: they are become troublesome to Me; I am weary of bearing them." And Ephesians 4:30: "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you are sealed." The sense therefore is:
Fifth, others: Let him who hates put her away, and he will cover his iniquity under his garment — that is to say: The man who puts away his wife will cover his own infamy, with which his wife, while she was detained at home and badly treated, used to defame him. Sixth, many others consider it to be irony — that is to say: If you hate your wife, put her away; but know that iniquity will cover your garment. For the law did not permit divorce on account of hatred, but on account of the unseemliness of the wife — that is, on account of fornication, leprosy, incorrigible behavior, etc., as I said on Deuteronomy 24:1. Seventh and most plainly: When you hate your wife, put her away, giving her a bill of divorce so that she may marry another, rather than perpetually afflicting, beating, mutilating or killing her at home as a slave: but know that you will not escape iniquity. For although it is a lesser evil to put away a wife than to kill her, yet in itself it is a great evil: for it is not lawful to put her away merely on account of displeasure or hatred.
that is to say: You, O Jews, by your blasphemy have vexed, exasperated and wearied God, saying: "Everyone who does evil is good (the Chaldean: upright) in the sight of the Lord" — that is to say: The wicked are pleasing to God, God loves the wicked; for He so prospers, enriches and exalts them that He seems to take delight in them. Whence, explaining further, he adds: "And such please Him. Or certainly, where is the God of judgment?" Where is God's providence? Where are His just judgments? Where is the just God, the avenger of the impious and the protector of the pious, who has so afflicted us, His faithful ones, and has so magnified our faithless enemies? It is a dilemma: either God loves the wicked and evil things, or He does not love them: if He loves them, then He Himself is likewise evil — God forbid; if He does not love them, why then does He not punish them? — rather, He prospers them, and causes them to lord it over the pious and to rage against them, as has happened to us.
For the cause of this complaint and blasphemy was that, as St. Jerome says, "the people having returned from Babylon, and seeing all the surrounding nations, and the very Babylonians who served idols, abounding in riches, vigorous in body, possessing all the things that are considered good in the world; while they themselves, who have the knowledge of God, are covered with filth, hunger and servitude — they are scandalized and say: There is no providence in human affairs, all things are carried along by uncertain chance, nor are they governed by the judgment of God; rather, evil things please Him, and good things displease Him: or certainly, if God judges all things, where is His just and fair judgment?" St. Jerome adds: "The mind that is incredulous of the future raises this kind of question before God daily, when it sees the wicked powerful and the saints humbled, etc. Just as in the Gospel we read of Lazarus, who before the doors of the rich man clothed in purple desires to sustain his poor soul with the crumbs that are thrown from the remains of the table; while the rich man is of such savagery and cruelty that he has no pity on a man for whom even the tongues of dogs have pity; not understanding the time of judgment, nor that true goods are those which are eternal, they say: The wicked please Him, and where is the God of judgment?" A similar complaint is in Habakkuk 1. See what was said there. Malachi repeats the same in chapter 3:14, and responds to it in verse 16 and following — namely, that in this matter they should await the time of vengeance appointed by God, and meanwhile praise God's patience and long-suffering, which delays punishment so that the sinner may repent (Romans 2:4).
WHERE IS THE GOD OF JUDGMENT? — In Hebrew there is the demonstrative he, which has great emphasis: Where is God, hammishpat, that is, of that judgment — namely, the great, most certain, most exact, most acute, all-knowing, most just, most free judgment, which regards neither the powerful, nor the rich, nor gifts, nor anything else besides justice. For He Himself is the God hammishpat, to whom it belongs by nature to judge all persons and all things with exact judgment; for His nature is equity itself, justice itself, providence itself, governance itself, and that most just and most wise. Whence the Septuagint translates: Where is the God of justice? The Chaldean: Where then is the God who executes judgment? — to whom it properly belongs to be the judge of all, and to exercise rigorous judgment upon all: indeed, He will exercise this very judgment plainly and fully on the decisive and last day of the world, which will be the horizon of this life and the next, dividing time from eternity, heaven from hell, the blessed from the damned, for all ages, through Christ, whom He has appointed judge of all, the living and the dead. In vain, therefore, did the impious and foolish Jews once cry out, and still cry out: Where is the God of judgment? — who will judge and vindicate us, His own nation, from the many reproaches and hardships which we have suffered everywhere on earth for 1,500 years. Therefore the equally foolish Rabbis write in the Talmud that God, whenever He remembers the calamities which the Jews suffer from the Gentiles everywhere, sheds two tears into the ocean, and beats His breast with both hands in grief — a blasphemy so impious and foolish that Sixtus of Siena, among very many others, records it and laughs at it in Book 2 of the Bibliotheca, under the entry 'Talmud,' page 142. More truly and wisely they ought to argue for God and against themselves thus: God, since He is most just, has by a just judgment cast us all off for 1,500 years and punishes us most severely: therefore we committed a most grave crime — namely, we killed our Messiah, Jesus Christ, God and Lord of all: the God, I say, of judgment. In vain, therefore, do we complain and ask: Where is the God of judgment? — for we killed Him.
appointed, and in the meantime to praise God's patience and long-suffering, which defers vengeance so that the sinner may repent, Romans 2:4.
