Whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings.
Read Chapter 39
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Barren. Literally, "salt. "(Haydock)
This is of a nitrous quality, which renders those countries barren. The salt in snow and dung gives warmth and fruitfulness.
52. Ought we in this place to understand the solitude of the body, or the solitude of the heart? But what avails the solitude of the body, if the solitude of the heart be wanting? For he who lives bodily removed from the world, but yet plunges into the tumults of human conversation with the thoughts of worldly desires, is not in solitude. But if any one be bodily oppressed with crowds of people, and yet suffers from no tumults of worldly cares in his heart, he is not in a city. To those therefore of good conversation solitude of mind is first granted, in order that they may keep down within the rising din of worldly desires, that they may restrain by the grace of heavenly love the cares of the heart which bubble up from its lowest depths, and drive away from the eyes of the mind with the hand of gravity, all the motions of trifling thoughts which importunately present themselves, as flies which are flitting around them: and may seek for themselves some secret spot with the Lord within,...
68. For in the Gentile world, in which there was no Patriarch, no Prophet, there was hardly a man to exercise his reason to gain a knowledge of God. Of this solitude it is said by Isaiah; The desert and the pathless land shall rejoice, and the solitude shall exult and blossom as the lily. [Is. 35, 1] And again it is said of the Church; He will make her desert as delights, and her solitude as the garden of the Lord. [Is. 51, 3] But this same solitude, which, before it knew the true wisdom of God, had brought forth saltness, is mentioned again as a land of saltness; because it produced no verdure of good understanding, and savoured only of what was wrong. He receives therefore his house in the solitude, and His tabernacle in the land of saltness, because God when Incarnate for men, forsook Judaea, and possessed the hearts of the Gentiles. Whence it is said to Him by the voice of the Father, through the Prophet; Ask of Me, and I will give thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the en...
