Книга пророка Иеремии, Глава 23, стих 24. Толкования стиха

THE LORD IS NEAR TO EVERYONE. AUGUSTINE: How shall I call on my God—my God and my lord? For when I call on him, I ask him to come into me. And what place is there in me into which my God can come—into which God can come, even he who made heaven and earth? Is there anything in me, O Lord my God, that can contain you? Do indeed the heaven and the earth that you have made and in which you have placed me, contain you? Or, since nothing could exist without you, does whatever exists contain you? Why, then, do I ask you to come into me, since I indeed exist and could not exist if you were not in me? Because I am not yet in hell, though you are even there. For “if I go down into hell, you are there.” I could not exist, O my God, I could not exist at all, unless you were in me. Or should I not rather say that I could not exist unless I were in you, “from whom, through whom and in whom are all things?” It is even so, O Lord, even so. Where do I ask you to be, since I am in you? Or, from where can you come into me? Where may I go beyond heaven and earth, in order that my God may then come into me, he who has said, “I fill heaven and earth.” CONFESSIONS 1.2.2.

GOD’S LOVE ENDURES. AUGUSTINE: A person’s conscience accuses itself if he doesn’t love someone who loves him, or love in return someone who loves him, expecting nothing from that person but indications of his love. So he mourns if someone dies, experiences the gloom of sorrow, that saturating of the heart in tears. All sweetness turns into bitterness on the loss of the life of the dying, the death of the living. Blessed is the one who loves you and has his friend in you. . . . For he alone loses none dear to him. All are dear to him who cannot be lost. And who is this but our God, the God who created heaven and earth and fills them, because by filling them he created them? No one loses you but the one who leaves you. CONFESSIONS 4.9.14.

GOD ALONE IS THE CREATOR. AUGUSTINE: It was by this same divine creative force, which knows not what it is to be made but only how to make, that roundness was given to the eye, to the apple and to other objects that are by nature round and that we see all about, taking on their form with no extrinsic cause but by the intrinsic power of the Creator, who said, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” and whose wisdom “reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly.” CITY OF GOD 12.26.

SHALL WE SEE GOD WITH OUR EYES? AUGUSTINE: The question still remains whether they will see God with their eyes open and by means of these bodily eyes. For, of course, if spiritual eyes in a spiritual body can see no better than our present eyes can see, then it will certainly be impossible for even spiritual eyes to behold God. If the spiritual realm, without material form, circumscribed by no place but everywhere wholly present, is to be visible to the eyes of a spiritual body, then those eyes will most certainly have to have a power altogether unlike the power of any eyes on earth. It is true that we say that God is in heaven and on earth, and he himself through a prophet says, “I fill heaven and earth.” But this does not mean that in heaven we shall say that God has one part there and another part on earth. For he is entirely in heaven, and he is entirely on earth. He is in both simultaneously, not merely successively—which is utterly impossible in the case of any material substance. CITY OF GOD 22.29.

GOD IS EVERYWHERE IN KEEPING WITH HIS CHARACTER. AUGUSTINE: Therefore, God is poured forth in all things. He says by the prophet, “I fill heaven and earth,” and, as I quoted a short time before of his wisdom, “He reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly.” It is likewise written, “the Spirit of the Lord filled the whole world,” and one of the psalms has these words addressed to him: “Where shall I go from your Spirit, or where shall I flee from your face? If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I descend into hell, you are there.”

Yet God so permeates all things as to be not a quality of the world but the very creative substance of the world, ruling the world without labor, sustaining it without effort. Nevertheless, he is not distributed through space in a physical sense so that half of him should be in half of the world and half in the other half of it. He is wholly present in all of it in such a way as to be wholly in heaven alone and wholly in the earth alone, and wholly in heaven and earth together; not confined in any place, but wholly in himself everywhere. LETTER 187.14.

THE BEAUTY OF THE FIELD. AUGUSTINE: Through the indescribable wisdom of God residing in the Word, we understand that all things are with him and the Word himself is all things. Is not the beauty of the field in a manner with him, since he is everywhere and has said, “Heaven and earth I fill”? What is not with him, of whom it is said, “If I shall have ascended into heaven, you are there. If I descended into hell, you are present”? EXPOSITIONS OF THE PSALMS 50.18.