WHERE IS THE GOD OF JUDGMENT? — In Hebrew there is the demonstrative he, which has great emphasis: Where is God, hammisphat, that is, of that judgment, namely the great, most certain, most exact, most keen, all-knowing, most just, most free judgment, which regards neither the powerful, nor the rich, nor bribes, nor anything else besides justice. For He Himself is the God hammisphat, to whom it belongs by nature to judge all persons and all things with exact judgment; for His nature is equity itself, justice itself, providence itself, governance itself, and that most just and most wise. Whence the Septuagint translates: Where is the God of justice? The Chaldean: Where then is the God who executes judgment? whose proper function it is to be the judge of all, and to exercise rigorous judgment upon all: namely, He will exercise this very thing fully and completely on the decisive and last day of the world, which will be the horizon of this life and the future, separating time from eternity, heaven from hell, the blessed from the damned, for all ages, through Christ, whom He appointed judge of all, the living and the dead. In vain therefore did the impious and foolish Jews once cry out, and still cry out: Where is the God of judgment? who should judge and vindicate us, His people, from so many reproaches and afflictions, which we have suffered everywhere in the world for 1,500 years. Wherefore the equally foolish Rabbis write in the Talmud that God, whenever He remembers the calamities which the Jews suffer from the Gentiles everywhere, sheds two tears into the Ocean, and strikes His breast with both hands from grief: this impious and foolish blasphemy of theirs, among very many others, Sixtus of Siena records and ridicules in Book II of the Bibliotheca, under the word Talmud, page 142. More truly and wisely they ought to argue thus for God against themselves: God, since He is most just, has by just judgment cast us all aside for 1,500 years, and punishes us most severely: therefore we committed a most grave crime, namely we killed our Messiah, Jesus Christ, God and Lord of all: the God, I say, of judgment. In vain therefore do we complain and ask: Where is the God of judgment? For we ourselves killed Him.
As if to say: You, O Jews, have troubled, exasperated and wearied God with your blasphemy, saying: "Everyone who does evil is good (the Chaldean says, upright) in the sight of the Lord," as if to say: The wicked are pleasing to God, God loves the wicked; for He so prospers, enriches, and exalts them that He seems to delight in them. Whence, explaining further, he adds: "And such people please Him. Or surely, where is the God of judgment?" Where is God's providence? Where are His just judgments? Where is the just God, avenger of the impious and protector of the pious, who has so afflicted us His faithful ones, and so magnified our unfaithful enemies? It is a dilemma: either God loves the wicked and wicked things, or He does not love them: if He loves them, then He Himself is likewise wicked, which God forbid: if He does not love them, why then does He not punish them? Nay rather, He prospers them and causes them to lord it over the pious and to rage against them, as has happened to us?
For the cause of this complaint and blasphemy was that, as St. Jerome says, "the people returned from Babylon, and seeing all the surrounding nations, and the Babylonians themselves who served idols, abounding in riches, flourishing in bodily health, possessing all things that are considered good in this world; while they themselves, who have the knowledge of God, are covered with squalor, hunger, and servitude, they are scandalized and say: There is no providence in human affairs, all things are carried along by uncertain chance, and are not governed by God's judgment; indeed rather evil things please Him, and good things displease Him: or surely if God judges all things, where is His fair and just judgment?" St. Jerome adds: "A mind incredulous of future things daily raises this sort of question against God, when it sees the wicked powerful and the saints humble, etc. As we read of Lazarus in the Gospel, who before the doors of the purple-clad rich man desires to sustain his destitute soul with the crumbs that are cast away from the table scraps; while the rich man is of such ferocity and cruelty that a man does not pity a man, though even the tongues of dogs pity him; not understanding the time of judgment, nor that those goods are true which are everlasting, they say: The wicked please Him, and where is the God of judgment?" A similar complaint is found in Habakkuk 1. See what is said there. Malachi repeats the same in chapter 3:14, and responds to it in verse 16 and following, namely that in this matter they must await the time of vengeance appointed by God.