The
princes of the city and the people understand the truth about this dispute.
Now, certain elders whose responsibility it was to know the old traditions
recall the historia and the prophecy of Micah of Moresheth, who
prophesied under King Hezekiah. They liken Micah’s prophecy to the prophecy of
Jeremiah, who was being threatened with the death penalty. They show that Micah
said things that were even more severe than what Jeremiah said, and yet the
righteous King Hezekiah did not in any way persecute Micah. Instead, Hezekiah
and the people turned to repentance, so that the Lord’s negative sentence was
changed into a favorable one. For Micah said, “Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins and the mountain of the house a wooded height,”
whereas later on Jeremiah says, “I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will
make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth.”
So
the elders gave their advice, thinking that what Micah predicted would never
come to pass, since due to the people’s repentance it had still not happened
even after a long time. Likewise, these elders thought that what Jeremiah
pronounced would not take place, if (as Jeremiah advised) they made good their
ways and their doings and listened to the voice of the Lord their God, so that
the Lord might not bring against them the evil that he had threatened. In this
way the elders subdued the madness of the accusers, and at the same time they
included themselves along with the accusers, saying, “But we are about to bring
great evil on ourselves.” The elders say this not because they think that they
should kill the prophet but because if they were to kill him, they would not be
harming the accused but themselves. But they could rescue themselves by
changing their verdict. (Jerome, Commentary on Jeremiah [trans. Michael
Graves; Ancient Christian Texts; Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2011],
164-65)
