Chapter XXIV.
From the Almighty, times are not hidden; but those who know him, are ignorant of his days. Indeed, those who feel and understand God are ignorant of the days of his eternity. In that eternity, neither times nor days, which are in temporal existence, are found, where one eternal day is. Or in other words: He knows everything that I now speak or suffer.
Others have moved boundaries, plundered flocks, and fed upon them. That is, they have moved flocks and consumed them. This is evident according to the letter. Now let us examine what it signifies according to the mystical understanding. By moving boundaries, that is, by overthrowing the decrees of the Church, it signifies that heretics, who by the novelty of perverse doctrine, exceed the boundaries set by the evangelical law and the apostles, and thus by deceitful persuasion plunder the flocks of the Lord, that is, the people who believe in Christ.
They drove away the donkey of the orphans and took the widow's cow as a pledge. They have disrupted the path of the poor and have oppressed the gentle people of the land. The orphans, indeed, are vulnerable, either infants in faith or those who do not have God the Father to defend them against their adversaries. The heretics forcefully and cunningly drive away their minds, like a strong and necessary beast, from carrying God within themselves through faith. They strip them of the virtue of their souls, called the name of an unclean animal, while taking it away from them, they lead them into perfidy under the guise of true religion. Widows are also those souls who have lost their husband, their God, and their Lord: from whom heretics, by way of a pledge of their perfidy, particularly confession, through which they are initiated by their false inventions, attempt to take away the purity of holy virtues and the useful works of the soul, and make themselves debtors to them. The poor, too, in this place are to be understood as those who are deprived of the testimony of faith. Others are rich in faith: the heretics have subverted the way of religion for these, by which they were able to return to God, with their errors. But let us consider those people gentle who do not have the ability to resist their enemies with steadfastness, and who, due to the weakness of their spirit, are easily led astray. Therefore, they are oppressed by many teachings of errors and various superstitious beliefs. However, those who mortify themselves with vices are on the good side: they are the poor, they are the apostles. The heretics try to remove them from this number: while they persuade some of the poor of the saints or deceive the gentle ones who cannot resist them but listen patiently out of simplicity, they strive to extinguish them.
Some, like wild donkeys, go out into the desert for their work, and they prepare bread for their children. They are violent, those who seize things publicly. They are pirates and robbers, those who go out from hiding to do their work, certainly not of God.
They do not harvest their own field, and they sell the vineyard of the one they have oppressed. The field, or vineyard, is a certain way of life for each individual, which is cultivated by each person, when the filth and certain shrubs of vices are cleansed, or even uprooted. Therefore, since the diligence of this cultivation is of little benefit, when every good of nature is not referred to faith: because the just person lives by faith: the aforementioned worshipers of idols, oppressing the hearts of the faithful, even though they live honestly, lead them into error as if by some kind of seduction: while by dispersing their crops, they violently snatch away their field or vineyard.
Men also undress, removing their clothing, while they are stripped of their possessions by the good works.
Those who do not have coverings in the cold are certainly stripped, for they do not have the clothing of God's charity, and therefore they suffer from cold in unfaithfulness: because they do not deserve to be clothed with the tunic of the fervent spirit.
Those rains wet the mountains. Therefore, he says to those who have been abandoned in their misery from their homes: since the caves and shades of the mountains will cover them, and how great is their necessity to dwell in the mountains themselves, he describes. Those rains wet the mountains, that is, they are cleansed by the abundant waters flowing from the mountains themselves. Those rains wet the mountains. They are not watered by the rains of the sky, but by the mountains that rise up against the knowledge of God, which is from heaven.
And not having a covering, they embrace stones. Others have said more clearly: those who do not have a covering are covered with a stone. And not having a covering, they embrace stones. This means that without the garment of virtues, they delight in their sins and errors.
They committed violence by robbing the orphan children. It is understood what they did to those who had nothing, since they did not show mercy even to the poorest. They committed violence by robbing the orphan children. They also preyed upon those who possessed some knowledge of natural goodness but could not defend it; living with a fragile and childish mindset, they were deceived by wicked persuasions and subjected to force.
And they have plundered the common poor. They have also treated the multitude of the people with contempt through their actions and ignorance, and the poor, if they had any justice or even natural innocence, they have deprived of the aforementioned goods while dragging themselves further into the evil of their own error.
