 
A Wise Benedictine reminds us to never say it can't happen to us!
Reflection by Dom Prosper Gueranger, OSB provided by Father Lawrence Smith
 Food for thought,
though the modern mind
has a tapeworm!
To better understand the theme of the Ninth Sunday After Pentecost, ("Ecce Deus ádjuvat me") Father Smith has provided us a reflection from the ultimate authority and master on the Liturgy Dom Prosper Gueranger, author of The Liturgical Year, who provides a meditation anchored in the omens foretold by the prophet Jeremias in Chapter 7 through 11 (DRV).
"And souls, too, on whom God heaps His choicest favours, inviting them thereby to a closer union with Himself, have a lesson to learn from all this. Woe to them if, through indifference or sloth, they neglect to correspond with their graces! Woe to them if they imitate the cities on the Lake of Galilee, by greedily accepting the honour done them but never producing the fruits of holiness which should follow such signal and frequent gifts of Heaven."
...In every part of the unhappy Galilee blood was flowing in torrents, and the flames of burning villages lighted up the horizon. It was hard to recognize this as the land where Jesus had spent the years of His childhood, or as the scene of His first miracles, and of those teachings of His which were ever borrowing some exquisite parable or other from the sight of the pretty hills and fertile vales of that then favoured country. The arm of God was now pressing with all its weight on this land of Zabulon and Nephthali, on which first so brightly shone the light of salvation, (Isa. Ix. 1, 2.) as we sang on Christmas night.
So again this time it was the first to be visited by God. But these were unhappy times; and the visit was no longer that of the divine Orient, opening out to the world the paths of peace. (St. Luke i. 78, 79.) He was hid behind the tempest, (Ps. xvii. 12.) and darted the fiery arrows of destruction on the ungrateful country that had refused to welcome Him in the weakness of human flesh, which nothing but His mercy had led Him to assume. 'They cried out, on the day of my vengeance,' says this rejected King of Israel, 'but there was none to save them; they cried to me their Lord, but I heard them not: and I will break them as small as dust, and scatter them before the wind; I will bring them to nought, like the dirt in the streets.' (Ps. xvii. 42, 43.)
Terrible lesson which the Church learned and has never forgotten, that no blessing, no past holiness, is of itself a guarantee that the place thus favoured will not afterwards draw down on itself desecration and destruction! She saw, and trembled as she saw, these events of the first age of her history. She beheld violence and every sort of crime profaning the paths that had been trodden by the feet of her adorable Master, and the hills where He had passed whole nights in prayer and praise to His eternal Father. She one day witnessed even the pure waters of the Lake of Genesareth fearfully polluted; those waters that had so oft reflected the features of her divine Spouse, as when He walked on their glassy surface, or sat in Peter's bark superintending those mystery-meaning fishings of His apostles. The event we here allude to was that of six thousand Jewish insurgents - hemmed in between God's wrath and their Roman pursuers - reddening with their blood this Sea of Tiberius, where once Jesus had spoken to the storm and quelled it. (Jos., De Bello Jud., iii. 9.) Their livid carcasses were thrown back by the waves on the shore, where our Lord had uttered woe to the cities that had witnessed His miracles, and yet were not converted. (St. Matt. xi. 20, 21.)
And souls, too, on whom God heaps His choicest favours, inviting them thereby to a closer union with Himself, have a lesson to learn from all this. Woe to them if, through indifference or sloth, they neglect to correspond with their graces! Woe to them if they imitate the cities on the Lake of Galilee, by greedily accepting the honour done them but never producing the fruits of holiness which should follow such signal and frequent gifts of Heaven. The prophet Amos couples these forgetful, careless souls with the cities which our Lord had treated with such partiality, and which yet remained apathetic and worldly; and he tells us what this slighted benefactor will say to both: 'You only have I known of all the families of the earth! Therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities! Shall two walk together, except they be agreed?' (Amos iii. 2, 3.)
