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The previous books, the sixth and seventh, contain an allegorical interpretation of the fifth book, which I previously dictated with a historical explanation. The present work, that is, the eighth book, returns to the begun interpretation, equally setting out both the historical and allegorical meaning of both editions. If this seems long to you, virgin of Christ Eustochia, then blame it not on me, but on the difficulties of the Holy Scriptures, and especially on the prophet Isaiah, who is clothed in such darkness that, due to the greatness of the subject, I must consider short an explanation that is in itself long. After all, we write for those who are curious and want to understand the Holy Scriptures, and not for those who are bored and disdainful of everything. If they want rivers of eloquence and graceful oratory, then let them read Cicero, Quintilian, Gallio, Gabinian, and if I turn to ours, Tertullian, Cyprian, Minucius, Arnobius, Lactantius, Hilary. Our goal is that with our help Isaiah will be understood, and not that our words will be praised regarding Isaiah. Ch. XXIV. Art. 1–3. Behold, the Lord will lay waste the land and lay it bare, and smite its face, and scatter its inhabitants; and there shall be both the people and the priest, and the servant and his master; both the maid and her mistress; both the buyer and the seller; both the lender and the recipient of loans, both the giver and the debtor. The land will be desolate and plundered, for the Lord has spoken this word. After the private denunciation of all the nations separately, Judah, Babylon, the Philistines, Moab, Damascus, Israel, Egypt, the desert of the sea, Idumea, Arabia, the valley of the vision, and finally Tire, in explanation of which we have said what we could, now the prophetic speech depicts that he will suffer the whole world to its end, and prophesies not about individual nations, but equally about all. And first of all, he says what kind of torment the wicked will suffer, how, in accordance with the Gospel and the Apostle, heaven and earth and the image of this world will pass away (Matthew 24; 1 Cor. 7) and sinners will be led to hell (Ps. 30), - sinners about whom it is written: they will go down into the nether regions of the earth, they will be given into the hands of weapons, they will be parts of foxes (Ps. 62:10). Then, since the Father has many mansions in terms of the quality of his merits, it is said how the saints will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and will always be with Him (John 14; 1 Thessalonians 4). Instead of the earth being devastated, the LXX translated: the universe is corrupted, and instead of the face of it, that is, the earth, will be smitten, they translated: and the face of it will be revealed, so that the dead may come out of their graves; or he will expose it, so that all its deeds will be revealed to everyone and its inhabitants will be scattered to different places, being destined for rewards or punishments. There will then be no distinction between the noble and the ignorant, the priest and the layman, the slave and the master, the maid and the mistress, the rich and the poor, the usurer and the one who stands under the yoke of other people's money, the buyer and the seller. For all will stand equally before the judgment seat of Christ, and there will be no respect of persons with God (Rom. 14; Col. 8). Job speaks about this in almost the same words: there are small and great there, and the servant shall not fear his master (Job 3:19), and the Savior, to whom all judgment has been transferred, testifies in the Gospel in detailed speech. So, the earth will be devastated and all earthly affairs will turn into nothing, so that after the earthly image is destroyed, the heavenly image will remain. For the first man is ringed from the earth: the second man is the Lord from heaven. Like the earthly one, so are the rings: and like the one who is in heaven, so are those who are in heaven. And just as we have put on the image of earth, let us also be clothed in the image of heaven (1 Cor. 15:47–49). Therefore, the same Apostle says: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (Ibid., v. 50), - not in the sense of the heretical teaching that the bodily nature will be destroyed, but in the sense that this corruptible will be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal will be clothed with immortality. And all this will be fulfilled, for the Lord spoke through the prophets about what it will be. Art. 4–5. The earth groaned and became sad and drooped; the world is sad, the height of the people of the earth has fallen, and the earth has been killed by its inhabitants. LXX: The earth groaned, the universe was corrupted, the high lands groaned, and the earth acted wickedly because of its inhabitants. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble (James 4–6). Therefore, the first sentence is directed against the high ones of the earth, that everything that is now strong will decline - through the fault of those who added blood to blood, and like the blood of Abel, forced the blood of the slain to cry out to God (Gen. 4). Art. 6. For they have transgressed the law, they have changed the truth, they have broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse will devour the land, and those living on it will sin; therefore its cultivators will go mad, and only a few people will remain. LXX: For they have broken the law, they have changed the commandments, the everlasting covenant. For this reason the curse will devour the earth, for those who live on it have sinned; Therefore, the inhabitants of the earth will be poor and there will be few people left. Let the Jews hear, boasting that they alone received the law of the Lord, that first all nations and the whole world received the natural law, and subsequently the law was given through Moses, because the first law was broken. The Apostle Paul says about this law: while the pagans, not having the law, do what is lawful by nature, they, not having the law, are a law to themselves. Those who demonstrate the law are written in their hearts (Rom. 2:14). Therefore, those who comply with these laws will receive rewards; those who do not fulfill them will suffer what the prophetic speech now threatens. And how in the beginning God blessed all creation that He created (Gen. 1), so at the end of the world He will curse those who are earthly and who were not aliens, but inhabitants of the earth and sinned on it, who, forgetting about their nature, raged against each other with mutual hatred. And few will remain having the most heavenly image; or, according to LXX, the inhabitants of the earth will be poor, for they have lost spiritual riches. Art. 7–12. The vineyard groaned, the vine was sad, all those who rejoiced in their hearts wept. The fun with the tympanums has stopped, the noise of those having fun has ceased, the pleasant sound of the harp has died down: with the song they will not drink wine, the drink will be bitter for those who drink it. The city of vanity is crushed, every house is locked, and no one enters. There will be weeping for wine in the streets, all joy will be abandoned, the joy of the earth will be banished. And desolation has been left in the city, and disaster will close in on the gates; for it will be in the midst of the earth, among the nations. At the end of the world, the memory of past pleasures will be the cause of torment. Therefore, this rich man, dressed in purple at the feast, having received his good things in his life, lifting up his eyes from hell, sees Lazarus in the place of rest (Luke 16). And the Lord, denouncing the rich, drowning in pleasures and laughing, says in the Gospel: woe to you rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are now full, for you will hunger. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will weep and lament. So, when there is a resurrection of the dead and the day of judgment comes, then the wine and the vineyard will mourn, about which Moses says: “Their grapes are from the vines of Sodom, and their rod is from Gomorrah: their bunch is a bunch of gall, a bunch of their sorrow.” The wrath of serpents is their wine and the wrath of asps is incurable (Deut. 32:33). Then every drink, or as they say strong drink, that is, intoxication, which distorts the state of mind and does not allow people to stay awake, will be replaced by bitterness, which to those who consume it falsely appears to be honey, and then will turn out to be bitterer than bile. Then all the pleasant singing of those having fun and the sound of timbrels and harps will turn into weeping and groaning. Let us point out this evidence to those who at feasts indulge in the pleasures of not only voluptuousness and intoxication, but also of hearing, in order to weaken the strength of the soul through all the senses. The city of vanity will be crushed - or every city, or spiritual Babylon, which sits in purple on seven mountains, about whose punishments we read in the Apocalypse of John (Apocalypse 18). And he said it perfectly: the city of vanity. For if it is said about heaven and earth and about everything on earth: vanity of vanities and all vanity (Ecl. 1:2), then shouldn’t it be all the more true to say this about one city, which makes up a small part of the whole world? Then the houses that now have gilded ceilings, the walls of which are covered with marble inlay and shine with shiny ivory carvings, while the poor die of cold without shelter and huts, these houses will remain empty. There will be mourning in the streets about wine, not on the narrow and narrow path leading to life, but on the wide and spacious path leading to death (Matthew 7). About the wine and intoxication of the delusion of those who fell asleep in their sleep, and all the men of wealth found nothing in their hands (Ps. 76:6). For the joy of the earth has been transferred to heaven, and desolation has remained in the once most famous city, and the gates of the crowded roads through which numerous crowds of people entered will be oppressed by the misfortune of the inhabitants. And so that we can clearly see that the destruction of the whole world is being announced, he added: it will be among the earth, among the pagans or nations. Art. 13–15. Just as the few remaining olives are shaken off the olive tree, the clusters of grapes are shaken off when the grape harvest is over. They will lift up their voice and praise, when the Lord is glorified, they will shout from the sea: therefore in doctrines glorify the Lord, in the islands of the sea the name of the Lord God of Israel. How much the LXX translation departs from the Hebrew text in this place will be shown by the following words of the LXX: As if someone shakes off an olive, they will shake off them, and as if the grape harvest ends, they will cry out. Those who will be left on earth will rejoice along with the glory of the Lord; the water of the sea will be troubled; Therefore the glory of the Lord will be on the islands of the sea; the name of the Lord will be glorious, even the Lord God of Israel. When there are few people left, when the curse devours the land and there is desolation in the city, and all this happens in the middle of the earth, among the nations and pagans, then there will be so few saints about whom the Lord speaks in the Gospel: many are the titles, few are the chosen, and the oppression of the righteous will be so strong that, if possible, even the chosen ones of God will be tempted - there will be so few saints that their insignificance is compared to very rare olive trees on the earth. olive trees, which, after shaking and removing the fruits, only a small number remain at the top of the branches - and is likened to how, at the end of the grape harvest, the poor, driven by need, usually inspect the empty vines and collect a few grapes. So, those who will remain, and after the end of the harvest and trampling of the grapes of the world will be able to escape the hands of the persecuting Antichrist, or the fires of threatening torment, they will raise their voices and praise God. When the Lord comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels and they see Him reigning in majesty, then they will neigh like horses, revealing great joy, and they will neigh from the sea of ​​this world. Therefore, you who are instructed in the Holy Scriptures and know that such great joy and such great rewards remain for you, glorify the Lord in the teachings, heeding what is written: Boast, let him boast in the Lord. (2 Cor. 10:17). And not in the land of Judea, but on the islands, that is, in the churches of this sea and the world, by which