Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.
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Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
We who have Christ, the author of necessary things dwelling inside the heart, were at once enriched in every kind of virtue, and in the abundant and inalienable possession of the spiritual gifts…. He promises to speak in her heart. For the synagogue of the Judeans, exactly as the church from the nations, will be called to awareness by taking into mind the divine laws inscribed through the Spirit.
Since she [Israel] is accessible like a wellwatered land to the herds of demons, he [the Lord] promises to treat her as a wilderness…. He will display it to their desires as an austere, untrodden and waterless place, so that finding no resting place they will despise it and depart.
“Behold, I will mislead her” not from what is necessary and useful to life … but from the things that are shameful and harmful to the fulfillment of any enjoyment…. And as her ways are usefully hedged around with thorns so that she may not lay hold of her lovers, in the same manner she believes herself—now running downhill toward ruin and destruction—to be led astray by the mercy of God when she is brought to desire virtue. Having received the light of the knowledge of God in mind and heart, as I said, she is no longer able to find her old path.
I will allure her After her disloyalties, I will still allure her by my grace, and send her vine-dressers, viz., the apostles, originally her own children, who shall open to her the gates of hope; as heretofore, at her coming into the land of promise, she had all good success after she had satisfied the divine justice by the execution of Achan, in the valley of Achor, Josue vii. (Challoner)
Septuagint, "I will seduce or make her stray "plano. (Haydock)
I will permit her to yield to error, in captivity; (Theodoret) or will cause her hopes to be frustrated yet in exile I will comfort her. The Jews were not changed till they had seen the vanity of idols, and suffered much. (Calmet)
God's grace prevents sinners, that they may be converted. (Worthington)
I will allure her: After all her disloyalties, I will still allure her by my grace etc., and send her vinedressers, viz., the apostles: originally her own children, who shall open to her the gates of hope; as heretofore at her coming into the land of promise, she had all good success after she had satisfied the divine justice by the execution of Achan in the valley of Achor. Jos. 7.
