As for the earth, out of it comes bread: but under it is turned up as it were fire.
Read Chapter 28
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
In its Hebrew and Septuagint, "and under it is turned up as it were fire "which lies in it. (Haydock)
Fire, like Sodom; to which event Job alludes, chap. xxii. 20. (Calmet)
The furnaces to melt various metals have taken the place of corn, and occupy the land. (Menochius)
Men have extracted bitumen, even from the lake of Sodom. (Pliny, vii. 15.)
Nothing escapes them. (Calmet)
51. Judaea was wont to give bread, in that she used to set before men the words of the Law. Which same Law because the children of perdition could now no longer understand and interpret, the prophet Jeremiah bewails in the Lamentations, saying, The young children asked bread, and there was no man to break it unto them [Lam 4, 4]; but this ‘earth is overturned in its place with fire,’ because on beholding the miracles of the faithful it consumed itself with the firebrand of envy. For because envy is always used to be engendered from pride, she ‘perished in her place by fire,’ who for this reason burned with envy, because she did not abandon pride. And so ‘the earth, which first had bread, was afterwards overturned by fire,’ because the Synagogue, which set before men the commandments of God in the Law, by persecuting the new-born Church consumed itself with the fire of envy. Was it not in flames with the brands of its jealousy when on seeing the miracles of our Redeemer; it said by...