the name of the Lord God of Israel or the man who saw God is blessed and praised. In relation to LXX, everything that we understood about the saints can be attributed to the wicked - that when the grape harvest is over, then they will cry in torment; and those who escape being counted among the wicked will rejoice in the glory of the Lord, and the waters of the nations of this world will be troubled. Art. 16. From the ends of the earth we have heard praises, the glory of the Righteous One, and I said: My mystery is to me, my mystery is to me: woe is me. LXX: From the wings of the earth we have heard miracles: there is hope for the Righteous, and they will say: “My secret is mine.” The words: my secret is not in the LXX, but added in Greek from Theodotion’s translation. Also, instead of the fact that they put woe to connect with the next verse, in Hebrew it is oi li, which actually means woe is me. And instead of ends, as we translated more clearly to reveal the meaning, in Hebrew there is meccenaph, which means wing, not end. So those about whom it was said above: will lift up their voices and praise when they neigh from the sea and glorify the Lord in teachings and see that on the islands of the sea the name of the Lord God of Israel is praised, then they will sing in agreement and say: we have heard that His praises are proclaimed from the wings of the earth, that is, from the prophets and Saints of the Lord, who, having taken the wings of doves, strive for the kingdom of heaven, and that glory or hope The righteous is not in vain, but everything is fulfilled in practice. So, while the saints say this, they cry out from the sea, lifting up their voices and praising, the prophet says to himself: when I heard this and saw that the prediction of the prophets about the destruction of the world would be fulfilled, I said to myself in the inner movement of my heart: I cannot express everything that I see; my tongue sticks to my throat; the word is bound by sadness. Woe is me! What a series of executions are taking place before my eyes! I see fulfilling what will happen in the future. – Those who, without paying attention to the connection of thoughts, think that this should be understood on behalf of God are mistaken. And I am surprised with what thought, instead of psalms and praises, that zemroth is read in Hebrew, LXX translated miracles, unless the sign and miracle is that after the exclusion of the people of Judah, the previously unbelieving multitude of pagans will be saved. Art. 17–18. Traitors betrayed and by betrayal they changed criminals. Horror and a pit and a noose are upon you, inhabitant of the earth! And it will be that the one who runs away from the cry of horror will fall into the pit, and whoever frees himself from the pit will fall into the net. LXX: Woe to the criminals who break the law. Fear and a pit and a noose are upon you who live on earth. And it will be that whoever escapes fear will fall into the pit, and whoever comes out of the pit will be caught in a noose. This is the reason for my crying and groaning, why I said twice: my secret is to me, my secret to me: this is that they violated the law of God, and therefore the Lord’s punishment is not postponed and is not predicted in the future, but is coming and is already covering the inhabitants of the earth. And when they consider themselves to have escaped punishment, they will fall from one misfortune into another, and wherever they turn, they will not escape the coming wrath of the Lord. Art. 19–20. For the abysses are opened from on high, and the foundations of the earth will shake. The earth will be crushed by destruction, the earth will be destroyed by destruction, the earth will be shaken by a shaking. The earth will stagger like a drunken man, and will be taken down like a tent in one night, and its iniquity will weigh it down, and it will fall and rise no more. No one will escape the fear and the net and the pit of the Lord because the abysses from above, or, as LXX translated more clearly, the windows of heaven, opened, so that the Lord looked upon all the sins of people, which before, as having remained unpunished, seemed unknown to sinners to God. When, after opening the windows, He saw all the deeds of mortals, the foundations of the earth shook, according to what is written elsewhere about the look of the Lord: look upon the earth and make it shake (Ps. 103:32); then the earth will be crushed and destroyed and shaken and staggered like a drunken man, not because the earth itself will turn to dust and nothing, but because everything earthly will pass away and new life will begin. And just as a drunk person does not realize what he is doing, and due to the weakening of his nerves from intoxication, neither his leg nor his mind fulfills its purpose: so the whole earth, that is, all the people living on earth from the greatness of evils and punishments, will be drunk and will be in amazement at everything that they see. And just as a tent, or tent, is moved from place to place in one night, and the place of the former tent is left by the traveler, so that no trace remains of the former camp: so the image of this world will pass away, and the land will be empty, burdened with its iniquity, the burden and greatest weight of which is described in Zechariah: “it sat on a talent of lead.” And she will fall, he says, and will not rise again - not in the sense that the resurrection of people and everyone who lived on earth is denied; but in the fact that there will be no earthly life and previous life relationships, since human bodies will be resurrected so that souls will put on the same bodies that they previously put together and receive from God either for the good or for the evil that they did on earth. Art. 21–23. And it will come to pass on that day that the Lord will visit the host of heaven on high, and the kings of the earth on the earth. “And they will be gathered together into one crowd into the lake, and they will be imprisoned there, and after many days they will be visited. And the moon will blush, and the sun will be ashamed, when the Lord of hosts reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and is glorified before his elders. Instead of what we translated: and the moon will blush and the sun will be ashamed, LXX translated: the brick will soften and the wall will fall; and what is the reason for the error, the following words will show. The sun in Hebrew is called threefold: semes, hamma, which means heat, and heres, which means ὅστρακον, i.e. potsherd, or dryness; mala, which in Greek is ϑωστήρ, is called luminary in Latin, a common name for the sun and moon. Further, the moon is called iaree, which in Greek is μῆνή, since the thirty-day revolution forms a month, and is also called labana, i.e. white or pure. Thus, in the present place, instead of labana, that is, moon, LXX translated brick, which in Hebrew is lebena, - translated words deceived by reciprocity. Further, instead of hamma, i.e. heat, which signifies the sun, they erected a wall, which in Hebrew is called homa. The whole meaning of separation is this: the windows of heaven were opened, so that with the Lord’s contempt for earthly sins, the entire image of earthly affairs would pass and fall and would no longer rise to its previous position. On that day, that is, on the day of judgment, the Lord will visit the army or decoration of heaven on high - to judge not only earthly things, but also heavenly things. And what kind of decoration or heavenly army we learn from what Moses writes: lest when they look up to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars and all the beauty of heaven, they are deceived and bow down to them (Deut. 4:19). The Lord, according to the idiocy of the Scriptures, will visit the army and the decoration of heaven, as if sick, requiring cutting and cauterization, according to this: I will visit them with the rod of their iniquity and the wounds of their iniquity (Ps. 89:33). For further we read: I wrote my sword in heaven; and in Job: the stars are unclean before him (Job 25:5), and also: and in the angels it is obstinate that he sees. He will visit the kings and princes of the earth, the rulers of this darkness, and he will also visit the spiritual iniquities in heaven. Daniel also wrote about these princes in charge of various regions: “The prince of the kingdom of Persia, and the prince of the kingdom of Media, and the prince of the kingdom of Greece came out to meet me.” So these princes, who have not preserved their degree, will be gathered by the Lord on the day of judgment, as if bound in one bundle, and will be sent to the lake of hell, so that what is written about the wicked will be fulfilled on them: a pit of graves, and a pit of graves, and they will fall into the pit that they have made. And they will be imprisoned, according to what the Lord said: go into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angel (Matthew 25:41). Further, and after many days they will be visited, apparently it favors my friends who give repentance to the devil and demons - that after a long time these latter will be visited by the Lord; but let them pay attention that the Divine Scripture did not say directly: they will be visited by the Lord, or they will be visited by angels, but vaguely: they will be visited. In this vagueness of the word one can understand both healing and punishment, that while the righteous will receive rewards, they will be visited with eternal torment. However, one should know that human frailty cannot know the judgment of God, and pronounce judgments about the greatness and extent of punishment, judgments that are left to the will of the Lord. Then the moon will turn red and the sun will be ashamed - in accordance with what the apostle said: for all creation sighs and grieves (Rom. 8:12), seeing that the people who used their light did nothing worthy of the goodness of God, who commands His sun to rise on the just and the unjust - seeing, as if a manager or steward before the coming of his master sees that his subordinates suffer various sufferings and do not carry out his orders. The Savior teaches about this same place in more detail in the Gospel: The sun will darken, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will move. And then the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven: and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and much glory (Matthew 24:29, 30). We learned about the destruction of the earth, about the visit of the heavenly army, about the gathering of kings and princes into one crowd, about their casting into the lake and imprisonment, about the visit, after a long time, to those who were imprisoned, about the shame of the moon and the embarrassment of the sun. After all this, the Lord of hosts will reign on Mount Zion in heavenly Jerusalem, about which it is written in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. 