Jeremias 6:30

Well then, though we say that trial is twofold, i.e., in prosperity and in adversity, yet you must know that all men are tried in three different ways. Often for their probation, sometimes for their improvement, and in some cases because their sins deserve it. For their probation indeed, as we read that the blessed Abraham and Job and many of the saints endured countless tribulations; or this which is said to the people in Deuteronomy by Moses: “And thou shalt remember all the way through which the Lord thy God hath brought thee for forty years through the desert, to afflict thee and to prove thee, and that the things that were in thy heart might be made known, whether thou wouldst keep His Commandments or no:” and this which we find in the Psalms: “I proved thee at the waters of strife.” To Job also: “Thinkest thou that I have spoken for any other cause than that thou mightest be seen t …

21. He said again: The saints of the Most High shall receive the Kingdom . What shall we say concerning this? Have the children of Israel received the Kingdom of the Most High? God forbid. Or has that people come upon the clouds of heaven? This has passed away from them. For Jeremiah said concerning them: Call them rejected silver, for the Lord has rejected them . Again he said: He will not again regard them . And Isaiah said concerning them: Pass by; pass by; approach not the defiled . And concerning the saints of the Most High (Daniel) said thus: They shall inherit the Kingdom for ever . For these rested a little from the burden of kings and princes , namely, from after the death of Antiochus till the sixty-two weeks were fulfilled. And the Son of Man came to free them and gather them together, but they did not receive Him. …

3. Furthermore I questioned him about another saying that is written in Ezekiel; namely, that he said to Jerusalem: Sodom and her daughters shall be built up as of old, and thou and thy daughters shall become as of old . So he explained this saying to me, and began to make a defence, and said to me “As to this that God said to Jerusalem by the Prophet, Sodom and her daughters shall be built up as of old, and thou and thy daughters shall become as of old; this is the force of the passage, that Sodom and her daughters shall be in their place as of old, and shall be made subject to Israel; and Jerusalem and her daughters shall be in the splendour of royalty as of old.” When I heard this defence from him, it was very contemptible in my eyes, and I said to him: “Inasmuch as the words of the Prophet were said in wrath, is the whole passage wrathful, or is part of it wrathful and part of it gra …