The Integrity of the Covenant and the Purpose of Affliction

All things before their being. Being. It is not foreknowledge that makes things such or such, but choice, the things chosen. I say: I foreknow that this person will give birth to a male and will have sons; this is not a matter of choice. But to become something trivial or important, or to have some other fitness, is a matter of choice. It does not come from foreknowledge, since God judges beforehand and justifies beforehand. And if He justifies beforehand, it was of His goodness to justify all.

Again, concerning Esau and Jacob, the apostle, as if speaking in a dilemma, says: 'What then shall we say to this? Is there injustice with God? May it never be!' (Romans 9:14). Because he had refuted injustice, he forced us to seek how there is not injustice with God. If it were so, as those who speak of foreknowledge say, we would rather find injustice in Him. 'I loved Jacob,' He says, 'but I hated Esau' (Romans 9:13). But one is hated or loved according to things done and according to things thought. How then does foreknowledge have room? Is injustice found with God? But he, refuting this, said: 'What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? May it never be!' Since there is no injustice, let the matter be sought in another way, how it has come to pass.

Many times we have also said that: if we have a correct assumption about someone, we understand everything about him accordingly; as we were saying concerning the king. And in all the ways of captivity, he said this in many pleasures and pains, and being wise in both pleasures and pains, it did not result in God being forgotten by them, but rather they were grieved, because they were men needing such things, just as concerning the captives, that they need captivity. Thus indeed some have demonstrated that in the one hundred and eighty-first and tenth psalm it is so: 'Despondency has taken hold of me from sinners' (Psalm 181:10). One becomes despondent when he sees men made in the image of God and in likeness having become sinners. And just as if someone is a father, when he sees his son suffering from fever and weakness, he strikes him, he is grieved, not because he strikes him, but because he has come into such a state; so also these, being noble and knowing that 'through many tribulations it is necessary to enter the kingdom of God' (Acts 14:22), they do not sink entirely into the afflicted. For they say: 'In all things we are afflicted, but not in anguish' (2 Corinthians 4:8).

Not being distressed is to bear the afflictions bravely. 'And we have not acted unjustly toward your covenant' (Ps 74:22). What has been decreed according to your will remains for ever, and all things according to your judgments, and therefore we have not acted unjustly. If anyone says, 'Why is this one a child and that one a child, and this one rich and that one poor?' he acts unjustly toward the covenant of God. Just as with these covenants which men establish, if anyone wishes to contradict and fight against one of those written, he unjustly acts against the covenant in vain. His own injustice seems to be an injustice against the covenant. If anyone handles the God-breathed Scripture differently, as the heretics do, they act unjustly toward the Gospel, toward the Divine Scripture.

And our heart has not turned backward (Ps 73:22). You see that there is a remaining straightness of following. 'Has not turned backward' means we have not become others, having a heart that is right and straight and looking straightly. And this thing of the unsettled and the uncertain happens to us; many, having come into affliction, turned their mind so as to grumble against providence. 'And you have turned our paths from your way' (Ps 119:176). This says that we ran your way well before we descended into this condition and conduct. 'You have turned our paths from your way,' because you have transferred us into another life and a way suitable to life. However, even if 'you have turned our paths' by handing us over to captivity, nevertheless our paths did not turn away from your way.

For you have humbled us in a place of affliction (Ps 102:19). Take the place of your humbling according to both the consequences of the deportation from Jerusalem to Babylon. Primarily this place is the earth, where the souls that are brought low are humbled, 'the body of humiliation.' It can also be handed over to the afflicted to bear the shame and the place of affliction, namely the land of Assyria or the land of Babylon. 'And you have covered us with the shadow of death' (Ps 23:4). Even if the death of affliction lay upon us, it did not consume us. His shadow covered us. Let it be like a heavy stone lifted up on high. Let someone be under this, but not necessarily fallen upon it. And let him see occasionally the shadow of the...