Annotation CCCXLVI

”And I will give to my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” — Apocalypse 11:3

Whether Jeremiah is dead.

Victorinus the Martyr, in the commentaries on this book, elucidating these [words], affirms that Jeremiah the prophet is not yet dead, [but] lives in Paradise, that thence, at the end of the world, he may come to preach penance, and be slain by Antichrist. His words are these: “MANY think that one of these witnesses is Elijah, or Elisha, or Moses: but these are [all] dead. But the death of Jeremiah is not found,¹ because all our ancients handed down that he is [the] Jeremiah [meant]. For the very word which was made to him testifies, saying to him: ‘Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth from the womb, I sanctified thee, and I set thee a prophet among the nations.’ But among the nations he was not a prophet. And therefore the truthful word of the Lord necessarily has [it], that [what] he promised he should exhibit, [namely] that among the nations he should be a prophet.” Hilary condemns this opinion, in the canon on Matthew 20. And the conjecture of Victorinus is frivolous. For [as to] that which God says, “I set thee a prophet among the nations,” it is not so to be taken, as if God were about to send him outside Judaea to prophesy and preach in the regions of the nations; but that he should prophesy concerning the deeds of the nations. For he foretold the victories of the Assyrians against Israel, and the destruction also of their [own] kingdom.