They took the grain from those who were naked and walking without clothes. With the nakedness of faith, deprived of the protection of God, they also took away the garments of hope, charity, and other virtues, with which souls are adorned. They even took the grain, in which they had the divine knowledge concealed, so that the hungry, at some point when the veil is pulled back, could receive the naked truth itself as the bread of life.
Among their heaps are those who are thirsty from treading the winepresses. This is a great and most unjust evil, that while others labor and bear fruit, others rest and indulge in the wine of those who, having gathered their own vineyards, are thirsty. Among their heaps are those who are thirsty from treading the winepresses. Therefore, when the stalks are removed, containing within themselves the knowledge of the divine name, those who had them in full understanding would prepare solid food. But deceitful oppressors boast among their goods, resting as it were among heaps, and attribute it to themselves. If someone follows the natural virtues of the gentiles, from whom they establish in themselves a collection of works like seeds, they themselves, however, deceived, trample on the vintage of virtues and, having been squeezed out, thirst: because they did not find the cup of truth among those from whom they were led astray in error.
They cause men in the cities to groan. Not only, he says, do they plunder those who dwell without defenses and afflict them with the rule of harsh superstition: but also those who dwell in cities fortified by good morals of their minds, they destroy by the battering-rams of errors through warfare. And it is clear that this has happened to many philosophers: who, although they have been great and renowned for their self-control over their bodies, have still not been able to attain knowledge of the truth without groaning and great labor.
And the soul of the wounded cried out, and God does not allow it to go unavenged. God does not allow the voice of those who implore him to go unanswered, but instead gives vengeance for their errors: so that while the wounded of sins turn to the truth, falsehood, convicted, may be punished. For it punishes when it deprives of conversion those who were seduced. But what he says, 'The soul of the wounded,' let us understand as the collective voice of those who cry out to God. The tribulation of the destroyers reached the city's inhabitants with a groan. But those who are wounded are not only to be understood as those whose bodies are pierced by others, but also those whose souls are struck by excessive fear of the enemy, as if by a sword.
They themselves were rebels to the light, they did not know its ways: nor did they return to its paths. Demons, heretics, philosophers, and all the wicked are to be understood as those who strive against the doctrine of God, because the commandment of life is light, because in nature there is light, which is of itself: but darkness is the blindness of the heart. And therefore, if the blindness of the heart is darkness, rightly the external darkness is understood to be punishment. Just as the unjust are cast into the darkness of their sins, into the darkness of torments: so the divine judgement, both within and without, is consummated before the angels of God, and they are clothed with their own confusion. But we can understand that the wild donkeys who dwell in the desert represent the pagans who, in their error of gentility, are in the desert of true religion, because they are not contained by the yoke of a certain religion. Therefore, they go forth to their work. For they are said to go out, when they show their own emotions through false teachings to those whom they seduce. For in this way, with all cunning, they prey on wandering souls, lost to their own posterity, like the nourishment of deadly doctrine, they abandon obstinacy.
In the morning, the murderer will rise first: he kills the needy and the poor. Again in the morning it is said, because the evil is committed publicly and in broad daylight, so that the perpetrators may be seen as glorying in their actions, and according to the example of the Sodomites, they do not conceal their sin but proclaim it. This could also have been said about unjust judges, who rise early for this purpose, in order to pervert the cause of the needy and the poor by being corrupted by bribes. Or differently: Therefore, here the murderer, rightly each heretic is considered, from their number who kill the souls of men with harmful and deadly thoughts. What he says, he rises early in the morning: that is, because when those who were recently initiated in faith have the morning, that is, as if the holy religion had a beginning: or they themselves have become morning ones, when they have become sons of light and of the day in the Lord; they hasten to offer the poison of their own treachery, in order to deceive them. Or in another way: Christ must be understood, for it is his resurrection that heresies began to exist in the Church.
But during the night he will be like a thief. All the senses of heretics must be compared to night and darkness, because they do not have the light of truth. They are also adulterers, because they corrupt the pure words of God with adulterous interpretation. I think night is called so because transgressors of affairs seek a certain secret time, like the night, when they receive bribes for transgressed causes.
The adulterer's eye watches the darkness, saying, 'No eye will see me,' and covers his face. Or as others have said: 'He has made a hiding place for his face.' That is, the eye of his heart has been blinded by forgetfulness, so that it does not rise to his memory, for God is the observer and knower of all evil thoughts and human deeds.
