Dante and Virgil are still in the seventh circle of Hell and the second ring. Remember the seventh circle of Hell is for those who have sinned with violence. Within this circle are three rings. The first one was the punishment for those who do violence against others. The second one was the punishment for those who do violence against themselves. That was where Canto XIII left off. Today we look at Canto XIV and Dante and Virgil will be going to the third ring which is punishment for those who do violence against God, the Blasphemers.
From there we proceeded to the boundary line
At which the third and second rings divide:
And there a dreadful form of justice is seen.
To make these new things clear: we two now stood
On a plain whose bed rejects all plants – bare, flat
Garlanded all around by the woeful wood
Just as the wood is by the sorrowful moat
And here we stayed our steps at the very edge.
The ground was dry deep sand, resembling that
Which Cato trod. O vengeance of God, how much
Should you be feared by all of those who read
What my eyes saw! It was a great assemblage
Of naked souls in herds, all of whom mourned
Most miserably and seemed to be subject
To different laws. Some lay upon the ground,
Supine; some sat hunched up; while others walked
Restlessly about. It seemed that those who moved
Were the more numerous, those who lay abject
In torment, fewest – but it was they who grieved
With tongues most loosened by pain. All over the sand
Distended flakes of fire drifted from aloft
Slowly as mountain snow without a wind
…
Eternal fire descended in such profusion
Sand kindled like tinder under flint, and made
The pain redouble – with their dancing hands
Not resting even for a moment they pawed
Themselves now here, now there, and beat the brands
Of fresh fire off.
The third ring of the seventh circle is devoted to violence against God, in His person and in His possessions.
This terrible landscape before Dante is a sterile plain of hot, dry sand. Normally you would imagine a plain as productive land. Rain would water the ground so things would grow. But here it is just the opposite. It is an unproductive plain with a rain of fire so there would be nothing to live and grow – “on a plain whose bed rejects all plants”.
The sand is described as like the sand “Cato trod”. Cato the Younger led Pompey’s Republican forces across the sands of Lybia to escape Caesar. It is also like the hot sands of India that Alexander the Great experience.
Dante notes that the “naked souls” are in “herds”. He says “some lay on the ground, supine; some sat hunched up; while others walked restlessly about”. So the herds are divided into those lying on the hot sand, those sitting hunched up and those walking restlessly around. There are three groups of sinners in this ring. Those lying on the sand are those who blaspheme God, they are violent against God’s person. They are the most talkative, “but it was they who grieved with tongues most loosened by pain”. Those who are seated on the sand are those who were violent against God’s “arte” (Nature’s daughter, God’s granddaughter) which is usury. Those who walk about are those who were violent against God’s daughter, Nature, which is homosexuality or the sodomites.
Dante picks one of those lying down and asks Virgil who he is.
Who is that one,
The great one seeming to pay no heed to the fire,
Who lies disdainful and scowling, so that the rain
Seems not to ripen him?” He appeared to hear
Me ask about him, and shouted, “What I was
Alive, I am in death! Though Jove may wear
His smith out, from whom anger made him seize
The sharpened bolt that smote me my last day;
And though he wears out every smith he has
At Mongibello’s black forge; and though he cry,
‘Help, help, good Vulcan’ just the way he did
Amid the battle of Phlegra, and hurl at me
With all his might – he still will not have had
The pleasure of his vengeance.” Then my guide
Spoke with more force than I had heard, and said,
“O Capaneus, that this unquenched pride
Remains in you just punishes you the more:
No torment but this raging of yours could goad
With agony enough to match your ire.”
Then gentler, to me: “He was one of the seven kings
Who besieged Thebes, and bore – seems still to bear –
Disdain for God. But as I said, his revilings
Earn his breast fitting badges.”
