14:22
(Verse 22.) Are there any among the idols of the nations that can make it rain? Or can the heavens themselves give showers? Are you not the Lord our God, whom we have waited for? For you have made all these things. After many and various discourses, he returns to the title of the prophecy, in which it is written: that the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah concerning the words of drought. Therefore, what he says is this: because the idols of demons cannot make it rain, nor can the heavens themselves give their own shower, you, Lord our God, whom we have always waited for, in whom we turn our hopes and desires, give us your rain. For all things are yours; and whatever good exists, without you, to whom it belongs, cannot be given. Let us say this also against the heretics, who cannot bestow the rain of doctrine; and although they promise themselves to be heavens and boast about themselves: The heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1): yet they cannot give the downpour of doctrine. For God alone is the one who instructs his people and grants different graces to those who await him.
15:1
(Chapter 15, Verse 1) And the Lord said to me: If Moses and Samuel stood before me (or against me), my soul would not be for this people. For we read that these men resisted the anger of the Lord for the people and turned away the impending judgment. Although, he says, if they were to stand, either in my presence or against me, to whom God said: Let me alone, and I will destroy this people (Exodus 32:10): yet I will not listen, because the sins of the guilty people have been completed.
Drive them (or send them away) from my presence, and let them depart. Sinners do not depart from God by place, but by will: although we read that both Adam and Cain were driven away from the presence of God (Gen. III and VIII).
15:2-3
(Verses 2, 3.) But if they say to you: Where shall we go out? You shall say to them: Thus says the Lord: He who is for death, to death; and he who is for the sword, to the sword; and he who is for famine, to famine; and he who is for captivity, to captivity. And I will visit upon them four kinds, says the Lord: the sword for killing, and dogs for tearing, and birds of the sky and beasts of the earth for devouring and scattering. The four plagues by which the people of the Jews were handed over, as the prophecy of Ezekiel also shows, are the sword, pestilence, famine, beasts, and captivity (Ezek. 14). Among the beasts, dogs and birds are also understood, to whom bodies were given to be torn apart, devoured, and scattered. For it was not possible for the whole creation to rise up against sinners without the Creator being neglected.
15:4
(Verse 4.) And I will give them into the heat (or turmoil and distress) of all the kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for all that he did in Jerusalem. We read in the Book of Days that Manasseh, after captivity and repentance, returned to Jerusalem and reigned (2 Chronicles 33). But how the merits of the saints descend to their descendants, like David and the others, so the scandals of sin, if their children and grandchildren do similar things, reach to their descendants. But when he says, I will give them heat, or commotion, and distress to the whole earth, it was fulfilled under the Babylonians in part, and now it is being fulfilled completely, when the wicked king, who filled Jerusalem with the blood of the righteous from one gate to another, was imitated by the impious people. From this we learn that peoples are often destroyed by the wickedness of kings, princes, and rulers.
15:5
(Verse 5.) Who will have pity on you, Jerusalem? Or who will grieve for you? Or who will go to ask for your peace? For no one can, having offended God, ask for forgiveness for the sins; for neither can a creature be as merciful as its creator, nor can it be as distant from foreigners as the Lord is inclined to spare his own people.
15:6
(Verse 6.) You have forsaken me, says the Lord: you have gone backward. The reason is given why no one has pity on Jerusalem, nor is she grieved for; nor is she beseeched for the sake of her peace: which, according to the Apostle (Philippians 3), should forget the things that are behind and extend oneself to the things that are before, is on the contrary turned backward, and desires the fleshpots of Egypt.
And I will stretch out my hand over you, and I will kill you: I have labored when asked (or asking): for which the Seventy translated: I will by no means let them go any further. The outstretched hand is a sign of striking: the killing of sinners signifies complete anger. But what it brings: I have labored when asked, or asking, has a double meaning, that God may now have failed, frequently forgiving them, and may always be weary, provoking them to salvation.
15:7
(Verse 7.) And I will scatter them with a winnowing fan at the gates of the land (or my people). I have killed and destroyed (Vulgate: scattered and destroyed) my people; yet they have not returned from their wicked ways. What use is it for me to be asked repeatedly, when they do not return from their wicked ways and do not repent? For I have scattered them like chaff, to cleanse my threshing floor. And I scattered them at the gates of the land, to tread upon the thresholds like the depths of hell. And I killed and destroyed my people, so that, compelled by the necessity of evil, they would avoid impending evil.
15:8
(Verse 8.) Her widows are multiplied to me above the sand of the sea: I have brought upon them the destroyer at noonday: I have sent troubles suddenly upon the cities. With various medicines God desires to save sinners: so that those who despised His gentle entreaties may fear His threatening. Widows are multiplied above the sand of the sea, with men being killed; mothers, with their children being lost, have felt the destroyer, not in the night and by treachery, but in broad daylight: so that He may show the open force of a stronger adversary. He sent, he says, over the cities, no doubt with the intention of causing sudden terror to Judah, and the sinful people, so that the more sudden the disaster was, the more difficult it would be to escape.
