Voices and influences
Jerome
The scholar who went to the Hebrew itself and gave the West a Bible it read for a thousand years.
Summary
This site quotes Jerome 2,794 times across 57 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 420.
- Quoted here most in Matthew: 558 of 2,794.
.jpg?width=640)
Jerome
- Lived
- died 420
- Tradition
- Patristic
5 of 2,794 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Jerome died in 420 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
(Chapter 49, verse 3) Reuben, my firstborn, you are my strength and the first of my sons, tough in bearing and tough in insolence and injury, like water that does not boil.
The rest of the quotation
You went up on your father's bed, then you defiled it when you went up. In Hebrew it is written: Reuben, my firstborn, you are my strength, and the first in power among my sons. Greater in carrying, and greater in strength. You are poured out like water, do not exceed. For you have ascended the bed of your father and defiled the couch in his ascent.
Genesis 49:3 Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, excelling in honor, excelling in power. BSB
But we your people and the sheep of your pasture. When he says "sheep," he signifies innocence. Sheep have nothing but a shepherd. We will give you thanks forever. We will confess: either we do penance, or, what is better, we glorify.
The rest of the quotation
From generation to generation; among the first people, and among the second people. Although according to the historical sense it is said otherwise in Ezekiel, nevertheless according to the spiritual understanding we say this, since these two peoples — that is, the two rods — are joined together in Ezekiel, and become one kingdom.
Psalms 79:13 Then we Your people, the sheep of Your pasture, will thank You forever; from generation to generation we will declare Your praise. BSB
I have become like the pelican of the wilderness. There are said to be two kinds of these birds.
The rest of the quotation
One lives in the waters, and its food is fish; and one lives in the wilderness, and its food is venomous creatures, that is, serpents and crocodiles and lizards. Now these birds are called in Latin 'onocrotali.' To that one therefore have I become like, which lives in the wilderness, which eats venomous creatures: that is, my food was to me as it were poison. I have become like the night-raven in its dwelling-place.
Psalms 102:6 I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. BSB
"Be exalted above the heavens, O God." God is not exalted except above the heavens, he is not exalted above the earth. When we are earthly, we do not exalt God; but if from earthly we have been made heavenly, then we exalt God.
The rest of the quotation
And our Lord, when he was on earth, did not exalt us. Someone may say: You speak rashly, since he himself says in the Gospel: "When I have been lifted up, I will draw all things to myself."
Psalms 108:5–6 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; may Your glory cover all the earth. Respond and save us with Your right hand, that Your beloved may be delivered. BSB
Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion. Just now we heard the holy presbyter preaching that, because of its transgression of the law, the Jewish people has been forsaken; and how is it that now it is said, Praise the Lord, O…
The rest of the quotation
Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion? Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem, "vision of peace." Praise your God, O Zion. Zion is interpreted "watchtower." You see, then, what he says: Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem. Wherever there is a vision of peace, wherever there is contemplation of God, there let there be praise of God.
Psalms 147:12 Exalt the LORD, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion! BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Jerome 2,794 times across 57 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Eusebius Hieronymus was born about 347 at Stridon, a town on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia that no longer exists. His parents were Christians with money. They sent him to Rome, where he studied grammar and rhetoric under the great teacher Donatus, collected pagan authors, and was baptized in his late teens. He traveled east, and about 375 went into the desert of Chalcis, southeast of Antioch, to live as a hermit. He lasted a few years. He hated the heat, quarreled with the monks over the Trinity, and — by his own account — hired a converted Jew to teach him Hebrew, largely to keep his mind off Rome. That decision changed the history of the Bible in the West. Ordained at Antioch, he went on to Constantinople, where he heard Gregory of Nazianzus, and then in 382 to Rome, where Pope Damasus made him a secretary and set him to revising the Latin Gospels against the Greek. In Rome he also became teacher to a circle of wealthy Christian women — Marcella, Paula, and Paula's daughter Eustochium — who studied Scripture and Hebrew with him. His scorn for the worldly Roman clergy was returned with interest, and after Damasus died in 384 he left the city for good. In 386 he settled at Bethlehem, where Paula founded monasteries for men and women and paid for his books. He stayed thirty-four years, working in a cave beside the traditional site of the Nativity. There he did the thing he is known for. Instead of correcting the old Latin against the Greek Septuagint, he translated the Old Testament out of the Hebrew — going to Jewish teachers for help, arguing that the Hebraica veritas, the Hebrew truth, was the standard. Augustine wrote to warn him that congregations would riot over changed familiar words, and in North Africa one did. Jerome kept going. He also wrote commentaries on most of the prophets, on Matthew and several letters of Paul, a catalogue of Christian writers, letters that were copied and read as literature, and translations of Origen and Eusebius. He was a savage controversialist. He broke publicly with his oldest friend Rufinus over Origen, attacked Jovinian, Vigilantius, and Pelagius in print, and lost few opportunities to wound. In 410 refugees from the sack of Rome arrived at his door and he wrote that the light of the world had gone out. Paula died in 404, Eustochium in 419. Jerome died at Bethlehem in 420. His translation, gathered later with other Latin books into what came to be called the Vulgate, was the Bible of Western Europe until the Reformation and remained the Roman Catholic standard far beyond it. Sources: Jerome, Letters and De viris illustribus; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church; the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series, second series volume 6; the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.
2,794 quotations across 57 books
Where this voice is quoted
Why then have these people turned away? Why does Jerusalem always turn away? They cling to deceit; they refuse to return.
“(Verse 5) Therefore, why is this people in Jerusalem turned away with contentious turning away? They have grasped falsehood and did not want to return.”