As to Israel, the highly-favoured above all people, he would not agree with the Jesus who so loved him, and was visited with chastisements exactly corresponding to his crimes. In the spring of the year 68, an officer under Vespasian scoured the left banks of the Jordan, driving the terrified Israelites before him. (Jos., De Bello Jud., iv. 7.) They fled in thousands toward Jericho, where they hoped to find refuge; but the river had so flooded the country round the city, that entrance was impossible; the wretched fugitives were overtaken and slain by the Roman troops. The Ark of the Covenant had once opened there a miraculous passage to the tribes of Israel; but even had it been there now, how was it to protect such unworthy descendants of the patriarchs -descendants, that is, who broke the Covenant made by God with the sons of Jacob? A frightful massacre, a merciless mowing down of human beings, followed; and, at what a place! The very place where, forty years before, St. John the Baptist had seen the axe laid to the root of the tree, and foretold the wrath to come upon this brood of vipers, who called themselves children of Abraham, and would not do penance. (St. Matt. iii. 5-12.) A countless multitude drowned themselves in the Jordan; they found death in the very stream to which our Saviour had imparted sanctification by being Himself baptized in it, and imparting to it the power to give light to the world. But Israel had chosen the kingdom of the prince of this world in preference to that of the divine Giver of life. (St. John xix. 15.) The number of those who perished in that holy stream was so great that the heap of their dead bodies made it impossible for vessels to sail in the river; and this fearful obstacle continued until such times as the current had swept the corpses down to the Dead Sea, and scattered far into that dismal lake of malediction that hideous jetsam of the Synagogue. Had not our Lord said, that Sodom's guilt was less than theirs? (St. Luke x. 12.)
Rome and her legions were masters, in the north, of Galilee and Samaria; in the east and west, of the banks of Jordan and of the Mediterranean coast; and the conquest of Idumaea completed the circle of iron and fire that was to shut Jerusalem in. Roman garrisons held Emmaus, Jericho, and all the fortified positions round the Jewish capital. Having, as God's instruments, chastened so many other ungrateful cities. Vespasian was preparing to lay siege to the most guilty of all, when Nero's fall, and the events which followed it, drew the attention, both of himself and of the whole world, from Judea.
The last years of the tyrant had witnessed frequent 'earthquakes in divers places,' (Senec., Natur. Quaest., vi. 1.; Tac. An., xiv. 27, xv. 22.) and 'plagues' (Senec., Ibid., 27; Tac., Ibid., xvi. 13; Suet. In Ner., 39.) and 'signs in the heavens'; (Tac., Hist., v. 13; Jos., De Bello Jud., vi. 5.) but when he died there came 'risings of nation against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.' (St. Luke xxi. 10, 11)
The entire west was in arms; and the east herself was attracted towards Rome by the immense political commotion of the year 69. From the heights of Atlas to the Euxine Sea, and from the Humber to the Nile, provinces and peoples were striving for the mastery. Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, proclaimed emperors by their respective armies, sent their rival legions from Britain and the Rhine, from Illyria and the Danube; they met at Bedriac for mutual slaughter. In one thing alone they that survived were unanimous: friends or foes, all must Italy waste. Rome was taken by the Romans; whilst on the undefended frontiers appeared Suevians, Sarmatians, and Dacians. The Capitol and Jupiter's temple in flames excited the Gauls to declare their independence, and Velleda to stir up Germany to revolt. The old world was gradually disappearing beneath the universal anarchy and war.
Circumstances, then, suddenly seemed favourable to Jerusalem; they gave her a fresh invitation to atone for her crimes; but, as we shall see when commenting on this Sunday's Gospel, she made no other use of them than to multiply her sins, and treat herself with greater cruelty than the Romans would have done…
The Prophecy of Jeremias: Chapters 7-11 (Some say that it couldn't happen to us…)!
Jeremias 7:
The temple of God shall not protect a sinful people, without a sincere conversion. The Lord will not receive the prayers of the prophet for them: because they are obstinate in their sins.
