The Jews have borne away and taken away [their joy]. For in Jl 2:12, “because joy has been taken away from the sons of men.” I do not think that the particle quia (“because”) is to be taken as logical or rational in force, but rather as a stylistic ornament employed by the Hebrews, and one that among the Latins would be altogether idle if used merely for adornment, though elsewhere it is often so employed. Thus in John: “You have said well, because I have no husband,” and similar expressions; or certainly it has the same force as ideo quod or idcirco (“for this reason”). So too in Hosea 9:15: “All their wickedness is in Gilgal, because there I hated them,” that is, for this reason I hated them. In this sense, then: “Because the grain has been confounded, the vine has languished; therefore joy has been confounded and taken away.” To have joy “confounded” by someone is the same as for it to be absent or to perish. Compare what we said a little earlier on the phrase “because it has perished from their mouth.” Such fierce and frequent reproaches are hurled in anger.
Jl 2:13: “Gird yourselves and lament, O priests; wail, ministers of the altar. Enter in, lie in sackcloth, ministers of my God.” These words sufficiently indicate that this prophecy pertains to the two tribes among whom the true temple, the legitimate priesthood, and the sacrifices instituted by the Law existed. The prophet exhorts especially the priests, whose task it is to avert divine wrath by prayers and sacrifices, so that by mourning and tears they may render the Lord appeased toward the people.
“As for ‘enter in, lie in sackcloth,’ it is uncertain to what the word enter refers: whether to a private house of some sort, or to the temple. In either place the priests could lie in sackcloth and ashes. Sackcloth is assumed as the garb of penitents—what Scripture elsewhere calls cilicium, a rough and hairy garment—and fasting is immediately enjoined along with it. All these things are most powerful for softening divine offense.
The phrase “wail, ministers of the altar” is added by way of per exegesim, for it is the same as “lament, O priests.” David indeed lay down in mourning in his house when his son conceived in adultery was sick unto death. Likewise Ahab lay down (1 Kings 21) in similar sorrow and fear. It is very likely that priests—and even the lay crowd—were accustomed to lie in the temple, sprinkled with ashes and with sackcloth spread beneath them, as we learn from Judith 4, where the Jews are said to have done something similar in pain and fear. This is precisely what Joel now exhorts them to do: “All the people cried to the Lord with great insistence, and humbled their souls with fastings and prayers, both they and their wives. The priests clothed themselves in sackcloth, and the infants lay prostrate before the face of the temple of the Lord; and they covered the altar of the Lord with sackcloth.”
From these things both interpretations seem to me probable, though nothing is certain. Yet the latter appears more fitting to the priestly ministry, since priests bear a public role and must labor for the common cause, offering a public example and performing their ministry openly. Therefore, in the temple—where perhaps the altars were covered with sackcloth—it was also spread out for the priests as bedding and couches, where they sought not long and pleasant sleep on a soft bed, but brief, troubled rest on the hard ground. Thus Jerome, Vatablus, and Figueroa.
From this it is clear that to avert the wrath of God not only a brief, daytime penitence is enjoined, but also a prolonged, nocturnal one, so that by such persistence and sustained effort the divine heart may be assailed and the anger broken or blunted—especially since prolonged austerity is wont to be loosened and undone by nocturnal softness and cleanliness, and the restraint practiced by day is easily polluted by forbidden nightly pleasures.
Still, I am uncertain whether the word lie down indicates sleep, or rather rest—albeit uncomfortable—due not so much to the hardness of a bed as of the ground, or whether it refers instead to that bodily posture in which men lie prostrate in the dust while praying as suppliants. For the posture of one lying down and praying upon the earth is exceedingly powerful for arousing compassion. We have many examples of this among pagan writers, and even more among the sacred authors. We discuss this further in our commentaries on Isaiah, particularly Isaiah 29:4: “You shall be brought low; from the earth you shall speak, and from the dust your voice shall be heard; your voice shall be like that of a spirit from the ground.” And also Lamentations 3:29: “He puts his mouth in the dust; perhaps there may yet be hope.” These passages strongly support this interpretation. Likewise Isaiah 49:23: “With their faces to the ground they shall worship you, and lick the dust of your feet,” and Psalm 71:9: “The Ethiopians shall fall down before him, and his enemies shall lick the earth.”
From this custom it perhaps arose that prayers are said to be laid down or prostrated, because they are poured forth by men who are themselves prostrate, and that those who pray deeply fall upon their faces or lie upon the ground.
