Ezekiel — Chapter 21
God's sword is drawn for the slaughter of both righteous and wicked: Lapide wrestles with the scandal of the righteous suffering with the wicked in temporal punishments. He resolves it through Augustine's teaching that the temporal suffering of the just is a purification, while for the wicked it is the beginning of eternal punishment.
Verse 3
I am about to draw my sword from its sheath and cut off from you both righteous and wicked: Lapide grapples carefully with divine justice's appearance when the innocent suffer alongside the guilty in temporal punishments. He distinguishes temporal punishment (which falls on all) from eternal judgment (which separates strictly according to merit) and cites Augustine's Letter 138 to Marcellinus.
Verse 15
I have given the glittering sword — ah, it is made for lightning and is wrapped for slaughter: Lapide's meditation on the divine sword as an image of divine justice that does not negotiate or hesitate. He connects to Hebrews 4:12 ('the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword') and to the sword of the Spirit in Ephesians 6.
Verse 27
'Subversum subversum ponam illud' — overturned, overturned, overturned: the triple repetition of subversion Lapide reads as the three destructions of Jerusalem (by Nebuchadnezzar, by Antiochus Epiphanes, by Titus). The 'whose right it is' (cuius est iudicium) he reads as Messiah, following the Targum and Theodoret.