God’s Forbearance toward a Hard People

…temple, when the ministering priests sang of Jerusalem: “Glorious things have been spoken of you, O city of God” (Psalm 87:3). The Lord Himself also recalls this, when He says that no one should swear by his own head, because he cannot make one hair white or black, nor by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great King (Matthew 5:35-36). For they used to swear by Jerusalem, calling it, as I said, the city of God. And they leaned on Him too, saying that the Lord of hosts was their strength (compare Isaiah 48:2).

But those who then held this belief ought not to have profaned the city of God with altars and sacrifices, entangled as they were in the deceits of demons, nor to have provoked against themselves the One in whom they trusted; rather they should have gladdened Him with good pursuits, bringing Him, like a sacrifice, a steadfast devotion.

Yet “hear these things,” He says (Isaiah 48:1). And what are they? “The former things I declared long ago; they went out of my mouth and were made known. Suddenly I did them, and they came to pass” (Isaiah 48:3). For, as I said, in the beginning Manasseh, hateful to God, gathered from everywhere the so-called diviners and augurs (compare 2 Kings 21:6) and was always prying into the future; carried away by their charlatan tricks, he perhaps thought that he knew it clearly. That is why the God of all says: It was I who declared to you the first things too; these were not spoken to you by any other of the falsely named gods, but went out of My mouth; it was made known to you, and suddenly I did it, and it came. That is, even if you did not expect these things to come to fulfillment, still you learned through the events themselves and by actual experience that I both did it and it came.

He seems to call “former” the misery brought on them by the war, when they were carried off from their native land, took up the yoke of bitter slavery, and were taken away into the country of the Persians and Medes. For it was second, after those events, that the things brought on the Babylonians by divine wrath befell them, which we have already described at great length.

“I know that you are hard, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your forehead bronze. And I declared to you of old, before it came upon you; I made it known to you” (Isaiah 48:4-5).

Here he shows the incomparable gentleness of the supreme nature, and how great the mercy it shows to human beings, even to those who are used to grieving Him deeply. For its calm forbearance matches its own glory. And just as by boundless excellence it rises far above the measure of created things, so too it is beyond comparison in its love for humankind. See how, though He knew Israel to be hard, with a proud and unbreakable neck, so that even …