COME TO CHRIST. AUGUSTINE: Listen to him: “Come to me, all you who labor.” You do not put an end to your labor by running away. You prefer to run away from him, do you, not to him? Find somewhere, and run away there. But if you cannot run away from him, for the good reason that he is present everywhere, the next thing to do is to run away to God, who is present right where you are standing. Run away, then. So, you see, you have run away beyond the heavens, he is there. You have gone right down to hell, he is there. Whatever solitary places of the earth you may choose, there he is, the one who said, “I fill heaven and earth.” So if he fills heaven and earth and there is nowhere you can run away to from him, do not go on laboring with all that trouble. Run away to him where he is present right beside you, to avoid experiencing him as he comes to judge you. SERMON 69.4.

THE WORD OF GOD BECAME HUMAN. AUGUSTINE: So the aspect he chose was the one by which Christ came into the world. He came, after all, insofar as he was man. Because insofar as he was God, he was always here. Is there anywhere God is not, I mean, seeing that he said, “I fill heaven and earth”? Christ is certainly the power of God and the wisdom of God. Of this wisdom it says, “She reaches from end to end mightily and disposes all things sweetly.” So then, “he was in this world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.” He was here, and yet he also came. He was here by divine greatness; he came by human weakness. So because he came by human weakness, that is why Paul declared his coming by saying, “The word is human.” The human race would not have been set free unless the Word of God had agreed to be human. After all, people are said in particular to be human who show some humanity, above all by giving hospitality to human persons. So if human beings are called human because they receive human beings into their homes, how human must that one be who received humanity into himself by becoming human? SERMON 174.1.

THE FATHER IS WITH THE SON. AUGUSTINE: Jesus said, “He that sent me is with me.” He had already said this before, but he is constantly reminding them of this important point. “He sent me,” and “He is with me.” If then, O Lord, he is with you, it is not so much that the One has been sent by the other but rather that you both have come. And yet, while both are together, one was sent, the other was the sender. Incarnation is a sending, and the incarnation itself belongs only to the Son and not to the Father. The Father therefore sent the Son but did not withdraw from the Son. For it was not the case that the Father was absent from the place to which he sent the Son. For where could the Maker of all things not be? Where could he not be who said, “I fill heaven and earth”? TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 40.6.

THE HOLY SPIRIT IS PRESENT WITH FATHER AND SON. AMBROSE: Of what creature can it be said that it fills all things, as it written of the Holy Spirit: “I will pour my Spirit on all flesh.” This cannot be said of an angel. Lastly, Gabriel, when sent to Mary, said, “Hail, full of grace,” plainly declaring the grace of the Spirit that was in her, because the Holy Spirit had come on her, and she was about to have her womb full of grace with the heavenly Word. It is the Lord who fills all things, who says, “I fill heaven and earth.” If, then, it is the Lord who fills heaven and earth, who can judge the Holy Spirit to be without a share in the dominion and divine power, seeing that he has filled the world, and what is beyond the whole world, filled Jesus, the Redeemer of the whole world? For it is written, “But Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, departed from the Jordan.” Who, then, except one who possessed the same fullness could fill him who fills all things? ON THE HOLY SPIRIT 1.7.85-86.

WHEN HIS WORD COMES. AMBROSE: God says, “I will dwell in them.” Elsewhere also it stands that God said, “Come, let us go down and confound their language.” God, indeed, never descends from any place, for he says, “I fill heaven and earth.” He seems to descend when the Word of God enters our hearts, as the prophet has said: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” We are to do this, so that, as he himself promised, he may come together with the Father and make his home with us. It is clear, then, how he comes. ON THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 5.7.98.

THE FULLNESS OF GOD IS EVERYWHERE. AMBROSE: Since we are in his image and likeness, as Scripture says, let us presume to speak, just as he expresses himself in the fullness of his majesty and sees all things—sky, air, earth, sea—embracing all and penetrating each one, so that nothing passes his notice and nothing exists unless it exists in him and depends on him and is full of him, as he says: “I fill heaven and earth, declares the Lord.” LETTER 49.

