The Witness of Creation

…and become impious acts of daring?

He has very good reason, then, to call heaven and earth to witness. He was about to bring charges against Israel, and he wants the angels in heaven, and the whole earth itself, to know the ways of that people's impiety, so that no one would think that God had been moved without cause, or had rushed, over small and quite trivial faults, to cast off the beloved, the people set apart as His own portion, whom long ago He had rescued with very great strength from the greed of the Egyptians.

For He had mercy on them as a people wronged beyond all reason, weighed down by an unwilling servitude, contrary to the nobility that befitted their fathers and was native to them. And when their oppressors resisted, they were bitterly punished, as God hurled every kind of torment upon them. So, just as Israel's being taken up as His own was most conspicuous, He wants the manner of their casting off not to go unknown either.

If some would rather take it that the elements themselves are being called by the prophet's voice, the force of the thought would not miss the fitting sense, for those who have considered the following. Israel, as I said, was being redeemed through Moses from the ungodliness of the Egyptians. But when Pharaoh, impiously rising up against the commands of God, said, “I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go” (Exodus 5:2), creation armed itself with its own Master against those who were hostile. From above, from heaven, came a great many striking signs, and likewise a great many wonders on the earth itself. Heaven sent down hail (Exodus 9:23), and the earth threw up frogs, as it is written (Exodus 8:6); the water was changed into blood (Exodus 7:20); and when furnace soot was scattered and clouded the air, sores and blisters broke out on the bodies of everyone (Exodus 9:8–10). So, since the very elements had all but laboured in vain over those who had been redeemed, he says: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 1:2).

But let us approach the sense of the passage in another way as well. Those of Israel dishonoured the training given through the Law and neglected the saving teachings; they forsook the one God, who is God by nature, and brought their worship to unclean demons on mountains and hills, and in the most thickly wooded ravines they burned incense to the works of their own hands and bowed down to them. The God of all was angered at this, and with very good reason, and He said to one of the holy prophets: “Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, O hills, the judgment of the Lord, and you ravines, foundations of the earth, for the Lord has a judgment against His p…” (Micah 6:1–2).