1:15-16
(Verse 15, 16.) For behold, I will gather all the families of the kingdoms of the North, says the Lord, and they shall come and each one shall set their throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, and over all its surrounding walls, and over all the cities of Judah. And I will speak my judgments with them concerning all their wickedness, who have forsaken me, and worshiped foreign gods and bowed down to the work of their own hands. Without a doubt, many nations and the kings of each nation were subjected to the Babylonian king, who, besieging Jerusalem, placed their thrones and tents around it, so that none of those who were closed in could escape. And not only Jerusalem, but also all the cities of Judah were surrounded by a similar siege. And when, he says, the city has been captured, then I will speak to them that my judgments were right, and that each one received what they deserved: not for the other vices to which human nature is subject, but especially for idolatry, by which they deserted me and worshipped the works of their own hands. Some interpret this passage in a positive way, namely that those who have been refined in the bronze furnace and purified through torments will afterwards become princes of Jerusalem; and after the Lord has shown compassion to them, then he will rebuke them because, when he deserted them, they worshipped idols. But this is a violent and wicked interpretation: so that an ignorant handler does not commit slander.
1:17
(Verse 17.) So gird up your loins and arise, and speak to them all that I command you. And Job is commanded to gird up his loins (Job 4); and to the Apostles (Luke 12), that with girded loins, which Elijah (2 Kings 1) and John the Baptist (Matthew 3) had mortified with haircloth belts, they may hold lamps in their hands, namely for the proclamation of the Gospel. Therefore, whoever is going to speak the words of God must gird up his loins, knowing that all the power of the devil is in the loins (Job 40); and let the righteous man say in the Psalms: My loins are filled with illusions (Psalm 37:8). And when he has girded his loins, let him hear what is written: Arise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead: and Christ shall enlighten you (Ephesians 5:14); that being always vigilant and rising from sleep, he may speak the things that God has commanded him.
Do not be afraid of their face: for I will not make their appearance fearful to you. Whether as the Septuagint and other interpreters have: lest I make you afraid. And the sense is according to our translation: Do not be afraid of their face: for with me as your helper, you will not be able to fear them. According to the Septuagint: Do not be afraid of their face, have the confidence of my command. For if you do not offer what you have, in order to stop being afraid, I will abandon you and deliver you to fear, and in a way it will seem that I make you afraid while I abandon you to fear. But this signifies that truth should always be loved: and the multitude of men should not be feared, who, when rebuked, do not endure it; but they lay snares for the one who rebukes them. And what follows in the Septuagint: 'For I am with you to deliver you,' says the Lord, is not found in the Hebrew. And the meaning is: I will deliver you, not so that no one lays snares for you; but so that, enduring the snares, you do not transgress.
1:18-19
(Verse 18, 19) For I have set you today (or Behold I have made you on this day) as a fortified city, and as an iron column, and as a bronze wall over all the earth: to the kings of Judah, to its princes, and to its priests, and to the people of the land. And they will fight against you, but they will not prevail, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you. The divine word describes why the Prophet should not be afraid. I, he says, have set, or made you today, that is, in the present life, until it is called today, as a very strong city: not as one house, nor a tower, or any walls (Matthew 5); but as every city that is situated on a mountain cannot be hidden. About which it is written: Glorious things are said of you, O city of God (Psalm 86:2). And: I am a strong city, a city that is under attack (Isaiah 27:3). And, in a column, it is said of a pillar of iron, about which the Apostle writes: The pillar and foundation of truth (1 Timothy 3:15). Thus Peter and John, who were considered pillars of the Church, gave the right hand of fellowship to Paul and Barnabas. And not only this, but it is said to be a bronze wall, which is not damaged by rust and does not perish when beaten by rain, but becomes stronger with age. But you are such against kings and princes and people, not of any place, but of the land; those who have earthly wisdom and do not know heavenly things, who have the image of the earth and not of the heavenly. These, he says, will fight against you and will not prevail. Why, I ask? What is the cause of such great strength that neither kings, nor princes, nor priests, nor people can prevail against one? It follows: Because I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you. If at any time the kings of Judah, who are called confessors, and their princes, and the priests, and the people, namely the bishops and presbyters and deacons, and the lowly and ignoble commoners, should rise up against the holy man, let him have firm faith and cease to fear: for with the help of the Lord, he will prevail.
