Commentary on Nahum
Latin source: Jerome's commentary on Nahum, in one book addressed to Paula and Eustochium (written at Bethlehem about 392–393), from the critical text of M. Adriaen, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 76A (Turnhout, 1970), pp. 525–578, verified against the page images, with the edition's few evident misprints corrected (three of them from the text of Vallarsi and Migne). Each lemma gives Nahum in Jerome's own version from the Hebrew and, in most places, then after "LXX:" in his Latin of the Septuagint; all Scripture is translated as Jerome quotes it, from his own Latin. Italics mark the lemmata and the other Scripture he quotes. Psalms keep the Latin (LXX) numbering, with the Hebrew number in parentheses. Greek words are kept as printed, with an English gloss in parentheses where Jerome gives none, and Hebrew words keep Jerome's own transliteration. This English translation is released into the public domain.
Prologue
According to the Seventy translators, in the order of the twelve prophets Nahum is placed after Jonah, because they seem to prophesy about the same city. For it is written in Jonah: The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai, saying: Arise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it. But in Nahum this is the opening: The taking up of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. Therefore both weave their prophecy about Nineveh, the metropolis of the Assyrians, which is now called Ninus. Moreover, in the Hebrew, Micah is placed after Jonah, and Micah is followed by Nahum, which means consoler. For the ten tribes had already been led away into captivity by the Assyrians under Hezekiah, king of Judah, under whom now also the vision against Nineveh is seen, for the consolation of the people carried away. Nor was it a small consolation, both for those who were already serving the Assyrians and for the rest, who under Hezekiah, of the tribe of Judah and Benjamin, were being besieged by the same enemies, to hear that the Assyrians too were to be taken by the Chaldeans, as will be shown in what follows in this book. But it must be understood — since Nineveh in our language, from the Hebrew, sounds beautiful; and this world is called beautiful, whence among the Greeks too κόσμος (world) received its name from adornment —, that whatever is now said against Nineveh is proclaimed figuratively of the world. For this reason the taking up, which the Seventy translate λῆμμα, and which Aquila translated ἄρμα, is given among the Hebrews as massa, that is, a heavy burden, because it presses down on her against whom it is seen, and does not allow her to raise her neck. Moreover, as to what is added, Nahum the Elkoshite, some think that Elkoshite was Nahum's father, and that according to the Hebrew tradition he too was a prophet, whereas Elkosh is to this day a hamlet in Galilee, small indeed, and scarcely showing in its ruins the traces of old buildings, but still known to the Jews, and pointed out to me as well by the man who was leading me around. At the same time this too must be noted, that this very taking up, or burden, or weight, is the prophet's vision. For he does not speak in ἐκστάσει (ecstasy), as Montanus and Prisca and Maximilla rave, but what he prophesies is the book of the vision of one who understands everything he speaks, and who makes the weight of the enemies a vision among his own people. Therefore, concerning the consummation of the world according to ἀναγωγὴν (anagogy), O Paula and Eustochium, the prophecy is woven for the consolation of the saints, so that whatever they see in the world they may despise as passing and perishable, and may prepare themselves for the day of judgment, where the Lord is to be the avenger against the true Assyrians.
1:2
A jealous God, and an avenging Lord. The voice of the prophet praising God because he has avenged on the Assyrians the wrong done to his people. Or, according to a higher understanding, because he hears the groaning of his saints, and at the consummation of the world makes the adversaries feel punishments. That zeal is taken in a good sense, the apostle Paul too shows, saying: Be zealous for the greater gifts, and in another place: For I am zealous for you with the zeal of God, and the Lord himself in the psalm: The zeal of your house has consumed me, and Elijah: Zealous, he says, I have been zealous for the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel. We read also of the zeal of Phinehas, and of Mattathias. And Simon the Zealot, the apostle of Jesus Christ, whom Mark the evangelist calls Simon the Cananaean. But the Lord is zealous for the salvation of those over whom he is zealous, so that those whom his clemency could not save, his jealousy may save. Hence also to Jerusalem, which because of its excessive sins did not deserve the visitation of his zeal and fury, God speaks in Ezekiel: My zeal has departed from you, and I will be angry with you no more. So as long as the world was doing repentance, its consummation did not come about; but after iniquity was multiplied and the charity of many grew cold, so that even the elect of God are tempted, then the zealous Lord comes for vengeance, not that he himself is an enemy and avenger, which is said of the devil, but that his vengeance is hostile, and like fire consumes wood, hay and stubble, so that pure gold and silver may remain.
The Lord avenging, and having fury: the Lord avenging on his foes, and he himself angry with his enemies. LXX: The Lord avenging with fury, the Lord avenging on his adversaries, and he himself taking away his enemies. According to both understandings, because the Lord loves the one whom he rebukes, and chastises every son whom he receives, he is therefore angry, so that he may take away whatever is adverse and hostile to him, and so that, when the foes and the contrary thoughts are broken and their words taken away, they may return to their former state. Then in what follows he says: The Lord is patient, and his strength long. But since we have once undertaken to expound the history as well, let us understand the enemies and foes of God to be the Assyrians, against whom, though he has long been patient, he will afterwards show himself an avenger with fury and wrath.
1:3
The Lord is patient and great in strength, and, cleansing, he will not make innocent. This is said more expressively in the Greek: καὶ ἀθῳῶν οὐκ ἀθῳώσει (and clearing he will not clear). And the sense is: he was indeed long patient with the crime of the Assyrians, and by the strength of his magnanimity bore their iniquities, calling them to repentance; but since, having despised the goodness of God, according to their impenitent heart they stored up for themselves wrath on the day of wrath, he who before was patient will by no means allow them to go away unpunished as though clean and innocent. Or certainly thus — since we wish at the same time to take what is said in a good sense —, he is patient who upholds all who are falling, and raises up those who are dashed down, who heals the troubled in heart and binds up their bruises, and great is his power, dissolving the enmities in the flesh, and not making the guilty innocent, since even he who applauds himself overmuch will be convicted of having been saved not by his own merit but by the mercy of God. For although he may say: Behold, I have served you so many years, and I have never passed over your command, yet since the Lord is good to all, and his mercies are over all his works; and all have sinned, and lack the glory of God, justified by him freely, he will hear: Or is your eye evil, because I am good? And so it will come about that in the very act by which he reproves and pardons, he allows no one to go away as innocent.
The Lord, in storm and whirlwind are his ways, and clouds are the dust of his feet. For storm and whirlwind the Seventy translated consummation and commotion, although where we have put in storm, and where in the Hebrew basupha is written, it can also be understood as in commotion. This signifies that at the end of the world all things will be moved, according to what is written in Haggai: Yet once more I too will move heaven and earth, sea and dry land; and when all things have been moved — so that they may believe the ways of the Lord, who says in the Gospel: I am the way, and the life, and the truth, and: When the Son of Man comes in the clouds, which in Isaiah are commanded not to rain rain upon the vineyard, and to which the truth of God reaches, as the psalmist says: Your truth even to the clouds —, then the clouds themselves too, namely the prophets and the souls of the saints, which before had been weighed down by their union with the flesh, will be lifted on high and become of a finer substance, and, brought down to be the footstool of God's feet, will minister among the angels in each of the lowest offices. For they will not be able to know the former and ancient things that pertain to the head. But another will take the clouds in the contrary sense, because they always trouble what is serene, and strive to veil the clear light of the sun and stars with their darkness, and because afterwards, subjected to the Lord's power, they are reduced to dust and to nothing, and the earth in them, which is fat, is dissolved.
1:4
Rebuking the sea, and drying it up, and leading all the rivers to the desert. According to the letter, the power of God is described: since he is about to vindicate Israel against its adversaries, it is no great thing for him to destroy the Assyrians, whose majesty is such that he can even change the elements. Or certainly, since we have said once for all that the prophecy concerns the consummation of the world, take this too in the simple sense. When the consummation of the world comes, and heaven and earth pass away, the sea too and the rivers are dried up. But to me, as I read that passage in the psalms: This great and wide sea, there are creeping things without number, small animals with great. There the ships pass, that dragon which you formed to mock him, it seems worthy of the goodness and clemency of God to destroy by his threat all the bitterness and saltiness of the sea, and to humble the dragon that reigns in the waters, and to dry up the whirlpools of malice in which the small creeping things swim, of which there is no number; for the things that dwell with the dragon are not worthy of number. Leading the rivers also to the desert: all knowledge falsely so called, which, raising itself against God, uses the river of eloquence and volubility of words, and, rolling its swelling whirlpools, is borne headlong to the wonder of those who watch. Look at Plato, behold Demosthenes, and Tully too, philosopher and orator alike, and consider the chiefs of the heretics, among whom were Valentinus, Marcion, Bardesanes, Tatian, and you will have no doubt about the rivers. But all these the Lord Jesus will consume with the spirit of his mouth, and destroy with the illumination of his coming, and will lead to the deserts. And at the same time observe that, according to the title, which is inscribed The taking up of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite, rightly both is the world understood figuratively in Nineveh, and its sea and rivers of eloquence are dried up at the consummation.
Bashan has grown weak, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon has languished. LXX: Basanitis has been diminished, and Carmel, and the things of Lebanon that flourished have failed. Μεταφορικῶς (metaphorically), through Bashan, Carmel and Lebanon, a fertile region and planted mountains, the devastation of the Assyrian is shown, because he, once powerful and flourishing and ruling over very many nations, is to be laid waste when the Lord is angry. But we can also understand it of the consummation of the world, that all the powerful and noble, and those abounding in excessive wealth, suddenly perish, and it is said to them: Fool, this night your soul will be taken from you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? Moreover, according to the interpretation of the names, since Bashan sounds confusion and disgrace, we assert that at the consummation of the world, when the Lord comes, everything that is worthy of disgrace and blushing grows weak, and that not only are sins reduced to nothing, but also Carmel, which is interpreted knowledge of circumcision, and those who seem to themselves rich and flourishing in good works, tremble at the coming of Christ, and that the saying in the Gospel is fulfilled: When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on the earth? For as iniquity increases, the charity of very many will grow cold, and on account of these things the wrath of God will come.
1:5
The mountains were moved by him, and the hills were made desolate, and the earth trembled before his face, and the world, and all who dwell in it. LXX: The mountains were moved by him, and the hills were shaken, and the earth shrank back before his face, the universe and all who dwell in it. It can also be taken simply: that at the consummation of the world, when the Savior comes in his majesty, the mountains and hills, the world and the earth, and all things are moved. For if at his passion the sun fled, the rocks were split, the earth trembled, much more will all things be thrown into turmoil at his glory. But figuratively too the mountains and hills are to be understood as the lofty and powerful, who at the coming of the Lord will be cast down to the ground, and, deposed from their throne, will cleave to the pavement. The face for of the Lord is upon those who do evil, to destroy their memory from the earth. Then too the earth will tremble, and the world and the universe will dread the face of the Lord, counting it the supreme torment and punishment that they will not dare to look on his face.
1:6
Before the face of his indignation who will stand, and who will resist in the wrath of his fury? LXX: From the face of his wrath who will endure, and who will resist in the wrath of his fury? In place of what we have put: And who will resist in the wrath of his fury? Symmachus translated more plainly: And who will endure the wrath of his fury? Therefore one will be found rarely, or not at all, who is not deserving of the wrath that rebukes. Nor will there be any soul that does not tremble at the judgment of God, since even the stars are not clean in his sight. Moreover, the Hebrew word iaccum, which Aquila and the Seventy translated will resist, let us transfer to that understanding of which it is said, in the second book of Kingdoms (2 Samuel) and in the first book of Chronicles, concerning the wrath of God, in the masculine gender. And no one doubts that there the wrath of God is understood as the devil, and the most wicked angels, who are sent to punish those who are worthy of wrath. So it will be hard to find, at the consummation of the world, one who, spotless and pure, dares to say: Behold, the prince of this world comes, and finds nothing in me, and stands against him with a free brow. But against the Assyrians it must be understood thus: that when the Lord comes in storm and whirlwind, drying up the empire of Babylon, which is interpreted sea, and overturning all its kingdoms, which are understood as rivers, and reducing to nothing its power and fertility, which μεταφορικῶς (metaphorically) are called Bashan and Carmel and the flower of Lebanon, and mountains and hills, and shaking the breadth of its empire, which is called the world, then no power will be able to resist God when he is angry and vindicating his people.
