3 Now is the end come upon thee, and I will send mine anger upon thee, and will judge thee according to thy ways, and will recompense upon thee all thine abominations.
(Verse 3, 4.) Now the end is upon you, and I will unleash my fury upon you, and I will judge you according to your ways, and I will bring all your abominations against you. And my eye will not spare you, and I will have no pity, but I will bring your ways upon you, and your abominations will be in your midst, and you will know that I am the Lord. In this chapter, according to the Septuagint Interpreters, the order has been changed and confused, so that the first become last, and the last become first or middle, and even the middle is now transferred to the extremes and vice versa. From this point, following the Hebrew and other interpreters, we have set forth the order of truth. Therefore, the speech is directed to the land of Israel, because the end and consummation will come upon it, and the Lord will send forth His anger upon it, not unjustly, but only coming from indignation; but it will be full of equity and reason, so that He may judge it according to His ways, and show it all its abominations. He will remember His works and understand what evil it has done. But as he says: My eye will not spare you, and I will not have pity, like a most merciful physician who wants to cut away putrid flesh and burn festering wounds with a cauterizing iron, he does not spare in order to spare; he does not have pity in order to have more pity; so that nothing putrid and corrupting remains in the body to infect the living flesh nearby. The Lord strikes those whom he loves, and he chastises every son whom he receives (Heb. 12:6). Of this understanding, it is said: I will strike and I will heal (Deut. 32:39). For every medicine has bitterness in the beginning, but afterwards the fruits of pain are revealed, and health is shown. This is what God speaks through Amos: 'Because I have known you from all the tribes of the earth, therefore I will avenge upon all your sins.' For the Lord knows those who belong to Him. And He says in Second Timothy: 'I will set forth his ways, and all the steps of his life, his abominations and stains, that the previous sins may be placed before the eyes of the sinner who is punished for the sake of health.' And when the Lord has done this, those who were oppressed will know that He is the Lord. This itself signifies and that testimony: I will punish Jacob according to his ways, and repay him according to his deeds. (Hosea 12:2).
[AD 420] Jerome on Ezekiel 7:3-4