Septuagint: “And there was sent to me
one (unum) of the seraphim.” Aquila and Theodotion have: “And one (unum)
of the seraphim flew to me”; Symmachus has: “And one (unus) of the
seraphim flew to me.” Daily a seraph is sent to us, daily the mouths are purged
of those who groan and say: “O, I am wretched, for I pricked”; and when they
have been delivered from sins, they prepare themselves for God’s service. But
as for what the other translators said, that it “flew” in place of “was sent,”
understand this of the swift advent of the divine word upon us who are judged
worth of fellowship with him. There is also a difference in the gender. The
Septuagint, Aquila, and Theodotion translated “seraphim” in the neuter gender,
Symmachus in the masculine. One must not think that there is sex among the
powers of God, since even the Holy Spirit himself is set forth as ruach
in the feminine gender, in accordance with the properties of the Hebrew
language. In Greek this is expressed in the neuter as το πνευμα, in Latin
by the masculine word spiritus. From this one must understand that when
there is a discussion about the things mentioned above, and something is
recorded in the masculine or feminine gender, it is not so much their sex that
is being indicated as the unique properties of the language. For indeed God
himself, invisible and incorruptible, is set forth in nearly all languages in
the masculine gender, even though sex does not apply to him. The error (I grant
that it is a pious error) needs to be exposed of those, too, who in their
prayers and oblations dare to say, “You who sit above the cherubim and
seraphim.” For it is written that God sits above the cherubim, as for instance
in this passage: “You who sit above the cherubim, show yourself”; but no
Scripture records that God sits above the seraphim. Moreover, we have not even
found the seraphim themselves standing around God in any Scripture with the
exception of the present passage. (Jerome, “Epistle 18B to Damasus,” c. A.D.
380-382, in St. Jerome: Exegetical Epistles, 2 vols. [trans. Thomas P.
Scheck; The Fathers of the Church 147; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2023], 1:81-82)
