Defilement, washings, and the path back to holiness

The sins that have weakened me, having cast me away from the divine oversight and delivered me into the service of the sovereign of evils, are such that, due to the boundless and infinite nature of wickedness, I cannot fully minister to her nor satisfy her with sufficient provision. Indeed, sin truly humbles and presses down upon one, causing the gaze to fall low; yet the yoke and the ever-present, piercing conscience continually sting and urge one not to relent, stripping away all boldness. Moreover, as he says, permission and the strength with which I did not act well have been granted, and I behold the evils that hold me dissolving. He did not take them from my midst (for even if I had been deprived of them, I could have used them elsewhere), but in my midst he judged them guilty for the very acts of impiety I committed. My chosen ones have endured the most severe trials, having drunk the wine of the Lord’s wrath, which He trod in the winepress until it filled me and the virgin daughter of the most royal Judah. One might say that the strong are those who wage war and defend the fatherland, while the elect are the noble or the wise. He clarifies the winepress by referencing what was said in the Psalms concerning the punishment of sinners: “A cup in the hand of the Lord, full of unmixed wine, mingled with spice,” pouring from the one being punished upon the one being punished, until all the sinners of the earth drink, while the remnants of the vintage remain for the lesser sinners still existing, to whom finally “the one who treads the winepress” shall be emptied. It is not difficult to see how the Lord trod the winepress upon the virgin daughter of Judah.

For indeed, as the proverb says, “Each one reaps what he sows,” and so too, perhaps, each one harvests what he cultivates. The one who produces superior wine will rejoice in the fruits of his own labor. But the one who cultivates “the vineyard of Sodom and the vine-dressing of Gomorrah, bearing fruit for the tribe of bitterness, yielding a cluster of gall and a wrath that shields cannot withstand—all of which the Lord gathers together”—into a single winepress, where his evil deeds are trodden underfoot and crushed, such a person, in keeping with such fruits, drinks in order to vomit up the gall, the bitterness, and the wrath. And he drinks, according to Jeremiah, to purge himself; according to Isaiah, to awaken and clothe himself in kindred glory. For the Lord does not tread the winepress in vain, and especially not for the virgin daughter of Judah. 34 Thus, the soul, having received many gifts from its Creator—both natural and chosen—yet deprived of them through wickedness and suffering punishment, acknowledges what it has endured. And the one called to be broken in the time of retribution is the moment when, according to Ezekiel, “none of the righteous deeds which the righteous one has done shall be remembered in the day of his sin.” Mourning what has befallen her, she is benefited, for to those who mourn and weep belongs the promise of consolation and laughter. 35 She declared that the cause of her lamentations was the absence of the one who turns back her soul—namely, the one who restores it according to Symmachus. And she says that her sons have perished through the strengthening of the enemy, by means of which they were exiled; for although we are pious, we do not prevail, for the weak, as they progress, are destroyed and utterly broken beneath the feet—“becoming thin as dust before the face of the wind,”

And as clay in the streets, becoming thin. For in proportion as we sin, it is nourished and gains strength; but when transgressions cease, it is, as it were, destroyed by famine. And from the opposing forces, the divine powers, when we act well, we strengthen ourselves and pursue those who sin. Therefore Symmachus, instead of "the obliterated ones," delivered "deserts." One might say these things of a contemplative soul that has attained the word of true divinity and, through slackness, has lost this joyful word and all its fruits, which it names as its children, because it has been strengthened against the evil that opposes it. Zion says the mountain, and the people of Jacob, and the mother-city Jerusalem. And God commanded Jacob with commandments by which, when transgressed, he was encircled by enemies; and according to Symmachus and another edition of the Seventy, the Lord commanded that those who oppress him should be round about him, namely, the powers appointed to do evil. The uncleanness of Jerusalem through sin, as through a sewer, he has shown. And in the midst, he speaks either of Zion and Jacob, or of the whole mountain as middle (for in part it is built upon), and of the whole people; now this signifies Jacob, the twelve scepters. And according to the word, it is possible to take Zion and Jerusalem in two ways: either the places or the inhabitants. But if Zion is a place, her hands are her works, for example.