After the address of the Lord in which he commanded, go throughout Jerusalem, and so on, the prophet addresses the Lord in return: Lord, your eyes look for faith, which is ʾemûnā in Hebrew, referring not to the works of the Jews, in which they exulted according to ceremonies of the law, but to the faith of Christians, through which we are saved by faith.^[1] In this chapter, therefore, we learn that supplications are brought for the correction of our faults. This is why he says, You struck them, and they did not grieve; you wore them out, but they refused to accept discipline. For Jerusalem was emended through many torments and chastisements and was found to have no shame for their faults after all of this, but with rock-hard shamelessness on their brow, they would not convert to the better way.

Who among us has amended his life, or what part of the Roman world, no matter how afflicted, is corrected? As we read, For all have declined, they have become useless at same time. Therefore, the prophet cries out to God and says, You have struck them, and they have not sorrowed. You have consumed them, and they have refused to accept discipline. They have hardened their faces harder than a rock and were unwilling to return. Present affairs show how truly this applies to us.

Disasters occur either to discipline the obstinate people or punish evil people. The same God declares in the Holy Scriptures, I have struck your children in vain. They have not received correction.^[1] The prophet devoted and dedicated to God answers these words in the same way and says, You struck them, but they have not grieved. You scourged them, but they have refused to receive correction. See, God inflicts stripes, and there is no fear of God.

Paul says about those who live in piety and prosperity, I thank God that in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge. And to those who are impious, the blessed Jeremiah says, Maybe they are poor. For this reason, they could not hear the word of the Lord. Do you see that he calls poor those who have distanced themselves from piety? Therefore, God is merciful to those who sin because they are spiritually poor, and he places demands on those who act justly because they are spiritually rich. To the former he gives freely, on account of their poverty. From the latter he collects with great care, on account of their wealth of piety. That which he does to the righteous and to sinners, he does to both the rich and the poor.

Truly, slander humiliates a person, and slander troubles the poor person. The evil of slander is so great that it brings down both the perfect person . . . from his height, and the poor person, that is, the one who lacks great learning, as it seems to the prophet, who says, Perhaps they are poor . . . therefore they will not hear. I will go to the great ones, meaning by the poor those lacking in intelligence, and here, of course, those not yet made orderly in the inner person or having attained to the perfect measure of their age. These, the proverb says, are troubled and made to waver.

Well-off refers to the priests and the teachers of the law; poor refers to the rest, insofar as they did not possess the wealth of divine knowledge. Yet he accuses both of lawlessness, proceeding in this way, They all alike broke the yoke, they snapped the bonds. It was not without purpose the prophet said this. Instead, since the Lord promised lovingkindness, provided he found someone doing justice and seeking faith, he explains that though he went looking, as he was commanded to do, he found they had all broken the yoke of the law.

The strong in soul are spoken of with approval. For also among the Greeks the strong and the greatness of the rational soul are continually named. For whenever anyone throws himself into great deeds, has worthwhile objectives, always considers what is right and how he can live in accordance with right reason, wishing not to know anything abject and small, such a person has in the soul the strong and the great. The others, then, the ones the Word disparaged since they were poor, did not hear, the prophet said; they did not hear for this reason: since they were poor. I will go to the strong and speak to them, and if it is so that the blessed person is meant in the saying the ears of those who hear one is blessed if he should ever meet a strong and great listener.

We must conduct our festivals and rejoice with fear and trembling. A faithful Christian, the psalm says,^[1] must not sing the songs of the heathen or have anything to do with the principles and doctrines of strange assemblies. It may happen that through their songs, he might make mention of the names of idols, which God forbids the faithful to do. The Lord scolds certain people through Jeremiah and says, Your children have forsaken me, and have sworn by those who are no gods.

The prophets compare them to irrational animals, because of the irrationality of their conduct: They have become like horses lusting for females. Each one of them neighs for his neighbor’s wife. And again, Man, when he is honored, was made to be like cattle.^[1] This means that, for his own fault, he is compared with cattle, rivaling their irrational life. And we also, as the custom is, do designate people like this as cattle and irrational beasts.

