Those Who Call Evil Good

… and yet in a way those punishments were being dragged on by them, because they wished to fall even into the outbursts of divine wrath. I think that we can say to each such person, most fittingly and truly: “Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is leading you to repentance? But by your hardness and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Romans 2:4–5).

For, as I said, they drag the time of punishment upon themselves, perhaps fretting that he was slow to punish them and was not laying penalties on them as they sinned without restraint. So they drag their sins as with a long rope, and their lawless deeds as with the strap of a heifer’s yoke. For just as those who bring heifers, that is, oxen, under the yoke sometimes drag them with great force and bind them to their labor, so in the same way, I think, these men too put themselves under what was about to befall them from divine wrath, and said: “Let what he will do come near quickly, so that we may see; and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel come, so that we may know” (Isaiah 5:19).

Those who say this and think this way another of the holy prophets also calls wretched, saying: “Woe to those who long for the day of the Lord! It is darkness and not light, gloom that has no brightness” (Amos 5:18, 20).

So when we learn that God has been grieved, we must repent at once and soothe him instead with unceasing prayers, not provoke him further once he has been moved, nor despise him when he threatens. For he is patient and rich in mercy, taking away lawless deeds and passing over wrongs (compare Numbers 14:18; Micah 7:18), and sometimes, at the few tears of those who have sinned, he turns back to the calm that is dearest to him.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight” (Isaiah 5:20–21).

By these words too he shows that those who drag their sins as with a long rope are utterly without understanding. When they ought to have counted the duty of repentance worthy of all praise, to free themselves by every kind of gentleness from the wrath hanging over them, and to make their defense with fasts before God, the ruler of all, whom they had grieved, they have become untrustworthy money-changers, valuing the baser things and debasing what is incomparably better and most profitable for their salvation.

So the “woe” fits those who think this way. For they have become unholy and senseless judges against themselves. By saying that evil is good, by counting darkness as light, and the bitter sweet and the sweet bitter …