2:1
(Chapter 2, Verse 1) And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying. This is not found in the Septuagint, but it was added under asterisks in the edition of Theodotion, who interpreted the Hebrew word Carath () as clama; or praedica, meaning 'read'. And it signifies both reading and crying out and preaching because of its ambiguity. However, we should understand the ears of Jerusalem as the ears of its inhabitants.
2:2
(Vers. 2.) Thus says the Lord: I have remembered your youth, the kindness of your betrothal, when you followed me in the desert, in a land that is not sown. LXX: Thus says the Lord: I have remembered the mercy of your youth, and the love of your betrothal. This is said more fully in Ezekiel (Ezek. I), when the Lord joins Jerusalem to himself in marriage, and under the persona of a wife, unites her with his embraces: either to show a more ardent affection, he calls her a girl, a young woman, and betrothed. For what we have not yet obtained, we desire to obtain more. 'When,' he said, 'you followed me in solitude; and, like betrothal and dowry, the adornments of the Law were distributed to you as necklaces of words. And all of this does not refer to his merit, but to his mercy, through which he also obtained charity. This also which we have placed, in the desert, in a land which is not sown, is not found in the Septuagint.'
2:3
(Verse 3.) Holy is Israel to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest: all who devour him shall be guilty; evil shall come upon them, says the Lord. When Israel speaks of the first fruits of the Lord's harvest, it shows that the people are gathered from the nations after the first fruits; according to what is written in another place: Remember your congregation, whom you have possessed from the beginning (Psalm 73:2). However, the first fruits are always owed to the priests, not to the enemies. What follows is this: All those who devour him will sin: evil will come upon them, says the Lord. This is its meaning: Just as those who devour the offerings (Numbers 5) are not from the priestly lineage, they are guilty of a sinful act, so those who defile Israel will be subjected to great evil: as it is written in the twenty-sixth psalm by the holy David: While evil men approach me to consume my flesh, my enemies who trouble me have become weak and fallen (Psalm 26:3-4). For indeed, those who carry out the sentence of God will not be exempt from punishment, and evils come upon them; for scandals must come, but woe to him through whom the scandals come (Mat. XVIII).
2:4-5
(Verses 4, 5.) Hear the word of the Lord, house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord: What did your fathers find in me of iniquity, that they went far from me, and went after vanity, and became vain? This meaning is also testified by another prophet: O my people, what have I done to you, and how have I been a burden to you? Answer me: for I brought you out of the land of Egypt, and delivered you from the house of slaves (Micah 6:3-4). However, both names, Jacob and Israel, are used: not according to the twelve tribes, but according to the entire people. For Jacob himself was later called Israel. But the sins of the fathers do not have an effect on their children, although the children, having the likeness of the fathers, may be punished for their own sins and the sins of their parents. We often read that God has mercy on the children because of the holy fathers. However, the fathers of the sinful people have forsaken God, and not for a short time, but for a long time. And they have followed vanity, that is, idols, which are of no benefit to their worshippers. And they have become like them, as it is written: Let them become like those who make and trust in them, and all who trust in them.
