He casts forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold?
Read Chapter 147
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
26. "Who sendeth His crystal like morsels of bread" (ver. 17). We need not spend our toil again in saying what crystal is. We have already said it, and I do not think that ye, beloved, have forgotten it. What is then, "He sendeth His crystal like morsels of bread"? What is "crystal"? It is very hard, it is very tightly congealed; it can not, like snow, be easily melted. Snow, hardened by many years' duration, and by the successionof ages, is called "crystal," and this "He sendeth like morsels of bread." What meaneth this? They were too hard, no longer fit to be compared to snow, but to crystal; but they too are predestinated and called, and some of them even so as to feed others, to be useful to others also. And what need is there to enumerate many, whom we happen to know, this one and that one? Every one when he thinks can recall to mind how hardened and obstinate some of those whom he knows have been, how they have struggled against the truth; yet now they preach the truth, they have...
His chrystal. Some understand it of hail, which is as it were ice, divided into bits, or morsels. (Challoner) (Ecclesiasticus xliii. 22.) (Calmet)
In summer and winter God sends proper moisture for the earth. (Tirinus)
The most hardened are sometimes converted: but this must be the effect of grace. (Worthington)
Cold. If it were to continue, all would perish. He therefore sends the warm (Calmet) "south wind. "(Syriac)