His indignation has been poured out like fire, and the rocks have been dissolved by him. LXX: His fury consumes principalities, and the rocks have been crushed by him. In place of what we have put, has been poured out, Aquila translated συνεχωνεύθη, that is, has been fused, Symmachus and Theodotion ἔσταξεν, that is, has dripped. Whether, then, the indignation of God has been fused like fire, or his fury has dripped in the likeness of a blaze, so that the hard hearts of men, which are called rocks, might be crushed and dissolved, the indignation of God is useful, which, long bearing our sins through patience, has scarcely ever been fused, and yet does not burst forth wholly into punishment, but will drip on us with a moderate heat. But if a drop of his indignation consumes the principalities, against whom we have the wrestling of battle, what would happen if the whole wrath of God were poured out on us? May Jesus grant that the heart of stone be taken away and changed in us into a heart of flesh, and that, its hardness softened, it may receive into itself the precepts of the Lord which are written: For a sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God will not despise. And that you may know that what has been said sounds of the clemency of God, not of severity, learn from what follows.
1:7
Good is the Lord, and strengthening in the day of tribulation, and knowing those who hope in him. LXX: Sweet is the Lord to those who wait for him in the day of tribulation, and recognizing those who fear him. When he has begun to be angry with the nations and to lay waste kingdoms once most powerful, he will know those who are his, and will not overwhelm those at sea in one and the same storm. But let us understand the day of tribulation, according to ἀναγωγὴν (anagogy), as the day of judgment, of which Isaiah wrote: Behold, the day of the Lord comes, incurable, of fury and of wrath, to make the world a desert and to destroy sinners out of it. Let us hope in the Lord, and through patience await his coming, so that when he comes we may experience him as good, not as a judge, and that he may recognize either those who hope in him or those who fear him. For the Lord knows those who are his.
1:8
And in a flood passing by he will make a consummation of its place, and darkness will pursue his enemies. LXX: And in a flood passing over he will make a consummation; darkness will pursue those rising up and his enemies. The Lord is patient and of great mercy, and he will not be angry to the end, nor will he be indignant forever; but when wickedness has grown upon the earth, and all flesh has corrupted its way, he will bring on a flood that is to pass through, not to remain forever. But he will make a consummation, or an end, of its place, that is, of the flood, so that, just as it is said of the impious man: And I passed by, and his place was not found, and: The way of the impious will perish, so the way of the flood may perish after the wrath of the Lord, with mercy alone appearing. This indeed can also be understood according to the history: when he has laid Israel waste, and has inundated the land of promise as if with a flood, he will make an end of the captivity, calling him back to his former dwellings. But on the contrary, darkness will pursue his enemies the Assyrians, who led the people into captivity. But what we have said of Israel and the Assyrians can be understood of the consummation of the world, and of the saints and of the persecutors, or the opposing powers: that God has mercy on the saints after his wrath; but as for the persecutors and their enemies, who have chosen darkness and not light, the very darkness that they chose will seize them; for they will be sent into the outer darkness: There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The word macoma, which we have translated "of its place", all have divided into two parts of speech, so that they turned ma into the preposition "from", that is, ἀπὸ, and interpreted coma as "rising up". Finally Aquila says ἀπὸ ἀνισταμένων, that is, "from those rising up"; the Seventy, "those rising up"; Theodotion, "for those rising up against him"; the Fifth edition, "from those rising up against him". Symmachus alone, agreeing with our translation, says: And in a flood passing over, he will make a consummation of its place. Some of our own interpret "those rising up and the enemies" as Marcion and all the old heretics, who dispute against the Creator.
1:9
What are you plotting against the Lord? He himself will make a consummation; a twofold tribulation will not rise up. LXX: What are you plotting against the Lord? He himself will make a consummation, he will not avenge twice on the same thing in tribulation. Symmachus more plainly: They will not withstand the onset of a second distress; Theodotion: A second tribulation will not rise up. But according to tropology he is speaking against Marcion, of whom we spoke above, and against all the old heretics, who, inventing some good God or other, say that he is the one who will make the consummation of the world, and accuse the God of the law as if of cruelty, because he punishes many and inflicts torments for sins. What then, he says, are you plotting against the Lord? He himself who created the world will also make its consummation. But if he seems to you cruel, harsh and bloody, because he blotted out the human race in the flood, rained fire and sulphur upon Sodom and Gomorrah, drowned the Egyptians in the waves, and laid low the corpses of the Israelites in the desert, know that he exacted punishments in the present for this reason: that he might not punish forever. Surely what the prophets say is either true or false. If what they seem to say about his severity is true, they themselves have said: The Lord will not avenge twice on the same thing in tribulation. But if they are false, then this too is false that is said: A twofold tribulation will not rise up; false, therefore, is also the cruelty that is described in the law. But if it is true, as they will not be able to deny, since the prophet says: The Lord will not avenge twice on the same thing in tribulation, then those who have been punished are not punished afterward. But if they are punished afterward, Scripture lies, which it is impious to say. Therefore those who perished in the flood, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and the Israelites in the wilderness received their evil things in their lifetime. Here someone may ask, if a believer caught in adultery is beheaded, what becomes of him afterward. For either he will be punished, and this saying is false: The Lord will not avenge twice on the same thing in tribulation, or he will not be punished, and it is something for adulterers to wish for, that by a short and swift penalty in the present they may escape eternal torments. To this we will answer that God, as he knows the measures of all things, so knows the measures of punishments too; that he is not forestalled by the sentence of a judge, nor is the power taken from him of exercising punishment on the sinner thereafter; and that a great sin is washed away by great and long-lasting torments. But if anyone has been punished, like him in the law who had cursed the Israelites, and him who had gathered wood on the sabbath, such men are not punished afterward, because a light fault has been compensated by the present punishment. The Hebrew expounded this passage thus: What do you think, O Assyrians, you who plot iniquity against the Lord, that he himself would consume the people of Israel, that is, the twelve tribes, to the point of extermination? A twofold tribulation will not rise up, that is, he will not hand over Judah and Jerusalem to you as he handed over the ten tribes and Samaria.
1:10
For as thorns embrace one another, so is their banquet of men drinking together; it will be consumed like stubble full of dryness. LXX: For even to their foundations they will be reduced into brambles, and like bindweed wound about it will be devoured, and like stubble full of dryness. The three distinctions which the Lord set down in the parable of the sowing, apart from the good soil, which bears fruit thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold, the prophet seems to me to unfold again: one, the seed that fell beside the way, another that fell among stones, and a third that fell among thorns; and the Apostle too, speaking of those who do not build well upon the foundation of Christ, indeed intimates this, that there are some who build wood, hay, stubble. Let us therefore refer the wood to what is now said: For even to their foundations they will be reduced to brambles. But the hay to what follows: And like bindweed that is wound about, it will be devoured. Moreover, the stubble is plainly referred to the stubble of which it is now said: And like stubble full of dryness. For this reason, then, the Lord will not avenge twice on the same thing, because the wickedness that had arisen in the authors of heresy will be consumed down to the foundation and to its roots. And if anyone among them seemed to have a pomp of words, that is, empty leaves that delight only the eye, he will be devoured like bindweed, which in Greek is called σμίλαξ, and will be consumed into nothing. Now bindweed is a plant like ivy, which commonly winds itself around vines and shrubs and creeps a long way. Whatever in them, too, seems to have the show of a crop, but has no ears and grains of wheat, will be handed over to the fire like stubble full of dryness. This is according to the Seventy. But according to the Hebrew, truly the alliances and close ties of the heretics are like thorns embracing one another, and their banquet and their mysteries, since they too say that they have the Lord's table, are a league of thorns, eating together and drinking together alike. For when, drunk from the vine of Sodom, they blaspheme against the Maker with rabid mouth, is it not a banquet of briars? Yet it will be consumed together with its authors, like stubble full of dryness.
1:11
For out of you will go forth one plotting wickedness against the Lord, turning over transgression in his mind. LXX: Out of you will go forth a thought against the Lord, most evil, thinking contrary things. Truly from the heretics will go forth a thought hostile to the Lord. Does it not seem to be wickedness and transgression against God to say, as Valentinus does, that the Creator was brought forth last, as if the abortion of an erring Wisdom? Is not the shamelessness of Basilides a thought against God, and the monstrous name ἄβραξας (Abraxas), which is set above the Lord the Maker? Moreover, since, having been taught by the Hebrews, we wish to follow their tradition too, and to set out for our own, that is, for Christians, an explanation of the history, it must be said: A twofold tribulation will not rise up, that is, the two tribes will not be captured by the Assyrians as the ten were captured. For while the Assyrians are still in the land of Judah, and like thorns embrace one another, glad and rejoicing, they will be consumed by the angel, when in one night one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the enemy were slain. Beautifully, too, he compared the multitude of their army to a banquet of drunkards, and said that the banquet itself was not of roses, not of lilies, not of flowers, but like thorns embracing one another, which are always handed over to the fire and, like stubble full of dryness, are burned up by a slight blaze. But what follows: Out of you will go forth one plotting wickedness against the Lord, turning over transgression in his mind, they want it understood of Rabshakeh, because, having come forth from the Assyrians, he blasphemed God and wished to persuade the people to despair of the Lord's help and hand themselves over to the Assyrians, to serve not God but idols.
1:12-13
Thus says the Lord: If they are complete, and so more numerous, even so they will be shorn, and he will pass through; I have afflicted you, and I will not afflict you any more; and now I will break his rod from your back, and I will burst your bonds. LXX: Thus says the Lord, reigning over many waters: and so they will be divided, and your report will not be heard any more; and now I will break his rod from you, and I will burst his bonds. According to the letter the sense is plain: Although, he says, the Assyrians are strong, and their might is increased by the number of all the nations, even so, as the angel lays waste, they are shorn. For just as the number of the hairs does not resist the sharp shears, so too the number of God's adversaries will be removed by an easy cutting down, and Asshur will pass through: either he will cease to exist, or, his army laid waste, he will return to his homeland, leaving you safe. And again the word is directed to Judah and Jerusalem: I have afflicted you, and I will not afflict you any more, not that he promises perpetual security, but only for that time, and from those enemies by whom it was then besieged. Finally he adds: And now I will break his rod, that is, the Assyrian's, from your back, and I will burst your bonds; either signifying his power by a metaphor, or else the rod with which he was trying to strike, and the bonds which he was preparing for the captives; although the siege of the shut-in multitude can also be taken for the bonds. But according to the LXX the sense is far different. For he still seems to be speaking against those to whom he had said above: What are you plotting against the Lord? and: Out of you will go forth a thought against the Lord, most evil, thinking contrary things. Thus, then, says the Lord, reigning over many waters, that is, over the powers, which are called the waters above the heavens, and which are commanded to praise the Lord, or else over the understandings and the wisdom and the teachings of God. For just as rivers will flow from the belly of the righteous man, and abundant springs unto eternal life, through the various and manifold meanings over which the word of the Lord rules, so the heresiarchs too have their own waters, over which they rule, and which first flowed from their spring. But what follows: And so they will be divided, can be understood either of the heavenly powers that serve God on high, in that each one is in its own office and ministry, or of the manifold variety of wisdom; lest, because he had said: Reigning over many waters, the number of meanings should be thought confused and undistinguished, but rather that each statement has meanings divided among themselves, and separate matters and its own ὑποθέσεις (subjects). For what is said: Your report will not be heard any more, is a rebuke against those who had thought things contrary to God: that, once the sophisms and snares by which the people of God was entangled have been exposed, their word may no longer run its course, nor be received by the peoples. But this too, which he adds: And now I will break his rod from you, and I will burst your bonds, is said on behalf of the very ones against whom the threat is made, that they may by no means be beaten by the devil, nor be subject to him at whose instigation they had devised and fabricated such great things. Therefore his dominion over them will be broken, and the bonds by which the souls of sinners were bound will be burst by the word of God, saying to those who are in bonds: Go out.
