Let us consider our sins, and reviewing the secrets of our action and mind, let us weigh the merits of our conscience.

The enmity that God had both against Jews and Gentiles was, as it were, a middle wall. And this wall, while the law existed, was not only not abolished but rather was strengthened.

But since we say that God is plenteous in mercy, why is it that when amidst temptations we unceasingly knock and pray, we are not heard and He disregards our prayer? This we are clearly taught by the Prophet when he says, The Lord’s hand is not little, that it cannot save; nor is He hard of hearing, that He cannot hear: but our sins have separated us from Him. . . . Remember God at all times, and He will remember you whenever you fall into evils.

The Lord can prohibit adversities, but the merits of sinners cause him to give no aid. . . . Therefore, let your sins and offences be numbered; let the wounds of your conscience be considered; and let each one cease to complain about God and about us, if he understands that he deserves what he suffers.

Therefore, since bodies that cannot exist without a place cannot be spatially separated from God, without a doubt neither are the spirits that God created spatially separated from God.

For every spirit that God created exists in some place, and God is there. [God], through the grace by means of which he grants to whom he wishes a holy and blessed life, is not in evil spirits; Still he is always in all his creatures through his natural power. Thus there is no creature than can be found in whom God is not present through his power. Therefore, that nature can be separated from God that was or is able to be subject to sin. There is no other thing that can go away from God except that substance that is able or has been able to sin with its own will. For Isaiah says, See, the Lord’s hand is not too short to save or his ear too dull to hear. Rather, your iniquities have been barriers between you and your God.

But punishments lead us back to God. . . . Suppose anyone has a wound, which is the more deserving of fear—gangrene or the surgeon’s knife? The steel or the devouring progress of the ulcer? Sin is gangrene; punishment is the surgeon’s knife. As then he who has a gangrene, al-though he is not lanced, has to sustain the malady and is then in the worse condition when he is not lanced, so also the sinner, though he is not punished, is the most wretched of people and is then especially wretched when he has no punishment and is suffering no distress.

Inasmuch, then, as this is the cause that puts us far from God, let us remove this obnoxious barrier that prevents any near approach being made.

But now hear how this has actually occurred in real instances. Among the Corinthians some man of mark committed a sin such as was not named even among the Gentiles.^[1] This man was a believer and belonged to the household for Christ; and some say that he was actually a member of the priesthood. What then? Did Paul cut him off from the communion of those who were in the way of salvation? By no means, for he himself it is who rebukes the Corinthians countless times, backwards and forwards, because they did not bring the man to a state of repentance; he desired to prove to us that there is no sin that cannot be healed.

Scripture is accustomed to call hatred toil. For the word has more than one meaning. Hatred wastes and withers up the hearts of those who receive it. Thus says the psalmist about someone or about Israel as a whole, He conceived toil and bore iniquity.^[1]

Rising again with the same flesh as that with which he was buried, [Christ] stands behind the wall of our unbelief, the wall that as we sinned we built with our muddy, dirty works. About these works God spoke through the prophet Isaiah, But your sins have made a wall between you and God. Behind the wall stands Christ the Lord, and he waits to be called on by the ungodly, and he summons the sinful soul to penitence. Behind the wall where [Christ] stands,^[1] he waits for the unbelieving to believe in him until such time as they reach baptism or penitence.

Now those who meditate evil, we say, do not [think] truth but falsehood, and not righteousness but iniquity, for their tongue learns to speak lies. They have done evil and have not ceased that they might repent. For, persevering with delight in wicked actions, they hasten thereto without turning back, even treading under foot the commandment with regard to neighbors, and instead of loving them, they devise evil against them, as the saint testifies, saying, And those who seek my evil have spoken vanity and imagined deceit all the day.^[1] But that the cause of such meditation is none other than the lack of instruction the divine proverb has already declared: The son who forsakes the commandment of his father meditates evil words.^[2] But such meditation, because it is evil, the Holy Spirit blames in these words and reproves too in other terms, saying, Your hands are polluted with blood, your fingers with sins, your lips have spoken lawlessness, and your tongue imagines iniquity: no one speaks right things, nor is there true judgment. But what the end is of such perverse imagining, he immediately declares, saying, They trust in vanities and speak falsehood, for they conceive mischief and bring forth lawlessness.