15:9
(Verse 9) She has been weakened (or cast aside, or made empty) who gave birth to seven (or many); her soul has failed: the sun has set upon her while it was still day (or midday). She is confused and ashamed: and I will give her remaining ones into the sword in the sight of their enemies, says the Lord. We have often said that the Hebrew word Saba () can mean either seven, or oath, or many. Therefore, there is also a different interpretation: Aquila, the Seventy, and Theodotion translate as seven; Symmachus, as many. Therefore, she who was once wealthy and had children became suddenly bereft and perished in clear light, and she was confused in the solitude of herself. But the remainder, he said, I will deliver to the sword, so that no one may escape the death and wrath of God. Others attribute it to the Synagogue, which was weakened, so that the multitude of the Church might grow; according to what is written: The barren woman has borne seven, or more: and she who had many children was weakened (1 Samuel 2:5). And the sun of justice sets upon him, in whose wings is health (Malachi 4); and therefore it is covered with eternal confusion, destroying its people with a spiritual sword.
15:10
(Verse 10) Woe to me, my mother, why did you give birth to me as a man of strife (or judgment), a man of discord (or one who judges), in the whole world? This can be understood συνεκδοχικῶς from Jeremiah, that he was judged not in the entire world, but in the land of Judah. Truly, it belongs to the Lord, the Savior, who speaks in the Gospel: I have come into this world for judgment, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind (John 9:39), of whom it is written: Behold, he is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (Luke 2:34). For who of the philosophers, who of the pagans, who of the heretics does not judge Christ, affirming the laws of his nativity, passion, and resurrection? No wonder, in accordance with the truth of his assumed body, Christ says: Woe to me, my mother; when in another place it clearly pertains to his person what is said: Woe to me, for I have become like one who gathers stubble in the harvest, and like a cluster of grapes in the vineyard, having no ear of grain to eat as the firstfruits. And so that we may not attribute the worthlessness of our groans to the Word of God, who is this one who weeps, it immediately follows: Woe to me, for my soul has perished in returning from the earth: not because we divide the Persons, as the wicked do; but so that the one and the same Son of God may speak now according to the flesh, now according to the Word of God.
I have not lent, and no one has lent to me; everyone curses me. In the Septuagint: I have not profited, and no one has profited me. In Theodotion: I have not owed, and no one has owed me. The sense of all these is from the perspective of Christ: No one has offered themselves to receive my debt; and no one has lent to me in supporting the holy and the poor, making me their debtor. Whether I have not profited, and no one has profited me; for no one has desired to receive as much as I have desired to give. No one has been of use to me; for the salvation of the creature is the profit of the Creator. Or certainly no one should have, nor could have, benefitted me: No one has given me as much as I desired to receive, nor made me indebted to them in any way. And this bears repeating: No one should have benefitted me, which means: How could I owe interest to someone who did not deign to receive interest? Everyone, he says, curses me. For who among the heretics and the wanderers does not curse Christ, by believing perverse things and blaspheming even more perversely?
15:11
(Verse 11) The Lord says: If your remnants are not for good, if I do not come to you in the time of affliction and in the time of tribulation and anguish against the enemy. These things can also be understood from the perspective of Jeremiah, who was compelled to prophesy in the worst of times, with captivity imminent, and enduring hardship from an unbelieving people. In response to what he had said before: Woe to me, mother! Why have you birthed me as a man who judges? And I will be distinguished among all the lands and the rest, the Lord answered: Do not consider the present, but the future; for your remnants and last shall be for good. Moreover, in the present when your enemies sought to oppress you, I was with you, and you were protected by my help. This can also be referred to Jeremiah, as well as to the dispensation of the assumed flesh, to the Savior. Because according to the Hebrew interpretation, we have translated it as: All curse me, to the point where it is written, in the time of tribulation against the enemy, in the Vulgate edition it is written as follows: My strength has failed in those who curse me; may it be, O Lord, for those who direct them, if you did not stand by you in their time of affliction, and in their time of tribulation, in good against the enemy. And the meaning is: My strength is weakened in those who curse me. For they do not understand my virtue, which is perfected in weakness, and the more they curse me, the more my strength diminishes in them. And either the Prophet or the Lord joins in, and says: Let it be, Lord ((or Lord)), for those who direct them, that is, let the curses that the enemies speak against me happen to me; and may they be directed to good, if not in the time of their tribulations and distress, when the enemy was ravaging them and hastening to capture them, I stood before you and interceded for them, and I said: Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34). But we often find that Jeremiah also prayed for the people in this volume.