1:14
And the Lord will command against you: It shall not be sown from your name any more. From the house of your god I will slay the graven and the molten image; I will make your grave, for you are without honor. LXX: And the Lord will command concerning you: It shall not be sown from your name any more. From the house of your god I will destroy the graven images and the molten images, I will make your grave, for they are swift; behold upon the mountains the feet of one who brings good news and announces peace. I have set down more from the Seventy translators for this reason, that the second περικοπὴ (pericope) could not be separated from the first. For where it says, for you are without honor, for which the Fifth edition put ὅτι ὑβρίσθης, the Seventy translated: for they are swift, which in the Hebrew reads chi calloth. But unless you refer "swift" to the feet of the following section, the sentence is left hanging. Therefore, according to my custom, I will sift first the history, and afterward the sense of the common edition. The Lord, he says, will command against you, O Asshur, so that what you are to suffer may not come by chance and without any judge, but you may suffer it at God's pronouncement. It shall not be sown from your name any more: for indeed Sennacherib, as soon as he had returned to Nineveh, was killed by his sons. Read Isaiah: and he was killed in the house of his god, which he had entered to worship. For this is what he says: From the house of your god I will slay: you will be punished from the place from which you hoped for help. The graven and the molten image will be your grave, so that amid the altars and the sacred couches the impious blood of one worshipping idols may be poured out. But according to the Seventy translators, join what follows to what precedes: It shall not be sown, he says, from your name any more. By no means, O heretics, will the souls of the deceived take from your dogmas the names which they had previously invoked upon their lands, as is sung figuratively in the forty-eighth (49th) psalm. And this very cessation of sowing will profit you, a sowing which used to kill first the soul of the sower, then that of him in whom he sowed. The dogmas of errors, therefore, will die for you; and you too, who before seemed to yourself to be alive, will die to error, and, dead for your own good, you will have as your grave the idols which you used to worship. And so it will come about that from your breast, which before had been the temple of your god, whom you had feigned, all errors will be taken away. And these things will happen to you, who once used to think things contrary to the Lord, when the word of God, which always ascends upon the mountains, that is, into lofty and sublime souls, has come swiftly to you, and, having trodden down the waves of your former errors and brought them to calm, has restored to you the peace and the sense of faith. Pardon my prolixity; for in following both the history and the tropology I cannot take in both briefly, especially since I am tormented by the variety of the translations, and am sometimes compelled, against my conscience, to weave together the sequence of the common edition.
1:15
Behold upon the mountains the feet of him who brings good tidings and announces peace. Celebrate, O Judah, your feasts, and pay your vows, for Belial will no more pass through you; he has wholly perished. For a little while I shall put off the LXX translators, because among them the very sections are also confused by the variety of their translation. And when I have briefly set out the history, I shall temper their edition with my own words. It is written in the book of Chronicles that while Sennacherib was besieging them, they could not keep the Passover in the first month; but when his army had been slain by the angel, and his flight and death had been announced, they celebrated the day of the Passover in the second month with the greatest festivity. What he says, then, is this: O Judah, you who reign in Jerusalem, do not be anxious, now that your enemy has been killed in the temple of his god. Behold, a messenger comes to you, running over the mountains and hills, and as if from a lofty watchtower announcing from afar that Sennacherib is dead and the world freed from his rule. Celebrate your festivals; pay the vows for the death of your enemy which you promised to God; never again will the transgressor and ἀποστάτης (apostate) pass through you, for this is what Belial means. He has wholly perished, that is, both the army and the king and the empire of the Assyrians have utterly fallen. And this indeed according to the letter. But according to ἀναγωγὴν (anagogy) it is said to the Church, it is said to the souls that confess the Lord, that the devil, who formerly laid you waste and pressed you down under a most heavy yoke, has perished in the idols and with the idols which he had fashioned: Celebrate your feasts and pay your vows to God, singing continually with the angels, for never again will Belial pass through you, of whom the Apostle also says: What fellowship has Christ with Belial? Because, Nineveh being overthrown, he has wholly perished. If ever there has been a most grievous persecution, such as under Valerian and Decius and Maximian, and the vengeance of the Lord has appeared upon his adversaries, let us say to the Church: LXX: Celebrate, O Judah, your feasts, pay your vows, for they will never again add to pass through into oldness; it is fulfilled, it is consummated; he has gone up breathing into your face, rescuing you from tribulation. I have said once already that according to the variety of the translation the sections themselves are also divided differently, and that the sense of the Hebrew translation cannot agree with the sections. Therefore what is now said is of this kind: O man of the Church, since from the name of your adversaries there shall be no more sowing, and their rod is broken, and their bonds are torn apart, and he has come who should announce peace to you, celebrate your feasts, not in wine and banquets, as the carnal Jews suppose, but in spiritual delights and the torrent of pleasure. O Judah, pay your vows, for never again will enemies pass through you to lead you into oldness, that is, who wish you to bear the image of the old man. For what is old grows aged, and what grows aged is near to perishing: the world is fulfilled, the adversary is consumed. Christ has come to you, who earlier had breathed into your face when he formed you from the clay, and after the resurrection too, breathing into the face of the apostles, said: Receive the Holy Spirit; he it is who frees you from tribulation. For when Nineveh is laid waste and the world passes away, tribulation too will pass away.
2:1-2
He has come up who will scatter before your face, keeping the siege; watch the way, strengthen the loins, make your power very strong, for as the Lord has repaid the pride of Jacob, so the pride of Israel, because the ravagers have scattered them and have corrupted their branches. I am compelled by necessity to steer the course of my discourse between history and allegory, as between rocks and crags with shipwreck threatening, and to take care that it does not suddenly strike. For indeed, according to the fables of the poets: Scylla holds the right side, implacable Charybdis the left; if we flee the rocks, we run into the deep; if we avoid the twisting whirlpools, we are carried onto the rocks. The Lord is my witness that in all that I discuss according to the Hebrew I do not speak from my own sense, which is the charge laid against the false prophets, but follow the exposition of the Hebrews, by whom I was taught for no short time, and I am bound simply to point out to my readers what I have learned. Certainly it will be at the reader's discretion, when he has run through both, to judge which he ought rather to follow. Now therefore the discourse is turned to Nineveh — and it is above all on this account that the prophets are obscure, that suddenly, while one thing is being treated, the person is changed to others —, and it is said to her: Nebuchadnezzar has come up against you to besiege you, to lay waste the fields before your face, to pursue the farmers, to ravage the countryside, and to hold you yourself shut in as well. Since, then, war threatens you, behold, I the prophet now rejoicing foretell it: watch carefully and look, and observe what is coming upon you. Strengthen the loins, that is, gird yourself; make your power very strong, that is, gather armies, for as the Lord avenged Judah for the pride of Sennacherib, when his army was slain in Judea and he himself was also murdered by his own sons, so will he avenge Israel, that is, the ten tribes which are held in possession by Nineveh. For the Assyrians laid waste and overthrew both, Judah and Israel, and, under the metaphor of a vine, corrupted the branches of both.
LXX: Watch the way, hold the loin, be strengthened in strength exceedingly, for the Lord has turned away the insolence of Jacob, as the insolence of Israel, because those who shake out have shaken them out, and have demolished their branches. Three things are commanded to Judah. First, that he watch the way and look carefully at the road by which he is to walk, according to what is written in Jeremiah: Stand in the ways, and ask for the eternal paths, and see which is the good way, and walk in it, so that when we have stood in many ways, we may come to that way which says: I am the way. Next it is said to him that he hold the loin, that is, that after choosing the way he mortify his body and bring it into subjection, lest, preaching to others as a king and master, he himself be found reprobate. It would take long now to tell how the strength of the devil is above all in the loins, and how the promise is made to David: Of the fruit of your loin I will set upon your throne, and that saying of the Apostle: For he was still in the loin of his father Abraham, Levi was, when Melchizedek went to meet Abraham. And how John is girded with a leather girdle, and how the disciples are commanded by the Savior: Let your loins be girded. And the Apostle to the Ephesians: Stand therefore, having your loins girded in truth; for although ἄσκησις (ascetic discipline) and continence of life avail very much toward the mortifying of the loins, yet nothing so mortifies them as the knowledge of the truth. Hence it is said: Gird your loins in truth. For if Christ is the truth, he who has believed in Christ with his whole mind has mortified his loins in Christ. Thirdly it is commanded: be strengthened in power exceedingly. You have chosen, he says, the way; you have held the loin; take up power, so that you may fight with the enemies. And lest perhaps you lose confidence, a reason is given you for hoping: The Lord, he says, has turned away the insolence of Jacob, as the insolence of Israel; which is ambiguous: for either the Lord has turned away the insolence of Jacob himself, with which he did injury to others, or he has turned away the insolence which Jacob endured from others. But it seems better to me that the insolence which Jacob used to do to others has been turned away by the Lord. For it is not of such great virtue to endure an injury done by others as it is of the Lord's grace to be calm, gentle and tranquil, unable to do injury. It is asked how the injury of Jacob was turned away, as that of Israel too had been turned away: after Jacob wrestled with the angel, he was found worthy to receive the name of Israel, and because he saw God, he ceased to do injury. As therefore Israel, sense or a man seeing God, and ever thinking of God, does not know how to do injury, so all wantonness and insolence has been turned away from Jacob, that is, from the supplanter, from him who, still set in the contest, supplants his enemies. And that we may know how injury is taken in the bad sense, Solomon is witness, saying: Insolent eyes, an unjust tongue. And how, according to both understandings, the injury has been turned away from Jacob which had earlier been turned away from Israel, the following words make plain: Because those who shake out have shaken them out, and have demolished their shoots, or have corrupted them. The angels, he says, of each one, who daily see the face of the Father, have shaken out whatever dust had clung to Jacob and Israel. Hence Peter's feet too are washed. And through the prophet it is said: Shake off the dust, and arise, O Jerusalem. The disciples too are commanded by the Savior: Shake off the dust of your feet. And in the psalms it is written: As arrows in the hand of the mighty, so are the sons of the shaken out. So the mind prompt to insolence has been turned away from the true Jacob and from the true Israel, because whatever had been earthly in them, and compacted of the lower dregs, has been shaken out and cleansed by the ministering angels, or by admonishers and teachers, who not only shook them out, but also scattered the vices, which soothe the senses with pleasure only for the present, and which are like shoots and branches that are full of leaves without fruit, as the Lord says: Every branch that abides in me and bears fruit, my Father cleanses, that it may bear more fruit; but what does not abide in me and does not bear fruit, my Father will cut off and cast into the fire.
