Since, therefore, history is clear that those who killed Christ were the children of those who did these things,^[1] the question occurs as to how they are called children of perdition, in opposition to those who wish to be of a different nature. The former are evil and lost, unable to be saved, whereas the latter are good, unable to perish. For if, as they think, the children of perdition are worse by nature, how is it possible that one of them could be found who was previously lost? In the parable of the prodigal, moreover, both the one sheep lost out of one hundred and the one silver coin lost out of ten were found again, as was the son, about whom the father said to his elder brother: This your brother was lost and is found again; he was dead, and now he lives!^[2] For no one perishes unless previously healthy, and no one dies unless previously alive. Therefore, those who are now called children of perdition, or children of iniquity and crime, have failed the Lord by their own fault and thus began to be children of perdition when they were still children of the Lord, as the prophet says to these very people: You failed the Lord and provoked the holy One of Israel to wrath.^[3] We can receive this, according to the tropological sense, as applying to heretics who are children of perdition and the seed of the worst, or liars. For they were liars from the beginning, just like the devil, who is the father of their lie and the father of every lie.^[4] . . . Nor is there any doubt but that such children of perdition and wicked seed will themselves have many children whom they will deceive and murder in deep valleys and in the abyss of impiety, under overhanging rocks that continuously threaten destruction, rocks that are called many on account of the diversity of their lies and the variety of their false doctrines. We, by contrast, have one Rock that the people of God continuously follow and from which the people of Israel formerly drank, when they enjoyed familiarity with the Lord.^[5]

This shows them to be those who detest God, having a sick hatred for him and ready to eat blood. There was nothing new in this; it was a long established custom. For you are the ones who have from long ago called on idols under a leafy tree. . . . Your guilt is that you first think to kill your firstborn and then offer libations to impure demons and soulless idols; so slaying will also be your portion and your lot. . . . Should I not be angry with these people? Is there not a good cause for my anger?

First we will discuss the Hebrew, which differs greatly in this location from the Septuagint. As for what it said above [Is 57:7], You have set your bed on a high and lofty mountain, it also accuses her of behaving like a prostitute, standing behind the door to the entrance of houses and in other shadowy places, such that whoever wished to enter a room would have temptation before his eyes. Now, it blames and insults the same adulterous wife, who, while sleeping with her husband, will secretly receive an adulterer and uncover herself to him and extend her bed for him and forge an agreement with him, as though she were signing a contract.

You have made a bargain for yourselves with them means, You have united with many demons, and you have followed their laws, and you have covenanted to serve each one.

Rightly does God through the prophet reproach the sinful soul that goes whoring away from him and say, You thought, if you withdrew from me, you would have more?^[1] But like that younger son, why, you have ended up feeding pigs; why, you have lost all things;^[2] why, you have remained in want and left it very late before you grew tired and came back. Now at last realize that what the Father gave you, he could keep for you more safely. . . . O sinful soul, filled with harlotries, turned foul and faded, turned unclean, and still loved like that! So go back to the beautiful one, in order to return to beauty; go back and speak to him who alone suffices you. . . . So lift your heart up, do not leave it on the ground, or in those beggarly treasures or in a place to rot. In Adam, too, the root of all evils was avarice. You see, he wanted more than he had received, because God had not been enough for him.

Whoever walks along the one royal way does not labor. Indeed, God issued a commandment about this through Moses: You shall walk along the royal way and not deviate to your right or to your left.^[1] The one way is the way of truth, as it says in the Gospel: I am the way, the truth and the life.^[2] But there are various ways of deception, along which Jerusalem is now demonstrated to have walked. God, who knows the difference between such ways, said earlier to those who were wandering: Your ways are not like my way.^[3] And those who trust in the Lord said, You have caused our ways not to depart from your ways.^[4] With knowledge of the one royal way, then, let us beware of deviations to the left and right, along which we are forbidden to walk. The royal way is temperance, having neither too little nor too much. For example, the royal and right way entails prudence; we deviate to the right if we understand more than is proper for us to understand and if we prefer cleverness above prudence, by which measure the serpent was more prudent than all the animals in paradise^[5] and the children of darkness are more prudent than the children of light.^[6] We deviate to the left, however, when we are foolish and have less understanding than is necessary. Concerning such people, it is said, The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’^[7]

The royal road also involves fortitude and constancy, from which the impulsive and rash deviate to the right and the timid and fearful deviate to the left. Hence, a holy person desiring to walk along the right way prays, Lead me, Lord, on the right path,^[1] and, in another passage, Make known to me, O Lord, the way in which I should walk, for to you I lift my eyes.^[2] . . . Then it continues, according to the Hebrew: You found life by your own hand, so you did not beseech [Is 57:10], which has the following sense and meaning: Because you were abounding in all things and flowing in riches, you neglected the Lord, whereas Solomon refused such riches precisely so that he would not forget God. . . . For not only riches but poverty also tests a person, which is why it was written above: I tested you on the road of poverty,^[3] the same road on which Lazarus the poor man was tested, who sustained debilitating illness as well as poverty.^[4]

