(Verse 5 onwards) And Jeremiah the prophet said to the prophet Hananiah: Listen, Hananiah: The Lord did not send you, and yet you have made this people trust in a lie. Therefore, thus says the Lord: Behold, I will send (or cast) you away from the face of the earth, you will die this year. And what follows: Because you have spoken against the Lord. And Hananiah the prophet died in that year, in the seventh month, which is not mentioned in the Septuagint. For as much as they have set him forth above: He died in the seventh month. And this Ananias is not spoken of in the Septuagint as a prophet, though the Holy Scripture of the Hebrews calls him a prophet, even though Jeremiah accuses him, saying: Hear, Ananias, the Lord has not sent you, yet thou have prophesied. For how could he call him a prophet, whom he denied to be sent by the Lord? But the truth and order of the history is preserved, as we have said, not according to what it was, but according to what it was thought to be at that time. You deceived, he says, the people with a lie, so that they would not submit to the judgments of God. Therefore, you know that you will die this year. When we die, we are released from the prisons of the body, according to that testimony, which heretics interpret wrongly: Bring my soul out of prison (Ps. 141:8): so how is death now imposed as a punishment on false prophets? But in this place it should be noted that Jeremiah, after suffering injury from a false prophet, and before receiving a direct message from the Lord, remains silent; later, however, sent by the Lord, he boldly accuses the liar and announces his impending death. And that he who usually translates the seventh month is said to rest under this number, perhaps they falsely claim that he died in the seventh month so that he may be freed from the evils of the body, according to what they quote from the writing. Death is rest for a man. But we know that the bodies of believers are temples of God, if indeed the Holy Spirit dwells in them (Sirach 22:11).
About four hundred years have passed since the preaching of Christ burst on the world, and during that time in which his robe has been torn by countless heresies, almost the whole body of error has been derived from the Chaldaean, Syriac and Greek languages. Basilides, the master of licentiousness and the grossest sensuality, after the lapse of so many years and like a second Euphorbus, was changed by transmigration into Jovinian, so that the Latin tongue might have a heresy of its own. Was there no other province in the whole world to receive the gospel of pleasure and into which the serpent might insinuate itself, except that which was founded by the teaching of Peter, on the rock Christ? Idol temples had fallen before the standard of the cross and the severity of the gospel. Now, on the contrary, lust and gluttony endeavor to overthrow the solid structure of the cross. And so God says by Isaiah, “O my people, they which bless you cause you to err, and trouble the paths of your feet.” Also by Jeremiah, “Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and save every one his life,” and do not believe the false prophets who say, “Peace, peace, and there is no peace,” who are always repeating, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” “Your prophets have foreseen false and foolish things for you. They have not exposed your iniquity in order to call you to repentance. They devour God’s people like bread. They have not called on God. Jeremiah announced the captivity and was stoned by the people. Hananiah, the son of Azzur, broke the bars of wood for the present but was preparing bars of iron for the future. False prophets always promise pleasant things and please for a time. Truth is bitter, and those preaching it are filled with bitterness. For with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth the Lord’s Passover is kept, and it is eaten with bitter herbs.
The Septuagint does not translate “two years,” nor does it call Hananiah a “prophet,” lest it appear to name someone a prophet who was in fact no prophet, as if not many persons in sacred Scripture were named in accordance with the opinion of the time in which they lived or according to the truth of the matter. But Joseph is called the father of the Lord. And Mary, who knew that she had conceived by the Holy Spirit (responding to the angel, “How can this be, since I have never known a man?”), asked her son, “Son, why have you treated us this way? Your father and I have been looking for you desperately.” The prudence, humility and patience of Jeremiah must also be considered. When the pseudo-prophet damaged and broke the yoke around Jeremiah’s neck, which he was not able to do with iron, Jeremiah remained silent and concealed his pain. For what he should say was not yet revealed to him by the Lord, so that sacred Scripture would demonstrate tacitly that a prophet never speaks only on his own decision but also by the will of the Lord, most especially regarding future events, which are known to God alone. Jeremiah departed, it says, and went on his way as though he were well, thus fulfilling the prophecy: “I have become like a person who hears nothing and has no rebukes in his mouth.”
[AD 420] Jerome on Jeremiah 28:5-17