2:3-7
The shield of his mighty men is fiery, the men of the army are in scarlet; fiery are the reins of the chariot in the day of his preparation, and the charioteers have been lulled to sleep. They have been thrown into confusion on the roads; the four-horse chariots have been dashed together in the streets. Their appearance is like torches, like lightnings running to and fro. He will remember his mighty men; they will fall on their roads; swiftly they will go up to her walls, and a shelter will be prepared. The gates of the rivers have been opened, and the temple has been torn down to the ground, and the soldier has been led away captive, and her handmaids were driven along, moaning like doves, murmuring in their hearts. LXX: The arms of his power from men, mighty men mocking in fire, the reins of their chariots in the day of their preparation, and the horsemen will fear in the outgoings; and the chariots will be confounded and will be dashed together in the streets. Their appearance is like torches of fire, and like lightnings running to and fro, and their nobles will be remembered, and they will flee in the days, and they will grow weak on their way, and they will hasten to the walls, and they will prepare their bulwarks; the gates of the cities have been opened, and the royal things have fallen, and the substance has been uncovered; and she herself was going up, and her handmaids were being led like doves speaking in their hearts. According to the history the sequence continues against Nineveh, and the army of the Babylonians coming against her is described. And as for his saying, Fiery reins of the chariots: by the burning thongs he signifies the speed of those making ready, and the pomp, as it were of ἐπισκευῆς (of equipment), of those preparing themselves for battle is recounted. And the Scripture is woven together in a mingled way, now about what Israel once suffered, now about what the Assyrian did, now about what the Babylonians carry out against the Assyrians. It is not, therefore, he says, surprising if they come so swiftly to lay waste, since the charioteers and mighty men, either of Israel before or of the Assyrians afterward, had been lulled to sleep. And returning again to the order of the description, he says: So great is the multitude of those coming that the column on the march is mingled together and cannot be told apart. The four-horse chariots themselves too, while they cannot find a way, are dashed against one another in the streets because of the multitude. The appearance of the Babylonians is like torches, like lightnings running to and fro, so that they terrify their adversaries by the sight before they lay them low with the sword. Then Asshur will remember his mighty men and will look for those who fell on the roads, and he will swiftly go up the walls of Nineveh, and because of the very long siege he will prepare shelters to ward off the heat. But what does it profit to build a house unless the Lord has built it? What does it help to shut the gates which the Lord unbars? The gates of Nineveh have been opened, which had a multitude of citizens like rivers, and the temple, that is, her kingdom, has been destroyed, and the soldier has been led away captive, that is, all have been led into Babylon. But by the handmaids of Nineveh understand, by a metaphor, the lesser cities and villages and forts. Or certainly the captive women will be driven along before the faces of the victors; and so great will be the terror that their grief will not even break out into sobbing and wailing, but they will moan silently within themselves and with a dark murmur swallow their tears, after the manner of cooing doves. These things according to the Hebrew tradition. Now let us come to the Seventy translators. Those who shake out, who shook out Jacob and Israel and scattered their shoots, also broke the arms which they had been accustomed to have while they were insolent, and with which they had oppressed all the weak; and they did not do this only, but they also destroyed in fire the mighty men who were mocking. Consider whether you can call the mighty men mocking in fire the opposing powers, which serve the fiery darts of the devil, which, mighty and once mocking Jacob and Israel in fire, had chariots and horses, by which they were borne, urged on, into war in the day of their preparation. The reins of these chariots, then, and the horsemen will be thrown into confusion on the roads and will be dashed together in the streets, when, Jacob and Israel having been healed by the enlightening of the Lord, both the demons and those who serve their will shall be overthrown by the Lord. We can understand these things of his first coming, when the mighty men and the drivers of the chariots and the horsemen said: What have we to do with you, son of David? Have you come before the time to torment us? But since we have once taken the prophecy against Nineveh as concerning the consummation of the world, it is better for us to say that the arms of the devil's power are then taken away from men, and his mighty ministers, who mocked men in fire. For all their hearts are adulterers, like an oven; and we may say that the bonds too by which the captives were led into vices, and the riders of the chariots, are loosed. For the horsemen will fear in the outgoings, that is, in the consummation of the world, and they will be confounded, and the chariots will be dashed together in the streets; for although broad and spacious is the way that leads to death, yet, under the pressure of a time cut short, they will not be able to find a straight road; but they will be dashed against one another, and none the less they will breathe out their old fury, and like lightnings they will run to and fro hither and thither. I saw, says the Lord, Satan like lightning falling from heaven. And when the devil and all his nobles have understood this, they will remember the consummation which had long ago been foretold, and they will flee in the days. For they will by no means move about in the nights, but as the day grows bright the darkness will be put to flight, and they will grow weak on the way, not making progress nor fulfilling their endeavors, and they will hasten to the walls. For so great a terror of the coming Lord will seize them, and so feeble will they be for resisting, that they will flee to the bounds of the world, by which the world is shut in and encircled as by walls, and they will prepare themselves to resist. Just as, if someone flees an enemy, not daring to resist him, when he has come into a solitary place, if perhaps the foe follows, he is compelled by necessity to fight back. But while they are thinking this, all the things which had been held and possessed by them will be brought out into the open, and the gates which they had shut will be opened, and their kingdoms will fall, and the substance, that is, the riches, will be uncovered. But the substance of the world itself and all her handmaids, after they have subjected themselves to Christ and have begun to serve him, will be led glad and rejoicing, and believing from the inmost heart of confession, so that they are compared to the cleanness of doves, they will murmur or speak in their hearts. And then will be fulfilled what is said in the sixty-seventh (68th) psalm of the victory of the Savior: Ascending on high, he led captivity captive.
2:8-9
And Nineveh: like a pool of waters are her waters, but they have fled. Stand, stand, and there is none who turns back; plunder the silver, plunder the gold, and there is no end of riches from all the desirable vessels. LXX: And Nineveh: like a pool of waters are her waters, and they, fleeing, did not stand, and there was none who looked back; they were plundering the silver, they were plundering the gold, and there was no end of her adornment; she has been weighed down above all the vessels of her concupiscence. It is plain that, when the cities of Nineveh — which Scripture calls her daughters — have been led into captivity, Nineveh herself, who had nourished such great peoples that they were compared to the waters of pools, has a useless multitude, since there is no one to resist and to bear the onslaught of the Babylonians rushing in. For she had peoples who only fled, and while their mother cried out: Stand, stand, shut the gates, mount the walls, fight back against the enemy, there was no one who turned back, no one who looked back to his mother, but all, turning their backs, deserted the city as plunder for the enemy. Hence it is said to the Babylonians, since those have fled: Plunder the silver, and make spoil by a sudden ravaging of the wealth gathered over so long a time. For there is no end of the riches, the furniture and the vessels which are stored in Nineveh, nor can you carry off as much as she offers herself to be plundered. But since we have once said that Nineveh is the beautiful one, that is, the world, let us see what the pool of the world is. Scripture does not say that the waters of Nineveh are like the waters of the sea, nor like the waters of rivers, nor like the waters of springs, nor like the waters of wells, but like the waters of a pool, so that, just as in Jeremiah the people is rebuked which forsook the fountain of living water and dug for itself broken cisterns that cannot hold water, so in Nineveh too all those waters are such as have fallen from heaven and, leaving their ancient height, have slipped down to the depths. For all the dogmas of this world which are outside the fountain of the Church and the sealed garden, and cannot say: The rush of the river makes glad the city of God, nor are of those waters which above the heavens praise the name of the Lord, though they seem great, are nevertheless small and shut in within a narrow bound. And let it not disturb anyone that we take the pool in the bad sense, when that pool to which Isaiah the prophet, son of Amoz, is commanded to go up is taken in the good sense. For there it is said with an addition: The pool of the aqueduct, and the pool of the fuller, which is accustomed to wash away filth and to cleanse the stains of garments. And because it is set on high, the prophet is therefore commanded to go up to it and, in meeting the king, to promise victory over the two burnt firebrands. There follows: Fleeing, they did not stand, namely the inhabitants of Nineveh. First, indeed, they ought not to have fled from God; then, even if they had fled, they ought at some time to stand. For there is a great difference between him who fled and stood, and him who, fleeing, never stood. For he who stands has ceased to flee; he who does not stand has gone forward in perpetual flight. In so great a crowd of those fleeing, therefore, there was no one who looked back and did repentance and heard the Lord speaking: Return to me, O sons, returning, and I will heal your bruises. Hence the saint too says in the psalms: Flight has perished from me. I think that this very thing is also signified by the mystery of leprosy, concerning which it is said in Leviticus: When the leper has been separated by the priest outside the camp, if the leprosy has stood still, the man is clean, and he who had been cast out as a leper is cleansed and returns to the camp and dwells among the people. But if, he says, the leprosy has spread, that is, has not stood still but has grown and made progress in evil and changed the color of its former health, then the leprosy is most plainly proved by him who has the knowledge of inspecting and purging leprosy. But we too are commanded by the true Solomon to dwell in Jerusalem and never to go out from it. And if what was formerly subject to us flees from us and goes to the Philistines, let us not go out of the walls of our city nor follow the footsteps of the fugitives; lest, while we wish to save those who flee, we ourselves perish; but rather let us let them go, that the dead may bury their dead, and, while we may, let us pluck out and cut off from ourselves the eye, the hand and the foot that cause us to stumble. And as for what is said: They were plundering the silver, they were plundering the gold, and there was no end of her adornment: she has been weighed down above all the vessels of her concupiscence, it is said of the waters of Nineveh, and of those fleeing who had fled and did not stand, nor was there one who looked back; and who, not content only to have fled and not to have looked back, were plundering the silver besides, whatever eloquence was seen in the world; they were plundering the gold, whatever was splendid in the way of maxims in the learning of the age, in order to adorn Nineveh, in order to compose their dogmas with every flower of thoughts and words. Because of this Nineveh has been weighed down above all the vessels of her concupiscence; for the more she had a great possession of gold and silver and varied furniture, which was heavy, the more she herself was weighed down, since she loved heavy things. Hence also iniquity in Zechariah sits upon a talent of lead, and the Egyptians, who were heavy with sins, sank in the sea like lead. And in the person of the sinner it is said in the psalm: Like a heavy burden they have weighed heavily upon me. And Peter, who before, being light, trod the waves with suspended step, after he was weighed down by unbelief and was being swallowed by the billows, is lifted up by the hand of the Lord.
2:10
She has been scattered and torn and rent apart, and the heart is melting, and there is a loosening of the knees and a failing in all the kidneys, and the faces of all are like the blackness of a pot. LXX: A shaking out, a shaking out again, and a boiling up, and a breaking of heart and a loosening of knees, and pains upon every loin, and the faces too of all like the scorching of a pot. Under the metaphor of a captive woman, Nineveh is described as scattered, torn, rent: her heart melting, her knees loosened, and her kidneys broken, and the faces of all her inhabitants, through terror of the enemy and the greatness of their fear, appear scorched like pots, wasted, and disfigured with pallor. Moreover, according to the LXX we must understand at a higher level what shaking out, shaking out again signifies. He who is of the people of God and, being a man, has at some time sinned, and returns to his former state, is told, as Jerusalem is: Shake off the dust, and rise up, O Jerusalem. And of him who is such that, after he has been shaken out, he deserves to pass into the arrows of God and to be drawn by the Lord against the enemies, it is sung: As arrows in the hand of the mighty, so are the sons of the shaken out. And when his footprints, as of one walking upon the earth, have been sprinkled with dust, he will hear from the Savior: Shake off the dust of your feet for a testimony to them, no doubt meaning those who refused to receive the preachers. But he who is of Nineveh, which has been weighed down above all the vessels of her concupiscence, is shaken out not once but often. And after he has been shaken out again, and his surface has been cleansed — lest any filth remain within —, there comes to him also a boiling up, which in Greek is more expressively called ἐκβρασμὸς; for ἐκβρασμὸς is properly used of things of this kind, when what lay hidden within breaks out upon the surface. Hence also the pimples which arise on the lips after an illness are called ἐκβράσματα, and it seems a sign of health that the disease has broken out onto the surface. And not only is this remedy applied to Nineveh, that she be shaken out frequently and the hidden sickness be forced to come out of her vitals, but a breaking of heart and a loosening of the knees are also foretold, so that, just as the hard and stony heart of Pharaoh was broken, which, as long as he had it, would not let the people of God go, so the broken heart of Nineveh too may be softened and changed into one of flesh, and the stiff knees which before were not bent to God may be loosened and bow to God, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named, and in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, on earth and in the underworld. So that, after they have come to know their creator, they may hear: Be strengthened, you loosened hands, and make strong the feeble knees. And pains, he says, upon every loin. We have already said above that sexual union is signified by the loin, and that all the works which pertain to intercourse are shown by the name of the kidneys. Great, therefore, will be the pains in the kidneys at the consummation, because all the strength of the dragon is in the loins; and in return for all these things on account of which there came before the shaking out, the shaking out again, the boiling up, and the breaking of heart, the loosening of knees, the pains of the kidneys, the face of all will be like the scorching of a pot, so that it is either close to fire and burning, or, losing the sheen of oil, grows black like coals and is covered with eternal confusion, from which the saint is far removed when he says: The light of your countenance, O Lord, is sealed upon us. For with unveiled face he beholds the glory of God. And I think that, just as other is the glory of the sun, other of the moon, other of the stars, and star differs from star in brightness, so in the resurrection of the dead there will be a great distance both of brightness among the saints and of blackness among the sinners.