For in the cobweb there is the appearance of something woven but no substantiality in the appearance, for he who touches it touches nothing substantial. As the spider’s threads break with the touch of the finger, just such is the unsubstantial texture of idle phrases, Not dividing his own essence by begetting and being at once begetter and begotten. . . . Who is so distracted, who is so demented, as to make the statement against which Eunomius^[1] is doing battle? For the church believes that the true Father is truly Father of his own Son, as the apostle says, and not of a Son alien from him.

Because Isaiah said that they weave a spider’s web, he now explains why the weaving of this web profits nothing. All of their work and teaching, he says, fails to produce either a vestment for Christ or a covering to protect the soul’s nakedness, but they spend themselves in vain labor, as the same prophet says: This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They worship me in vain, teaching doctrines and precepts of humankind, the following of which neglects the law of God.^[1] . . .

Then it continues that their ways are perverse not by nature but by their own will, for everything that is perverted and crooked has been twisted from what was right into something depraved.

They sin with all parts of the body, through hands, feet, tongue. But it is the life inside their minds that sins before all of these once it has fallen into imprudence, so that it cannot recognize the peace that is at hand.

At times even we, when we were in error, mired in the pride of our mind as if our feet were stuck in the mud, did not perceive our error of the divine gospel each day. We would grope around in the dark like blind people, because our inner mind did not possess that which is necessary for discernment. Then, as if from a deep sleep, the mercy of the Most High poured out like pure rain, was sprinkled on our drowsiness, and from our sleep we were roused and boldly took up this mirror to see our self in it. At that very moment we were convicted by our faults, and we discovered that we were barren of any good virtue and that we had become a dwelling place for every corrupting thought and a lodge and abode for every lust.

This is to be understood that just as there are eyes where there is no light or there is light but not eyes to see it with, they are unable to see the matter at hand; so it is necessary that the one who wants to understand the sense must not miss what is offered as wisdom from the holy Scriptures.

There will be on that day so much groaning and howling, just as a bear when it is robbed of her cubs, or even as with doves who by nature constantly moan.

And we coo like meditating doves who have no sense and no understanding of the Scriptures, contemplating only those words that they sing from memory. But just as it is written of doves that Ephraim is like a dove with no sense,^[1] and just as the innocence of doves is contrasted with the prudence of serpents in the Gospel,^[2] so also innocence without prudence, which is the neighbor of foolishness, is shown in the present passage to consist of meditating on words alone.

For this reason righteousness and peace are far from you, since each has abandoned the fear of God and grown blind in his faith and ceased to walk by the rules of his precepts or to behave in a way worthy of Christ. Rather does each follow the lusts of his evil heart by reviving that wicked and unholy rivalry, by which, indeed, death came into the world.^[1] 1

It was not you who failed to be concerned for us, but it was our life of iniquity that deprived us of your care and concern.

For just as the deeds of the wicked are their accusers before the righteous Judge, making them bend and bow down their heads silently in shame, so also their beautiful deeds plead cause for the good before the good One. For the deeds of all humankind are both silent and speak silently by their nature, yet they speak when one sees them.

In that place there is no interrogation, for [God] is the judge of knowledge; nor is there any response, for when he sees it, he hears. He hears with sight, and he sees with hearing.

The prophetic text^[1] makes this statement detailed in order to invite those who desire help to appease the Lord by saying something like the following: We acknowledge our offenses, we have recognized our impiety, we have spoken falsely against you, our Master, since we promised to keep your laws and we have violated them. We have not ceased contradicting you, uttering words of unrighteousness, proposing things that are unjust, failing to dread your judgment. We have kept ourselves far from righteousness. After this, he changes the form of his statements and puts their accusation categorically: For truth is consumed in their ways. It has vanished, he says, because deceit has veiled it. And they could not pass by a straight path. For they have not stopped taking the opposite route.