He destroys houses in darkness, just as they had planned for themselves during the day, and they are ignorant of the light. It is evident that they plan this robbery by their own thoughts during the day before they come to the darkness of their wicked deeds. He destroys houses in darkness, just as they had planned for themselves during the day. Each heretic, standing in the depravity of doctrine, does not descend into the souls of the faithful with the sweet and gentle message of the Gospel, like a gentle rain and like dew in silence, but rather with harshness and with a sharp intention to wound, he destroys the homes of their souls. For heretics, like on a designated day, arranged for themselves to pierce all mortals with the dangerous spears of their teachings, when they had determined to create heresies while still in the Church, that is, on the day of truth.
If the dawn suddenly appears, they consider it the shadow of death, and thus they walk in darkness as if in light. Once justice for themselves and the light of honesty from elsewhere begin to appear, and the evil of their conscience is thrown upon them, they then consider themselves deserving of the punishment of death, because justice and holiness, as divine Scripture says, are abhorrent to the wicked. If the dawn suddenly appears, they consider it the shadow of death, and thus they walk in darkness as if in light. If anyone should arise as a disputant, who sets forth against them the light of manifest truth, they are convinced that they have incurred the shadow of death, and nevertheless they boast in the darkness of their folly, as in the light of wisdom. The devil may also be understood as a murderer, thief, and adulterer: because he became a murderer in order to deceive man, as the Lord says: He was a murderer from the beginning. He was also found to be a thief, who tries to steal what belongs to others, by arrogantly claiming divinity for himself through presumption of his own mind. He also lost that pure and chaste love of God when he sought adulterous endeavors against the love of his own God and Lord, of his own free will. Therefore, in the early morning, that is, around the very birth of the first man, he arose to deceive him through his woman, and killed him, devoid of counsel and poor, who, being less cautious due to lack of experience, fell for the deceit of deceitful persuasion. But he himself worked the night of sin: when he wanted to invade divinity like a thief, saying, 'I will set my throne above the stars of heaven and I will be like the Most High.' And from then on, with his companions whom he called the stars of heaven, he was called night and darkness, and the prince of darkness. And rightly so, for he had lost the light of the Lord. Now, being in the darkness of his sins, he covered his face with the hardness of his evil conscience, not intending to repent. And therefore, deprived of divine light, he strives and endeavors to commit those things that are worthy of darkness and gloom. While carrying out his works in the underworld, he will dig for himself dwelling places, along with his ministers, with whom he attempted to rise up against God, the creator. Therefore, his ministers, while still blessed in that eternal bliss, on that everlasting day which has no beginning or end, have engaged in this sacrilege of tyranny with their leader, and they thought that God, who is the true light, wise and intelligible, would leave this evil of their arrogance unpunished, so that he would not cast them out from that blessed and glorious abode. And I think he said this because they were ignorant of the light: they believed that God would never do this to them, which is why they became blinded in their minds and became eternal darkness. They were also called the powers of darkness, that is, sinful humans. And that is why they tremble when they hear the name of God, which we think is signified by the word 'dawn'. Therefore, the thought of the devil could only reach as far as speech, not action: for he did not reign there, and he was immediately cast down when he spoke aloud what he had thought, and he fell downward. From this, it was evident that he spoke to persuade the other angels with the devices of his own heart against God, and in this way, with many consenting, a kind of conspiracy would be formed against God, as if it appeared so. However, it must be held firmly that the duties of celestial warfare should never be carried out in silence, since we read that the angelic powers sing before the throne of the Lord with unwearied voices to praise his glory. Nor would the Apostle have said in any way: 'If I speak with the tongues of men and angels,' if the languages of the angels were not such as of men, even though they are different from human languages. Therefore, there is a very great and essential difference between the diversity of languages among earthly beings and the divine ministries. The canon of the New Testament has thoroughly instructed us about the great matter, which contains the acts of the apostles.
He is like a light leaf on the surface of the water. Because they are not of the great Church, that is, the heavy and holy people, who are compared to the fruitful grains of the best wheat, and who are to be stored in the barn of eternal dwellings, like light chaff with no weight, which pertains to the burdening of virtues, he will float on the element of water: so that he may be carried away by a gentle breeze. Or in other words: These waters have the shape of people who love this world: because they are always inclined towards lower things, dragging much mud with them, which is deposited in the chaotic weight of the underworld.