2:11-12
Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the pasture of the lions' whelps, to which the lion went, that the lion's whelp might enter there, and there is none to frighten them? The lion took enough for his whelps, and killed for his lionesses; and he filled his caves with prey, and his den with plunder. For caves and lionesses the Seventy translated nests and whelps; in the rest the sense is the same. But this is still said of Nineveh: that it was the dwelling of kings and the court of nobles, to which the lion went, the Babylonian king, that is, Nebuchadnezzar, and the lion's whelp, that is, his under-kings as well, and there was none to resist them. The lion took enough for his whelps, and killed for his lionesses. That is to say, this same Nebuchadnezzar possessed everything by the right of victory, and handed over the captives into slavery to his children and to his cities, or certainly to his wives; and he filled his caves with prey, or, as it is in the Hebrew, his pits, and his den with plunder, filling both his treasuries and his cities with gold, silver, garments and every adornment, so that he might possess what Nineveh had held and Babylon had conquered. But since according to ἀναγωγὴν (anagogy), both in Jonah and in this prophet, we have interpreted Nineveh as this world, and according to John: The whole world is set in the evil one, when the world, the dwelling of beasts and the place in which lions used to pasture, has passed away, then in wonder and exultation we shall say: Where is the dwelling of the lions and the pasture of the lions' whelps, to which the lion went, the devil, of whom Peter also speaks: Your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour, and the lion's whelp, the antichrist, and all perverse teachings, the contrary word? You have heard, says John, that antichrist is coming; but now there are many antichrists; for there are as many antichrists as there are false dogmas. And before the coming of Christ there was none to frighten them; but after our Lord came into the world and entered Nineveh, he saw Satan falling from heaven like lightning, and Lucifer, who rose in the morning, fell from heaven. For the true Samson came to the Philistines, and while he was going to Timnah, which means its consummation, to take to wife the poor little Delilah from the Gentiles, he killed the lion to which its consummation had come, and when it was dead he ate the honey of sweetness. But the true David too, keeping his father's sheep, seized the lion and killed it; and Benaiah, which means the Lord a builder, went down into the pit of this age, which is wont to cool hot waters, and killed the lion. And in the vision of Isaiah which is seen against the four-footed beasts, it is first said of the distress of these beasts: In tribulation and distress the lion and the lion's whelp. This lion, before he was killed by Christ, took very many as prey for his whelps, and killed for his young lions, his attendants, that is, the demons. Look at the conventicles of the heretics, and you will not have to seek the many taken by the lion. Consider the dead who have left life behind, and you will not call their churches the sheepfold of the shepherd, but the caves of the lion, which he has filled with corpses and the blood of the dead. You have made, says David, darkness, and it became night; in it all the beasts of the forest will pass through. The lions' whelps, to snatch and to seek their food from God. The lion is hard to find by day, but he always prowls in the nights, to snatch from the Church of Christ, so that, according to Habakkuk, he may be sated with choice foods. Finally, Judas was of the sheepfold of Christ, and, snatched by the lion, he was strangled with a noose. And that prophet too, whom the Lord had commanded not to eat bread in that region where the golden calves were, and a lying religion, was struck by a lion because he ate. Jeremiah also speaks of sinners: A lion from the forest struck them, and a wolf destroyed them even to their houses; and a leopard kept watch over their cities. All who go out from them will be taken. In this, note that no one is taken except one who has gone out from the cities of God. In the fourth book of Kingdoms (2 Kings) too, those dwelling in the cities of Samaria and not knowing the judgment of the God of the land were killed by lions, until they learned to worship God, and they were freed from the lions. For this reason, I think, whatever has been taken by beasts is not offered in the sacrifices of God, and the prophet says: What is unclean and taken by a beast has not entered my mouth. The lion, therefore, has been killed, and, false dogmas having been refuted, out of the eater came forth food, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.
2:13
Behold, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will burn your chariots even to smoke; and the sword will devour your whelps, and I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers will be heard no more. LXX: Behold, I am against you, says the Lord Almighty, and I will burn your multitude in smoke, and the sword will devour your lions, and I will take away your prey from the earth, and your works will be heard no more. O Nineveh, all that has been said you will suffer, and I am its author. I the Lord will burn your chariots even to smoke and consumption, and I will cause all your nobles and under-kings to be devoured by the sword. No longer will you lay waste lands, nor exact tributes, nor will your emissaries be heard throughout the provinces; or else, I will no longer hear the angels who are your governors interceding for you. But these very things are also said to the world, in which is the multitude that goes by the broad and spacious way to death, the multitude which the Lord threatens, once set on fire, to be suffocated by the smoke of its own malice, because of its excessive vanity. The sword also, the word of God, living and sharp and filed on every side, will devour the lions; and he promises, moreover, that he will take away its prey from the earth, so that no one may any longer be taken in Nineveh, and as one merciful he takes away the evil works and suppresses them, so that their voice and sound can be heard no more. Hence he says: And your works will be heard no more.
3:1-4
Woe, city of bloods, all full of the laceration of falsehood; plunder will not depart from you. The voice of the whip, and the voice of the onrush of the wheel, and of the snorting horse, and of the seething chariot, and of the horseman going up, and of the flashing sword, of the gleaming spear, and of the multitude slain and of heavy ruin; and there is no end of corpses, and they will fall upon their own bodies. Because of the multitude of the fornications of the harlot, beautiful and pleasing and having sorceries, who sold nations in her fornications, and families in her sorceries. LXX: O city of bloods, all lying, full of iniquity, the hunt will not be handled; the voice of whips, and the voice of the commotion of wheels, and of the pursuing horse, and of the bearing chariot, of the horseman going up, and of the shining sword, and of the gleaming arms, and of the multitude of the wounded and of heavy ruin, and there will be no end to her nations, and they will grow weak in their bodies from the multitude of fornication. A harlot beautiful and pleasing, leader of sorceries, who sells nations in her fornication and tribes in her sorceries. Where we have put, full of laceration, in the Hebrew there is pherec malea, which Aquila translated ἐξαυχενισμοῦ πλήρης, that is, full of stiff-neckedness; but Symmachus ἀποτομίας πλήρης, which we can render full of cruelty, or of severity. In another edition of his I found μελοκοπίας πλήρης, that is, of cuttings of flesh and of pieces cut up limb by limb; and then he immediately added: where there is ceaseless plunder. Moreover, the Hebrew interpreted pherec not as stiff-neckedness, for which in Aquila's edition we find ἐξαυχενισμὸν, but as a rudder, that is, κυβερνισμὸν, to show both that the city had been royal and that, as on a ship, it had held the rudder of all the nations. Now its power, that is, Nineveh's, is described, and under a lament it is convicted of cruelty. Woe, city of bloods, in which there is no truth, but all is falsehood, full of plunder and of the laceration of prey. The voice of the whip of an empire ever cruel and raging, and the voice of the onrush of the wheel. Let us take voice for sound; the seething wheel, a running about in different directions, and of the snorting horse and of the seething chariot: in all of them voice is understood. So beautiful, according to the Hebrew, and so like a painting is the description of an army preparing itself for battle, that every word of mine would be poorer. For what he says, And of heavy ruin, and there is no end of corpses, let us understand of the adversaries who were slain by them. And they will fall upon their own bodies: either they will fall from their own multitude, while they are crowded together by one another, or they will fall upon the corpses of the slain; for αὐτῶν means both "their own" and "their". Because of the multitude, he says, of the fornications of the harlot, since she fornicated with many nations, and worshiped the idols of the whole world which she had subjected to herself. Beautiful and pleasing, and having sorceries: it means magicians; who sold nations in her fornications, and families in her sorceries, that is, she who had power over all the nations. These things have been said of Nineveh in the simple sense. But if, on account of the name of beauty, we have reasonably understood Nineveh as the world, rightly the world, which is set in evil, is called a city of bloods, because of the multitude of archers and of those who kill men with their tongues as with swords. Hence, consequently, it is also all lying, which refers to the perversity of the teachings, since the word of God has nowhere in it to lay its head, while perverse dogmas possess everything. There is none who understands or seeks God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one. Although these things happen in part even now, yet they are fulfilled more at the consummation, when, iniquity having multiplied, the love of many will have grown cold. How many are captured by Nimrod, the giant and most savage hunter, because, proud against God, he has entangled very many from his forest in his snares, whose prey, or hunt, will not be handled by many. For he has many attendants, and hunters together with him, who rejoice in his hunting and stand by him after the manner of captives. But the voice of whips too is heard in the world, since many are the tribulations of the just, and those who are scourged by them cry out and testify with a tearful voice to the greatness of their pain: when one is seized by a demon, another by anger, which is like madness, another by lust, hatred, envy, pride, the whip of the Assyrian king sounds in them. And in the ills of the body too we understand the whip of the devil, of which it is said to the just man: And the whip will not come near your tent; if ever we see this man rotted with jaundice and outliving his own corpse, another with water under the skin swimming in a swollen body, and, as the limbs grow, the form of the former man shrinking, as we lately saw in the Hydra; that man coughing up certain purulent matter and the wastings of a wounded lung; this one, with the humor dried into stones, feeling the bitterness of urine and the torments of the bladder, let us not hesitate to say that this is the voice of the whips of Nineveh. Granted, some suspect that these things happen either from corrupted air or from the diversity of foods and of bodies. Let us, who read both that a fever was rebuked, and that the woman who had been bound by the devil for eighteen years was cured, with the Lord as her physician, know that all these are the whips of Nineveh. Hence there follows: And the voice of the commotion of wheels, while the human race is swept hither and thither, and in uncertain runnings about through all things we do not know where the danger is, where safety; of which wheel it is written also at the beginning of Ezekiel; in the seventy-sixth (77th) psalm we read: The voice of your thunder in the wheel. Nineveh also has the pursuing horse, whose neighing and hoof digging the ground and heaving breast always desire wars, as the Lord speaks against the devil: From afar he smells the battle, when with leaping and shouting he does not spare those who flee, nor lets those who turn their backs get away, but pursues to lay them low, kill, trample, dash them down. There is also in Nineveh the voice of the seething chariot, such chariots as I think Pharaoh had, which were sunk by the Lord. To this chariot four horses are yoked, namely four perturbations, about which the philosophers dispute, and Maro is not silent, saying: These desire and fear, grieve and rejoice... With these horses and with this chariot Nineveh throws everything into turmoil. And the voice of the horseman going up also resounds in her, who, prepared for war by a certain art and by wheeling, advances not without danger to the one fighting against him. This horseman has the sword of speech, sharpened on the whetstone of dialectic and smoothed with the oil of the rhetorical art; he has gleaming arms, as Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, arms which are contrary to the apostolic armor. Nor is it any wonder if there is a multitude of the wounded in Nineveh, since there is a multitude of arrows. And just as the four with which we fight and are protected are the shields of the virtues, prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, so on the contrary there are four vices, folly, iniquity, luxury, fear, by which we are struck by the enemy. Each of these has within itself sprouting and manifold kinds of arrows, by which wounds are inflicted; and unless medicine heals them at once, there follows a heavy ruin. And would that as many in Nineveh were falling lightly and lightly wounded, as there are those who, through the weight of their ruin, are plunged down even to hell. And there is no end to her nations; her malice has no end, and as many as are the kinds of sins, so many are the nations of Nineveh, which will grow weak in their own bodies from the multitude of fornication. Although this can also be taken of those who, on account of venereal pleasures, are weakened even in body, and with the perdition of the soul also break the flesh which they serve, yet these nations of which we have spoken do not fall, according to the Hebrew, except upon their own bodies, and do not stumble — as Symmachus translated — except upon the corpses of the dead, which have been laid low by the multiplication of fornication. In this place the LXX translators, although we have put, according to the Hebrew, Because of the multitude of the fornications of the harlot, wanted, as it were, another beginning, so as to say: For the multitude of fornication, and, the sentence being finished there, then to begin: A harlot beautiful and pleasing, leader of sorceries. For leader of sorceries Aquila and Symmachus translated, having sorceries. Nor will anyone wonder that Nineveh is now the most pleasing of harlots, who has seen so great a multitude of men fornicating with her, and almost all being drawn to love of her by her sorceries and by certain incantations. She sold nations in her fornications, nations which take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot, and tribes in her sorceries. For she makes them love what they ought to have hated, and detest what they ought to have loved, so that, when they have been deceived, according to what is written: Evil conversations corrupt good morals, they too may trip up others by the art of sorcery. I have read in the holy Scriptures that sorcerers are also taken in a good sense: And of the sorcerer who enchants wisely. But such a sorcerer enchants for this purpose: to draw back to soundness of mind those bound by love of the harlot Nineveh.