12), and will be glorified in the presence of his elders. What kind of elder was Abraham, who died in a good old age and was joined to his fathers (Gen. 25), whom Moses is commanded to choose as elders, whom he knows that they are elders, for “the gray hair of a man is his wisdom” (Prov. 4:8), who imitate the Ancient of Days, whose hair, to signify longevity, is depicted as white (Dan. 7:9). This can also be understood about church rank, unless by deeds they destroy the rank. Ch. XXV. Art. 1–5. God! You are my God; I will exalt You, I will confess to Your name, for You have done wonderful things, the ancient and faithful decrees, amen. For You turned the city into a heap of stones, a strong fortress into ruins, into a house of strangers, so that there was no city and that it would not be rebuilt forever. Therefore, a strong nation will praise You, a city of strong nations will fear You, For You have become strength for the poor, a strength for the unfortunate in their grief, hope from the storm, shade from the heat; for the breath of the mighty is like a storm striking a wall. Like heat in a time of thirst you will tame the violence of strangers, and like heat under a dry cloud you will dry up the branch of the strong. LXX: Oh my God! I will glorify You; I will praise Your name, for You have done wonderful works, the ancient counsel is true, let it be. For You turned the cities into heaps of stones, strong cities, so that their foundations fell. The cities of the wicked will never be built. Therefore the people of the poor will bless you, and the cities of the people who suffer iniquity will bless you. For You have been a helper to every humble city and a covering for every city that is sorrowful because of poverty: You will deliver them from wicked people; You are the shadow of the thirsty and the breath of the people who suffer iniquity, like the cowardly people who suffer thirst in Zion from the wicked people to whom You have delivered us. This place can be explained in two ways. The Jews think that this is the voice of the saints and the believing people, when God will do against the whole world what is said above and when the prophecies of all the prophets will be fulfilled. By the city destroyed they mean Rome, which will be completely destroyed. And by the strong people, who praise the Lord and for whom the Lord became a strength in their adversity and distress, they mean Israel, who was delivered from the oppression of the pagans as if during a time of extreme heat. Others understand better and more correctly that this is said on behalf of the prophet, sending thanks to the Father for the suffering of the Lord Savior - that He will do marvelous things and fulfill the ancient decrees in practice, when those standing on the right hand hear: Come, blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world (Matthew 25:34). Understanding this, Paul also says: because he chose us in him before the service of the world, to be holy and blameless (Eph. 1:4), and desiring the fulfillment of what he prophesies, he adds the Hebrew word amen, instead of which the LXX translated let it be. And the Lord often uses this word in the Gospel: amen, amen, that is, truly, truly, I say to you (John 6:54). And why he praises and confesses to the name of the Lord and what wonderful deeds and ancient decrees are, which He showed to be true - this is stated further: for You turned the city into a heap of stones, a strong fortress into ruins, into a house of strangers, so that there was no city and so that it would not be rebuilt forever. Of course, the once strong city of Jerusalem, which became a city of foreigners, about whom the Savior speaks in the psalm: the sons of strangers have lied to Me, the sons of strangers have promised (Ps. 17:45). After this city is destroyed, it will never be built again, so that dreams of a thousand-year kingdom and a golden and jeweled Jerusalem will be silenced. After the destruction of Jerusalem for its wickedness, the strong people will praise the Lord. What a strong people they are is shown by the following verse: The city of strong nations will fear You. While they blaspheme, the people of the Gentiles will fear You. For the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 9:10). The strong people will praise You, and the city of the nations (or Gentiles - gentium) of the strong will fear You - that is, the Church gathered from the Gentiles. For you have become a strength for the poor - for your Christ, about whom we read in the Psalms: blessed is he who considers the poor and needy (Ps. 40:1). And in Zechariah, according to the Hebrew text, this poor one, i.e. ebion, is depicted sitting on a donkey’s foal (Zechariah 9). He is strength for the poor in the grief of His suffering, hope in the whirlwind of the tree of the cross and shade from the heat - at the time when He said: Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit (Luke 23:46). For just as the wind, hitting a wall, goes around it, so the whirlwind of the blasphemous Jews could not harm Him. And, - using another comparison, - just as a vine shoot, scorched by intense heat, dries up, so You will dry up and destroy the riot and cries of strangers, that is, those who have become alien to you. According to the LXX interpreters, in this place I could not find, I do not say the meaning, but also the connection and order of words. Where we translated as heat during thirst, instead of which in Hebrew it is written basaion, which they mean impassable place or thirst, they, instead of impassable or thirst, translated in Zion. The error clearly occurred due to the similarity of the words Saion and Sion, which are written with the same letters. Art. 6–8. And the Lord of hosts will make for all the nations on this mountain a feast of fat, a feast of wine, of the fat of the marrow, of strained wine. And on this mountain he will destroy the bonds that are bound for all nations and the veil that is woven for all nations. And he will destroy death forever, and the Lord God will take away tears from every face, and he will take away the reproach of his people from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. LXX: And the Lord God will do to all the nations on this mountain: they will drink joy, they will drink wine. They will anoint themselves with ointment on this mountain. Pass all this on to the nations, for this is the definition for all nations: the prevailing death has devoured. And further: The Lord took away every tear from every face, and took away the reproach of his people from all the earth. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Instead of what we translated: the face of the bonds bound to all nations, Aquila translated: the face of darkness to all nations. And while Aquila named darkness twice, Theodotion named it once, and the rest is similar. Symmachus instead translated: the face of a ruler who rules over all nations. And what LXX wanted to say instead of this place: transfer all this to the nations, then it is clear to the reader that they did not put the words of the Scriptures, but their understanding - that all the secrets of the law and the church will be transferred to the church from the nations. So, after the suffering of the Lord, when He delivers Him from thirst and heat and the whirlwind, the Lord will arrange not for the Jewish people, but for all the nations on Mount Zion, a fat meal, a burnt offering of the fat of bones, a meal of strained wine, so that He will destroy and destroy the face of death and the bonds by which all people were bound, and will tear apart the net of death and the veil that embraced all the nations. And according to the apostle, death will be swallowed up forever (1 Cor. 16). And the Lord will take away tears from every face when, after the victory over death, the kingdom of Christ comes, and the reproach of the human race, which was created in the image of the Creator, will escape slavery to the devil and death. And it is not surprising if, according to Symmachus, death is called ruler, when the blessed apostle said: royal death from Adam even to Moses and over those who have not sinned in the likeness of Adam’s crime (Rom. 5:14). By the ruler over all nations or the face of darkness over all nations and the veil woven over all nations, some mean the Antichrist, who will be destroyed on the Mount of Olives, which we also said in the last vision of Daniel. According to LXX, a table of joy is being prepared for all nations on Mount Zion, at which they will drink the wine that the Lord promises to drink with his saints in the kingdom of the Father (Matt. 20; Luke 22) and will be anointed with the ointment, so that by being reborn in Christ they will become a new people; That’s why it says: convey all this to the nations - everything that Israel once did in the shadow and image. For this is the determination of the Lord, that all this should be transferred to the pagans, for death is swallowed up (1 Cor. 15) and every tear is wiped away and the reproach of the whole earth, upon the advent of the kingdom of Christ, is destroyed. Art. 9–12. And they will say on that day: Behold, this is our God! We were waiting for Him, He will save us! He is Lord; we trusted in Him; Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation. For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain, and Moab will be crushed under Him, as straw is crushed in a cart. And he will spread out his hands under him, as a swimmer spreads them out to swim, and his glory will be humiliated with the crushing of his hands, And the fortifications of your high walls will fall, be humbled and cast to the ground in the dust. After being destroyed forever by death, the people of God, freed from the hand of death, will say to the Lord: Behold, this is our God, whom the unbelievers considered only a man, and we waited for Him, that is, we believed His words that He would fulfill His promises and save us. Therefore, having been snatched by His help from the jaws of death, let us rejoice and be glad in Him, and His hand and power will rest on this mountain, as we read above: when the Lord of hosts reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and will be glorified in the presence of His elders (Isa. 24:23). Moab, which means from the father, will be crushed in the same way as straw is usually crushed by a cart. This applies to the way of life of Palestine and many eastern countries; due to the lack of meadows and hay, straw is prepared for livestock feed. They use iron carts with wheels in the middle, moving like saws, which grind the straw and grind it into chaff. So, just as straw is ground with these iron shells, so Moab will be worn out under Him - either under God’s power, or in itself, so that nothing whole will remain in it. And just as a swimmer usually stretches out his entire body, so out of his power he will be thrown to the ground and, falling, he will make a sound. And all the fortifications of his high men, or walls, as they stand in the Hebrew, will fall and will be humiliated and cast down to the ground and even ground to dust. So, the prophetic speech, although it generally composes a prophecy about the end of the world, however, without apparently completely omitting the present, it points to Moab, which was such an enemy for Israel that it tempted him to commit fornication with the Midianites and to sacrifice to the idol Beelphegor, which means Prian and against which Jeremiah says: “Chemosh will go out into captivity, along with his priests and his princes,” and also: “shamed Moab will be for the sake of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was put to shame for the sake of Bethel” (Jer. 48:7, 13), and so on. One idol and the demon who controlled this idol indicates that all opposing forces will be humiliated and brought down to hell and crushed to dust. If this is so, then where is the repentance of the devil? Ch. XXVI. Art. 1. On that day the following song will be sung in the land of Judah: The city of our fortress is the Savior; a wall and a vestibule will be erected in it. LXX: On that day they will sing this song in the land of Judea: Behold, a strong city, and he will build our salvation with a wall and a rampart. When Moab is humiliated and cast down to the ground and dust, and all enemies are subdued under the feet of Christ, then such a song will be sung in the land of Judah or Judah, of which both mean confession - so that just as by Zion and Jerusalem we mean the city of heaven, so by the region of this city we mean the heavenly confession. Therefore, the saints, not wanting to sing the song of Judea in a foreign land, say: how let us sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land (Ps. 137:4). I think that this is the song about which the saints are commanded elsewhere: sing to the Lord a new song (Ps. 95:1). This song will be like this: The city of our fortress is the Savior. What city is this? He who, having been placed on a mountain, cannot hide (Matthew 5), about whom it is written in another place: the river’s aspirations make glad the city of God (Ps. 45:4), and also: a beautiful verb was spoken about you, the city of God (Ps. 86:2). The builder of this city is the one about whom the Father says: “He created my city,” or better: the city of our fortress is the Savior, that is, Jesus. And a wall and a wall will be erected in it - a wall of good deeds and a wall of right faith, so that it will be fenced with a double fortification. For it is not enough to have a wall of faith if faith itself is not strengthened by good works. This wall and this antechamber or circle is built from living stones, which, according to the prophet, lie on the ground. Instead of a fortification, as we translated, Symmachus translated fortifications, so that the walls themselves are surrounded by fortifications - a rampart, a ditch and other walls, which, when building fortifications, are usually called tours (lorieulas). Art. 2–4. Open the gates, and let a righteous people who keep the truth come in. The former error has passed, you will preserve the peace; peace, for we have trusted in You. You have trusted in the Lord forever and ever. LXX: Open the gates, so that a people who keep righteousness and keep the truth, who hold to the truth and keep peace, may enter in; peace, for they trusted in You, O Lord, even to eternity. In this entire song, which the saints in the land of confession and praise will sing, faces quickly change, and it is composed, as it were, of questions