I have listened and heard; they do not speak what is right. No one repents of his wickedness, asking, ‘What have I done?’
“(Verse 6.) I listened and heard: no one speaks what is good. There is no one who repents for his sin, saying: what have I done? All have turned to their own course, like a horse rushing into battle.”
Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons. The turtledove, the swift, and the thrush keep their time of migration, but My people do not know the requirements…
“(Verse 7) The kite in the sky knows its time: the turtledove and the swallow and the stork keep the time of their arrival. But my people do not know the judgment of the Lord.”
The wise will be put to shame; they will be dismayed and trapped. Since they have rejected the word of the LORD, what wisdom do they really have?
“(Verse 9) The wise are confused, terrified and captured. For they have rejected the word of the Lord, and there is no wisdom in them.”
They dress the wound of the daughter of My people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all.
“But what can I do, I who can only wish for peace and have no power to bring it about? Even though the wish may win its reward with God, its futility must still sadden one who cherishes it.”
Are they ashamed of the abomination they have committed? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush.
“(Verse 12.) They were confused because they committed abominations. However, they were not confused by their confusion, and they did not blush.”
I will take away their harvest, declares the LORD. There will be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the tree, and even the leaf will wither.
“(Verse 13) I will gather them together, says the Lord. There are no grapes on the vines, and there are no figs on the fig tree; the leaf has fallen off, and I have given them what has passed by.”
The snorting of enemy horses is heard from Dan. At the sound of the neighing of mighty steeds, the whole land quakes.
“(Verse 16.) And a sound of his horses was heard, from the voice of the neighing of his warriors (or cavalry) the whole earth was shaken.”
“For behold, I will send snakes among you, vipers that cannot be charmed, and they will bite you,” declares the LORD.
“(Verse 17) Behold, I will send you serpents, rulers (or as the Septuagint translated, deadly ones) with whom there is no enchantment. And they will bite you, says the Lord, incurably, and you will fail with the pain of your heart.”
My sorrow is beyond healing; my heart is faint within me.
“(Verse 18) My sorrow is upon sorrow, my heart is mourning within me. As we have said before, the previous seventy sentences, which were said, were connected in order to establish: 'And they will bite you,' says the Lord, 'incurably: with the pain of your…”
Listen to the cry of the daughter of my people from a land far away: “Is the LORD no longer in Zion? Is her King no longer there?”
“(Verse 19) Behold, the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people from a distant land. She describes weeping and the howling of the city of Jerusalem as the enemies enter.”
For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am crushed. I mourn; horror has gripped me.
“(Verse 21.) I am crushed with the contrition of the daughter of my people, and I am sorrowful: astonishment has taken hold of me.”
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?
“(Ver. 22.) Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?”
Oh, that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night over the slain daughter of my people.
“(Chapter IX — Verse 1) Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes, so that I may weep day and night for the slain daughters of my people?”
If only I had a traveler’s lodge in the wilderness, I would abandon my people and depart from them, for they are all adulterers, a crowd of faithless people.
“(Verse 2.) Who will give me lodging in the solitude of travelers, and I will leave my people and depart from them? LXX: Who will give me a final dwelling place in the solitude, so that I may leave my people and depart from them?”
“They bend their tongues like bows; lies prevail over truth in the land.
“(Verse 3.) Because they are all adulterers, a gathering of transgressors. And they have stretched out their tongue like a bow of falsehood and not of truth.”
Therefore this is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Behold, I will refine them and test them, for what else can I do because of the daughter of My people?
“(Verse 7.) Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Behold, I will melt (or refine) and test them.”
Their tongues are deadly arrows; they speak deception. With his mouth a man speaks peace to his neighbor, but in his heart he sets a trap for him.
“(Verse 8, 9.) The arrow that wounds their tongue speaks deceit: in their mouth they speak peace with their friend but hide traps for them secretly.”
For the sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How devastated we are! How great is our shame!
“(Verse 19.) How desolate and utterly confused we are! Because we have forsaken the land, for our tents have been abandoned. This is the voice of those lamenting Zion: how desolate and utterly confused we are!”
Declare that this is what the LORD says: “The corpses of men will fall like dung upon the open field, like newly cut grain behind the reaper, with no one…
“(Verse 22.) Speak these things, says the Lord, and the mortality of man (or the corpses of men) will fall like dung on the face of the region (or the field) and like hay behind the reaper, and there is no one to gather.”
This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the wealthy man in his riches.
“(Verse 23, 24.) Thus says the Lord: Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the strong man boast in his strength, and let not the rich man boast in his riches.”
“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will punish all who are circumcised yet uncircumcised: Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and all the inhabitants of the desert…
“(Vers. 25, 26.) Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will visit everyone who is circumcised and has the foreskin, including Egypt, Judah, Edom, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and all those who have shaved their heads and live in the desert, for…”
They adorn it with silver and gold and fasten it with hammer and nails, so that it will not totter.
“(v. 4.) Decorated with silver and gold, fastened with nails and hammers, so that it would not be dissolved (or moved). He decorated it with silver and gold, to deceive the simple-minded with the splendor of both materials.”
The LORD made the earth by His power; He established the world by His wisdom and stretched out the heavens by His understanding.
“(Verse 12.) The one who made the earth in his strength, who established the world in his wisdom, and who stretched out the heavens in his understanding. He who makes the earth by His power, He is God the Father.”
Woe to me because of my brokenness; my wound is grievous! But I said, “This is truly my sickness, and I must bear it.”
“(Verse 19.) Woe is me for my brokenness, my grievous wound. LXX: Woe is you for your brokenness, your grievous wound. According to the Hebrew text, Jerusalem itself speaks, expressing that it has been heavily afflicted and endures an incurable wound.”