The women of my people have you cast out from their pleasant houses; from their children have you taken away my glory forever.
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Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Let him who cannot fly like an eagle fly like a sparrow. Let him who cannot fly to heaven fly to the mountains. Let him flee before the valleys that are quickly destroyed by water. Let him pass over the mountains. Abraham’s nephew passed over the mountain of Segor and was saved. But Lot’s wife could not climb it, for she looked back in womanly fashion and lost her salvation. “Draw near the everlasting mountains,” the Lord says through the prophet Micah, “arise from here, for this is not a rest for you by reason of uncleanness. You have been corrupted with corruption, you have suffered pursuit.” And the Lord says, “Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.” Mount Zion is there, and so is the city of peace, Jerusalem, built not of earthly stones but of living stones, with ten thousand angels and the church of the firstborn and the spirits of those made perfect and the God of the just, who spoke better with his blood than Abel. For the one cried out for vengeance but the othe...
Cast out Either by depriving them of their houses; or, by your crimes, giving occasion to their being carried away captives, and their children, by that means, never learning to praise the Lord. (Challoner)
The Jews accustomed them to sing God's praises early, while they were still innocent, Psalm viii. 2. Misery might cause them to complain of Providence. Perhaps the prophet alludes to the custom of divorces, Malachi as ii. 15.
“In the Lord I take refuge; how can you say to me, ‘Flee to the mountains like a sparrow!’ ” Shrewd adversary; he tempted the Lord Savior in the desert, and now he wants the faithful, every one of them, to depart from the land of Judea and to dwell in a wilderness barren of virtues, that there he might crush them more easily. Even the counsel itself is crafty. It is not an exhortation to assume the wings of a dove, a gentle, simple and domestic bird—one, they say, entirely lacking in gall—which was offered in the temple in behalf of the Lord. [Instead it is an exhortation to take] the wings of a sparrow, a chattering, roving bird, one that is a stranger to its mate after hatching its young—notwithstanding that Aquila and Symmachus have usually translated “bird” in the place of “sparrow.” … The mountains, moreover, we may identify as those to which Scripture refers in another place: “Draw you near to the everlasting mountains,” and in the second of the gradual psalms: “I lift up my eyes...
You have cast out: either by depriving them of their houses: or, by your crimes, given occasion to their being carried away captives, and their children, by that means, never learning to praise the Lord.