LIMITS OF THE NEGATIVE WAY OF KNOWING GOD. GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS: How, again, can justice be done to the scriptural fact that God pervades and fills the universe (“Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ says the Lord,” and, “The spirit of the Lord fills the world”) if part of it limits him and part of it is limited by him? It cannot, for he must either occupy a complete vacuum and our universe vanish—involving the blasphemy that God has been rendered corporeal and does not possess the universe he made; or his body must be contained by bodies, which is impossible; or he must be knit through them as a contrasted strand, like liquids in mixture, parting some, parted by others—which is a more absurd old wives’ tale than even Epicurus’s atoms. It follows, then, that talk of God’s body has no solid body to it and must collapse. What if we call God “immaterial,” the fifth element envisaged by some, borne along the circular drift? Let us assume that he is some immaterial, fifth body, incorporeal, if they wait for it so to suit their free-drifting, self-constructing argument—I will not quarrel over the point. What place will he have in the moving drift of things—leaving out of account the blasphemy of identifying the creatures’ motion with their creator’s, the mover’s (if they will concede the term) with that of the moved? What moves this fifth element? What moves the whole? What moves that which moves the whole? And so on ad infinitum. Must not this moving fifth element be in space? Suppose that they call it something other than the fifth element, an angelic body, say. What grounds have they for asserting that angels are bodies? What are these bodies? How far will God transcend angels who are his ministers? If supra-angelic, a countless swarm of bodies will be fetched in, an abyss of nonsense with no halting place.

So we have proved that God is not a body. No divinely inspired teacher has asserted or accepted that idea; the verdict of our fold is against it. He can only be incorporeal. But the term “incorporeal,” though granted, does not give an all-embracing revelation of God’s essential being. The same is true of “ingenerate,” “unoriginate,” “immutable,” and “immortal,” indeed of all attributes applied or referred to God. For what has the fact of owning no beginning, of freedom from change, from limitation, to do with his real, fundamental nature? No, the full reality is left to be grasped, philosophically treated and scrutinized by a more advanced theorist of God. Just as predicating “is body” or “is begotten” of something or other where these predicates are applicable is not enough clearly to set out the things, but you must also, if an object of knowledge is to be displayed with adequate clarity, give the predicates their subject (people, cows and horses, you see, are “corporeal,” “begotten” and “mortal”), so, in the same way, an inquirer into the nature of a real being cannot stop short at saying what it is not but must add to his denials a positive affirmation (and how much easier it is to take in a single thing than to run the full gamut of particular negations!). The point of this is that comprehension of the object of knowledge should be effected by negation of what the thing is not and by positive assertion of what it is. A person who tells you what God is not but fails to tell you what he is is rather like someone who, asked what twice five is, answers “not two, not three, not four, not five, not twenty, not thirty, no number, in short, under ten or over ten.” He does not deny it is ten, but he is also not settling the questioner’s mind with a firm answer. It is much simpler, much briefer, to indicate all that something is not by indicating what it is, than to reveal what it is by denying what it is not. ON THEOLOGY, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 2 (28).8-9.

IS DEITY LOCATED IN SPACE OR NOT? GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS: This is all common sense, surely, but now that we have proved deity incorporeal, we shall take the examination a stage further. The problem is this: is deity located in space or not? If it is not, then your shrewd critic might ask how it can even exist at all. Granted that what does not exist has no spatial location, it may well be the case that what has no spatial location does not exist. But if deity is spatially located there are two possible consequences: either the universe contains it, or it is located above the universe. Taking the first alternative, then, it is either contained in a part of the universe or the whole of it. Supposing deity is contained in a part of the universe, it will be delimited by something smaller; if in the whole, by something larger, quite different in relative scale, I mean, as between deity inside and the surrounding universe, granted the universe is going to be contained by the universe and all spatial location to have its bounding line. These consequences follow the hypotheses that the universe contains God. Again, where was it before the universe was created? This produces a considerable problem, you see. If, on the other hand, deity is located above the universe, what is the dividing line between it and the universe? Where is this higher place? How are higher and lower levels to be recognized; where there is no dividing line between to separate them? There will have, surely, to be something in between, something to bound the universe off from what lies above it. In that case this something in between must have the very spatial location we rejected. I do not now insist on the fact that deity must be delimited if it be mentally comprehended, for comprehension is one form of delimitation.

