Let him who cannot fly like an eagle fly like a sparrow. Let him who cannot fly to heaven fly to the mountains. Let him flee before the valleys that are quickly destroyed by water. Let him pass over the mountains. Abraham’s nephew passed over the mountain of Segor and was saved. But Lot’s wife could not climb it, for she looked back in womanly fashion and lost her salvation. “Draw near the everlasting mountains,” the Lord says through the prophet Micah, “arise from here, for this is not a rest for you by reason of uncleanness. You have been corrupted with corruption, you have suffered pursuit.”And the Lord says, “Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.” Mount Zion is there, and so is the city of peace, Jerusalem, built not of earthly stones but of living stones, with ten thousand angels and the church of the firstborn and the spirits of those made perfect and the God of the just, who spoke better with his blood than Abel. For the one cried out for vengeance but the other for pardon. The one was a reproach to his brother’s sin; the other forgave the world’s sin. The one was the revelation of a crime; the other covered a crime according to what is written, “Blessed are they whose sins are covered.”
“In the Lord I take refuge; how can you say to me, ‘Flee to the mountains like a sparrow!’ ” Shrewd adversary; he tempted the Lord Savior in the desert, and now he wants the faithful, every one of them, to depart from the land of Judea and to dwell in a wilderness barren of virtues, that there he might crush them more easily. Even the counsel itself is crafty. It is not an exhortation to assume the wings of a dove, a gentle, simple and domestic bird—one, they say, entirely lacking in gall—which was offered in the temple in behalf of the Lord. [Instead it is an exhortation to take] the wings of a sparrow, a chattering, roving bird, one that is a stranger to its mate after hatching its young—notwithstanding that Aquila and Symmachus have usually translated “bird” in the place of “sparrow.” … The mountains, moreover, we may identify as those to which Scripture refers in another place: “Draw you near to the everlasting mountains,” and in the second of the gradual psalms: “I lift up my eyes toward the mountains, whence help shall come to me.” They are the mountains too in which we must take refuge after the abomination of desolation shall stand in the holy place.
(Versed 9, 10.) You have expelled the women of my people from their delightful homes, and you have taken their praise from their children forever. Arise and go, for you have no rest here, because of your uncleanness. It will be corrupted with the worst decay. The interpretation of the Septuagint (if indeed it is Septuagint; for Josephus writes, and the Hebrews affirm, that only five books of the law of Moses were translated by them and given to King Ptolemy, or rather contradicted) differs so greatly in this passage from the Hebrew truth, that we cannot put the chapters equally nor explain their meanings together. Therefore, let us first discuss our translation, and afterwards we will come to the same points. This is still in opposition to the people of God, of whom he had already said: On the contrary, my people have risen up against me as an adversary: you have taken away their outer garment, not only that, but also the women, that is, the once delicate matrons, have made them go as captives, or under the metaphor of the cities of Judea, which he also calls the daughters of Zion in Isaiah (Isaiah 26), because Zion was the metropolis. You have also taken away the praise of them from their little ones, he says, forever, there remained no one in the people, all being either killed or captured, who would sing my psalms; but even the few who remained in Babylon testify that they cannot sing. How, they say, shall we sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land (Ps. 136:4)? Arise and go into captivity, for in this land you shall not have rest, which has been defiled because of your sins, and it cannot be cleansed unless it has first observed a long sabbath. Therefore I say to you, you do not have rest here, because your land is polluted, and it will be corrupted with the worst decay, namely captivity, whether Babylonian or Roman, because it has shed the blood of the Lord: for it can be understood according to the truth of both histories.
