Septuagint: “I have no pleasure (voluntas)
in you, says the Lord Almighty, and I will not accept a sacrifice from your
hands. For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is
glorious among the Gentiles; and in every place incense is offered to my name,
and a clean sacrifice; for my name is great among the Gentiles, says the Lord
Almighty. But you defile it in that you say, the table of the Lord is polluted,
and his meats set thereon are despised. And you said, behold, these things are
troublesome; and you puffed it away, says the Lord Almighty: and you brought in
rapine, and the lame and the crippled, and you offered sacrifice in the hope
that I might accept them from your hands, says the Lord Almighty.”
The rule of the Scriptures is that when a very clear prophesy about
the future is composed, one should not detract from what is written by means of
uncertain allegories. Therefore, properly speaking, the word of the Lord is now
being made to the priests of the Jews, who are offering in sacrifice the blind,
the lame and the sick. This is so that they may know that spiritual victims
will come in succession to the fleshly victims. And it is not the blood of the
bulls and goats that must be offered to the Lord, but “incense,” that is the
prayers of the saints;81 and not in one province of the world,
Judea, nor in one city of Judea, Jerusalem, but in every place the oblation is
offered, not an unclean one, as from the people of Israel, but a clean one, as in the ceremonies of the
Christians. For from the rising of the
sun even to the going down, the name of the Lord is great among the Gentiles,
since the Savior says: “Father, I made your name
known among men.”
And since my name will be great among the Gentiles, he says, you,
O princes of the Jews, have profaned
it and you also are profaning [it].
For he is composing a prediction of the future in such a way as not to abandon
the present time. But for that reason, O priests and princes of the Jews, a clean oblation is offered to me in every place, and my name is great among the Gentiles, because you say the table of the Lord has been defiled.
And that which is laid thereupon is
contemptible with the fire that devours it. According to the book of Ezra,
the people who returned from Babylon had built only the altar with stones they
chanced to find that were unpolished. They were without a temple, without the
buildings of the city, without the construction of walls, and they thought that
their religious worship was inferior, because the outward adornment of the
temple was wanting. The Lord says to them: you think the altar is polluted, and
the burnt offerings and sacrificial victims that are placed on it; that the
fire too that devours the victims is polluted. And you do not understand that
“Almighty” God does not seek gold, precious stones, and a multitude of
sacrifices, but the wills (voluntates)
of those who make the offerings. As for those, however, who think that one
should understand here not the altar but the table on which the bread loaves
were placed, I do not see at all how they can interpret what follows, with the fire that devours it; for fire
does not devour the bread of presentation, which they were always exchanging,
new ones in place of the old, and once removed they were allowed to be used by
the priests.
Or certainly it is to be understood in this way: you profaned my name in that you say: What good does it do for us
to offer the best [victims]? Of whatever kind they are that are offered, they
are destined to be devoured by fire.
But the fruit of the altar is fire,
and “meat” is the fire of the sacrificial victim or the whole burnt offerings.
And the impiety of the former words do not suffice, but you have even said
this: Behold of our labor, and you puffed
it away, says the Lord of hosts. This is the meaning of his prayer: You
have said: we have returned from the captivity. We were prey to our enemies. We
labored much on the long journey. We are poor. Whatever we might have had was
consumed in the labor on the way. We offer whatever kinds of victims we have.
And by saying this, you puffed away
your sacrifices, that is you made [them] worthy by my puffing away. Or, as it
can be read in Hebrew, and you puffed me
away by saying these things: You did wrong not to the sacrifice, but to me,
the one to whom you were sacrificing. Therefore “I shall not receive it from
your hand, says the Lord Almighty.”
Some think that this is being said to the Jews especially, because
their sacrificial victims are unclean and defiled, and the sacrifice is being
transferred to the Gentiles, that it ought to be understood of the priests of
the church who carelessly offer sacrifices to the Lord. But if we take it that
way, then the sacrificial victims must be transferred from the church once
again to another religion. And just as the gospel succeeded the law, so the
things that are not to be will once again succeed the gospel. They also refer
the polluted table of the Lord to the Holy Scriptures, if they are understood
otherwise than they were written. (Jerome, Commentaries on the
Twelve Prophets, ed. Thomas P. Scheck, 2 vols. [Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP
Academic, 2017], 2:124-25)