Why have I made this digression, too labored, I dare say, for the general ear but in tune with the prevalent fashion in discussions, a fashion that despises noble simplicity and substitutes tortuous conundrums? I did it to make the tree known by its fruits, to make the darkness that activates dogmas like these, I mean, known by the obscurity of their expression. I did not do it to gain a reputation for startling oratory or extraordinary wisdom as a marvelous Daniel for “showing hard sentences and dissolving doubts.” No, I wanted to make plain the point my sermon began with, which was this: the incomprehensibility of deity to the human mind and its totally unimaginable grandeur. Not that deity resents our knowledge: resentment is a far cry from the divine nature, serene as it is, uniquely and properly “good,” especially resentment of its most prized creation. What can mean more to the Word than thinking beings, since their very existence is an act of supreme goodness? It is not that he treasures his own fullness of glory, keeping his majesty costly by inaccessibility. It would be utterly dishonest, utterly out of character not merely for God but also for an ordinary good person with anything of a proper conscience about him to get himself the senior place by keeping others out. ON THEOLOGY, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 2 (28).10-11.

LET US PLEASE GOD WITH OUR SPEECH AND BEHAVIOR. CYPRIAN: But let our speech and petition when we pray be under discipline, observing quietness and modesty. Let us consider that we are standing in God’s sight. We must please the divine eyes in our bodily manner and with appropriate restraint of voice. For as it is characteristic of a shameless person to be noisy with his cries, so it is fitting for the modest to pray with moderated petitions. Moreover, in his teaching the Lord has bidden us to pray in secret—in hidden and remote places, in our very bedchambers—which is best suited to faith, that we may know that God is everywhere present, hears and sees all and in the plenitude of his majesty penetrates even into hidden and secret places, as it is written, “I am a God at hand, and not a God afar off. If a person shall hide himself in secret places, shall I not then see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?” THE LORD’S PRAYER 4.

 Глаголет негде Бог: «Или небо и землю не Аз наполняю? — рече Господь». И наполняет Он, конечно, повсюду пребывая Духом. Поняв это, Псалмопевец и сказал: «Камо пойду от Духа Твоего? и от лица Твоего камо бежу? Аще взыду на небо, Ты тамо еси: аще спиду во ад, тамо еси»  (Пс. 138:7-9). Итак, если посредством Духа Бог наполняет всё и повсюду пребывает, то, стало быть, Бог — Дух, все наполняющий (τό τά πάντα πληρούν)    как Бог.

THE POWER OF GOD SEES, BENEFITS AND INSTRUCTS. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRA: “I have known all that is hidden and all that is open to view. I was a pupil of Wisdom, who formed them all.” There, in brief, you have the profession of our philosophy. The process of learning about these, if practiced under good supervision, leads upward via Wisdom, who formed the whole universe, to the ruler of the universe, a being hard to catch, hard to track down, who always distances himself in retreat from his pursuer. But this same ruler, distant as he is, has—truth be told!—drawn near. “I am God who is near at hand, declares the Lord.” In his essential being he is distant—how could a creature subject to birth ever draw near to the unborn and the uncreated?—but very close by the exercise of that power that had enfolded all things in its embrace. It is written, “Can anyone act in secret without my seeing him?” Yes, the power of God is always present, touching us with a power that sees, is good and instructs. STROMATEIS 2.2.

CHRIST FILLS THE COSMOS. ORIGEN: And how will it be possible to set the text, “Do not I fill heaven and earth? says the Lord,” side by side with the whole world understood as Jesus’ shoe? It is worthwhile, however, to give attention to whether we must understand the words in relation to the fact that the Word and Wisdom have permeated the whole world, and the Father is in the Son, as we presented it, or he who first girded himself with all creation, because the Son was in him, granted to the Savior, since he was second after him and God the Word, to pervade the whole creation. COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 6.202.

GOD’S FULLNESS IS EVERYWHERE. SALVIAN THE PRESBYTER: Elsewhere we read the words of the prophet: “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” God tells why he fills all things: “because I am with you to save you.” Behold, the Lord shows us not only his rule and its all pervading fullness but also the power and benefits accruing from this very fullness. For the fullness of divinity carries as its reward the salvation of what it fills. Paul, in the Acts of the Apostles, said, “for in him we live and move and are.” THE GOVERNANCE OF GOD 2.2.

Стихи 16–20 содержат осуждение лжепророков за то, что они обманывают народ: «рассказывают мечты сердца своего, а не от уст Господних». Господь же вопреки утешению лжепророков утотовал наказание нечестивым, и последующие дни должны подтвердить это.

Указывая далее на незаконность (непризванность) лжепророков, Иеремия отмечает разницу, отличие Божиих слов, которые подобны огню и молоту, от вымыслов лжепророков. За нечестие им предвозвещается вечное поношение и бесславие (40 стих).