Capaneus – a king who was one of the Seven Against Thebes. He was a son of Hipponous and husband of Evadne (or Ianeira). Capaneus had immense strength and body size and was an outstanding warrior. He was also notorious for his arrogance. He stood just at the wall of Thebes at the siege of Thebes and shouted that Jove himself could not stop him from invading it. While he was mounting the ladder at the wall of Thebes, Jove struck and killed Capaneus with a thunderbolt made by Vulcan at his forge at Mongibello, and Evadne threw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre and died. The poem is about the war between the two sons of Oedipus, king of Thebes, Polynices and Eteocles. Polynices gathers an army led by the Seven Against Thebes to take Thebes from his brother. In the end, the two brothers kill each other. Thebes represents the worst of human society. Statius, who lived (circa 45 AD – circa 96 AD), was a revered Latin author who wrote his epic poem, Thebaid, a Latin epic in twelve books. The story was made into a play by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus called The Seven Against Thebes. Capaneus continues to curse the deity (whom, being a pagan, he addresses as “Jove”, in some translations Zeus or Jupiter) despite the fact he inflicts more pain on himself. Why? So God “still will not have had the pleasure of His vengeance” He thinks he is causing God pain by suffering the pain he endures. !?!
This is a typical action that we would call “shooting your own self in the foot”. You suffer more than the revenge you give. Capaneus is hurting himself with his pride and arrogance, not God. Let’s look at what God has to say about revenge, vengeance, forgiveness.
Matthew 19:16-22 (NLT) 16 Someone came to Jesus with this question: “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”
17 “Why ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. But to answer your question—if you want to receive eternal life, keep the commandments.”
18 “Which ones?” the man asked.
And Jesus replied: “‘You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. 19 Honor your father and mother. Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
20 “I’ve obeyed all these commandments,” the young man replied. “What else must I do?”
21 Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Leviticus 19:18 (ESV) You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
Proverbs 24:29 (ESV) Do not say, “I will do to him as he has done to me; I will pay the man back for what he has done.”
1 Peter 3:9 (ESV) Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.
Matthew 5:38-39 (ESV) “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
Matthew 6:14-15 (ESV) “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Mark 11:25 (ESV) “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”
Romans 12:17-21 (ESV) Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Why do you think God tells us to leave revenge to Him? Because we do more harm to ourselves than to the person we are trying to hurt. God knows us very well and He knows carrying bitterness, anger, unforgiveness and pride is destructive to us. We get bogged down in the sin of it all and it kills us spiritually, emotionally and physically. If we can pray about it and give the situation to God and let it go, we are the healthier for it.
It reminds me of all this going on about George Floyd and his murder by cop. George Floyd was a very flawed human being as we all are. He had a record, he was on drugs, he had a very unsavory past. But he didn’t deserve to die like that. He was a human being who was created and loved by God. He was a sinful human being. His murderer, and those who were accessories, were immediately taken into custody and will face justice. That should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. People got angry because he was killed unnecessarily and it wasn’t enough for them that those policemen will face justice in our judicial system. They were so angry, bitter and full of hatred, that they wanted to drag those men out of jail and lynch them on the town square just like was done to people in the old days. Since they couldn’t do that, they began “protests” which turned into riots with mobs assaulting, murdering, raping, looting, and burning all across the country. Antifa and BLM got involved and instigated, funded, and supplied the rioters. Meanwhile, they put George Floyd in a shiny gold coffin, had a HUGE televised funeral (during a pandemic) in which thousands of people came and bowed before his coffin. He has been idolized and deified into something that no man is, a god. These rioters have gone bananas and have destroyed so much and killed so many in the name of “justice” that they have far surpassed what was done to poor George Floyd. So many people have made the choice for revenge and hatred that they have been consumed with it and are taking it out on innocent people, their property, their businesses, their lives. They are destroying cities, our whole country for nothing. The killer will probably never see the light of day again so justice is being done. A peaceful protest would have