At another time, he speaks of us under the figure of a colt. He means by that that we are unyoked to evil, unsubdued by wickedness, unaffected and high-spirited only with him our Father. We are colts, not stallions who whinny lustfully for their neighbor’s wife, beasts of burden unrestrained in their lust. Rather, we are free and newly born, joyous in our faith, and hold fast to the course of truth. We are swift in seeking salvation, and we spurn and trample on worldliness.

The neighing horse depicts the recklessness of young men.

Angels do not change. Not one of them is a child, or a young man, or an old man, but in whatever state they were created, in the beginning, in that state they remain. Their substance is preserved pure and inviolate for them. But we change in our body, as has been shown, and in our soul and in the inner person, always shifting our thoughts with the circumstances. In fact, we are one sort of person when we are cheerful and when all things in our life are moving forward with the current. But we are another sort in precarious times, when we stumble against something that is not according to our wishes. We are changed through anger, assuming a certain savage state. We are also changed through our lusts of carnal things, becoming like beasts through a life of pleasure. They become amorous horses, being madly in love with their neighbors’ wives. The deceitful person is compared with a fox, as Herod was. The shameless person is called a dog, like Nabel the Carmelian. Do you see the variety and diversity of our change? Then, admire him who has fittingly adapted this title to us. For this very reason, a certain one of the interpreters seems to me to have handed over beautifully and accurately the same thought through another title. He says, For the lilies, in place of, For them that shall be changed. He thought that it was appropriate to compare the transitory state of human nature with the early death of flowers. But since this word has been inflected in the future tense (It is said, For them that shall be changed, as if at some time later this change will be shown to us), let us consider whether there is suggested to us the doctrine of the resurrection, in which a change will be granted to us, but a change for something better and something spiritual.

If birth is an evil, then the blasphemers must place the Lord who went through birth and the virgin who gave him birth in the category of evil. Abominable people! In attacking birth they are maligning the will of God and the mystery of creation. This is the basis of Cassian’s docetism,^[1] Marcion’s too, yes, and Valentinus’s semi-spiritual body. It leads them to say, Humanity became like cattle in coming to sexual intercourse. But it is when a man, swollen with lust, really and truly wants to go to bed with a woman not his own, that that sort of man actually becomes a wild beast. They turned into stallions crazed for mares; each was whinnying for his neighbor’s wife.

Fasting can be utilized as a weapon against demonic armies: For this kind does not come out except through prayer and fasting.^[1] Many good things come from fasting, but being satiated introduces the beginnings of insolence. It immediately rushes in alongside the delicacy you are eating and it accompanies rich sauces. All kinds of licentious behavior begin grazing at its table. After this, men start becoming lusty horses toward women because all this luxury begins to start a maddening itch that enters into their soul. Those who get drunk begin perverting themselves against nature, using a male like a female, or vice versa.^[2] Fasting, by contrast, reveals the proper boundaries for marriage. It curtails the excesses of even those things that may be permitted by law but that are abstained from by agreement so that the couple can devote themselves to prayer.^[3]

But we should not limit the goodness of fasting only to abstaining from foods. True fasting, in whatever form, is the enemy of evil. Loose the chains of injustice!^[4] Forgive your neighbor when an offense occurs against you and forgive his debts. Do not fast in order to bring about judgment and strife.^[5]

You may not eat meat, but you devour your brother. You abstain from wine but hold on to insolence. You wait till evening to indulge [in a meal] but spend the day in court. Woe to those who are drunk, but not from wine!^[6] Wrath can also be a drunkenness of the soul, making it senseless, like wine. Grief can also feel like being drunk, weighing down the mind. Fear is another form of drunkenness whenever it fears something where there is no need for fear, because the psalmist says, deliver my soul from the fear of my enemy.^[7] When taken together, each of these passions that allow the mind to be taken over and to go out of control is rightly termed drunkenness. . . . Guard against this kind of drunkenness, but do not be given over to the kind that comes from wine, either. Do not start being a water drinker just because you have been drinking too much. Do not let drunkenness be what leads you into fasting. The door that leads to fasting is not entered through drunkenness. Neither is greed the entryway into justice, nor is intemperance the way to sound judgment. In summary, evil never leads to virtue. There is another door into fasting. Drunkenness leads to intemperance. Contentment is what opens the door to fasting.