GOD FILLS THE COSMOS. THEODORET OF CYR: If the sun, being corporeal, for it is visible and susceptible to disintegration, cannot be polluted when it passes through corpses, putrid mud and many other evil-smelling substances, much more impervious to such pollution is the maker of the sun, the creator of the universe, the incorporeal one, the invisible, the unchangeable, the one who always remains the same. And that those things are so the following reflection will bear out. We both assert and believe that his nature is infinite, for we have heard him exclaim: “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth? says the Lord.” ON DIVINE PROVIDENCE 10.16-17.

Бог вездесущ: но могут ли жить в Его вездесущии те, которые не токмо не ищут близости к Нему, но если бы могли, то сами повелели бы Ему оставить их: «отступи от нас; путей твоих ведети не хощем» (Иов. 21:14)? – Им возмерено будет избранною ими мерою. «Бог не хотяй беззакония Ты еси, Господи! не преселится к Тебе лукавнуяй, ниже пребудут беззаконницы пред очима Твоима. Удаляющиися от Тебе погибнут» (Пс. 5:5-6:72:27).
Бог вездесущ: но живут ли в Его вездесущии те, которые ни окрест себя, ни в себе ничего не видят и не чувствуют, кроме мира и тварей, в них полагают и весь свой труд и все свое успокоение; наслаждаются приобретенным, как своею собственностию, а не даром Божиим; ищут потребного себе только у тех, которые, подобно им, ничего не имеют собственного, и воспоминают о Боге разве только для роптания пред Ним на свои недостатки? – Нет! не рабы они Божии, но изгнанники дома Господня, которые мнят царствовать в своем заточении.
Бог вездесущ: но живут ли в вездесущии Его и те, которые хотя и познают Его вездесущие, но составляют о нем токмо скоропреходящие и никакого следа в сердце их не оставляющие, мысленные образы; хотя признают Божий промысл, но не хотят усматривать Его непрестанного милования и хранения над самими собою, и вместо того, чтобы «вкушать и видеть, яко благ Господь» (Пс. 33:9), хотя, кажется, «видят,» но совсем не «вкушают»? – Они суть чуждые зрители дома Божия, которые иногда могут даже показывать другим некоторые внешние чертежи Его, но сами не причащаются внутренних благ Его и не обладают Его сокровищами.
Бог вездесущ, и наипаче здесь во храме «есть имя Его, ...и очи Его..., и сердце Его» (3 Цар. 9:3): но да не будет сие сказано в оскорбление сего священного места – все ли точно и здесь приступают к престолу вездесущия? Умолчим, как о несущих от сего двора, о тех, которых может приводить сюда лицемерие или нечто сему подобное. Нет ли даже между искренними любителями дома Божия таких, которые во храме рукотворенном, в сем чувственном и осязательном представлении вездесущия, едва-едва обретают нерукотворенный храм Божия присутствия; удерживаются долу тем самым, что долженствовало бы воскрилять их горе; слышат «глаголы» Божии, но не ощущают в них «духа... и живота» (Ин. 6:63); предстоят при славословиях, но не могут еще с Давидом сказать себе самим: «возстани слава моя, возстани псалтирю и гусли» (Пс. 107:3); или, наконец, когда и обретают нечто здесь, не умеют того износить отселе в напутствие себе?
Бог вездесущ, и, по неизреченному своему снисхождению столько приближается ко всем и каждому, что, по изречению Апостола, готов бы дать осязать себя, когда не могут видеть Его и внимать Ему: «да поне осяжут Его и обрящут, яко не далече от единаго коегождо нас суща» (Деян. 17:27), но, несмотря на сие, многие ли дерзнут исповедать о себе гласом божественной любви: «обретох, егоже возлюби душа моя; удержах Его, и не оставих его» (Песн. 3:4)?
Итак, истинная близость к Богу должна быть предметом ревностного искания и плодом неослабного подвига. «Взыщите Господа, и утвердитеся: взыщите лица Его выну» (Пс. 104:4).

THE TRINITY FILLS THE EARTH. FULGENTIUS OF RUSPE: Accordingly, we must consider that one and the same nature of the Trinity fills the whole in such a way that there is no place where it is not. So, it is everywhere complete and in no way contained in a place. It is complete in individual spirits and bodies and complete at the same time in all creatures. Now we are not speaking about grace by which God with a free gift of his mercy offers himself to human beings for their salvation, but about nature by which God both fills and contains all the things which he made; according to this, he says, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” LETTER 14.4.