Fragments on Jeremiah

1"Each one speaks peace to his neighbor, but holds enmity within himself," and so on (Jeremiah 9:8). The scribes and Pharisees of the Jewish people would not have inherited so great a "woe" from the Savior if it were not for hypocrisy. For in exposing their sins, the Lord never stopped warning them on every occasion: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," calling them whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful to people on the outside but inside are full of dead bones and every kind of uncleanness (Matthew 23:27). If we do something good to a neighbor through unhypocritical love, we hear from the Savior: "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40). In the same way, if we do something evil to a brother through deceptive and defiled hypocrisy, or through any other sin whatever, we sin against God just as much. Hypocrisy, brothers, is therefore a terrible and hostile thing. And deceit hidden in the heart, meant to entrap those who come forward in simplicity, speaks one thing with the mouth while carrying another in the breast, and so it deceives those who possess love. Pride is not good, since it carries with it much empty glory. For it is clear—very clear—that every perfect good comes from God. It cannot be received by a human being in any other way, so that what has been said is truly the most certain of all: the one who boasts should glory only in this, in understanding and knowing that the Lord himself is the one who shows mercy and judgment and righteousness, and in this is the will of God (Jeremiah 9:24). For the divine takes pleasure in such a person and always produces good things that are lasting and secure, when that person attributes the cause of the good things he has to the one who is truly the ultimate cause—the one to whom he must also attribute the cause of the good things remaining.

2How can the word call them circumcised, and then name not only Jews, not only Israelites, not only the house of Jacob, not even the proper name that lies before us, Judah, but list among them Egypt, and Edom, and the sons of Ammon, and the sons of Moab, as though all of them were uncircumcised in their hearts? Does the word mean something like this: that the sons of Israel seem to have the law of circumcision, but they differ in no way from the rest of the uncircumcised nations, since they too are uncircumcised in their hearts and have not cut away their evils?

I say, then, that the word wants to say something like this: the sons of Judah have the word of circumcision and the other oracles of God, yet they differ in no way from those who do not have the law of God, Egypt and Edom, the sons of Ammon and the sons of Moab. Or does it at some point call all of them circumcised together, not only the Israelites and the Jews, but also the rest of the nations, as the letters that are read also make clear? For it called all of them circumcised, and then it placed Egypt and Judah and the rest of the nations under that heading.

And how is it possible to say that all of them are circumcised? If someone should reason from the beginning about all these named nations that lie before us, he would find that they come from the descendants of Abraham. Abraham was circumcised when he was ninety-nine years old, he and his sons, Ishmael and all the men of his house, both the homeborn and those bought with silver from foreign nations. He circumcised them. For these things are recorded word for word in Genesis.

How, then, does he bring the circumcision down to the Egyptians, and to Edom, and to the sons of Moab, and to the sons of Ammon? Ishmael was circumcised, as I said, according to the law, when he was about thirteen years old, since he was Abraham's son by Hagar the Egyptian maidservant. And a little later: "Ishmael was settled," it says, "in the desert, and he became an archer, and he lived in the desert. And his mother took for him an Egyptian wife" (Genesis 21:20-21).

3Why should all this be told to me as a story? I am looking for the circumcised in Egypt, and I am looking for the circumcised in the desert—all those whom the word records. They seem, then, to be from the line of Ishmael, who settled in the desert and married an Egyptian wife. And I no longer doubt that these are the circumcised in Egypt, and those who cut the hair around the face, and those who live in the desert. For it is likely that Ishmael, having received the law of his father Abraham—since Abraham was a God-loving father—and having withdrawn from his own land, kept doing the things he considered safest, because they were handed down from the fathers, and did the same for his own descendants. In this way, then, one can find Egyptians or those who live in the desert circumcised. And how is Edom circumcised? This Edom also descends from the descendants of Abraham. For Abraham had a son, Ishmael, by Hagar, and he also had Isaac by Sarah. Isaac in turn had two sons, Esau and Jacob. Jacob did not marry a wife of foreign blood, nor one of the Canaanites, his father having looked into this matter. Esau, however, married the daughter of Ishmael, the sister of Nebaioth—taking as his wife his own cousin on his father's side, though of another people on his mother's side—and he became the father of many children. His firstborn was Edom, and the sacred oracle will testify for me when it says: "These are the generations of Esau, the father of Edom" (Genesis 36:1).

4What was said a little earlier about Ishmael, that he received the law of circumcision from his father and handed it down to his own descendants, we may also say about Esau. He was the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, and the law that came to him from his grandfather and his father he also handed down to his children. He himself circumcised Edom. Is this no longer unclear?

And how are the sons of Ammon and the sons of Moab circumcised? Those who have studied more carefully know that these are the sons of Lot, Abraham's nephew.

And after a little: Ammon and Moab were born from Lot, each from his daughters, when Lot's daughters suspected that the earth was desolate and so wished to preserve the human race. Moab was born to the elder daughter, and his name means "from a father." Ammon was born to the younger, and his name means "son of my people."

All these things, once said, persuade us without difficulty to agree that all these peoples are called circumcised by the sacred word. The sacred word itself testifies through Jeremiah about the sons of Moab and the sons of Ammon, that he counted them among the circumcised.

And after a little: If we should gain some benefit from these words, we may rightly say that many peoples of the human race have a pretense of righteousness and bear certain traces of the law of God. They are shaped in some way and superficially cultivate virtue. Yet their resolve stops at outward form, at pretense and hypocrisy. They did not even strive to cut out evil from themselves, as the reproaches against Egypt and Idumea, that is Edom, show.

Jeremiah 10:2: "Do not learn according to the ways of the nations." And what do you learn? You learn the law of God, which says: "You shall have no other gods besides me." "Let the gods who did not make heaven and earth perish from the face of the earth and from under heaven" (Jeremiah 10:11).