Letter 543
To Macedonius the Taxeotes [a tax-collecting or military official].
For what reason are spiritual words spoken of in Jeremiah as an axe that splits the rock [Jeremiah 23:29, "Is not my word like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?"]? Because the word of God, when it comes to the stony heart, breaks apart the things that have been badly joined together, so that a person may be able to discern accurately, and to distinguish the better from the worse, and to choose at last what is good, but to thrust away what is blameworthy.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Τίνος ἕνεκεν οἱ πνευματικοὶ λόγοι πέλυξ κόπτων
πέτραν εἴρηνται ἐν τῷ Ἰερεμίᾳ; Ὁ γὰρ λόγος τοῦ
Θεοῦ ἐρχόμενος τῇ λιθώδει καρδίᾳ δέξιται τὰ κά-
κως συνημμένα, ὅπως ἂν δυνηθείη ὁ ἄνθρωπος δια-
κρίνειν ἀκριβῶς, καὶ διαστέλλειν τὸ κρεῖττον ἀπὸ τοῦ
χείρονος, καὶ αἱρεῖσθαι μὲν ποτὲ καλά, διωθεῖσθαι
δὲ τὰ φεκτά.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern nilus ancyra workflow v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: project source import
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