Wall personified; tears of repentance; cling to Christ

There are times when scripture makes the words full of feeling and gives perception to the unperceiving, introducing hills leaping and mountains skipping, and calling hills and stones to witness; which in these things is impossible, the wall having already been taken down by enemies. Wall here, then, is both king and rulers and as many as by power were walling her round—whom he counts worthy to pour unceasing tears of repentance, which the fallen wall throughout procures for those who see. These things, he says, belong to them—even if again he signifies the grief of the power that long ago was guarding, showing this hyperbolically. “And in affliction,” he says, “they remembered the Lord from their whole heart.” Do this, then, he says, weeping night and day and “on your beds be pricked”; and do not consider release from these things to be sobriety; for repentance is unto salvation. And one is sober not by ceasing from good things, but from worse ones. And join the mind continually toward Christ, so that he may guard you as pupil of an eye and may become a wall for you.