How the Faithful City Became a Harlot

…disobedient and hard of hearing?

“How has Zion, the faithful city full of justice, become a harlot? Righteousness once lodged in her, but now murderers” (Isaiah 1:21).

He is in a way astonished at the change in the synagogue of the Jews, so unsound and so without excuse: a change to the worse, I mean, and a passing from better things to more shameful ones. For by the Law given through Moses she was taught the knowledge of what is profitable, and since she had the word of God to guide her in each thing she was to do, she was splendid and highly esteemed and admirable, renowned for a great many men in whom the fruit of righteousness richly flowered, and she was worthy to be accepted by God. There were in her prophets and priests, and guardians of the works of righteousness, and leaders of the peoples who kept judgment, who had the Law on their tongue and were adorned with every good and excellent way of life.

Then she was bereft of all such men; or rather, she chose to take no account of that ancient goodness of hers and set at naught her reverence and love toward God. Before the coming of our Savior she bowed down to those who are not gods by nature, monstrously outraging the one and true Master by harlotries of this kind. Like some promiscuous and frenzied woman, she was impious in many ways, attaching herself now to some guides and now to others, men who knew how to lead her into anything at all that God hates. So the God of all accuses her through the voice of Jeremiah, saying: “See what the house of Israel has done to Me: she has gone up on every high mountain and under every leafy tree, and there she has played the harlot” (Jeremiah 3:6).

And again, as if to her: “If a man sends away his wife, and she goes from him and becomes another man's, will she ever return to him again? Will not that woman be utterly defiled? And you have played the harlot with many shepherds, and yet you kept returning to Me, says the Lord. Lift up your eyes and look straight ahead, and see where you have not been defiled. By the roads you sat for them like a lonely crow in the desert, and you have polluted the land with your harlotries and your wickedness, and you have had many shepherds as a stumbling block for yourself. You had the face of a harlot; you grew shameless toward all” (Jeremiah 3:1–3).

For, as I said, she despised service under God, turned to apostasy, and took unclean spirits and the worshippers of idols as her shepherds and teachers. These, as I said, were the charges against the synagogue of the Jews before the coming of our Savior. But when Christ shone upon those on earth — for, as it is written, “God is the Lord, and He has appeared to us” (Psalm 118:27) — she did not take Him as her teacher instead, but honoured teachings, commandments…