Thus says the LORD,
Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have you sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.
Read Chapter 50
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Joseph was sold in Egypt because Christ was going to come to those to whom it was said, “It was for your sins that you were sold,” and thus he redeemed with his own blood those who had been sold by their own sins. But Christ was sold because he took our condition on himself, not our fault. He is not held to the price of sin, because he himself did not commit sin. And so he made a contract at a price for our debt, not for money but for himself. He took away the debtor’s bond, set aside the moneylender, freed the debtor. He alone paid what was owed by all. - "Joseph 4.19"
God never sends away anyone who makes his home with him, and he rejects none of those who walk uprightly. He allows them to be forever associated and firmly joined to him as a way of obtaining help. However, everyone who opposes or fights against his divine teaching falls completely away from the glory of God and shows that he is a lover of pleasure rather than a lover of God. Therefore, like one who lived with the mother of the Jews God says, “What kind of bill of divorce did your mother have when I sent her away?” For no one could prove that I hated her and despised her. Instead, he would rather have to accuse her of deserting me.… It says, “I came,” that is, I took human form and appeared to those in Israel, and there was no man among them, that is, no one with a heart who was able to recognize the season of redemption. “I called, but no one listened.” … For he was in a form like ours, and yet he was God the Word, having become man by taking on flesh born of a woman. But those who k...
Away. Such a one could not be received again, if she had taken another husband, Deuteronomy xxiv. 3. Some explain this of the captives. But God restored them to favour. It seems rather to relate to the reprobation (Calmet) of the synagogue, which will never again become the true Church, (Haydock) though many of Israel will be converted, Romans xi. 25.
Sold you, as a father might do, Exodus xxi. 1., and Matthew xviii. 15. St. Ambrose (Tob. viii.) inveighs against such cruel parents, as the Christian religion had not then entirely repressed this inhumanity. (Calmet)
God rejected the synagogue, not out of hard-heartedness or want, but because of her sins. (Worthington)
For he compares himself with a husband who is his wife’s master and householder. For what master is obliged to let you go? But you have been transgressors from the beginning and so cast out, “sold to your iniquities,” enslaved by them, who were before independent and free. And finally, since God did not wait for you but came to you, and coming down to a lowly dignity, he became man. But no one answered him as he was calling for salvation. He adds “there was not one person,” since the mass of those not answering are deemed to be as nothing. Whereas those who answered, a few out of the nations will be exempted from the fate of the nations; as with Lot in the days of Sodom, they will be brought out. For the Lord did not think fit to make the holy land available to many. And the barren fig tree was a sign of that. - "Commentary on Isaiah 50.1–11"