Cursed be his portion in the land. For whoever is not in the land of the saints, which is the land of the living, will be cursed: whether his portion in the land is cursed, that is, in the mass of humanity.
And let him not walk along the paths of the vineyards. That is, let his conversation be so cursed in this land, that he does not imitate the people of God or the holy souls, which are like fruitful vineyards, and let him not walk through them. For the teachers, like farmers, cultivate these vineyards with teachings like tools, so that they may harvest the wine of good works, which, in faith, that is, pressed in the winepress of the Church by the weight of tribulation, may be stored in the storerooms of celestial homes, burning with the most sweet scent and with the power of merits, through the grace of Christ.
Let the excessive heat pass away from the waters of the snow. Holy Job seems to me to speak of two hells, fire and cold, through which the devil, heretics, and wicked humans are transformed. Perhaps in that very hell such torments of sensation will be suffered by those who are tormented in it, that now they feel as if a burning fire, now an excessive intensity of cold, and a penal transformation, now cold to those who feel it, now heat, so that they estimate a passage from place to place. And so the Lord says in the Gospel: Cast him into outer darkness: there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Let this gnashing of teeth arise from the rigidity of cold. We can find a certain similarity in our bodies: in which, before the most burning fire of fevers, there precedes an intolerable rigidity in the typical movements, that is, the abundance of red, which is the hottest. And these two things, which are recognized as contraries, are said by physicians to be produced in man from the same bile material.
And even to the depths goes his sin. The sin of the wicked and unjust is so great and so heavy, that it drags him down to hell like lead in the strongest water.
Let his mercy be forgotten. That is, he who is not only merciful, but is also called mercy itself: because the one who is merciful is greater than the act of showing mercy, and therefore the name is, as it were, a prototype that is greater than the act that is named. Therefore, whoever can be called merciful, truthful, and just among the saints - none of them can rightly be called mercy, truth, and justice.
The sweetness of it is worms. In a figure of speech, that is, it is abundantly filled with worms. And in the Gospel: Their worm will not die. Therefore, such sweetness will be for the wicked and those who hate God.
Let it not be remembered. That is, it does not reach the mercy, which, we have learned from the Holy Scriptures, will happen to the devil and his heretics and impious.
But let him be crushed as an unfruitful tree, according to that which is said: Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down, and cast into the fire. Or let us understand by the wood, sin, which happened through wood: through which wood the devil added to the heap of his crimes, that he became rebellious against God, so as to cast man into death: wherefore he is now condemned to eternal destruction: on account of which the devil himself can be called an incurable and unfruitful tree: because he will never be healed by the remedy of repentance. But concerning the wood of life, that is the cross, or concerning Christ, it is said: According to the days of the wood, so shall be the days of my people.
For he indeed cultivated the barren. That is, he nourished and fostered sterile souls, and unfruitful in virtues.
And those who do not give birth. He also nourished their souls with the delights of their ascent, which, although they are able to give birth to good things from the womb of the heart, they were unwilling, as David says about such people: They did not want to understand, so that they could do good.
And he did not do well by the widow. The widow, lacking the strength of a holy soul, who had had God as her husband, refused to be consoled with exhortation, so that she might act in such a way as to return to her former husband.
The strong ones were brought down by their own strength. Others have said. And in anger he overthrew the weak: that is, he defeated and detracted the strong and virtuous men.
And when it stands, it will not believe in its own life. God has given him a place for repentance, and he abuses it in pride: but his eyes are on its ways. And when it prospers, it does not even think, with a conscience biting, that it can perpetually enjoy the same happiness, since it is of such obstinate and hard mind, believing that it can stand in that lost life.
They are raised up for a little while, and do not endure, and they shall be humbled like all things, and they shall be taken away. 'For a little while' is said, in reference to the brevity of the present life, in which the wicked are exalted for a time. They shall be taken away like all things, that is, like those things which are of the opposing party, whether all temporal things are taken away at the end of the age.
And just as the tops of ears of grain are crushed. For just as the tops of ears of grain, a clearly fragile thing, are crushed with such ease that they are reduced to nothing: so too these of whom I have spoken, like the finest dust, or like the down of ashes, will be ground down before the face of God, when they have been worn away by the insult of confusion.
But if it is not so, who can accuse me of lying and present my words before God? For who among you can prove me wrong, that it will not happen as I said, and prove me false, when you assert that God will repay sinners in this life according to their merits, which you falsely cast upon me out of your contentious spirit.