3:5-6
Behold, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will lay bare your shameful parts before your face, and I will show the nations your nakedness, and the kingdoms your disgrace; and I will cast abominations upon you, and I will heap insults upon you, and I will make you an example. LXX: Behold, I am against you, says the Lord Almighty, and I will uncover your hinder parts over your face, and I will show the nations your shame, and the kingdoms your disgrace; and I will cast abomination upon you according to your uncleannesses, and I will make you an example. Because you have sold nations, O Nineveh, in your fornications, and families in your sorceries, and like a public brothel have spread your feet for all, therefore I myself will come to you to overthrow you; I will not send an angel, I will not entrust your judgment to others. I will uncover your shameful parts in your face, so that what you did not see before may be set before your sight. I will show the nations your nakedness, and the kingdoms your disgrace, so that those who have fornicated with you may themselves despise you, mock you, heap insults upon you; and you will be an example to all who see you. Now all these things are told under the metaphor of an adulterous woman, who, when she has been caught, is brought out into the open and paraded before the eyes of all. This, indeed, the prophetic word in Ezekiel also describes most fully, by a transference, against Jerusalem. Yet they are said more truly and more usefully to the world, to which the true physician came from heaven both to cut and to cure. Behold, I am against you, says the Lord Almighty; because I am almighty, I can heal all diseases, and what is impossible for others is possible for me. I will lay bare your hinder parts in your face, that is, my virtues, precepts and words, which you have cast behind your back: though you do not deserve it, I will make you see them. For I had commanded you concerning my words, that they should always move before your eyes, be bound on and hang there. But you, scorning the command of him who gave it, left them behind your footsteps, so that you not only did not do what I had commanded, but did not even deign to look at it. Or certainly I will make you see and understand your errors, which before, when you were borne along blind and headlong, you thought to be virtues. After this I will also show your nakedness to the nations whom you sold in your fornication, so that they may by no means be captured by love of you, but, seeing within the filthy and foul body by whose surface they were at first led on, they may cease to fornicate with you. To the kingdoms also, which are greater than nations, I will show your disgrace, which you yourself brought about, so that you should have it. And I will cast abomination upon you according to your uncleannesses, so that, as you are unclean, so you may be seen to be unclean, and may not deceive very many who, cleaving to you before, were made one body with you. And I will make you an example, so that the dreaded likeness of the punishment may forbid the likeness of the sinning.
3:7
And it shall be: everyone who sees you will spring back from you and will say: Nineveh is laid waste. Who will shake the head over you? Whence shall I seek a consoler for you? In the Hebrew the word head is not found, but we added it, so that the sense might become clearer. Indeed, Symmachus translated it thus: And everyone who sees you will withdraw from you and will say. Nineveh is torn apart, who will mourn with her? The Seventy, moreover: And it shall be, everyone who sees you will go down from you and will say: Wretched Nineveh, who will groan for her? Whence shall I seek consolation for her, tuning the string. Whoever sees the ruins of Nineveh, and her set as an example for all, will be terrified and will marvel, and will say: Nineveh is torn apart, who will shake the head over you? That is, who will grieve over you, who will be able to be your consoler? You who, as long as you were powerful, like a cruel mistress, had no pity on the old man, nor regarded the little child, nor prepared for yourself a companion in your mourning, you who would have no partner in reigning. But he who despises these earthly things, and has scorned the sorceries of Nineveh the poisoner, and has not been ensnared by her false beauty, when he has seen all her foulness within and has begun to hate what the rest love, will flee and spring back from her, or, as is said by the Seventy, will go down. For as long as we honor earthly things and think them lofty, we are, as it were, once at the pinnacle of pride, and we admire the beauty of Nineveh. But when we have considered her nature, and have despised all bodily goods as lowly, subjecting ourselves to the power of the hand of God, then we shall pity Nineveh, and judge all earthly goods worthy of lamentation, and we shall say: Wretched Nineveh, how many have been ensnared by your snares, how many you hold bound with your chains. Who, do you think, will spring back from you and go down from your pride, and judge you wretched? Now what he says, who, we ought to take not so much as meaning what is difficult, as what is rare, as we have often said: Who, do you think, is the faithful and prudent steward? and: Who is wise, and he will understand these things? and: Who will ascend into the mountain of the Lord? Who, then, will groan over Nineveh? Who can be found who, weighed down by this tabernacle, may say with Paul: Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? We see daily that if death has come near to anyone, and he has understood that he is being taken away from this world by fever, or by a wound, or by any kind of disease, he panics, he trembles, and, shaking in his whole body, he clings to the embraces of Nineveh and is scarcely torn away from the body of the beautiful harlot. Now what follows, Whence shall I seek consolation, or a consoler for you, who may tune the string? It is still said in the person of him who will spring back or go down from Nineveh, and will say: Wretched Nineveh, who will groan for her? He is discoursing on the confused way of life of this age, in which nothing can please anyone for ever; but what pleased displeases, and what had displeased pleases again. Who, then, will be able to be found as such a consoler? And, so to speak, a lyric writer and a lyre-player who could draw her discordant strings into one harmony, and make of them a concert of voices in the praises of God? This which we have expounded, who may tune the string, or tuning the string, which in Greek is said ἁρμόσαι χορδὴν, we have found neither in the Hebrew nor in the other translators, but in its place the beginning of another passage: Are you better than Amon, which dwells among the rivers? Hence it seems to me that it should rather be joined with what follows.
3:8-12
Are you better than Amon, which dwells among the rivers? Water is round about her, whose riches are the sea, waters are her walls; Ethiopia is her strength, and Egypt, and there is no end; Africa and the Libyans were your help. Yet she too is led away into exile, into captivity; her little ones will be dashed at the head of all the ways, and over her renowned ones they will cast lots; and all her nobles will be fastened in fetters. And you therefore will be drunk and will be despised; and you will seek your help from the enemy; all your fortresses, like fig trees with their early figs, if they are shaken, will fall into the mouth of the eater. LXX: Tune the string, part of Ammon, you who dwell among the rivers, waters round about her, whose beginning is the sea, and water is her walls; Ethiopia is her strength, and Egypt, and there is no end of your flight. And the Libyans became her helpers, and she herself will go into exile as a captive, and they will dash her little ones at the beginning of her ways, and over all her renowned things they will cast lots, and all her nobles will be bound with fetters; and you will be drunk and will be despised, and you will seek there to make a stand against the enemies; all your fortresses are like fig trees that have early figs: if they are shaken, they will fall into the mouth of the eater. Where in the Seventy one reads Tune the string, part of Ammon, the other translators too rendered: Are you better than Amon? The Hebrew who instructed me in the Scriptures asserted that it can be read thus: Are you better than No, Amon? And he said that in Hebrew Alexandria is called No, and Amon a multitude, or peoples; and that the order of the reading is: Are you better than Alexandria the populous, or of the peoples, which dwells among the rivers, water round about her? Not that it was called Alexandria at that time, since it received its name long afterwards from Alexander the Great of Macedon, but because under its first name, that is, No, it was always the metropolis of Egypt and most abounding in peoples. Finally, those too who have handed down to memory the deeds of Alexander affirm that it was the chief city of Egypt. Moreover the prophet Jeremiah too understands Amon, or No, as Alexandria in the vision against Egypt, to which he says: Egypt is a beautiful heifer; a goader will come to her from the north. He also adds this more plainly: The daughter of Egypt is confounded, she has been delivered into the hand of the people of the north, says the Lord of powers, the God of Israel. Behold, I will visit upon Amon Menno, that is, upon the people from Alexandria. For Amon, as we have said, means peoples, men the preposition 'from', and No Alexandria. And I will visit, he says, upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt and upon her gods; and upon her kings, and upon Pharaoh, and upon those who hope in him; and I will give them into the hands of those who seek their lives, and into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of his servants. And so it is said to Nineveh: Are you more populous, or more powerful, than Alexandria? And the site of Alexandria is described, which, set upon the Nile and the sea, is surrounded on this side and that by waters and rivers. Water is round about her, whose riches are the sea, waters are her walls. For on one side she is girded by the stream of the Nile, on another by Lake Mareotis, on another side by the sea. And that Ethiopia and Egypt, and Africa, for which in the Hebrew Phut is put, and the Libyans are her protection, the very situation of the provinces and of the city shows. She too, therefore, whom my discourse, says the prophet, describes, will be taken by the Babylonian king, and the same man will be the devastator both of you and of her. These things Josephus too, the writer of the Jewish history, relates in his books: Her little ones will be dashed at the crossroads; her nobles will be divided by the lot of the victors, and princes once most powerful will be led captive in chains. Since, then, Alexandria is to suffer these things, you too, O Nineveh, will drink from the same cup, and will be drunk, and lying stupefied you will be despised, and you will come into such need that you will ask help from the Babylonians, or against the Babylonians, from your enemies. All your strongholds, and your walls stretched up on high, and the heights of your towers, which you now think impregnable, and your brave men and warriors, will be compared to first-ripe figs, which, if they are shaken with a light touch, will fall into the mouth of the devourer. For what is read in the Seventy, Tune, or set in order, the string, is still said to Nineveh. And the sense is: What is disordered and out of tune in you, and jarring in different directions, tune like strings, Nineveh, for your beauty and your greatness, which you believe you possess in a pre-eminent degree, will profit you nothing unless you tune yourself for singing. For consider the whole part of the lot of the sons of Ammon, and how whatever goods they are reckoned to possess did not defend them from going into captivity and from their little ones being dashed in the ways. What did the rivers profit her, beside which the city of Ammon is set? What did so great a multitude of wells and springs, besides the rivers, beginning from the Dead Sea and walling in her region, profit her? What protection did Ethiopia and Egypt, once her allies, afford her? As, then, the help of her allies did not aid her, so neither will there be an end of your fleeing, O Nineveh, but you will be laid waste hither and thither. Why should I speak of the Ethiopians and the Egyptians, who were the protectors of the sons of Ammon, when even the Libyans were her allies? She too, therefore, will be led into captivity; her little ones, because they will not be able to walk, will be slain in the ways, struck down before the faces of their parents, and all her wealth will perhaps be divided by the victors. Nor will any of her princes escape, for they will be bound with iron and fetters. And you therefore, O Nineveh, will be drunk, and you who were once rich and beautiful, who had so many lovers, will be despised by all, and with your enemies pursuing you will seek rest and will not find it. All your warriors and all your auxiliaries will be a prey to the enemies, and will be taken without any labor, like the early figs of a fig tree, which, when shaken, fall not to the ground, so that there may not be even the small labor of gathering them, but straightway into the mouth of the devourer. Let these things be said παραφραστικῶς (by way of paraphrase) according to the Seventy translators: for we have once for all resolved to follow the common edition too, lest we seem to have given the Hydra and Sardanapalus any occasion for censure. However, the example of the overthrow of Nineveh does not seem to me to fit well enough with the sons of Lot, who are called Amman. For first, it is called Ammon and not Amman; then Ammana, which is now called Philadelphia, is not set upon rivers, nor is its wealth gathered from the sea, since it is inland; nor are waters its walls, nor does it have Ethiopia and Egypt and Africa and the Libyans as allies; whereas all these things, as to the example, as to power, and as to the description of the place and region and of the friendly nations, are rather to be fitted to Alexandria; and Nineveh, a most powerful city, compared with lesser Philadelphia, would never hear from the prophet: Are you better? But the one to whom it is said, Are you better, is shown to be less than the one with which she is compared, and that she ought not to take it ill if she is captured, since a greater, firmer and more powerful city, both by the nature of its site and by its brave men, has been overcome by the same enemy. But since we have interpreted Nineveh also as this world, she is commanded to tune and set in order her strings and to prepare herself for a mournful song; for the part of the sons of Ammon, which had been much better than Nineveh and had dwelt upon rivers, because it was caught in error, has paid the penalty of its crime. And first, as must be said according to the history of Alexandria, Ammon means peoples, and the sense according to the laws of allegory is this: Consider the peoples of the Church, which dwells upon the streams of the prophets, and has teachers round about her, out of whose belly rivers flow, and whose beginning is the sea. For from the reading of the law, which without the wood of Christ is bitter, like Marah, one comes to her mystery, and she has Ethiopia for her strength. For Ethiopia indeed will be first to stretch out her hands to God; and she has Egypt, into which the Lord came on a light cloud; and the Libyans, who before dwelt in parched places and afterwards became her help. She too, therefore, if she does not take heed to herself and keep her heart with all diligence, will be led captive and will mourn her sons. Her little ones too, who are still at the beginnings of the ways and have not reached the middle of the journey, will be dashed at their very beginnings, and the most savage enemies will hasten to divide among themselves by lot all her splendid things, and they will drag into captivity her nobles, whom we can understand as princes and overseers, bound with chains and hampered by the heaviest weight of fetters. And you therefore, Nineveh, that is, unbelieving men, men clinging wholly to the world, will feel punishments and will be stupefied by my cup, since those too have drunk who had been of my portion and fell by their own fault. And you will be despised by me; you will seek an end amid the vices and passions that will press upon you, and nonetheless you will not be able to find a resting place and an end of evils; but all your desires and delights, and the powers of the age, and the dogmas you seemed to yourself to hold most firmly, will be devoured by the eater, of whom Samson speaks in a parable: Out of the eater came forth food, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. For then all your strong things, and those that promised sweet fruits to the eyes of onlookers, will tumble at the first shaking of the tree into the mouth of the devouring devil, by whom Nineveh had always been held and possessed. Moreover, what we passed over, And there is no end of your flight, since it is said to Nineveh and is set among the things written about Ammon, and seems to be inserted irregularly in a place not its own, let us refer to Nineveh as if by ὑπέρβατον (hyperbaton), so that the order is: And you will be drunk, and there is no end of your flight, and you will be despised, and the rest that is said to Nineveh. And we will interpret it to mean that there is no end of Nineveh's flight from God, because she always makes progress in fleeing and never wishes to stand still, according to what we said above: And they, fleeing, did not stand, and there was none to look back. And we will say that holy Scripture is woven with these difficulties, and above all the prophets, who are full of riddles, so that the difficulty of the language too may wrap up the difficulty of the meanings, that what is holy may not easily lie open to dogs, nor pearls to swine, nor the holy of holies to the profane. But if we wish to interpret Ammon of the sons of Lot, let us say that Lot had two sons by his two daughters, Moab and Ammon, of whom the elder, Moab, means 'from the father' or 'paternal water', and the younger, Ammon, either 'son of my race' or 'our people'. And I think that, just as to one who had been born of Judah it is said because of his sin: Seed of Canaan, and not of Judah, and in Ezekiel to sinful Jerusalem: Your root and your generation are from the land of Canaan, your father an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite, so whoever were of the former people, that is, of the Jews, and of the younger, that is, of ours, are figuratively called Moabites and Ammonites. And because they turned aside from their father — for Lot means turning aside — they are to be subjected to punishment and will suffer all that we have set out above. But if the severity of God begins with those who were once holy, and she who dwelt among the rivers will be purged by the fire of Gehenna, how much more will Nineveh, which before did not have the law nor receive the yoke of God's commandments, because of her pride at the last fall into the mouth of the devourer.