been enough to insure nothing was covered up. There was video taken and everyone has seen it. It’s a done deal. But it wasn’t enough. What do these rioters and mobs want? It’s become nothing but vengeance and hatred for whites. They want what someone else has, they want it now, they are bent on taking it by force and the only reason is because of their hatred for white people which is racism at it’s worst. Their demands have absolutely no basis in reality. They want to get rid of the police force which is all that stops the criminals from taking over. They want to defund the police forces across the nation. They want reparations for slavery that happened 160 years ago. They want to take everything white people own and give it to black people. So thousands of people have been assaulted, beaten, raped and violently murdered in these free-for-alls. That’s worse than George Floyd being murdered. Cities and businesses burned out which is worse than George Floyd’s murder. Looting and stealing from innocent people and businesses which is worse than George Floyd’s murder. An entire country in crisis which is worse than George Floyd’s murder. Our economy on the verge of collapse which is worse than George Floyd’s murder. They have taken the one event and multiplied it horrendously making it far worse than what was done to George Floyd. They have shot themselves in the foot. They are hurting themselves. They don’t seem to understand the consequences of what they are doing and how it will effect them, their lives, their futures. It’s like a toddler on steroids having a temper tantrum and destroying his own home and life. They are shitting in their own nest. And this doesn’t even take into account what it’s doing to them emotionally and spiritually. They are in so much bondage to anger and hate that they can’t think, talk, move or act without anger and hate. They can’t talk in a normal tone of voice, it has to be loud, raging exclamations in cliches, curses and propaganda slogans. They can’t have a normal life because it is all about hate. They can’t think about anything else but hatred, anger and revenge. They have lost all perspective, all commonsense, all rational thought. Nothing else matters to them but their hatred. This is bondage to sin. Satan has promised them a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but satan is a liar and his promises are nothing but smoke and mirrors. It’s all fake. What they sow, they will reap. They sow the whirlwind, they will reap the whirlwind. A whirlwind is destructive but it contains nothing but wind. There will be no pot of gold, just wind. It’s much ado about nothing. They will have wasted their lives, their opportunities, their youth on nothing but destruction.
Why do you think God tells us to leave revenge to Him? Because we do more harm to ourselves than to the person we are trying to hurt. God knows us very well and He knows that carrying bitterness, anger, unforgiveness and pride is destructive to us. We get bogged down in the sin of it all and it kills us spiritually, emotionally and physically. If we can pray about it and give the situation to God and let it go, we are the healthier for it.
It reminds me of all this going on about George Floyd and his murder by cop. George Floyd was a very flawed human being as we all are. He had a record, he was on drugs, he had a very unsavory past. But he didn’t deserve to die like that. He was a human being who was created and loved by God. He was a sinful human being. His murderer, and those who were accessories, were immediately taken into custody and will face justice. That should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. People got angry because he was killed unnecessarily and it wasn’t enough for them that those policemen will face justice in our judicial system. They were so angry, bitter and full of hatred, that they wanted to drag those men out of jail and lynch them on the town square just like was done to people in the old days. Since they couldn’t do that, they began “protests” which turned into riots with mobs assaulting, murdering, raping, looting, and burning all across the country. Antifa and BLM got involved and instigated, funded, and supplied the rioters. Meanwhile, they put George Floyd in a shiny gold coffin, had a HUGE televised funeral (during a pandemic) in which thousands of people came and bowed before his coffin. He has been idolized and deified into something that no man is, a god. These rioters have gone bananas and have destroyed so much and killed so many in the name of “justice” that they have far surpassed what was done to George Floyd. So many people have made the choice for revenge and hatred that they have been consumed with it and are taking it out on innocent people, their property, their businesses, their lives. They are destroying cities, our whole country for nothing. The killer will probably never see the light of day again so justice is being done. A peaceful protest would have been enough to insure nothing was covered up. There was video taken and everyone has seen it. It’s a done deal. But it wasn’t enough. What do these rioters