Among pagan authors, Livy relates (Book 3, Decade 1): “Mothers lay scattered everywhere, sweeping the temples with their hair, begging pardon for the anger of heaven and an end to the pestilence.” Lucius Piso, as Valerius Maximus reports (Book 8, Chapter 1), when he was in grave danger in a lawsuit and seemed already condemned, kissed the earth and the judges’ feet, filthy with rain and mud; and when he showed his mouth and beard smeared with filth, he escaped the terrible judgment that threatened him.
This final explanation does not displease me, though I do not therefore reject the earlier ones.
As for “enter,” the Hebrew is בֹּאוּ (boʾu, “come”), which has the same force as venite. Hence I suspected—and I am still not far from that view—that the word does not denote any place or withdrawal, whether a cell, the temple, or another public space, but is rather an interjection that spurs on the hesitant and, as it were, applies the goad—like the Latin agedum, agite. That verbs such as “come,” “go,” and the like are used as interjections we have noted in our commentary on Jeremiah 2:1. As if he were saying: “Come now, quickly—lie down in sackcloth, because the sacrifice perishes from the house of your God.”
Verse 14: “Gather the elders.” There is no command more powerful than that which is proposed by the example of the best leaders. No one would be ashamed to do what leaders or those in authority not only command but themselves practice. Indeed, it would be far more shameful if leaders themselves either shrank from, fled from, or despised as unseemly or base what they judged honorable for others.
The prophet first commanded the priests—the leaders by dignity—to mourn and clothe themselves in sackcloth. Now, having given the example of sackcloth, he orders them also to summon the people and proclaim lamentation and a cry. One who is wounded invites others to be wounded; one clothed in sackcloth calls others to sackcloth; one sprinkled with ashes calls others to ashes; and one fasting not only invites others to fast but compels them.
“To sanctify a fast” means nothing other than to institute and observe a fast legitimately and religiously. For many fasts, although lawfully established with an assembly convened and the people consenting, were nevertheless not undertaken in such a way as to be pleasing to God, since they served private purposes rather than the divine will. Of these God speaks in Zechariah 7:5: “When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for these seventy years, did you really fast for me?” And Isaiah 58 rebukes the fasts of the Jews as idle and vain. Therefore, sanctifying a fast commends holiness in fasting, but also adds something else—namely that it be public and legitimate, instituted for a public reason, with the people summoned and bound by law and vow, either perpetually or for a fixed time.
Such were the many fasts which the Jews instituted around that time, whether when they feared an enemy—whose severe disasters the prophets foretold—or when they had suffered some calamity. Hence, for various misfortunes various fasts were decreed, which even now, as I hear, the Jews observe: for the blinding of Zedekiah, the killing of his sons, the siege of the city, the destruction of the walls, and the burning of the sanctuary. All these fasts were sanctified with the people summoned and consenting.
“To sanctify,” according to scriptural usage, signifies to decree something sacred or legitimate by a certain ceremony. Thus war is said to be sanctified when it is undertaken for religion, and soldiers are sanctified when their levy is solemnly enrolled—that is, when an oath or military sacrament intervenes. On the verb to sanctify we have spoken more fully at Jeremiah 1:5, “Before you came forth from the womb I sanctified you.”
This, I believe, is what the prophet now urges: that the people be convened and, by common consent, decree a fast by which the wrath of God might be turned away—a wrath from which they could fear all extremes. Perhaps for no other reason does the prophet command that the elders be summoned, not merely those who are old in years, but those who are elders in counsel and prudence, so that they may deliberate concerning the common good and, in a lawful assembly, decide upon proclaiming and sanctifying a fast.
Verse 15: “Alas for the day, for the day of the Lord is near.” The Hebrew אָהָהּ (ʾahah) our interpreter renders as A, thrice repeated, as also in Jeremiah 1:6, though in Jeremiah 4:10 he renders it heu, heu, heu (“alas, alas, alas”).
“As devastation from the Mighty One it shall come.” For “the Mighty One” the Hebrew has שַׁדַּי (Shaddai), a word derived from the root שדד (shadad, “to devastate”), and it is a name of God signifying the strong conqueror and devastator. There is here an elegant paronomasia, since from the same root is derived שֹׁד (shod, “devastation”).