3:13-17
Behold, your people are women in the midst of you; to your enemies the gates of your land will be thrown wide open; fire will devour your bars. Draw yourself water because of the siege, build up your fortifications; go into the clay, and tread it, and working it hold the brick. There fire will devour you; you will perish by the sword; it will devour you like the cankerworm; gather yourself like the cankerworm, multiply like the locust. You have made your tradings more than the stars of heaven are. The cankerworm spread out, and flew away. Your guards are like the locust, and your little ones like the locusts of locusts, which settle in the hedges on the day of cold. The sun has risen, and they have flown away, and their place where they were is not known. LXX: Behold, your people are like women in you; to your enemies the gates of your land will be opened with opening; fire has eaten your bars. Draw yourself water of the siege, hold your fortifications; go into the clay and be trodden in the straw, prevail over the brick. There fire will eat you, the sword will destroy you, and it will eat you like the locust; you will be weighed down like the cankerworm; multiply like the cankerworm; you have multiplied your tradings like the stars of heaven. The speaker's discourse is still woven as addressed to Nineveh. No wonder if your strong men and fighters, like early figs, fall at once into the mouth of the devourer, since your people has become effeminate and cannot resist. Your gates, then, will be thrown open, and the city will lie open to the enemies; fire will consume the stoutest bars with which the gates were closed. Draw water, therefore, and take care that drink is not lacking to the besieged fortress; make bricks, so that you may build up the breaches of the walls: for the siege is near. And when you have done all these things, you will be devoured by the sword as the ground is by the cankerworm. But even when you have been multiplied like the cankerworm, and gathered together into one like the locust, and have gathered your riches like the stars of heaven, then, just as locusts and the cankerworm, and the small offspring of locusts which are called attelabi, fly away when the sun grows hot and are not found, so you will be scattered and will flee. For this is the nature of locusts, that, torpid in the cold, they fly about in the heat. Moreover, the attelabus, which Aquila has rendered more expressively as 'the glutton', is a small locust, between the locust and the cankerworm, creeping rather than flying with its small wings and always hopping, and for this reason, wherever it has sprung up, it consumes everything down to the dust, because until its wings grow it cannot go away. These things I have explained more plainly according to the Hebrew, treading in the very footsteps of Scripture, for the reader's easier understanding. But I will speak also according to the LXX, following the τροπολογίαν (tropology) I have begun, first briefly, that is, as in an epitome, and afterwards discussing each point more broadly: Your people, O Nineveh, that is, the men of this age, who are properly called the people of the Assyrian city, are so unnerved by passions and have so languished in vices that they are compared to the weakness of women; for they possess nothing strong in their souls, nothing robust and manly. Hence the enemies, prevailing against them, have opened all their senses and have entered through the bodily doors. And significantly the senses of bodies are called the doors of the land of Nineveh. But even those who have enslaved themselves to vices have, from God's first creation, an occasion of knowing God, like the stoutest bars, with which they may block and close the gates of the senses. But fire will consume these too, the fire that is winged by burning arrows; wherefore it is said to Nineveh: Draw yourself water, and sprinkle yourself with the word and with reason, and make full use, for fighting, of the occasions of understanding God and of exercising the virtues that are implanted in you. But you, with slackened hands, that is, by the works of pleasure, have lost whatever strength you had in you; therefore turn back, and do repentance, and hold your fortifications again. And since she has once entered the clay, and you are shut up in a body — which, as from earth and straw and water, so is compacted of flesh, blood, veins, sinews and bones — bear the injury and the necessities of the body, and be trodden down by the enemies, and suffer all things that are worthy of repentance for subduing the flesh. For having once taken on the clay and the straw, and being entangled in the empty dealings of this age, you ought willingly to be trodden down through injury; and yet do not utterly despair of salvation: be confident, and bring your body, that is, your brick, into servitude, because of the word you have taken up like water; and subject it to yourself, so that you may rule over your brick; otherwise, unless you do this, a living flame will afterwards consume you, kindled either for punishment through Gehenna or by the burning darts of the enemy, and you will not only be laid waste by fire, but the sword too will eat you, as the locust eats the green things of the earth. And this you will suffer if you are not over the brick: weighed down by your own weight and losing all flight, you will be dragged wholly down to the earth, as the cankerworm suddenly falls to the earth when with wearied flight it can go no further. Have, therefore, virtues as innumerable as the cankerworm, lest you be dragged down to the earth by your weight like the cankerworm. All these things you have suffered because you multiplied for yourself riches and the tradings of diverse dogmas, thinking them brighter than the stars and shining more than the constellations of heaven. These things, as I said, have been said by us briefly so that the sense may be grasped; now, returning to the beginning of the section, let us unfold each point as we can. Who would not say that beautiful Nineveh, a soul beautiful by nature, beguiled by the luxury and pleasures of this age, has come to womanish delights, and, her manliness lost, has languished into a woman? For if the soul of the righteous man, coming to the perfect man and keeping the firmness of its creation, and cleaving to God, is made one spirit with him, why should not, on the contrary, the soul that loves the world become one with the world, and, reduced to womanly softness, lose its manly firmness? I think that for this reason in Exodus Pharaoh commands that every male born to the Hebrews be thrown into the river, and every female be kept alive. For the Egyptian king, who says elsewhere: The rivers are mine, and I made them, could command nothing other than this, that whatever is strong and manly in the Hebrews, and in those who pass through this age, be thrown into the waters and carried down by their streams into the sea. And on the contrary, whatever seemed womanly and soft and comely in this age, that should be kept alive, should grow up and beget. And consider at the same time that the Egyptian ruler cannot kill the men of the Hebrews, nor those who have already come out of infancy, but only those whose age is still tender, and their body soft, and their progress just beginning; he knows that the females cannot be reared unless the males have been killed. So he wishes to drown in the whirlpool of his river whatever is strong and manly in the Hebrews, so that what is womanly may grow up alone more freely. As for what follows, To your enemies the gates of your land will be opened with opening, you will be able to understand it by taking testimony from Jeremiah, in whom it is written: Death has come up through your windows. And what in Jeremiah is shown in the windows, here you will declare is shown in the gates, and you will refer these very gates to the senses. For the divine word, knowing that the senses are twofold, says in Proverbs, to distinguish them from the evil senses: You will find a divine sense. But here you should not take sense for the soul and the mind, which in Greek is called νοῦς, but for αἰσθήσει (sense-perception), from which the five senses also are named: sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing. The gates of the land of Nineveh, then, are understood as the bodily senses; but the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem as every divine sense, and one coming from above. These gates of Nineveh her people opens through sight and hearing and all the remaining senses, as through the broad and spacious way that leads to death, seeking to seize the bodily pleasures against which the men of God close their gates, stopping their ears lest they hear the judgment of blood, closing their eyes lest they see iniquity, stopping their nostrils lest they take in by smell the chief ointments to the effeminacy of their soul, closing the mouth to the gullet and to the greedy belly, and drawing back their hands from soft touch, lest the belly, boiling over into lust, drive the burning soul into womanly embraces. But those who are men of God open their senses, that is, the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, so that the word of God may enter into them. Of the evil gates this is an example: You who lift me up from the gates of death. Of the good, this: That I may announce all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion. When you see a lover of pleasures rather than a lover of God, and one given over to luxury, say of him at once: He has opened the gates of his land to his enemies; for it is not to the friends of their soul, but to the enemies, that they open the gates of the land of Nineveh. And if those too who are reckoned princes among the people do the same, you will not fear to say of them also: The leaders of my people have been cast out of the house of their delights. But if you see them hampered by pleasures and by luxury surrounding them on this side and that, having no mercy toward the poor and no concern for the people of God, you will fit to them what follows: Who sleep upon beds of ivory and flow with pleasure on their couches, who eat kids from the flocks and sucking calves from the herds; who drink strained wine and are anointed with the chief ointments; and they suffered nothing over the affliction of Joseph. Moreover, what is said, Fire has eaten your bars, is of this kind: If there seemed to be anything of natural good in your soul which, like bars, could hold back and repel the enemies who were trying to break in through the gates of your senses, this has been burned up by the Babylonian fire. Also, Draw to yourself water of the fortification, is said of the word of God, so that the soul may surround herself with the teaching and reason of the Scriptures as with a most firm wall, lest the enemy be able to break into her inner parts. Hold, he says, your fortifications. Whatever good you have in you by nature, which preserves in you the beginning given by the best Creator, this, unhappy soul, Nineveh, hold for your defense, and do not let it flow out of the ruling part of the heart. As for what is added after this, Walk into the clay, and be trodden in the straw, another perhaps may think it is said of the soul which, fixed in the clay of the body and the straw of this world, empty, that is, and perishable, turning itself about wholly, is trodden down by demons. But to me this seems to be said to her: Bear the temptations, the injuries to which you have been handed over, the punishments which you suffer by your own desert; for if you walk upon the empty and fragile dealings of this world, know that you are bearing them as a remedy, if only you prevail over the brick and subjugate the flesh to the rule of the soul. Then follows: There fire will eat you. If you are not over the brick and do not have dominion over the flesh, but remain in the brick, and love the straw, and live in the flesh according to the flesh, not only will the burning darts of the enemy devour you, but his sword too will kill you, and like locusts it will consume with greedy tooth whatever in you seemed green and sprouting of its own accord from the good of nature, and as the cankerworm, its flight lost and weighed down by its own weight, so you too, weighed down by the burden of sins, will be dragged down to the earth. Therefore, lest you suffer such and so great things, multiply like the cankerworm, and as great as its number is, so many virtues must you have. For you who have multiplied your tradings, and of every kind — as if you desired to possess heavenly things — have gathered for yourself by right and by wrong riches that will perish, ought to equal the multitude of sins with a multitude of virtues. Above, according to the Hebrew, I had come as far as the place where it says: The sun has risen, and they have flown away, and their place where they were is not known. And I said what seemed to me in the context of the discourse itself. Now, because the LXX seem to have the beginning of a sense of their own, I will set down their testimony and follow the order of the explanation I have begun.