Humanity . . . did not understand and neglected to follow God and to become like his Creator. And becoming a slave of the passions of the flesh, he is compared with senseless beasts and is become like them. Now he is like an amorous horse that neighs after his neighbor’s wife. Now like a ravenous wolf, lying in wait for strangers, but at another time, because of his deceit toward his brother, he makes himself like the villainous fox. Truly, there is excessive folly and beast-like lack of reason that he, made according to the image of the Creator, neither perceives his own from the beginning nor even wishes to understand such great dispensations that were made for his sake. At least, he should learn his own dignity from them, but he is unmindful of the fact, and he throws aside the image of the heavenly, but he has taken up the image of the earthly.

Let us then, as is becoming, as at all times, yet especially in the days of the feast, be not hearers only, but doers of the commandments of our Savior. Having imitated the behavior of the saints, we may enter together into the joy of our Lord who is in heaven, which is not transitory but truly abides. . . . But they who are not doers are compared, in their disgrace, with beasts without understanding, and becoming like them in unlawful pleasures, they are spoken of as wanton horses. Also, for their craftiness, errors and being laden with death, they are called, by John, a generation of vipers.^[1]

Some are so cold and senseless that they are always looking only for the things that are here and saying such things as, Let me enjoy all the present things for a time, and then I will consider things out of sight. I will gratify my belly. I will be a slave to pleasures. I will make full use of the present life; give me today, and take tomorrow. What foolishness! How are these people any different from goats and swine? For if the prophet allows that they are not to be considered human when they neigh after their neighbor’s wife, who shall blame us for considering them to be goats and swine and more insensible than donkeys when they hold as uncertain those things that, in the end, are even more evident than what we see?

Murder is rare among slaves because of their dread and terror of capital punishment, but it is common among the rich because of their hope and trust in impunity. Perhaps we are wrong in putting in the category of sins what the rich people do, because, when they kill their slaves, they think that it is legal and not a crime. Not only this, they abuse the same privilege even when practicing the filth of unchastity. How few among the rich, observing the sacrament of marriage, are not dragged down headlong by the madness of lust? To how few are not home and family regarded as harlots? How few do not pursue their madness toward anybody on whom the heat of their evil desires centers? It was about such people that the divine Word said, They are become as stallions rushing madly on the mares.

Rebuking censures what is base and highlights what is noble. This is shown by Jeremiah: They were horses mad for females. Each one neighed for his neighbor’s wife. Shall I not visit them for these things? says the Lord. Should not I avenge my soul against such a nation as this? He everywhere interweaves fear, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of reason.^[1]

Accusation is the censure of wrongdoers. This mode of instruction God employs by David, when he says, The people whom I did not know served me, and when their ears heard they obeyed me. Sons of strangers came to me, and halted from their ways.^[1] And by Jeremiah: And I gave her a divorce decree, but covenant-breaking Judah did not fear.^[2] And again: And the house of Israel disregarded me. The house of Judah lied to the Lord.

We say then that the power of the divine message resembles a live coal and fire. And the God of all somewhere said to the prophet Jeremiah, Behold, I have made my words in your mouth to be fire, and this people to be wood, and it shall devour them. And again, Are not my words as burning fire, says the Lord?^[1] Rightly, therefore, did our Lord Jesus Christ say to us, I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled.^[2] For already some of the Jewish crowd believed on him, whose firstfruits were the divine disciples. The fire, being once kindled, was soon to seize on the whole world immediately after the whole dispensation had attained to its completion. . . . He had borne his precious passion on the cross and had commanded the bonds of death to cease. He rose on the third day from the dead.

The Word literally said to them, As you have forsaken me and served other gods in your land, you shall serve in a land not your own. But every person who makes something a god serves alien gods. Do you deify food and drink? Your god is the belly.^[1] Do you honor silver and the wealth here below as a great good? Your god and lord is Mammon. For Jesus spoke of the love of money when he said, You cannot serve God and Mammon. No one can serve two masters.^[2] Thus one who honors money and esteems wealth and supposes that it is good and accepts the rich as gods and despises the poor as not possessing god in their character, deifies silver. If anyone in the land of God, in the church, should worship alien gods by making things worthy to be god that are not to be made god, he will be rejected to an alien land and worship gods that he worshiped when he was inside. Outside let him be rejected by the church as a lover of money; let the one who is a glutton be outside the church.

