Jerome : "Who is wise and will understand these things? Who is prudent and will know them? Because the ways of the Lord are straight, and the just shall walk in them; But the transgressors shall fall therein." LXX: "Who is wise and will understand these things, or prudent and will know them? For the ways of the Lord are straight and the just shall walk in them: but the wicked shall fall therein." When he says, "Who is wise and will understand these things? Who is prudent and will know them?" he indicates the obscurity of the volume and the difficulty of the explanation. But if he who wrote either acknowledges it to be difficult or impossible, what can we do, whose eyes are dimmed with blindness and filth of sins, so that we cannot perceive the brightest rays of the sun, except to say what is written: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable are His ways!" (Rom. II, 33)! For who can, without Christ teaching, know what Jezrael means: what its sister, not having obtained mercy means; what the third brother, not being my people means; who the adulteress is, who will sit for a long time without the law of God; what the covenant with the beasts of the earth and the birds of the sky means; who David is to whom the people will return, whose third day will be the resurrection, and whose coming forth will be compared to the dawn: what the first and last rain means; who is the one the prophet says will come to show us righteousness, or in whose type Israel was brought up out of Egypt, and was carried in arms, and led by the ropes of love: who it is that will slay Death, and dry up his veins and springs, and will make desolate the vessels that were kept in the treasury, and other things too long to relate? Therefore, whoever is holy and just will know the right ways of the Lord. We recognize the ways of the Lord by reading the Old and New Testaments, understanding the Scriptures. In these ways, whoever walks, unless he is converted to the Lord and the veil, which was before the eyes of Moses, has been taken away from him, he will not be able to find the right path. But if he says with David: "Reveal my eyes, and I will consider the wonders of your law" (Ps. CXVIII, 18), he will walk in them, and he will find Christ: and he will feel offended, weakened, and fallen by the Jews and heretics, whom the Scripture now calls prevaricators or impious, according to what is written: "Behold, this one is placed for the ruin and resurrection of many in Israel" (Luke II, 34). — Commentary on Hosea 14:10