Complete Works of Saint Jerome, Vol. V

(Ver. 7.) "And you shall turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and your arm shall be bare Vulgate: extended, and you shall prophesy against it. LXX: And you shall prepare your face for the conclusion of Jerusalem, and you shall strengthen your arm, and you shall prophesy over it." Preparation of the face is needed, as well as strength and the confirmation of an arm that is bare and naked, so that the siege of the city may be demonstrated not only by voice but also by the gesture and habit of the prophet.

(Ver. 8.) "Behold, I have surrounded you with bonds, and you shall not turn yourself from one side to the other, until you complete the days of your siege (or conclusion)." The left parts are assigned to Israel because they were without the temple and the knowledge of God in Samaria; the right to Judah, in which is the worship and religion of God. And it should be noted that in one is the punishment of sinners, in the other the exercise of virtue. Nor does he turn himself from one side to the other, so that no rest from the torments is indicated, until the perfect conclusion of the aforementioned days is fulfilled. What are days for the prophet are years for those who suffer (Gen. 29). And the years that Laban thought were years, for Jacob were as if they were few days. Moreover, there is variety not only in punishments according to the diversity of merits; but also in the retribution of goods, the lambs stand on the right, and the goats on the left. Hence it is written in another place: "The heart of the wise is in his right hand, but the heart of the fool is in his left" (Ecclus. 10:1). There are the bonds of the Lord, by which we are bound unto salvation; there are others of the devil, by which he had bound a woman for eighteen years in the Gospel (Luke 13). Hence also, "Each one is bound by the ropes of his own sins" (Prov. 5:22). These the Lord loosed through the type of the raised Lazarus, who had lain in the tomb bound with strips and cloths (John 11).

(Ver. 9 ff.) "And you take for yourself wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and vetches: and you shall put them into one vessel, and make for yourself bread by the number of the days that you sleep on your side: for three hundred and ninety days you shall eat it. And your food which you eat shall be in weight, twenty staters a day: from time to time you shall eat it. And you shall drink water in measure, the sixth part of a Hin: from time to time you shall drink it. And you shall eat it as ash-baked barley bread, and you shall cover it with human dung in their eyes." What we have translated as vitia vetches, for which the Hebrew says CHASAMIM spelt: the Septuagint and Theodotion placed ὄλυραν spelt/emmer, which some think is oats, others rye (a). The first edition of Aquila and Symmachus translated it as ζέας spelt, which we call either far, or in the native language of Italy and Pannonia, spica or spelt. In the vessel, the Septuagint also add "earthen," and the prophet is commanded to demonstrate by his work the coming famine and the poverty of the people of Israel. For just as in the scarcity of all things, one does not seek the varieties and delicacies of food, but how the belly may be filled: so now the prophet puts wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and oats into one vessel, and makes three hundred and ninety loaves, which he should eat day by day. These loaves have twenty shekels, that is, staters. A shekel, (b) that is, a stater, has four drachmas. And eight drachmas make a Roman ounce: so that one loaf is said to have ten ounces, by which the soul is dragged rather than sustained. The sterility of the food is increased by the sterility of the water. For he is ordered to drink the sixth part of the Hebrew measure, which is called a hin, every day. Furthermore, a hin makes two Attic χοᾶς choes: which we can call two Italian sextarii, so that the hin measure is [equal to] the Jewish sextarius, and our military [measure], of which a sixth part makes a third part of an Italian sextarius. This food and drink, according to the famous Orator, does not grant strength, but prevents death. As to what he says: "From time to time you shall eat or drink," that signifies from evening until evening: although some mistakenly think it should be understood as from year to year. And the loaves themselves are made like ash-baked barley bread. And it is said to him that he should cover them with human dung, not that those who are about to eat do not know it (for ignorance is accustomed to temper miseries), but that they see it, and it is in their eyes, so that they may endure the horror of the sight before the nausea of the taste. It should also be noted that, according to the number of days of the left side, three hundred and ninety ash-baked loaves are commanded to be made and eaten day by day; and of the loaves for the forty days of the right side, there is complete silence: so that the holy Scripture may secretly insinuate that the punishment of the sinful people is not the same, if at least they have knowledge of God, as it is for him who has departed entirely from the religion of the true God. We can also say this according to spiritual understanding, that the Jewish people, after their offense against God, even to this day eat ash-baked bread mixed with wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and oats; of which one is the food of men, the other of beasts. In the fact that they are seen to believe in one God, they have something of wheat. But because they deny the Son, they are fed with the barley of beasts and with beans, by which the bellies of the eaters are inflated and the mind is said to be oppressed: so much so that for the Pythagoreans, this food is detestable. On account of a lentil stew, Esau lost his birthright (Gen. 25). Millet is the food of rustics, and the wild, and fatted animals. Oats, or vetches and spelt, are eaten by brute animals. That which is written, according to the LXX, that Elijah fleeing Jezebel found an ὀλυρίτην ash-baked loaf (3 Kings 19), that was the time of persecution, from which that opinion of the Rabbis especially collapses concerning the double shekel, profane and sacred, which they think was twice the value of the common one, of which they contend Jerome speaks here. But neither Jerome nor Josephus acknowledged this distinction; nor can it be derived easily from Scripture itself.