and answers. The people of God said: The city of our fortress is the Savior, a wall and a vestibule will be erected in it. The Lord answered, or rather commanded, not to those who said this, but to the angels who were in charge of the gates of the city of the Lord, so that they would open the gates and that the righteous people who keep the truth would enter through them, or, as they say in Hebrew, emmunim, which in our language means faith, in the plural, and not in the singular. What kind of gate is this that is opened by angels, so that not the Jewish people, who are rejected, but the righteous people, who from faith have received the name of the faithful, may enter? Of course, these are the gates about which the saint says: Open for me the gates of righteousness: when we enter, let us confess to the Lord (Ps. 118:18). No one can enter these gates, except the one who will be freed from the gates of death, as the Psalmist said: lift me up from the gates of death, so that I may proclaim all Your praises in the gates of the daughter Zion (Ps. 9:15). For when we are snatched up from the gates of death, then we will be able to sing all the praises of the Lord in the gates of the daughter of Zion. And just as I recognize sins as the gates of death, about which Peter is told: the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18), so I consider all works of virtue to be the gates of righteousness, the one who enters will find one door, about which it is said: “This is the door of the Lord, the righteous will enter into it” (Ps. 118:20). And just as through many pearls we receive one pearl, so through many paths and gates we come to the One who says that He is the way and the door through which we enter to the Father. After the words of God, the people answer in Hebrew: jeser samuth, that Aquila and Symmachus translated πλᾶσμα ἐπηρεισέμον in the same way, i.e. our delusion has been taken away, or our thoughts, which formerly wavered between you and idols, have been strengthened so that we are not carried about by every wind of doctrine, but we believe in You, the Lord Savior, with all our understanding. Instead, to make the meaning clearer, we translated: the previous error has passed. And since our thoughts have been strengthened, therefore You will preserve for us the peace that you promised to the apostles, saying: My peace I give to you, My peace I leave with you (John 14:28) and not only once, but twice, so that the reward promised by the word repeated twice will be certain, just as the apostle said: Rejoice, and again rejoice (Philippis 4:4). This peace is achieved by the one about whom the book of Leviticus says: man, a man from the sons of Israel (Lev. 17), and in the book of Numbers: “a man, a man whose wife defiles the bed” (Num. 5:12), so that twice the man and twice the husband receive double peace. And we deserve, they say, peace, for we have trusted in you with all our hearts. After the words of the people and the answer of the Lord and again the words of the people, the prophet says to the believers: you have hoped, or trust in the Lord forever and ever, and so on that follows. According to LXX, he enters the gates of the Lord who preserves the truth in good deeds and observes or adheres to the truth in the righteousness of faith, so that through good deeds and faith he may achieve peace that surpasses all understanding and be worthy of receiving peace itself; since he believed in God, who rewards good deeds with eternal blessings. Therefore, in another place it is written: if you desire wisdom, keep the commandments, and the Lord will give it to you. Art. 5–6. In the Lord God, mighty forever; For He will overthrow those who live on high, He will humble the high city, He will humble it even to the ground, He will bring it down even to the dust. His foot will trample, the feet of the poor, the feet of the beggars. LXX: Great and eternal God, You who humbled and overthrew those who dwell on high, You will destroy the mighty cities and level them to the ground, and 6the feet of the meek and humble will be trampled underfoot. This is also said by the prophet, who answered beginning with the words: trust in the Lord forever and ever, which now adds what we have given: in the Lord God mighty forever and so on. Instead of the Lord God the mighty, there are three names in Hebrew: ia, adonai and sur, of which the first means invisible, the second - ineffable, the third - strong, of which the first is the last syllable in alleluia. Let the inquisitive reader pay attention to the fact that sometimes, when citing the passage being explained, we separate the text, for a different meaning is given by the LXX edition and a different literal translation from the Hebrew. So the prophet says: trust in the Lord forever, in the Lord God, mighty forever, whose help is everlasting. For He will overthrow those who live on high, for everyone who exalts himself will humble himself—those who live on high, who boasted that they had Abraham as their father, and in reproach of the Lord said, “We were not born of fornication” (John 8:41). He will humble the high city, - according to the Jews, Rome, and according to our more true conviction, Jerusalem, who killed the prophets and stoned those sent to her and finally killed the Son of the Lord, so that by killing the heir the inheritance would perish (Luke 13:20). And it is not called a city, which in Hebrew is ir, but is called sagia, which Aquila translated πολίχνην and which we can translate either a town or a village or a small city - by which name Jerusalem is often called in Scripture. And he beautifully repeated about humility twice: he will humble, he will humble him - the first time under the Babylonians, when the church was destroyed, the second time under Titus and Vespasian, the devastation of which will remain until the end. His foot will trample on him; repeats this word and adds: the feet of the poor - without a doubt of Christ. We talked about this above: he became strength for the poor, a strength for the needy in his grief. The feet of the beggars, that is, the apostles, who, imitating the poverty of the Lord, received the advantage of His strength, who, being rejected in this city, shook off the dust of their feet on it. And since it is said in the words of the Savior: everyone who exalts himself will humble himself, but he who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 14:11), then we can attribute this not only to people, but also to opposing forces. According to LXX, the prophet sings praises to God for the fact that He humbles all the proud and destroys the fortifications of all cities, comparing them to the ground, and that these fortifications trample on the feet of the saints, the meek and humble. Art. 7–9. The path of the righteous is straight, the path of the righteous is straight to walk; and in the way of your judgments, Lord, we trusted in you; Your name and the remembrance of You in the desire of the soul: my soul desired You at night. LXX: The path of the righteous is straight, the path of the righteous is straight and prepared. For the way of the Lord is judgment; we have trusted in Your name and in the remembrance which our soul desires. The prophet also speaks about Christ, about whom he spoke above: his foot will trample, the feet of the poor. So the path of this righteous man is straight, or, inventing a new word, his paths are corrections, which the Greeks call εὐϑήτοταϛ, and we can call it more in Latin aequitates, and what in Hebrew is called messeirim. So on one path of Christ are all righteousnesses found, and He trampled this path and rubbed it with His foot, so that everyone who wanted to walk along it would walk without stumbling. On this path of the Lord's judgments the Saints trusted in Him and hoped in Him, for hope does not put one to shame. And they had His name and the remembrance of Him in the desire of their souls, saying: My soul loveth to desire Thy judgments at all times (Ps. 178:20) and again: “My soul desires and melts away for Thy salvation” (Ps. 119:81). And whoever desires the name of the Lord does not desire anything else. It should also be noted that the desire of the Lord is not in the flesh, but in the soul, according to what is read in another psalm: my soul thirsts for the mighty, living God. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; Even so they oppose one another, so that you do not do these things as you will (Gal. 5:17). Further: at night, according to LXX, it is connected with the next verse, and according to Hebrew with the previous one. My soul longed for You at night, the one who speaks with confidence to the psalmist can say: I will wash my bed every night, I will wet my bed with my tears (Ps. 6:7). Night and darkness can be understood in the sense of sorrow and disaster, which is why in another psalm about the safety of the righteous the prophet sings: in the days the sun will not burn you, the moon will not burn you at night (Ps. 121:6), that is, you will never be shaken in either happiness or misfortune. But with my spirit in my inward parts I will watch unto You in the morning. LXX: Out of the night my spirit rises up to You, O God, for Your judgments are light on the earth. We want to follow the Hebrew and not completely bypass the Vulgates, and by this force of things we are forced, with the difference in the arrangement of words and the expressions themselves, to look for different meanings. The word: from the night, according to LXX, is, as we said, the beginning of this verse, and according to Hebrew - the end of the previous one, although according to LXX it can be taken at the end of the previous verse, so the meaning is this: My soul desires You at night, and after that a new verse begins: in the morning my spirit rises to You, O God. In the morning he rises because Your commandments are light on the earth. For keeping Your commandments, and illuminated by their radiance, about which it is said: the commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes (Ps. 18:9), I cannot sleep, but at all times desiring You, I rise up to You with my spirit. It should also be noted that even while we are still in the middle of the night, we desire the Lord with our souls; when our spirit in our inward beings rises to God with all our mind, then we are awake to Him in the morning. To put it more clearly, night and desire apply to the soul, and morning and wakefulness to the spirit. The one who can say: out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord, is awake to God in spirit in his inner beings (Ps. 129:1). Art. 10. When You execute Your judgments on earth, then those who live in the world will learn righteousness. Let us have mercy on the wicked, and he will not learn righteousness; in the land of the saints he has acted wickedly, and will not see the glory of the Lord. LXX: Learn the truth, you who live on earth. For the wicked is no more, and he will not learn righteousness on earth, nor will he create truth; Let the wicked be required, so that he does not see the glory of the Lord. Let us first explain it from the Hebrew text, and if we want to clarify the thought of the prophet, then we will move on to the LXX interpreters. Until You carry out Your judgments on earth, and reward the good with good and the evil with evil, Your righteousness, O Lord God, is not known on earth. When on the day of judgment, according to the quality of deeds, You reward everyone with what he deserves, then Your righteousness will be known on earth, which previously seemed like injustice to those of little faith, so that one of the saints said: My feet did not move in a little, my feet did not shed in a little: because I was jealous of the wicked, the world of sinners was in vain (Ps. 72:2). To this the Lord answered: let us have mercy on the wicked, which, with the exception of the Seventy, was translated the same way. And the meaning is this: it is better for the wicked to receive mercy and learn My mercy until he himself is saved. And when the Lord says this, the prophet, on behalf of human impatience, again answered: and he will not learn the truth. And the meaning is this: how can he know Your truth if he experiences such mercy? And he gives reasons why he wants him to learn the truth of God: since he acted unjustly in the land of the saints and constantly fought against Your saints, he must endure torment. And again the Lord, mitigating the sentence, says: And let him not see, or not see, the glory of the Lord. And the meaning is this: it is enough for him, instead of all the punishment, that he will not see Me, together with My saints, reigning in His majesty. Some argue that by the wicked, that is, resa, we mean the devil, about