2:6
(Verse 6) And they did not say, Where is the Lord who led us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the desert, through an uninhabited and impassable land, through a land of thirst and the shadow of death, through a land in which no man walks, nor does any man dwell. For son of man, they interpreted as the seventy sons of man; and for the shadow of death, it was added from Theodotion, the shadow of death. And while this is evident according to history, it should be considered in light of the anagoge, that as long as we are in this world and are led out of Egypt, we ascend gradually, and first we pass through the deserts and the uninhabitable land, which the holy one ought not to inhabit, and the impassable land, to show the difficulty of the journey. You are thirsty for the earth, where we always desire greater things and are never content with the present. And it is an image, or rather a shadow of death: for we are always in danger, and everywhere the devil sets his traps. On the earth where no man has walked, who is perfect in Christ. For we will all rise to become perfect men, to the measure of the fullness of Christ's age. Neither does he who is a man of God or the Son of Man ever reside in it, but always hastens to greater things. From this it is clear that there is no perfection in the journey, but in the end of the journey and in the dwelling place that is prepared for the saints in heaven, and about which it is said: Those who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God (Psalm 133:1). Therefore, it is in vain that this new heresy suspects perfection to be here, where there is a battle and a contest, and an uncertain outcome of future events.
2:7
(Verse 7) And I led you into the land of Carmel, that you may eat its fruit and its goodness; and when you entered, you polluted my land and made my inheritance an abomination. For the labor of a very hard journey, I gave you abundance of all things. Indeed, Carmel, which is called Chermel in Hebrew, signifies this, and in our language it means the knowledge of circumcision. Just as that people defiled and violated the holy land and the fertile land of all things with idolatry, so we, receiving the knowledge of true circumcision, eat its fruits; and with negligence creeping in, we pollute God's land and make his inheritance abominable.
2:8
(Verse 8.) The priests did not say, 'Where is the Lord?' and those who held my Law did not know me, and the shepherds transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied in Baal and followed idols. After so many benefits, they turned the privileges of dignity into contempt, so that the priests would not seek the Lord, so that the teachers of the Law would ignore him whom they should teach, and the shepherds (or rather, preachers) would become transgressors through negligence, and the prophets who dispute among the people would not speak to God, but to idols, and would worship their own creations. But we must use words against the masters of our order, who devour the people of God like bread, and by their evil deeds do not invoke the Lord.
2:9
(Verse 9) Therefore I will still contend with you in judgment, says the Lord, and I will reason with your children. So that it may not seem that I strike with power, as if contending with equals in reason; according to what David sings and the Apostle uses: That you may be justified in your words, and may overcome when you are judged (Psalm 50:6; Romans 3:4). And he testifies that he has done this many times in the past, and he demonstrates a similar stubbornness in the children of evildoers. However, it secretly signifies that the ancient denial of God, even their children followed in the coming of the Lord.
2:10-11
(Vers. 10, 11.) Go to the islands of Kittim, and see: and send to Kedar, and consider carefully, and see if such a thing has happened: if a nation has changed its gods (or its own gods). And certainly they are not gods: but my people have changed their glory into an idol (or something that will not profit them). He makes a comparison of that which is incomparable, and gives the true God to liars. Go, he says, to the islands of Kittim: which we should understand as either Italy or the Western lands: because the island of Cyprus, which is called by this name, is near the land of Judah. Of which both Zeno and the leader of the Stoics were. But the region of Cedar is one of solitude and of the Ismaelites, who are now called the Saracens: against whom the prophecy of the very Prophet himself is covered in the farthest parts (infra ad cap. XLIX); and of whom David mentions, saying: I have dwelt with those who dwell in Cedar: my soul has traveled much (Psal. CXIX, 5). And the meaning is: Either go to the West, or send into the wilderness, and see if any nation has done what you have done. For they did not despise their gods, neither the wooden and stone ones, nor did they change them in comparison to gold, but following the ancient error, they held onto what they had received from their ancestors. And certainly this is true, since none of their gods exist, but rather they are man-made idols. But my people have exchanged the truth for a lie and have preferred an idol to me, which will not be able to help them in times of need. We can also say this against those who pursue vices with more zeal than virtues, whom the Apostle warns, saying: I speak as a human, because of the weakness of your minds. Just as you presented your members as servants to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as servants to righteousness leading to sanctification. (Romans 6:19).