Wailing on the Housetops

… “the axe lies at the root of the trees; every tree, then, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:10).

Since Israel, then, gave free rein to its advance in sin, and was devoted, as I said just now, to the false worship of idols, God through the prophet foretells the capture of Jerusalem that would come in its time, and says: “What has happened to you now, that you have all gone up to useless housetops? The city is filled with people shouting. Your wounded are not wounded by the sword, nor are your dead the dead of war” (Isaiah 22:1–2).

It seems to point here to the devastation in the days of Jeconiah, and to accuse those of Israel severely, because even amid these very evils, in misfortunes at their very height, they did not know how to do what leads to their good and what would win them favor from above. For they ought to have gone up to the house of God weeping and lamenting, to promise repentance, to ask pardon for the outrages they had committed, and to seek the helping hand from him, and from him alone.

And he himself taught this, saying through one of the holy prophets: “Gird yourselves and beat your breasts, you priests; wail, you who minister at the altar. Go in, sleep in sackcloth, you who minister to God, for sacrifice and drink offering are withheld from your house. Sanctify a fast, proclaim a solemn service, gather the elders, all who dwell in the land, into the house of your God, and cry out earnestly to the Lord: Alas, alas, for the day” (Joel 1:13–15).

These are the things they ought to have done to appease the one who has power to save, since he had been provoked. But it seems that they did not even let it enter their minds that they ought to do these things. Instead they went up to the highest parts of their houses, and everywhere there were laments, and the wailing of children, wasting away, it may be, from hunger and thirst. For such things must happen to cities under siege.

That is why he says: “What has happened to you now, that you have all gone up to useless housetops?” Why, he says, even amid terrors so unbearable, when your peril had reached its last extremity and everything was at stake, did you not cry out to God, but instead leapt up to the housetops, though that did you no good at all? That is why he calls them useless housetops.

And why was the city filled with people shouting? Not, surely, people crying to God, but people crying out at random, and all but beside themselves at the evils that had come within their doors. The lament ought to have been for repentance; the tears ought to have been shed before God. See, he says: before you joined battle, before you took up the sword, before you planned any resistance, the city became full of dead. It is useful, then, …