Complete Works of Saint Jerome, Vol. V

has described Jerusalem in the dust, he may depict the entire siege against it: foreshadowing the fortifications, the heaped-up mounds, the crown of the besieging army, and the battering rams in a circle, by all of which cities are accustomed to be captured. Fortifications are called those things by which a city is closed so that none of the besieged can escape; heaped-up mounds are those by which the rampart and trenches are filled; camps are the watches of the soldiers around the perimeter; battering rams are those by which the foundations of the walls are shaken and the joining of the stones is dissolved. This, however, is said to signify the near captivity of the city of Jerusalem under Zedekiah, in whose eleventh year both the king and the city were captured. For "brick," which in Greek is called by the feminine gender ἡ πλίνθος the brick/tile, Symmachus translated more clearly as πλινθίον a small brick/tablet, which we can call a small brick or an abacus. Upon its dust, geometers are accustomed to describe γραμμὰς lines and radii. From this, some want it not to be absurd to have knowledge of this science (recounting those examples where Joshua the son of Nun sent scouts to describe the land (Jos. 2), which is properly called Geometry: and that the Angel in Zechariah had a geometric measuring line for measuring Jerusalem (Zech. 2). And because the Prophet is now commanded to describe Jerusalem in the dust (which among them is properly original: "scenographia" called scenography the art of perspective drawing), we can interpret the brick also as a mockery of Israel, because it served Pharaoh in mud and brick (Exod. 1). Or so that the city, which they thought to be firm and impregnable, may be compared to the most fragile brick, which at the touch of water is immediately dissolved, so that that of which it was said before is it not the hardest rock, or is it the desert mountain of the daughters of Zion, might be turned into a brick, which is corrupted by the Babylonian flood; according to that which is written: Therefore the Lord will bring upon us the many and strong waters, the king of the Assyrians (Isa. 8:7).

(Verse 3) And you, take to yourself an iron pan: and you will place it as an iron wall between you and between the city, and you will strengthen your face against it, and it will be in a siege, and you will surround it. It is a sign to the house of Israel.

What we said above, that both the prophet himself and the description of the brick, surrounding it with fortifications, a mound, and battering rams, precede as a sign of the siege of Jerusalem, this is now said more clearly, after many things which are in between: It is a sign to the house of Israel. The iron pan, which is placed like a wall between the prophet and the city, demonstrates the great anger of God, which is not fatigued by any prayers, nor bent toward mercy. For just as iron subdues all metals, and nothing is harder than it, so the incredible crimes of Jerusalem made God, naturally soft, become by their own fault most hard. The pan is also called the wall placed between the people and God, to show that the whole multitude is shortly to be broken and reduced to nothing. And the strengthening of the face against the city is an indication of severity: according to that which we read written elsewhere: The face of the Lord is against those who do evil; to destroy their memory from the earth (Ps. 33:17).

(a) The manuscript codices read in this way; but the published books retain sciographia shadow-painting/sketch instead of scenographia. However, it is scenography from Vitruvius: The sketching of the front and receding sides, and the correspondence of all lines to the center of the compass: which perfectly fits the present place of Ezekiel describing Jerusalem in the dust. MART.

(b) Victorius says: Josiah reigned for thirty-one, not thirty-two years, 4 Kings 22; 2 Chronicles 34, according to all. But nothing has been changed, because the reasoning of the numbers which he calculates would not correspond if one were removed. For with that removed, they would be 163, not 164, and 134, not 135, and thus the prophetic number of 390 would be off by one year. Nor should you therefore think the most holy man lapsed in memory, for he takes an imperfect year for a perfect one: and that is the reason that in the total sum he calculates not 390 years, but 389 years and four months. But the Sacred Scripture counts only whole years in the lives of Kings, not imperfect ones. But the holy man drew the history from elsewhere that Josiah lived a few months over thirty-one years.

(Verse 4 et seqq.) And you will sleep upon your left side, and you will place the iniquities of the house of Israel upon it, by the number of days in which you will sleep upon it, and you will take their iniquity. I have given you the years of their iniquity, by the number of days, three hundred and ninety days, and you will bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when you have completed these, you will sleep upon your right side a second time, and you will take the iniquity of the house of Judah for forty days. I have given you a day for a year, I say, a day for a year.

We must ask who are the three hundred and ninety years which are calculated for as many days, in which the prophet would sleep bound and constrained on his left side; so that he would not move to the other side, showing the captivity and miseries of the ten tribes, that is, of Israel. And who are the other forty years, in which he would lie on his right side for Judah and its iniquities, or as holy Scripture narrates, he will sleep. Concerning Israel, this must be said, that under King Pekah the son of Remaliah, who was the nineteenth to reign in Israel for twenty years, came Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria (4 Kings 15), and captured Ijon, and Abel, the house of Maacah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, and the entire land of Naphtali, and translated them to the Assyrians. After him, Hoshea the son of Elah reigned in Israel for nine years, and was captured with all of Samaria by Shalmaneser king of Assyrians, and was translated into Halah and the rivers of Habor of Gozan in the cities of the Medes. In the sixth year of King Hezekiah, as the holy history of Kings tells (ibid., 17), Hoshea was captured: from which, if we calculate in order how many years Israel was pressed under the anguish and yoke of captivity, we can thus find it. From the sixth year until the twenty-ninth (for Hezekiah reigned for so many years) twenty-four years are calculated: to whom succeeded Manasseh, and he reigned for fifty-five years. After him Amon reigned for two years. After whom Josiah for thirty-two years. To whom succeeded Jehoiakim, who was also surnamed Eliakim, and he reigned for eleven years. After whom Jehoiachin, surnamed Jeconiah, who was immediately led into captivity, and in his place reigned Zedekiah for eleven years, under whom Jerusalem was captured and the temple destroyed. Thus there are from ...?