1 The word that came to Jeremias from the Lord, saying: 2 Stand in the gate of the house of the Lord, and proclaim there this word, and say: Hear ye the word of the Lord, all ye men of Juda, that enter in at these gates, to adore the Lord. 3 Thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel: Make your ways and your doings good: and I will dwell with you in this place. 4 Trust not in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord. 5 For if you will order well your ways, and your doings: if you will execute judgement between a man and his neighbor,
6 If you oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, and walk not after strange gods to your own hurt, 7 I will dwell with you in this place: in the land, which I gave to your fathers from the beginning and for evermore. 8 Behold you put your trust in lying words, which shall not profit you: 9 To steal, to murder, to commit adultery, to swear falsely, to offer to Baalim, and to go after strange gods, which you know not. 10 And you have come, and stood before me in this house, in which my name is called upon, and have said: We are delivered, because we have done all these abominations.
11 Is this house then, in which my name hath been called upon, in your eyes become a den of robbers? I, I am he: I have seen it, saith the Lord. 12 Go ye to my place in Silo, where my name dwelt from the beginning: and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel: 13 And now, because you have done all these works, saith the Lord: and I have spoken to you rising up early, and speaking, and you have not heard: and I have called you, and you have not answered: 14 I will do to this house, in which my name is called upon, and in which you trust, and to the places which I have given you and your fathers, as I did to Silo. 15 And I will cast you away from before my face, as I have cast away all your brethren, the whole seed of Ephraim.
16 Therefore, do not thou pray for this people, nor take to thee praise and supplication for them: and do not withstand me: for I will not hear thee. 17 Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Juda, and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire and the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of Heaven, and to offer libations to strange gods, and to provoke me to anger. 19 Do they provoke me to anger, saith the Lord? Is it not themselves, to the confusion of their countenance? 20 Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Behold my wrath and my indignation was enkindled against this place, upon men and upon beasts, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruits of the land, and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched.
18 "Queen of Heaven"... That is, the moon, which they worshipped under that name.
21 Thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat ye the flesh. 22 For I spoke not to your fathers, and I commanded them not, in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning the matter of burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this thing I commanded them, saying: Hearken to my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people: and walk ye in all the way that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you. 24 But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear: but walked in their own will, and in the perversity of their wicked heart: and went backward and not forward, 25 From the day that their fathers came out of the land of Egypt, even to this day. And I have sent to you all my servants the prophets from day to day, rising up early and sending.
22 "I commanded them not"... Viz., such sacrifices as the Jews at this time offered, without obedience; which was the thing principally commanded: so that in comparison with it, the offering of the holocausts and sacrifices was of small account.
26 And they have not hearkened to me: nor inclined their ear: but have hardened their neck, and have done worse than their fathers. 27 And thou shalt speak to them all these words, but they will not hearken to thee: and thou shalt call them, but they will not answer thee. 28 And thou shalt say to them: This is a nation which hath not hearkened to the voice of the Lord their God, nor received instruction: Faith is lost, and is carried away out of their mouth. 29 Cut off thy hair, and cast it away: and take up a lamentation on high: for the Lord hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath, 30 Because the children of Juda have done evil in my eyes, saith the Lord. They have set their abominations in the house in which my name is called upon, to pollute it;
31 And they have built the high places of Topeth, which is in the valley of the son of Ennom, to burn their sons, and their daughters in the fire: which I commanded not, nor thought on in my heart. 32 Therefore behold the days shall come, saith the Lord, and it shall no more be called Topeth, nor the valley of the son of Ennom: but the valley of slaughter, and they shall bury in Topeth, because there is no place. 33 And the carcasses of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be none to drive them away. 34 And I will cause to cease out of the cities of Juda, and out of the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride: for the land shall be desolate.
Jeremias 8:
Other evils that shall fall upon the Jews for their impenitence.
1 At that time, saith the Lord, they shall cast out the bones of the kings of Juda, and the bones of the princes thereof, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves. 2 And they shall spread them abroad to the sun, and the moon, and all the host of Heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and adored: they shall not be gathered, and they shall not be buried: they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth. 3 And death shall be chosen rather than life by all that shall remain of this wicked kindred in all places, which are left, to which I have cast them out, saith the Lord of hosts. 4 And thou shalt say to them: Thus saith the Lord: Shall not he that falleth, rise again? and he that is turned away, shall he not turn again? 5 Why then is this people in Jerusalem turned away with a stubborn revolting? they have laid hold on lying, and have refused to return.