One who does not carefully weigh every word of the opinions uttered cannot rightly discover the value of the assertion. For someone like this, who only possesses skill in disputation and ornaments of speech, cannot penetrate to the very heart of Scripture and the mysteries of its spiritual meanings. True knowledge is acquired only by true worshipers of God. And certainly this people does not possess it to whom it is said, Hear, O foolish people, you who have no heart, you who have eyes but do not see and who have ears but do not hear.^[1] And again, Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from acting as my priest.^[2] It is said that in Christ all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.^[3] So how can we hold the opinion that someone has acquired spiritual knowledge when that person has not even wanted to find Christ, or, when he does find him, blasphemes him with impious lips or at least defiles the catholic faith by his impure actions? The Spirit of God will avoid deception and does not live in a body that is subject to sin. There is then no way of arriving at spiritual knowledge but by this which one of the prophets has accurately described: Sow to yourselves for righteousness. Reap the hope of life. Enlighten yourselves with the light of knowledge.

Not understanding him who had been anointed and sent and who was the author of such wonderful works, they returned to their usual ways and talked about him in a foolish and vain way. For although they wondered at the words of grace that proceeded out of his mouth, yet their wish was to treat them as valueless. They said, Is not this the son of Joseph? But what does this diminish from the glory of the worker of the miracles? What prevents him from being both venerated and admired, even had he been, as was supposed, the son of Joseph? Didn’t you see the miracles? Satan fallen, the herds of devils vanquished, multitudes set free from various kinds of maladies? You praise the grace that was present in his teaching. Then do you, in Jewish fashion, think lightly of him because he considered Joseph for his father? How ignorant can you be! It is true what they say about them: Lo! A people foolish and without understanding, they have eyes and see not, ears, and hear not.

The vessel was severely tossed by the violence of the tempest and the breaking of the waves. And along with the ship, the faith of the disciples also was tossed, so to speak, by similar agitations. But Christ, whose authority extends over all, immediately arose. He at once appeased the storm, restrained the blasts of wind, quieted their fear and yet further proved by his actions that he is God at whom all created things tremble and quake and to whose nods is subject the very nature of the elements. He rebuked the tempest, and Matthew says that the manner of the rebuke was with God-like authority. He tells us that our Lord said to the sea: Peace! Be still!^[1] What can there be more grand than this in majesty? Or what can equal its sublimity? Appropriately worthy of God is the word and the might of the commandment, so that we too may utter the praise written in the book of Psalms: You rule the power of the sea. You still the turbulence of its waves.^[2] He too has himself said somewhere by one of the holy prophets, Why do you not fear me, says the Lord, nor tremble at my presence? I who have set the sand as the bound of the sea, a commandment forever, and it has not passed it. For the sea is subject to the will of him who made all creation and is, as it were, placed under the Creator’s feet, varying its motions at all times according to his good pleasure and yielding submission to his lordly will.

Through all the story of waters be mindful of that first word, Let the waters be gathered.^[1] It was necessary for them to flow that they might reach their own place. Then, being in the places appointed, they were to remain by themselves and not to advance further. For this reason, according to the saying of Ecclesiastes, All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea does not overflow.^[2] It is through the divine command that waters flow, and it is due to that first legislation, Let the waters be gathered into one place, that the sea is enclosed within boundaries. For fear that the flowing water, spreading beyond the beds that hold it, always passing on and filling up one place after another, should continuously flood all the lands, it was ordered to be gathered into one place. Therefore, the sea, frequently raging with the winds and rising up in waves to towering heights, whenever it merely touches the shores breaks its onrush into foam and retires. Will you not then fear me, says the Lord? I have set the sand as a bound for the sea. With the weakest of all things, sand, the sea, irresistible in its violence, is bridled.

When I say we, I do not refer to human power but to the grace of God, who in the weakness of people shows forth his own power. This the prophet, speaking in the person of the Lord, says, Will not you, then, fear me? I have set the sand as the boundary for the sea. For by this weakest and most contemptible of all things, sand, the mighty One has bound the great and ponderous sea. Therefore, since our condition is somewhat similar, it would follow that some of the true brethren should be sent continuously from your charity to visit us in our afflictions and that affectionate letters should come more frequently to us, on the one hand to strengthen our zeal, and on the other to correct us if we fail in any respect. Indeed, we do not deny that we are subject to many faults, since we are people and are living in the flesh.