Jeremiah’s lead; woman as weakness; hoopoe wings to Babylon

indeed the prophet Jeremiah was bewailing the peoples of the Jews not accepting the cleansing through Christ, saying: ‘The bellows has failed from fire, lead has failed; in vain a silversmith silversmiths; their evils have not been melted; call them rejected silver, because the Lord has rejected them.’ You understand therefore how divine Scripture has not been ignorant that the cleansing upon silver is not able to be practiced without lead. Therefore since Christ has thoroughly cleansed us being unapproved, he is likened to lead, and he himself stops up the mouth of the sin, of the one as in a form of a woman. And a woman is a symbol of weakness and of pleasure together, and every lawlessness is practiced through these. For the mind having been corrupted beforehand by some pleasure unto whatever, or this, and thus being unnerved, lets go the toils that carry off unto virtue, and the human soul falls toward sin; therefore some are said lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. And the prophet also addresses those who from psychic weakness have been sickened with the sin, and the palsy unto baseness: ‘Strengthen hands let go, and knees paralyzed.’

Palladius: But thus this. And a pair, tell me, of women, who carry the measure and the lawlessness away unto the Babylonians’ land—what would it wish to make clear?

Cyril: The mouth of the lawlessness has been stopped up, noble one, through Christ; for we have been justified in him, and have been freed from every charge, and the cry-down of the lawlessness against us has ceased. For this has become the aim of the economy unto us, by the one who through us, according to us, and for us, unto death, even if he lived again; for it was not possible that the life be defeated by death. But some disobeyed Christ’s Gospel, and not having accepted the redemption from the sin, bear it again as a burden, having hung it upon their own heads through weakness of mind, and softness of understanding and unmanliness of soul. These are carried about by every evil wind, and being most violently pushed together unto every form of uncleanness they make as much eagerness as possible unto the base things. And a sign of eagerness is the wing, which he also says is of a hoopoe, and this is a form of a small bird, always running round the most foul-smelling of the marshes, and gathering from mire and uncleanness unto food. As many therefore as spend their own eagernesses unto pollution, these would altogether reasonably be said to have the hoopoe’s wings. And they themselves are womanlike, and made soft, and thereafter conformed to the sin tyrannizing against them. For in the manner those under him and with him have become conformed to Christ through sanctification, so also those loaded with the lawlessness, and having chosen to live together with unclean baseness, are conformed and like-formed to it. And they carry the measure away unto Babylon, and seek a house for it there, enigmatically