Letter LXVIII¶
AN explanation of the text, Thy heaven shall be brass and thy earth iron.
AMBROSE TO ROMULUS
1. BEING yourself in the country I am surprised at your having been led to inquire of me the reason why God should have said, And thy heaven shall be brass, and thy earth iron. For the very appearance of the country and its present fertility might teach us how great is the mildness of the air, and how genial is the climate, when God vouchsafes to give plenty, but when sterility, how all things are closed up, how dense the air, so as to seem hardened into the very substance of brass. Elsewhere also you read that in the days of Elijah the heaven was shut up three years and six months.
2. By the heaven then being brass is signified its being shut up, and refusing its use to the earth. The earth also is iron, for it withholds its produce, and with hostile rigour excludes from its fructifying soil the seeds thrown upon it, which its wont is to cherish as in the bosom of a tender mother. For when does iron bring forth fruit, when does brass melt into showers?
3. Those impious men therefore He threatens with miserable famine, that they who know not how to shew filial piety to the common Lord and Father of all, may be deprived of the support of His paternal clemency, that the heaven may be to them as brass, and the air condensed into the substance of metal; that the earth may be to them as iron, deprived of its natural productions, and as is usually the case with poverty, a sower of strife. For they who are in want of food commit robberies, that at the expense of others they may relieve their own hunger.
4. If further the offence of the inhabitants be so great that God stirs up and brings war upon them, then their land is truly iron, bristling with crops of spears, and stripped of its own fruit, fruitful as regards punishment, barren as regards nourishment. But where is abundance? Behold I will rain bread for you, saith the Lord.
Farewell; love me, for I also love you.