and mobs want? It’s become nothing but vengeance and hatred for whites. They want what someone else has, they want it now, they are bent on taking it by force and the only reason is because of their hatred for white people which is racism at it’s worst. Their demands have absolutely no basis in reality. They want to get rid of the police force which is all that stops the criminals from taking over. They want to defund the police forces across the nation. They want reparations for slavery that happened 160 years ago. They want to take everything white people own and give it to black people. So thousands of people have been assaulted, beaten, raped and violently murdered in these free-for-alls. That’s worse than George Floyd being murdered. Cities and businesses burned out which is worse than George Floyd’s murder. Looting and stealing from innocent people and businesses which is worse than George Floyd’s murder. An entire country in crisis which is worse than George Floyd’s murder. Our economy on the verge of collapse which is worse than George Floyd’s murder. They have taken one event and multiplied it horrendously making it far worse than what was done to George Floyd. They have shot themselves in the foot. They are hurting themselves. They don’t seem to understand the consequences of what they are doing and how it will effect them, their lives, their futures. It’s like a toddler on steroids having a temper tantrum and destroying his own home and life. They are shitting in their own nest. And this doesn’t even take into account what it’s doing to them emotionally and spiritually. They are in so much bondage to anger and hate they can’t think, talk, move or act without anger and hate. They can’t talk in a normal tone of voice, it has to be loud, raging exclamations in cliches, curses and propaganda slogans. They can’t have a normal life because it is all about hate. They can’t think about anything else but hatred, anger and revenge. They have lost all perspective, all commonsense, all rational thought. Nothing else matters to them but their hatred. This is bondage to sin. Satan has promised them a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but satan is a liar and his promises are nothing but smoke and mirrors. It’s all fake. What they sow, they will reap. They sow the whirlwind, they will reap the whirlwind. A whirlwind is destructive but it contains nothing but wind. There will be no pot of gold, just wind. It’s much ado about nothing. They will have wasted their lives, their opportunities, their youth on nothing but destruction.
Now let’s look at it from God’s standpoint. God says all the hatred, unforgiveness, revenge and anger destroy us so we must forgive. He commands us to forgive or we won’t be forgiven. He tells us to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us. I must forgive them for the destruction and deaths they have caused and the loss of future in our country. I must pray, leave it in God’s Hands and walk away. I must obey Him by forgiving my enemies and trusting it to Him. He alone knows how to take care of all of this. My job is to forgive, pray for them and do good. His job is to take care of the mess they are making.
The same is to be said for them. If they want to be saved, they can turn to Jesus and ask forgiveness and accept Him as their Savior. No matter what they’ve done. As long as they are breathing, they can be forgiven and saved through Jesus Christ. But then they are commanded by God to forgive, let go of anger and allow God to take care of what they see as injustice. If they feel there is injustice, inequality and racism, then they are to go to God in prayer, give it to Him and let it go. They can express their feelings but then leave it at the cross for God to take care of. It’s hard for any of us to do, but it is the healthiest thing to do in every way. Plus we receive blessings when we obey God. This way, we remain free of the destructive, enslaving sin that eats away at us until there is nothing left. We don’t have to live in bondage to sin any more.
Capaneus died on the wall of Thebes while shouting his blasphemy. Alive he was a defamer of God and he still is. It only took a single bolt of lightening to kill him despite all his arrogance and boastful blasphemy. He meant to oppose divine power (by whatever name). “What I was alive, I am in death” is Capaneus’ way of saying Hell and it’s punishments have not changed him; he is unrepentant. He is correct but what a boast! Although the fiery “rain seems not to ripen him” he is ripe alright. He is so ripe he’s downright rotten with sin. And his continued “revilings earn his breast fitting badges”. I.e. he just keeps adding to his own torture. He has created his own Hell and punishment and he’s proud of it!
In silence we reached a place
Where gushing from the woods a small stream poured
So red that it still makes me shudder. As issues
That stream from Bulicame that is shared
Among the prostitutes, so this brook flowed
Down and across the sand. It was stone-floored;
Stone lined both banks and the margins on each side;
And I could see that this would be our route.
