Jeremias 13
Origen of Alexandria · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Jeremias 13:4
The linen waistcloth clings about his hips. Why? In order to make clear that the people are like a shelter of God. For against those who wish to accuse God, the people of God are placed, and they cover him like a shield and do not allow something wrong to be said in what concerns God. But whenever we sin, just as the prophet puts aside this loincloth and condemns it to the Euphrates River in order that it may perish there, so the sinner is thrown from the hips of God. And once banished, he is banished to the Euphrates River, the river of Mesopotamia, where there are Assyrians, enemies to Israel, where there are Babylonians, and there he is ruined. — HOMILIES ON JEREMIAH 11:6.1
Jeremias 13:7
The linen waistcloth clings about his hips. Why? In order to make clear that the people are like a shelter of God. For against those who wish to accuse God, the people of God are placed, and they cover him like a shield and do not allow something wrong to be said in what concerns God. But whenever we sin, just as the prophet puts aside this loincloth and condemns it to the Euphrates River in order that it may perish there, so the sinner is thrown from the hips of God. And once banished, he is banished to the Euphrates River, the river of Mesopotamia, where there are Assyrians, enemies to Israel, where there are Babylonians, and there he is ruined. — HOMILIES ON JEREMIAH 11:6.1
Jeremias 13:12
Understand these skins in terms of evil and virtue in order to envision how every skin is filled with wine. But if it is necessary to see the effects of evil and of virtue—punishments due to the evil, blessings and promises due to virtue—let us set down from the sacred Scriptures how the punishments and the promises are discussed as wine: "Take the cup of this undiluted wine, and give to all of the nations to which I have sent you to drink"—he says this to Jeremiah, and he adds to it—"and they will drink and vomit and go mad and fall." Hence he has called the punishments here "undiluted wine," which those deserving of "undiluted wine drink," that is, an "undiluted" punishment. But there are others who drink a punishment that is not undiluted but that has been diluted. For "in the hand of the Lord is a cup filled with a mixture of undiluted wine, and he poured it from this into this. Though its lees were not emptied out, all of the sinners of the earth drink." If you also wish to know the "cup of blessing" that the righteous drink, the text from Wisdom then also suffices, in which it says, "Drink the wine that I diluted for you." But see with me the Savior on the Passover who goes up into "a large upper room furnished and ornamented" and who feasts with the disciples and gives to them a cup, about which it is not written that he diluted. For Jesus, who cheers up the disciples with undiluted wine, cheers them up and says to them, "Take, drink, this is my blood, which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins. Do this as often as you drink in memory of me," and, "Truly I say to you, I shall not drink again of this until that day when I drink it new with you in the kingdom of God." You see the promise that is the cup of the new covenant. You see the punishments as the cup of the undiluted wine, and another form of punishment as the cup that has been diluted so that in each person what he drinks is diluted according to the amount the worthwhile action mingles with the futile action. Notice that those who are strangers in every way to the worship of God and who do not commit themselves but live as it happens drink the undiluted wine—to which we apply the text from Jeremiah—while those who are not in every way apostates and sinners but are still unworthy of the cup of the new covenant, these people sometimes do better, sometimes the opposite acts, and drink wine of an undiluted mixture. — HOMILIES ON JEREMIAH 12:2.2