Книга пророка Иеремии, Глава 3, стих 7. Толкования стиха

SCRIPTURE HEALS BY INVITING TO REPENTANCE. BASIL THE GREAT: In addition to these things, “when people fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return?” Why, then, is the virgin “turned away with a stubborn revolting,” even though she heard Christ, her spouse, saying through Jeremiah, “And when she had committed all these fornications, I said, ‘Return to me, and she did not return’?” “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?” Indeed, many safeguards against evil would you find in the divine Scripture and many remedies which from destruction bring salvation—the mysteries of death and resurrection, the words of the terrible judgment and everlasting punishment, the doctrines of repentance and the forgiveness of sin, those innumerable examples of conversion, the drachma, the sheep, the son who spent his livelihood with harlots, was lost and found, was dead and alive again. Let us use these safeguards against evil. THROUGH THEM, LET US HEAL OUR SOUL. LETTER 46.

IMPORTANCE OF FIDELITY. JEROME: “And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah has not returned to me with her whole heart, but feignedly.” It is a smaller sin to follow evil that you think is good than not to venture to defend what you know for certain is good. If we cannot endure threats, injustice and poverty, how shall we overcome the flames of Babylon? Let us not lose by hollow peace what we have preserved by war. I should be sorry to allow my fears to teach me faithlessness when Christ has put the true faith in the power of my choice. AGAINST THE PELAGIANS 1.PROLOGUE.2.

CHRIST’S MINISTRY. CHRYSOSTOM: He directs his speech to the city, in this way, too, being minded to correct his hearers, and said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” What is meant by this repetition? This is the manner of one pitying her and gently loving her. She is like a woman who is beloved. He always loved her indeed, yet she has despised him who loved her. Therefore at the point of being punished, he pleads, being now about to inflict the punishment. This he does also in the prophets, using these words, “I said, ‘she will return to me,’ but she did not return.” HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 74.3.

CALLED TO CONTINUAL REPENTANCE. CHRYSOSTOM: These two indeed are chief sins, engendered by violent lusts, the one of sexual desire, the other of the desire of money. Hear what God said to Jerusalem, “I said, after she had committed all these prostitutions, she will return to me, and she did not return.” When we have come back to the earnest love of God, he remembers not the former things. God is not as people. He reproaches us not with the past, neither does he say, when we repent, “Why were you absent for so long a time?” Only let us approach him as we ought. Let us cleave to him earnestly and rivet our hearts to his fear. . . .

How many other such changes would you see, both to have taken place back then and now taking place every day? For this reason I say, “Neither let him on the cross despair, nor let him in the church be confident.” For to this last it is said, “Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” And to the other, “Shall not he that falls arise?” And, “Lift up the hands that hang down, and the feeble knees.” Again, to these he said, “Watch”; but to those, “Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead.” These need to preserve what they have, and those to become what they are not. These need to preserve their health, those to be delivered from their infirmity, for they are sick. But many even of the sick become healthy, and of the healthy many, in being remiss, get sick. HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 67.3-4.

THE CALL TO RETURN. CHRYSOSTOM: For the evils we have once perpetrated cannot provoke God so much as our being unwilling to make any change in the future. To sin may be a merely human failing, but to continue in the same sin ceases to be human and becomes altogether devilish. For observe how God by the mouth of his prophet blames this more than the other. “For,” we read, “I said unto her after she had done all these deeds of fornication, return to me, and yet she returned not.” . . . “Declare you first your iniquities that you may be justified.” Now this he demands from us in order to intensify our love toward him. LETTER TO THE FALLEN THEODORE 1.15.

GOD WILL WELCOME ALL WHO TRULY REPENT. ORIGEN: This is a new kind of his goodness that even after adultery God nevertheless would receive the soul that returns and repents from the heart as he also says through the prophet, “If a woman leaves her husband and sleeps with another man, shall she return to her husband? Will she not be contaminated? You, however, have committed fornication with your many shepherds and returned to me.” He says the same thing elsewhere, “After you committed fornication, with all these, I said, ‘Return to me.’ And you have not thus returned, says the Lord.” HOMILIES ON EXODUS 8.5.

THE INFIDELITY OF ISRAEL. THEODORET OF CYR: Those who place themselves far from your care and choose to serve idols will reap the destructive fruit of defection. He calls idolatry infidelity here. God likewise says also through Jeremiah, “She went up every high hill and under every green tree and was unfaithful there. I said, after all this infidelity of hers, ‘Return unto me,’ and she did not return.” Again, “She committed adultery with tree and stone,” meaning, “Leaving me, her spouse, she served false gods.” Accordingly, here too he called the worship of idols infidelity. COMMENTARY ON THE PSALMS 73.12.