Bulicame was a hot spring near Viterbo from which prostitutes built conduits to their dwellings for bathing since they couldn’t use public baths. Virgil goes on to tell Dante the origins of the stream.
“In the middle of the sea
Lies a waste land called Crete, a realm whose lord
Governed the world in its age of purity.
The mountain Ida is there, which once was glad
With foliage and waters, and now must lie
Deserted, like some worn thing by time decayed.
Long ago Rhea chose it for her child
As his safe cradle; and since they had to hide,
Made all there shout whenever her infant wailed.
Within the mountain stand an immense Old Man,
Who turns his back toward Damietta, to hold
His gaze on Rome as on his mirror: of fine
Gold is his head, pure silver his arms and breast
Down to the fork is brass, and from there down
The choicest iron comprises all the rest
But the right foot, of clay baked hard as brick:
On it, more weight than on the left is pressed.
Every part but the gold head bears a crack,
A fissure dripping tears that collect and force
Their passage down the cavern from rock to rock
Into this valley’s depth, where as a source
They form the Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon.
Then their way down is by this narrow course
Until, where all descending has been done,
They form Cocytus – and about that pool
I shall say nothing, for you will see it soon.”
KEEN, Catherine M. 14. The Patterning of History: Poetry, Politics and Adamic Renewal In: Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy. Volume 2 [online]. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2016 (generated 29 juillet 2020). Available on the Internet: <http://books.openedition.org/obp/3679>. ISBN: 9782821883963.
“Probably the most evident vertical connection that a reader will initially identify between the Fourteens (or two of them, at least) is a topographical one, given the prominence, in both Inferno and Purgatorio, of river imagery. Roughly half the space of both canti is occupied by the starkly moralized description of waterways. In Inferno xiv, we begin with a ‘picciol fiumicello’ [little stream] (l. 77) flowing through a stony channel in the circle of violence, which recalls the Bulicame, a natural thermal spring near Viterbo. In Purgatorio, river imagery begins with an unnamed ‘fiumicel’ [little stream] (l. 17), which rises in the Apennines and flows more than a hundred miles down to the sea. The two speeches will both unfold at some length before the two rivers, infernal Phlegethon and Tuscan Arno, are finally named. They open with almost identical locutions: (Inf., xiv. 94–96) ‘In the midst of the sea lies a ruined land’, he said then, ‘called Crete, under whose king the world once was chaste’…. (Purg., xiv. 16–18) And I: ‘Through the midst of Tuscany there flows a little stream that is born in Falterona, and a hundred miles of flowing do not sate it’.
“Besides their lexical and structural symmetries, equally notable is the way that each river episode begins by describing an apparently harmless fiumicello, but develops into unsettling, monstrous imagery as it follows the river from source to end. In Purgatorio xiv, the Arno flows down through a series of communities metamorphosed from the human to the bestial, as if through Circe’s black magic (l. 42). The Arno’s known course clearly identifies these unnamed locales, each symbolized by a more unpleasant animal, from uncouth swine in the Casentino, to whining dogs in Arezzo, wolves in Florence, and in Pisa cheating foxes (ll. 43–54). Confirming the explicit moral allegory of the bestial imagery, it has been noted since the early commentaries that the Arno’s ‘maladetta e sventurata fossa’ [cursed and baleful furrow] (l. 51) follows a scale of descending vices that matches the stratification of sin in Inferno, as it passes from swinish incontinence, through lupine force, to vulpine fraud.
