{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-6796","native_reference":{"book_number":350,"chapter_from":12,"chapter_to":12,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":1,"verse_to":1},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: God of my heart … I didn't know how to love you, because I did not know how to conceive the existence of anything—however glorious—beyond mere matter. The soul that goes puffing and wheezing after such figments of the imagination [as fortune telling] is one that goes whoring from you and trusts what is phony and feeds on the wind. Yet while I wouldn't have this sorcerer sacrificing to demons on my behalf, I was actually sacrificing to them myself just by being involved in my superstition. For what else is to feed on the wind, if not to feed on error, and so to become the sport and plaything of the demonic?<br/><i>— CONFESSIONS 4:2</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: \"Ephraim feeds on the wind and follows after the east wind: all day long he multiplies lies and desolation. And he made a covenant with the Assyrians and brought oil into Egypt.\" LXX: \"But Ephraim is a spirit of wickedness, following the heat: all the day long he hath multiplied lies and vanities, and he hath made a covenant with the Assyrians, and oil he carried into Egypt.\" The sacred story tells that Manahen, king of Israel, after making peace with the Assyrians, sought aid from the Egyptians (2 Kings 15), and this is what is now said, that Ephraim feeds the winds, that is, deceives himself with vain hope, follows the oppressive heat, that is, \"summer,\" and goes to the South, and does nothing else all day but deceive himself. And while he runs here and there, he prepares destruction and devastation for his cities. Is it not destruction and deceit to make a covenant with the Assyrians and to carry oil into Egypt? By connivance, indeed, the whole thing was arranged, to send gifts to the Egyptians. Although some believe that oil is not produced in Egypt at all; but it was sent as a precious gift from Ephraim, whose land of Samaria is very fruitful in oil. Moreover, according to tropology, all heretics are held by the worst spirit of demons, about which it is written in the Apostle: \"Against spiritual wickedness in high places\" (Ephes. VI, 10). \"And when an unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.\" (Luke 11:24-26) Therefore, the worst spirit is followed by a desert wind, that is, a \"scorching wind\" or \"burning wind,\" which destroys everything that is flowering and germinating. It pursues emptiness and vanity throughout the entire day, is not content with its own error but multiplies many disciples, indeed companions of its own emptiness and error. He also makes a covenant with Assyrians, whose prince is great sense, that whatever he may have devised, he might appear to have devised it wisely, that wisdom which was destroyed by God, which even the Apostle commands to be avoided, saying: \"Beware lest any man shall cheat you by philosophy and vain seduction, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world\" (Col. II, 8). But he also brings oil to Egypt, or he trades in the wisdom of Egypt, desiring to mix with ecclesiastical dogmas the oil of anointing with which prophets and priests were anointed, with which even kings were anointed. They have this oil too, who are called saints, of whom it is said: \"Your sons are like new olive trees around your table\" (Ps. 127: 4). And the good olive tree in which our olive branch is inserted. Although heretics try to mix lies with the truth, oil cannot be coupled with waters and other moist and liquid substances. The truth is always above, and the lie is below. All other forms, that is, heresies, which do not have, as we have said, the oil of truth, can be mixed with themselves, and numerous ones can be made into one body. But the oil that is brought into Egypt, and descends from the holy land to Pharaoh's realms, is detested by the prophet, saying: \"The oil of the sinner will not anoint my head\" (Ps. 140:5).<br/><i>— Commentary on Hosea 12:1</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"915bde70c6611d9edb0ba80ac66fa93e8beeee6a8fcec1b9d860e6ba6372fe71","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":6796,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"90ccac1324e7ffa3bf33f21045c51f1a59654bee8816141299e9ebd05ae47b13","translator":null,"work":null}