But how could it not have been necessary to act as a suppliant and ask God for mercy when you had dared to commit such shameful and foul deeds? For he receives those who wish to repent. He is good by nature, and he knows our substance, as it is written. For he has spoken through one of the holy prophets: Return, my sons, return and I will heal you from what oppresses you.^[1] Therefore this is a sin of their extreme lawlessness and of their total turning away and being fixed in evil things, that they refuse to seek mercy from God by confessing their sins.

Of what are you so afraid that you would lie and neither remember me nor think of me in your heart? For I am silent, as if I do not see, and you forget me.^[1] Because you put your trust in the gods whose storehouses are full, you refused to ask me and were thus fearful of many things. For you were unable to say, The Lord is my help, and I am therefore unafraid of my enemies,^[2] or The Lord is my light and my savior, so whom shall I fear?^[3] If at any time you chose to speak against what was in your own mind, you lied. For how would you be able to invoke me, who remember neither me nor any of my precepts, such as: Honor the Lord and you will be strong and will fear nothing^[4]? For, according to Symmachus and Aquila, I am he who continually remained silent about your sins and pretended to ignore the crimes you committed, as though I had not seen them at all, this so that you would return to me at least for the sake of my patience, if not because you fear me. . . . The word mind, which is associated with the heart in the Septua-gint, is not written in the Hebrew text but is added here as though it were a gloss on how the mind ought to be identified with the heart in Scripture.

This, as I have said, is obscure: shall possess the land and inhabit my holy mountain. After all, if we take it literally and materialistically, we won’t be cleansing ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit; and God will have procured for us to no purpose the conjunction of the end of the reading from the prophet with the beginning of the reading from the apostle, if to possess some earthly mountain we start getting ourselves ready for avarice, not for godliness. Well, but what should we understand by the mountain? It is obscure what [Isaiah] meant by mountain.

Yes, but if God had really let us down, he would nowhere say what mountain means. Where he does tell us openly, that is where you must love the mountain. Where he openly recommends a mountain to you, and Scripture opens itself up to say what mountain means, that is where you must love it. Yes, wherever you hear such a mountain promised you, set your sights on it. . . . What sort of mountain really has been promised us? . . .

The church itself is the mountain . . . we are going to rise again, and we shall be the holy mountain of God. On this mountain dwells whoever has given himself to God. But those who have given themselves to me shall possess the land and inhabit my holy mountain.

And it shall be said, ‘Remove every obstruction from my people’s way.’ Probably he said these words with regard to the Jewish Zealots, who killed their fellow citizens, because they had lapsed into idolatry and had been an obstacle for their fellows in the days of the Greeks.

The blessed prophets, when the Lord of the universe promises what is great and godly to them, were filled with much wonder at his glory and clemency and, as if responding from excitement, they run to give praise. We find the prophet doing precisely that here. The Lord says these things but has to add, the exalted, that is, he who is by nature over and above all things that have come to be. I dwell in the high places means again that he is in the unshakeable upper reaches and that this divine and lofty nature is in the ineffable transcendence that is above. However, I think that this, the divine nature’s dwelling in the exalted places, is forever. For it exists without change in these places by itself, and there is nothing in better conditions than it is, but rather the being that is in these conditions unchangingly exists unceasingly.

By these names the kindness of God shows that he is supreme. For those sharing in these titles have made him to be low, consorting with idols and demons. Although he is holy, these people blaspheme his name with evil desires and deeds that are not honorable. He says, I am holy, and I rejoice with the holy as I sanctify them, stirring up their power and rousing them in their attitudes, providing they show themselves to be worthy and demonstrate their wills to be contrite and penitent. For to such I will grant eternal life.

Revenge is meant in the sense that God will give sinners over to troubles so that they receive discipline. God does these things, yet also he spares our race in his compassion. God shows his compassion in these instances of recompense by only disciplining us a little, given the large amount of our sins.

Thus says the Lord, who is exalted and sublime, who dwells in the heights and is holy in the saints, though not as in a locality but in the merit of those in whom he lives, one of whom said in the Psalms: I will exalt you, O Lord, for you have raised me.^[1] . . . It is not to be understood from this that God is elevated by human speech but that God can be exalted also in the humble, according to what was said elsewhere: God has become my salvation.^[2] . . . Moreover, just as wisdom does not enter a wicked soul, neither does it dwell in a body subjected to sins. In this way does the holy One dwell in saints. And wherever there is filth, purity cannot live. . . . For Christ does not dwell in earthly places but in regions above the heavens, which proclaim the glory of the Lord.^[3]

We certainly ought not to agree, after the Jewish custom, that God is enclosed in any place and dwells only in heaven. For God, by whom all things are held together, is present everywhere. Instead, we should understand correctly the meaning of heights and heavens and saints and virtues. . . .