“As for the rivers of Hell itself, in Inferno xiv they too follow a downward flow that is figured as both physically and morally degenerative. The Phlegethon has a sufficiently sinister appearance, with its sulphurous, boiling similarity to the Bulicame, and waters red with blood. As Virgil explains, it forms part of a continuous system of four rivers flowing through Hell (ll. 115–20): the Styx, Acheron, Phlegethon, and Cocytus, all names borrowed from classical poetry, including Virgil’s own Aeneid. As noted above, before the rivers are named, a long circumlocution explains their origin in the familiar earthly world, on Crete’s Mount Ida (ll. 94–114). Yet although the locale and mechanics of the river system’s source are earthly, they are also uncanny. The bloody waters of the Phlegethon have their source in another bodily fluid: the tears weeping from the statue of an Old Man, hidden in a cave on the island of Crete. The tears flow not from the statue’s eyes, but from wounds perforating its body, in a parody of the redemptive flow of blood from the wounds of Christ at the Crucifixion: ‘Each part of him, except his golden head, is broken by a crack that drips tears (ll. 112–13). The image carries a reminder that all the pain of souls in Hell has its origins in their sinful actions on earth. Within a vertical reading, there is also a parallel between the weeping wounds of Inferno xiv’s Cretan statue, producing the rivers of Hell, and the weeping, wounded eyes of Guido del Duca, who produces the polluted, infernal image of the Arno in Purgatorio xiv.
“The infernal rivers’ relentless downward flow from the fissures in the statue make a single interconnected system out of, not only the abyss of Hell, but of the whole Mediterranean above ground, where Crete lies in mezzo mare. If the landscape imagery in the whole circle of the violent forms a negative counterpart to earthly landscape phenomena — sterile bushes in the wood of the suicides, the desert and rain of fire of blasphemy, the blood-filled Phlegethon — this reversal of natural order is consolidated in the Old Man image. Hell’s rivers, in exact opposition to earthly ones, have their origins in salt waters and flow downwards into ice, in the frozen lake of Cocytus; whereas rivers in the human world rise in icy mountain regions and flow towards the salt sea. Nonetheless, at the end of the canto, a brief allusion to the fifth river of the classical afterlife, Lethe, reminds us that the flow of water can, and should, cleanse as well as contaminate: Lethe you will see, but outside this ditch, there where the souls go to be washed once their repented guilt has been removed.
“If the mountain island of Crete is the well-spring for Hell’s rivers of pain, Dante will also provide a counter-balancing image in Purgatory of a mountain island where the Lethe rises with pristine Edenic origins, and produces consolation.
“The second part of Inferno xiv is dominated by this discussion of infernal rivers and their strange earthly origins, but the canto opens with another reversal of natural order, in a snowfall of flakes of fire: Over all the sand there rained, with a slow falling, broad flakes of fire, like snow in the mountains without wind.”
Rhea was Saturn’s wife. Saturn ate his own children so as not to be dethroned. So Rhea hides her child, Jupiter, on the island of Crete. There is a mountain on Crete called Mt. Ida. Inside that mountain is a huge statue called Old Man. His back is turned towards Damietta which was a city in the Nile River delta so he has turned his back on Egypt and towards Rome. He has a gold head, silver arms and breast, brass midsection, iron legs with a clay right foot. There is a crack from the chest down and this wound weeps. The water goes down fissures into Hell to form Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon and Cocytus.
Why is this story here in the seventh circle and second ring with the those who are violent against God, the blasphemers? The island of Crete is described as once “glad with foliage and waters” which calls to mind the Garden of Eden before the Fall. The Old Man, Adam, had been created perfect, thus the gold head that is unmarred by the crack. But the crack appears from the chest down signaling the Fall. Adam chose to sin and thus the crack. Adam bemoans his sin, thus the tears. Mankind degenerates into sin and idolatry. We need the New Man, Jesus Christ, to set us free from sin and make us perfect again. The Old Man statue also represents the pagan religions that worshipped idols and denied the true God. The Old Man blasphemes the New Man, Jesus Christ, Son of God.
Water is a powerful symbol in the Bible. Throughout the Bible, water is present in many of the stories. Water is seen as a cleansing agent in judgment (The Flood is one example). Troubled or overwhelming water was often used to symbolize those who reject God and are enemies to God and His people. “Still waters” were used to symbolize God’s care and the peace this brings us. Water sometimes symbolizes the spiritual cleansing that comes with the acceptance of God’s offer of salvation. Jesus said He would give us “living water” that would give us eternal life (John 4:10-14). The Holy Spirit is the fountain of living water from within.