whom in the ninth Psalm it is written: You have rebuked with your tongue, and the wicked perished; you have consumed his name for ever, and for ever. The enemy has run out of weapons to the end, and you have destroyed cities (Ps. 9:6, 7). We will understand the wicked in general in the sense of either a sinner, or one who does not have reverence for God. According to the Seventy, the inhabitants of the earth are commanded to learn the truth. For every man is righteous to himself (Prov. 21:2); but God, who will reward everyone according to his deeds (Prov. 24:12), knows the hearts of everyone. And in another place in the same book it says: they are the way, imagining that they will rule over a husband, but they will end up in the depths of hell (Proverbs 16:25). Therefore, we must learn the truth and not rely on our own opinion. For there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness (Eccl. 7:16), not because he is righteous, but because it seems to him that he is righteous. If Christ has become for us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30), then those who are commanded to know the truth are commanded to understand and know Christ. “I command you,” he says, “to learn the truth, because the wicked is consumed, and the kingdom is taken away from him, who, no matter how long he reigned on earth, could neither learn the truth nor produce the truth, about which it is written elsewhere that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). And since the wicked does not create truth on earth, he will be consumed, for he is not worthy to see the Lord reign. Art. 11. Lord, let your hand be exalted, and let them not see: let them see, and let the zeal of the people be crushed, and let the fire consume your enemies. LXX: Lord, Your arm is high, but they did not know, but when they find out they will be dismayed: jealousy will seize an ignorant people, and now the fire will devour their enemies. What He said above: and will not see the glory of the Lord, can be understood this way: You, prophet, demand that I not be merciful to the wicked, so that if I have mercy on him, he who has acted wickedly in the land of the saints will not become ignorant of righteousness; I answer you: so he will not see the glory of the Lord? So the one who should most have seen Me reigning will not contemplate My triumphs, in order to know how much great good he is deprived of? This should be read for greater emphasis, in terms of the question. To this the prophet answered: Lord, let Thy hand be raised high, and let it be stretched out to defeat, so that the wicked do not see You, and so that they do not even use the light of Your glory to repent. The Lord answered him: It is better to let them see and be confused, either by the jealousy of the people, or by the zealots of the people, and let the fire devour and destroy your enemies, that is, the enemies of the holy people. The fire, of course, is repentance, which will torment their hearts for killing such a Lord. This can also be understood in relation to the Jews, who did not recognize Christ, the arm of the Lord (Isa. 53:1; John 12:37, 38), and when they see and recognize Him who was nailed to the cross, they will be confused. The unenlightened and ignorant people of God's law will then be aroused by the sting of jealousy when they see that the pagans have taken their place, and then they will be consumed by the fire of repentance, or the pain of punishment when they hear what is written: go into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angel (Matthew 25:41). Art. 12. Lord! You will give us peace, for You have rewarded us for all our deeds. LXX: Lord God give us peace, for You have given us everything. It should be noted that He will give peace, rewarding us for our deeds, and also note how he sets out the reasons why he asks for peace. For they say that for all the deeds they committed on earth, they suffered torment, and that after punishment and torment it is right for them to receive pardon. Or in other words: since the end of the world has come, and everything that You spoke through the prophets was fulfilled in events, and You have rewarded everything that You promised, then give us peace that surpasses all understanding (Phil. 4:7). Art. 13. Lord our God, rulers have taken possession of us without You: only in You will we remember Your name. LXX: Lord our God, gain us: Lord, outside of You we know no other, we call on Your name. We ask for mercy and peace, which must be given after everything, because we have been possessed by rulers without You, that is, idols, or the demons inherent in idols, and we do not seek anything else except that after so many errors we should be worthy to remember Your name. According to LXX, who said: Lord God, gain us, they ask that upon the return of peace to them, they may become God’s gain. This is exactly what we read about Wisdom, which, according to the Hebrew text, says in Proverbs: The Lord acquired Me, the beginning of His ways (Prov. 8:22), although in some lists, instead of acquisition, creation is incorrectly placed, incorrectly because it then follows: before all the hills He gives birth to Me (v. 25). For how can birth, which is more fitting for acquisition, be connected with creation? In Deuteronomy it is written: Is not this your Father himself who acquired you, and created you, and created you (Deut. 32:6)? And we must pay attention to the fact that he did not say: the Lord, or God, acquired you, and created you, and created you, but the Father, in order to soften the severity of power with the tenderness of his name. And the word: Lord, apart from You we know no other, does not exclude the Son, but unites him with the Father, for he did not say: “We know no other,” but “outside of You we know no other.” But when the Son says: I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me (John 14:10), then outside the Father we do not know the Son, because we know Him in the Father. Finally, we name His name, saying in “Prayer.” Lord": Our Father who art in heaven (Matthew 6:9). Art. 14. Let the dying not live; let the giants not rise. Therefore You visited and destroyed them, and destroyed all memory of them. LXX: For the dead will not see life, and doctors will not raise them to life. Therefore You brought, and destroyed, and took away all that was manly from them. Symmachus, as usual, is clearer: The dead will not be brought to life: giants will not be resurrected. Therefore You visited and destroyed them, and destroyed all memory of them. Let's explain first about LXX. The question seems difficult: how can the dead not see life? It is resolved by the fact that until then they will not see life as long as they remain dead. As if we said: a blind man does not see the light as long as he remains blind; if he again receives health, he will see the light: so he who has died in unrighteousness and sins will not be able to live until he is revived by righteousness and virtues through Him who says: I am life (John 14:6). Therefore He is called the God of the living, and not of the dead (Matthew 22:32). For the soul that sins will die (Ezek. 18:4). We read in the epistle that is written to the Hebrews: “let us not again lay the foundation of conversion from dead works” (Heb. 6:1). If sins are called dead deeds, then why, on the contrary, are virtues not called living deeds? And then the following: and doctors will not resurrect, the meaning, obviously, is that the fables of poets who divulge that Virbius was resurrected by Aesculapius are condemned. And not only about the dead, but also about any illness, it must be said that without the mercy of God, the art of healing means nothing. But how? Unless the Lord builds a house, those who build it labor in vain; unless the Lord preserves the city, it builds in vain (Ps. 157:1). Thus, if the Lord does not heal from illness, then doctors who want to make the sick healthy work in vain. If the Lord does not preserve health, then those who even publish rules on maintaining health in their books protect it in vain; During the time of health, not only physical, but also spiritual, one should always be admonished by it: bless my soul the Lord, who heals all your ailments (Ps. 102:1, 3). But those who, being dead in sin, persist in it, and cannot restore mental health in themselves with any healing art, will be destroyed and destroyed by the Lord, and everything strong that exists in them, which is called masculine, will be completely taken away. Therefore, Pharaoh wants to destroy not the female sex, which in itself is weak and can easily die, but everything male (Ex. 1), which, if it is an adult and comes to manhood, is difficult to kill. According to Symmachus, the dead cannot be brought to life, because they, being dead because of sin, cannot give life to others, for praise is not sweet in the mouth of a sinner (Sir. 15:9). Nor will the giants, that is, raphaim, who according to the book of Genesis are called fallen ones, resurrect others. And the Lord visits them so that all memory of the dead and the giants will be destroyed. For there is only one who raises the dead, of whom it is said: as the Father raises the dead and lives, so also the Son, whoever He wills, lives (John 5:21). We can call the images of dead people dead, and the demons inherent in their images giants. And we should not be afraid of why the LXX was translated: masculine, and other translators: memory, when both are written by the Hebrews with the same three letters; zain, kaf and resh. But when we say: memorable, it reads: Zachar; when masculine, Zochor. They think that Saul was deceived by this ambiguity of the word when he fought against the Amalekites and destroyed all their male sex (1 Sam. 15). For while God commands that he destroy all memory of the Amalekites in the heavenly places, he, instead of memory, not so much out of error as deceived by the desire for prey, understood: men, not knowing this apostolic message: do not be flattered: God is not mocked (Gal. 6:7). Art. 15. You were lenient with the people, Lord, you were lenient with the people. Have you been glorified? You have expanded all the borders of the earth. LXX: Add more disasters to them, O Lord, add more disasters to the glorious ones of the earth: You have pushed far away all the boundaries of the earth. The word disaster, which LXX put twice, is not in Hebrew; but since he said above: therefore You brought and destroyed, and took away everything that was virile from them, then they, following the same meaning, added from themselves: disasters - that those who are glorious on earth are struck by extreme disasters. But according to the Hebrew text, the meaning is completely different and consistent with the previous conversation. The Lord said: Let us have mercy on the wicked. The Prophet answered: and where is Your truth? especially when he caused so much misfortune to your saints? The Lord said to this: and he will not see the glory of the Lord. The prophet again: let Thy hand rise high to destroy, and let them not see Thy glory, which they are not worthy to behold. The Lord says to this: it’s better to let them see and be confused. The Prophet again: Lord, give us peace, and gain us, who remember Your name. Let the wicked and proud not live and rise in glory, but blot out all memory of them. And he gives reasons why he wants them to die. You were condescending to the people, Lord, you were condescending to the people. Have you been glorified? And the meaning is this: You often had mercy on the nations, that is, on the human race, and showed them incredible mercy. Did they call you? Have you glorified Your name? On the contrary, have they not gone far from You? For safety breeds negligence, and negligence breeds neglect. Art. 16. Lord, in trouble they sought You, in sorrow they whispered Your instruction to them. LXX: Lord, in sorrow I remembered You, in little sorrow Your instruction to us. since You, being condescending, were often neglected and not glorified, but on the contrary, everyone retreated from the knowledge of You, therefore, strike them, Lord, so that in disaster they would seek You, and in grief Your instruction would be whispered to them, so that when such a weight of disasters falls on them, they would not even dare to shout boldly, but swallow their sorrow in silence. According to LXX, the prophet in sorrow remembers the Lord, in accordance with what is said in the Psalm: out of sorrow I called on the Lord, and heard me into space (Ps. 118:5). And in another place: when I was in sorrow, I cried out to the Lord, and he heard me (Ps. 119:1). Therefore the Apostle says: “We are oppressed, but not straitened; we are persecuted, but not forsaken” (2 Cor. 4:8, 