He has shown how truth has departed: they did not want to consider their duty, he says, but they have distorted their intelligence so as not to understand what ought to be done and what is useful. The truth in this has disappeared, and the person who turned away from evil has been besieged. They have distanced themselves so far from the truth that they openly combat those who turn away from perversity and choose the good.

For the unjust deeds displeased the just judge so he did not call the workers of these deeds humans, for although being in an honored place they do not understand and are comparable to the unthinking beasts and resemble them. . . . In place of mercy the three translators have rendered justice, so as to say he has exacted a just recompense on them. It calls the operation of God his arm, while mercy teaches the usefulness of discipline. The God of all things disciplines for profit.

[Isaiah] says that God shares salvation, which is exchanged for repentance and understanding with those deserving, who put on righteousness just as if it were their garment. He says nothing less than that God is girded with the righteous deeds of human beings, just like body and head armor. Such things are said with reference to God to enthuse the listeners and to raise up their thoughts as being those capable of becoming the garment of God and so sharing his righteousness.

He is referring here, without doubt, to those Jews who continued in their blasphemies and to the change effected by their enemies when the Roman army surrounded them. By their victory, the Lord is shown to have done the fighting. Indeed, this testimony was used by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, urging us to be clothed in the armor of Christ whereby we would be enabled to repel the flaming arrows of the devil.^[1] . . . The author of this blessing^[2] is he who will come like a rushing river that the Spirit of the Lord drives, or, as Aquila translates it, like a narrow river that is a sign of the Spirit of the Lord, or, as Theodotion has it, like a warring river that the Spirit of the Lord has inscribed. Of that testimony, therefore, that the Septuagint translates as like a violent river, the wrath of the Lord will come with fury, the last portion is not included in the Hebrew. For wrath and fury are not to be placed into the promises of God, since in the other promises that follow, blessing belongs to the future and warnings and punishments to sinners. But according to Aquila and Theodotion, it is in Christ that the Spirit of the Lord is signified, confirming what was first read in John the Evangelist: for God the Father has set his seal on the Son of man.^[3]

And he will come to Zion as Redeemer, that is, Zerubbabel. Therefore the spiritual Zion and the hill of visions and revelations is the church. The Redeemer, who comes to it, is Christ, that great Zerubbabel. This is my covenant with you, which I made with your ancestors on the mountain, so that my words might never be lacking from the mouths of your descendants.

He continues, The Redeemer will come to Zion and to those who return from iniquity in Jacob, says the Lord. The Septuagint, however, translates this as follows: He who will liberate shall come from Zion and avert impieties from Jacob. If he who averts impieties from Jacob will come from Zion, therefore, we should understand that this man is born in Zion and that the Most High established him there who averts sins from Jacob. If, however, the Redeemer will come to Zion and to those who return from iniquity in Jacob, says the Lord, this means that Christ will redeem Zion with his own blood. Or it could be that he was begotten from the seed of Israel, for that is what Goel means (Anchisteus in Greek) according to the distinctively Hebrew, which neighbors Zion. And lest we think that all of Zion is redeemed and liberated from sin, which is flowing with the blood of the Lord, he adds significantly, to those who return from iniquity, that is, provided that they are willing to do penance, for which persons the prayer of the Lord is completed with Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.^[1]

[Verse 21] is addressed either to Isaiah, as I think, or to the Lord, as many believe. This is why the order of thought is presented thus to Isaiah: This is the eternal covenant of the gospel, that my Spirit, which is in you, and my words, which I have put in your mouth, through which you will come to preach, will depart neither from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your children nor from the mouth of their children, so that it will be demonstrated to every generation consecutively. But the grace of the prophets will surely come to the apostles and to those who will believe through the apostles.

He calls mouth that of the apostles, and seed of the apostles those who learn from their teaching. Thus he promises grace of the Spirit to those who believe in him. . . . Thus, we who also enjoy this grace, let us sing praises to the fount of grace to whom glory is due for the ages of ages. Amen.