Because I strike in order to correct, therefore do I kill in order to bring to life. For I have mercy on my creatures, nor will I allow those whom I have established to perish eternally. And my Spirit that proceeds from me, or, according to the Hebrew of Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion, that encompasses all things (for this is what the Greek words perieilēthēsetai and periballei signify), is the animator of all that exists. I also created the breath, or plural breaths (this is what nasamoth indicates), about which it is written elsewhere: May every breath, or everything that breathes, praise the Lord.^[1] . . . Some among us say that this is the Spirit^[2] whereby all the world is inspired and ruled. . . . But others understand it to be the Holy Spirit who was borne above the waters in the beginning and vivified everything,^[3] the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and, because of the union^[4] of natures, is sent by the Son, on account of which he said: It is expedient for you that I go away, for unless I depart, the Paraclete will not come to you. If I go, however, I will send him to you.^[5] . . . Let no one be scandalized, though, if the Spirit is said to proceed from the Father, for the Son also says this about himself: I proceeded and came from the Father; I did not come on my own, but he sent me.^[6]

He has shown the variety of types of care; although he dwells in the heavens, [God] considers lowly things, and though as holy he resides among holy ones he gives spiritual comfort to those who are spiritually weak. Those who are heartbroken he leads back to life. For he does not concern himself only with the righteous but also with those who have let themselves draw near to the abyss of evil, and he brings healing in various ways to those afflicted in soul.

It is easier for the Lord to restrain his anger, which we know is remote from his tranquility; but we should believe that he is more inclined to mercy, which is never detached from his majesty. . . . So he will not restrain his mercy in anger, but rather he will refrain from anger in mercy, as long as devoted conversion is forthcoming in this world. Remember too that in the case of the Lord anger is mentioned in a loose rather than a precise sense.

For such is the loving-kindness of God; he never turns his face away from a sincere repentance, but if any one has pushed on to the very extremity of wickedness and chooses to return afterwards toward the path of virtue, God accepts and welcomes and does everything so as to restore him to his former position. ^[1] THE SALVATION OF THE PEOPLE. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: Creating for his mourners the fruit of the lips, that is, at this stage they will not use anymore their outrages and blasphemies against me, but praises, which are convenient to these facts. Others assert, I made them live in perfect security, and this is the reason why they will be led to holiness. ^[1]

It is our duty to be at peace in our own minds, for the person who does not find any disorder in himself will not quarrel with another but will be peaceable, friendly, gathering the Lord’s people and a fellow worker with him, in order to increase the number of those who shall be saved in unanimity. For those who contrive enmities, and strifes, and contests and lawsuits are wicked and aliens from God.

But let us humble our own souls by almsgiving and forgiving our neighbors their trespasses, by not remembering injuries or avenging ourselves. If we continually reflect on our sins, no external circumstances can make us elated, neither riches, nor power, nor authority nor honor; no, even should we sit in the imperial chariot itself, we cry bitterly.

Through love of this true life you ought, then, to consider yourself desolate in this world, no matter what happiness you enjoy. For, just as that is the true life in comparison with which this other, which is so much loved, is not to be called life, however pleasant and prolonged it may be, so that is their true comfort that God promised by the prophet saying, I will give them true comfort, peace on peace. Without this comfort there is no more grief than consolation to be found in earthly comforts, whatever they may be. . . . Not by such goods do we become good, but having become good otherwise, they make these things good by their good use of them. Therefore, there is no true comfort in these things; rather, it is found where true life is. A person’s happiness necessarily must come from the same source as his goodness.

Some understand this passage to be about the Savior in particular, because he was deeply saddened for a while over the sins of the world, saying, My soul is sorrowful to the point of death.^[1] And the Father struck him, who said through Zechariah, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.^[2] . . . God also averted his face from the Savior, so that he could accept the form of a servant^[3] for a time and walk in sadness, mourning the sins of the people and deploring and lamenting Jerusalem. Because the Father saw the road he was traveling, he healed him who was forsaken among the dead.^[4]

Symmachus and Aquila, instead of saying, to the afflicted, have said to those who weep for him. God our Master has shown the power of repentance. For he has seen their regret and their change of thinking and the sadness of their expression, and he has deemed them to be worthy of encouragement, they and those who weep for them. Now it is the heralds of truth who weep for them, while the blessed Paul prayed that he might be cut off for their sake.^[1] These things he has done, God who created fruit of the lips, that is, he who established the sacrifice of praise, rather than the cult appointed by the law.