LXX: The leaders of my people will be cast out from their luxurious homes; they have been rejected because of their wicked inventions. This can be understood both generally of the leaders, priests, and Pharisees of the Jewish people, who were cast out of their city of luxury after the passion of the Lord, where they had previously indulged in wicked inventions, and specifically of the lineage of David, because as soon as the Lord was born, the prince of Judah failed, and the ruler from his loins, who was awaited by the nations, came. But even the leaders of the Church who abound in pleasures, and believe that they can preserve their chastity amid feasts and revels, are described by the prophetic word as being expelled from spacious houses and luxurious banquets, and from meals acquired with great effort, and expelled on account of their evil thoughts and deeds. And if you want to know where they will be expelled to, read the Gospel: Into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 22:13). (Is it not a confusion and disgrace to preach Jesus crucified, the master, poor and hungry, while gorging on well-fed bodies, and to proclaim the doctrine of fasting with blushing cheeks and bloated mouths? If we are in the place of the Apostles, let us not only imitate their speech, but also embrace their conduct and abstinence.) It is indeed holy and the ministry of the Apostles to serve widows and the poor (Acts 6:2). They say that it is not fitting, with the word of God dismissed, to serve ourselves at the table. But now I am not speaking of the poor, I am not speaking of brothers, and those who cannot invite in return (from whom, except for the favor, the episcopal hand hopes for nothing else), but rather soldiers and those girded with a sword, and judges, with centurions and troops standing guard before their doors, the priest of Christ invites to the meal. The whole clergy runs through the city: they seek to display to judges what they cannot find in their own praetoriums, or certainly what they have found but do not buy. Nor indeed should it be thought that this invective is directed generally at everyone; but rather that the prophetic discourse strikes those who are such, and threatens them with punishments and eternal darkness: so that those who are not bound by shame and modesty may at least take action in repentance through the threat of punishment.
LXX: Approach the eternal mountains. By eternal mountains, we can understand either angels or prophets, about whom it is also written in the psalm: His foundations are on the holy mountains (Ps. 86:1). And in another place: I lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come? (Ibid. 120:1). But he approaches the eternal mountains who is not separated from the company of the blessed by his own sins, just as Moses approached God, not by place, but by merit. And to those who approached the eternal mountains, the Lord himself spoke. I am a God who is near, and not a God from afar (Jer. XXIII, 23). But the eternal mountains are called so to distinguish them from those that are not eternal, namely the beginning of the dark mountains of this world, which when they are raised up like the cedars of Lebanon and pass away with the world, their place cannot be found.
LXX: Arise and walk, for there is no rest for you here. We are commanded to think of no rest in worldly things; but, as if rising from the dead, to strive for the heavenly, and to walk after our Lord God, and to say: My soul clings to you (Ps. 62:9). But if we neglect and refuse to listen to the one saying: Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you (Eph. 5:14), we will indeed sleep, but we will be deceived, and we will not find rest because where Christ does not illuminate one rising up, what appears to be rest is tribulation.
LXX: Because of uncleanness, you have been consumed by corruption. For what we have said, you have been consumed; according to the Greek understanding, in Latin it can sound as 'you have been corrupted', so that there is order, because of uncleanness you have been corrupted by corruption. However, this is said to those who, serving the pleasure of the body and lust, corrupt not only the soul but also their own body, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God. He could also say, because of your uncleanness, you were corrupted, and even your understanding would have been filled without corruption. But now, because he says, you are corrupted by corruption, it seems to me that he is speaking of beneficial corruption. Along the lines of which the Apostle also speaks: And if our outward man is corrupted, yet the inward man is renewed day by day (II Cor. IV, 16). The one who always carries the death of Jesus in his body, and corrupts the external man, and subjects the flesh to the control of the soul, he is indeed corrupted, but not by corruption, because his corruption is of a beneficial nature.
You fled, with no one pursuing. It is said of those who, because of the filth of corruption, have been corrupted, that their conscience, even without punishment, does not dare to resist enemies and fight.
And so, they are expelled from the camp and repelled from the battle line, in order to not terrify the minds of their brethren, the fearful ones in the battle of the saints (Deut. 20), and in the curses of Leviticus, a word is directed towards such men: The voice of a flying leaf shall pursue you, and you shall flee, with none pursuing you (Lev. 26:36). I know that I have read in certain commentaries, explaining the beginning of the Gospel of John: All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing, that they have attributed this saying, 'nothing,' to wickedness, and furthermore, that they have interpreted wickedness itself as the devil, and in that same sense, they have understood that which was made without Christ, as nothing, as the devil. Therefore, if malice or the devil is nothing, and those who have been corrupted by corruption have fled, with no one, that is, nothing pursuing, the devil has pursued them into nothingness. But if this seems too forced to anyone, and contrary to the simplicity of Scripture, let him rather follow the skill of speech than a true interpretation, or let him follow the former exposition or any other he may discover.
[AD 397] Ambrose of Milan on Micah 2:9-10