LXX: The cankerworm rushed in and flew out; your commingled one leapt out like the attelabus, like the locust that goes up upon the hedge on the day of frost; the sun rose, and it leapt out, and did not know its place. It seems to me that the multitude of Nineveh, without a ruler, mingled together from here and there without order, and rushing wherever impulse carries it, is compared to the cankerworm, a small and innumerable creature, which seems to raise itself only a little from the ground. And the attelabus too, which in Greek is called συμμικτὸς and in Latin has been translated as 'commingled one', we can understand as the ignoble rabble and a people gathered from here and there out of diverse nations, that is, not citizens but foreigners. Hence the people of Israel too, as it went out of Egypt, is related to have had πολὺν σύμμικτον (a great mixed multitude), that is, of Egyptians and Ethiopians and various nations. This mixed one of Nineveh, then, so to speak, is compared to the leaping attelabus and to the locust, which on the day of cold, because it cannot fly away, settles on the hedge, and afterwards, when the sun has risen, warmed by its heat leaps out, and flying away to other regions by no means remembers the hedge on which it had sat in the time of cold. Let these things be said παραφραστικῶς (by way of paraphrase), so that the prophet's discourse itself may be more easily understood. However, you will not be able to hesitate to call cankerworm the multitude of men which, going along the broad way, busies itself in the world, when you see them wholly given to the earth, running about hither and thither with fickleness of opinion, and unable to fly to higher things. Look at Rome, and at Constantinople exchanging its former poverty together with its earlier name. See Alexandria, the head of Egypt, and when a riot has been stirred up, either for scarcity of the grain supply or, what is matter for shame and blushing, on account of charioteers and mimes and actors, see the people rush like the cankerworm and, clinging wholly to vices, flit hither and thither through its fickleness and its change of opinion from moment to moment; then truly you will be able to say: The cankerworm went off with a rush and flew away. Moreover, as to what follows, The attelabus leapt out, and your mixed one like the locust, I think the mixed one differs from the cankerworm in this, that the cankerworm is compared to the unskilled and innumerable multitude, but the mixed one is gathered from here and there out of all nations. And just as in cities some are citizens and others foreigners, who are pleased to live in a city not their own, so I think that the mixed one who dwells in Nineveh are those who seem to themselves, in their own opinion, to follow some dogmas of truth, and to be better than the cankerworm in this, that the cankerworm does nothing else but stay always on the ground and, without wings, serve its food and its belly; while the attelabus at least takes on small wings, and though it cannot fly on high, still strives to leap up from the ground, and at length, coming to be a locust, it flies about indeed, but its flight is not lasting; for when its little wings fail and are stiffened by the cold, even the locust settles, and settles not on a fruitful tree and on green leaves, but on a hedge woven of brambles and brushwood, or on a dry-stone wall put together from stones picked up at random here and there. Let us consider the wise men of Greece, and of the Egyptians and Persians, and the Gymnosophists of the Indians, and the Samaritans, and the various opinions among them, and the Jews and their Pharisees, and the Sadducees, and the manifold heresies of the Church, and we shall see the attelabus lifting itself a little from the ground, and the locust flying indeed, but not at full course, and, because it does not have the heat of the sun of righteousness, its love toward God growing cold, sitting in thorny hedges. For all their dogmas, since they are cold and cannot fly, find a seat and rest for themselves among the thickets of Aristotle and Chrysippus. From there Eunomius brings forth: What was born did not exist before it was born. From there Manichaeus, to free God from the creation of evils, introduces another author of evil. From there Novatus withdraws pardon, so as to take away repentance. And to sum up everything at once in a brief word, all the dogmas draw the streams of their argumentations from those springs, so that they have even entitled the very places from which arguments are taken τοπικὰ (Topics). This locust, then, which now sits in the hedges, when the time of judgment has come and the world has grown warm at the rising of the sun, will leave its seat and its places to which it clung in the time of cold, and, turned to better things, will not remember its former seat. But what we have said generally of the time of judgment can be understood in part even now: that through learned and erudite men the light of the sun of righteousness may rise for locusts of this kind, and that, leaving their thorns, they may pass into a pure and free flight.
3:18-19
Your shepherds have slumbered, king of Asshur; your princes will be buried, your people is scattered upon the mountains, and there is none to gather them. Your crushing is not obscure, most grievous is your stroke. All who have heard the report of you have clenched the hand over you, for upon whom has your malice not passed continually? LXX: Woe to them. Your shepherds have slumbered, the king of Asshur has lulled your mighty ones to sleep, your people has gone away upon the mountains, and there was none to receive them, and there is no healing for your crushing; your stroke swells. All who have heard the news of you will clap their hands over you, for upon whom has your malice not rushed continually? It is no wonder if your shepherds have slumbered, O king of Asshur, you who held dominion in Nineveh, and if your princes are buried, or wander, your petty kings, that is, and the leaders of all the nations who served you before, since your people have become women in the midst of your city, and its gates have been opened to your enemies, and the whole multitude sitting on the wall has been likened to the locust, which, as at the rising of the sun, so has fled from the ramparts at the coming of Nebuchadnezzar, and has turned its back to the enemies, and its place has not been found. Therefore, since God was angered because you had laid waste his people, O Asshur, and had raised your nest up to heaven, whence you are also called great sense, your city has been destroyed. And with all the princes slain who were able to resist the adversaries, the rest of your people, unwarlike and ignoble, has been scattered on the mountains, and none of the leaders can be found to gather them and from those gathered to muster an army again. Your wound is not obscure, nor is it such a stroke as could be cured by a physician's hand. All who hear that Nineveh has been overthrown and the Assyrian king overcome, and that the most mighty city, and the king once lord of the city, has been wounded, and lies half-dead, and wallows in his own blood, will either be stunned at the greatness of the event and the unhoped-for news, and will clench their hands, or surely, for the greatness of their joy, insulting you, they will clap their hands and resound with a kind of clamor of joy. For there is no one who can grieve over you and grant tears to your overthrow and your wound, since there is no one over whom your malice has not continually passed. And "has passed" is well said: for the malice of the Assyrian king cannot remain perpetually in his enemies. Thus far let the order of the history have been woven. But according to the Hebrew as well, before we discuss the edition of the Seventy — for in them the sense is far other and different —, we ought to climb a little from the history to the heights, and to teach that in the last prophecy of Nahum an ἀποστροφὴ (apostrophe) is made to the devil, the great sense, the prince of the Assyrians, who once said boastfully: By strength I will do it, and by the wisdom of understanding I will take away the bounds of the nations, and I will feed upon their strength, and I will shake the cities that are inhabited, and that it is said to him: O Lucifer, who rose in the morning, who sent your sparks to all the nations, how have you fallen to the earth and been crushed? Nineveh, your beautiful and mighty city, has been destroyed, in which you presumed so great an empire for yourself that you dared to say even to the Son of God: All these things have been delivered to me; if you fall down and worship me, I will give them to you. Your shepherds and petty kings have slumbered, who did not feed men unto salvation, but nourished them for your slaughter, so that you might devour fatter victims. All your people, and the throng of peoples that once worshiped you, has deserted you and your city, and has fled to the mountains, and has placed itself under the hiding places of the apostles of Christ and of the teachers; and meanwhile there is none of your leaders to call back to himself the throng that was once yours. Your stroke and your wound have resounded through the whole world; all who had once been deceived by your supplanting have insulted you; for there is either no one, or scarcely anyone, whom you have not at some time deceived, and through whom your malice has not passed. And it must be noted that the one in whom the malice of the devil has stood fast cannot insult his ruin and wound, since he is of the shepherds and the people of the Assyrian king; but the one through whom it has passed insults him, and with good and upright works, as with hands, claps over him. And fittingly, according to the Hebrew, up to this point it has been spoken of the ruin of the world, and last of all the stroke and wound of the devil himself too is proclaimed, who was the prince of the world: For the world is set in the evil one. But in the Seventy it is still said to the σύμμικτον, that is, to the mixed one of the world, that its shepherds have slept, and that, so that they might sleep, they have been lulled to sleep by the Assyrian king; and so it comes about that, while in them is described what the Assyrian practiced among others, and not what he himself suffers, nothing is said of the wound and stroke and slaying of the devil. Woe, therefore, to those who are masters of perverse doctrines in Nineveh. And fittingly it is said to them: Your shepherds have slumbered; for they have given sleep to their eyes, and slumber to their eyelids. And therefore they did not find a place for the Lord, nor a tabernacle for the God of Jacob. Nor did they hear of Ephrathah, that is, the fruitful Church, nor did they find it in the thickets of the woods. But not only have the shepherds of this mixed one, and of the locust, which, when frost threatens, sits in the hedges, slumbered, but they have also been lulled to sleep by the king of the Assyrians. For the Assyrian king knows that he cannot deceive the sheep unless he has first lulled the shepherds to sleep. It is ever the devil's endeavor to lull wakeful souls to sleep. Finally, in the Lord's passion too he weighs down the eyes of the apostles with heavy sleep; and the Savior, rousing them, says: Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation. And again: What I say to you, I say to all: watch. And because he never ceases to lull the wakeful to sleep, whomever he has deceived, and enticed to sleep as with the sweet and deadly song of the Sirens, the divine word rouses, and says: Rise, you who sleep, and be lifted up, and Christ will enlighten you. At the coming, then, of Christ, and of the word of God, and of the Church's teaching, and of the consummation of Nineveh, once the most beautiful harlot, the people that had before been lulled to sleep under its masters will be lifted up and will hasten, and will go to the mountains of the Scriptures, and there it will find as mountains Moses and Joshua son of Nun, as mountains the prophets, as mountains the apostles and evangelists of the New Testament; and when it has fled to such mountains, and has been occupied in the reading of mountains of this kind, if it does not find anyone to teach it: For the harvest is great, but the laborers are few, then both its zeal will be approved, because it fled to the mountains, and the sloth of the masters will be convicted. For he adds: And there was none to receive them. There follows: There is no healing for your crushing; your stroke swells. Therefore the mixed one of Nineveh cannot be healed, because he does not lay aside his pride, and the wound is always fresh, and he is struck every day as the devil smites him. And after all these things there is no healing for his crushing; for although he seems to himself to be sound, yet his soul is broken and crushed, as the hammer of the whole earth strikes from above, and it is not healed, because it is always lifted up. But if he is humbled and submits himself to Christ: A crushed and humbled heart God does not despise, and: A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit. At the end is placed: All who have heard the news of you will clap their hands over you. For upon whom has your malice not rushed continually? When you begin, ὦ σύμμικτε (O mixed one), to undergo punishments, all who hear the news will insult you and rejoice with a harmonious and vocal clapping, and, so to speak, with the sound and concert of works. For there is no one, or surely scarcely anyone, upon whom your malice has not rushed, or come, continually. For if the city of Nineveh has συμμίκτους shepherds and mighty ones, and every false doctrine and lying opinion of knowledge comes from the symmictus, it is to be feared that perhaps there is no one upon whom the malice of the συμμίκτου has not come. And observe carefully that he did not say: Into whom your malice, σύμμικτε, has not entered, but: Upon whom it has not come. For often the darts of false dogmas come upon us, and desire as it were to enter into the secret place of the soul; but when we shut the gates, the σύμμικτος does indeed come upon us; and as far as in him lies, he rushes in, and always does this; but with Christ the Lord helping, and guarding our heart with all watchfulness, he rushes in indeed, but cannot enter.