Just has the most skillful physicians carefully consider the causes of disease, and thus strive to arrest it with the help of their expertise, in the same way, in my view, the God of all looks within our mind and heart and investigates the causes of the passions within us, and thus checks the diseased mind with appropriate remedies. He charges the people of Israel, therefore, on the basis of prosperity, with falling victim to forgetting the one who provided them with everything necessary for life and all that was likely to shed the light of knowledge.
[…]
There was always, in fact, such sufficient enjoyment and conceitedness through unexpected honors as to cause you to forget God and enable the human mind to descend to every possible irregularity. In my view, Israel would have become sufficiently liable to accusation for kicking over the traces and finding in the extent of its prosperity an occasion for such a dire ailment; and when they overcame nations, with the help of the God who is all-powerful, they contracted arrogance, attributing somehow to themselves, and not to the God who protected them, the splendor of their achievements.
Luxurious living is therefore risky and difficult to manage, and is, as it were, a slippery path to apostasy from God; far better is moderate tribulation.
St Cyril of Alexandria, “Commentary on Hosea 13” in Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, Volume I. trans. Robert C. Hill (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2007), 240-1.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In