9). And in another place: the passions of this present time are unworthy of the glory that desires to appear in us (Rom. 8:18). If a small sorrow instructs, corrects, and improves, then isn’t it even more great when we receive a reminder of our condition and bring to mind the power of God? Art. 17, 18. As one who has conceived in the womb, when she is about to give birth, cries out in agony during her pains: so we were from Thy presence, O Lord, We conceived and, as it were, in pain in childbirth, and gave birth to the spirit. LXX: And as one who is about to give birth, when she is about to give birth, in her illness she cries out: so we were to Thy beloved: because of Thy fear, O Lord, we were conceived in the womb, and were tormented in childbirth, and gave birth to the spirit of Thy salvation, which we have brought forth on earth. Just as a woman approaching childbirth is forced to cry out in pain: so, in distress we seek You, and from the presence of Your power we conceived in the womb, and suffered in childbirth, and gave birth to children not of the flesh, but of the Spirit: so that we may believe in You with all our minds, so that what was previously unknown through good deeds, we may now know through torment. What LXX added: thus we were to Thy beloved, instead of which the others translated: thus we were from Thy presence, O Lord, should be noted with whitewash. We can accept Christ as the beloved of the Lord, because of whose fear we conceive in the womb, and suffer in childbirth, and give birth, and bring forth on earth the spirit of salvation. An apostolic man can say this when he teaches the nations and imitates the Apostle Paul: My children, even as I am sick, until Christ is imagined in you (Gal. 4:19). Should there be any doubt that the Apostle Paul, who by preaching spread the Gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum (Rom. 15:19), and, like a wise builder, laid a foundation outside of which no one else can lay, the foundation which is Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 3:10, 11), gave birth to the spirit of salvation on earth? So, whether we read: because of Thy fear, O Lord, we conceived in the womb, or according to the Hebrew: from Thy presence, O Lord, we conceived, and in the womb we conceived - both mean that from fear and remembrance of the Lord we perceive the word of God into ourselves, and our heart is enlightened when we say: the light of Thy countenance is upon us, O Lord (Ps. 4:7), and: enlighten your face, and we will be saved ( Ps. 79:4). We did not accomplish salvation on earth: therefore the inhabitants of the universe did not fall. LXX: We will not fall, but the inhabitants of the earth will fall. Different translations necessarily have different meanings. According to the Hebrew it says the following: since we have not done anything worthy of Your mercy, the wicked have not fallen, but still prevail and possess the earth. LXX they say that while the saints give birth to the spirit of salvation on earth, those who are the inhabitants of the earth fall, although there is a great difference between the universe, called in Hebrew thebel, and in Greek οἰκουμένη, and the earth. Consequently, those who give themselves up to earthly life and are firmly rooted in earthly affairs will fall, and those who live in the universe and rest in the Church, which is the dwelling of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, will not fall. Art. 19. Let Your dead live, let My slain rise: arise and praise, you who dwell in the dust, for Your dew is the dew of lights, and You will draw the earth of giants into destruction. LXX: The dead will rise and rise from their graves, and those on earth will rejoice. For Your dew is their health, but the land of the wicked will fall. While the saints are tormented in childbirth and give birth to the spirit, and the inhabitants of the earth fall because they have not accomplished salvation on earth, those whom the apostle calls dead in Christ and who were killed for the name of the Lord will rise in glory (1 Thess. 4:14-17). And since their death is a dream, it is not said, as in LXX, that they will be resurrected, but will rise up and awaken. Therefore, Lazarus, who was about to be awakened, is called by the Lord sleeping (John 11). So all the martyrs and holy men who shed their blood for Christ, and whose whole life was martyrdom, will arise and awaken, and will praise God their Creator, those who now dwell in the dust, about whom it is written in Daniel: many from those who sleep in the dust of the earth will arise, these to eternal life, and these to reproach and eternal shame (Dan. 12:2). And from the Evangelist John we read: “The time will come, and now is, when those who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God, and having heard, they will live, and those who have done good will come forth into the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil into the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:25, 22, 29). For the dew of the Lord, surpassing all the herbs of Apollo, about which the fables of the poets speak, will revive the bodies of the dead. And just as dew, after putting seeds into the ground, causes plants to grow little by little and produce a certain kind of fruit, so the dew of the Lord, meaning mercy, will be the dew of very many lights, which in Hebrew is called oroth. The earth, that is, the bodies of the Raphaim, that is, the giants and the wicked. The Lord will cast you down to eternal torment. Only LXX translated the wicked instead of Raphaim. And since we read above: the dead will not see life, and doctors will not resurrect, instead of which Aquila and Symmachus translated Raphaim and giants: then we ask, what is the reason for such a mistake, that instead of the Hebrew raphaim, some put giants, and others doctors? The Hebrew word raphaim, if after the first letter res is followed by vav, reads rophaim and means doctors; if it is written without the letter vav, then it is read raphaim and translated giants. And at the same time, since he said above: the dead will not see life, then in order to show more clearly that it is not said there about those who died according to the law of nature and due to the separation of the soul from the body, but about those who died as a result of sin, now, on the contrary, he says to God: Your dead will live, those killed for You, who are called not generally dead, as the LXX translated, but according to the Hebrew text, where it says leju Metheca, - Your dead. Art. 20–21. Go, my people, enter your chambers, lock your doors behind you, hide for a short moment until the indignation passes. For behold, the Lord will come out of His place to visit the iniquity of the inhabitants of the earth against Him, and the earth will reveal its blood, and will no longer hide its slain. LXX: Go, my people, enter your chambers, shut your door, hide yourself for a short, very short time, until the wrath of the Lord passes. For behold, the Lord will bring wrath upon the inhabitants of the earth from the holy one, and the earth will reveal its blood, and will no longer hide the slain. Above, the prophet said about the saints: the dead will rise, and those who are in the graves will rise, for the dew from You is their health, and, on the contrary, about the wicked: the land of the wicked will fall; Now he says to the saints: since the resurrection is promised to you, while the wrath of God rages against sinners and the wicked, enter your tombs and hide yourselves, for the time is short until God’s wrath passes away. The Lord, as it were, leaves His place when He, the merciful and compassionate Lord and most loving Father, is forced to strike careless children and change in some way in His disposition in order to send a visit and bring His wrath upon the inhabitants of the earth, about whom Hosea speaks: “oaths, and lies, and adultery, and theft were poured out on the inhabitants of the earth” (Hos. 4:2), and in the Apocalypse We read three times: woe to them that dwell on the earth (Apoc. 8:13). But the righteous who can say: “I am a stranger and a wanderer on earth, like all my fathers” (Ps. 39:18), and those enjoying the dwelling of the Most High, about whom the saint says: He who lives in the help of the Most High will dwell in the blood of the God of heaven (Ps. 90:1), although visible on earth, yet their residence is in heaven (Phil. 3:20). Then the earth will reveal its blood, about which God speaks to Cain: the voice of the blood of your brother cries to me from the earth, even as it opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand (Gen. 4:10, 11). This can also be understood in relation to the martyrs who shed blood for Christ and cry out under the altar of God: how long will the holy and true Master not judge and avenge our blood from those living on the earth (Apoc. 6:10)? Moses speaks about them in song: the blood of His sons avenges and will avenge, and will repay vengeance to the enemy (Deut. 32:43). The earth, which has received this blood, will open it and will not hide the slain of the Lord, but will reveal them before everyone, for the condemnation of the murderers of the martyrs. Let this be understood in relation to simple resurrection. In a mysterious sense, the people of God are commanded to enter their chambers or storehouses, for ταμε͂ια means both, to close, according to the Gospel commandment, the door of their room (Matthew 6:6) and speak to the prophet: Lord, place a guard over my mouth, and a guard door over my mouth (Ps. 140:3), and take refuge in a little, very little time until the wrath of the Lord passes, so as not to do anything for glory, but to enjoy the good of conscience and wait for the only Judge - God. Storehouses that are enriched by deeds and words (1 Cor. 1:5) must be locked and hidden, so that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, in order that we may enjoy the treasures of the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel, which are prudence, self-control, steadfastness, righteousness. And that all the days of our life are short and small, Jacob, having more than a hundred years, says about this: the days of my life were small and evil (Gen. 47:9). The wrath of the Lord, which is about to pass, is the one that those who do not want to bring repentance accumulate for themselves; after it has passed, the storehouses will no longer be locked, but what is written will be fulfilled: nothing is hidden that cannot be revealed, and hidden that cannot be understood (Luke 12:2). And the words: for behold, the Lord will bring forth His wrath from the saints, mean that the wrath of God will begin with the saints (1 Peter 4:17), or that all His vengeance is righteous and holy, proceeding not from an agitated state of spirit, as is usually the case among people, but from the desire for correction. The land of the inhabitants, I think, is the one about which it is written: let the earth hear the words of my mouth (Deut. 32:1), and: tell the earth (Isa. 1:2), and again: earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord (Jer. 22:29)! For both those who dwell on earth and those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom. 8:8). The earth in this place means the soul that lives carnally. And she will reveal her blood if she has tempted anyone, and she deserves to hear, together with Cain: the voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the earth, even as she opened her mouth to receive your brother’s blood (Gen. 4:10, 11). So all blood will be exacted on the day of judgment, and the earth will not hide its blood, and those killed, whom it has killed, either intentionally or through negligence, will be revealed to everyone. Chapter. XXVII. – St. 1. On that day the Lord will visit with His strong sword, and great and strong, Leviathan, the constipated serpent, and Leviathan, the crooked serpent, and will kill the whale that is in the sea. LXX: On that day God will bring the holy, and great, and mighty sword against the dragon, the fleeing serpent, against the dragon, the crooked serpent, and will slay the dragon that is in the sea. The Jews say that the devil, that is, the slanderer, which is a Greek name, is called Satan in Hebrew, that is, the adversary. Therefore, Zechariah says: Satan, that is, the enemy, stood at his right hand to resist him (Zech. 3:1). He is also called Belial, that is, an apostate, a traitor, and without a yoke. Therefore, the apostle says: what agreement does Christ have with Belial (2 Cor. 6:15)? And wherever LXX delivers the sons of destruction, it is written in Hebrew: sons of Belial. Therefore, what is sung in the Psalm about the mystery of the Savior: the son of iniquity will