6 I attended, and hearkened; no man speaketh what is good, there is none that doth penance for his sin, saying: What have I done? They are all turned to their own course, as a horse rushing to the battle. 7 The kite in the air hath known her time: the turtle, and the swallow, and the stork have observed the time of their coming: but my people have not known the judgment of the Lord. 8 How do you say: We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Indeed the lying pen of the scribes hath wrought falsehood. 9 The wise men are confounded, they are dismayed, and taken: for they have cast away the word of the Lord, and there is no wisdom in them. 10 Therefore I will give their women to strangers, their fields to others for an inheritance: because from the least even to the greatest all follow covetousness: from the prophet even to the priest, all deal deceitfully.
11 And they healed the breach of the daughter of my people disgracefully, saying Peace, peace: when there was no peace. 12 They are confounded, because they have committed abomination: yea rather they are not confounded with confusion, and they have not known how to blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall; in the time of their visitation they shall fall, saith the Lord. 13 Gathering I will gather them together, saith the Lord, there is no grape on the vines, and there are no figs on the fig tree, the leaf is fallen: and I have given them the things that are passed away. 14 Why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the fenced city, and let us be silent there: for the Lord our God hath put us to silence, and hath given us water of gall to drink: for we have sinned against the Lord. 15 We looked for peace and no good came: for a time of healing, and behold fear.
16 The snorting of his horse was heard from Dan, all the land was moved at the sound of the neighing of his warriors: and they came and devoured the land, and all that was in it: the city and its inhabitants. 17 For behold I will send among you serpents, basilisks, against which there is no charm: and they shall bite you, saith the Lord. 18 My sorrow is above sorrow, my heart mourneth within me. 19 Behold the voice of the daughter my people from a far country: Is not the Lord in Sion, or is not her king in her? why then have they provoked me to wrath with their idols, and strange vanities? 20 The harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.
21 For the affliction of the daughter of my people I am afflicted, and made sorrowful, astonishment hath taken hold on me. 22 Is there no balm in Galaad? or is no physician there? Why then is not the wound of the daughter of my people closed?
Jeremias 9:
The prophet laments the miseries of his people: and their sins, which are the cause of them. He exhorts them to repentance.
1 Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes? and I will weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. 2 Who will give me in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men, and I will leave my people, and depart from them? because they are all adulterers, an assembly of transgressors. 3 And they have bent their tongue, as a bow, for lies, and not for truth: they have strengthened themselves upon the earth, for they have proceeded from evil to evil, and me they have not known, saith the Lord. 4 Let every man take heed of his neighbor, and let him not trust in any brother of his: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every friend will walk deceitfully. 5 And a man shall mock his brother, and they will not speak the truth: for they have taught their tongue to speak lies: they have laboured to commit iniquity.
6 Thy habitation is in the midst of deceit: Through deceit they have refused to know me, saith the Lord. 7 Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: Behold I will melt, and try them: for what else shall I do before the daughter of my people? 8 Their tongue is a piercing arrow, it hath spoken deceit: with his mouth one speaketh peace with his friend, and secretly he lieth in wait for him. 9 Shall I not visit them for these things, saith the Lord? or shall not my soul be revenged on such a nation? 10 For the mountains I will take up weeping and lamentation, and for the beautiful places of the desert, mourning: because they are burnt up, for that there is not a man that passeth through them: and they have not heard the voice of the owner: from the fowl of the air to the beasts they are gone away and departed.
11 And I will make Jerusalem to be heaps of sand, and dens of dragons: and I will make the cities of Juda desolate, for want of an inhabitant. 12 Who is the wise man, that may understand this, and to whom the word of the mouth of the Lord may come that he may declare this, why the land hath perished, and is burnt up like a wilderness, which none passeth through? 13 And the Lord said: Because they have forsaken my law, which I gave them, and have not heard my voice, and have not walked in it. 14 But they have gone after the perverseness of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them. 15 Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel: Behold I will feed this people with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.
16 And I will scatter them among the nations, which they and their fathers have not known: and I will send the sword after them till they be consumed. 17 Thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel: Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, and let them come: and send to them that are wise women, and let them make haste: 18 Let them hasten and take up a lamentation for us: let our eyes shed tears, and our eyelids run down with waters. 19 For a voice of wailing is heard out of Sion: How are we wasted and greatly confounded? because we have left the land, because our dwellings are cast down. 20 Hear therefore, ye women, the word of the Lord: and let your ears receive the word of his mouth: and teach your daughters wailing: and every one her neighbor mourning.
21 For death is come up through our windows, it is entered into our houses to destroy the children from without, the young men from the streets. 22 Speak: Thus saith the Lord: Even the carcass of man shall fall as dung upon the face of the country, and as grass behind the back of the mower, and there is none to gather it. 23 Thus saith the Lord: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, and let not the strong man glory in his strength, and let not the rich man glory in his riches: 24 But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, for I am the Lord that exercise mercy, and judgment, and justice in the earth: for these things please me, saith the Lord. 25 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, and I will visit upon every one that hath the foreskin circumcised.
26 Upon Egypt, and upon Juda, and upon Edom, and upon the children of Ammon, and upon Moab, and upon all that have their hair polled round, that dwell in the desert: for all the nations are uncircumcised in the flesh, but all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.
Jeremias 10:
Neither stars nor idols are to be feared, but the great Creator of all things. The chastisement of Jerusalem for her sins.
1 Hear ye the word which the Lord hath spoken concerning you, O house of Israel. 2 Thus saith the Lord: Learn not according to the ways of the Gentiles: and be not afraid of the signs of Heaven, which the heathens fear: 3 For the laws of the people are vain: for the works of the hand of the workman hath cut a tree out of the forest with an axe. 4 He hath decked it with silver and gold: he hath put it together with nails and hammers, that it may not fall asunder. 5 They are framed after the likeness of a palm tree, and shall not speak: they must be carried to be removed, because they cannot go. Therefore, fear them not, for they can neither do evil nor good.
6 There is none like to thee, O Lord: thou art great and great is thy name in might. 7 Who shall fear thee, O king of nations? for thine is the glory: among all the wise men of the nations, and in all their kingdoms there is none like unto thee. 8 They shall all prove together to be senseless and foolish: the doctrine of their vanity is wood. 9 Silver spread into plates is brought from Tharsis, and gold from Ophaz: the work of the artificer, and of the hand of the coppersmith: violet and purple is their clothing: all these things are the work of artificers. 10 But the Lord is the true God: he is the living God, and the everlasting king, at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide his threatening.
11 Thus then shall you say to them: The gods that have not made Heaven and earth, let them perish from the earth, and from among those places that are under Heaven. 12 He that maketh the earth by his power, that prepareth the world by his wisdom, and stretcheth out the Heavens by his knowledge. 13 At his voice he giveth a multitude of waters in the Heaven, and lifteth up the clouds from the ends of the earth: he maketh lightnings for rain, and bringeth for the wind out of his treasures. 14 Every man is become a fool for knowledge every artist is confounded in his graven idol: for what he hath cast is false, and there is no spirit in them. 15 They are vain things and a ridiculous work: in the time of their visitation they shall perish.
16 The portion of Jacob is not like these: for it is he who formed all things: and Israel is the rod of his inheritance: the Lord of hosts is his name. 17 Gather up thy shame out of the land, thou that dwellest in a siege. 18 For thus saith the Lord: Behold I will cast away far off the inhabitants of the land at this time: and I will afflict them, so that they may be found. 19 Woe is me for my destruction, my wound is very grievous. But I said: Truly this is my own evil, and I will bear it. 20 My tabernacle is laid waste, all my cords are broken: my children are gone out from me, and they are not: there is none to stretch forth my tent any more, and to set up my curtains.
21 Because the pastors have done foolishly, and have not sought the Lord: therefore have they not understood, and all their flock is scattered. 22 Behold the sound of a noise cometh, a great commotion out of the land of the north: to make the cities of Juda a desert, and a dwelling for dragons. 23 I know, O Lord, that the way of a man is not his: neither is it in a man to walk, and to direct his steps. 24 Correct me, O Lord, but yet with judgement: and not in fury, lest thou bring me to nothing. 25 Pour out thy indignation upon the nations that have not known thee, and upon the provinces that have not called upon thy name: because they have eaten up Jacob, and devoured him, and consumed him, and have destroyed his glory.
23 "The way of a man is not his"... The meaning is, that notwithstanding man's free will, yet he can do no good without God's help, nor evil without his permission. So that, in the present case, all the evils which Nabuchodonosor was about to bring upon Jerusalem, could not have come but by the will of God
Jeremias 11:
The prophet proclaims the covenant of God: and denounces evils to the obstinate transgressors of it. The conspiracy of the Jews against him, a figure of their conspiracy against Christ.
1 The word that came from the Lord to Jeremias, saying: 2 Hear ye the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Juda, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 3 And thou shalt say to them: Thus saith the Lord the God of Israel: Cursed is the man that shall not hearken to the words of this covenant, 4 Which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying: Hear ye my voice, and do all things that I command you: and you shall be my people, and I will be your God: 5 That I may accomplish the oath which I swore to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day. And I answered and said: Amen, O Lord.
6 And the Lord said to me: Proclaim aloud all these words in the cities of Juda, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying: Hear ye the words of the covenant, and do them: 7 For protesting I conjured your fathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt even to this day: rising early I conjured them, and said: Hearken ye to my voice: 8 And they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear: but walked every one in the perverseness of his own wicked heart: and I brought upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did them not. 9 And the Lord said to me: A conspiracy is found among the men of Juda, and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 10 They are returned to the former iniquities of their fathers, who refused to hear my words: so these likewise have gone after strange gods, to serve them: the house of Israel, and the house of Juda have made void my covenant, which I made with their fathers.
11 Wherefore thus saith the Lord: Behold I will bring in evils upon them, which they shall not be able to escape: and they shall cry to me, and I will not hearken to them. 12 And the cities of Juda, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall go, and cry to the gods to whom they offer sacrifice, and they shall not save them in the time of their affliction. 13 For according to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O Juda: and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem thou hast set up altars of confusion, altars to offer sacrifice to Baalim. 14 Therefore, do not thou pray for this people, and do not take up praise and prayer for them: for I will not hear them in the time of their cry to me, in the time of their affliction. 15 What is the meaning that my beloved hath wrought muck wickedness in my house? shall the holy flesh take away from thee thy crimes, in which thou hast boasted?
16 The Lord called thy name, a plentiful olive tree, fair, fruitful, and beautiful: at the noise of a word, a great fire was kindled in it and the branches thereof are burnt. 17 And the Lord of hosts that planted thee, hath pronounced evil against thee: for the evils of the house of Israel, and the house of Juda, which they have done to themselves, to provoke me, offering sacrifice to Baalim. 18 But thou, O Lord, hast shewn me, and I have known: then thou shewedst me their doings. 19 And I was as a meek lamb, that is carried to be a victim: and I knew not that they had devised counsels against me, saying: Let us put wood on his bread, and cut him off from the land of the living, and let his name be remembered no more. 20 But thou, O Lord of Sabaoth, who judgest justly, and triest the reins and hearts, let me see thy revenge on them: for to thee I have revealed my cause.
20 "Sabaoth"... That is, of hosts or armies, a name frequently given to God in the scriptures.-- Ibid.
20 "Thy revenge"... This was rather a prediction of what was to happen, with an approbation of the divine justice, than an imprecation.
21 Therefore thus saith the Lord to the men of Anathoth, who seek thy life, and say: Thou shalt not prophesy in the name of the Lord, and thou shalt not die in our hands. 22 Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: Behold I will visit upon them: and their young men shall die by the sword, their sons and their daughters shall die by famine. 23 And there shall be no remains of them: for I will bring in evil upon the men of Anathoth, the year of their visitation.
Above provided by Father Lawrence Smith
Sacerdos vagus
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