John 7:37-39 (Jesus speaking) “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified”
Ephesians 5:26-27 (parenthesis mine) that He (Jesus) might sanctify her (the church, His bride), having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish
Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water
The water is “tears” and it’s “so red that it still makes me shudder”. It’s totally opposite of the cleansing water of God’s mercy through Jesus Christ. This is not water of joy but tears and blood red. The red reminds us of the blood of Jesus that paid for our sins. In Hell, this reminds sinners that they chose not to be cleansed by His precious blood. They can be submerged in this river of blood and still not be cleansed and saved. The time to accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is past for them. They will always be reminded that they chose to reject their own salvation. There is no cleansing in these rivers, only judgment and regret. The rivers in Hell are made by human tears. The rivers have formed the pit and circles of Hell. Humans have made their own Hell.
This statue also reminds me of the statue in Daniel 2.
Daniel 2:29-45 (NLT, Daniel interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream) 29 “While Your Majesty was sleeping, you dreamed about coming events. He who reveals secrets has shown you what is going to happen. 30 And it is not because I am wiser than anyone else that I know the secret of your dream, but because God wants you to understand what was in your heart.
31 “In your vision, Your Majesty, you saw standing before you a huge, shining statue of a man. It was a frightening sight. 32 The head of the statue was made of fine gold. Its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs were bronze, 33 its legs were iron, and its feet were a combination of iron and baked clay. 34 As you watched, a rock was cut from a mountain,d but not by human hands. It struck the feet of iron and clay, smashing them to bits. 35 The whole statue was crushed into small pieces of iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold. Then the wind blew them away without a trace, like chaff on a threshing floor. But the rock that knocked the statue down became a great mountain that covered the whole earth.
36 “That was the dream. Now we will tell the king what it means. 37 Your Majesty, you are the greatest of kings. The God of heaven has given you sovereignty, power, strength, and honor. 38 He has made you the ruler over all the inhabited world and has put even the wild animals and birds under your control. You are the head of gold.
39 “But after your kingdom comes to an end, another kingdom, inferior to yours, will rise to take your place. After that kingdom has fallen, yet a third kingdom, represented by bronze, will rise to rule the world. 40 Following that kingdom, there will be a fourth one, as strong as iron. That kingdom will smash and crush all previous empires, just as iron smashes and crushes everything it strikes. 41 The feet and toes you saw were a combination of iron and baked clay, showing that this kingdom will be divided. Like iron mixed with clay, it will have some of the strength of iron. 42 But while some parts of it will be as strong as iron, other parts will be as weak as clay. 43 This mixture of iron and clay also shows that these kingdoms will try to strengthen themselves by forming alliances with each other through intermarriage. But they will not hold together, just as iron and clay do not mix.
44 “During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or conquered. It will crush all these kingdoms into nothingness, and it will stand forever. 45 That is the meaning of the rock cut from the mountain, though not by human hands, that crushed to pieces the statue of iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold. The great God was showing the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true, and its meaning is certain.”
The head of gold represented Babylon. The chest and arms of silver represented the Medo-Persian empire. The bronze midsection was the Greek empire. The iron legs were the Roman empire. The feet of mixed iron and clay was the corrupted Catholic church. At the time this was written, all this was in the future and prophetic.
Dante asks Virgil about another river known as being in the underworld, the River Lethe which is the River of Forgetfulness. Virgil tells him that Lethe is not in Hell and Dante will see it but not here.
“Lethe you shall see, but out of this abyss: There where, repented guilt removed, souls gather To cleanse themselves.”
Then Virgil leads Dante around the edge of the sand, where the woods meet it, and they continue.
Excerpts of Inferno are from a new translation by Robert Pinsky.
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