Verse 16: “Has not food perished before your eyes from the house of our God, joy and gladness?” This passage has persuaded many that what was said earlier about the caterpillar, the locust, and the palmerworm succeeding one another should be understood literally of those insects, and not figuratively of a hostile army. But just as I recognize there the forces of the Chaldeans—as the prophet himself teaches not obscurely—so here I understand a severe famine by which the people also labored at the same time.
Yet I think a simpler sense is this: that the prophet prescribes that all who fast—whether the fast be proclaimed only for this immediate emergency or also for another time—should come together in the temple and cry out to the Lord, that He might aid a people so sorely afflicted. It is very likely that such an interjection indicates intense sorrow or disturbance.
The word day is in the third case, as the prefixed lamed proves, and “day” is taken metonymically for the events which on that day, or during that longer period, hang over the unhappy people from the Chaldean enemy. Whatever those misfortunes are, they are signified by the name “devastation from the Mighty One,” as if to say: devastation shall come from the devastator—namely from one whose power and ravaging hand none could resist. Therefore, they must meet him not so much with arms as with fasting and prayers.
Nevertheless, food had failed not only because of locusts and caterpillars, but also because of the lack of rain. Jeremiah teaches—either explicitly or not obscurely (chapter 14)—that rain failed at that time, and therefore cattle perished. The prophet here thus announces two things: a hostile assault, by which the borders of Judah would often be widely devastated, and a lack of rain, by which that unhappy region would long suffer, so that both men and beasts would waste away with hunger and misery. This, in my judgment, is sufficiently clear from the end of the chapter, which we shall discuss in its place.
Food is said to have perished “before their eyes” because this could happen in many ways: either because, when crops and vines had already reached timely maturity, all were suddenly burned or trampled by the Chaldean invasion; or because hostile insects attacked vines and crops while the fields were still tender; or because drought and lack of rain caused it. For although sowing was done with timely rain and crops sprang up, giving hope to the farmers, the later rain could fail, and as the crops withered from dryness, all hope and joy of the farmers was dashed. This latter explanation seems to me more likely, and it accords well with Jeremiah’s history and with the whole thread of the chapter.
When crops failed for human sustenance and the pasture of herds and flocks dried up, there were no victims to be rightly slaughtered in the temple, nor libations to be offered from grain and oil; and thus all joy seemed taken away from altar and temple.
Verse 17: “The beasts have rotted in their dung.” This is variously explained. The Septuagint has “the beasts leaped”; the Chaldean paraphrase has “the wine-vessels rotted”; more recent interpreters read “the grains rotted under their clods,” as though the seeds were corrupted by harmful moisture in the very womb of the earth and perished before sprouting. If that were the sense, I might favor this latter interpretation. But without doubt our interpreter renders it better according to the Hebrew word בְּהֵמָה (behemah, “beasts”).
Now we must consider what it means that beasts rotted “in their dung.” The common opinion of interpreters is that, lacking fodder, the beasts remained shut up in their stalls, and since there was no straw on which they might lie more cleanly and comfortably, they lay in their own filth and there, consumed by hunger, wasted away. I do not reject this view, but rather approve and embrace it since it pleases many.
Yet I will say something further. Nothing hinders this interpretation, since “dung” or “dunghill” is not always that foul and malodorous substance alone. A dunghill is any filthy place, however it came to be so. Thus a dunghill is said to be the place where men fell and rotted. Jeremiah 16 says of the Jews: “They shall die of deadly diseases; they shall not be lamented nor buried; they shall be dung upon the face of the earth.” And of those who fell under Sisera in Midian: “They perished at Endor; they became dung for the earth” (Psalm 83). Job lay on no other dunghill than that which contracted filth and stench from his ulcerated and fetid body. And when Jehoiakim is said in Jeremiah 22 to have “the burial of a donkey,” it means nothing else than that he would have no honorable burial.
Thus it seems to me that the beasts, once they were entirely useless, were not kept in stalls by the mangers—utterly deprived of fodder and destined to die there—but rather failed in the fields and arid pastures, to which they had been driven by their owners so that they might seek food for themselves and free their masters from expense and trouble. This the prophet himself either teaches or indicates when he says shortly after: “Because there is no pasture for them.” That beasts and herds perished in the fields from drought and hunger at that time Jeremiah also indicates in chapter 14: “The doe gave birth in the field and abandoned her young because there was no grass”; and in chapter 12 he says that for the same reason every beast had been consumed: “How long shall the land mourn and the grass of every field wither? Because of the wickedness of those who dwell in it, beast and bird are consumed.”
