Jeremiah 12:11

(Vers. 11, 12.) And the earth mourned, desolate it is, because there is no one who thinks in their heart. The devastators have come over all the paths of the desert, for the sword of the Lord has devoured from one end of the earth to the other: there is no peace for all flesh. LXX: Therefore the earth is utterly ruined, and the rest. This that we have set, 'and the earth mourned,' is joined to the previous verse according to the Hebrew, so that the meaning is: They have made it into ruin, that is, my inheritance: And the earth mourned, deprived of my help. But according to the Septuagint, God spoke that because of him the earth is devastated and turned into a wilderness, because there is no one who remembers in their heart, nor any peace for all flesh. For the flesh cannot receive the peace of God. For the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. And according to the Hebrew, therefore all of Judaea is desolate, because there is no one who remembers God in their heart, nor is there any survivor who can escape. For through all the ways of solitude came the devastators, that is, a hostile army, and the sword of the Lord devoured from one end to the other; and there was no rest for those fleeing from the city. Hence it is said: There is no peace for all flesh.

Who is it that says, "Because of me the whole earth has been laid utterly waste"? Christ says these things, before whose coming many sins had indeed been committed by the people, but not such sins as to cause them to be utterly forsaken and handed over into a captivity of long duration. But when they had filled up "the measure of their fathers" and had added, to the killing of the prophets and the persecuting of the righteous, the slaying of "the Christ of God," then came to pass the word, "Your house is left to you." And it is because of him that they have suffered these things, and "the whole earth has been laid utterly waste." But if you wish also to hear in a loftier sense the words, "Because of me the whole earth has been laid utterly waste," look at the earth within you, in what manner it was laid waste when Jesus came; for it was laid waste "when the members that are upon the earth were put to death," and the earth no longer works its own works, no longer are there produced in the righteous person the works of the flesh in which the flesh once flourished — no longer fornication, no longer uncleanness, not licentiousness, not idolatry, not sorcery, and the rest. And the Savior too says, "Do you think that I came to cast peace upon the earth? I did not come to cast peace, but a sword." For truly, before he came, there was no sword upon the earth, nor did "the flesh lust against the spirit, nor the spirit against the flesh"; but when he came and we were taught which things are of the flesh and which are of the spirit, the teaching, having become as it were a sword upon the earth, divided the flesh and the earth from the spirit; and "the earth was laid waste" when we carry about the dying of Jesus in the body, and we no longer live according to the flesh but the spirit lives, and we sow nothing unto the flesh but all things unto the spirit, so that we may not reap corruption from the flesh but from the spirit eternal life.