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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.
Jerome. Painted by Caravaggio. The file is marked public domain. This site's record does not give the artist's death year, which is what settles the painting's own rights. The file record

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.

Hebrew Questions on Genesis, 420

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.

Homily 12, on Psalm 78, 420

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.

Homily 28, on Psalm 101, 420

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.

Homily 34, on Psalm 107, 420

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…

Homily 57, on Psalm 147, 420

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

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

Psalms 142:7Homily 52, on Psalm 141 (420)

Free my soul from prison, that I may praise Your name. The righteous will gather around me because of Your goodness to me.

Bring my soul out of custody, that it may confess to your name. That is, out of this body. To confess, that is, to glorify, as he says: "I confess to you, Father." The righteous await me, until you reward me.

Psalms 143:1Homily 53, on Psalm 142 (420)

O LORD, hear my prayer. In Your faithfulness, give ear to my plea; in Your righteousness, answer me.

O Lord, hear my prayer. The words of a humble man, full of humility and mercy. Give ear to my supplication in your truth. These are the words of one who trusts. In your truth, that is, in your Christ.

Psalms 143:3Homily 53, on Psalm 142 (420)

For the enemy has pursued my soul, crushing my life to the ground, making me dwell in darkness like those long since dead.

For the enemy has persecuted my soul. This needs no interpretation: no one doubts that it is the devil. He has humbled my life on the earth. This is what he means.

Psalms 143:4Homily 53, on Psalm 142 (420)

My spirit grows faint within me; my heart is dismayed inside me.

And my spirit was in anguish over me. 'Do you first tell your sins, and you shall be saved.' And again: 'If you only sigh for your sins, you shall be saved.' My heart within me was troubled. Because of my conscience, because I sinned.

Psalms 143:6Homily 53, on Psalm 142 (420)

I stretch out my hands to You; my soul thirsts for You like a parched land. Selah

I stretched out my hands to you. Bound by the enemy, I can do nothing else except do penance, and lift up my hands to you. My soul is as earth without water to you.

Psalms 143:7Homily 53, on Psalm 142 (420)

Answer me quickly, O LORD; my spirit fails. Do not hide Your face from me, or I will be like those who descend to the Pit.

Hear me speedily, O Lord, my spirit has failed. My soul has failed, my flesh has failed: my spirit alone remained in me, and it too has failed: but hear me speedily, and have mercy on me.

Psalms 143:8Homily 53, on Psalm 142 (420)

Let me hear Your loving devotion in the morning, for I have put my trust in You.

Make known to me the way in which I should walk. Make your Christ known to me, who said, 'I am the way.'

Psalms 144:1Homily 54, on Psalm 143 (420)

Blessed be the LORD, my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.

Blessed be the Lord my God, who teaches my hands for the fight. He who interprets briefly gains this: that he himself has no praise, and yet whatever there is in the interpretation, those who have heard retain it.

Psalms 144:3Homily 54, on Psalm 143 (420)

O LORD, what is man, that You regard him, the son of man that You think of him?

Lord, what is man, that you have made yourself known to him? or the son of man, that you take account of him? This very thing is said also in the eighth psalm. 'What is man, that you are mindful of him?

Psalms 144:4Homily 54, on Psalm 143 (420)

Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.

Man is made like to vanity: his days pass away like a shadow. Truly our days are like a shadow.

Psalms 144:5Homily 54, on Psalm 143 (420)

Part Your heavens, O LORD, and come down; touch the mountains, that they may smoke.

Lord, bow down your heavens, and descend. You will not be able to save this vileness of man, unless you yourself put it on. Lord, bow down your heavens, and descend.

Psalms 144:6Homily 54, on Psalm 143 (420)

Flash forth Your lightning and scatter them; shoot Your arrows and rout them.

Flash forth the lightning, and you shall scatter them. See what he says. He did not say, you shall destroy them: but, you shall scatter them.

Psalms 144:7Homily 54, on Psalm 143 (420)

Reach down from on high; set me free and rescue me from the deep waters, from the grasp of foreigners,

Send forth your hand from on high. 'Lord, who has believed our report? and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?' Send forth your hand from on high. Lord, bow down your heavens, and descend.

Psalms 144:8Homily 54, on Psalm 143 (420)

whose mouths speak falsehood, whose right hands are deceitful.

Whose mouth has spoken vanity. They promise themselves knowledge, and they raise up their mouth against their Creator. 'They have set their mouth against heaven.' Whose mouth has spoken vanity. Their knowledge is the knowledge of vanity.

Psalms 144:9Homily 54, on Psalm 143 (420)

I will sing to You a new song, O God; on a harp of ten strings I will make music to You—

O God, I will sing to you a new song. A new man, a new song. O God, I will sing to you a new song. 'Sing to the Lord a new song.' How beautifully he did not say, I sing, but, I will sing.

Psalms 144:15Homily 54, on Psalm 143 (420)

Blessed are the people of whom this is so; blessed are the people whose God is the LORD.

They called blessed the people who have these things. Many, not knowing, think such people blessed. But for us there is Christian simplicity: we do not want Platonic eloquence, but we want the apostolic simplicity of fishermen.

Psalms 146:1Homily 55, on Psalm 145 (420)

Hallelujah! Praise the LORD, O my soul.

Praise the Lord, O my soul. He did not say, praise the body, but, praise, O my soul; not that he condemned the body, but he condemned the works of the flesh. Praise the Lord, O my soul. The soul exhorts itself.

Psalms 146:2Homily 55, on Psalm 145 (420)

I will praise the LORD all my life; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

I will praise the Lord in my life. See what it says: it exhorts itself, and it itself answers. What does it say? It says to me, Praise the Lord, O my soul: I myself answer, I will praise the Lord in my life.

Psalms 146:5Homily 55, on Psalm 145 (420)

Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God,

Blessed is he whose helper is the God of Jacob. These trust in chariots, and these in horses: but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God. They have more helpers: but they are princes, but they are men, but they collapse.

Psalms 146:7Homily 55, on Psalm 145 (420)

He executes justice for the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free,

He executeth judgment for them that suffer wrong. Even if it comes late, do not despair: coming he shall come, and shall save. He executeth judgment for them that suffer wrong. Let this alone be in our conscience, that we suffer unjustly.

Psalms 146:8Homily 55, on Psalm 145 (420)

the LORD opens the eyes of the blind, the LORD lifts those who are weighed down, the LORD loves the righteous.

The Lord enlighteneth the blind. See what it says. If he were speaking of these blind men, he ought to have said, The Lord enlighteneth the blind. But he did not say this: but according to the Hebrew and Greek truth, what did he say?

Psalms 146:9Homily 55, on Psalm 145 (420)

The LORD protects foreigners; He sustains the fatherless and the widow, but the ways of the wicked He frustrates.

The Lord keepeth the strangers: he will take up the orphan and the widow. And according to the letter it is profitable. He will take up the orphan and the widow.

Psalms 147:1Homily 56, on Psalm 146 (420)

Hallelujah! How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and lovely to praise Him!

Praise the Lord, for a psalm is good. The one hundred and forty-sixth psalm is headed with the title "Alleluia."

Psalms 147:3Homily 56, on Psalm 146 (420)

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

Who heals the contrite of heart. You see how Jerusalem is built: the contrite of heart are healed. A contrite and humbled heart God does not spurn. And who binds up their bruises.

Psalms 147:4Homily 56, on Psalm 146 (420)

He determines the number of the stars; He calls them each by name.

Who numbers the multitude of the stars. What is the connection, according to the letter, between "And binding up their bruises" and "who numbers the multitude of the stars"?