CHAPTER 23

From the same.

How the Lord rebukes the Jewish People, because They will not receive Him when He comes, nor hear His Call, and what He will suffer at Their Hands.

[Passages quoted, Isa. 1. 1, 2 a, b.]

HERE the Lord Himself recording plainly His Coming among (303) men rebukes the Jewish people, because they will not receive Him when He comes, nor hear Him when He calls. And He teaches, as if by way of apology, that this is the cause of their own rejection. "For when I came," He says, "I was not among you as a man: I called, and there was none that heard: therefore," He says, "ye were sold for your sins, inasmuch as ye were of yourselves divorced from my call, not that I had given you a bill of divorcement." This is clearly (b) addressed to the Jews, and at the same time reveals their outrages on Him at His Passion, when it says: "I gave my back to scourges, and my cheeks to blows," and that which follows. But these words shall be properly interpreted at leisure.