not embitter Him (Ps. 89:23), in Hebrew is called: the son of Belial. It is also called by other names, as in another psalm it is written: tread on the asp and the basilisk, and cross the lion and the serpent (Ps. 90:13). This serpent is actually called leviathan in Hebrew. He is that great whale, about which, that he will be caught by Christ, Job says in mysterious language: he will take him into his eye, and, having become hardened, he will tear through his nostrils (Job 40:19), for there, too, instead of the whale stands Leviathan; and again: take the serpent with a hook, or put a bridle around his nostrils (v. 20); and immediately: this is the beginning of the creation of the Lord: the reproach of His angels was created (v. 14), and in the Psalm: this sea is great and vast: there are vermin, there are no number of them, the small living creatures with the great ones. This serpent, whom you also created, curses him (Ps. 103:25, 26). John writes about him in the Apocalypse: There was a war in heaven: Michael and his angels made war with the serpent, and the serpent was braced and his angels, and they could not, and they found no place in heaven (Apoc. 12:7, 8), and: the great serpent was put in, the ancient serpent, called the devil. and Satan flew through the whole world, and was cast into the earth, and his angels were cast down with him (v. 9); It also says: the slanderer of our brethren was brought down, slandering them before our God (v. 10). It should also be noted that the Psalm and Job say that the serpent, that is, Leviathan, was created so that he would be mocked by the angels. Therefore, the apostles also receive power to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19). So, since from the place where it is written: behold, the Lord will scatter the earth and lay it bare (Is. 24:1), or according to LXX: behold, the Lord will destroy the universe and desolate it; Before this section, at the end of the world, judgment was announced against the universe, and the last enemy will be destroyed by death (1 Cor. 15:26): therefore, the final sentence against the devil is that a holy, and great, and strong sword should be directed against him, or, according to the Hebrew and other translators, a strong sword. For it is not said sadesa, as LXX thought, that if it were, it would mean: holy; but casa, which actually translates: solid. Therefore Kish, the father of Saul, means steadfast. By the holy sword, or, according to the feeling of the one who suffers from it, strong, some of our people mean the word of God, about which the apostle speaks: the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword (Heb. 4:12). Therefore, in another place we read that from the mouth of the Savior comes a two-edged sword (Apoc. 1:16, 19:15). When, at the end of the world, a holy or hard, great and strong sword is turned against Leviathan, called at the beginning of Genesis the wisest serpent of all the beasts that exist on earth (Gen. 3:1), then he, who has never had the habit of running away, will take flight, not knowing what is written: I will go from Your spirit, and from Your presence I will flee (Ps. 135:7)? Well, one poet in the Gigantomachy laughed at Enceladus: Where are you running, Enceladus? Whatever shores you land on, This same leviathan, the escaping serpent, is called bavi in ​​Hebrew, which Aquila translated as constipated, Symmachus as locking, Theodotion as strong. It is called a lock or a locker, I think, because it has locked many in its prison, and in the proper sense has subjected it to its power, and has nothing straight in itself, and is therefore called crooked, and cannot imitate the rod of the Lord, about which it is written: the rod of righteousness, the rod of Thy kingdom (Ps. 44:7). The Lord will kill him, the inhabitants of the once sea, the deceptive and bitter waves, with the spirit of His mouth (2 Thessalonians 2:8). Those who say that the devil will repent and receive forgiveness, let them explain to us how they understand what is written: and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea or the whale. For in the second half of this section he is called in the Hebrew text not leviathan, but thannin, which actually means: whale. Therefore, the Jews think that Leviathan dwells under the earth and in the ether, and the Phanniim in the sea, which is a Jewish fable. And what is said at the end of this verse: on that day, Eusebius will add to the previous verse, so that the next prophecy does not refer to that time, and the Jews and other interpreters to the next verse, which we will now quote. Art. 2, 3. In that day the vineyard of pure wine will sing to Him. I, the Lord, who guards him, will suddenly give him water: so that they do not somehow break into him, I guard him night and day. LXX: On that day the vineyard will be beautiful; His desire is for Him to be the boss over him. I am a strong city, a city at war: in vain will I give it drink. For by night they will be taken captive, and by day the wall will fall. The Hebrew reading differs greatly in this passage from the LXX edition; Therefore, we will consider each of them in the form in which we have presented them separately. What kind of vineyard should be understood here, about which Isaiah speaks above: the grapes came to the Beloved in a rose, in a fat place (Isaiah 5:1), we can learn this from the same Isaiah, who said: for the grapes of the Lord of Hosts are the house of Israel (v. 7), about which the Psalm is sung: you brought grapes from Egypt, and so on. (Ps. 79:9). To him and through Jeremiah the Lord offers a cup of the purest wine (Jer. 25:18). For when He sent him to give drink to all nations, and the prophet willingly offered himself for this duty, he received the command to first make Jerusalem drunk. Therefore he says: You have deceived me, Lord, and I am deceived (Jer. 20:7). So Jerusalem will drink, and an intoxicating drink is brought to him so that he will learn to beat himself and cry. And the Lord says that He protected him for a long time and gave him room for repentance; but since he did not want to correct himself, he suddenly had to be intoxicated. For he says that he did this day and night, so that he was always protected by His help. LXX call this same vineyard beautiful, because in it were the law and the prophets, the priesthood and the high priesthood, and the knowledge of God, according to the words of Scripture: God is known in Judah, His great name is in Israel (Ps. 76:1). Others think that, according to their publication (LXX), this refers to the Church, of which there is nothing more beautiful, and about which it is said: the glorious one spoke about you, the city of God (Ps. 87:3): she is the ruler of her parent, and says in the Song of Songs: the sons of my mother were at enmity against me (Song of Songs 1:5). He also says: I am a strong city, a city at war. And he said it perfectly: fought, but not conquered. And immediately he adds about the synagogue, which has turned from the head into the tail: in vain I give her the drink of my teachings, for in the darkness of her delusion she will be captivated. And since she did not accept the clear light, then during the day her wall will fall, that is, everything that she considered to be help for herself, and there will not be a single opponent who would not take possession of her, which we must understand in relation to opposing forces. Art. 4–5. Am I not indignant: who will give Me for thistles and thorns in war? I’ll go at him: I’ll set him on fire too. Or would I rather hold on to My strength? let him make peace with me, let him make peace with me. LXX: There is no one who would not master it. Who will put me in charge of the straw in the field? Because of her enmity, I rejected her. Therefore, the Lord will fulfill everything that he has determined: I am burned; its inhabitants will say: Let us make peace with Him, let us make peace with Him. According to the Hebrew text, the meaning is this: Do I, who have always guarded My vineyard day and night, so that the boar from the forest does not undermine it, and so that the beasts do not devour it (Ps. 79:14), do not have indignation, and do not know how to defeat the sinner, and give to everyone what he deserves? Where Aquila placed thistles and thorns, in Hebrew it is written samir and saith, which means adamant and places full of thorns. Therefore he says: Who will prompt Me to be cruel, to overcome My mercy, to come out mercilessly, with war and battle, to go to the vineyard that I formerly guarded, and to burn it out, which I fenced with My wall? Would it not be better if My power would cause Me to put aside my wrath and, by the grace of the Gospel, save those who were not saved by the severity of the Law? According to the Hebrew text, it should be read with emphasis: Who will make Me so harsh and cruel (for this is meant by thorny places and thistles) so that I overcome My nature, so that I, as if in war, trample and burn out that vineyard that I have always protected with My care? Or would I rather retain My power, which, without a doubt, is Christ, and about which we read: Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24), so that it may conclude a peace treaty with Me and reconcile the world? According to LXX, the meaning is that on behalf of the Church we understand the following here: I am a strong city, a city surrounded by many enemies; in vain did I give a helping hand to the enemy of my synagogue, for at night she would be captured, and her wall would fall, and there would not be one of the opposing forces that would not take possession of her. I will also say: What good is it for me to guard that which has straw in it and not grain, which is so uncultivated that it is full of thorns and thistles? I wanted to save her; but since she is hostile towards me, I moved away from her. And the apostles who were born in me and from me said: it is not wise for you to speak the word of God first: but having rejected it, and being unworthy of creating eternal life for yourselves, behold, we are turned into tongues (Acts 13:46). Therefore, the Lord will fulfill what he threatened, so that everyone in it will burn, surrounded by Roman fire, or, at least, burn from vices and sins, so that they cannot quench the fiery arrows of the devil (Eph. 6:16). For “all adulterers are like a furnace of their hearts” (Hos. 7:4, 6). And those who were in it before, having exclaimed: the city is taken and burned, will leave it, and, reconciling the world with God, will say: let us make peace with Him, let us make peace with Him, that is, with Christ, always writing in their epistles: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:3). We read about them from this very prophet: how red are the feet of those who bring good news of peace (Is. 52:7). Some attribute this place to churches - that although they are protected by God, many in them do not bear fruit, and therefore are burned by the fire of the good Teacher (Jn. 2:17) so that they would cry out and confess their error, and then make peace with God so that they could rightly be called sons of Jacob. Art. 6. Those who ascend are from the root of Jacob: Israel will blossom and blossom, and fill the face of the world with seed. LXX: Those who are to come are the sons of Jacob: Israel will vegetate and prosper, and the world will be filled with its fruit. When the apostles, preaching the Gospel throughout the entire universe, say: let us make peace with Christ, let us make peace with Him, then those from the tribe of Jacob who will be among the highest and achieve apostolic dignity will be called the sons of Jacob. Then Israel will vegetate and prosper, seeing that the whole universe was filled with the teaching of his sons, and that it bore very abundant fruits, which it did not bear while in Judea. Art. 7. Was he really slain in proportion to the blow of Him who smote him? Or was he slain in the same way as he slain those who slain Him? This place is understood in two ways: either against Jerusalem, to say that it was not struck by God as it struck Christ and His apostles; or against the multitude of pagans - that although they persecuted Christians and shed their blood, the apostles and apostolic men, despite this, cared for their salvation and reconciled them with God. Art. 8. By measure against measure, when he is rejected. You will judge him. LXX: Quarreling and reproaching, He will send them away. According to the Hebrew text, the meaning is this: As Jerusalem did, so it will be done to her, and the measure with which she measured it will be measured to her. And he will receive the full measure when the time of judgment comes and God rejects him. According to LXX, what is said depends