Nor does anything hinder this interpretation from the fact that the beasts are said to have “rotted in their dung.” For dung, or a dunghill (stercus, sterquilinium), is not always that foul and malodorous matter which putrefies from corrupted straw and the fodder of beasts, and which is commonly found in those places where herds are stalled at the manger. Rather, a dunghill is any filthy and fetid place, however it may have come to be so. Indeed, a dunghill is said to be the place where men have fallen and rotted. Thus Jeremiah 16 says of the Jews: “They shall die by deadly diseases; they shall not be lamented nor buried; they shall be dung upon the face of the earth.” And of those who fell under Sisera in Midian, because they remained unburied, it is said: “They perished at Endor; they became dung of the earth” (Psalm 83). Nor did Job lie on any other dunghill than that which contracted filth and stench from his ulcerated and foul-smelling body. And when Jehoiakim is said to be buried in Jeremiah 22 with “the burial of a donkey,” this means nothing other than that he would not have the honor of burial.
Thus it seems to me very plausible that when the beasts are said to have rotted “in their dung,” nothing else is signified except that they were slain by hunger and wasted away in the very place where they fell while seeking pasture in the fields; and that the place itself, like a rotting corpse dissolved into filth, is called dung or a dunghill.
This passage is variously applied by the Fathers in a moral sense. One example will suffice. Gregory the Great says (Moralia, Book 24, Chapter 8): those who succumb to carnal affection are no longer called men but beasts, as is said through the prophet of certain people who die in their sin: “The beasts rotted in their dung.” For beasts to rot in their dung is for carnal men to end their lives in the stench of lust. They are declared not to be men but beasts, of whom the prophet says: “Each one neighed after the wife of his neighbor.”
“They have broken down the storehouses; the granaries are destroyed, because the wheat has been confounded.” Something is said to be destroyed or overthrown when it no longer serves the use for which it was designed by its maker, or when it lies idle—especially if it is transferred to some sordid or base use. “To perish” is said metaphorically of things when zeal grows cold and nothing is heard in them except the empty name, as studies are said to perish when learning languishes; a monastery or a temple is said to perish when nothing sacred is practiced there, even though it may still have other uses unworthy of the religious name. Those also are said to have perished who have fallen from a lofty position to a base and ignoble one; hence it is common for those who have fallen from high estate to lament their condition by saying, “I am ruined, I am nothing.”
Further, things are said to be what they are not in reality but what they ought to be according to the nature of things, as we have often noted elsewhere. Thus, when there is no cause, fear, or suspicion of war, weapons are said to be broken and converted into agricultural tools—spears into plowshares and swords into sickles. Since therefore there will be neither grain nor wine—things which are usually stored in granaries and storehouses—and since there will be no future use for them, those buildings are said to be destroyed and overthrown, though I do not think they were literally demolished. Hence the sense is that, as regards harvest and vintage, granaries and storehouses can be said to be destroyed without any actual loss of material things.
Verse 18: “Why did the beasts groan? The herds of cattle bellowed, because there was no pasture for them.” This sufficiently shows that these things arose rather from lack of rain than from the arms of enemies. For this reason the beasts rotted; for this reason the cattle and herds groaned—because the pastures dried up, without which they were either bound to die or to waste away with leanness and disease.
Moreover, the mention of irrational animals—creatures devoid of reason—serves to magnify the greatness of the disaster or famine. For it is no small drought or devastation which brings death even to beasts most patient of labor, or to those endowed with swiftness and a certain cleverness in seeking out and cropping food wherever it may be found, such as goats and rams. It also greatly contributes to pathos that tame animals, worn down by rustic labor, fall everywhere, perhaps in the very places which they had often broken with the plow.
Furthermore, this prepares the way for the prophet immediately to rise to prayer and to propose those things which may incline the divine mind to mercy. For that the wrath of God should be inflamed against those who had grievously sinned in the worship of idols is not at all surprising; but what had irrational creatures deserved? What had beasts, destined either for the sword or for the plow, done that they should waste away and perish by hunger and disease? Therefore he would not pray imprudently who were to set forth the merits or the innocent life of those who suffer without guilt.
Indeed, God was moved to restrain His avenging hand from the Ninevites by compassion for infants and beasts which had never sinned, as He says to Jonah in chapter 4: “And shall I not spare Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many cattle?”
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