Книга пророка Иеремии, Глава 2, стих 22. Толкования стиха

THE GOOD PHYSICIAN HURTS THAT HE MIGHT HEAL. EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA: So also God is introduced by the prophet as saying to the person who had become evil by his own choice, “Yet I had planted you a fruitful vine. How have you turned back into a wild vine?” Anywhere it is said that evils happen to the wicked from God, it must be understood as an accidental coincidence of name. This name is given to the chastisements that God in his goodness is said to send not for the hurt of those who are chastised but for their benefit and profit, in the same way that a physician might be thought to apply bad things in his painful and bitter remedies to save the sick. PREPARATION FOR THE GOSPEL 13.3.

THE CLEANSING OF PRAYER AND REPENTANCE. CHRYSOSTOM: Hence God gave the gift of prayer. But he does this, even though he does not need for us to ask, but that we might not grow indifferent from being saved without effort. For this reason, he said to Jeremiah, “Do not pray for this people, for I will not hear you,” not wishing to stop his praying (for he earnestly longs for our salvation) but to terrify them. Seeing this, the prophet did not stop praying. So that you may see that God did not wish to turn Jeremiah from it, but to shame them that he said this, hear what it says. “Don’t you see what they are doing?” Also when he says to the city, “Although you wash yourself with soda and use an abundance of soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me,” it is not that he may cast them into despair that he so speaks, but that he may rouse them to repentance. HOMILIES ON ROMANS 14.

 Здесь говорится об известном, существующем издревле иудейском обычае телесных омовений, которыми лицемерные люди старались прикрыть свое внутреннее нечестие. Это-то именно (а не крещение, котораго тогда не существовало) и обличает здесь пророк, подобно тому, как обличал во время земной жизни Иисус Христос лицемерных фарисеев за строгое соблюдение этого обычая в известное время, тем какбы прикрывавших свою внутреннюю нечистоту: Мк. 7:1-4; Лк. 11:3-8. Для полнаго очищения пред Богом евреям нужны не внешния омовения или вообще внешния только дела благочестия, а нужно нравственно переродиться, ставши добродетельными и верными Господу: Ин. 3:5. Такое перерождение пророк и относит ко временам новозаветным: Иерем. 31,31—34; Евр. 8,8—12.

GOD IS PATIENT EVEN WITH APOSTATES. IRENAEUS: The Lord has therefore endured all these things on our behalf, in order that we, having been instructed by means of them all, may be in all respects judicious for the time to come. He endured that, having been rationally taught to love God, we may continue in his perfect love. God has displayed patience in the case of humankind’s apostasy. While humankind has been instructed by means of it, as also the prophet says, “Your own apostasy shall heal you.” God thus determined all things beforehand in order to bring people to perfection, to edify them and to reveal God’s dispensations, that goodness may both be made apparent, and that righteousness be perfected, and that the church may be fashioned after the image of his Son and that humankind may finally be brought to maturity at some future time, becoming mature through such privileges to see and comprehend God. AGAINST HERESIES 4.37.7.

FAITH IS BUILT ON SCRIPTURE. ORIGEN: Let us attempt to discuss also a third exposition at the moral level. If there is anyone who, while evils are increasing and vices are overflowing, can turn from the things that are in flux and passing away and fallen and can hear the word of God and the heavenly precepts, this person is building an ark of salvation within his own heart and is dedicating a library, so to speak, of the divine word within himself. He is erecting faith, love and hope as its length, breadth and height. He stretches out faith in the Trinity to the length of life and immortality. He establishes the breadth of love with the compassion of gentleness and kindness. He raises the height of hope to heavenly and exalted places. For while he walks on the earth, he has his “citizenship in heaven.” But he brings the sum of his acts back to one. For he knows that “all indeed run, but one receives the palm of victory,” of course, being that one who was not changeable with a variety of thoughts and instability of mind. But he does not construct this library from planks that are unhewn and rough but from planks that have been squared and arranged in a uniform line, that is, not from the volumes of secular authors but from the prophetic and apostolic volumes. For these authors, who have been hewn by diverse temptations, all vices having been curtailed and excised, contain life that has been squared and set free in every part. For the authors of secular books can indeed be called “lofty trees” and “shady trees”—for Israel is accused of having fornicated “under every lofty and shady tree”—because they speak indeed in a lofty manner and use flowery eloquence; they have not, however, acted as they have spoken. They cannot, therefore, be called “squared planks” because life and speech will by no means be equal in them. HOMILIES ON GENESIS 2.6.

THE CHURCH HAS REPLACED ISRAEL. ORIGEN: Thus does Paul also boast that the observance of the law and the whole glory of the Jewish system was to him like garbage, so that he might be found in Christ, having not his own justification that was of the law, but the justification from God. In this sense, therefore, Paul did not keep his own vineyard—that is to say, he did not keep the Jews’ tradition after he had received the faith of Christ. Perhaps the reason why he did not keep it was that, though it had been planted by God as a true vine, it had turned into the bitterness of a strange vine. “For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom, and from the fields of Gomorrah . . . their clusters are bitter; their wine is the poison of serpents, and the cruel venom of asps.” COMMENTARY ON THE SONG OF SONGS 2.3.

GOD IS NOT A DESERT. ORIGEN: The God who “brings forth the sun on the evil and the good” is a desert to no one. To no one is he who “rains on the just and unjust” ever a land made dry. How is he a desert, when he brings forth the day and causes the night to rest? How is he a desert, when he causes the land to bear fruit? How is he a desert, when he provides for each person in his soul so that it is endowed with reason, so that it can grasp knowledge and exercise its intelligence, and in the body so that it has healthy sense faculties? And so with respect to the way of what is universal, God is not a desert. HOMILIES ON JEREMIAH 3.2.1.