on the previous one. For Israel will not be struck as he was struck, and will be killed not as he killed - he was at enmity against the apostles, reproaching his teachers, and forbidding them to speak in the name of Christ (Acts 4:18, 5:40). Therefore the Lord will reject them and drive them out of His flock. He thought in His cruel spirit on the day of heat. LXX: Were you not the one who thought of killing them with a cruel spirit, a spirit of rage? According to the Hebrew text, the following is said: Jerusalem will receive by the measure with which he measured it: therefore God thought in His cruel and angry spirit, or spoke against it in the day of heat, that is, during the persecution, when the day of wrath and punishment is too hot. According to LXX it is said to Jerusalem itself or Israel: Was it not you, in your most cruel and ferocious spirit and in the rage of your blasphemies, who wanted to kill the apostles and teachers of the Lord? Art. 9. Therefore, through this, the iniquity of the house of Jacob will be forgiven, and the full fruit will be that his sin will be taken away: for he laid all the stones of the altar as stones ground into dust: the oak groves and the churches will no longer stand. LXX: Therefore the iniquity of Jacob will be taken away, and his blessing will be when I take away his sin, when he lays down all the stones of the altars ground down like light dust, and their trees and idols will not remain. Gives reasons why the Jews, after stretching out their hands to the Lord, will receive forgiveness if they want to repent, so that the Savior’s prayer will be fulfilled: Father, let them go: for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34). Therefore, he says, the iniquity of the house of Jacob will be forgiven and his sin will be taken away, so that he who deserves the curse with the words: His blood be on us and on our children (Matt. 27:25), has earned the blessing of God, - will be released because through the apostles from the tribe of Israel the Gospel will be spread throughout the entire universe, and idolatry will be destroyed, and altars will be crushed to dust, oak groves will be burned, churches will be overthrown and the knowledge of the one God in the mystery of the Trinity will be preached. Art. 10. For the fortified city will be desolate: the beautiful will be abandoned and forsaken like the desert. The calf will graze there, and there it will lie and eat the tops of it. LXX: Their idols will be cut down like an oak grove, and the herd living far away will be sent away, like a herd abandoned, and will be in the pasture for a long time, and the herds will rest there, and for a long time there will be nothing green on it, because it has dried up. Jerusalem, a city that was once strong and fortified, because it did not accept the Son of the Lord, but said: For this is the heir: come, let us kill Him, and our inheritance will be (Mark 12:7), will be devastated. And he, who was once beautiful, about which Ezekiel says: seven-foot, and copper, and oil, you were great, and you were very good (Ezek. 16:13), and serving as the dwelling place of the One about whom it is written: beautiful in kindness more than the sons of men (Ps. 44:3), will be abandoned and abandoned like the desert, when the Lord says to the apostles: Arise, let us go from here (John 14:31). There will be a calf grazing there - the Roman army, about which in another place under the name of the boar it is said: the boar and the boar are from the oak groves, and the solitudes of the wild are eaten and (Ps. 79:14). And there he will lie and devour the tops of Jerusalem, depicted under the metaphor of a vine and its branches, so that nothing green, nothing of the young shoots will remain in it, but the enemy will destroy everything. LXX: because they did not receive the good Shepherd (John 10:11): they will be like a forsaken flock, and will be subject to the bites of beasts; and there will be nothing green left for them, for drought will strike everything. Art. 11. During the drought of his harvest, the women who come and teach him will be distressed. For he is not a wise people: therefore He who created him will not have mercy on him, and He who created him will not have mercy on him. LXX: Women coming from the spectacle, come: for he is not a people having understanding; therefore He who created them will not have mercy on them, and He who created them will not have mercy. What was said: during the drought, the harvest will be crushed, instead of which the Seventy translated: there will be nothing green on it, because it has dried up, according to the Hebrew text it is connected with the subsequent one, and according to the LXX with the previous thought. Therefore, let us first explain it according to the Hebrew text. When the time of drought and harvest comes and, to put it more clearly, the devastation of Jerusalem, a multitude of people will come running from the synagogues of the whole world to mourn Jerusalem and alleviate its disasters. Or he speaks directly about women who beat their naked breasts with their hands until they bleed, and the Lord’s prediction will be fulfilled: daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, weep both for yourself and for your children (Luke 23:28). And learning lamentable songs from women is a great misfortune for the people, just as it was a humiliation for the people of Israel when in the book of Judges the Lord accomplished salvation through the hand of the woman Devorah (Judges 4), and when during the near captivity, in the silence of her husbands, the woman Golda (Holdah) prophesied (2 Kings 22). Women, upset by the long journey, exhaustion, hunger and sadness, will lament and teach the pitiful people because they are not a wise people, and have not understood their Creator, who, neglected and despised by them, will not have mercy on the creature and will not spare His creation. According to LXX, it speaks of Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, and other wives who were the first to see the risen Lord, and grabbed hold of His feet, and were worthy to hear from Him: Do not be afraid: go, tell my brethren, that they may go to Galilee, and that they may see Me (Matthew 28:10). The prophetic word foretells these women long before they were born, and from the spectacle of the passion and resurrection of the Lord calls them to preach the Gospel, and, according to the Hebrew text, to teach Jerusalem or the land of Israel that He is Lord and God. For since the people of Israel did not have wisdom at the time when the Lord suffered, and the prophetic prediction was fulfilled: save me, Lord, for I am poor (Ps. 11:1); and: all having turned away, they were together without keys: not to do goodness, not to one (Ps. 13:3): then the women are called from the spectacle so that they tell the apostles what they themselves saw. Israel, about whom it is said: Israel does not know Me, and My people do not understand (Is. 1:3), provoked his most merciful Creator and Creator to grief, so that He would not have mercy on him. Although all this is pious, how it is consistent with the rest and applied to the times of the end of the world is difficult to explain. Art. 12 And it will come to pass in that day that the Lord will strike from the bed of the river even to the brook of Egypt. LXX: And it will happen on that day: the Lord will block off the equal rivers even from Rhinocorura. If I had not added: on that day, which indicates that what follows must have a connection with the previous one, then we could explain this verse in its proper sense; now everything must be applied to the previous one. since the fortified city will be desolate, and the beautiful one will one day be abandoned as a desert, and there the calf will lie and devour the branches of the vineyard, and everything will dry up, because they are a people without understanding, and, due to their stupidity, have not received any mercy from their Creator: then the Lord will strike them or block them from the bed or channel of the river even to the brook of Egypt, so that in all Judea, which once was the promised land, no word of teaching, no knowledge of the Scriptures was found. The apostle also says about the Jews: they do not pay heed to the fables of the Jews, nor to the commandments of men, but turn away from the truth (Tit. 1:14); and again: for they are many who are disobedient, talkers of vainglory, and of a deceived mind, especially those who are of circumcision, whose lips must be stopped (Titus 1:10). In the historical sense, we can call the Euphrates the bed or channel of the river, as in the seventy-first psalm it is written: “it will rule from sea to sea and from the river to the end of the universe” (Ps. 72:8). Others consider it Jordan. And then it should be noted that what is within the borders of Judea is called a river, and what is within the borders of Egypt is called a stream, which has muddy and not always flowing waters. Instead of the Egyptian stream LXX, they translated Rhinocorura, which is a city on the border between Egypt and Palestine, thereby expressing not so much the words of Scripture as the meaning of the words. What we said: to strike, instead of which LXX put σομφραξει, that is, to block, Aquila and Theodotion translated the word ῥαβδήσει, which can be understood: either he will strike with a rod, or, if understood not in a bad way, but in a good way, he will count the number of His flock by the rod. And ye shall be gathered together, one and one, O children of Israel. LXX: But gather ye one and one, the children of Israel. O children of Israel (instead of which Symmachus translated: house of Israel)! after the defeat of your opponents from the channel of the river to the stream of Egypt, that is, from the Euphrates to the Nile, you yourself will either gather to the faith of the Lord one and one, since the majority of the Jews did not believe, through which it foretells that few of the Jews will believe in the Lord Savior; or, O apostles and apostolic men! you, because of the unbelief of the majority of the Jews, bring from all the world those whom you can, like weak sheep, into the sheepfolds of the Lord, and gather them together with the people from the pagans, so that what the Apostle Paul and Barnabas say to the Jews will be fulfilled: it is unseemly for you to speak the word of God first: but having rejected it, and created for yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turned into tongues (Acts 13:46). Art. 13. And it will happen on that day that the sound of a great trumpet will sound, and those who were destroyed from the land of Assyria and driven into the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem. LXX: And it will happen on that day: they will sound the great trumpet, and those who perished in the land of Assyria and those who perished in Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem. In this place, the Jews flatter themselves with vain dreams that at the end of the world, when the Antichrist comes, as their anointed one is called (ἠλειμμένοϛ), then the scattered people will gather from Assyria and from the land of Egypt, and will come to Jerusalem, and, having built a church, will worship the Lord their God. This literally cannot come true at all. For those who believe in Christ will be called not only from Assyria and Egypt, but also from the whole world. Therefore, he foreshadows that at the last trumpet, according to the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 15:52), all those who perished in Assyria and Egypt will come to the Lord. And he did not say: all the sons of Israel, but all are lost, through which he means a multitude of pagans, because those who have given themselves over to idolatry, and magic, and philosophy will come to faith in Christ and will worship Him in the Church. By the great trumpet we can understand the word of the Gospel, about which we read from this very prophet: go up to a high mountain, preach the good news to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, preach the good news to Jerusalem (Isa. 40:9). Therefore, the holy mountain and Jerusalem are those about which we have often spoken: come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the multitude of angels, the triumph and the church of the firstborn in heaven, written (Heb. 12:22). Hitherto, starting from the place in which they began to explain: behold, the Lord will scatter the earth and expose it (Isa. 24:1), everything contained in this book was said about the end of the world. Now, if Christ helps us, or better yet, enlightens us, let us move on to the ninth book, which will contain the beginning of another prophecy. You might be interested in: