John Chrysostom — Commentary on Scripture

Jeremiah 1:6

Prophets had power either to speak or to refrain from speaking. They were not bound by necessity but were honored with a privilege. For this reason Jonah fled, for this reason Ezekiel delayed and for this reason Jeremiah excused himself. And God drives them not only by compulsion but also by advising, exhorting, threatening. He does not darken their mind, because to cause distraction, madness and great darkness is the proper work of a demon. It is God’s work to illuminate and with consideration to teach what is necessary.

HOMILIES ON 1 CORINTHIANS 29:2

Jeremiah 1:9

I say this, for Isaiah said, “The Lord has given me a learned tongue that I should know when I ought to speak a word.” Furthermore, what of Jeremiah? When he was sent, he then was inspired by God. And what of Ezekiel? For, when he had eaten the chapter of the book, he then spoke prophetically.

HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 69

Jeremiah 2:5-7

“What transgression have your fathers found in me?” … showing their thankless disposition, and that when in the enjoyment of all things, they requited it by the contraries; but here God expresses it with yet greater force.

HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 68:2

Jeremiah 2:5-7

Again, elsewhere he says, “What fault have your fathers found in me?” That which is said is great and marvelous, because what he says means, “What wrong have I done?” God tells human beings, “What sin have I committed?”—something that not even slaves tolerate that their master utter.

HOMILIES ON REPENTANCE AND ALMSGIVING. 4:5.23

Jeremiah 2:9-11

God actually permitted erroneous and unworthy opinions of himself to prevail—opinions such as that he was formerly a body and that he was visible.… For he nowhere considers his own dignity but always what will be profitable to us.… Even in reproving he stoops down, as when he speaks by the prophet, “Has a nation changed their gods?” And in every part of Scripture there are instances of his humility both in words and actions.

HOMILIES ON TITUS 3

Jeremiah 2:9-11

For since you are not persuaded by the Scriptures, I am compelled to shame you by those who are outside your company. God also did this to the Jews when he said, “Go to the Isles of Kittim and send to Kedar and find out if the nations will change their gods which are no gods.”

HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 17:6

Jeremiah 2:13

Still the Anomoeans have another well-rehearsed argument. What is that? Scripture says, “God is spirit.” Tell me, then, does that bring his essence to light? Will anyone accept that argument if he has even drawn a little way near to the doors of the divine Scriptures? According to that argument, God will also be fire, just as it has been written that God is spirit, so has it been written, “Our God is a consuming fire,” and again, “a fountain of living water.” Not only will God be a spirit and a fountain and a fire; he will also be a soul, a wind, a human mind, and other things far more absurd than these.

AGAINST THE ANOMOEANS 5:41

Jeremiah 2:19

When he does not convince with his word, God many times permits the experience of things to be the teaching, something that he also said to the Jews. When he expended myriads of words though the prophets, he neither persuaded nor embraced the Jews. Allowing them to be educated through punishment, he said to them, “Your apostasy shall correct you, and wickedness shall reprove you.”

HOMILIES ON REPENTANCE AND ALMSGIVING 1:4.27

Jeremiah 2:21-22

Hence God gave the gift of prayer. But he does this, even though he does not need for us to ask, but that we might not grow indifferent from being saved without effort. For this reason, he said to Jeremiah, “Do not pray for this people, for I will not hear you,” not wishing to stop his praying (for he earnestly longs for our salvation) but to terrify them. Seeing this, the prophet did not stop praying. So that you may see that God did not wish to turn Jeremiah from it, but to shame them that he said this, hear what it says. “Don’t you see what they are doing?” Also when he says to the city, “Although you wash yourself with soda and use an abundance of soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me,” it is not that he may cast them into despair that he so speaks, but that he may rouse them to repentance.

HOMILIES ON ROMANS 14

Jeremiah 3:1-2

He has come as a physician, not as a judge. Therefore, in like manner, as those of old took harlots for wives, even so God too married to himself the nature that had played the harlot. This also prophets from the beginning declare to have taken place with respect to the synagogue. But that spouse was ungrateful toward him who had been a husband to her, while on the contrary, the church, when once delivered from the evils received from our ancestors, continued to embrace the Bridegroom.

HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 3:5

Jeremiah 3:1-2

“You did sit waiting for them like a deserted bird.” Now if God did not exclude from repentance her who had many times committed fornication, much more will he embrace your soul, which has now fallen for the first time. For certainly there is no lover of bodily beauty, even if he be very frantic, who is so inflamed with the love of his mistress as God longs after the salvation of our souls.… See at least, both in the introduction of Jeremiah and many other places of the prophets, when he is despised and scorned, how he again hastens forward and pursues the friendship of those who turn away from him. He also himself made clear in the Gospels saying, “O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! The city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!”

LETTER TO THE FALLEN THEODORE 1:13

Jeremiah 3:3-5

What then is one to do?… We ought not to apply punishment merely to the scale of the offense. Rather, keep in view the disposition of the sinner so that, while wishing to mend what is torn, you do not make the rent worse. Because you do not wish, in your zealous endeavors to restore what is fallen, to make the ruin greater. Weak and careless characters are addicted for the most part to the pleasures of the world. If they have the opportunity to be proud of their birth and position, they may yet, if gently and gradually brought to repent of their errors, be delivered, partially at least, if not perfectly, from the evils by which they are possessed. But if anyone were to inflict the discipline all at once he would deprive them of this slight chance of amendment. When the soul has been forced to put off shame, it lapses into a callous condition. It neither yields to kindly words, nor bends to threats nor is susceptible of gratitude but becomes far worse than that city that the prophet reproached, saying, “You had the face of a harlot, refusing to be ashamed before all men.”

ON THE PRIESTHOOD 2:4

Jeremiah 3:3-5

And this again is the peculiarity of harlots that they are his who gives the gold. Even if he is a slave or a gladiator, or any person whatever, yet if he offers their hire they receive him. But the free, even should they be nobler than all, they do not accept without the money.… For that shamelessness makes harlots, hear the prophet saying, “You were shameless toward all. You had a harlot’s countenance.” This may be said to the covetous also, “You were shameless toward all,” not toward these or those, but “toward all.”

ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 15:7

Jeremiah 3:6-9

For the evils we have once perpetrated cannot provoke God so much as our being unwilling to make any change in the future. To sin may be a merely human failing, but to continue in the same sin ceases to be human and becomes altogether devilish. For observe how God by the mouth of his prophet blames this more than the other. “For,” we read, “I said unto her after she had done all these deeds of fornication, return to me, and yet she returned not.” … “Declare you first your iniquities that you may be justified.” Now this he demands from us in order to intensify our love toward him.

LETTER TO THE FALLEN THEODORE 1:15

Jeremiah 3:6-9

He directs his speech to the city, in this way, too, being minded to correct his hearers, and said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” What is meant by this repetition? This is the manner of one pitying her and gently loving her. She is like a woman who is beloved. He always loved her indeed, yet she has despised him who loved her. Therefore at the point of being punished, he pleads, being now about to inflict the punishment. This he does also in the prophets, using these words, “I said, ‘she will return to me,’ but she did not return.”

HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 74:3

Jeremiah 3:6-9

These two indeed are chief sins, engendered by violent lusts, the one of sexual desire, the other of the desire of money. Hear what God said to Jerusalem, “I said, after she had committed all these prostitutions, she will return to me, and she did not return.” When we have come back to the earnest love of God, he remembers not the former things. God is not as people. He reproaches us not with the past, neither does he say, when we repent, “Why were you absent for so long a time?” Only let us approach him as we ought. Let us cleave to him earnestly and rivet our hearts to his fear.…How many other such changes would you see, both to have taken place back then and now taking place every day? For this reason I say, “Neither let him on the cross despair, nor let him in the church be confident.” For to this last it is said, “Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” And to the other, “Shall not he that falls arise?” And, “Lift up the hands that hang down, and the feeble knees.” Again, to these he said, “Watch”; but to those, “Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead.” The…

These two indeed are chief sins, engendered by violent lusts, the one of sexual desire, the other of the desire of money. Hear what God said to Jerusalem, “I said, after she had committed all these prostitutions, she will return to me, and she did not return.” When we have come back to the earnest love of God, he remembers not the former things. God is not as people. He reproaches us not with the past, neither does he say, when we repent, “Why were you absent for so long a time?” Only let us approach him as we ought. Let us cleave to him earnestly and rivet our hearts to his fear.…How many other such changes would you see, both to have taken place back then and now taking place every day? For this reason I say, “Neither let him on the cross despair, nor let him in the church be confident.” For to this last it is said, “Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” And to the other, “Shall not he that falls arise?” And, “Lift up the hands that hang down, and the feeble knees.” Again, to these he said, “Watch”; but to those, “Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead.” These need to preserve what they have, and those to become what they are not. These need to preserve their health, those to be delivered from their infirmity, for they are sick. But many even of the sick become healthy, and of the healthy many, in being remiss, get sick.

HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 67:3-4

Jeremiah 4:2

If the old law had belonged to the devil, it would not have led people away from idolatry. Rather, it would have drawn them on and cast them into it, for this is the devil’s desire. But now we see the opposite effect produced by the old law. And indeed this very thing, the oath, was ordained of old for this cause: that they might not swear by the idols. “You shall swear,” said he, “by the true God.” There were then no small advantages that the law effected, but rather very great. That they came to the “strong meat” was the work of its care.

HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 17:5

Jeremiah 4:14

To pray with unwashed hands is a thing of no consequence, but to pray with an unclean conscience is the worst of all evils. Listen to what was said to the Jews, who were much concerned about such exterior purification, “Wash your heart from wickedness. How long shall hurtful thoughts abide in you?” Let us also wash our hearts, not with filth but with pure water, with almsgiving and not with covetousness.

HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 73

Jeremiah 5:4

Paul says about those who live in piety and prosperity, “I thank God that in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge.” And to those who are impious, the blessed Jeremiah says, “Maybe they are poor. For this reason, they could not hear the word of the Lord.” Do you see that he calls poor those who have distanced themselves from piety? Therefore, God is merciful to those who sin because they are spiritually poor, and he places demands on those who act justly because they are spiritually rich. To the former he gives freely, on account of their poverty. From the latter he collects with great care, on account of their wealth of piety. That which he does to the righteous and to sinners, he does to both the rich and the poor.

HOMILIES ON REPENTANCE AND ALMSGIVING 7:3.8

Jeremiah 5:8

Some are so cold and senseless that they are always looking only for the things that are here and saying such things as, “Let me enjoy all the present things for a time, and then I will consider things out of sight. I will gratify my belly. I will be a slave to pleasures. I will make full use of the present life; give me today, and take tomorrow.” What foolishness! How are these people any different from goats and swine? For if the prophet allows that they are not to be considered human when they “neigh after their neighbor’s wife,” who shall blame us for considering them to be goats and swine and more insensible than donkeys when they hold as uncertain those things that, in the end, are even more evident than what we see?

HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 13:7