Letter 49: The Philip who baptized the Ethiopian eunuch and instructed Simon the sorcerer was not the Apostle Philip, but one...
On what the nut-tree rod signifies.
Jeremiah, the most danger-beset of the prophets, saw a nut-tree rod [Jeremiah 1:11 LXX, where the prophet beholds "a rod of a nut tree"] as a figure of the priesthood. The parts of it that are visible and on the surface, and, as one might say, its preliminaries, prove to be astringent and rough and partaking of sharpness; but the parts that are hidden and within are stable and secure, and able to give support. One must therefore bear the toils of the priesthood nobly, and await its prizes eagerly.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
Τί σημαίνει ἡ καρυΐνη ῥάβδος.
Ῥάβδον καρυΐνην εἶδεν Ἰερεμίας, ὁ τῶν προφητῶν πολυκίνδυνος, ἱερωσύνης ὑπόθεσιν, ἧς τὰ μὲν προφανῆ καὶ ἐπιπόλαια, καὶ ὡς ἄν τις εἴποι προοίμια, στυπτικὰ καὶ τραχέα τυγχάνει, καὶ δριμύτητος μέτοχα· τὰ δὲ κρύφια καὶ ἐσώτερα, σταθερά τε καὶ βέβαια, καὶ στηρίζειν δυνάμενα. Χρὴ τοίνυν καὶ τὰ ἐπίπονα τῆς ἱερωσύνης φέρειν γενναίως, καὶ τὰ ἔπαθλα ταύτης περιμένειν προθύμως.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern isidore pelusium workflow v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/PatrologiaGraeca (PG vol.78)
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